The Power of Yoga Visualisation

Aug 19, 2013 | XTeaching, Yoga teaching  | 0 comments

visualise
When I was rather new to yoga, having just completed a 10 week YMCA beginners course, I moved to southern California. I was keen to find a yoga teacher and, in the seventies – way before Google searches – how to do that was to check out the local newspaper classified section.
I discovered Joan in a small ad that mentioned yoga, so I rang the phone number. Joan seemed friendly enough so I booked for a private session to see if I liked her in person. At that time, I was an ingenue in the realm of yoga and fairly open-minded, so I just took on Joan’s style of teaching without much scrutiny.
Joan was a full-bodied woman, confident and articulate. She looked Jewish to me, but I later found out that she was a member of a church called Religious Science. In my first lesson, we did a little bit of stretching, but the main program was something I’d never encountered called visualisations.
I had a hard time paying for private lessons as I was unemployed, but Joan kindly lowered her fees and we shortened our session to just a half hour and somehow I managed.
Using visualisations as a method of working with the mind is probably more commonplace now than it was back then. We see it as a healing method in many alternative therapies but also in medical circles, where it is known as guided imagery.
In the end, I didn’t stay with Joan’s type of yoga. I became nervous about subliminal messages coming through from her religious background. More to the point, I wanted a physically oriented approach to yoga, and years later I found what I wanted when I learned the Iyengar method.
What’s really interesting though is that I use imagery constantly when I’m practising and teaching yoga. Through my studies of anatomy and physiology, I picture and sense exactly how my body works in each pose. In the classroom, I ask my students to visualise their shoulder blades or kneecaps or sitting bones to help them connect body and mind.
Sometimes, I’ll ask the students when they are in a supine position to close their eyes and picture the whole of the pose I’m teaching before doing it. Having done a mental dress rehearsal, they are more aware when they actually perform the pose.
I heard after I’d moved on from Joan’s teaching that she studied to become an Iyengar teacher. I’m sure the visualisations she practised created a great platform from which to practice and teach the rigorous style of BKS Iyengar.
 

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