Where are students?

Where are you?

• Understanding where you are is the key to creating a safe and enjoyable practice that will advance you to the "next level." What that next level is, depends on where you start. Being clear about where you are is an important component of self awareness and self knowledge.
• your job as a teacher is to help make your students more embodied and more aware of their internal state.

• There are three types of people:
• those who think they are less capable
• those who think they are more capable
• those who know where they are.

• Capability is a subjective term which is often misunderstood, as is "advanced" practice.
• ADVANCED PRACTICE is defined as practice that exists on subtler and subtler levels
• it is not the ability to achieve a posture (shape)
• it is not inversions
• it is not being the strongest or most flexible
• it is the ability to understand the workings of one's mind and body and deeper levels
• it is the ability to control and channel one's breath for different purposes
• it is the ability to regulate one's own practice to fit one's needs at each MOMENT
• Your CAPABILITY is determined by the following:
• your current state of knowledge
• your current physical state
• your current mental state
• your motivation (aspirations)
• your determination (work ethic)-how regularly you practice

• LIMITATIONS
• physical
• mental
• fear
• comparison and competition
• body
• discipline
• perfection
• concentration and attention

LongView: A Lifetime Perspective

• Yoga is a process of listening to this perspective
• You will change as you travel through the lifecycle. Deal with it.
• Every day you are different
• Every breath is unique

• Asanas/Vinyasa are TOOLS FOR EFFECTS, not goals.
• Practice is about gaining a certain perspective or impact, NOT postural shape. 
• Understanding KRAMAS (levels) of postures is key, because it allows you to see what are the important aspect of a posture and make sure that is what you are practicing. 
• This is especially true when a desired shape is either inappropriate or unachievable.
• practicing this way increases awareness, embodiment, and the positive effects of practice
• Asana are man-made and not the product of any sacred geometry. There is little evidence of the ancient nature of most asana.
• therefore, shapes are arbitrary and creativity and experimentation are encouraged in practice (to achieve certain effects).
• Every asana or movement should be practiced in a specific way for a specific reason, at a specific moment. 
• practice without purpose is not yoga. 
• purpose is found in your theory and methods, and exacted through techniques.

• Advancing practice entails learning to LISTEN TO THE FEEDBACK you give yourself during practice
• even when you are in class, you should be the one that makes choices (assuming you are ATTUNED).
• even more important as we move on with virtual practice outside of in person studio classes

• STRENGTH and FLEXIBILITY are a dialectic.
• strength and flexibility should always be worked to achieve a BALANCED RELATIONSHIP. 
• our culture valorizes flexibility, especially for women, but this thinking will only lead you toward constant injury.
• strength provides the foundation for flexibility
• MOTTO: "Strength and Stability Precede Flexibility"

• Practice should have a mental motivation, either INNER and OUTER-directed.
• This means that one can focus on internal sensations 
• this is most easily and naturally achieved in holding postures (ASANA), and the subtle internal movements of the mind and body
• the longer the holding, the more internal the focus becomes
• Also one may focus on connecting to things outside of us
• this is most easily and naturally achieved in VINYASA (moving practice), where there are no real postures ( in its most extreme expression) but only constant transition. 
• the more sustained the movement, the greater the external focus

The Mind-Breath-Body

• It is foundational in yoga practice that the mind and the body are one, and that they communicate through the breath. 
• The BODY
• Skeletal, muscular, circulatory, respiratory, nervous systems make up what we know as the body. These Systems are NOT SEPARATE, but interact with each other forming a WHOLE which is greater than the sum of its parts. (Dialectic)
• Systems are either controlled voluntarily or are sustained as a function of the autonomic nervous system.
• of the autonomic functions, only BREATHING is capable of conscious control
• through controlling breathing we can indirectly affect the functioning of the other autonomic systems.
• this is why breath is so crucial and controlling and attending to breath is foundational to yoga.
• The MIND
• the mind is part of the body as it is principally a electro-chemical neurological phenomenon. 
• We can use our mind through breath to become more EMBODIED
• EMBODIMENT is the degree to which a person feels that the wholly occupy their body. It creates a fluid sense of self. 
• Disembodiment by contrast, would describe a degree of bodily disengagement, separation, or dysmorphia. When we increasingly engage with our bodies, we are able to have more heightened levels of experience in which we see ourselves as full human beings.
• As Merleau-Ponty writes, “The body is us. We are not simply our minds. In fact, experiences in our bodies create who we "are" [mind].”   Embodiment is a way of thinking about bodily experience…it includes pleasures, pain, suffering, sensorial and sensual engagements with the world, vulnerabilities, capabilities, and constraints as they arise within specific times and places. It is both the experience of corporeality, of living in and through the body, as well as phenomenology, the philosophical study of conscious experience from an individual’s subjective perspective.  
• In short, we become who we are through our experiences in our bodies; it is the dialectic between our bodies and minds that interacts with the world. 
• Culture, Emotion and the Mind
• Culture and Perception: What we perceive and give meaning to (experiences) is conditioned by our culture. Any experiences we have are therefore "real," within the context of what is "possible" in our worldview.
• Emotion and Perception: Emotions are called "feelings" because they are bodily sensations that indicate mental states.  Emotions may be channeled in the service of yoga practice for peak experiences. 

What we have set out to do as teachers is help students cultivate a greater awareness of and attunement to their internal state as they practice (the truth of a posture or movement). This is an acceptance of the inevitability of constant change, and the the lack of sustained "truths."