Hanna Somatic Yoga
“However beautifully we carry out an ãsana, however flexible our body may be, if we do not achieve the integration of body, breath and mind we can hardly claim that what we are doing is yoga. What is yoga after all? It is something that we experience inside, deep within our being. Yoga is not an external experience. In yoga we try in every action to be as attentive as possible to everything we do. Yoga is different from dance or theatre. In yoga we are not creating something for others to look at. As we perform the various ãsanas we observe what we are doing and how we are doing it. We do it only for ourselves. We are both observer and what is observed at the same time. If we do not pay attention to ourselves in our practice, the we cannot call it yoga.” - T.K.V. Desikachar
What is Yoga?
Yoga is both a state of balance that permits the experience of oneness, and also the practice that leads us toward this state. With the explosion in popularity of yoga, I find today that many "Yoga" classes look a lot like yoga externally and yet internally lack the awareness that can lead one to a state of Yoga. That, in fact, much of the time Asana practice is done in a way that takes people further out of the balance that is innate within us. When we can get out of our own way, our system self regulates and maintains this balance. Stress, Poor Body Mechanics, Poor Food Choices, along with many other factors, take us out of balance. When we are out long enough, it starts to feel normal and we can no longer 'hear' the messages our body is giving us. So it starts to 'shout' and we become sick or we injury ourselves. Moving with awareness teaches us again how to 'listen'. Our brains have the benefit of better sensory feedback and can then do a more effective job of directing our body in movement keeping us in balance and decreasing the amount of stress on and in our system.