Posts Tagged ‘sushumna’
transmission
kim on 3:28 pm July 10th, 2009 / 2 Comments »
On Wednesday, the yoga class I took was silent. The teacher explained at the beginning of class that first she would do the poses, and then with the tap of a singing bowl, we’d follow what she’d done. There would be no talking during class, just imitation of what we saw in her positions and adjustments.
I’d never taken a class like that before. I’ve taken many silent classes before, especially out at Piedmont Yoga Studio, when I was taking that studio’s Advanced Teacher Training in 2004. But this class was different. There was something in the standing around, watching her create a shape–and then trying it ourselves, as a group–that ignited my spine.
The purpose of yoga is to quell the jumpiness in the mind — the constant analyzing, thinking, reviewing, obsessing. Through the practice of hatha yoga, we create shapes and fill those shapes with breath, or prana, and observe the mind/body connection from moment to moment as the breath and shape changes. This body-and-breath training is ultimately mind training, and through this training the mind settles down like a choppy lake that becomes crystal clear and still.
During the class, I felt mainly, only, my spine. I felt movements up and down the sides of it in asymmetrical poses like trikonasana and parsvakonasana, and I felt it expand into something warm and soft during sirsasana (headstand).
My teacher said at the beginning of class that a certain type of “transmission” would take place during the class that differed from that which could be conveyed through words. Though I understood intuitively what she meant–music communicates something very clear and real, and something altogether different from words–it wasn’t until the actual practice that I felt the experience I’ve had, time and again, over the past 15 years of yoga:
The spine is the thing we are lighting up, as it is the superhighway of all our thoughts and experiences. It is either congested or not. Hatha Yoga cleans up body and in turn cleanses the spine, which in turn cleanses the mind and its troubled thoughts. Much of this experience cannot (yet) be measured by science or (probably ever) be conveyed in words.
