Eric Stewart
Spring Intensive

Start Spring right! Immerse yourself in three days of nourishing, challenging yoga. March 29-31.
A place for finding space.
Eric Stewart
Eric Stewart
Eric Stewart
Hello everyone,
by Chelsea Doohan Do you remember being a child and learning how the Earth spins like a top?A top has a visible shaft at its center. The widest part of the top is like the equator of the earth. When you look at a top, its shaft and circumference are tangible, visible. With the Earth, this is less true. Because we aren’t in a position to see the entire earth as one object (unless we are in space), we have to conceptualize the earth’s axis and equator. They don’t feel like solid things. Yet they are still real.When teaching yoga, I often refer to a student’s vertical axis. This is much the same as Earth’s axis. It’s very real but isn’t a tangible object. Rather, it’s a reference, and it gives us something around which to organize.So let me be more concrete. Your body’s vertical axis is basically a plumb line generated by a gravitational pull toward the ground you stand on. Around this plumb line, the weight of your body must distribute itself evenly. Otherwise, one of two things happens: 1) you fall over like a top that has stopped spinning, or 2) one side of the body needs to work hard to keep you from falling over. As time goes on, this second options gets tiring!.Exploration no. 1:Stand in tadasana, (mountain pose). Don’t worry if you are a beginner and/or you don’t know how to do the pose “correctly.” Just stand vertically. That is tadasana.Bring your attention to your vertical axis, your plumb line. How do you know where it is? One way is to sway in the pose, such that you move around the axis. Play with swaying in tadasana, forward, back, and side to side.When you move around something enough, you start to get an idea of where it is. Your vertical axis is somewhere between front, back, and your two sides—that’s pretty obvious. But, you can get more specific by gradually making your swaying smaller. In other words, move in a smaller radius around your plumb line. Playing with smaller and smaller movements, you may hone in on where your axis is.Effortless StandingOnce you find this, you can stay in tadasana for a long time without any one part of you tiring. That’s because all your parts are organized around the plumb line, and your body’s weight is evenly distributed around it.Here’s a pattern I see in tadasana a lot: Hips and belly move forward of the vertical axis. Shoulders are nice and far back, perhaps over the heels, which might give the impression of having a plumb line. . . until you realize that the hips are off of this line—they are in front of it. The body is making something of a bow shape. Is this a problem? Well, it can put a lot of pressure on the low back. And if you do tadasana like this all the time, you may start to feel that that position is centered and plumb, when it isn’t.Exploration no. 2:Stand in tadasana and push your hips forward. You can even exaggerate it (but stop if it makes your back hurt!) This is just to feel a particular pattern. Then, gather your hips back a bit so they are more over your heels. This is likely to tone your abdomen and gather your belly towards hour low back. It should feel nice on your low back, spreading and lengthening it. More generally, you may feel that you can grow upward all around your vertical axis. Your back lifts as much as your front lifts, so that your back doesn’t get compressed.This plumb line I’m talking about. . . where in relation to other body parts is it? It is an axis that runs just in front of your spine. Your spine can be a great reference, and we often hear about lengthening the spine in yoga. Nothing wrong with that! However, we can also get more precise and note that the the body’s true axis is in front of the spine, more on the inside.In tadasana what if you felt the length coming from a space just in front of the spine, a place that is more central? One thing this does is place the crown of the head in the vertical axis (not in front of it, as I so often see).So now we have crown, hips, and ankles all in one plumb line. This is a very strong tadasana!Sitting involves the same principlesThis vertical axis of the trunk, from hips to head, is essential for seated poses as well and especially twists. Twists need a clear axis to move around or else one side of the body becomes compressed or collapsed. You will get more benefit from twists if you find your vertical axis before moving into the rotation.Exploration no. 3 (chair twist):Find a level, firm-seated chair with a back but no arm rests. Sit sideways in the chair such that the chair back is on the right side of your body. Before you twist, find your two feet flat on the floor and find your vertical axis. You can think of it like tadasana, except now you are “standing” on your two sitting bones instead of your two feet. From here, twist to your right and take your hands to each side of the chair back, so that your arms are somewhat engaged, helping you rotate. You can think of lengthening up through your axis the whole time, or it might work better for you to think of growing upward, then twisting, growing upward again, twisting a bit more, etc.The twist will involve the whole trunk, from head to seat. One note here: sometimes students aren’t sure whether they are supposed to keep their hips square while the trunk twists. My answer is that it is actually helpful for the pelvis to participate in the twist. It won’t turn a lot, but there will be a slight rotation of the hips around each other (and around the central axis). This will bring one sitting bone forward on the chair, and I encourage students to simply let that happen.RewardsThe rewards you can gain from this awareness are about relating to the world that is around you. Being clear in your axis creates a stable vantage from which to better see outside of yourself. You can not only attend to what is in front of you but also to what is to the sides and all around. Then, pivoting in order to switch attention from one thing to another becomes more effortless and graceful. Also, it makes backing out of parking spaces a whole lot easier.Have fun playing with this! Namaste. |
Here’s an audio practice that combines seated and standing asana. It’s a beginning to intermediate-level practice. Familiarity with moving from sitting to downward dog via crossed legs, and transitioning from wide-footed standing poses to a vertical lunge with the back heel off the floor are prerequisites for this practice.
