Explore or learn some essential, basic ‘postures’ or āsana from an understanding, personally felt perspective. Plopping these here because the principles are so fundamental to my teaching that they are great resources I can refer you to along the way during mentorship. Alternately, you can give yourself a whole somatic learning project by working your way through each video, top to bottom. These are not intended to be practices - these are lessons in how to make the practices work for you. They are learning resources.
The philosophies and anatomies and even insights of yoga are something you already have. They are in your own body. Instead of superimposing alignment, you can spend your time feeling your way into yourself.
Feet and Bones
Yoga āsana deals with three main body tissues: bone tissue, muscle tissue, and connective tissue. Bones are designed to hold and transfer force. That is, they hold us up without cost. Muscles are designed to move the bones. Connective tissue threads through all the other tissues of the body (including bone and muscle): connective tissue both contains and separates. That is, it creates relationship.
I start looking at bones in alignment. If we can begin to explore our anatomy in this way, we often have insights and experiences of depth, interiority, sthira and sukka. We also start to understand ‘shapes’. Further, this teaches a root principle and the principle of roots: start from the ground, the foundation.
Feel your feet: samasthithi
Rather than trying to ‘make’ your body mimic what other bodies are doing, explore your ability to feel and balance the concepts of steady (shira) and comfortable (sukkah) as the basis for ALL āsana.
Your body has these things built in: they are part of who you are.
Virabadrasana: warrior one
Build on your understanding of samasthithi, stira and sukkah, to explore standing in your own strength.
Find felt connection to the bones of your feet and their relationship to your body weight, center of gravity, capacity to move compared to stability.
This is an old video: I talk about my former teacher Leslie Kaminoff quite a bit at the beginning. I no longer work with him, but don’t have the time to make a new video editing him out. The principles are valid, and the teaching is my own.
Arches
a mostly laying down practice to orient you to the boney landmarks, three arches, and internal organization of the foot. Because they are so important to our being walkers, feet translate right on up the body. A little bit of attention there tends to feel good everywhere, and help us literally find support and ease in the design of being human.
Bones in a chair
Half hour somatic practice in a chair…looking for the sensation of bones, skeletal poise, and resting or listening to bone. This is something our nervous system (and muscles) can do, but isn’t terribly practiced at. We’re much more trained to look for effort and strain. Learn something about your spine and the bones of the axial skeleton, and then play with what you’ve learned in other practices on your own.
Bones of a warrior
moving from an awareness of bones can be a deeply settling AND a deeply powerful experience of internal stability, intelligence, support, and strength. Strength: when we move from our bones, just the right muscles figure out what to do in just the right amount. Your brain doesn’t recognize muscles by name, and doesn’t separate or value according to ‘poses’. This kind of a practice can help you feel you, as opposed to an external idea of working out, exercise, or conformity.
I recommend you practice 'bones in a chair’ at least once before exploring this one. You’ll take what you’ve learned about spinal integrity and spinal movement, a flexible rib cage, head and pelvis into various standing postures. This is a play shop: have a wall, chair, and any other things you like to practice with.