Mindful Yoga with Blake focuses on caring attention to your interior experience as you are guided through mellow and gently strengthening asana sequences, truly allowing you to maintain a genuine moment to moment meditative quality in your practice. If we want it to be more than an avenue for fitness (and by the way, there is absolutely nothing wrong with fitness!), if we want to employ it in the
service of living a more vibrant, conscious and heartfelt life, we can do so, simply by imbuing every instant we spend on the mat with as much sincerity and presence as possible. "Presence" is one of those hip buzz words in the yoga scene whose meaning often seems rather ambiguous. Rather than letting it stand here as some kind of mystical place-holder for all things spiritual, let me clarify what I mean. Being present means being alive and available to what is actually happening here and now; to feel and know this living breathing present moment in a full and direct way. So, that's different from thinking about being present, different from fondly recalling how happy you were before you got into Crescent Pose, different from planning out what you hope to say to the attractive yogi next to you when class is over. Rather, presence has a lot to do with intimacy with your physical senses: Really feeling the texture of the mat against the soles of your feet, or allowing each nuance of this breath you are breathing right now to wash through your consciousness, absorbing even every whispering sound it makes as it flows in and out of your lungs. And there is no bottom to how deep this kind of presence can go. Often in yoga practice we are asked to be present with thoughts, emotions and perhaps even intuitions of a different kind that defy easy categorization. You could say that presence is another word for mindfulness. So, Mindful Yoga is presence yoga, and the full presence of mind and heart in each shape, each breath, each sensation, is a practice so profound that I myself have no idea where its diligent application might lead. Another super important principle of this approach to practice is softness. I emphasize softening, doing less-- an extremely kind and gentle approach to each movement and to oneself. Much like a friend who is stressed or upset is not going to open up to you and tell you what is going on the more you force and badger her, so the body will not unwind its hidden traumas and release its inner tightness by repeatedly forcing it into the maximum expression of breath, the maximum articulation of each pose. I try to get students to relax, find some ease and spaciousness in each pose, and literally back out of the pose a little if they feel any gripping or constriction. Better to find an easier, gentler pose where you can breathe and soften your jaw, neck and heart than careen past your edge into an impressive, fancy-looking pose that leaves you feeling more stressed out, even on a subtle level, than when you came into class. It's really hard to be present when we're stressed out. Have you noticed this? So, the two go hand in hand. Presence and softness, two sides of the same coin, two wings on the same bird, soaring toward a life of ease and vitality and insight.
* * *
Another aspect of the notion of "PRESENCE" that I really care about, and it's one I feel doesn't get enough air time in the average L.A. yoga class, is a sense of soulfulness, or passion, or intensity, in the asanas. This might be a hard thing to explain...
One of my teachers, Saul David Raye, often says that when it comes to spiritual practice, and life in general, it's less a matter of what we do, and more of how we do it. That's very in line with what I'm trying to talk about. These yoga poses that we practice can be mechanical exercises, dry, static boring shapes, or they can be lit up from within with feeling and soul and sincerity, like a neglected lamp whose wick is suddenly ignited, or like the performance of a dancer inspired to greatness by the gaze of her lover. We can focus exclusively on the alignment of our physical form-- "Drive the outer edge of your back foot into the mat as you rotate your front thigh externally," et cetera, and we can leave it at that. Our bodies will get stronger, our health will improve. But we can also include attention to a kind of alignment of our hearts, our spirits: "Pour your whole being into this shape, this moment, every ounce of love and presence and heart that you can summon." Wouldn't the inclusion of that more soulful, artistic dimension make practice more interesting, dynamic, fulfilling?
