I just love teaching beginners. There is something powerful about being with someone as they take their first few steps and breaths into this healing practice. I wrote down some notes that I have been using as part of my five week series with Brand New Beginners, and also my Yoga 102 classes. They are not original material, in fact most if not all, is synthesized from what I have learned studying from the awesome books and teachings of Pema Chodron, and also from Donna Farhi. Some of the material is also based on my reflections from practice. With that being said, please enjoy these thoughts and see how they may even inform your practice no matter how long you have been on your yoga journey!
How to begin practice
I believe that Yoga is about befriending what is. As Pema says you learn to welcome the present moment in as if you had invited it in. It’s all you ever have so you might as well work with it rather than fight it, reject it, or wish it to be something other than it is right now. This really helps to ensure that you practice more with compassion and acceptance rather than aggression.
How do you do this?
You begin by noticing what is--shifting from thinking to awareness, from external to internal. You start with breath and from there ride the wave of the breath more deeply into your body.
You then work on feeling what is- really allowing yourself to feel into the body, letting sensation after sensation reveal itself to you. Noticing where tension is, where resistance and clinging are. Notice where is there space and openness too.
You practice allowing what is. Let the process of revelation continue without suppressing, denying, hiding, etc..Letting things be rather than letting things go. When you try to let go of tension, when you try to let go of thoughts, very often their grip on you tightens. It's like "don't think about an elephant", and that's all you can do. When you practice just letting things be and continuing to just breathe anyway, then something quite profound can happen. You simply join with breath to create space and ventilation around tightness, clinging, and stale stuck energy in the body.
This is the practice of aligning with the flow of life. Abiding with the fluid energy of life. Practice then becomes and opportunity to learn how you can create an optimal channel for vitality and openness to flow through you. Rather than moving and quickly trying to get from point a to b, you can learn to slow things down and notice all the incremental stages and steps in-between a and b. You can practice letting the body wrap itself around the breath--which feels so much different than contorting the body into shapes it's not ready to be in.
This is also an opportunity to practice moving into space/stillness. You can find the natural gaps and space between breaths, and between movements and allow time to stop and sink into the pause. Learning to find this pause is sacred as the pause is a tool you can learn to take with you in the moments you are prone to enter into automatic pilot mode, or into habitual ways of being that do not serve you.
Most important, I think, is to remember that this practice is not about more and more poses, or even deeper expressions of poses. It's not a race nor a competition. It’s about going deeper into life and refining your awareness of and connection to your life force. Rather than poses, it’s about process. It is mindfulness in motion. It is about being here fully and engaging in your world fully.
Enjoy this practice as it will give you so much to enhance your life and relationships!
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