Au Revoir, Emilie

Posted on April 14, 2014 by admin

I just heard the news of Emilie’s passing from my friend Deborah and I am feeling a deep sense of loss, for myself, and for all of us somanauts and explorers of the mystery of aliveness. Emilie was a mentor and friend and her deep support and encouragement of my own unfolding was incredibly powerful and important to me. She was unique, to say the least, and fearless and will be tremendously missed. This is from the Continuum web site and offers a brief glimpse into Emilie and her life’s work.

A Letter from Emilie Conrad, Continuum Founder

Although Continuum officially emerged in 1967, the work basically represents a lifetime of freeing myself from the confines of culture.

As a very young person, my intuition sensed that all life was imbued with a unifying spirit and somewhere within my body this spirit could be experienced. The impression I received from the world around me was, “God was elsewhere”.

For years, I had a recurring image of the movement of fish dissolving into the undulating waves of the ocean, becoming one inseparable reality. I felt that somewhere in a secret long ago, we were all swimming with the very same boundless wave movements of ocean fish, and if only I could discover how to get there, the “real” world would be revealed to me.

In 1953, I received a scholarship at the Katherine Dunham School in New York, where I steeped myself in the magical world of Haitian dance. A few years later, I arrived in Haiti, and through a series of fortunate events, I became involved in a newly formed folklore company as choreographer and lead dancer. It was there that I had an epiphany that would change the course of my life.

What I witnessed in the prayer rituals was the undulating movements I had been searching for all my life. Though I had seen these same movements at the Dunham School, it wasn’t until I was actually dancing in a Haitian hut and feeling myself drawn deeper into the primal call of the drums that my known self dissolved into the memory of those ancient rhythms. To this day, deep in my eyes, there still dances a timeless undulating resonance.

What I saw was how the undulating wave movements of the Haitian prayer became the connecting link to our spiritual bio-world. At last I saw the movement of ocean fish personified in human movement. I knew in that moment that these fluid undulating movements transcended time, place or culture and provided the crucial connection, linking organism to environment as an unbroken whole.

I returned from Haiti in 1960, and spent the next seven years exploring the universality of those undulating wave motions that so inspired me. These explorations eventually led to what is now known as Continuum. It’s important to know that each of us carries billions of years of an ongoing global process, a sequenced continuum of life on Earth, which is taking place within the galaxy and human alike.

We are basically fluid beings that have arrived on land. All living processes owe their lineage to the movement of water. Our implicate pre-existent memory beginning with the first cell, lies in the mysterious deep, quietly undulating, circulating, nourishing this aquatic being on its mission to planet earth. God is not elsewhere, but is moving through our cells and in every part of us with its undulating message. The fluid presence in our bodies is our fundamental environment; we are the moving water brought to land.

I would like to suggest that the far-reaching consequences of having a body are not just to serve as a conveyance, not just to propagate, but that we are composed of a mysterious substance that has no defined boundary. Without this substance we could not exist as humans. We may, at some time in the near future, learn to replace our pulsating wet body parts with metallic ones, in which case, we will become something quite different.

It was the vision of a universal human that beckoned me. I had no map to follow except my strong urge to experience our essential bio-lineage and my certainty that our existences were fed far beyond our cultural moorings. It is my belief that we carry in our cells, in our tissues, in the very throb of our existence an underlying flow that urges, inspires, flares our nostrils and beats our heart. This encompassing atmosphere of love has its own destiny — perhaps using humans as its messengers, this love has arrived on Earth.

Notes From St. John Yoga 2014

Posted on March 12, 2014 by admin

St John Yoga 2014

General Theme: Planting the seeds of, developing and stabilizing the toroidal field of the heart, using guided meditation, imagination and the basic yoga poses.

Heart Centering/ Cosmic Opening meditation:
Center awareness/attention in heart center and link to wholeness: One Heart / One Mind. Return to this as often as possible every day. Build strength and stability, using imagination, perception and structural awakening.

Things to note as you go through your practice and daily activities:
Quality of attention: dull, distracted or clear
Scope of attention: focal or open
Level of attention: Gross body, subtle/energy body, causal/light/cosmic fields body, Absolute/Infinite

Quality of self identification: small self vs holistic self
Flexibility of perspective: “stuck in one point of view” vs
“able to change perspectives or take on multiple perspectives”

Quality of energy: dull, erratic, steady

Energetic shapes and patterns to explore: circles and spheres, lines, arcs and curves,
toroidal fields: mushrooms, bagels, inverted cones, hour glass, flower of life

Which chakras dominate? Which feel neglected?
How do they relate / overlap in radial energies?
How does it feel when the chakra line, the center axis of the body is totally open and free,
crown and root chakras open to the cosmos and your heart?

