What is The Deeper Meaning Behind Postural Alignment Cues?
…Well, what it isn’t is this: It isn’t to show how much the yoga teacher knows; it isn’t to bamboozle you with information; it isn’t to make you feel like what you’re already doing isn’t quite enough and it isn’t to see if you’re really taking it all in…
The deepest meaning behind postural instructions is…for you to experience the true essence of your own very deep inner flow – that doesn’t come after just ‘arriving’ in a posture, it comes from ‘aligning’ in a posture.
I like to think of it like this: Postural instruction is like tuning a guitar. Yes, if you just strum it you will definitely get a sound out of it. After some ‘fine tuning’ that sound becomes a sweet, harmonious melody, extremely pleasing to the ears. The more that sound is sweet (Shri) the more you want to continue and enjoy where the sound takes you…
This is what happens when you are on the yoga mat, you are listening for that shri sound…which comes from within…suddenly, one day, you’ll hit a note and instead of the audience giving you a standing ovation for the music, your hips will feel more free or your vision will change, you will find a posture far more likeable, you’ll sit comfortably crossed-legged or you’ll reach that place of samadhi (pure bright bliss) in relaxation, you’ll have a very ‘ah’ moment.
One day a yoga student said: “wow – thank you, all through my body I felt light and spacious, even my back felt really open for the first time ever! It made me think about a beautiful experience I had as a child which I haven’t thought about since I was a child. I can’t explain it very well but it was a very beautiful feeling.”
That feeling belongs to my friend. However, there is a gorgeous pathway leading towards it and its within postural alignment instructions. You become a little more sensitive, tuned like a gorgeous instrument, you take the pathway which leads towards greater energy flow. Then you step inside because you know something will come up…your highest remembrance of you, your own natural flow, your ever expanding awareness, your pure, unchangeable, essential true nature, your essence. Suddenly, there you go a flicker of it again…and again…In yoga we call this increased awareness, increased mindfulness Chit. AND what do we do when we realise it? We celebrate it with full, creative expression. That knowing deep inside those postural instructions wants to explode with joy and express the feeling from the inside-out. And so our body, like a finely tuned instrument in beautiful and spiritual art-form (Bhava). We call this creative expression of pure love and joy which is always right at the centre of our being, Ananda: freedom, shri, bliss, joy, and love for the sheer delight of it. Through good alignment we can reach greater FREEDOM of energy and flow.
I guess the deepest meaning behind all of those finely tuned instructions that you get in a Form and Flow Yoga class is that you get to feel ‘you’ that true unwavering ‘you’ mind, body, breath, heart and soul, right here, right now, this life, this moment. This is it! This freedom is your birthright. Yoga gives you a way of expressing whatever that ‘it’ is – YOU are the point the universe is trying to make…and ‘so what?’
Expressing it feels truly AMAZING!
May you continue to finely attune to your own true nature through your yoga practices because that feels delicious in the body!
With Divine love,
Wendy
