asana: a living breathing organic orchestration of your entire system that is conducive to bliss!
Yoga with Ateeka explores ASANA from a fluid-body perspective . . . the breath is the first direction from which our the life movements of asana emerges. I encourage you to feel into asana that allows your authentic somatic identity to emerge. Asana becomes a very personal experience, as you inhabit your own sensory experience in your own unique body, physically and energetically. . . as you move, you will learn about your own inner territory and your potential in bringing yourself creatively forth into the world around you.
What is “asana”? It has bee defined in so many different ways by so many different sources. Traditionally speaking, Patanjali asserts that asana is a “steady, comfortable seat” and a limb on the eight-limbed path of Raja-Yoga.
Yet as we open wider and accept the asana as more than just a postiion, the form (asana) itself is a living entity . . . not just some “clothing” that you impose upon or dress your body with for a little bit of time on a mat? . . .
And living entities are in constant motion and change . . . albeit at different rates sometimes imperceptible to our human eyes
In its own language, the asana (which I refer to as a “gesture”) asks you for relationship . . . for interaction, for rapport. . . for getting to know YOURSELF through the mirror of the other and in this case, the other is the movement/form/gesture that you are playing in. Asana becomes like a lover. When we make love, we roll and embrace and kiss and play and bend and merge and separate and flow and spiral and twist and laugh and sound and breathe . . . asana can also live like your lover . . . inside of you . . . be in constant relationship with the changing form.
Some thoughts about asana from my commentary on Patanjali's Yoga Sutras
II.46 Sthira sukham asanam
Asana is an organization of the body to feel “landed” and in pleasurable comfort.
Asana essentially is a position conducive to bliss.
II.47 Prayatna - `sainthilyananta samapattibhyam
Asana becomes landed and pleasurable when one let’s go of efforting and widens the intellectual focus well into the infinte.
II.48 Tato dvandva na bhighatah
As we release the efforting, the gap between life’s natural dual state, the state of polarities, becomes less wide and we feel more centered and in union. Efforting less evokes a parasympathetic response of the nervous system which returns blood flow towards the organs, towards the center of the body . . . thus the feeling of “centered”.