This summary includes what we covered, possibly some stuff I am imagining, and leaves out lots I have forgotten. But it is a start….

Complimentary Theme: Opening the Chakra Line/Center Axis

Monday: Muladhara day! Connecting open heart to the three limbs of the root chakra (leg, leg, tail) for grounding. Also, sense of smell, element earth, color red, elimination.

While sitting: Find your heart – open to heaven and earth, feel the radiant sphere of light emanating from the heart surrounding you. Stabilize this field with 3 OMs.

In Tadasana: find your feet, like a skier or skater, as energy from the heavens passes through and down into the earth. Relax, let the energy flow through the whole body, into hands and feet, organs and cells. Find your root chakra at the bottom of the pelvis and connect to your legs and feet. With the help of your arms in an open hug, feel the chi field of the heart in the space in front of you. Let the grounding energy rise up and out the crown as well.

In Uttanasana, reach back through pelvic floor into an imaginary tail that grows longer and longer. Let the primary energy of the pose be down through the legs and back throughout he tail. Feel the trifurcation of the muladhara. Keep the upper body relaxed and alert through the crown, neither contracted nor collapsed. Explore moving in and out up and down, slowly until you begin to feel the hamstrings opening. To go deeper, move more slowly maintaining space for the tail to keep lengthening. If the tail get cut off, the pelvic and leg muscles will constrict. Stretching will not help! Open the muladhara gates to let the energy flow. Explore same action in wide dog (prasarita padottanasana). The muladhara feeds the tail and legs, from femurs to feet. To differentiate 1st chakra, open the hips joints and release the tail. The pelvis can be considered as part of the spine to help.

Trikonasana: Feet wide apart. Triangle is a lateral flexion pose, like a reptile or fish. From the open heart, rotate the pelvis and tail laterally, in an arc, reaching out through the tail to open the front hip. Now we can add the inner back heel to find a new link to the muladhara. Use trikonasana to go more deeply into the hip opening, keeping the ascending energy alive as well. Then,

Ardha Chandrasana: wall support for balance as we are looking for the energy line from heart to inner heel that continues the hip opening action. The inner heel awakens the tail energy and as the tail opens and stabilizes, the hip muscles begin to melt. No stretching is necessary. Just open energy lines into ground and space.

Revolved Ardha Chandrasana: from AC, sustain length along spinal axis-tail-inner back heel, as well as from the standing leg foot up through the pelvis. Without losing all of that, begin to rotate the pelvis in and out of PAC, carefully opening the outer hip muscles. *** Notice that only one side of the hip has to feel the movement. The standing leg stabilizes at the femur/foot/floor and that pelvic bone explores rotation around the femur head. No twisting at the sacral region is necessary. This movement is often compromised because of tight outs hip muscles and tissues, stemming from a lack of energetic support on the DFL, the inner groin line integrating with the core of the torso. Many sacro-iliac issues come from improper twisting action. The muladhara energy will open the hips and protect the sacrum.

Parsvakonasana: Using the feeling of the previous poses, move into and out of parsvakonasana solely through the muladhara action of back inner heel and tail, keeping the torso long, soft and open. The tendency for beginners is to move from the upper body. just move from the roots and let the rest of the body follow. Do not let the arms wander into strange, disconnected places.

Find the muladhara line, extending in both directions, through inner heels into: one leg dog, flipping the dog, hand stand and head stand. Transition through head balance, shoulder balance, or viparita karani into savasana. Homework: Use your tail when swimming. Try on different types of fish tails. Keep the energy moving.

Afternoon class: Hanging out. Tie straps to long ballet bar and come into hanging or supported dog pose. Option 1. (shown on left) Wrap the belt around the top of the thighs to find the hip sockets. Option 2. (not shown) Wrap the belt around the pelvis and through the inner thighs so the belt creates a vector that mimics the tail, lifting back and up throughout the pelvis. In both cases, sustain extension through core chakra line, as well as hands and fingers.

Transition to up dog while maintaining the tension in the belt. Feel the tail action to create a spinal curve slightly separate from the angle of the legs. Then explore up and down dog without the support, keeping the tail extending back, then one leg dog and flipping the dog.

