We make our standing practices of 3 planes of spinal movement, lymphatic clearing, and circles with the joints, all guided by breath.
Take your time to sense your breath. What does that mean?
We take our breath for granted. We might believe that if I can inhale then I am breathing, when actually the breath is a cycle of four phases. 1.) the inhale, or puraka, 2) the completed inhale in which no more air can enter, the “full pot”, or upper apnea, or antara kumbhaka, 3) the exhale, or recaka, and 4) the completed exhaled, the “empty pot”, or the lower apnea, or bahya kumbhaka.
To consciously observe the breath’s four phases is to awaken the mind, to visualize, and to use the imagination to understand. This healthy use of imagination illuminates.
Use breath to enter posture, to observe its complete expression, to illuminate, to exit.
In this way we awaken functionality, we awaken the pranic delivery (vyana) , and we specifically address breath within the the structures of the body (nyasa). Every pose serves this purpose. The benefits can be experienced both in the physical body and in the subtle realms fo the body.
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.