Discussions

Discussions

Experienced teachers and new students alike can draw benefits from these modules, which usually range in length from five to 15 minutes. The focus of each discussion centers on concepts and techniques that enhance one’s understanding and practice of yoga.

Teachers may find these discussions useful in holding conversations with students about yoga philosophy, asana practice, and meditation. Beginning yoga students may likewise find these short, clear discussions useful for gaining footholds (pun not initially intended–but, upon reflection, heartily endorsed) in their respective yoga practices.

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Inner-Awareness and Yoga: Starling-Cloud Perception

A scene from *Starling-Cloud Perception*.

In the first Momentasana discussion module, listeners explore the concept of the “Starling-Cloud of Perception,” an analogy for a mindfulness strategy involving the practice of merging breath, body-sensation scanning, and full-body awareness within poses.

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Forthcoming Discussion Modules

Strategy: Juxtaposition of Work and Rest

A scene from vinyasa (flow) classes featuring work-rest juxtaposition.

Asanas offer practitioners an opportunity to juxtapose work and rest, noticing by virtue of close comparison the productive relationship that holds between these modalities. Rest energizes work; work prepares for and deepens rest. In asanas such as the locust pose, this comparison affords chances for an especially rich reflection whereby a third perspective opens, a point of view that crosses both working and resting states without reducing to either one of them. This liberating meditative state deepens self-awareness and facilitates balanced work-rest management practice and mentality in moment-to-moment life.

Stages within an Asana

A scene offering guidance on pose-development.

Yoga poses can evolve, moment-to-moment and breath-by-breath. Finding a pose quickly exists as one type of opportunity and challenge for a practice, but it is certainly not a requirement for yoga, nor is it always the most health-promoting option. Meditative movement and concentration bring rich information to a practitioner’s evolving awareness; this ever-updating information supports stages of increased comfort, steadiness, confidence, and exploration within the pose, reaching finer degrees of subtlety as the practitioner listens to and adjusts the inner dimensions of the pose. The pose is alive. Even in the case of externally graceful and apparently motionless asana expressions, the internal dimension of the pose vibrates and flows with change.

Breath Pose-Inflation

In the original yoga philosophy, first recorded by Patanjali approximately 2,600 years ago, we learn an important standard for poses: that poses combine sukha (comfort) and sthira (steadiness). Like a firm handshake, a well-struck pose should be strong yet restful, assertive yet receptive, energized yet relaxed. We know we have found a health-promoting expression of a pose when we feel this combination of qualities in it.

Mechanically, we can move ourselves only so far into a comfortable and steady expression of the pose, wherein the body reaches a comfortable tautness and well-tuned expression of power. Through the breath, however, practitioners may experience a deepening, even a completion or fulfillment, of the pose, by drawing the inhale breath into the shape of the pose, especially where the pose is most active. The effect of this “inflation” technique is akin to filling an already-filled mug to the brim, and just above the brim, so that all contents remain fully contained while somehow slightly exceeding the container’s edge. This subtly ecstatic experience is available in all poses, and it facilitates a practitioner’s safe and stable development of strength and flexibility in a yoga practice.