I’ve been fortunate enough to clear my busy schedule to attend a few classes with Laurie Blakeney who is in Hawai’i. Blakeney is now the IYNAUS assessment chair, and I have been attending her annual workshops for the past few years. What I appreciate about her teachings is she gives simple instructions which produce a maximum amount of effects.
Case in point, on the first day we worked on the concept of keeping both panels of the chest even. The reason why I chose the I-Beam graphic is because that is the image that she branded in my head when we went through a few simple poses. The lower part of the I-beam I imaged were my hips. The middle the spine. And the top part my shoulder blades.
Right of the bat she taught Bharadvajasana, a typically asymmetrical hip pose and had us study the evenness in the torso even though there is an obvious distortion. The point seemed to be not to get the even torso, but to create an intense awareness of how easily it gets distorted.
It seemed like we did Bharadvajasana for 20 minutes. She said that it is best to lose track of which side you are on when doing twists, and just call it “20 minutes of twists.” As I have written before about Bharadvaja, a figure in the Mahabharata, his claim to fame was his ability to meditate and his scholarship. Very fitting title for this pose.
I like how Laurie will teaches about an hour of sitting poses before standing poses. By the time you get to them, you already feel the awareness of the points she is trying to make. She also taught wrists and the scooping in of the upper back. But for this lesson the “I-beam” hit home
In Utthita Hasta Padasana, the pose before Utthita Trikonasana, my hips were uneven and I found it very challenging to even them (probably based on bad habit). And in Parsvottasasna my hips were even more uneven.
She gave a wonderful instruction in Parsovattanasana while our hand were on blocks: pull your hips back while extending forward with the chest. As she said this, I kept that I-beam image in my mind an felt great extension of the spine. By pulling the hips back, a lot of other things pulled back too that she did not have to mention. Mainly, the side panels of the chest stayed even like Tadasana.
More to come…
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