Accomplice Yoga: A Completely different Take

My first expertise with companion yoga occurred early in my Iyengar coaching. In lessons and workshops, college students have been usually invited to pair off and assist one another. For probably the most half, partnering with somebody feels useful. For those who rating the fitting companion—somebody whose arms are each delicate and positive—you possibly can typically expertise better freedom or stability in a pose.

However through the years, I’ve realized that not everybody loves companion yoga. (And to be sincere, I prefer it solely sparingly as of late.) Accomplice yoga usually invitations numerous extraneous discuss that may problem focus. It breaks up the movement of a category. Additionally, there are individuals who don’t take pleasure in being touched by folks they don’t actually know. And never everybody is aware of the best way to make an adjustment to another person’s physique in a non-coercive method. So, besides in circumstances the place all my college students are acquainted and comfy with one another, I’ve deserted utilizing companion poses in my lessons.

Nevertheless, there’s a method to follow companion yoga with out all these drawbacks. We will truly companion with our personal our bodies.

Our Obedient Our bodies

All day lengthy, our our bodies reply to our will. More often than not we don’t even give it some thought. We’ve an impulse to face up, and our physique stands. After we wish to stroll, our physique obliges. After we sit all the way down to a meal, we eat and digest. And so forth. Our our bodies largely obey no matter calls for we place on them, robotically, and with out forethought.

This occurs in yoga follow as properly. After we wish to follow Trikonasana (Triangle Pose) for instance, with out a lot thought we:

• Stand in Tadasana (Mountain Pose).
• Widen our stance to roughly a leg’s size aside.
• Rotate our ft and legs in a single course.
• Prolong our arms out at shoulder degree.
• Floor into our again foot.
• Prolong our torso laterally, out over our entrance leg.
• Place our hand on our shin, or a Yoga Block.
• Lengthen our torso as we maintain and breathe.
• Floor the again foot to assist us carry again as much as standing.

All of this requires psychological intention and bodily effort. When you’re in a pose, you may proceed to ask extra of your physique within the type of pushing additional, and we’re usually inspired to take action. However there’s one other selection. When you’ve made the gesture of shifting into the pose, you possibly can shift from the internal govt that directs your physique‘s actions, to an internal witness.

Accomplice Yoga and the Internal Witness

The internal witness is our listening capability. It’s the curious, receptive high quality that wishes to study slightly than to dictate. As soon as we’ve made the gesture of forming the physique into the form of an asana, we will shift our minds to that invisible witness. On this method, we’re doing our physique’s bidding slightly than the opposite method round.

Right here’s how I prefer to follow this:

1. Set an intention to follow a selected pose. Earlier than you progress your physique, word what ideas, psychological states or photographs come up for you. You may experiment with practising a pose you want, or with a pose you’re not keen on. Attempt one in every of every, only for enjoyable.
2. Transfer into the pose with intention, feeling every motion from the within.
3. Cease at about 80 % of what you may usually consider as your restrict. At your absolute edge, there aren’t a complete lot of selections, and your physique could properly scream at you. Once you keep inside your edge, your physique is more likely to talk with you on a subtler degree.
4. Now, chill out. Examine in with the locations in your physique the place you understand you have a tendency to carry stress—facial muscle groups, shoulders, throat, jaw, stomach, and so forth. For those who really feel stress or resistance in these areas, invite them to start to launch.
5. Are you able to breathe simply? In case your breath feels shallow or fast, it’s possible that you just’re struggling towards your physique not directly. How will you modify your pose in order that your breath is free and straightforward?
6. Are you able to chill out right here? After all, a number of the extra lively poses, similar to standing poses, backbends, balancing poses, would require some effort. However are you able to chill out your breath, your thoughts and your angle?
7. As you chill out into your pose, your physique could sign that it desires to maneuver additional. If that’s the case, proceed gently, checking your respiration, your thoughts and your angle.
8. Pay attention for when your physique is completed with the pose. Years in the past, Donna Farhi steered that I come out of poses when my curiosity started to wane. That’s one indication. However after all, your physique could also be providing you with alerts—refined or not so refined—that it’s starting to tire.
9. Keep current as you permit the pose. Then pause in a impartial place to really feel the aftereffects. For those who’re standing, relaxation in Tadasana. For those who’re sitting, you possibly can relaxation in Dandasana (Employees Pose), or for those who’re mendacity down, relaxation in Constructive Relaxation Pose.

Accomplice Yoga and Mastery of Asana

Within the yoga sutras, Sutra 2.47 defines mastery of asana this fashion. “It’s mastered when all effort is relaxed and the thoughts is absorbed within the Infinite.” What’s suspiciously lacking is the concept that performing loopy poses and pushing ourselves to the restrict has something to do with mastery. We will, as an alternative, equate mastery of asana with the idea of partnering with the physique.

We make the gesture to maneuver right into a pose. Then as soon as we stabilize ourselves within the pose, we let go of our internal govt and switch towards the internal witness. We enable the physique to inform us what it wants and desires. After we can chill out into the place we’re, our minds could be “absorbed within the Infinite,” aka the ever-changing current moments of physique sensations, ideas and psychological states.

Yoga is the union of physique, thoughts and spirit. After we follow in a fractured method, the thoughts barking orders on the physique, there’s no connection. It’s solely once we chill out into the place we’re and respect our physique’s requests and desires that we will expertise the union that’s distinctive to yoga. Make a companion of your physique, and observe what unfolds.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and commenced instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Apply and Yoga for Meditators, each printed 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 people sextet Purple Rock Rondo, whose DVD received two Emmy awards in 2010.