Finally, lying on floor with the pelvis supported by the short side of a block. (Shorter than what you see here! We are looking for horizontal and lateral space and length, not height through the pelvis.) Ground your feet and feel the heart energy extending into the legs and out the crown. Now add the tail, first extending it up and out to the ceiling to open the back body, and then out and down along the floor to release the front body. Between the two possibilities, find the center of the body, relax and open. Explore with different positions of the legs, and then on the floor. Add arms for happy baby/anemone pose. Savasana

Tuesday: 2nd Chakra day:
Sacral energy, water, flow. Differentiating sacrum from pelvis and legs. Also, sense of taste, color orange, sexuality. This begins the fish body.

Begin with meditation as Day 1. Repeat standing poses as above. Begin by opening muladhara in tadasana, extending in both directions, and standing forward bending poses/movements. Open the hip joints and free up the tail. With this as your base, then use trikonasana to begin to widen through pelvic bones to discover sacral freedom. The lateral flexion postures, trikonasana, parsvakonasana, ardha chandrasana, all help create lateral space and unlock the 2nd chakra energy. Find the circle of energy created by lateral flexion/extension. Let it radiate out through crown as well.

Keep differentiating tail energy. If you lose this, the hip muscles overwork and the sacral energy gets lost. To find the tail energy, see above. To find the sacral energy, the pelvic bones are now considered part of the legs, pelvis to feet. This frees up the sacral space.

Revolved Ardha Chandrasana to find the healthy ‘twisting /rotation for the sacral area. The sacra-illiac joints are not designed to rotate, but many sacral imbalances involve a torque or improper rotation, and twisting can help reset this to neutral. But it can also re- aggravate it. The pelvic bone has to be able to rotate over the femur. If this movement is blocked, don’t force the si’s to compensate. (See PAC from Monday).

Now trace PAC action into Parsvottanasana, pivoting on back big toe as necessary to clear the hips through the rotation. In PAC the foot is free to adjust, in parsvottanasna and revolved triangle, the foot is on the floor. Do not compromise the sacrum if the hip muscles are tight by not adjusting back foot. Star fish (opened up revolved parsvakonasana) offers a multiplicity of vectors for moving the energy. Even the Red Sox are including variations on this!

Now hanging dog to find the sacrum and really release out through crown. Feel the sacral bone like a bubble in a level. When in balance, the bubble floats in the middle ( in relationship to the pelvis, not the floor!). When out of balance, it tips up or down. Then hanging up dog, and then, on the floor, sphinx, cobra and up dog. Feel you way into the openings. Then normal dog pose, any dog variations, head and shoulder balance, or repeat any standing poses that invite you, and transition to relaxation.

Afternoon: Lying pelvis on block, sacrum like the bubble in a level. Feel open channels from the cosmos through crown and root chakras.

Sphinx. Feel tail separate from pelvis. Keeping arms in place, push back like going to down dog, lifting your butt up and back. Then leaving your imginary tail up in space, slide the pelvis down and forward to return to sphinx. Repeat this is cobra and up dog until the spine releases from the pelvis at the SI joints. Try same in

Wednesday: 3rd Chakra day: Standing Poses: Solar plexus, chi gong circles.
Color yellow, like the sun, sense of sight, eyes, element fire, digestion.

Begin with meditation as Day 1. Repeat standing poses as above, opening muladhara, then begin to widen through pelvic bones. Then Chi circles to open/round the thoracic spine/chest cavity by moving the 3rd chakra up and out the crown and down and out the tail and legs. We all have strong tendencies to flatten the thoracic to create the illusion of lifting the heart/chest so please discourage this. Explore circles up to lift, down to ground.

Add chi circles to move in and out of parsvottanasana and revolved triangle, in a singular movement, not a series of separate ones. Keep 3rd chakra energy going in both directions.

Then lying on block as seen above, draw energy from muladhara up through 2nd chakra, third chakra and into heart/chest cavity. Expand and release arms and head.

Then sitting, maha mudra, as per LOY. Feel the energy coming up to heart, but not brain. Do each side a few times to your capacity. Then return to the standing poses, create a similar feel, and compare the energy. If you are doing inversions, connect 3rd charka energy to legs in head and shoulder balance. Do not hang out. Transition to savasana in whatever way you desire.

Afternoon. More maha mudra and antara kubhaka to awaken navel and lift to heart.

