From Sweat to Soul: Nurturing Mind-Body Connection in Yoga Practice
Twice a week I teach hot power flow, and I love it. I love showing up as a student for a physically challenging flow, and I love teaching them. These flows teach me to trust my body and to breathe through challenges. These flows help me to feel fully embodied and connect me to the sense of aliveness coursing through my veins, and I love the opportunity to share that embodiment with my students.
And, yet, I know that there is so much more to yoga than just the sweaty flows.
Yoga is a path that can lead to self awareness and self-responsibility. Yoga can help us to connect fully to ourselves and to remember over and over again that we're never separated from the Divine nor from each other. And yet, the vast majority of people who come to value this path begin walking it through attending yoga asana classes.
So, how do we square the circle? How do we both share yoga asana with our students while also honoring and sharing the other aspects of yoga? And, how do we do that all in a sixty minute class?
First, let me say that none of this is easy. It's hard enough to lead students effectively through asana in sixty minutes. However, I believe there are ways to weave together a physically strong class with exploration of philosophy.
First, it starts with us. As teachers, our job is not to be perfect. Our job is to show our students what is possible when they show up on their mats consistently. We can take an honest look at our own practices and ask ourselves, "am I meditating? Am I doing breathwork? Am I continuing to read?" If the answer is no, we might adjust our own practices to make more room for meditating, practicing Pranayama, and reading or discussing philosophy.
Be intentional with our planning. This is not super easy to do, but with a few tweaks we can lead our students to a deeper place in our asana classes. This might look like sharing a theme for our classes or teaching one new Pranayama technique or a guided meditation at the end of class.
Check in with our why. Why did we start coming to our mat? Why do we continue to come to our mat and to teach? Checking in with our why and also spending some time talking with our students about their why will help to deepen our asana practice and teaching and strengthen the alignment between our why and the reality of our classes.
Embrace spanda. In other words, create space for yoga to be both. This may be controversial, but I do not believe that there is anything necessarily wrong with a physically challenging and strengthening asana practice. This workout can lead to a work in, so to speak. We can have our physically strong yoga practices AND practice meditation AND read philosophy AND practice vichara. It's not an either or proposition, but rather a both and. Challenging ourselves and our students to think about what they can add to their yoga practice in order to experience yogs on a deeper level can be a much more accessible way to think about creating change instead of asking that people subtract from their practice.
How do you add to your own practice? How do you add to your classes or challenge your students to dive deeper into their yoga practice? Whether your a teacher, student, or enthusiastic practitioner, we would love to learn from you.