breath

yoga seeds #25 – A home practice – 2/ What do I do?

| María Ferrara

There are many approaches to building a sequence, so the question is very legitimate! If you’re regularly attending someone’s class, your body has very probably already internalized some of their sequences. A possible approach is to just let your body lead you. It is likely that it remembers more than your mind. That’s how I started practising at home :) You could also decide beforehand what you’re going to do, based on how you feel or on a certain long-term focus that you’re working on. Start your session connecting to your breath, make it balanced by including the five movements of the spine -forward bend, backbend, side bend, twist and elongation (this one should be there transversally, in everything)- and finish lying down to relax and integrate (savasana). If you’re working on an asana, you can approach its component parts in the previous asanas, starting with the least challenging . I try to signpost my classes, so that you know what each thing is for. My intention is that, with time, you can play with these building blocks yourself and combine them in different ways. Give it a go! You might be surprised how much you’ve already in-corpo-rated.

Thanks to all my students at Yoga Hub Berlin, who inspire me with their practice.

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yoga seeds #14 – Special and subtle: the breath

| María Ferrara

The most basic pranayama practice is observing the breath. “Basic”, as opposed to “simple”, because it’s the basis upon which we can develop other practices and also because observing the breath is no simple matter. For one thing, as soon as we turn our attention to it, the breath tends to change. The first challenge is allowing the breath to be what it is while we become aware of it. Like other bodily functions like the heart beat or digestion, breathing changes automatically depending on our state. What makes breathing special is the fact that it’s the only bodily function that we can also direct to a certain extent. All this means that it’s a meeting point between the body, the mind and our emotions or energy. For some people observing the breath feels uncomfortable or even unsettling. This can be disconcerting, when observing the breath is always suggested as a way to calm down. It is in the long run, but while we get there it’s worth being very gentle with ourselves. We are approaching a central aspect of our way of being in life and, by doing so, we are faced with things that we may not usually notice. Imagine your breath is a bird on a branch. If you are too conspicuous with your watching, it might fly away. Observe softly, kindly, with no expectation or demand, take a break from the practice if you need to and when you’re ready come back. Observe almost as a question, “Can I?”. And respect however long the gettting-to-know-one-another takes.

Thanks to all my students at Yoga Hub Berlin, who inspire me with their practice.

Visit the Yoga Seeds index to go straight to what you’re looking for.

yoga seeds #6 – Shoulderstand and plow pose: giving space to the breath

| María Ferrara

The breath adapts to the different positions of the body, but if it we feel like we can’t breathe, then we need to back off. If shoulderstand (sarvangasana) and plow pose (halasana) feel difficult to breathe in, that’s no surprise. As in any inversion, the weight of the abdominal content is resting on the diaphragm, making it harder to inhale. So: great to strengthen the diaphragm! However, if we let the weight of the pelvis and legs just drop, it will shorten our spine and the front of the trunk, and we won’t have space for the air to come in. By pressing our shoulders and arms into the ground we will feel the trunk elongating upwards. Using the core muscles around the waist to hug our centre we can send the pelvis up high, away from our ribcage, giving the lungs space. In plow pose this will also prevent overstretching at the lower back, as our spine is supported closer to its neutral shape. First things must come first, and if one is a living being, breathing is definitely at the top of the list!

Thanks to all my students at Yoga Hub Berlin, who inspire me with their practice.