by Hilary Lindsay | Dec 1, 2014 | Asana, Feldenkrais, nashville yoga, Yoga, yoga class, Yoga Philosophy, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
Injuries surfaced a dozen years ago; injuries that told me my career as a teacher was over but that’s not me. I kept going, changing my focus, my message, my style, my mission. Screw defeat. Vacillating between discipline of form and giving it up altogether to find my own circuitous path in a bi-polar vortex of pain and pissed, I’ve learned a couple of things. I’ve come all the way back and been completely broken again. I could not get up off the yoga room floor the day I was sure all my injuries were gone. Superman met kryptonite that day as I came down confidently from the impossible height forced by a block under my sacrum and could not even move a finger. Shithead. You are paralyzed. You forgot your fragility in the ecstasy of a whole strong spirited body again. But you are not that. Now you know. Back I crawled into my Feldenkrais womb of acceptance for all that is true about this body on this day, this age: Crawl crookedly as I am and find myself in my circuitous path born of instinct and survival. Bring it back to the yoga floor and try again. But if I stay a crooked path with a crooked body, won’t I get more crooked? I feel sure that is true and work to strike the balance again. On days uninspired by a willing body I strike out with alignment from my Iyengar toolbox as a weapon against a blank page that refuses to be written. ABC is familiar and safe. Except when the letters...
by Hilary Lindsay | Jul 18, 2014 | Yoga, yoga community |
I’m subbing and don’t know the clientele. I ask the standard questions: Is anyone new to yoga? Is anyone injured? Are there any requests? They smile at me but nothing else. I ask; why are you here today? To my surprise the first answer is “love”. Love? I’ve never met her before. It does not seem logical that I can provide what she wants. Look up the word love and see that there is no absolute definition. What is love? It can be a multitude of things. As stated on Wikipedia: This diversity of uses and meanings combined with the complexity of the feelings involved makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, compared to other emotional states. And within this discussion of love, an interesting premise for the yoga class is written: Love may be understood as a function to keep human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species We are empowered by the comfort of community. It’s primal. I used to work on film sets. The experience was not unlike the commonality of the group who spends a couple of days together at a yoga retreat (except for the liquor, x-rated banter and sleepless nights:)). You are an impermanent collective with one purpose. Yoga studios promote community which requires a consistent group of participants. In this case there seemed to be a random section of the population who had not met previously, who did not gather before or after class. Could love then be described as a function of community? It did not feel that way to me. I have taken class with...
