Poetry in Motion

I think that one of the hardest concepts for new yoga students to get their head around is that asana, or yoga poses, aren’t static.

They aren’t poses to be struck and held; they are a framework for movement, opening, and exploration – no matter how subtle these actions may be.

In my opinion, much of the attraction of vinyasa, or flow styles, of yoga is because students respond to the idea of movement. It gives them a sense of “doing” that is often difficult for them to find – especially early in their practice – while focusing on single poses.

While I teach some flow sequences in my classes, I frequently ask my students to detail single poses, looking for nuance and change in the pose over the time they’re in it.

Billy Collins wrote a great poem about teaching poetry to students that I find analogous to the teaching of yoga and how I’d like to inspire my students to explore a pose:

Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Over the years, I’ve become known for reading poetry to my students, usually at the end of class, at the very beginning of Savasana. But this is a poem I frequently read to students, especially new students, at the beginning of class, or in a moment when I find them trying to “muscle” their way through a pose.

The action instructions I give during class, in Uttiha Trikonasana for example – to ground down through the rear leg, to lift the rear inner thigh up into the femur, to externally rotate both legs, to actively lift the front thigh while drawing it back toward the rear heel, to let the underside of the waist be as long as the upper side of the waist, to widen the arms and collarbones away from each other, opening the heart center (and there are many more!), are all prompts to help my students keep moving in the pose. I try to keep them from locking up and beginning to struggle with the pose, making it rigid and hard.

Instead, I suggest they use the breath as a mouse, and let it run through the pose, finding the tight areas and those that are more open. I suggest that they, metaphorically, walk around inside the pose and feel the inner walls for a lightswitch, turning it on with the breath, and lighting and warming the pose from within.

And yes, sometimes when we take a non-traditional approach to a pose, or pass through more quickly in a flow sequence, I recognize that we are waterskiing across the surface of the pose, waving at tradition as we go, and I point that out, too.

My objective in teaching is to give my students the power to analyze the way their yoga feels in their own body. This will always be more important than how the poses look. I also want them to have the toolkit to understand the actions of the poses and how to work inside of them, changing and growing over time. Finally, I want to stop them from beating their poses with a rubber hose, encouraging them to approach yoga – and themselves – with curiosity, playfulness, and loving kindness.

Namasté.