by Hilary Lindsay | Jun 6, 2017 | Asana, Healthy Living, Meditation, Pranayama, therapeutic yoga, Tradition, Yoga, yoga class, Yoga psychology, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
Yoga teacher Michael Stone has a gift for conveying imagery through words with a tenderness that is unique. I am putting his newsletter on Pranayama here because it is everything I could say in words I had not thought of. He is remarkable. Check him out. The link is first and I’ve copied his copy below. All credit to Michael Stone. https://michaelstoneteaching.com/pranayama-1-practices/?utm_source=Michael+Stone+Newsletter&utm_campaign=5f19a8a3fe-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_06_05&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6b6fe36477-5f19a8a3fe-122510405 Pranayama 1: Practices Pattabhi Jois said that pranayama practice was like plugging yourself in to a 12,000 volt outlet. Some confuse the endorphin rush of extended inhales and exhales with what should really be going on: ease and pleasure. The best part about chanting is not chanting. The afterglow, the clean taste in the palette when it’s finished. Ujayyi Pranayama Pranayama means the energy of prana. We’re ayaming (unrestraining) the prana. Ujayyi means victorious, and up. We’re stretching the threads of the breath to release the prana. The inhale and exhale are conditioned by samskaras – your scars of gender, culture, Stephen Harper, childhood, the Keystone XL Pipeline proposal. All this can be found in your breath. Doing pranayama means becoming a connoisseur of the breath. Inside the breath there are gravestones, habits, flows of the past, nervous system indicators/regulators, immune system indicators/regulators. We practice to comb through all the layers of the prana. Inhaling and exhaling through the nose tones the glottis. Try to produce just enough tone in the vocal diaphragm so you can hear an aspirant breath, but so your neighbour can’t hear it. It’s like when you’re whispering – then you are also toning the vocal diaphragm....
by Hilary Lindsay | Mar 23, 2015 | anatomy, Asana, Meditation, nashville yoga, Yoga, yoga class, Yoga psychology, yoga teaching |
You are lying down, face up on a hard floor in a public place. You have completed your yoga practice which required attention and vigilance. You trained yourself to stay alert. You are used to watching out for yourself more than watching into yourself so it was a beautiful effort. When you are asked to transition from that effort to effortless relaxation your nerves grasp and rush for a place to rest that is not immediately obvious. The mind is still scanning the horizon as is its habit. Savasana: Place a blanket with no more than an inch or so of height under the head with the edge touching the tops of the shoulders but not under the shoulders. You are connecting your head to your trunk for the sake of the nervous system which can stand down. (If your chin is jutted to the ceiling and you cannot lengthen your neck you may add height until the throat recedes below the Adams Apple. You may alternately bend your knees and rest a bolster under your thighs to soften the tight back line of the spine, pelvis or legs.) Turn the palms up and let no part of the arm touch the trunk but no farther than this necessitates. You are now un-tethered. Let the upper eyelid drop rather than squeezing the lower lid and upper lid together to close the eyes. You are more un-tethered, disconnecting one part of your skin to another. Boundaries fade and the lightness that comes may feel disorienting. You may find you need an anchor. Place something with weight on your...
by Hilary Lindsay | Feb 20, 2015 | Asana, Meditation, Yoga, yoga class, Yoga psychology, yoga teaching |
Lie down and close your eyes. What part of you feels tension, tightness, restriction, binding or discomfort? What part of you feels light, empty, easy, relaxed? Keep your mind on the easy parts as you breathe gently but intentionally. How does your attention to pleasure affect the less comfortable places? What if all your life was that manageable? Can you apply this to something happening now, beyond the...
by Hilary Lindsay | Sep 30, 2014 | Meditation, nashville yoga, Nature, Yoga, Yoga and Religion, yoga class, yoga community, Yoga Philosophy, Yoga psychology, yoga teacher |
approximate reading time: 1 minute and 20 seconds In the season of flame red trees and burning leaves we sow what we’ve reaped from the earthly plain. It is a straightforward thing to plant a seed and harvest the plant, having clear parameters of time and direction. What we have sown or reaped also becomes a philosophical inquiry at harvest time as fall marks the beginning of a new year for the Jewish people with a ritual of reflection on our behavior to our fellow men. Less condensed, as it’s a daily practice, the underpinning of yoga requires reflection with regularity. We are sowing without pause and observing the outcomes. I had a lovely old Tantra teacher who asked me if I knew what the worst pollution was and when I failed to come up with an answer he said that it was words: You can clean the air, the earth, the water but words can never be removed. I came upon a medical study on rejection and physical pain. An MRI (an imaging device) of the brain lit up the same area of the brain for rejection as it did for the physical pain of a burn. Rejection forms its own words in the mind of the rejected. Rejection is the upshot of any number of actions: Being fired from a job, being fired as a lover or friend, being passed over for a post, being ignored by anyone close to us or not, with words spoken or implied. I write rejection and you’ve already remembered your own.So when we say we got burned by...
