Earlier this yr, I wrote a put up about how one can simplify your yoga cues. When you’ve ever been in a yoga class the place the cues have been coming at you quick and furiously, it’s possible you’ll know the way complicated it may be. I like listening to lecturers clarify observe in methods I’d by no means imagined. However generally fixed cueing can go away no house for our personal exploration. Yoga cues are essential, for college students’ security and for his or her progress. But when I might solely give one yoga cue in my courses it will be this: Calm down into the place you might be.

A Yoga Cue for Mastery of Asana Follow

This yoga cue aligns with Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Of the 196 yoga sutras, these three are involved with asana observe (as translated by Alistair Shearer):

• 2.46: The bodily posture ought to be regular and comfy.
• 2.47: It’s mastered when all effort is relaxed and the thoughts is absorbed within the Infinite.
• 2.48: Then we’re not upset by the play of opposites.

In Sutra 2.46, we study that asana is a observe of steadiness—balancing stability and ease. The third niyama, tapas (interior hearth) evokes us to be regular in our dedication, and powerful and steady in our expression of the poses. However we steadiness this with a way of ease, by no means pushing ourselves to the purpose of ache or battle.

Balancing these two qualities opens the door to mastery. What Sutra 2.47 tells us is that mastery of asana has nothing to do with pushing our our bodies to the max, or training “superior” poses. Mastery arrives after we are in a position to loosen up into the place we’re. Once we are in a position to loosen up right into a pose simply as it’s—no matter what it could appear to be from the skin—our minds and our bodies develop into one. We develop into absorbed within the ever-changing sensations arising in every second of a pose.

Our capacity to relaxation in every second of every pose, it doesn’t matter what sensations occur to be arising, yields essentially the most life-changing advantage of asana observe. Sutra 2.48 states that when we’ve mastered asana on this method, we’re in a position to navigate the ups and downs of our lives with extra grace.

Intentions for a New 12 months

I’ve typically stated after we’re training a seated ahead bend in my courses, “Enlightenment doesn’t come from touching your head to your knee. Calm down into the place you might be.” In fact, that doesn’t imply prompt enlightenment will occur after we loosen up into our poses simply as they’re. However maybe, for a number of moments, we will contact into our interior useful resource of calm and peace after we enable ourselves to easily be in our poses with out judgment or ambition. We will shift from the realm of doing to the realm of being.

Working towards asana on this method may also help us domesticate a behavior of enjoyable into the place we’re in different areas of our lives. All of us expertise nice and ugly experiences in our lives. Peace doesn’t come from avoiding the disagreeable experiences; it comes from assembly them with each stability and readability. Once we observe this yoga cue on the mat, it turns into a ability we will entry off the mat.

As we head into a brand new yr, might you loosen up into the place you might be proper now. Could you domesticate stability and ease and benefit from the pleasures of merely being.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and commenced instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Follow and Yoga for Meditators, each revealed by Rodmell Press. Her third e book 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 folks sextet Crimson Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards.