Silent Practice

This week I woke up with a dolphin squeak of a voice that rapidly turned into some sort of monster parody, which eventually forced my sister to ask me to stop speaking in front of her children for fear of giving them nightmares.

It seems to be laryngitis.  That is something I have never had before.

A few interesting things happen when you cannot speak.  Well, they happened to me and I found them interesting.

First, I realised that I could forget I had lost my voice because I was still chattering away inside my head.  It was very noisy in there.

Second, sometimes if you don't speak, people will just ignore you.  That's particularly frustrating when you feel like you have a lot of interesting things to say.

Third, sort of an extension of the second, I realised how language helps us feel connected to other people.  There were several incidents I found terribly amusing but found I couldn't share them as they were too hard to mime and I did not have a pen and paper.  Because I couldn't share them, they somehow didn't seem as funny.

Fourth, I also realised that you don't need to speak to share things.  It just makes it easier.  Charlie (the dog) and I have 'meaningful' (to me) cuddles and we don't say a word.  Lots of kids I worked with in Sri Lanka could not speak at all due to disability but we played and had lots of fun together.

Fifth, I realised that I am a very good yoga mime and sometimes people in classes do better when I just show and don't tell.

Here I will just insert an amusing anecdote on the subject of miming.  It has a loose relationship to yoga.

A friend organised a yoga retreat for me at a hotel in Sri Lanka.  She was German and ran a business for a particular subset of rotund German tourists who seemed to spend a lot of time swanning around in small, tight swimwear no matter the venue, and who relied on her to sort out even minor issues in their travel itinerary.

"My God, these people!" she exclaimed after a particularly challenging day of incessant visits from her speedo wearing countrymen.

"You think they cannot get dressed a little decently in the lobby?  No, instead, I have to sit at the desk with some man's crotch at eye-level and sort out their toilet paper for them!"

"Really!" she went on, not yet finished.  "Surely it is not that difficult to communicate you need more toilet paper.  You don't need language to do that!"

And right there she jumped up and began to mime wiping her backside, taking her had to an imaginary wall with an imaginary toilet roll holder and pointing at her hand and raising her eyebrows to show the surprise that there was no toilet paper.  It was very funny at the time.

But all this brings me to the matter of showing rather than telling and leading a yoga class in silence.

As though to pre-empt my laryngitis last week I, when I still had a voice, I got to a particularly tricky pose in the sequence (eka pada koundinyasa I).

"I am not going to give you verbal instructions here," I announced.  "Just watch me.  I will show you what to do."

And so I broke the pose down into component parts slowly, pausing at each stage, pointing and tapping the body part I was using or moving for emphasis.

And people did beautifully!

I do believe our body has its own intelligence and for a lot of people our thoughts get in the way of us just doing.

When it comes to backbends I often pause and just get people to watch what I am doing without too much explanation.

This is because I believe your cells 'see' things.  By this I mean that when your body sees another body moving beautifully and freely I believe our bodies just want to find that movement within itself.  If we allow it to move as it feels then we can often surprise ourselves and come into poses effortlessly.  This is something I learned from watching my great teacher, Paddy McGrath.

Having said this, instructions are important and there is a place for them, especially when you are new or if there is some 'inner' work going on (and there always is but often this inner work will come naturally if we let it).

However, I think we sometimes place too much emphasis on them.  We can over-instruct, over-think, over-analyse.

Over-doing anything will block the flow of energy through the body.   The primary purpose of my classes, as I say at the beginning, is to move energy through the body.  Over-stretching, over-tensing, over-breathing, and over-thinking can interrupt this flow.  This is something I learned from another great teacher, Simon Borg Olivier.

Anyway, that said, this week's classes will continue to be in enforced silence, with me miming and clicking my way through.  Use it as an opportunity to explore your own movement, let your cells 'see' and do, worry less about whether you are following every instruction, and just enjoy moving!

Hope to see you in class soon!

Much metta,

Samantha

Do I Need To Tell You How To Breathe?

Simon Borg Olivier performing Nauli

Students always have great questions and I love to hang around after class and talk.  Sometimes the questions come in the few minutes before class and I always try and discuss them as best I can.  Time and my own deficiencies in clearly articulating some concepts can get in the way. 

Lucky I have a blog.  And lucky my extraordinary teachers do as well so I can link you to them!

This morning a student who came to a class the previous day said she loved the class but was confused about the breathing because I wasn't telling her how to breathe and all of the other teachers were.  

This made me smile.  I joked with her whether she needed me to tell her how to breathe when she went for a walk and she smiled back and said no, she was ok doing that on her own.

The thing is, at the beginning of the class I do tell people how to breathe.  I tell them to breathe naturally and that natural breathing is breathing into their belly.  This is what I learned from senior teachers like Paddy McGrath and Simon Borg Olivier.  There are other ways of breathing but I can only teach how I learned. 

What I wasn't doing was telling her when to breathe and she noted other classes she was always being told when to breathe. 

So I did a little experiment with her that my teachers have shown me.  By this time other students had arrived and we all joined in.  I said, 'take your arms overhead'.  No-one moved and I guess they thought I was being rhetorical or something so I said, 'no, really, take them up.'

They took them up.  

Then I said take them down.  They took them down.

I said, 'take them up'.  They did.

I said, 'did you just breathe in?'

They thought about it and said, 'yes.'

'Did I have to tell you to breathe in?' I asked.

They smiled no.

'Now take them down,' I directed.

They did.

'Did you just breathe out?' I asked.

They smiled yes.  

Simon Borg Olivier does this sort of thing in his workshops and it was a  big realisation for me that I had been over-instructing breathing to students and, in so doing, getting them to breathe more than they needed in their practice. 

Yoga is not too difficult.  You shouldn't need to breathe like you are jogging or take in a lot of air while you practice.  Taking your arms overhead is not too taxing for most people yet we often get told to breathe in deeply and take the arms up or are encouraged throughout class to breathe deeply.  Often, when you are told to breathe you will start to breathe more than you were before being told to breathe.  Essentially, being told to breathe can often cause us to over-breathe.

Now it is true that some people hold their breath and grip when they are practicing, causing some tension.  To them I just remind them to breathe naturally and relax the jaw, lips, and tongue.  

If people are in challenging poses I often as them to talk to me as a sign that they can breathe naturally and manage.  

Now, I am not a breathing expert and you need to go to other sources for more expertise.  Simon has a great blog post on the benefits and effects of both over and under breathing (hyper and hypo ventilation).  You can read it here.

I don't want to convey that breathing is not important.  We need to breathe.  Bianca Machliss from Yoga Synergy instructs breath in posture very well by reminding people to take a small sip in so that when she instructs the breath in posture she tries to ensure you do not breathe in more than you need.  It is important to note it is not a full breath in or out that is being instructed.  This is probably too much for what you are doing at the time.  

Finally, I also note that the senior asthangis I have practiced with have an amazing breath practice but that it also involves strong bandha and that the breath and bandha are intimately involved and it is beyond me to talk about that.  I just wanted to provide some food for thought noting that in the style of yoga I am teaching we just breathe naturally when we start out until we become very proficient in our postures and then we can learn some more tricks about breathing.

Much metta and joyful practicing! 

Is it wrong to take your shoulders towards your ears in when taking arms overhead?

Me in natarajasana where I need to move my armpits forwards and upwards so I don't squash my back.  [photo from Canberra Yoga Space].

Is it wrong to take your shoulders upwards as though to your ears? 

Do you know you have muscles put on your body to do precisely that?  Has your body been designed incorrectly?

It is not wrong to take your shoulders upwards towards your ears.  Ordinary life requires it, especially when reaching overheard. 

Go find a shelf that is beyond your reach and try to reach for something that is on it.  Barring any shoulder/neck issues you will no doubt automatically take your shoulder forward and upward.  If you looked to the side you could probably smell your armpit it is so high.

If you have young kids then take them to a playground and watch them swing and hang from bars.  You will see that when they hang their shoulders are right up beside their ears (and they will probably bring their knees to their chest with ease, something that most adults cannot do!). 

The movement of shoulders towards ears is a natural movement that will happen in overhead reaching, often with a little side bend if you are doing it one-armed.

So I have to ask myself why am I being told in some yoga classes I attend to take my shoulders away from my ears when they are overhead?

[And I have to ask myself why did I sometimes say this to students when I was a new teacher?  Certainly not because my senior teachers had ever told me to.]

Here are some reasons I have come up with.

·      People think that a lot of us already have tension around the upper shoulders and next and hold our shoulders in a little shrug so as a yoga teacher we should tell them to counter this by keeping them down away from the ears.

·      People think it squashes the neck to take the shoulders to the ears in overhead movements.

·      People want to strengthen muscles around the shoulder blades, especially when they give the instruction to pull the shoulder blades down and together. 

There could be other reasons as well and it would be great to hear from people about this.

Here is why I am not comfortable with those three reasons as being sufficient explanation or justification for teachers to give the instruction to move the shoulders away from the ears in overhead reaching. 

Overhead reaching includes poses like adho mukha svanasana (downward dog), adho mukha vrksasana (handstand), urdhva hasta tadasana (standing with arms overhead), utkatasana (fierce or chair pose), urdhva dhanurasana (back arch from the floor), and virabadhrasana 1 (warrior 1).  There are many more, including most of the advanced backbends where you reach and catch a toe behind your head, as well as inversions like pincha mayurasana and headstand.

First, it is true that many of us hold subconscious tension around the upper shoulders and hold them in a little shrug.  But we generally hold them in a little shrug, not a big one, and the shoulder never gets the chance to go all the way up.  It is important to encourage people to take their joints through their full natural range of movement.

Also, sometimes people who hold persistent slightly shrugged shoulders might not be aware they are doing so.  Sometimes activating the muscles with consciousness and taking them all the way up can alert them can help them become aware of this and learn to notice when there is slight tension and then learn to try to relax.

Importantly, as I discuss later, if they are going to take their arms overhead for advanced postures they need to take learn to move their shoulders towards their ears when it is required or they will squash their spine.

Second, it is true that it can squash the neck if you take your arms overhead and lift shoulders to ears.  However, that is often because people are trying to take their arms overhead and then behind their ears or level with their ears.  Most western people are way too stiff to be able to do this correctly. 

Instead, if you take the arms overhead and push the armpits forward and up you should find any neck squashing tendencies are countered. 

Allow people to keep their arms in front of their ears and encourage them to push their armpits in the direction they are facing. 

If anyone still feels any neck squashing then you could instruct them to take the arms lower so they are in front of the face (but still pushing armpits forward). 

Third, I believe this is probably an instruction that is not helpful in yoga with overhead reaching positions.  The reason is I have seen it given mostly in positions where the spine is upright and also extended (going towards a backbend). 

In a backbend you want to use your arms to help you create length in the spine, not compression. 

The instruction to move the shoulders down and together will create compression in the spine.

The instruction to move the armpits and shoulders up and forwards will create length in the spine. 

To tell people to bring the shoulders down in poses like utktasana or virabadhrasana 1, where the lower back is already more likely to be squashed (though with careful practice it will not be), will place most people at risk of further squashing their spines. 

It is not until you start to move into more advanced postures that you realize the real importance of being able to take shoulders up and forwards.  Drop-backs, backbends from the floor and advanced backbends that involve reaching arms overhead to hold onto a foot that is also circling behind and up (like a full natarajasana or kapotasana) all require you to take the armpits towards the ears. 

Ask any practitioner who is in those poses to do otherwise and they will instinctively tell you no way as it will shorten the back body, which they are trying to lengthen. 

My view is that we are trying to help people free their spines, not squash them.  So let’s give them instructions that will help them in that regard.  While you may not be teaching your students these advanced backbends, poses like vira 1 and utktasana are preparatory poses for those positions and if you do not give appropriate instructions in those poses they will never get to the more advanced versions.

If you want to help them build strength around the shoulder blades through actions of drawing them back and down there are other postures more suitable.

These include poses that require interlacing behind the back, or the floor backbends that do not involve taking the arms overhead such as up dog or the simple forms of dhanurasana where you hold the ankles (but not the full dhanurasana which has you take the arm forward and overhead to reach the toe), or simple bridge poses with arms interlaced behind the back. 

It might be a more useful cue for your students to watch they do not flare their lower ribs forward as they take their arms overhead. Stiff people will often use spinal extension to get their arms fully overhead by pushing the ribs forward to compensate for lack of movement in the shoulders.  This can again squash the lower back and it is perhaps more useful for them to not take the arms so high so the spine is not masking the work. 

I want to finish by being clear that I am talking about taking shoulders to ears in overhead reaching positions.  Also, I want to be clear that I do not think it is wrong to take shoulders away from the ears (depression).  That is also a natural movement of the body. 

However, I wanted to inspire some thought about considering the consequences of what you instruct and whether your instruction is contradicting another instruction you are giving, or whether you really mean to be giving that instruction for that particular pose.  I see this frequently when teachers tell me to lengthen my spine in vira 1 and then come and tell me to pull my shoulders down and back. 

For me, the best instruction to give is to tell people to activate their armpits when taking the arms overhead so the armpits press in the direction they are facing.  In an overhead position this is forward and upward.  I learned this from Simon and Bianca at Yoga Synergy.  

This simple instruction can be applied to positions where the arms are not overhead, such as plank, where again you can just instruct people to push the armpits in the direction they are facing (in that case down towards the floor and towards the hips).  If I take my arms behind my back I can press my armpits down and towards one another.  You can learn more about this and other tips to enhance your yoga practice via the Yoga Synergy online anatomy course. 

While about to post this, I also found another article that explains some of these ideas from an anatomical perspective written by Dr Roger Cole.  You can link to it here.

Also, last year I also wrote a post about taking the shoulders away from the ears!  There, I focussed on addressing the tension that gives some of us chronic tension and causes that habitual half-shrug look about us in our day to day life (I rather, perhaps unthinkingly called it rugby neck, mainly based on the look of the shrugging shoulders not necessarily what is happening at the shoulders).  My aim was to get people to use some tricks outside of yoga (e.g., at their desks) to catch that creep, or to provide them with a useful tool to counteract the tension.  However, in that post I clearly stated there are occasions where you want or need to take them up--especially in overhead positions.  I promised to write more on that but it has taken me time.  This article is the article I should have written a while ago on that matter!

Yoga Retreat @ Talalla, 29 May-1 June 2014

Announcing the last 4 day retreat before I return to Australia!

This retreat is once again being held at Talalla--a dedicated yoga retreat venue.  During the retreat you will have the opportunity to explore fundamental and complex yoga postures and basic breathing and meditation techniques.  

I will be teaching a different sequence in each of the 6 scheduled yoga sessions.  These sequences have been specifically designed to improve the circulation of blood and energy through active movements and spinal movement in particular.  There are plenty of challenging arm balances as well as variations of traditional postures to work on.

We need confirmation of rooms with payment by Friday May 9th to ensure the venue can hold the rooms for us.  Because there are limited rooms I am encouraging people to please consider sharing so that as many people can participate as possible.    

 Arrive Thursday 29th May afternoon - Depart Sunday 1st June after breakfast by Noon

Venue: Talalla Retreat

Classes: 6  x 2 hour classes

Aside from the usual yoga there is the opportunity to relax by the pool or at the beach (should be better swimming by then!), or get a massage.  I have done so much yoga study and have undertaken a yoga therapy course so I am also happy to make myself available for discussion in between as well if anyone thinks they need more yoga!

The weekend will start arriving Thursday.  First yoga class starts on Thursday afternoon at 4.30pm.  From then we will have 2 classes on Friday, 2 on Saturday, and 1 on Sunday.  We depart after class and breakfast on the Sundays by Noon. 

 There are only a limited number of rooms available so please book early, confirming with full payment by Friday May 9th.  Unfortunately we cannot refund once booked but if you can find another person to take your spot that is fine!

The rate includes:

•   All yoga classes

•   Full board (tea/fruit before yoga; buffet style breakfast served at table; a la carte lunch (there is a menu to choose an item from), buffet style dinner)

•   Accommodation

You need to pay for any extra drinks or snacks you might have if the mega breakfast and dinner leave you hungry!  

Normal timetable is as follows

7am                     tea/fruit (if desired)

7.30-9.30am         yoga

9.30                     breakfast

RELAX                  (have massage, swim, read, have lunch around 1 or 2ish depending on how full you are after breakie)

4.30-6.30pm         yoga

7pm                     dinner

The prices quoted below are based on 3 nights per person.   You need to find a person to share with if you opt for double or triple but Tilak can try to put you in touch with other people if you need.   There are also some family rooms and rates available so please contact Tilak if required.  Children are allowed at Talalla and they can even arrange a babysitter if you request early (about Rs 1000/day).  The only thing we ask is that there is no pool play during yoga classes as the pool is in front of the yoga hall and it is unfair to ask kids to be quiet in a pool so it might be better for them to be at the beach during those times!

Full payment is required by 9th May to confirm our space at Talalla. You can arrange paying Tilak directly or he can provide bank account details for you to transfer to if that is easier.

Single 3 nights                   Rs. 39,000/-

Double (share) 3 nights     Rs. 32,000/- per person

Triple (share) 3 nights       Rs. 30,000/- per person

Please contact myself or Tilak for payment:

samanthawhybrow@hotmail.com

tilak@antsglobal.lk

Hope to see you there.