by Chelsea Doohan
From childhood onwards there are few things someone can call you that are worse than “quitter”.
But wait a minute, there are also positive connotations to quitting, right? Quitting smoking or another bad habit sure is a positive thing. And. . . well, that’s actually the only thing I can think of that puts quitting in a positive light. Mostly it’s something we are taught NOT to do, at almost any cost.
So I want to stand up for quitting. I want to encourage you to do it, for reasons I’ll get into below.
Sure, there are times when persevering is a better choice than quitting. But we are so flooded with these stories of quitting=failure and persevering=success, I don’t think I need to write about them.
What doesn’t usually get discussed is what a profound purpose that quitting serves for any of us to function and thrive. This can range from the everyday–you quit one task because it’s time to attend to another, you quit eating because you are full–to the more significant decisions like quitting a relationship or a job that isn’t working.
Sometimes persevering works, but there is often a point when persevering just ends up hurting you and quitting is the skillful thing to do. The yoga of quitting is recognizing when that shift happens.
The yoga of quitting also involves awareness of how it feels after you quit something. If you stay alert in that space, you will possibly notice two things. One, there may be some yucky feelings left over from ingrained beliefs about quitting. Two, there are also other feelings, which might, in contrast, be quite pleasurable. I would describe it as a feeling of relief, spaciousness, and ease.
This is kind of obvious but also worth sitting with.
I remember a period of time when I was a music student and I played both the clarinet and the cello. I was enthusiastic and dedicated to practicing each one. I was getting better at both.
But I was aiming for the Oberin Conservatory, and there came a time when I just knew I would have to step it up if I was going to get in. There weren’t enough hours in the day to do that with both instruments.
I had to face it: I couldn’t do both. Not at the level I wanted. I had to let one go. I quit the clarinet, and it still hurts to write about it! I was heartbroken at first, but looking back, I absolutely did the right thing.
I was then able to focus on the cello, and I did get into Oberlin. What is more, playing only one instrument opened up a world of pleasure that I didn’t have access to before. I felt spacious, and I could really dig into my cello studies. I immersed myself in the music. I didn’t feel so tense all the time, so worried about whether I was going to be able to fit these two different things into my schedule, always feeling behind on both of them because I was trying to do too much and was spread too thin.
This story might apply to you if you are an achiever. If it is your inclination to do a lot of things and say yes to every opportunity, you might find it refreshing to quit something and feel the spaciousness that arises. The quitting opens up the space, so that other things can take root and grow.
When I really look at it, I realize that before almost any positive change can happen, there is first some little or big quitting that precedes it. This brings me to my final point for today, which is:
Like my story shows, quitting something doesn’t have to mean failure. It can actually be a crucial part of success.
Here is another example: Say an olympic athlete wins a gold medal. That’s a big success. Behind and underneath that big success are hundreds if not thousands of both little and big quittings that have made it possible. . . . Everything from the macro level, like quitting other sports or activities to focus on just one, or perhaps quitting eating certain foods… to the micro level, like quitting certain techniques or habits that are getting in the athlete’s way, or quitting certain negative thoughts in order to repopulate the mind with more positive ones.
Another way of saying this is that our brains get really crowded when we try to add new behaviors, thoughts, or habits without first clearing some space for them. Fuller success comes from a more spacious place.
