Weekly Class Observations - March 2nd

I'm hoping that Dana and Karen will help me fill in the spaces on this post!

The theme of the class was Satya, or truthfulness.  Satya is the second principle of Yama in Raja yoga.  More than just speaking what is true, you should also try to live your life in a way that is truthful.  This might mean choosing to do something different with your life because you know it's right for you, even though that might mean it's a bit out of your comfort zone.  What Melonie quoted that stuck with me was something about it might be uncomfortable to live your life truthfully, but at the end of the day you will be at peace (it would be great to have the real quote).

The main alignment teaching principle was ankle loops.  We will become friendly with the other loops in each of the following classes in this term.

The warm up poses were designed to really concentrate on the ankle loop.  We started with standing poses at the wall with our toes of the front foot turned up the wall.  Then we used a rolled up mat to put our toes up on, first in tadasana and then in warrior 1 pose, all the while trying to keep all four corners of the feet pressing down and recognizing the ankle loop.

After a few sun salutations, we moved into down dog where we first tried to remove the wrinkles in the ankles by lifting the heels off the floor, then keeping that engagement in the ankles, move the heels back toward the floor, thus engaging ankle loop.  Next in trikonasana, we noticed the wrinkling of the back of the ankle and tried to reduce that wrinkle using the ankle loop.

Next, as a warm up to arm stand, we moved to the wall and placed our elbows on the wall about shoulder's width apart and a bit higher than the shoulders.  Then melting the heart and moving the feet back we got into a position that is similar to arm stand, but no fear of falling over!  Also, in this position, since you are not concentrating on what the legs are (or are not) doing, you can really focus on the shoulders and the muscular energy.  Then we moved into arm stands.  All the handstand practice was beneficial in this pose too.

The cool down poses were happy baby pose, and butterfly pose (moving the feet out to form a diamond with the legs) and then adding a block under the feet.  It seemed that with the block, I was able to get a bit more inner spiral in that pose.  Then finally fire log pose (Agnistambhasana).


I have a deeper understanding after this class of the importance of balancing organic and muscular energy in each pose.  I think that will be my own personal theme this term.  When holding the "arm stand" pose against the wall, I wasn't maintaining muscular energy and my shoulder rolled out of the socket (because it can).  It felt really weird and surprised me.  This may be the same problem I was having in downward dog, too much organic energy and not maintaining the muscular energy, my arms weren't really staying pulled in the shoulder socket, where they should be.


Looking forward to next week's loop!