I will present a special workshop on Backbends and Inversions on Saturday, August 23rd at 2:30pm at Grace Yoga Studio, 209 North Foushee, between Broad and Grace Streets.
Cost $25 in-advance (up until August 20) and $30 at the door.Click here for registration information.“Bending back and opening the chest [also] unlocks the spirit within. Practicing these postures takes you along previously untraveled paths, challenging you to overcome fear and frustration, teaching you to move with ease and grace and to live with an open heart and a passion for life and love”
(J Chapmen, Yoga for Inner Strength, p164).
The backward bending asanas energize, refresh and invigorate the body- opening the chest, encouraging inhalation, an action associated with embracing life.
Bending backwards turns the body out to face the world, often from a different perspective.
Backbends can move blocked energy through all the chakras, or energy centers.
Often after backbends one feels invigorated, empowered and free and as though boundaries have been expanded.
The concept behind inversion poses is expressed in yoga texts as
viparita karani. Viparita karani is translated as meaning 'opposite process'. This simply means facilitating a different perspective. From the purely physical point of view, this different perspective in inversion poses is literal - in terms of looking at the world from a different physical viewpoint - as well as involving the body being supported in a different way.
There is a theoretical concept in yoga about why inversion postures help. Ayurveda considers that many of the body's impurities are in the lower abdomen. When we raise our feet above the head, gravity is assisting us to move these impurities towards what the Ayurvedic system calls agni, or 'fire'. Agni particularly relates to our 'digestive fire', and is thus located above our lower abdomen.
So, by being upside down, and by using the deep and slow breathing typical of yoga, we help 'burn off' the impurities that were previously stuck.
Improved circulation is a more readily apparent and less 'esoteric' benefit of inversion yoga poses.
Please join me at this very special location for this very special workshop. I'd love to see you there!
Namaste',
Iffet
