Francois
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Art of Alignment: All
Levels Iyengar Yoga Workshop
Special
rates for Yoga Teachers: "When we create an asana (yoga posture) we build the underlying structure, the sacred architecture. In doing so we follow the cosmic and esoteric rules of nature. We seek to expend minimal energy, to be as functional as possible. This is like establishing the foundation or creating the skeleton of beams when building a house. We have to create the optimal conditions so life can happen inside--so breath can breathe, heart can pulse with contentment, and fluids can flow and nourish the tissues. In yoga we have an inward experience of that living space as well as an awareness of the structure; they influence each other mutually." Francois is the director of Open Sky Yoga in Rochester, New York. He is a certified Iyengar teacher and has studied yoga with B.K.S. Iyengar for many years. Francois is dedicated to teaching yoga with awareness, integrity and compassion. This workshop includes Francois's acclaimed multi-cultural slideshow on Posture. Who should attend: this workshop is for yoga students and yoga teachers at all levels. A regular yoga practice and experience in Iyengar, Ashtanga or Anusara yoga is helpful. Location: CYE Hours:
10 Here's
Francois's latest newsletter: Welcome to Yogawaves, the Open Sky Yoga newsletter! This bi-monthly publication allows you to download our newest class schedule, learn what is going on within the Open Sky community, and take information and inspiration for your yoga practice. If you experience any difficulty viewing this newsletter, please click here.
SIT! Tatah ksiyate prakasa avaranam “During inhalation, the breath
should move exactly like the clouds that are spreading in the sky."
Through clear waters range to the
vast blue autumn sky, Sit! This essay is not about dog obedience class but human mindfulness training!!! Find a seat high enough for you to maintain the vertical axis of your spine. This maintains the natural forward angle of the sacrum, the sacred bone. Legs don't matter as much; how the spine grows out of the base, the altar, is more important. Sit in virasana, sukhasana, ardha padmasana, siddhasana--as you like, as long as your knees are lower than your hips. The exception is padmasana, but that is another story. The sternum is high, poised, elevated, like that a bird or of a small child. Not only the Nobles can have a noble pose. Every human being deserves space for the heart to pulse and the lungs to breathe! First observe how you sit. Let the structure of your asana, the feeling, the ethos of sitting, be the center of your attention. Every school, every spiritual current or tradition may have a different proposition of focus--the heart, the hara, the navel, the sushuma nadi, the whole asana, the breath, the present moment, the infinite, emptiness, fullness. In sitting we have a double winner: the body is sitting, so we have to feel the spine, the balance between front and back body. We create ease without collapse and vigilance without rigidity. That means observing and not being on hold. The breath may be calling for your attention but the line is busy! "In kumbhaka you should not hold
the breath, but the breath should hold you." Check when you sit. Are you ahead of yourself? (Is your head ahead while you use your back muscles as emergency breaks?) Are you behind yourself? (Are your shoulders posterior to the pelvis while there is tension in the hip flexors--especially the fourth head of the quadriceps bypassing the hip joint?) Or are you in synch with yourself? That means you are integrated on the vertical axis! You are yourself! No projections, a direct perception without any distance between subject and object. A perfect blend! Tune in a subtle way to the posture itself. This requires receptivity and prathyahara, withdrawing the senses. It is a form of positive sensory deprivation, or what BKS Iyengar would see as a form of renunciation. I will call it selective focus. The sutra says: Yathabhimata dhyanat va If you are really interested in something the rest of the world will vanish. So if you are ADD (who's not?!), focus on something you like. It will be easier. The practice is not moving away from or escaping; it is diving in deeper. And then there is mental stability, just from observing the stability of the body. Visoka va jyotismati The attention descends from the head to the heart, from the heart to the belly, and gradually identifies with the breath. We can say that breath, prana, mind and consciousness are the same. At the least, they overlap. Wherever the mind goes, the breath goes. And wherever the breath goes, the mind goes. If the center is undisturbed, it is like sitting in the eye of the storm. Even if the weather outside is erratic, agitated, changing, the inner weather is stable, quiet, silent, warm. There is only the wind of breath ascending and descending. The inner Gulf Stream of the vayus, the natural irrigation system, is reaching each and every cell. That is now the center of attention. See how we go form external to internal, toward deeper layers of the same entity, the sitting asana. In winter the organism needs to adapt to
