What to Practice: Energy and Matter

Week #4 The Play of Matter and Energy
What to practice

 There are a number of ways to think about structuring your home practice. Today we are going to talk about ways that you can structure a home practice so that you might practice "every day."
Generally speaking, practice come in two types: Structured and Free Sequences.
  • Structured Flow: are sequences which are set. This means that you do the same practice everyday.
    • Advantages: 
      • If you learn the sequences, you do not have to think! Then you can focus on whatever you are trying to access, learn, develop focus in as you practice. 
      • Even if you like to vary your practice, it's nice to have a structured BASE that you can riff off of and that has different DURATIONS
        • this way you can start you practice without thinking and end your practice when you are "finished"
    • Disadvantages
      • you may risk repetitive movement
      • you may become complacent in your experimentation
  • Intuitive Flow: Sequences are improvisational. This means no two practices are alike, but are invented as you practice based on your intuition of what should come next.
    • Advantages:
      • When you created novel sequences, you can practice what is needed for your body and mind each day.
      • Intuitive practice is creative and requires you to think, to be conscious and engage in critical inquiry and attunement with your current status
    • Disadvantages:
      • Thinking may stand in the way of getting into "flow" and having the deep experience you are looking for in yoga (when you "lose yourself")
      • requires a higher level of knowledge of options and impacts of yoga practice.
  • Themes
    • another way to think about practice is to practice according to themes
      • hip openers
      • moving with breath
      • twists
    • Advantages: create a focused practice where you can observe the impact
    • Disadvantages: sees practice in terms of a narrow range of factors
  • Structural Integrity and Structural Archetypes
    • There are basic components to any practice which can be implemented as you structure a home practice. 
    • Holding (internal)
      • active holding
      • passive holding
      • dynamic holding
      • long holding
    • Vinyasa (external)
  • Sequencing...How do I do it?
    • Master posture
    • Point counter point
    • One posture many ways
    • Warm up...work...cool down
    • Breaking down a posture (krama)
    • KEEP IT SIMPLE and focus on the small things. SMALL IS BETTER

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Internal Alchemy of Practice

Image
USING YOUR BREATH What does breath do? breath moves the body Vayus inhalation and prana and udana vayus:  exhalation and apana and samana vayus Mula (root) moves forward (I) and backward (B) with breath breath is the communication between your mind and your body GRACE What is grace? using just the right amount of effort to complete a task/movement/posture only what is essential moving with your breathing breath leads movement (starts just before the movement does) spiritual grace and physical grace...are they connected? imagining your essential self/nothing that isn't you = self-realization evenness of breath coupled with evenness of movement equals evenness of mind FLOW Flow (inner focus)  is a state where the right amount of effort is applied, no more or less, creating a single minded focus (eka grata) so that the body moves as one coalesced piece. (peak experience) needs a certain amount of challenge to maintain interest ...
Read more

Five Week Home Practice Plan

This course is designed to allow you to progress your home practice (and practice from home) using tools and techniques from both traditional and scientific perspectives. Each week we will learn a concept for practice and address each topic specifically from the perspective of you who are taking the course, so get your questions ready! On of the beauties of Hatha Yoga is that as a somatic practice, it acknowledges the interrelationship of BODY, MIND, and SPIRIT and explores the interactions and relationships along the body-mind continuum. The practice of Hatha Yoga has grown substantially in its contemporary form incorporating much from modern western science. This epitomizes the evolutionary nature of yoga and the IMPORTANCE OF CONSTANT QUESTIONING, VIGILANCE AND FEEDBACK in the process. We grow from constant attunement to the flow of our lives and our living embodied selves. Our bodies constantly adjust to our internal and external states...so a meaningful practice is a constant...
Read more