Begin with pelvis on block, opening core line from heart to cosmos and back. Using subtle action of the feet, get wave moving through fluids up and down the channel, stretching, opening the diaphragm, liver, intercostals, etc.. Then add HU breath from Emilie Conrad’s Continuum. Bring the water to the fire.
In sitting janu sirsasana, maha mudra as chi circles, with retention after inhalation, keeping upper gates open to circulate the chi/prana, feeling energy moving through tissues from chakra 3 to 4 and looping back. Try both up and down circles. Then, hanging dog on ballet bar to let gravity help the energy channels expand the tissues through 3 and 4th chakra regions.

Thursday: Anahata (Heart) Chakra, element air, color green, Universal Heart/Mind, center of all centers, starting point of awakening

AM: Begin with meditation as Day 1to open field and clear channels.
Standing poses to bring heart energy to and open lower chakras: chi gong circles to awaken 3rd chakra, standing poses again to fill heart energy field.

Now bringing heart energy up the chakras 5, 6 and 7, with: hanging dog, up dog, supported standing drop backs from the ballet bar. Then, to the floor for sphinx, cobra, up dog, dhanurasana and urdhva dhanurasana for those who are comfortable. From standing, natarajasana with belt. Feel heart energy transitioning up through throat to support head. In back bends, feel heart energy extending in both directions, out through crown and root, to complete an imaginary circle. If you are a yoga pro, the circle is not longer imaginary.

(But do not cheat by compressing spine like this pose to the left. There is a kink in the energy channel at chakra 3. Spinal hyper flexibility needs to back off and organ flexibility enhanced here.)

Transition through down dog and uttanasana to release spinal tension. Gentle seated or lying twist, then savasana.

Afternoon: heart to arms, finding open channels to integrate arms to heart and whole.
lying, either flat or with pelvis lifted on the block (low, not high) balance the sacrum and skull, like a bubble in a level, open crown and root chakras from heart into cosmos, then..
explore floating arms as they emerge from the heart field. Find/create chi sphere in front of heart.. feel the field as it supports to arms

integrating supination/pronation through forearms
integrating humerus rotation in arm movements, then explore in dog pose and variations.
breathing from ribs, expanding chest/intercostals, letting diaphragm slow down and relax

Friday AM: Throat Chakra: soft tissue, muscles and bones, voice, speech, spaciousness, opening to gut body, vowel sounds to open space for vibration, voice, breath, WOW sounds

Cervical curve is first of the secondary curves to emerge. Very old karma in neck region! Appears along with nursing!

Begin with meditation as Day 1. Then, lying down with tail bone very slightly elevated, begin to release back body into the floor. Then raise legs and begin to come into urdhva pascimottanasana, widening the legs if necessary to help release spinal muscles. Then elevate arms to help open upper thoracic vertebrae.

Come to tadasana and then begin to come into utkatasana to feel femurs grounding, sitting bones lifting. Come around the corner into uttanasana but keep the ribs in contact with the thighs. No gap! At first legs are flexed at the knees, but gradually open the backs of the legs without disturbing the spine. Interlude: bakasana for those who can. Then jumping into chaturanga smoothly.

Hanging dog to deepen groins and release spine further.

Working toward uttana padasana to discover the connection between the lumbar and cervical curves and the opening of the front line of the body. Begin lying on floor, knees bent, feet in toward sitting bones. Roll/extend/lengthen pubic bones into floor creating a sacral arch and watch how, if relaxed, the skull will rotate in the opposite direction leaving the liver/heart as the keystone of an arch along the front of the spine. Add the arms as above to fine tune cervicals. Add legs to fine tune lumbar.

Bring this feeling into sphinx series including cobra and up dog. Keep heart lifting into throat. Most beginning students try to use the skull and over stretch the front throat and contract the back of the neck. Carry lift through inner ears to lift 6th chakra and on through crown.

Transition through uttanasana to savasana.

PM: From 5th to 6th Chakra: Heart through throat into inner ears, base of cranium, allowing sphenobasilar junction to breathe. Soften all sensory portals.

