wednesday morning thoughts...

As promised to my Wednesday morning yogis...here are the thoughts ala Magi for Wednesday morning :).
Last Saturday Lauren, Todd, Diana and I took with Matthew Sweeney. I’ve loved his book for quite a while now...it’s a spiral bound large book, “Vinyasa Krama”, with pictures of him doing 5 different sequences he’s created complete with every posture labeled in sanskrit.
Without rambling extensively, the workshop was not our cup of tea (note British
reference!). He used minimal warmup- dhanurasana within 5 minutes for example- to achieve the allusive dropback-which we didn’t actually get to. He closed with an extensive discussion about “moon cycles” and how as women we “should” be able to feel ourselves ovulating (complete with a visual of the egg being released)...needless to say my feminist side was riled up. When’s the last time he ovulated?! Finally, news break in anatomy here, apparently your psoas now runs superficially across the abdominals, over your bladder, in the shape of a V. Alas...
Through all this however, I was reminded of the ever valuable lesson that one can often learn much more from something disliked as from something really liked. For example, teaching from one’s own experience and practice is infinitesimally more powerful and true than teaching from something written 3000 years ago for 12 year old boys in India...
One idea he mentioned in passing spoke to mulabandha, calling it the ever illusive and one of the least-understood concepts of yoga. He mentioned that mulabandha is always there, it’s our awareness of it that has the capacity to change. It isn’t something you “do”, its something you observe happening. This idea of observation of what is, rather than some mental creation of what we think could be happening, is what I hope to attain each time I visit the mat.

In short warm up, speak from experience without declarative statements you can’t back up, know your anatomy, and be a witness to what is without commentary!

After a tough morning of waking up at 10 and drinking my tea while watching an interview with Wayne Rooney (yes, I'm up to date on my english footballers!) I’m soon off to my first official led class in London @ TriYoga...