This entry was posted on Aug 22, 2023 by Charlotte Bell.
Within the age of social media, yoga pose images can encourage and/or intimidate. Instagram is chock filled with picture-perfect fancy yoga poses. Taking a look at yoga pose images is one strategy to set intentions in your apply. It may be useful to look at how others apply. However images have one main limitation: they’re static depictions of residing, respiratory types. However yoga will not be a static apply. Asana is a verb.
What Does It Imply to Pose?
A part of the rationale we frequently misread asana as a static type may very well be a matter of semantics. Most of us use the phrase “pose” to explain asana. The Oxford Dictionary’s first definition of the noun type of “pose” is that this: “a selected approach of standing or sitting, often adopted for impact or so as to be photographed, painted, or drawn.” This sounds an terrible lot like what we do after we pose for a potential viewers on social media.
The verb definitions are equally problematic. In line with Merriam Webster, the primary two are: “1. : to imagine a posture or angle often for inventive functions. 2. : to have an effect on an angle or character often to deceive or impress. posed as a physician to realize entry to the ward.” Yikes!
That is why I’ve tried—with restricted success—to vary my behavior of utilizing the phrase “pose.” Previous habits die exhausting, however I do really feel that the phrase “asana” is discovering its approach into my yoga instruction extra typically than it used to. The explanation I really feel that is necessary is that most individuals don’t come to yoga apply with a preconceived thought of what asana means. The phrase is extra malleable, making it simpler for college students to interpret it in additional versatile methods. Asana is a residing, respiratory course of. So it’s necessary to not confine it to a static definition.
If Asana Is a Verb, How Do You Strategy Follow?
Listed here are some methods to discover the method of asana:
- Step one in recognizing asana’s evolving nature is to let go of our ideas of what every pose “ought to” look or really feel like. Which means growing our “newbie’s thoughts.”
- When you open to permitting your asana to unfold naturally, as a substitute of attempting to make it match a selected preconceived mildew, you may start exploring.
- Every asana begins with our preliminary intention to apply it. So, set an intention to be current with the complete course of, starting with no matter sensations come up while you determine to apply a selected asana. Are you anticipating what you may really feel, based mostly on previous expertise? Is there trepidation or anxiousness across the pose? If it’s a pose you take pleasure in, are you in a rush to maneuver into it?
- Then be current with the sensations that accompany organising your physique so as to make the form of the asana. Do you begin the method from a selected standing, sitting or mendacity down place? What sensations are current as you put together?
- Be current with the method of transferring into the asana. Transfer slowly, so to really feel the altering sensations as your physique shifts towards the asana.
- As soon as your physique has discovered the form of the asana, breathe and loosen up. Keep related to the unfolding course of. The place do you are feeling stretching or stabilizing sensations? How are these sensations transferring and altering?
- Keep inside your physique, letting the breath information you. Every a part of the breath—inhalation and exhalation—will recommend to your physique to both retract from or deepen into your asana. Chill out into these ideas, permitting your physique to oscillate, gently and subtly, into and out of the pose. Be current with the method. That is in all probability the simplest strategy to perceive how asana is a verb.
- What sensations accompany the impulse to return out of an asana? Keep related to the method of transferring out of your asana. Then pause for a second in a impartial place to really feel the consequences.
A Few Extra Recommendations
- It may be useful to apply a selected pose greater than as soon as. If you happen to keep current as you apply, as within the above directions, you might really feel utterly completely different sensations the second time round. That may assist unstick us from our preconceived concepts concerning the asana.
- Have enjoyable with it. One of the simplest ways to maintain your apply contemporary is to strategy it with curiosity. Every time you apply, say, Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Going through Canine Pose), you’re coming to it with a distinct physique/thoughts. Regardless of what number of instances you’ve put your physique within the form of the asana, it actually is completely different every time. Staying current with the method can maintain your apply contemporary.
About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started educating in 1986. Charlotte is the creator of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Follow and Yoga for Meditators, each printed by Rodmell Press. Her third ebook is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and people sextet Crimson Rock Rondo, whose DVD received two Emmy awards in 2010.
