Today was such a beautiful class. Our guest teacher was so right on. Some Highlights.
In preparation for Pranayama she walked us through the alignment of our entire skeletal system beginning at the feet. In one minute she changed my practice. Today was the first Pranayama that I actively “rooted” my tail bone to the ground while “pressing” the inner part of my thighs together. I think that before I was more tightening the glutes. So, to combine the thigh press kept me from tensing the ass which undoubtedly helped lengthen my tailbone down. woot!  (pressing is not tightening but I couldn’t explain how that is!) My thighs felt tired after pranayama for the first time ever, so you know that’s a good thing.
Somewhere in all this great preparation she reminded us that every class is different, so take a moment to set our intention and rid ourself of any expectations. Set an intention, not an expectation. I love this. My intention was to learn as much as possible from her.
Another great shocker, rounding out the setup for Pranayama, she says you should not feel tension anywhere in the shoulders or neck. I’m pretty much floored now because Pranayama and Ardha Chandrasana / Halfmoon are my two most dreaded asanas all because of the painful tension in both my neck and shoulders!!
And so we began. And it turns out that by “pressing” the thighs together and keeping the stomach sucked in, breathing into the lungs, heart, and feeling the stretch into the hips, that the arms acted only as wings that expanded the lungs even more. I wasn’t forcing them to go higher and I didn’t feel any tension in my shoulders or neck. I realize this must sound obvious to some people, but before today, all my energy or focus was on getting my elbows higher and my head back farther! Turns out, all the energy is below the throat, on the lungs, chest, hips, thighs. Yea!
And, every asana was like this.
During the floor series, after coming out of sit-ups she would tell us to inhale while turning around on our mats and exhale while setting up for the next asana. Talk about group energy, keep it going between asanas and the whole class is like a wave.
So you can see that I’m totally blissed out on this teacher and hoping that I can hold what I learned in the next class.

Tags: alignment, Ardha Chandrasana, Halfmoon, pranayama

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 17th, 2009 at 10:58 pm and is filed under My Practice, Poses / Asanas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.