To awaken the body fully is something beyond the way we typically think of the body.
Yes, there is the anatomical truth of the body’s form from the entire surface of the skin inward. Yes, there is the physiological truth of the body’s functions and interacting systems. Yet further, there is the life force that courses through us both animating our metabolism and activating the mind and our soul.
To yoke breath and attention in the simple functions of movement, conscious of gravity and rhythm, fullness and emptiness, opening and closing, dilation and contraction, engagement and disengagement, this is to activate an awakening beyond our mundane expectations.
We step beyond our habits of identity.
Why not?
What is needed for hand balances? How do they build? How do we enter and exit? Where is shtira?
Beginning again means asking familiar questions and looking for the answers in the posture, observing what doesn’t work, and what does. Learning twice, and twice again in Beginners Mind.
I recorded this last night because I must be on the road during our usual time. Here we observe three planes of functional spinal movement with breath. I invite you to recall warm-ups of this past week and to practice from whatever you can recall. If you cannot recall, then reboot yr favorite livestream recording and use that.
This week marks the start of a new endeavor at the SAMURAI INTI Martial Arts Studio in Frisco. I’ll be teaching i a group class there at Sendai Sebastian Mejias ‘ dojo on Monday and Wednesday mornings.