More than half of my years I have spent learning yoga – and I still feel a beginner. No way that I ever become a master in that ancient Indian tradition. The main thing I learned from yoga is learning itself: To have an open mind.
The moment you enroll in a yoga class, you have already conceded that your body can influence your mind – and any great learning can happen from there. When I see somebody (yes, usually, it is a woman – but there are exceptions) who is lithe and nimble and radiates an inner joyfulness, she invariably admits to a longstanding yoga practice.
But today I don’t want to talk about the mind-body connection. I want to talk about the body-earth connection.
Indeed, one could describe yoga also as a series of sitting, standing, lying positions that try to come to grips with gravity. Because you don’t want to struggle against your weight pulling you to the ground. Instead you want to work with your weight, with the ground, and come to a happy compromise.
One thing you notice over the years you are doing yoga: Your feet become bigger and wider. They also become more beautiful. These big feet really STAND on the ground, planted for good. Your toes are wider apart, standing out and wiggling as individual toes as opposed of a crowded forefoot-thingy with five toenails. Each toe counts when you solidly stand on your yoga feet – you don’t wobble. There is no hesitation – there is only the bliss of being grounded – and feeling light, very light as a result.
That is the yoga paradox: As you stand firmer on our Earth, you become lighter.
Somewhere in your lumbar spine, there is a pivotal point: When you plant your feet, the lower part of your body goes down into the ground, following gravity’s call. But from that same pivot in your spine, the rest of your body floats up toward heaven, relieved of the dire heaviness of existence. Read More
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Getting Down on the Ground
October 28, 2010
If you don’t do a single exercise at all – no walking, biking, swimming, yoga, playing ball – this is the ONE THING you have to do every single day: Getting down on the ground.
Why? Use it, or lose it. Many people who remember fondly crouching under the big family table as a child or romping around in the living room with the dog as if it was just yesterday, can’t get down on the ground anymore, to their big surprise.
Or, let’s rephrase it: Once they are down, there is no way to get up again, alone. The arms aren’t strong enough anymore to push you up, and the legs … forget the legs. So, that is the last time they have been down - voluntarily.
For, you see: down you will come. We all one day end in the earth. What brings us there are often falls. You trip or slip, and the next thing you know (if you know anything at all), the ambulance arrives and drives you off to the hospital. Only because of two things: You couldn’t keep your balance, and you couldn’t get up from the floor.
This is your homework today: Get down on the floor, and get up again. Once you are down, you can try a yoga pose like the fish, or the sphinx. But the point is really to be able to get up again. If you are not sure you can make it up, get help: Make a friend lend a hand.
Let the ground not be your enemy – let it be your friend, the place that gives you strength daily. We will go to the earth, but we also are from it. The Earth, our home, is not only for trampling on her, she is also supporting us. Her gravity exercises our muscles. We are alive as long as we can use her. Read More