Feel good

let’s talk about feeling sensation in your body.

when I teach, I tend to teach with ✨energetic✨ cues rather than 🦴anatomical🦴 cues (both are equally important, just something I gravitate towards). phrases such as “feel your feet ground to the earth beneath you” or “cactus your arms and feel the expansion and openness of your heart space.“ when I teachYin, I similarly say phrases, such as “notice sensation in your spine as you melt down to the mat beneath you“ or “where are you holding any pockets of tension and where can you soften?”

on one such occasion, I cued the latter phrase and watched a student in front of me soften their fingers. I wanted so badly to shout. “YES! This is everything!“ but of course I did no such thing and instead just silently did a little dance in my head. this was truly everything! not only did the student actually scan their body for pockets of tension, but they noticed a spot and softened.

now I feel, I must preface this with the fact that this student has practiced yoga for many years, however, the feeling of happiness that I felt seeing this is no less diminished because of that fact. these are very difficult concepts, no matter how long you have practiced. even myself as I sit outside, leaned against a tree writing this I just noticed that my shoulders were shrugged up to my ears, and I took a moment to relax them.

as a yoga instructor, sometimes my one intention for practice is to allow students the ability to feel into their bodies. we spend so much of our time trying not to feel into our physical bodies for one reason or another – disassociating mentally, substance use, inaccessibility to understanding those spaces in the body, etc. so I for one find it deeply important to provide students with even just one hour of the ability to notice.

so as you read this, maybe notice where you are holding pockets of tension and where can you soften? perhaps it’s your body as a whole or maybe it’s just in your fingers.