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Your body
You cannot think your way out of a body that is braced. This area starts there: the breath, the ground under you, moving, eating, resting, and the small physical things that change how the rest of the day lands.
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13 practicesTheme · Posture and how you carry yourself
How long you have
What frightens a body is usually not how hard a thing is, it is having no way out. So put movement as an offer. If it feels alright, you might try lifting your arms.
The wording is doing quiet work here. Lift your arms, and see what happens if you lift your arms, are the same physical event, but only one of them…
Whatever a person walks in carrying belongs in the practice. The ache in the hip, the irritation, tears that arrive for no reason, the part that thinks all of this is nonsense.
Complex trauma teaches people to leave pieces of themselves at the door, and a yoga mat is an easy place to carry on doing exactly that, particularly…
When you start paying attention to your body, things wake up. More feeling, a deeper breath, memories arriving sideways. That is the practice working, not the practice going wrong.
Say this at the start, not afterwards. People who were not told tend to decide the movement made them worse and stop, when what actually happened is…
You are not here for a longer hamstring. You are here for a nervous system that can change gear, work when work is needed and settle when it is not.
An ordinary class measures you against the shape, and that measuring is the same self driving that wore you out in the first place. The therapeutic…
When attention has nowhere to settle, give it something. A fixed point on the floor, the breath, the shape your hands are making, or the plain feel of the position you are in.
Which one you choose matters more than people expect. Focusing on the breath turns attention inward, and inward is the wrong direction for anyone…
Once a shape feels safe, it becomes somewhere to explore from. The question stops being am I doing this right and turns into how does my body want to move now.
Stay in an easy position long enough for it to go slightly dull. Dull is the sign that the ground under you is steady. From there, small experiments:…
Picture a cat getting up from a nap. One side lengthens and reaches while the other side curls in, then they swap over. Do that. Add breath and sound if you want them.
After a minute of copying the animal, drop the instructions and let your body carry on however it likes. That is the reason for starting here:…
Find the place that is always tight, your jaw, your shoulders, the top of your back. Take it over deliberately. Squeeze it harder than it holds itself, then let it go.
Do that a few times and something changes. The holding stops being weather that happens to you and becomes something you are doing, which means it is…
Take a shape that asks something of you, warrior or mountain, eyes open, the middle of your body switched on. Then, without coming out of it, drop your attention inside and let the pose hold you instead.
Two things get practised in one position. First the doing: strong legs, clear gaze, a body that is ready. Then the yielding: still there, still…
Keeping your eyes open holds you in the room while you feel what is going on inside. One channel on where you actually are, one on yourself.
Closed eyes are the default in most classes and they are not always kind. When a lot is stirring, letting the eyes stay soft but open, so the light…
Grounding and relaxing are two different prescriptions. A squat with your back against a wall puts you back into your legs. Deep guided rest takes you downwards. Reach for whichever one is missing.
When someone has gone numb or absent, often from the waist down, weight bearing work in the legs gives the body something loud and unmistakable to…
Calm is only half the training. Plenty of people are more frightened of stillness than of adrenaline, because stillness puts the guard down.
If everything you practise is a settling practice, half the range goes untrained, and you may be asking someone to drop a defence they still need. So…
Play belongs here. Being a lion, a tree, a hissing snake, the way children do it with no embarrassment at all.
A lot of people meet trauma work as something solemn, and solemn is easy to sit through without ever softening. Silliness is harder to fake. If a…