As mentioned in the last post I'll will clarify and flesh out how to access these principles on the mat. We've already mentioned the importance of sensitivity on the mat. Sensitivity is cultivated by inviting practitioners to feel what's happening when they undertake actions. This may sound obvious and you could say that it is happening to everyone who gets on the mat and starts exploring. However, real sensitivity means that the practitioner is feeling more and more at deeper levels and applying action accordingly. In other words instead of being overly dependent upon the instructor you could say that one is learning to feel their way through practice rather than being directed through it. This means that the practice is coming from the practitioner, from their own sensation. Go to any number of yoga classes and see how this simple principle is being violated. Its often unconscious and unintentional but it has the effect of taking people away from yoga. Let me say here that the criticisms that you'll find throughout my blog are not intended to malign people. They don't stem from my own insecurities. Many folks in the yoga world are well intentioned and enthusiastic. However, we need more than that. These problems that are common in yoga today are simply facts that any honest observer can see for themselves if they look at the wide array of yoga practice in the marketplace objectively. What commonly happens in yoga classes is that the practitioner is instructor dependent. Now of course some of this will happen with all yoga especially in the beginning. But good yoga instruction will wean the practitioner off of dependency and into self practice. If I allow my students to depend on me to much, they'll never feel things for themselves. This does not mean allowing the practitioner to injure themselves. In the beginning much care must be taken to instill prudent action in the practitioner. This can be done without cultivating dependency.
The best way to cultivate sensitivity in the practitioner is to have them practice Ullolas. In a later blog I'll go into this more deeply. For now suffice it to say that ullolas are wave like movements between two or more poses. For example to move from balasana (child's pose) to satangasana (all four position, table) and back again is an ullola. It is not uncommon to move back and forth between these two poses 20 times. If this movement is just one among many as it would be in chandra namaskar (moon salutation) then its easy to slip by it without learning much. If its done in the ullola approach where you move in and out of the same pose many times, you can learn a great deal about sensitivity. The variety of ullolas is limited only by your own imagination. So play around with this idea. Get into a stance like you're preparing for Utita Trikonasana, then move into it and back out again on the breath. Exhale into and inhale back out of it. Clarify the bandhas while you continue to move. Synchronize the movement with the breath so that at the end of the inhalation the movement stops and at the end of the inhalation the movement stops. Notice weight distribution in the feet as you move and keep 1/2 of your weight in one foot and 1/2 in the other foot. This last point alone is almost universally forgotten in yoga classes. It is often alluded to by the instructor but never enforced and consequently people don't learn it. In people's eagerness to get their hand to the floor all kinds of compromises are made in terms of weight distribution across the foundation, collapse in the joints especially the knee and hip over which one is bending, and a loss of the bandhas which endangers the health of the back. With the ullola, because you keep moving, you can't settle into an unhealthy position. Rather, one must maintain integrity to be able to move in and out of the pose smoothly. Once this is learned one can move onto holding the pose with integrity. Needless to say, it matters not whether the hand is on the thigh, knee, shin, ankle or floor. What matters is what the practitioner is feeling across the foundation, in all the joints, and how the breath is affected by the maintenance or loss of the bandhas. Let's end for today and we'll continue in the next blog with clarifying the bandhas.
This was very helpful - Thank you
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