Yoga Basics: Mindful Movement

originally published in Yoga Journal (September 2003)

In the classical yoga tradition, movement and breathing practices are considered mere preludes to seated meditation. Asana and pranayama are offered as tools that cleanse and heal the body, preparing a practitioner to sit quietly for long stretches at a time.

But you don’t have to be sitting in lotus pose in order to cultivate a meditative state of being. When practiced mindfully, yoga asanas themselves can nurture many of the same gifts as more formal meditation practices: mental calm, balance and clarity. Explored in this way, yoga postures are transformed from mere stretches into meditation in movement.

How can we infuse our daily asana practice with a more mindful quality? Try a few of the following strategies to help you wake up to the present moment while moving through your favorite yoga postures.

Practice what the Buddhists call “bare attention,” attuning yourself to the raw sensations coursing through the body during your daily practice. While in a particular posture, take a moment to notice where you feel muscles stretching, where in your body you sense resistance and tightness, where you feel tension and where you feel spaciousness. Notice the warmth or coolness within your joints and organs, the firmness or softness of your muscles, the smoothness or roughness of your breath. Break the ingredients of the moment into their simplest elements, focusing not on judging the sensations but on simply witnessing them.

Use the breath as a resting place for the brain. In many schools of meditation, students are trained to quiet the mind by continually returning their awareness to the breath. You can use this strategy while moving through your daily yoga practice, too. Notice when you’re inhaling and when you’re exhaling. Notice which parts of the body move to the tune of the breath and which do not. Notice whether the breath feels smooth or jagged, hard or soft, enthusiastic or half-hearted. When your thoughts begin to stray beyond your body, gently coax them back to awareness of your breath. Over time this practice will teach you to maintain one-pointed attentiveness for longer stretches of time.

Intersperse your practice with periods of stillness. Begin and end your practice with restorative postures that enable you to experience both the benefits and challenges of physical stillness. In the middle of your practice, insert a resting pose between more demanding asanas, and use this as an opportunity to nourish quiet attentiveness. Or try holding a familiar pose for a few moments longer than usual, simply asking your mind to be a witness to the shifting sensations within. Over time you’ll learn to cultivate an inner oasis of quiet tranquility even amidst the most demanding yoga asanas.

Ask questions. Stay curious and engaged by continually challenging yourself to articulate your inner experience. As you explore a particular posture ask yourself what benefits it offers. How does it change your breathing? How does it alter your mood? Does it calm or energize you? And what can it teach you about yourself and the world around you? You may be surprised by the answers that bubble up from within as you move through your daily asana practice with mindfulness, attention and curiosity.

~ C. C.

Beautiful Words

Such beautiful words:

   release
       soften
           yield
           open
       bloom
   shine

Our only task now
is to embody them.

 ~ C. C.

Forward Bend

Settling into the earth.
nose nestles toward knees,
mind sinks into dark of night,
back to the beginning, to our roots.

Body grows calm and still,
cool and humble,
clean and quiet,
And finally, fully breathable.

Heart melts farther into
an oasis of calm
at the center of the
whole wide world.

Let go, breathe, settle,
surrender to deep peace,
grow quiet as a windless pond,
savor long and gentle exhalations.

Know that often less is more,
slow is sweet, and
surrender tastes
even sweeter than will.

Return to new and quieter ways
of living in the world.
Climb into a calm, clear home within,
settling happily back home.

~ C. C.

Blessing for Healing

May you be safe and protected from harm.
May you be healthy, happy and strong.
May you be healed by the love that surrounds you.
May your life unfold with ease.

 ~ C. C.

Day Break

I'm sitting by the fire, knitting, and
watching the snowy day awake.

Perhaps I should be making breakfast,
or cleaning up the dishes,
or getting us dressed for the day.

But I'm not. I'm sitting here,
listening to one son count to one thousand,
watching the other cuddle with the cat.

I hear that great poet Mary Oliver ask what
I plan to do with my "wild and precious life."
Sitting here and embodying peace may not
be wild, I think, but it is definitely holy.

To start the day in quiet,
to start the day with easy breath,
to start the day in peace.

~ C. C.

Starry Starry Night

I awoke in the night at about three and remembered this was the day of the Leonid meteor shower. I stumbled onto the terrace in the dark, inhaled the damp night air, and gazed upward. The stars twinkled all about, but the night sky seemed quiet.

I found the North Star. I found the Big Dipper. I found Orion, the first constellation my father taught me to identify and one that will forever remind me of him (we've agreed to meet up there someday when we're both reduced to ether and nitrogen and other primordial elements).

Just as I was turning to go inside, my first gift of the midnight gods appeared, streaking across the sky above - huge and magnificent, with a long sweep of a tail the echoed through the night for several long seconds. I sat down in a chair, lay back, and waited. After a few moments I spotted another, smaller blaze of light. And then another. And another. Some so dim I almost doubted their presence, and others so glorious I thought they may just land in my lap.

I decided to count. A few years ago early one morning here I spotted 19 and thought that must be some kind of shooting-star record, some sure signal from the gods that this life of ours is blessed, and I knew tonight would far surpass that.

I got to ten and the night seemed to quiet. I returned to bed, where I dreamed of chakras and shooting stars. An hour later I woke, and again stumbled out onto the terrace. The night sky had heated up considerably by now, and the gentle breeze had cooled, so I wrapped a damp beach towel around me and lay on my back again looked upward.

I watched stars shooting from east to west, from west to east, high up in the ceiling of the sky and then far off on the eastern horizon. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Then a pause. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, then another pause for the firework magicians to reload their barrels. Then the wild night dance began again, with star after star after star streaking across the sky.

Remember that old song, "Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket?" My pockets were full and I'd turned up my skirt to catch more and still they were pouring all about me, dropping from heaven to earth, second after second after second.

Still on my back I tried to broaden my vision as far as I could, from center to periphery, remaining alert but soft in the eyes. You can't TRY to find a shooting star, I kept reminding myself, you have to wait for the shooting star to find you. You put yourself in the place where shooting stars are most likely to happen, you offer your intention and your attention, and then you soften, surrender, and wait.

For awhile nothing seems to happen, even though you know that miles and miles away some chunk of rock is hurtling into our orbit and dying a spectacular death. And then just when you give up, when you let go of every expectation of ever seeing another one again, whoosh, bang, the stars start flying again. There's a life lesson in there, I thought, somewhere between falling star thirty-five and thirty-eight.

I love how the eyes know how to find them, though. How you rest back and watch and wait, and the eyes jump to the bright, streaking light before the brain even realizes what has passed before it. Do you think each of us contains a "shooting star reflex" somewhere deep inside? Somewhere nestled into the part of us that instinctively turns toward beauty, I suppose. I imagined a god of the night sky somewhere up in the great beyond, tracing his long finger along an arc of the midnight sky, leaving sparks of shooting stars trailing behind in his finger's wake.

I wondered what the ancients must have thought when the night sky came alive like this, surprising them one night as they traipsed across a high mountain ridge or nestled back against a stone to pass the night in sleep. They must have thought these winding, wandering, dashing stars were magic, miraculous, messengers, omens.

They must have thought they were blessed, I thought as I dozed off under the blanket of the twinkling night sky, my last count one-hundred-and-one.

~ C. C.

Life Cycle

Mom, is someone dying right now?
He asks fighting sleep. Yes.
And is someone being born right now? Yes.

Well, life is like that, I guess, he says.
And I kiss my four-year old Buddha
as his sleepy blue eyes slip shut.

~ C. C.