Lecture Part 1: Holding Space for Compassion
Rough Transcript of Class (Expect Typos)
Hands are anything but flat: A lot of our work with stabilizing the shoulders comes from the way that we interact with the floor through our hands in a variety of postures. Your hands take on an infinite variety of shapes to help us work with and manipulate the world around us, but one shape they rarely take on is flat— which is funny because so often that is how we are told to use them in yoga postures in an effort to stabilize the arm and shoulder to prevent injury. As we use our hands and arms as a foundation in shoulder based postures, the cue to flatten the hands and lock out the arms, as well as root the scapulas down the back, all have a very specific effect on our overall physiological experience. As we have discussed throughout this training, the pillar of support model isn’t as effective for a biological organism as it is for a square building— and as we are able to bring more awareness to our physiology we can find more inspiring pathways of mobility and support.
Test it Out: Don’t take our word for it, put the “Pillar of Support” paradigm to the test. Stand up and walk around the room with one of your arms locked out and notice the effect of this through the rest of your body. When one part of you locks out, everything else is effected— you rotate less in your hips and torso, you breath shallower, your facial expression even tightens. And it’s not just a physical phenomenon, it’s a subtle one too— release your arms and just clench your teeth, locking out your jaw, and you’ll notice the same debilitating effect throughout your entire body. Locking out might feel supportive in one isolated scenario, but its not how our body was meant to move, so we might as well start to work more skillfully on our mats if we want that work to support us in our life.
Padding of the Hands: Take another look at your hands and notice where the padding is in them. Notice the padding that naturally runs from your pinky edge, across the palm to the base of your thumb. You can also notice the lack of padding under the index, middle and ring finger. This physiological reality seems to imply that your body weight is meant to rest on the pinky side of our hands. Skeletally speaking, the outside edge of our hand corresponds to the Ulna in our forearm, its stabilizing aspect, and then to the humerus— whereas the index finger and thumb side of our hand correspond with the radius of our forearm, its rotating aspect.
Arches of Hands: Much like our feet, the palmer side of the hand has 3 supple arches that not only allows it to grasp objects of different sizes, but also create a spring of support when weight bearing. There are three arches in the hand: The Longitudinal arch which runs through the center of the palm, from mid wrist to middle knuckles. The Oblique arch, which runs in a parabola from the base of the thumb to the base of the pinky. And the Distal transverse arch, which runs along the knuckles themselves. Arches, as we know with our feet, are one of the nature’s greatest achievements— providing unmatched strength alongside an innate capacity for spring and mobility. THe idea of flattening the arches of your feet in order to use them is just as physiologically confusing as the cue to flatten your feet in order to bear weight on them. Not to mention, it misses all the fun and sensation at the heart of the hands and feet. The spring is where the dynamism is, feeling the spring engages a holistic symphony of support through the arms, instead of just igniting superficial players unilaterally. When you have an arch, you have spring, and when you have spring you have sensation and awareness.
Buddha Hands, Buddha Heart: You can easily see and feel these three arches in Anjlai Mudra, when bringing the hands together at the heart. Instead of pressing the hands together flat, let them naturally open inside. There shouldn’t be anything you have to do for this to occur, but there may be some things you have to ‘undo’ as we can get used to flattening the arches of our hands to create certain shapes.
Holding Space: The space between our hands mirrors the space in your body, your breath and your heart. Flatten your hands and feel your energy flatten with your will, but press the hands softly together while remaining receptive to the space they require to function optimally, and you have a very different experience. In everyday terminology this is like ‘holding space’— a way of seeing what’s possible in a given situation, and is our work at all levels of our yoga practice.
As Babaji teaches, “Having unrealistic expectations is the source of a lot of our unhappiness. We want someone to be a certain way so that we can feel happy. That never works--at least it hasn’t for me. Maybe it has for you. Our expectations often go way beyond reality. One of my favorite sayings lately is that you should always take a look at yourself and the situation you are in to see what is possible instead of what you want…It is good to have a positive attitude, but not to have to freak out when your experience doesn’t match your expectations of what you thought a spiritual life should be. Then you will be continually surprised.” SP, 44
Seeing what’s possible is how we hold the space of compassion for ourselves in our personal practice and for our students when we teach. We need to have plan, we need to prepare for class, but we also need to be receptive to the Plan B that presents itself when we arrive. We might call this the Plan ‘Be’, meaning that your actions are based on being present and selflessly serving the situation in the moment.
Exercise: Hand Jumping at wall and floor
Wish Fulfilling Jewel: The Buddha Chenrezig, the buddha of compassion, holds in their supple hands the wish fulfilling jewel. Chenrezig symbolizes compassion as a central focus of the spiritual experience, and is beloved throughout the Buddhist world. He is known by different names in different lands: as Avalokiteshvara in the ancient Sanskrit language of India, as Kwan-Yin in China, as Kannon in Japan. By holding space within our own hands, we can find that compassion for not only our own body mind and spirit, but our student’s as well. As Sri ShambhavAnanda teaches, “Loving compassion is something that you feel in your heart. It isn’t something that you demonstrate by going around and hugging everyone. …Loving compassion is something that comes from inside, a place where everything is done naturally, simply, and not with any exaggerated demonstration…Loving compassion is an inner state that overflows and that is filled with positive energy.”
Feel the Wish on your mat: This applies not only to Anjali mudra, but any time we place our hands on the mat— and it starts with holding this space of compassion in our hands as we move in our postures on the mat.
Hand Experiment 1: We have to begin this experiment by seeing how flattened hands feel, and then applying our new material. We won’t spend much time in this first variation as the benefits are quite minimal. Begin in table top and flatten the arches of your hand, spin the eyes of the elbows forward and root the shoulder blades down the back. Move through a couple repetitions of cat cow, and notice the experience in terms of the breath, holistic engagement of the body, etc. now move into single leg plank, double leg plank, and down dog and up dog, and again note the experience as a whole.
And all of this neglects to highlight that choosing to flatten your arch is a choice in itself that has odd logic— its basically saying ‘though my hand was built with an arch, I don’t think it is important for its overall function.” So if we want to give our shoulders a hand, then we should work with the arches of the hand in order to show our support for the shoulders when using our hands on the ground.
Hand Experiment 2: Now Let’s hold space for our wish fulfilling jewel. Place your hands under the shoulders and try to feel the wish fulfilling jewel between your hand and the mat. No need to over do it, just feeling space is enough. Add a little pressure to the hands as you breathe through cat and cow posture, and try to continue feeling the wish fulfilling gem between your hands and the floor. Notice how this awareness effects your entire posture, your breath, and even the way you work in the pose. Now come back to table and slowly lengthen one leg back, inflating your buoyant core. Stay mindful of holding space in your hands as you slowly lengthen the other leg back for a weightless plank. Is the wish fulfilling jewel still serving you? Finally, explore upward and downward dog with the wish fulfilling focus, and watch as you move through your postures with compassion.