doorways into alignment
“Both the pictures and the words on our minds influence the feelings in our bodies, which in turn feed our thoughts and mental pictures. To create powerful and dynamic alignment, we use this roundabout cycle to our technical advantage if we fertile with constructive information and weed out destructive thoughts.” -Eric Franklin
…And many of us have experienced first hand in yoga practice effects between these simultaneously evolving layers of our being. We can enter though any access point along this loop to explore the re-organization process, and shift the many layers, woven through the various dimensions of our thoughts, emotions, awareness, energetic body, and physical body.
One reason I love asana is in the feedback loop of accountability we can access. When the mind goes into it’s slippery matrix of rabbit holes, sometimes the navigational pathway is unclear. However, we can perceive clearly a femur that is pointed in a different direction than the knee and ankle joint, or a pelvis that tilts to the left. And by creating alignment in this plane, that harmony echos through out the subtler dimensions of self.
In a mini-Workshop focused on Birth Preparation this past weekend, a group of lovely pregnant mamas and I explored ways of accessing an emotional ease and alignement through playing with repetitive motion, rhythm, asana, and inner listening. We used the physical practice as an access point for finding a place of center within the self, an alignement in the subtler layers, as these women prepare for the greatest unknown: giving birth. The scope and possibility of this work amazes and inspires me.
(painting and photo by Avery Kalapa)