Asana is a Verb: Let Your Yoga Evolve

Within the age of social media, yoga pose images can encourage and/or intimidate. Instagram is chock stuffed with picture-perfect fancy yoga poses. yoga pose images is one technique to set intentions in your observe. It may be useful to look at how others observe. However images have one main limitation: they’re static depictions of dwelling, respiration varieties. However yoga just isn’t a static observe. Asana is a verb.

What Does It Imply to Pose?

A part of the explanation we frequently misread asana as a static type may very well be a matter of semantics. Most of us use the phrase “pose” to explain asana. The Oxford Dictionary’s first definition of the noun type of “pose” is that this: “a specific method of standing or sitting, often adopted for impact or as a way to be photographed, painted, or drawn.” This sounds an terrible lot like what we do once we pose for a potential viewers on social media.

The verb definitions are equally problematic. Based on Merriam Webster, the primary two are: “1. : to imagine a posture or perspective often for creative functions. 2. : to have an effect on an perspective or character often to deceive or impress. posed as a physician to realize entry to the ward.” Yikes!

For this reason I’ve tried—with restricted success—to vary my behavior of utilizing the phrase “pose.” Previous habits die laborious, however I do really feel that the phrase “asana” is discovering its method into my yoga instruction extra usually than it used to. The explanation I really feel that is necessary is that most individuals don’t come to yoga observe with a preconceived concept of what asana means. The phrase is extra malleable, making it simpler for college kids to interpret it in additional versatile methods. Asana is a dwelling, respiration course of. So it’s necessary to not confine it to a static definition.

If Asana Is a Verb, How Do You Method Follow?

Listed here are some methods to discover the method of asana:

1. Step one in recognizing asana’s evolving nature is to let go of our ideas of what every pose “ought to” look or really feel like. Which means creating our “newbie’s thoughts.”
2. When you open to permitting your asana to unfold naturally, as an alternative of attempting to make it match a specific preconceived mildew, you’ll be able to start exploring.
3. Every asana begins with our preliminary intention to observe it. So, set an intention to be current with all the course of, starting with no matter sensations come up once you determine to observe a specific asana. Are you anticipating what you would possibly really feel, based mostly on previous expertise? Is there trepidation or nervousness across the pose? If it’s a pose you take pleasure in, are you in a rush to maneuver into it?
4. Then be current with the sensations that accompany establishing your physique as a way to make the form of the asana. Do you begin the method from a specific standing, sitting or mendacity down place? What sensations are current as you put together?
5. Be current with the method of shifting into the asana. Transfer slowly, in an effort to really feel the altering sensations as your physique shifts towards the asana.
6. As soon as your physique has discovered the form of the asana, breathe and loosen up. Keep linked to the unfolding course of. The place do you’re feeling stretching or stabilizing sensations? How are these sensations shifting and altering?
7. Keep inside your physique, letting the breath information you. Every a part of the breath—inhalation and exhalation—will counsel to your physique to both retract from or deepen into your asana. Loosen up into these ideas, permitting your physique to oscillate, gently and subtly, into and out of the pose. Be current with the method. That is most likely the best technique to perceive how asana is a verb.
8. What sensations accompany the impulse to come back out of an asana? Keep linked to the method of shifting out of your asana. Then pause for a second in a impartial place to really feel the results.

A Few Extra Recommendations

• It may be useful to observe a specific pose greater than as soon as. When you keep current as you observe, as within the above directions, you could really feel utterly completely different sensations the second time round. That may assist unstick us from our preconceived concepts in regards to the asana.
• Have enjoyable with it. The easiest way to maintain your observe contemporary is to strategy it with curiosity. Every time you observe, say, Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Going through Canine Pose), you’re coming to it with a distinct physique/thoughts. Regardless of what number of occasions you’ve put your physique within the form of the asana, it actually is completely different every time. Staying current with the method can preserve your observe contemporary.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Follow and Yoga for Meditators, each printed by Rodmell Press. Her third guide 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.