by Hilary Lindsay | Feb 17, 2023 | Asana, nashville yoga, Poetry, Social Commentary, therapeutic yoga, Yoga, yoga class, Yoga Philosophy, yoga teaching |
Nashville is home and host to songwriters so it was nothing unusual to be sitting next to a visiting songwriter at dinner last night. He said he’s basically a writer. The melody is secondary added intuitively as he can’t read music and doesn’t play an instrument. A song’s melody should prop up the gist of the lyrics. Without a melody the poetry or prose can be impactful but notes give words sensations that pierce hearts and sear brains. Even wordless music stirs us. With my habit of taking the macrocosm into the particular through the windshield of yoga, I considered how assuming yoga poses without passion is like words with no melody. Posture becomes authentic when executed with sentiment. Sentiment implies drawing emotion from a well of experience. That sentiment shifts as fresh water fills the well and then you might say your yoga practice reflects all of you in the moment, every moment. It keeps changing. It stays interesting and lively as new impressions form again and again remixing the song of your soul....
by Hilary Lindsay | Dec 31, 2022 | anatomy, Asana, therapeutic yoga, Yoga, yoga class, yoga teaching |
Downward facing dog is a spinal stretch. Though the posture tones the arms and stretches the back of the legs and though this is a prerequisite to finding the spinal stretch, those limbs are just the path to the destination. The connection to the spine comes from opposition in the arms and legs. The spine has a component in the muscles of the lower gut as well as those that envelope the back. Once you’ve got enough arm strength to hold yourself in plank pose for a minute or more and once you’ve gotten enough space in the hamstrings, the backs of the legs, to lie on your back with straight legs able to go 45 degrees or more, you’re ready. Take plank pose Throw your hips in the air and suck the gut into the spine. Urge your arms forward and keep them there as you Push your thighs backward heels high. Reach your heels away from your toes and downward Imagine the ears to the wrists and the neck will release. Each inhale will touch the tissue of the lower back and the exhales touch the tissue of the lower belly. You are stretching spinal muscles and the guide wire of the spine which originates in the front of the hips and attaches through the lower belly to the spine. Hips Head Heels One Two Three Good...
by Hilary Lindsay | Mar 28, 2022 | Asana, nashville yoga, Social Commentary, Yoga, yoga class, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
I have less than an hour to get through to a group of college students. They are not consistent here at Vanderbilt. There’s no way to deepen a practice when every yoga class has to be an experience for new beginners. A journalist checklist creates a strong foundation for yoga that anyone can relate to. I offer it to them as a way to consider themselves as they take the plunge. Who What Where When Why How Taken out of order this makes most sense. How do I do this, where do I feel this, when do I feel it and how can I change it, what is the process, who am I in this context. If the yoga experience is informative or enlightening, when and why will be answered by the other questions. But every question must be answered for the story to reveal the facts. ...
by Hilary Lindsay | Nov 27, 2021 | nashville yoga, Poetry, Prose, Social Commentary, society, yoga community, Yoga History, yoga teaching |
Star Trek Captain of the Enterprise, William Shatner exited Jeff Besos’ Blue Origin rocket at the age of 90 overwhelmed by the revelation that the minuscule five foot wide thin blue veil surrounding earth is all that separates us from destruction. Distance and space shed light on this slight protection as well as the perspective of a combined humanity who will live or die together. The illumination defies the fact that we see ourselves as unrelated tribes speaking unrelated languages, living individual lives. It defies our aversion to amend bad habits despite worry for the planet. All that separates us summons the greeting Namaste. The light in you recognizes the light in me. The suggestion is I see you and I see you are like me though we mostly don’t see or believe that. The words thin blue veil stay with me. In this post quarantine Pandemic infused 2.0 life I see that veil hanging like a pall between what was and what will be. The atmosphere feels toxic and beyond repair. The dream of the greatest nation a spec in the bygone distance. The prevailing text of modern yoga states at the outset that the goal of yoga is to lift the veil of ignorance about our true nature. At this moment of cynical denial of undeniable truths, the veil prevails as evidenced by the current social civil war. I once thought yoga could save the world but it seems only to have become another distraction. This veil is a fog of confusion. Should this veil dissipate might we come to recognize the true nature of ourselves...
by Hilary Lindsay | Feb 4, 2021 | anatomy, Asana, Limbs of yoga, Meditation, nashville yoga, Pranayama, Prose, Social Commentary, society, therapeutic yoga, Yoga, yoga class, yoga community, Yoga psychology, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
February 2021. Soft hands belie a commitment to hand sanitizers as the Pandemic forges onward. Corona Easter Bunny 2020 by Hilary Those souls whose sensory overload comes quickly in the best of times are quickest to notice the rawness of skin now washed in a constant acid bath of battle. No lotion soothes these scoured parts, those instruments of giving and receiving for too human bodies. The skin the world sees, the skin of the organs, the skin of the breath and even the mind is chafed and chapped and twitchy. We are fragile and too tender for the fight. Being thin skinned takes on a sharp meaning when the thickness of ones skin implies protection. In a world where beauty certainly isn’t only skin deep, at a time when we are forced to the surface hourly in an attempt to come up for news that is the air defining our days, we live on the surface. The yoga teacher urges the student toward the down under. Seek the quiet beneath the surf for answers to your urgent question. Who am I? What’s happening? What is real? One might see living beneath the surface now as denial or detachment or worse, disassociation. Underground is a dirty word aligned with other words like the “dark web”. The underground rises to the surface again and again. It is blind and desperate for a light. It will not be ignored. On the surface it crashed the nation’s Capitol in a murderous rage. On the surface it is a violent virus burning holes in the skin of lungs. But in yoga we encourage...
by Hilary Lindsay | Jan 20, 2021 | Ethics, Healthy Living, Meditation, nashville yoga, Social Commentary, society, Yoga, yoga community, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
The Inauguration of Joe Biden 2021 Spring air teases the forsythia and bluebirds forward. The white cold light of winter still shines slantingly through my Southern facing windows this early dawn. It will soon shift to the northern side of this house and morning will be less of a call to attention as the days drift on for hours, eventually bleeding into night. On this day that Donald Trump departs he will take despair with him. He will carry the crushing weight of hate away on the country’s helicopter. His departure will unclog the suffocating sludge of contention that has sucked the oxygen from our people. It will feel that way for some of us. Some of us will follow the fumes kicked up by his dust, hoping to stay in his reality star story. Some will choose lies but most will roll over with exhaustion hoping for an unbroken rest now that he’s been replaced by a human being whether it be in defeat of their vote or victory. Will we emerge from the bunker rolls of toilet paper and paper towels to wonder at our prison walls? Will we stare in confusion at the storehouse of swabs, sanitizers, soaps and wipes stuffed into corners? Will we ever look at a communal bowl of food without horror? Will we find the old friends waiting and pick up the pieces as they’d never broken? What do our jobs that were lost mean now? Were we necessary and is there a place for us? What do the jobs we’ve done from home feel like when we take them back to...
