Principles of Practice

Hi, thank you for coming. I'm really glad to get to share these practices with you because they made such an impact in my life. This method of practicing where breath is absolutely the key element. So there's three kind of aspects of the practice that I think are really important. The first is breath and the quality of breath and how the breath is moving and being really aware of that. And the second is a foundation and stability. And the third is listening to your body. So I didn't always listen to my body when I was practicing yoga and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I might not be the only one. And when I learned these practices, I learned originally from Mark Whitwell and it changed everything for me. So you'll hear me say a lot during the practice, wait for the breath or you know it's time to move because the breath is already moving. So this element of breath initiating movement is absolutely key. And if I can show you a sort of example of what I mean. So say I'm going to inhale my arms up and exhale my arms down. I go okay. Inhale up. Exhale down. And there's a subtle quality that's added and for me this was just magical where the breath moves before the body moves so it would look more like this. I'll take a breath, I'll take a cycle of breath first and then do it. You see the difference? The breath is this long, the movement is this long. So the breath completely envelops the movement. What that provides for me is a focus, a sense of awareness that I previously didn't have and there's also alignment and physical support from having the breath be what starts, initiates and ends the movement. When the breath is there the whole time, I haven't hurt myself at all practicing yoga since I started to do this and I did hurt myself before. So the foundation is to make sure that you're stable in a way that you're free to practice.

You're not tweaking something in your feet or in your ankles, in your knees. Anything that is touching the floor is part of the foundation of the pose so pay attention to the foundation of the pose. And thirdly and in a way most importantly, breath, listen to your body. Absolutely listen to what your body is asking for and respond accordingly to that. So when something is hurting, back out. When you pay attention to your breath and your breathing super quickly or the breath is restricted in some way or you're not breathing at all, which happens, if you practice yoga for any length of time chances are you will have experienced that. If you push too hard, that's your sign to back out. So listen to your body and give it what it asks for. The practices that suited me when I was in my 20s and even through a whole bulk of my 30s did not suit me through my late 30s and now into my 40s and I needed to find something else and this is how I found it. So I really hope it's of use to you and thank you again for being here. Please stay in touch. You can comment on the videos in the forum or send me messages and I will respond. I'd love to know how this works for you. So thank you.