Days 6 & 7 were asana practice at a weekend long workshop at Yoga For Today with Michael Stone. What a great way complete my first week of this yoga journey! This is definitely turning into a journey of spirit, mind and body.
I truly enjoy Michael's style of teaching both yoga philosopy and asana. A lot of what he had to say this weekend really resonated with me and my thoughts about my life right now. A story he told us about being able to see the sun that is above the clouds on a gloomy rainy day gave me food for thought about my doldrums of winter. I keep thinking about getting away to some place warm and have been day dreaming about escaping the cold Edmonton winter. This has been going on for over a week now and I have been making myself miserable. After his story brought things into perspective for me, I've realized that I should just take winter with stride and know that spring and summer is just around the corner. In the meantime, I have my health, I have my family, I have my boyfriend, I have my friends...and they are all here with me right here, right now. I've realized that I need to keep this perspective or I'll just be miserable for the rest of the winter, since realistically and financially, I can't get away to a beach any time soon. Live in the moment and know that there is sunshine up there behind the clouds...sunshine is always there and without clouds every once in awhile, how can we really know how truly wonderful the feel of sun kissing your face is?
Yoga philosophy aside, asana practice this weekend was two days each of three and a half hour sessions! Phew! I sure was present for those classes - especially when he picked me to demostrate trikonasana and I held it for...I'm not sure how long. My legs were so wobbly when I got out of the posture, but it was weird, because although I could hear him lecturing in the background and other students asking questions, all I could feel was my breath flowing in and out of my body as I gazed at my dhristi (sp?) point. It helped that at the beginning of practice, Michael taught us the method of viloma pranayama and how it could help us find mula bhanda and he also guided us to the various dhristi points in each posture.
Michael told us that although he has practiced Ashtanga for many years, he does not subscribe to one style of practice. Instead he incorporates many different methods into his asana teachings and practices. His classes were challenging because his techniques of getting in and out of postures were different from any other style of asana that I have practiced. Some of his methods were even counter-intuitive (i.e. instead of expression with heart shining outward in trikonasana, he taught us to draw the kidneys and the ribs into eachother to get deeper into the posture). Although sometimes it didn't feel right to me, I still kept and open mind and practiced the way he taught the postures. As the end of the day, I felt that his teachings helped me deepen my practice in a way that I never expected.
There were a few postures that I will start incorporating into my own teaching. I am keen on practicing viloma pranayama more frequently and then teaching it to beginners. Especially since engaging mula bhanda is so important in many postures. I also can't wait to instruct more advanced students some of the deeper postures and to teach them that in order to get into these postures, you have to be patient with yourself, move with breath and not muscle into the asanas - especially some of the more advanced Moksha students. I find that many students who come to the Moksha studio often muscle their way into postures, but by using some of the verbal cues that Michale used this weekend can help me to be better able at gently guiding them through breath to find the posture.
The description of the second day of asana practice with Michael said "Inversions and Backbends". I signed up for this workshop, aside from enjoying Michael's lectures, was because I have a strong aversion to inversions. I am fearful of inversions, particularly headstands. I am afraid that I will lose control while in a headstand and end up injuring myself - perhaps even destroying my spinal cord and ending up a quadrapeligic...pretty fatalistic, eh? Anyway, I was kind of disappointed, yet relived, that we did not venture into headstands. However, I am glad to have been reinforced that any asana with your heart below your waist is considered an inversion - even downward dog - which is of my favourite postures!
I am glad that this 30-day challenge is turing out to be a 30-day yoga journey. One week into the challenge and already I am learing (and in come cases re-learning) things about myself and what brought me to the decision of becoming a yoga teacher in the first place. I hope to learn more about myself in the next 23-days.
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