Experience
comes with time and patience. Deepening your practice
is not so much learning to do more advanced postures,
but rather increasing your understanding of how to feel
yoga. Precision in technique can make yoga, even in
very basic postures, more focused and exciting, and
can deepen your understanding of what yoga is about.
The experienced one is the the possessor of wisdom who
knows how to let go and accept this process of life
and the flows that follow along with it. Practice, practice,
practice and all will follow. At the heart of a yoga
practice you have quietness: the ability to be agenda-free,
sensitive, gentle and open to all the possibilities.
At the heart of our advanced class you have focus, the
prerequisite to all of the above. When you walk into
the room of our advanced practice, you can cut the atmosphere
with a knife, the focus is so thick. Because of that,
our practice is so very deep. Focus is the intense listening
to the experience one is having, allowing the practitioner
to make optimal decisions according to what is felt
(what the body is saying), creating the environment
for healing. Focus is also the clearing of the mind
of all else, allowing for meditation (quietness), giving
the busy brain a rest from old mental habits, like the
redundant, recycled, unnecessary thoughts that are constantly
passing through our head -- judgment, criticism, competitiveness
that contribute to and facilitate stress. Stress may
be the largest factor in disease. For a yoga practice
to be "Advanced" one needs to understand it
is not the degree of physical difficulty, but the degree
of quietness, gentleness and sensitivity!!
So listen carefully: your body is talking. Don’t allow this to be simply an gymnastics class. Make it powerful and healing by honoring what you are feeling !!
Let’s heighten our experience.
Let’s advance our practice in the midst of this
abundant physicality.
Let’s strengthen our mentality.
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