Over the years of teaching Soma Yoga, I have thought a lot about defending my way of teaching, to find studies or research that can back what I am doing. These things are always good for a mind that needs to know and believe me, I have one. But, because Soma Yoga is an inner experience for each person that steps on their mat, it’s a real challenge to pin something down where I can say, this is it. Because each individual has such a unique body, heart, and mind, making the practices specific and scientific would dim them down for some, and be unreachable for others. Such a conundrum.
So here I am on a cloudy January morning recovering from Covid..thinking about this…
I know when I start any of my practice sessions, I sit, stand or lay down depending on what I need. If I decide to sit, I begin by sensing the call of the beloved earth. This can take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour depending on what starts to draw my attention and becomes important to my biological connection to this living planet. If I’m standing,
I sense the immense space around me and that always changes the density of my body in a way that shifts whatever I bring to the mat, knowing I am held by this great abundant care. I could move or not move as mentioned it all depends. If I am laying down anything can happen, from sensing gravity which usually happens first, to micro almost imperceivable movements to more dynamic movements and/ or organic postures that grow out of my bodies interest. You see I am sensing the living process from within, allowing the urge for what’s needed to emerge and that is where I continue to rest my soul, as a teacher, as an Embodied artist and as a woman of 62.
What I can say that is so necessary and counter to this culture is that these practices invite you to move outside of time, quantification and measure to allow the person doing them to finally come home to their own rhythm, timing, gesture, movement, breath and most important the living process of their body’s deep wisdom. I admit, maybe it’s not fashionable or trendy, yet it offers so much to the experience of being….instead of doing. To allow what’s needed to arrive and unfold without forcing something upon the body. To continue to peel away the minds grasp on needing to know from a culture that’s seems to be grumbling under the weight of all of that. Yoga says “We are not separate but a part of all things”. Just feeling that as a gesture of hope in my body is about all I can do right now. Feeling the grace of lifting an arm from the floor, the weight of it as it floats and drifts into space. Taking my awareness to a place of discomfort to abide with it for a while, to get to know all of the nuance in feeling in a culture that’s being wrecked by speed. Now for me that’s a radical act for change. To let the wisdom of my body lead me, not the culture, not what’s trendy, the billions of ancestral cells that have made me, the billions of creatures that have come before me, these are the things that are my teachers.
