Lecture Part 2: Move Smooth
We should move more, and move more like the water that we are
When it comes to movement for health, it can be helpful to remind ourselves that we are not trying to dig new rivers channels with our movement— our movment simply serves to clear the channels that are already there.
Our yoga practice is a time to repattern our fascia, which is to say, refine the pathways so it can flow freely again. As Patanjali said about the exhale, when the channels are clear, the water must flow— so it can also be said of the fascia.
To this end, it can be helpful to literally visualize your movement like water when you practice. As Bruce Lee once said, water moves through the cracks, it doesn't assert itself directly, it takes the form of it's container-- and from within that surrendered space, it does it’s work— it slowly wears away all obstacles, and accomplishes it’s goal, through fluid persistance.
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” Bruce Lee
You may not know that Bruce Lee was a master of facially informed movment— his fighting style, Wing Chun, is the only marital arts form created by a woman, and is entirely based on utilizing the elastic recoil strength of the connective tissue. His movement were so fast when he performed that he actually had to slow them down so the camera could see him move.
But of course, we’re not here to fight, we’re here to grow, and moving like water will do much more than simply support your physical body, it will support your spiritual growth.
As Swami Rudrananda teaches, our spiritual practice is how we keep our inner flow moving when we encounter resistance in our life. As he teaches in the following excerpt, when we encounter a challenge in our life, we tend to brace up, crystallize and protect our status quo-- when instead we should work inside, via our spiritual practice, to keep our heart open, keep our awareness present, to keep our inner flow moving so that this situation can help us grow. This is another way of understanding his teaching of "using your life for spiritual growth”— we’re not trying to change our life on the inside, we're trying to keep ourselves open on the inside while we encounter our life externally:
“While in threatening situations, all thoughts and ideas must be kept flowing so that the energy will present a solution. Usually the feeling within a man upon being threatened is to protect the image of himself. As a man develops, he attracts situations which are a test of his growth. Because the situations are a threat emotionally, he cannot stay open and perceive that which challenges him, and therefore he closes and rejects them. Inner work and surrender require a situation to be kept in a state of flow. Because the student does not close to the situation, new insights become apparent every day. It is through this change of pattern that man frees himself…There is usually inertia in a man that leads him to maintain his patterns, regardless of his discomfort and lack of harmony. Movement and change are the most difficult qualities for a person to accept as essential for life. Usually his whole purpose is to make a situation secure and free of change.” Rudi
So we see the pendulum of this analogy swing from one end of the spectrum to the other-- from seeing the purpose of movement for a predominately physical purpose in the case of martial arts, to movement as a metaphor for an energetic process in meditation. We will take this one step further in an attempt to bring these two levels together directly in our asana practice.
Zen master, poet and artist Paul Reps was a dear friend of Sri ShambhavAnanda and a frequent guest at the Eldorado Yoga Ashram in Colorado. He moved incredibly well all the way into his latest years of life, and although fascia had not yet been a keyword to associate with movement, we have found that his poems on movement are quite literally a page out of the fascial informed movment handbook, even down to the cellular level description.
The poem he wrote, which would go on to become one his most famous, revolved around the phrase, “Smooth Motion Cures Commotion”— in it he tells us that smooth movement requires sustained focus, and it itself moves us away from our troubles, both physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Instead of reading this quote while sitting still, I want to use it as a bridge for your homework. To incorporate this philosophy and science into your teaching practice, we want you to apply it specifically to your empowered vinyasa, the final vinyasa in your class sequence.
As we know, our final vinyasa is a time to explore more intuitive movement because we have already done the sequence and postures anywhere from 2-4 times. The pathways are there, and we can expand our teaching to tap into this most subtle layer of smooth moving.
To explore this, we would like you to do your empowered vinyasa from a space of personal pracitce, just doing the vinyasa with all of your focus on feeling and experience-- and really trying to feel what comes through, where you want to move, how you want to move.
This should give you a way of interacting with your vinyasa from a more subtle level, and a theme may begin to shine through, not through the mind, but through your experience.
You will then take some notes on this experience, and let it inform your theme and cues for when you teach. To make this even more interesting, though, we're going to record you doing this, so that you can watch the recording on your own and practice cueing over it in a way that would allow your students to have an experience like you were having.
To ensure that this experience is deeply felt and experienced, I am going to read the Paul reps poem about movement as you do your vinyasa, to provide clear instruction and inspiration.
THE EXERCISE:
“Smooth, as if to some silent music. Slowly, evenly, in unbreaking motion. Feel, a motion about to move you. Can you move smooth? You can and do, using fine and finer nerve muscles. Can you open a door silently, can you walk without hurry worry? Can you turn around and then move surely yet softly?…Walk inside a room, inside your skin, inside nerve-muscles, moving only the nerve sheath slowly. Like walking on air. As you move continue experimenting with smooth self motion, spontaneously generating non-repetitive, fresh. Do not accept ANY stale second-hand motion imposed on you by another, or by you…If the world ship sinks, will save it? Yes you will, move smooth. We each has some special bind: neck stick, shoulders rigid, jaw set, knees stiff, feet bound, face ominous. Then we move against it, fighting ourself, looking old, souring juices, our blood flow blocks, creases appear signaling imprisonments. Learning we may unknown the world in us, our bones, sinew, ligaments respond. What could be easier than to move? Experiment, discover som best way to make a given motion with least effort-- no matter how long it takes. Simply to feel a congestion and keep feeling begins to release it. Our pills and potions and non-herb foods back up on us when we forget to move. Considerately moving, you are your own best friend. Unknot world in you….Smooth motion cures commotion…Not fast, not slow, invisibly evenly. As old garments falling away, nakedly innocently, is this how new humans are born?”