Lying down, feet suspended from rails, open heart and release through crown and root chakras to open core channel. Balance sacrum and skull like the bubble of a level. Gradually lengthen core line out beyond head and tail. Wait for 10 minutes to let this settle and grow. Then begin to lower the feet into a supported baddha konasana, feet in belt, hands supporting thighs to move quads towards knees as femur bones sink into floor. When relaxed and open, release arms to side. Let the breath begin to create lateral space as right and left sides release away from center line. Release inner ears and inner groins simultaneously. Find the connection. Release shoulder blades and let the sides of the skull move like the doors of a DeLorean car. Feel heart throat and 6th chakra opening relaxing breathing. Find vast open lateral space.

Lying over rolled up mat along spine, build a field of awareness above and below, like an angel fish. Use imaginary chi circles to help feel the circular field. When full, begin to allow breath to fill a 3 dimensional space receiving and releasing effortlessly into the field.

Next allow breath to flow from outside inward on in-breath and inside outward during the out breath. No structure moving, but receiving the energy in and out.

Open attention: ask the body what it needs to complete the class.

Saturday AM: Begin with meditation ans in day 1. Then, review:

All standing poses: open and ground through lower chakras, legs, tail. Widen through hips to release sacrum, 2nd chakra. Open core from and through heart, up and down the line.
Find how chakras can be paired out from heart center:

3 and 5: lots of movement and confusion here;
open the secondary curves and involve the gut body, liver, aorta, vena cava

2 and 6: the cranio-sacral chakras, very little movement. Balance like a bubble in a level at each

1 and 7: the cosmic chakras, open to the whole universe through here

Dog pose and variations. Inversions if you are practicing. Find the stillness in every pose.

transition to savasana.

Saturday PM: Wave motion in the body to integrate the chakras and heart field.

Mammalian or saggital waves: uttanasana as waves, up and down, either moving in and out of pose, or remaining down and subtly rising and falling. No jerkiness, just fluidity.
Hanging dog; use the support to create longs fluid waves extending out crown and fingers.

Suspend feet from belt on ballet bar for lying fish body. Create lateral wave motion, like a fish. Feel it passing all the way through you, softly, effortlessly. Explore on floor without belt.

Finally, spiral waves. Part 1: Horizontal spirals: in any sitting pose, begin the the 1st chakra and ask it which way it wants to release, clockwise, or counterclockwise. Then allow it to spiral out in that direction, like a pebble dropped in a lake, like the spiral arms of a galaxy. This is not a muscular or structural twist. Let the energy move through a relaxed body. Be fluid and receptive. Repeat for each chakra, allowing all others to be relaxed and receptive.

Part 2: Upward spirals. Beginning with chakra 1. allow the chakra to rotate in its preferred direction and this time feel it rising up through the crown and beyond, and then down through the root and beyond. Feel what parts of the body let go effortlessly, which resist, which want to help. Explore each chakra this way. Try the opposite direction for comparison.

Savasana: open to the cosmos, feel your wholeness.

Notes From Annapolis, February 2014

Posted on February 26, 2014 by admin

Topics covered, and more…

1. Practice heart centering meditation, or variation there-of, every day. Keep working to stabilize the heart center as home base. Begin by palpating sternum/skin/fluids to find physical heart. Trace sensation inward to the space around the heart.

2. Practice the Dan Siegel ‘Wheel of Awareness’ meditation. In this meditation exploration, we use the wheel as a visual metaphor of the mind. Around the rim of the wheel are located the various information streams that feed the brain. These include the five outer senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch: the inner senses of kinesthesia which feeds information from the muscles, bones and joints about location and movement: and proprioception, where we feel the motility or inner movements from the organs and fluids, driven by breathing, the heart beat, peristalsis and the cranio-sacral rhythms: our emotional energies percolating up from the cells and organs; and the cognitive (word based) energies including the ‘monkey mind’. These sources stream to the hub along the ‘spokes’ and we use the hub to locate ‘awareness’. (Warning! All metaphors are limited. Useful but limited. Awareness is not confined by space or time.)

From the ‘hub’ of awareness, we direct our attention out the various ‘spokes’ to observe what is arising. We may notice the the process of ‘attention’ has a mind of its own and may jump from one spoke to another. Our discipline, (abhyasa), is to help stabilize attention, by bringing it to a specific spoke (dharana), keeping it there with some mindful effort (dhyana), and eventually having this become effortless (samadhi). Also we can cultivate a flexible attention that we can use efficiently as we take in the world without being ‘distracted’ by random sensations or thoughts.

