615.419.3604 hilarylindsayyoga@gmail.com

Asana Ignites When Melody Meets Lyrics

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....

Broken Yogi 2020

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...

We Are the People We Will Become

  We identify ourselves with some certainty. Smart, twitchy, resourceful, stubborn, kind, hard working, easy going, generous, like that. Is that it? Is it absolute? Seeds of change are dormant in all life forms. Both possibilities and pandemic. Stress forces them to mutate. Forces  adaptation. All life forms wired to survive.    Dis-ease threatens and unease arises. We change our habits. But also our behavior. What happens in reaction?   In yoga, once dormant comes to life with deliberate breath and movement. We name it “consciousness”. Knocks on the door and then breaks it down. This knowingness challenges our opinion of truth.   Forget who we were before this terrible tempest. Crisis now an opportunity. For curiosity. Respective human and humaneness magnified. Who are you?   Close your eyes. Repeat “I am” to yourself again and again. I am…….. What shows up? Keep going until nothing else comes up. Until “I am” is all. And...

Live in the Moment? How?

You are human and you think about the future. The future is a mystery that is scary. We are wired for danger. We are born for stress. It’s how we survived as a species. Now it seems to be killing some of us.   People tell you to live in the moment. What does that mean? Of course you live in the moment. The moment is the life. You also consider the next moment. That way you have food. And a roof. Or at least a raincoat. You learned about that because of the past.   There is so much to consider in a microwave  life where every moment presents an opportunity to slide into sloth.  I mean, you don’t consider consequences but live in the moment.  A pint of ice cream and a bag of chips seemed like a good idea in that moment. So did the next drink or the trip home with a stranger. There is that too but is that what the new age pundits are recommending? Before you beat yourself up for succumbing to what seems the less enlightened version of be here now,  consider that there is no such thing as the present because you are a compound of past present and future happening all at once always. You can’t live in just one of those things because they are not separate. What you can do is manage your reactions by observing them. Managing your reactions may result in better choices. It’s all about observation and ironically desire to be free of desire or a victim of your past.   You are frustrated...

No Stability, No Space. Closed Chain Yoga with Hilary Lindsay

Closed chain describes exercise where the limbs are steadied by a constant surface. It keeps the energy in the distal and proximal length of the limbs at once and crosses several joints at once. It bounces us back to the spine. A modern yoga teacher often uses the word “open”. Without a sense of center or place to open from, this description can be confusing in a physical yoga practice. Here the postures demand movement from the core. The core surrounds and supports the spine and brain. The sensation of opening in this case is the stretch of muscle bone and fiber once activated and rooted. This is stability. Once stable the nervous system calms and has space to pay attention, to direct attention. No stability~no space. Ignite what supports the spine and brain. Bring physical energy to the core in order to ground the student. Without grounding, opening is not only confusing but dangerous. Furthermore it makes for a whole lot of yoga absurdity. Who hasn’t been in a group of open hearted yogis who are more posture than substance? I know I have. I have fled the yoga studio scene because of that lack of sincerity. Using unstable bands, bands that stretch, encourages the nerves to find center in an unstable world. It adds an element of reality to the practice of yoga with props. I am introducing yoga using therapy bands. For instruction contact me at activeyoga@comcast.net. My studio comes with me. Here is the first video.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7NRrtDpP3g The cues for action and awareness will be...