“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” – Yoga Berra
Weekly Focus: The 8-Limb Path (a personal road map)
The 8-limb path contains the basic principles for many modern yoga practices, a road map of sorts. What road maps or guiding principles are the foundation for how you direct your life?
Much of what we study in modern yoga today is rooted in the Yoga Sutras – a text said to have been compiled by the Indian sage Patanjali over 1,500 years ago. Within the Sutras, ethical guidelines and principles are outlined through the 8-limbs of yoga, also known as the 8-limbed path. This past is comprised of the following:
- Yamas — personal restraints
- Niyamas — personal observances
- Asana — physical postures
- Pranayama — energy restraint
- Pratyahara — sensory restraint
- Dharana — intense focus
- Dhyana — sustained focus or meditation
- Samadhi — a meditative state experiencing Oneness
We can view this path as a sort of road map for achieving a state of internal balance, alignment and acceptance of one’s Self. Road maps are important tools to help us stay on track and to know where we should turn next, but of course any good road map allows us to be flexible and adaptable, to the unexpected blocks along the way. We need the option for detours, pit stops and sometimes scenic routes. That being said, we may not always use these guiding principles and practices in perfect order, or even hit every stop along the way, but we return to the individual parts as we need them, and eventually, they may all bridge together, on the path to self acceptance.
Often, we need more than one map to help us find the many destinations that may be important on a journey, and those maps need to integrate together as well. The 8-limb path of yoga is just one road map that we can use to integrate with other important values and practices that we hold dear to ourselves.
Where do you seek guidance externally in your life? Do you also have internal roadmaps that you work with as well? Perhaps you normally fly by gut instinct, what would it be like to live life with a gentle plan or guideline?
Passive Pose of the Week: Ananda Balasana (happy baby)
Ananda Balasana is often a landmark pose, frequently a place to stop off on our way to Savasana. Landmarks allow us to check back in, and be sure we are headed in the right direction.
- Begin lying on your back.
- Bend the knees and let the legs hover. Reach the hands forward to grab the outside ankles or edges of the feet.
- Pull the knees close to your ribs, they may even come outside of the ribs some, towards the floor. As you do, press your feet to the ceiling, but keep the knees bent.
- Hold and breath here for 5 – 7 breaths.
- If you like, explore the pose, you may rock left and right, or forward and back. Maybe you straighten one leg at a time. If you find a space that feels good, allow yourself to pause and breath.
Ananda balasana, or happy baby, is named as such because it’s a position we often see babies in! Babies literally use their bodies to explore the world, to explore movement, and to create new learning patterns from brain to body. This is how we first start to build our internal road maps for movement, motor skills, communication, and interaction. As adults, we tend to set this sense of creative exploration aside, and sometimes, because of whatever has happened in life, those road maps built from brain to body become disconnected. Can you allow yourself to come into that foundational sense of play and exploration here in happy baby? Embrace the opportunity to just move the body, observe, learn and listen.
Active Pose of the Week: Bitilasana Marjaryasana (cat-cow)
Cat-cow is a common position to welcome our body to the practice. We often start here as a warm-up, not only for yoga, but perhaps even other movement practices we have. Here we can check-in to see how we are feeling and create a plan or intention for where we need to go in our practice.
- Begin on all fours in a quadruped position, hands and knees.
- First, drop your belly to the floor, letting the back extend and arch down. The tail bone and chin will lift in correspondance. This is cow pose.
- Then, lift your belly up to the ceiling, letting the back flex, rise and arc up. The tail bone and chine will lower and tuck in correspondance. This is cat pose.
- Continue to move back and forth between these two positions, linking the movement with your breath.
- Each time you inhale, move into one position, and find the next on the exhale.
- If it you like, hold either position for multiple breaths.
- Release as you feel ready.
We often cue cat-cows with the inhale for cow pose and the exhale for cat pose, which is great! However, have you ever tried just breathing naturally to see where your inhales and exhales land on their own? Or perhaps, you intentionally switch it up, exhaling into cat and inhaling into cow. It can be a very interesting exploration to change where you breath lands in different positions. Try it out! You may find that you like the traditional breathing best, or you may find that something else suits you, and that may even change every time you visit the pose. This practice allows our natural breath and our inner guidance to be the road map, rather than simply the external cues. This is how we hone skills of intuitive movement and eventually become our own best guides.
Join us in class this week to learn more about the 8-limb Path. See the full schedule HERE.
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