In the ‘wheel of awareness’, we go back and forth, from the ‘hub of awareness’ to the various modalities out on the rim. What is most helpful is to really rest in the hub in between trips to the rim. Here awareness rest in itself. Awareness, not needing any information/objects of attention to sustain it, is still, open, unbounded by space and time. Patanjali call this drashtuh svarupe’ the seer resting it its own inherent nature, and uses this to describe the result of yoga. (PYS, I-3). Eckhart Tolle use the term ‘Now’. Atman, Brahman, Presence, Primordial Being are some other ‘pointing’ words. You can also use your open heart as the silent center.

By resting in awareness, we learn to not be so reactive to what arises, so we begin to tease apart the many layers of reactivity that comprise the ‘vrttis’ Patanjali describes in the Samadhi Pada. We see the ephemeral nature of thoughts, beliefs, ideas, sensations and slowly disentangle our ‘self-sense’ from this transient world.

In a somatic based practice like hatha yoga, the information streams coming from the body/mind are cultivated, studied and refined. We learn to feel our way through the body and allow the wisdom of the body to reveal itself moment to moment. Most yoga students begin with the mind telling the body what to do because they have never been taught how to feel, how to listen to the body. As teachers we need to help the students develop the confidence to trust what they feel and to not be afraid of sensations that are less than pleasant. Those sensations are our teachers.

3. Recognize and actualize the three levels of practice, related to the three bodies (gross, subtle and causal), as structure, energy/sound and light/cosmic fields.

4. In asana, awaken structure through the energy lines and circles. Structure involves the physical mass of the body, in movement and stillness. The study of anatomy and kinesiology, the physics of leverage, and anatomical alignment will help awaken this level of practice as you explore the moving energy in various yoga postures and sequences. Remember coiling and uncoiling. In embryology, the circle transforms into a tube, which then coils in on itself. To open the body, we must uncoil from the inside, flexion releasing into extension and then be able to return, extension releasing into flexion. This true for organs, spine and limbs.

Cultivating the energy lines and fields is as easy as 1-2-3. ONE heart / one mind. From your heart, as center, find the sphere of energy that always surrounds and supports you. It can pulsate, radiate or feel relatively stable. Then, find your core line or central axis of the body radiating in TWO opposite directions, feeling it extending through crown and root chakras, connecting all chakras, into heaven and earth. Use the inner heels to awaken tail lines. (see ardha chandrasana below) Maintain the sphere and core line dynamically throughout all of the poses and life embodying the THREE spacial dimensions. These can now become three axes of movement around the hip joints, and our postures can be seen to be organized around these. Master the simple movements as the core practice.

5. The first and most basic is saggital flexion and extension, or, in yoga terminology, forward bending and back bending. This is the fundamental movement pattern of mammals, from cats and dogs to whales and dolphins. Healthy action here requires clear and free movement of the pelvic bones over the femur heads and a long free imaginary tail to balance the spinal column. (See dogs below if an image is needed.) When there is compromised movement through the hip joints, the lower back and knees (as well as everywhere else!) will suffer the consequences. The human body, starting in tadasana, has far more flexion available than extension. The best leverage to explore forward bending is from standing because, unlike in sitting, the pelvis can move through space.

In a simple forward bend like uttanasana, stay grounding through the legs and grow your self a tail. Bird tail, cat tail, dinosaur tail, anyone will do. Make it as long as possible. The root chakra has three limbs that can and need to be activated in energy flow; right and left legs and the tail. In tadasana, the three root limbs all elongate downward, but to begin uttasana, or any other forward bending pose, the tail energy initiates the action by moving in a circle, back along the floor and then reaching into space. This allows the pelvis to move freely without contracting any spinal muscles or collapsing the organ tree at the front of the body. With your long ‘imaginary tail’, your sacrum is now the center or fulcrum of the movement and thus can let go of any unnecessary holding. Returning to tadasana reverses the action. Practice moving slowly in and out to get a feel of the three energies, keeping them flowing. “Trifurcating the mula” is a key energy awakening that we can learn here. Later we will learn how to engage the inner heels to help activate and reinforce the tail energy.

In backbending,we can use the supine positions like sphinx where gravity helps release the anterior lumbar. Activate the tail by pushing your hips back and up over your feet, like a mini dog pose, keeping the knees on the floor.

Leave the tail long and return back to sphinx by lengthening in an arc through the crown. Difficulty can be added by bringing the arms to cobra or up dog, or by taking the shins up the wall.

