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Sankalpa (Intention)
In the tradition of our culture’s “new year’s resolution” I like to practice yoga nidra at this time of year to help establish a new sankalpa or intention. A sankalpa is different from a new year’s resolution. It is short, affirming, and is both in the present and forward-looking.
Usually it takes a couple of weeks for me to be certain of what sankalpa is right for me to work with for a period of months. One year, I had been very sick for the entire fall and early winter, so it was easy to choose “I am healthy.” For the past two years, as I struggled with my place this time of war and societal struggle and thought about my own role in creating and avoiding conflict, I chose the sankalpa “I will come from the light in all I do” (“light” for me meaning an inner place of peace, compassion and spaciousness).
In the past several months, mostly due to having thoroughly enjoyed creating meals from the garden and the farmers’ market, I am a little heavier than works with the clothing I own and my sense of comfort with my body image. Instead of having a new year’s resolution to lose five pounds, which would likely fail, I am working with the sankalpa “I love and respect my body.” The former buys into societal expectations of what my body should look like, imposes mental will over my body, and reinforces a mindset of negative judgment and denial. The latter is joyous and affirming. I believe that if I truly love and respect my body, I will eat in a way that is healthy for my body and the earth. I will either lose the few pounds or be more accepting of my body as it is. This sankalpa thus gives me much to contemplate in terms of my relationship to the mirror, my clothes, my asana practice, and my way of eating. How much it gives me to contemplate expands if I think of the body extending beyond just my flesh and bones and physical appearance, but also to my energy body and all that I bring in through the senses.
What sankalpa would be transformative for you this year? What would help you embody your sankalpa (other than, of course, establishing a regular yoga nidra practice — see yoga nidra resources).
A Change of Plans
I’d bought this basket with the intention of helping organize papers and clutter, but the goddess in her incarnation as Uma the cat clearly has other ideas about it.
Will There Be Any Change in My Local Yoga Class Following the Events of the Past Few Weeks?
A regular reader of this blog, who was a member of the Willow Street Yoga community until she moved out of the country, wrote and said that though she enjoyed the classes in her new home, she missed the adjustments and alignment instructions at Willow Street. She asked in this context the following: “I’ve been wondering lately, when teachers leave anusara, can they still use the same terminology in their classes? If not, why not? Does JF have a copyright on some of the words?” I cannot speak to any copyright and trademark issues–I took a copyright class in law school, but that was 25 years ago.
All that I can speak to is how I will continue teaching, both at William Penn House, where the only class of the week is the one I teach, and at Willow Street Yoga Center, where I will continue to teach my gentle/therapeutic class, and the other workshops and classes I may teach. Although I have not tendered a formal resignation, I have removed the title “certified Anusara instructor” from the header of the blog. At this time, I do not even know, given John’s decision to step down for at least some period of time, what is the organization from which I would resign or whether a renewal license would be sent. For the moment, there is no need for me to make any specific changes in how I teach.
If my formal affiliation with Anusara as a corporate entity were to change, the thousands of hours I have spent contemplating, exploring, and studying the principles of alignment and how to teach them will still be the major part of my asana practice and teaching. Anusara is a deep, strong, significant presence and has been the most significant physical and energetic component of my practice and teaching and to some extent my yogic framework for being in the world for a decade. Given the healing and delight I have experienced from practicing in accordance with the principles, I do not expect anything to be otherwise. As I have been taught only to teach what I have practiced and experienced myself, and not just what I have heard from a teacher or read in a book, although obviously I cannot have experienced in my own body healing for all the various challenges of embodiment that my students have experienced, how could I not be teaching from my own interpretation of the principles of alignment, regardless of a possible need to shift vocabulary?
What will happen with the organization from a business perspective remains to be seen. The name of the system carries a trademark. Whatever happens and wherever I am led in my practice and commitments in the future, as have always done, I will honor John Friend and Anusara as the source of much of my learning and it will be a recognizable influence on my teaching. I will say in class or when I am writing that the alignment principles I have just articulated would be called [insert Anusara alignment principle] in Anusara. This will be true regardless of how the Anusara community is reconfigured and what my relationship is to any future organizational structure.
In answer to the question of what will my local yoga class be like now from my own perspective: Yes, I will be offering the same alignment instructions and adjustments–and hoping to get better over time with continued study and practice. But also, I will be even more precise about attribution, and I will be less likely to be using the “short hand,” which I already use relatively minimally. I have always found that a description of the actual physical and energetic aspect of one of Anusara’s “Universal Principles of Alignment” that applied to what was going on in the practice far more helpful than just using the name of the principle as a pointer to the action being emphasized.
It is a great question, and I am sure that the answer will be slightly different for each teacher, though I trust that all are committed to offering the best yoga class possible, just as they were before. For me, it will take a little feeling my way around the changed landscape to see how it influences my teaching. All I can say is that I am still committed to offering yoga practices that bring healing, joy, and connection, and I hope that I can do an ever better and fuller job of living up to my commitment. This is true wherever I teach and whatever name is given to the hatha yoga I teach.
An Opening
Last night in group practice, we were working on the mini-arm balances. As I demonstrated a pose, my spine shifted. From the middle thoracic vertebra right behind the heart all the way up to C7, each vertebra popped sequentially, releasing energy not only from each vertebra, but upward. I felt an incredible lightness moving from the heart space all the way through the crown of my head. We talked about it a little in practice, because the fact that some kind of opening had occurred was fully evident to everyone in the group.
As a purely physical matter, opening my thoracic spine is good. I have degeneration in my cervical and lumbar spine. Those parts of my spine are very mobile, almost unusually so, whereas my thoracic spine is quite tight. This imbalance can cause pain and muscle tension, though through therapeutic practice of the Anusara principles, I progressively find a healthy balance of stability and freedom. Go to any decent physical therapist for neck or lumbar pain, and the therapist will work to open the thoracic spine, which although it should be stiffer (being attached to the ribs and protecting the heart), likely needs to be more mobile to be in better balance with the rest of the spine.
This morning, I woke up still feeling more open around the heart space and noticing a shift in the energy in my upper back, neck, and head, and the sensation of the opening I experienced carried itself through my morning meditation.
We never know when we are going to get an opening in our practice. I keep coming to the mat and the meditation cushion because I want to be more open, more grounded, more free, more full of energy, more compassionate, more at peace, more in tune with others. It is fairly rare, though, that I experience a noticeable opening all at once (and the reason to practice should not to be to have wild moments, sensations, visions, etc).
When one comes, though, it leaves open the question: what will I do with it? Will I get absorbed in talking about it and reliving it? Will I think that I can slack in my practice because I have had a big opening? Will I return to how things were before? It is easy enough to do. Just witness the collective energy and momentary hopefulness of this country when it elected President Obama. Upon not getting instant change and relief, the country has returned to blaming, divisiveness, ineffectiveness, finger-pointing, greediness, warlikeness, and catering to the corporate war machine instead of moving towards universal health care, peace, and “green” energy consumption. It would likewise be easy for me to have enjoyed experiencing something wild and special on my mat and then go outside to walk to work and be tense and grumbly about the ice on the sidewalks, the snow in the forecast, and the limits I experience in my daily life. I know there will be some going backwards, but I will strive to take this experience to shift to a more optimal place in my practice on and off the mat.
