Playin’ The Edge

I’m sure you’re all flowed out and ready for Savasana. Here’s the last one for this week.

- Start in Warrior 2, hold for a few breaths.
- Then lean back so your back hand is touching your thigh and the front hand reaches up to the ceiling. Hold and enjoy the stretch up the long side of your torso.
- Come back to center and bring your hands down to the mat on either side of your front foot. Straighten the front leg enough to find a stretch. Let your torso relax over your thigh, let your head hang loose. Relax.
- Then bring your back leg up straight for Standing Splits and hold.
- Return back leg to the mat, on your toes with them facing front so that they’re in position for Lunge. Keep hands on the floor or bring them up overhead and hold.
- Bring front foot back for Plank, Cobra and Downward Dog to transition to the other side.

Option: you can also do this flow with your breath - exhale from Warrior 2 as you lean back, inhale back up to center and exhale into the easy forward bend, inhale the back leg up, exhale it down and back into Lunge, inhale as you press your chest forward and/or bring arms up. Have fun with it!

Alright let’s keep the flows a-flowing! Here’s another one to poke into some Sun Salutation fun:

- From Downward Facing Dog, lower your elbows to the mat shoulder width apart to bring you to Dolphin. Slide your shoulder blades down your back toward your waist. Walk your toes toward your elbows a little until you have a nice stretch up the back of your body. Hold for a couple of breaths.
- Lower your knees toward the floor slowly and stop at the point where you find your edge. Hold here or raise and lower a few times.
- Straighten your legs again and raise one leg straight up so you’re in a version of Standing Splits. Hold for a breath.
- Bring the leg down, bend and place it on the mat for Pigeon pose, stretching your other leg back. Hold for a few breaths.
- Then do a Plank, Cobra, Downward Facing Dog transition and repeat the flow on the other side.

Options: If you’re feeling keen and your shoulders are healthy, you can also raise and lower your hips slowly 3x in Dolphin before walking your feet closer to your elbows. Also, if this is an active flow, instead of resting in Pigeon inhale your arms up, exhale them down and move right into the transition.

This flow is a good strengthener - enjoy!

I’ve been working on some mini-flows to mix with Sun Salution flows or to use as warm-ups. Here’s one:

Start in Mountain. Bring your hands behind your back and clasp for Yoga Mudra. Press your chest up, and look up as you inhale. Then on the exhale fold forward, letting your arms relax away from your body for a shoulder stretch. Take another breath here. Bring arms back to your body, unclasp the hands and bring them down to the floor or to your legs for a Standing Forward Bend. Stay for another breath. Bend knees and bring arms up straight for Chair. Hold for a breath. Then lower your arms has you straighten your legs and come back to Mountain. Repeat often.

I like this flow because it stretches the legs as it warms them up. I also like Standing Yoga Mudra and Forward Bend together because they’re both calming and destressifying. It’s a warm-up flow that helps get you centered too. Give it a try!

It was the first weekend in weeks that I didn’t have a ‘to-do list’ as long as my arm. And it poured rain all weekend. I’ll admit it, I’m a bit of a busy-ness addict. Feeding the ‘do-stuff’ monster is my way of keeping chaos at bay. Doing stuff makes me feel I’m in control. It’s like I’m keeping some corner of my world right and good and interesting or at least organized. So without the busy I got kinda bored. And bored is not right and good and it’s *definitely* not interesting.

I ran across this quote from Eckhart Tolle’s Stillness Speaks :

The mind exists in a state of “not enough” and so is always greedy for more. When you are identified with mind, you get bored and restless very easily. Boredom means the mind is hungry for more stimulus, more food for thought, and its hunger is not being satisfied.

When you feel bored, you can satisfy the mind’s hunger by picking up a magazine, making a phone call, switching on the TV, surfing the web, going shopping, or — and this is not uncommon — transferring the mental sense of lack and its need for more to the body and satisfy it briefly by ingesting more food. (ed. Eckhart what are you saying?? People eat out of boredom?? )

Or you can stay bored and restless and observe what it feels like to be bored and restless. As you bring awareness to the feeling, there is suddenly some space and stillness around it, as it were. A little at first, but as the sense of inner space grows, the feeling of boredom will begin to diminish in intensity and significance. So even boredom can teach you who you are and who you are not.

You discover that a “bored person” is not who you are. Boredom is simply a conditioned energy movement within you. Neither are you an angry, sad, or fearful person. Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not “yours,” not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go.

Nothing that comes and goes is you.

“I am bored.” Who knows this?

“I am angry, sad, afraid.” Who knows this?

You are the knowing, not the condition that is known.

So I tried it. I just sat - for long periods at a time - like 10 minutes. Yup, that’s a stretch for me. I sat with the boredom rather than coming up with a next thing and rushing off to it. There was a part of me that was afraid I was going to sink into the Sunday blahs. It’s that hopeless feeling that there’s nothing more interesting ahead than Monday a.m.. But sitting with the boredom made it feel more OK. And I relaxed a bit. It wasn’t me, it was just a relaxed rainy Sunday.

I was in a class at the last yoga conference taught by a Kripalu teacher and she had us do the Flamingo pose which I hadn’t done before. I can’t find a photo of it, but here’s an easy description:

- From standing clasp your hands behind your back, but keep your arms loose. Or put your palms on your lower back, fingers down and press your elbows together gently.
- Bring your right foot to your left leg just above your knee. Keep your standing knee soft. Stay here if this is enough challenge or,
- Tuck your chin to your chest and round down bringing your nose toward your bent knee. Stay here for a few breaths.

I always like to have new balancing pose challenges to add to my yoga sessions and to classes. This one is a do-again!

I bought Light on Life , the latest from Iyengar, opened it up and found a little nugget that I’ve been sharing with my classes this week (page 33):

Extension and expansion always stay firmly rooted in one’s center. They originate in the core of one’s being. When most people stretch, they simply stretch to the point that they are trying to reach, but they forget to extend and expand from where they are. When you extend and expand, you are not only stretching to, you are also stretching from.

I like how he says that. When we first come to yoga we’re kinda scattered and looking around and trying to reach as far as our neighbour does in a pose. But over time as you become more centered you realize you’re reaching from your base, that foundation of who you really are. It’s not about where you get *to* it’s more about where you’re coming *from*. We talked about this in class with Warrior 1. How it’s all about building the pose from the ground up, feeling the bottoms of your feet right to the outward edge of your back foot. It’s about having strong legs, firm hips and an engage core. And then it’s from that base that you can reach and extend your spine and arms to the sky.

Also in seated forward bends newbies always work on touching their toes when really the stretch is all originating in your hips. Your sit bones need to be grounded in the mat so that they can dig in as the hips tilt forward. If it’s a Head-to-Knee pose there’s also a twist happening in the hips and torso. All those elements produce the hamstring stretch. The pose isn’t about rounding your back and diving *to* your toes or your knee (regardless of it’s name). It’s about stretching out from your center in your hips. And that’s what creates the space that Iyengar goes on to talk about.

Speaking of Head-to-Knee, here’s one to try. If you’re stretching your right leg first, get your legs in position but with a straight spine twist to the right and hold it for a few breaths before doing the pose. After twisting it’s easier to keep your shoulders somewhat square to your leg. Then twist left and hold. Then come to centre only until your right shoulder is in line with your right leg. Then drop that shoulder down toward your leg, tuck right hand under your leg and side bend, sweeping your left arm overhead and stretching your torso long from your hips. Very juicy.