How do we meet the ground?
Inspired by a recent Scaravelli-Inspired workshop by Dot Bowen, I have been incorporating how we touch the ground into my classes this week. It is such a simple concept, but when we move into a posture, the idea of how we meet the ground is important. Do we push against the ground? Are we unable to fully meet and trust the support? Or, can we lean in and get the support we need?
Gaining insight from yoga
How we move in our yoga classes can say a lot about who we are. Our physiology can reflect our emotional make-up. When we attend yoga classes perhaps this is something to think about – how our bodies respond when we allow ourselves to lean into the ground. It may be that we are not ready to truly lean in and get support, so can we be interested in where we are, not pushing to get the results of the pose?
Being interested in what arises for us in a yoga class can be helpful. Yoga, I feel, is about how we relate to ourselves and how we relate to others. If, say, I cannot lean into the ground, perhaps it says something about how I lean into others. We are complex beings with complex histories, conscious of some and unconscious of other parts of it. Noticing in a yoga class can be tantamount to providing us with deeper insight into ourselves.
A deeper awareness
I try to encourage a listening and noticing of the body in my Scaravelli-Inspired classes, allowing our awareness to follow what is there. A slight bit of tension is there for a reason – can we breathe into it with a soft awareness and allow it to take its course? Once we start moving into postures, we can jump into our habitual modes of being.
John Stirk used to say that our muscles hold what we think of as the ‘self’, since this autobiographical self is reflected in how we move and the tension patterns in our muscles. If we move unconsciously into a pose, we move into our habitual ways of being. If we move with a gentle observer that notices, then things might start to change.
