How’s Your Alignment?

The details of hatha yoga practice invite us to notice the many dimensions of physical and energetic alignment that are possible for our bodies. We get to know our habits, the places where we struggle to hold ourselves up and the places where we tend to collapse.

My long time teacher, Lisa Clark, helpfully translated the challenge of being upright into a matter of learning to balance the front and back body. Through conscious, subtle movement, we can learn to find a centered home for the skeleton and internal contents (organs, fluids, etc.) of the body.

Here is a simple example: Stand up. Now let more weight drop in your heel than your toes. Feel your tail drag a bit on the floor. Even feel the weight in your spinal column shift back towards the spinus processes (small boney fingers on the back of your spine). Let your head drop forward of your spine. See how you feel. You might notice tension in the shoulders, a sense of withdrawal, or even passivity. Then explore the opposite: Weight the toes. Move the ribs forward of your pelvis. Prop the head up, maybe poking the chin out. Feel the tail flip up behind you. This has a different sensation most likely, but is also likely to feel tense—just in different places.

Now, see if you can find some middle ground by weighting the whole foot, releasing the tail and pubic bone softly down towards the floor, allowing middle of the disks of the spine to transfer weight up and down your body, and gently knitting the ribs in towards your spine. Allow the skull to balance on the spine, while you gaze softly at the horizon. Feel what this is like.

This type of experimentation is a wonderful way to explore your current habits and to develop new, more healthful and aligned patterns. Figuring out how to be upright in balanced alignment is really an on-going project. Mindful movement can encourage us to attend to this as a balancing process—so that we notice both sensations of alignment and feelings associated with losing it.

As an avid dressage student, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out balanced alignment on horseback. Fortunately, I have the help of my horse to do this. When I lose my upright alignment and compromise my spine, my horse inevitably starts to rush and worry. She notices that I’ve “lost it”, and she loses it, too!

Lately, I’ve been trying to improve my rising trot position. I’ve figured out that I often lose my balance at the top of the rise by allowing my ribs to shift forward. This also affects the alignment of my pelvis. I can feel this hollowing happening, and I instantly become a less effective rider when my body goes into this position. I often go to this hollow pattern when I am nervous or worried about my horse’s behavior. The funny thing is, this worry habit actually makes both me and the horse feel more panicky!

To help me change this habit, I’ve thinking “Keep the back body involved” so that I don’t over stretch the front body and abandon the support of my back. I also think about knitting in the ribs towards my spine with each rise. When I get it right, my horse rewards me by moving more freely, with greater balance and power. When I lose it, my horse lurches, surges and hollows her own back, in reflection of my own imbalance.

While you may not be an equestrian, see if you can notice the effects of alignment and misalignment in your daily activities—whether walking, running, biking or lifting children. You can also observe how your physical alignment shifts or becomes challenged when your are in different situations. The first step to repatterning alignment is noticing what is happening. Then you can begin to explore different choices.

Happy practice!

Arriving to Your Practice and Your Class

You’ve survived the commute and have managed to arrive about 10 minutes before the start of your yoga class. Now what?

I know for new students this can be a period of uncertainty. Where do I put my mat? Which way is the teacher setting up? Does it matter how I orient myself? Will I be able to see and hear? Does the person next to me look friendly? Or more to the point, does the person next to me look so flexible, so thin, so young, or so whatever that I can’t imagine relaxing next to them in my body?

As you arrive to your class, I invite you to settle in like you would on a sandy beach. You can visualize yourself in a caftan or a bikini—it doesn’t matter. Scout the room, make a bold choice for your beach blanket (mat) and settle in! You might take a few moments to greet others near by or smile to others entering the class. But then let yourself settle into the sand like it’s your little spot of heaven.

Lying down on your back, belly or side is a wonderful way to let yourself relate to your selected space in the classroom. Let the weight of your body drop into the “sand” and your breathing settle deep in your belly. You might spend a few minutes or all of the time before class in this position.

I think of this practice of laying the body down as a way to ground and settle the body-mind. Since so much of our daily life involves dispersion of the body-mind (email, commuting, multi-tasking, etc.), taking the time to get all of you in the same place is a wonderful beginning to your practice and prepares you for class.

If you feel settled after several minutes, you might choose to gently explore a few movements, with particular attention to areas of your body that are calling out for massage. This might be simple vata (knee to chest) poses for the spine and hips; it might be child’s pose; it might be shoulder shrugs and easy arm circles. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy or a complete asana—just low key awakening of your body through gentle movement.

Finally, if your body feels released and ready, explore sitting in a comfortable position. Release your pelvis and sitbones into your mat. Allow the natural curves of your spine to flow upward out of your pelvis. Find an easy, aligned home for your skull. Release your jaw and enjoy the sensation of being upright, while still grounded.

Whether you’ve remained on the ground the whole time or not, you’ve prepared yourself to meet the content and intention of your practice and your class. Namaste!

A Not So Steamy Perspective on “Hot Yoga”

Riga the Weimaraner prefers Hot Meditation by the woodstove in her passive solar home.

These days, there are a number of varieties of “Hot Yoga” offered by yoga teachers across the country. While Bikram Yoga can be credited for bringing the idea of practicing in a heated (up to 100F+ degree) room to the masses, a number of variations of “heated” if not hot yoga classes are springing up in yoga studios and gyms.

My students often ask me what I think about hot yoga. Well, here are a few comments for your consideration:

1. Practicing in a hot room is not the same thing as learning to heat your body, from the inside out.

2. Similarly, just because you are in a hot room and sweating vigorously does not mean your muscles are actually learning new and more flexible movements. You may even assume you are more flexible than you really are, thanks to the sensation of external heat. This can lead to mis-judgement and even injury.

3. Some hot yoga environments are simply too hot to be comfortable for effective breathing. This can be a serious matter for people who are unused to heat, unfit, or have asthma or other challenges. I am especially cautious about environments that emphasize heating the room over 85F.

4. Similar to #2, just because you are sweating prolifically in a hot yoga class doesn’t mean you are actually engaged in challenging movement or effort. You may simply be hot and sweaty!

5. The energy it takes to heat a room about 85F is not insignificant. In a time when we are more aware of the costs of our energy usage, I encourage students and studios to consider the consequences of extremely high energy usage. Or, as Riga aptly demonstrates in the above photo, consider alternative means of creating a warm environment! For those of you practicing in un-airconditioned spaces during the summer, I would say that this is a wonderfully eco form of warm yoga!

6. There are ayurvedic rationales for being selective in the practice of hot yoga. For those of us with pita constitutions or aggravated pita (which is often all of us in a competitive world), adding heat is the last thing that is needed for busy, intense, *firey* pita minds and bodies. While vata types may crave a warm environment, pitas are already “on fire”–physically and/or mentally–and can benefit from learning to pacify and calm this firey, aggressive quality.

You can tell by my comments that I am not exactly a fan of hot yoga. I do understand how delicious it is to be comfortably warm when practicing—especially as my joints age! Yet I also think it is important for practitioners to be cautious in these environments. Heat exhaustion is simply not a good thing to practice, ever. Nor is heating up the body externally a quick fix to dive into more challenging postures, or for speeding weight loss.

Deliberate, conscious and active hatha yoga can teach us to increase the fire or agni in our bodies; it can also create a tremendous amount of heat—which is wonderful for cleansing, releasing toxins through sweat and encouraging cellular renewal. While it can take more time, attention and effort to feel that heat from the inside out, I think the process and the outcomes yield even greater rewards for our bodies, minds and spirit.