The famous Barcelonan architect, Antoni Gaudi, studied the math and physics of arches by hanging cables and strings and observing how gravity gives shape to the curves. Same in backbends. Once we feel how gravity opens and lengthens the spine in poses like the sphinx and dhanurasana, then, when we do reverse backbends like urdhva dhanurasana, (or triang mukkhottanasana), we have a sense of when there is space and when we are compressing the spine. Notice the use of vectors and leg energy in eka pada viparita dandasana. In both poses, notice the exceptional evenness of the curve on the front body. This is how to read backbends.

The second pattern of movement is lateral flexion and extension or fish body, where you rotate in the frontal plane. Fish, reptiles and amphibians move with this action and it is mostly spinal. As there is far less movement available here for the hip joints than the other two planes, yogis adjust the feet to create trikonasana, parsvakonasana, ardha chandrasana and other side bending poses, and use this unique leverage to more deeply open the hip joints. Because lateral flexion is also available in the spinal column, and we do want to encourage freedom here, it is important to differentiate lateral freedom versus lateral collapse. In the trikonasana series, when the hips reach their limit of movement, do not just cave in sideways with the spine. Notice Iyengar’s before and after (69 years!) trikonasanas.

If you use the wall for support, a beginning student can learn a lot about free movement in the hips by slowly moving in and out of ardha chandrasana, keeping the standing leg grounding in slight flexion and the extension through the inner back heel. Slow movements establish a sattvic energy flow and prevent “holding on” rajasic, or “hanging out” tamasic energies. Eventually, staying in the pose comes from open flow throughout the body, extending in all directions. Also, here, and in one legged dog, we can feel how the inner back heel is intimately connected to the tail energy. When we come back to trikonasana, we can use an extending energy through the inner back heel to be the major mover of the energy, like a skier using their edges going around a slalom gate.

The final pelvic action is rotation around the transverse plane and vertical axis of the body, known as twisting. How we place and use the feet has a huge effect upon the capacity to actually mobilize rotation in the hips. Revolved ardha chandrasana is the best at zeroing in on rotation because you can do each hip independently. Also, if you see the lines of energy in Venus (on her backhand) and Rafa (on his forehand) as they extend in opposite directions through space, back leg balancing front arm, and orient beyond their bodies, you can have a feel for the dynamism and aliveness possible in the pose.If we choose to ‘stay’ in a posture for many breaths, there should be this quality dynamism along with an ease in moving in and out along the spinal axis, from head to tail (or hands to feet).

6. Once we have a feel for the three planes, trifurcating the mula (adding a tail to the legs) and opposite action, we can take this awareness into ‘one legged dog pose’ and onto hand stand and head stand. Keep extending through the inner heels and tail as the rooting energy is now creating lift. This is the foundation for the safe practice of all inversions.

To learn a safe way to sarvangasana, begin with viparita karani and supported bridge pose to create opening to the organs and throat. Too many students block the throat chakra thinking they are doing jalandhara bandha.

5. The subtle body is energy, aka prana, chi, qi, or ki. Fundamentally it is sound, vibration, as all life is music. As beginners, we explore the breathing process and simple movements, where there is an oscillation between two poles (moving in and out of a pose) and a middle or fulcrum that is ever still. In time we begin to experience a deeper sense of the motility of the body, that is, all of the movements of physiology and especially the four major rhythms. Respiration is first and is felt in the tissues throughout the body, not just in the belly or chest. The heartbeat and the circulatory pulsation is the second, peristalsis and the rhythmic undulations of the gut body from mouth to anus is third. Finallly the cranio-sacral movements will bring us into our embryological origins and primal movements of our aliveness.

In addition to exploring the breathing movements, beginning students can also play with sound. Vowel sounds send patterns of energy through the body, fluids and structures, and can give us feedback on where we are holding tension. Being able to feel and create sounds is very therapeutic for all. Then mantras, chanting and bhajans or sacred songs can be explored, for the sheer joy of chanting, but also as a way to feel more deeply into the realm and intelligence of sound.

Emilie Conrad’s ‘Hu Breath, which we played with Sunday, combines the respiratory and peristaltic rhythms with sound to mobilize the fluid body, dissolve patterns of tension, and awaken the inner realms of aliveness. Like a dog panting, or laughing/crying, a rhythm is generated and then explored by micro changes in face, diaphragm, ribs, and anywhere that is free to move.

And always return to the center of the heart and the ever present stillness. Rest there, and remember stillness is not the absence of movement, but your natural state independent of all that is going on within you and without you.