This week my classes focused on TRUST. We looked at trusting our body and breath. We started with pranayama (breathing exercises) to stimulate the mind before we started flowing. And in class we returned to the idea of trusting your breath to carry you through sequences and postures.
What do you mean trust your breath?
Often when people first come to yoga, they come for the physical benefits. Certainly, this is why I originally took up yoga. However the more you practice, the more you realise it offers headspace. It offers a time in your week to think about nothing else but your body, your breath and it’s movements.
The reason I say trust your breath is because when in a pose, sometimes our mind wanders, we start thinking about dinner tonight, work, Celeb Great British Bake off **insert any other excuse here. We lose touch with our body. We disconnect.
When I say trust in your breath, I mean come back to thinking about the inhale and exhale that we focussed on in the opening pranayama. And when we are reminded of this, we return to thinking about our body, our breath, in that moment, on the mat. We come back to the connection between body and breath. We reconnect mind and body.
What do you mean trust your body?
Trust in your body physically to carry you through sequences. Now you have set up the breath to support you in pose, trust that your body will hold you there. Focus on the connection with the mat, and use that to support the integrity of the body in pose.
Sometimes when in a tricky pose, the mind tells us we can’t hold the pose physically, so we come out. However, it’s more often than not just our monkey mind. When we return to the breath, the breath carries us through, the body holds us, and we learn to trust ourselves more. We learn we can in fact hold for the length of the pose, no problem. And I encourage my students to take this self-trust into their wider lives.
Trust in the body, trust in the breath.
