Yoga

Note: Sorry for the post. Who doesn't love yoga? Ok, maybe some. With that, though, here's a post:

I started doing yoga when I was 19 as a sophomore and an NCAA Div. II basketball star (I wish :); should've been). But, I was on the team and performed the consequent bull-headed, meat-head, intellect-dominated training regimen of muscle-by-muscle training. I do biceps now, I do my stomach now, I do my chest now, I do my shoulders now, I do my legs now. Consequently, I couldn't sit cross-legged or touch my toes, etc.; I was a tight, muscle-bound person.

I started doing yoga because of my girlfriend at the time taught it; I thought it was a joke, for a while - until the day someone pointed out, when watching me sit in pain, that my body was a wreck. There was nothing overtly wrong with it, I just couldn't sit on the ground without pain. A flash-of-light realization occurred: I have to change this, this is not right. I started doing yoga everyday at age 21 and have continued until today, age 32.

I slowly got more flexible and better at yoga, and eventually I taught several yoga classes at the University of Missouri while I attended journalism school there, and the aphorism: "to master something, teach it," I found to be absolutely true. I wasn't the greatest teacher though I tried. I never systematic, long-term training; I just had an experience with a series of exceptional teachers, and a desperation to change my body. And I had a very solid grasp of the absolute basics: alignment, state of mind, attitude, which help create a successful session. Some of the absolute keys (this is gold):

• Always relax the face and breathe into whatever position you're in

• Shoulders always relaxed, dropping away from the ears. Shoulder blades reaching back toward each other, opening the upper chest and aligning the spine such that the body is supported so you feel the your flesh draped off and the energy/framework of the spine by grounding from the floor/feet through the hips up to the crown of the head. A light, free sensation

• Engage the lower back slightly, slightly; be aware that it's the absolute key between the two halves of the body, the nexus that once activated, stimulates balance and an amazing surge of energy, releasing all the power of the solar plexus (the spot two inches below the navel and our center of gravity/source of being). Gets on another level, but that's where you are

• Be aware of the hips' position relative to the shoulders, feet. In general, they will be even, horizontally speaking, and working to be either square, both hip points facing the same direction, or open, hip points spreading 180 degrees away from each other, following the knees

• Relax/spread the toes; it's surprising how this relaxes the face immediately and lets you sink deeper into whichever pose you're in

• Activate an interior line of energy; find the dynamic tension that remarkably anchors and energizes each pose
  

This post is inspired by a great yoga teacher I've been fortunate to study with in the Bay Area. Good teachers, in anything, are so rare. Jessie Holland is calm, confident, knowledgeable, thoughtful in the layout of her classes, and gives amazing, ever-changing, insightful body cues: spread the energry starting from your core outward to the hands and back toward the feet. Wow! It feels like the body floats away and supports itself.

Anyhow, excellent teachers are rare; it's a treat.

Hasta luego.