Move, yourself
Craig Buchanan • 23 March 2021
Don't do what the teacher tells you...
Aggression is underlying in our culture, it lurks inside most parts of our lives and beliefs. Beliefs on what makes us healthy are influenced by a fitness industry that glorifies exercise as an all out war on the body. Pushing your performance limits, boot camps , body pump, weights, power yoga etc and a general glorification of pain serve the sports injury and remedial therapy businesses. There’s even an underlying belief that exhaustion from work and exercise are good or even a status symbol - they’re not.
You’ve probably strained and pained in; sports or martial arts, yoga and even in sitting meditation - following a ‘right way’ to use your body. Teachers tell you how to “hold it” and “push it” ; to build, work and use your body to make it conform to idealised shapes and movements - we do what they say , even if it feels unpleasant or painful. From this perspective, exercises including yoga stretching, feel limiting and uncomfortable.
The act of focussing on life and fitness goals can make us dull to how we actually feel. We often carry muscle tension and mental stress without noticing it, until it later manifests in an unhappy relationship with life or illness. How well can you notice your mental and physical tension ?
Failure to sense comfort and discomfort diminishes your connection to your self and won't promote good movement . But, sensing the ‘rightness’ of movement allows you to make intelligent adjustments and improve it. This is very different from copying the teacher or pushing your limits.
Instead of pushing, it's possible to explore rightness and wholeness in movement, to undo habitual tensions by involving the body as a an intelligent whole. When we discover this, even for a moment, there's a sense of freedom that takes us out of our small selves ... it's relaxing and therapeutic.
How? work with teachers who can help you notice your movement habits so you learn to release them - to feel natural unforced movement. Instead of pushing and pulling to the limits of your body and creating more stress, try to respect (and even love) the limitations your body has. You don't hurt what you love. It's possible to become the authority on your body and not always do what teachers say ... to move; yourself.your post goes here. To edit this text, click on it and delete this default text and start typing your own or paste your own from a different source.
For me, yoga is about health, not fitness. They are not the same. Fitness is a physical aspect of health whereas health is a holistic term that includes mental, physical and social well-being (not merely the absence of illness) Here's where my yoga comes from: although we're individuals; we all share common experiences and behaviours. For example, we all have; sensations, emotions, persistent thinking, anxieties and tightness in our bodies from old injuries and repetitive positions. Patterns of thinking/emotion (old or current) can 'lock in' to certain muscle groups so we unconsciously contract them - this as fertile ground to practise and teach from. Yoga can be used to take us beyond all these behaviour patterns; by being attentive to our sensations we can change our experience and bypass our everyday self and ideas. So what happens when you bypass your habitual patterns of thinking and emotion that are operating most of the time? There's a spontaneous adjustment, revealing a broader, unified awareness beneath the patterns. But the point is, being in it, loosens us up mentally and physically, it's also where ideas, intuitions and personal insights can arise. The trick is getting there! Specific styles and methods won't help , theorys and and instructions won't help, nor will knowledge! Particular types of attention to sensation are the way through - when you bypass you access your primal nature directly; it feels clear, calm and powerful. Find a guide who goes there themself and can to help you to explore how to bypass you!
I practice yoga, mainly for insights; they're like feelings that come from a more empty sense of self. When I'm in an accord with space and stillness, I am in yoga. We live in our heads a lot; we tend to cut ourselves off from any sense of space in and around us. Yoga that doesn’t take you into inner space, (physically and mentally) can only be superficial. We keep looking outward for ideas and knowledge, but yoga (as originally practised) is to:- - Refine our attention and dampen incessant thinking - Come more alive to our inner space - Explore 'expansion' from there, and come to a purer sense of self If a yoga session is carried by these; then insights arrive...in their own time. When practising this way, the postures become secondary (like vehicles to be driven) and aims like stretching and performing flowing routines become unecessary. In group yoga; the space in the room separates us - but that space also connects us. The space between us in the group isn’t empty; ancient yoga and modern science show us this. Science also shows that groups of people in rapport will over time, unconsciously match their; breathing, heartbeats and motor neuron activity. Group yoga, if practised in a deep way; charges the group space and develops a collective awareness that affects your own sense of self. Together, our bodies release tension, the group expand perceptually and our minds become purer. This is the yoga, this sits at the core of what I offer. It's common to distrust your own experience and look outside for answers and what to do. Deeper ways of yoga restore that trust and release personal insights...
