Asana is a Verb: Let Your Yoga Evolve

Within the age of social media, yoga pose photographs can encourage and/or intimidate. Instagram is chock filled with picture-perfect fancy yoga poses. Taking a look at yoga pose photographs is one solution to set intentions in your observe. It may be useful to look at how others observe. However photographs have one main limitation: they’re static depictions of residing, respiratory varieties. However yoga shouldn’t be a static observe. Asana is a verb.

What Does It Imply to Pose?

A part of the rationale we regularly misread asana as a static kind might be a matter of semantics. Most of us use the phrase “pose” to explain asana. The Oxford Dictionary’s first definition of the noun type of “pose” is that this: “a specific manner of standing or sitting, normally adopted for impact or with a purpose to be photographed, painted, or drawn.” This sounds an terrible lot like what we do after we pose for a potential viewers on social media.

The verb definitions are equally problematic. In response to Merriam Webster, the primary two are: “1. : to imagine a posture or angle normally for creative functions. 2. : to have an effect on an angle or character normally to deceive or impress. posed as a health care provider to realize entry to the ward.” Yikes!

Because of this I’ve tried—with restricted success—to alter my behavior of utilizing the phrase “pose.” Outdated habits die arduous, however I do really feel that the phrase “asana” is discovering its manner into my yoga instruction extra usually than it used to. The rationale I really feel that is necessary is that most individuals don’t come to yoga observe with a preconceived thought of what asana means. The phrase is extra malleable, making it simpler for college students to interpret it in additional versatile methods. Asana is a residing, respiratory course of. So it’s necessary to not confine it to a static definition.

If Asana Is a Verb, How Do You Strategy Apply?

Listed below are some methods to discover the method of asana:

1. Step one in recognizing asana’s evolving nature is to let go of our ideas of what every pose “ought to” look or really feel like. Meaning growing our “newbie’s thoughts.”
2. When you open to permitting your asana to unfold naturally, as an alternative of making an attempt to make it match a specific preconceived mould, you may start exploring.
3. Every asana begins with our preliminary intention to observe it. So, set an intention to be current with all the course of, starting with no matter sensations come up once you resolve to observe a specific asana. Are you anticipating what you would possibly really feel, primarily based on previous expertise? Is there trepidation or anxiousness across the pose? If it’s a pose you take pleasure in, are you in a rush to maneuver into it?
4. Then be current with the sensations that accompany establishing your physique with a purpose to make the form of the asana. Do you begin the method from a specific standing, sitting or mendacity down place? What sensations are current as you put together?
5. Be current with the method of transferring into the asana. Transfer slowly, so that you could really feel the altering sensations as your physique shifts towards the asana.
6. As soon as your physique has discovered the form of the asana, breathe and calm down. Keep linked to the unfolding course of. The place do you’re feeling stretching or stabilizing sensations? How are these sensations transferring and altering?
7. Keep inside your physique, letting the breath information you. Every a part of the breath—inhalation and exhalation—will recommend to your physique to both retract from or deepen into your asana. Loosen up into these solutions, permitting your physique to oscillate, gently and subtly, into and out of the pose. Be current with the method. That is most likely the best solution to perceive how asana is a verb.
8. What sensations accompany the impulse to return out of an asana? Keep linked to the method of transferring out of your asana. Then pause for a second in a impartial place to really feel the results.

A Few Extra Strategies

• It may be useful to observe a specific pose greater than as soon as. Should you keep current as you observe, as within the above directions, you could really feel fully totally different sensations the second time round. That may assist unstick us from our preconceived concepts concerning the asana.
• Have enjoyable with it. One of the best ways to maintain your observe contemporary is to strategy it with curiosity. Every time you observe, say, Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Dealing with Canine Pose), you’re coming to it with a unique physique/thoughts. Irrespective of what number of occasions you’ve put your physique within the form of the asana, it actually is totally different every time. Staying current with the method can hold your observe contemporary.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and commenced instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the creator of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Apply and Yoga for Meditators, each revealed by Rodmell Press. Her third e-book is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and people sextet Purple Rock Rondo, whose DVD received two Emmy awards in 2010.