An embodied yoga practice teaches us to move from a point of awareness. An embodied yoga class (or any good yoga class for that matter) encourages us to shift our focus to specific points in the body and then picture the movement radiating outwards from that point. You might think this is just a way of protecting the body (for example, moving core stability muscle groups before the more superficial muscle groups) but when you delve a bit deeper, it actually has more far reaching consequences. The practice can also hone our ability to take a more mindful approach to life in general.
This process hones our ability to listen and observe from the inside out. To zoom in to a focal point, whether it’s a specific joint, or the point where the breath enters the body…and then to zoom out from that point; to widen the lens of awareness to explore interconnected muscle groups, body parts, and eventually, the body as a whole. We can use this metaphor to explore the body’s inner landscape as well – the pulsing heartbeat, the respiratory system, the weaving muscular and connective tissue. We learn to view ourselves as more than just singular parts, but as an interconnected whole. We learn to soften our focus and explore the grand view of the body – with its myriad systems and processes working in synchronicity. To feel into our own aliveness, our own fullness.
In class, I use language and imagery to hone this awareness. Cues such as ‘take your awareness outwards from…’ encourage students to begin movement patterns in one particular point (localised movement) before bringing in wider, more exploratory shapes that encompass further muscle groups (globalised movement). I also encourage students to feel into the movements, to allow form to emerge from that place of awareness, building more of a sense of passivity, observance, awareness and inner attunement to their practice. Instead of directive cues, I invite and suggest movements and shapes. This helps to deepen conscious awareness and encourage self-expression, creativity and intuition.
Mindfulness meditation is very similar, in that it begins with a focal point such as the breath and then encourages a softening of focus, a passivity of experience, an awareness of the interconnected nature of all phenomena, with the ‘self’ as neither the subject or the object of experience, but simply a part of the universe, that also contains the whole universe.
Even if this notion seems far fetched or you’re not quite able to connect with it yet, then don’t be disheartened. The practice of mindfulness at it’s core is simply a shift in perspective. And an embodied yoga practice, similarly, trains this ability. To shift your perspective. And given our mood and emotions determine our moment to moment experience, by simply shifting our perspective we can quite literally redesign our entire life.
Embodiment is a state in which your entire intelligence is experienced as a coherent unity, attuned to the world