external weather, sudden changes or intense conditions by practicing bhastrika,
pranayama and warming asanas. Just sit, with a high standard of physical and physiological adjustment. Along the guidelines of Sri BKS Iyengar’s teachings, "create balance by instinct, not by force." It is not a distraction; it is the meditation itself. Like those micro pendulum-like movements, rocking the body from its base, spiraling out, oscillating. Those are signs of surrender. You cannot make IT happen, IT happens. (That could be another bumper sticker, you know the reference!) Something else can happen because you are not the one controlling anymore. You may think you are the pilot but you are just the flight attendant; the flight is the sitting meditation or the asana or the pranayama, life if you like. Then all instructions are no longer instructions--they are descriptions, signs, metaphors, validations of your state of being. Like the softness of the eyes, the release of the corners of the lips in an unintentional half smile, the release of the forehead, widening and clearing better then any botox injection. Young from inside. Ageless. Timeless. Genderless. The release has to come from inside and from you. Then it is truly rewarding. Contentment. Bliss. Here there are no strict lines; it's more like watercolors. Laser-sharp concentration but softness of skin. All pores open like receptive eyes. You face is like a full moon with a halo, a diffused light, soothed and soothing. For those visiting the Buddha hall in Rochester where I teach, take a good look at the face of Ananda, one of the assistants of the Buddha. Do you see an inner smile?
"People are like stained-glass
windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets
in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within." When I was part of a contemporary shadow-puppet theater, touring the festivals of Europe (in the '70s, of course), one member of the troupe created a moon like that. The theater was in the dark, obviously for shadow, but my friend built a cubic box painted in black, with a handle, a cutout of the moon crescent on one side and inside the box a flashlight. What gave a halo effect was covering the cutout with an opaque kind of transparency paper. Then we could move the box slowly as the moon migrates in the night sky with that soft glow. Simple, but astute! Back to yoga. In savasana or in sitting
meditation, observe the luminosity. Does it glow in the dark? If you are tense,
mentally agitated or asleep, none of that will be possible! You cannot access
the channel; maybe you lost the remote! Some questions remain. Is it really possible to find a space within independent of the gunas (the three modes of nature: sattva, rajas and tamas)? Can one be undisturbed, completely silent? If the mind becomes silent, if that is ever possible, what's next? Silence, stagnation, and immobility could also mean death. Sensory deprivation is a form of torture. So, how far can you go toward silence? Is silence the absence of sounds? There is a silence of repression and a silence of resolution. How can we differentiate? Life is noisy and messy by nature. Should we welcome the chaos, raise the threshold instead of sorting it out? Clouds and fog have bad press in metaphors as being the thoughts or the vrttis, masking the clarity of consciousness. But the clouds themselves are so beautiful! Don't they deserve to be the center of your attention as well? Sure the clouds are masking the sun (just
flying gives you that experience) and the fog disturbs clear perception. If you
are above the clouds, you can be warmed by the light of the sun but you can also
surf on the ocean of cumulo-nimbus. So again as you sit, tune into that inner weather channel more often. Don't focus so much on the external one; you cannot control it anyway (same with the stock market). A certain dose of detachment is needed. You can appreciate the beauty of the seasons--especially in Rochester, New York!--but also the unique inner season, ever clear, pleasant, stable, sattvic by first nature, beyond sattvic. For those walking through the Rochester Zen Center garden to join an Open Sky yoga class, stop a moment in front of the sculpture of the faceless, ageless Buddha, still sitting, sitting still no matter what! Namaste, Post scriptum: Is the opposite of working out
resting in? Means hibernating? ©Francois Raoult, 2008
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