by Hilary Lindsay | Dec 31, 2020 | anatomy, Asana, Feldenkrais, Healthy Living, Limbs of yoga, nashville yoga, Physiology, Social Commentary, society, therapeutic yoga, Tradition, Uncategorized, Yoga, yoga class, yoga community, Yoga Philosophy, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
Yoga combats arthritis, scoliosis, osteoporosis, imbalances, muscle weakness, pain and mental suffering. Or it increases it. Everything is the result of how you’re made and how you do things. And then there is how you are guided to manage these things. Organization, meaning how our body organizes itself, is key but we are mostly messy and subject to outside opinions of “cleanliness”. In yoga cleanliness is not described as the opposite of dirty but an inner shine. It is a component of a larger picture of contentment. In the late eighties and nineties many of us yoga enthusiasts were taught to invite discomfort, to force ourselves past normal range of motion, to work till the breath was ragged and then work to control that breath. It was stimulating, emotionally revealing, challenging in the best of ways. It did feel like making diamonds from carbon. Yoga was young in the U.S.. We were young. For many bodies that was fine until time changed those bodies and the practice naturally evolved with aging. For some bodies that was fine until it wasn’t and it was too late to undo the damage. About 25 years ago I began to feel the effects of pushing my body to the limit. In fairness I’d been told by a rheumatologist that my ligaments lacked integrity and yoga was the worst thing my body could do. It would destroy me. I discounted that at a time when movement came so easily and yoga was a dance that satisfied me wholly. I probably should have stuck to my own practice of dance incorporating yoga as that never...
by Hilary Lindsay | Apr 18, 2018 | anatomy, Asana, Feldenkrais, Limbs of yoga, Meditation, nashville yoga, therapeutic yoga, Tradition, Yoga, yoga class, Yoga Philosophy, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
I cleaned out an old desk and found this described in a flyer from a workshop I taught in 2008: Balancing Structure and Freedom The student moving from precise focused alignment to an exploration of the senses will come away with a deeper awareness of asana as the physical expression of yoga philosophy. The student will also be guided to freedom of movement within and without form to create form. The second part of that workshop presented a study in inductive v. deductive body reasoning which is why an Iyengar student back in the day described my classes as back door yoga. The pose is revealed as the parts come together. You might say, as the parts become organized as a whole. This is based on my experience of yoga. This is what a yoga teacher offers. It is not regurgitation of something before them. It is the expression of that information now digested by their unique digestive juices. My yoga developed during years of dual study in Iyengar and Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement. These practices do not involve opposing subtleties but they are opposing dynamics. They are taught independently in different worlds of somatics. That informed my teaching at a time few people were studying either. Now I see the online yoga world discovering the benefits of subtle movement . What felt unique to me is becoming “a thing”. That is a good thing. But when I wonder what I have left to offer any student that hasn’t been done before, when I become frustrated that I’ve said and done it all, I am...
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...