I will share a quotation from Herman Hesse:
“Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.”
Indeed. Letting go (quitting) has the dual quality of being scary/painful on the one hand, but so easy and such a relief on the other hand.
Skillful quitting, like anything, takes practice. Meditation is great for this. Here is a short practice if you would like to experience some of that feeling of ease and relief that comes with quitting.
If your mind wanders, don’t worry about it, because you are still practicing quitting. You aren’t doing all the other things you do in your life. You have, for the time being, quit doing those things. Even if your thoughts take over and you can’t manage to quit thinking, you are still doing the practice because you have still quit a lot of things just to be there.
Let pleasure guide you with this. Do you get relief from quitting? or is this an uncomfortable space? If you get pleasure from this, it’s okay to trust that. If it’s difficult to be in that space, be gentle with yourself and maybe start with smaller quittings at first.
We always like to hear about your experiences with practice. If you have a comment, leave it here.
Melting is Messy Business
by Chelsea Doohan
The Spring Intensive is two weeks away, and registration is chugging along, just about half-full at this point. If you are looking to jump in, remember that the early registration date is a week away, March 20, the first day of spring.
A few days ago I was having a conversation with Renee Steinbrenner about the first time she participated in an intensive. It was a year or so after she had begun attending classes at Solaluna. There were three things she mentioned about the experience that happen to be relevant to today’s subject.
These three things all connect to a sense of enthusiasm for yoga, which is the subject of today’s post. We’ll also look at how to handle that enthusiasm when it’s present.
So what needs handling or dealing with when someone is really motivated? Being fired up to do yoga is great when it occurs… What’s the problem?
As it happens, people often fluctuate between periods of interest and disinterest. This is completely normal, but sometimes the cycle back and forth happens in a way that starts to deplete the practice.
Sometimes, exactly in the moments when yoga is most awesome and interesting, the wheel of attention starts to turn the other way. Energy and focus dissipate.
Fortunately, yoga itself offers a lot of insight as to why this happens and how to avoid it. Yoga can help distribute enthusiasm so that it’s more even, with fewer highs and lows.
Being able to do this draws on elements found in the three things Renee picked up during her first intensive:
Enthusiasm can lead a person to locate these things, and they in turn can feed and nourish enthusiasm. Still, this process can sometimes appear mysterious and haphazard. In order to better understand enthusiasm then, we’re going to explore the meaning of a very important Sanskrit word.
Tapas (not a Spanish small-plate meal).
In yoga, eagerness for practice is expressed powerfully in a single word: tapas. It literally means heat, and is often translated as strong desire for practice. More than an abstract idea, tapas is viewed as a substance that may be gathered or expended.
Tapas can wax and wane. Some circumstances and actions support strong tapas while other conditions drain it.
On the draining side of the spectrum, here’s a biggie:
There’s a curious thing that happens to many people when things are going really well, when they are most enthusiastic– they settle back, and let attention get a little hazy…
… and before you know it, the practice is in the weeds and enthusiasm gets drained.
One reason this happens is that enthusiasm requires energy. It has an intensity that can’t be sustained all the time. Taking a break is perfectly reasonable. Yet there are ways to step out of the intensity of tapas without letting go of the reins completely.
This connects to the second reason for depleted enthusiasm.
No Place to Go
Eagerness serves people when it can be channeled into something that fits their interests and abilities. If someone is inspired to expand their yoga but they don’t connect with anything that meets their motivation, then inspiration will dissipate.
A Place to Go
On the other hand, tending to a few elements that inspire and absorb enthusiasm goes a long way toward keeping the practice as steady flame.
In this way, the three elements that Renee discovered during her first intensive are great references in general for figuring out the sort of practice that makes sense for you
If you happen to feel ready to move a step beyond the demands of a regular studio class, if you are interested in connecting with people who share a similar inclination, and if you’d like some help in supporting a home practice when you can’t get to class, then the Spring Intensive is definitely something to look into. To find out more or to register, click here.
Start Spring right! Immerse yourself in three days of nourishing, challenging yoga. March 29-31.
Do you get pain and discomfort with things you either love to do or need to do? Check out our upcoming Alexander Technique classes!
Solaluna Center for Yoga and Movement