Opening up to grace

This week I am focusing my practice and teachings on the Anusara alignment principle of opening up to grace. This principle is the first of 5 main alignment steps in the Anusara system, the other steps are: Muscular Energy, Inner Spiral, Outer Spiral, and Organic Energy. You can learn more about the other steps in an earlier blog post I did here

For now, I'd like to focus on opening up to grace, as I am finding its meaning and relevance for my practice and life so powerful right now. To me, opening up to grace is the perfect way to begin practice. It's an opportunity to remember to connect and commit to something bigger, not outside of you, but something powerful within. I think of it as connecting to the current and spirit of life-that which sustains, uplifts, nurtures, and guides us if we allow it to. To me, that's ultimately the gift of practice to help support us in aligning with the current and flow of life.

This week as I practice I am noticing the ways in which I contract and expand, open and close, and resist the flow on and off the mat. I am taking time to observe when I need to be strong and when I can be soft and soften. I am noticing when I am forcing or flowing, or when I am flowing without integrity or stability. Paying this much attention can be difficult without first opening up to that vast spaciousness of grace.

Here is a little practice you can do to try this week to support you in opening up to grace. First, come to Tadasana, Mountain pose. Begin by noticing how your body is receiving your inhales. Notice where breath moves easily and freely, and then also notice where there is tightness or heaviness. Gradually begin to grow your breath intentionally supporting and guiding it into the tight places that need it. Continue to nourish the body for a good 2 min with this focused intentional breathing.

Now open to grace. Soften everywhere and allow breath to fill that softness with powerful awareness. Channel that alertness from the ground up to your pelvic floor, heart and then all the way to the crown of you head. Notice where breath is flowing with that awakened energy. Sometimes we open only to the areas that we know well, leaving those areas that are hard to connect with "out of the flow". Check to see if your breath only in the front of the body, is all the awareness there? Open to grace and feel a sense of your full inner body growing in all areas. Feel the breath awaken the sides of the body long so that the shoulders are buoyant and the armpits are more hollow. Breathe attentively into the lower and mid back feeling the kidneys awaken with buoyancy and lift (and the sides of the waist draw back slightly)- almost as if bowing into that source of grace. Savor this, and then soften the skin and the muscles around the fullness of your bright inner body. You are supported from the inside out. Allow each inhale to make the inner body brighter, and each exhale wrap the outer body gently around the support and radiance of your inner body. Repeat this in every pose--before you put your effort into creating a shape, soften, grow from the inside first, then move into the the more active stages of alignment to refine the creation that grace began. See what shifts open up for you as you open up to grace.

Peace,

Michael