Coming Into Alignment

Balance is your nature. In Deepak Chopra’s meditation series on health, we are lead to embrace this truth as the doorway to healing.

Your spine, hips, shoulders and the whole skeletal structure are meant, like the rest of your physical body, to be in balance. However, because of ingrained patterns of thinking resulting in emotional blockages, over time your posture begins  to reflect your mindset. You end up wearing your emotions.

Notice how a person who is depressed carries themselves and you will see depression personified. Slumped shoulders, lowered head, sunken in chest project an overall feeling of heaviness which if exercised for months and years eventually becomes your normal state of being. Your body becomes stuck in misalignment as it grows spurs and tissues to compensate for the imbalance. And if nothing is done to correct this, the consequences can be permanently debilitating.

One of  the biggest benefits of Hatha Yoga is the alignment of the entire body.

At the first level of yoga practice, postures are performed with attention to form using press points and energetic extensions.

Press points are those parts of the body that are in contact with the earth. These are usually the soles of the feet but they can also be the palms of the hands as in Downward Dog, Plank or Cobra. These press points create grounding and a strong foundation for your pose.

Energetic extensions are sensations of reaching up and out. Their purpose is to help adjust the body into balance. Energetic extensions can be felt through the toes and fingertips that are pushing out from center, as in Sundog, or in the arms reaching up as in Mountain. An energetic elongation also happens when the crown of the head reaches up towards the sky. And it can be felt in the tailbone as you come into Downward Dog, or in the pelvis as you hold in Bridge.

As your awareness tunes into these energetic points, the body naturally begins to align. This is where visualization comes in. When attention moves inward there is an amplified sense of self. You can picture in your mind’s eye, the center of your body and your limbs in relation to that center. In Mountain pose, for example, the feet are pressing into the ground as the crown of the head lifts up. As you extend your arms to the sides moving into Warrior II, the fingertips reach out. When you remain in a non-mental state of being, just observing without qualifying or resisting, the tendency of the body is to move towards that center. Whether standing, sitting or lying down, press points can be seen as connections with energy being drawn up from the earth. The energy is then channeled up the spine and picked up by the extensions, opening space in between the vertebrae as well as between the bones and their connective tissue.  This energetic decompression allows for the vertebrae as well as the whole skeletal structure to adjust and fall in line.

Once form has been established, surrender can happen, without striving or effort. Postures are performed with respect to your body’s limitations. Unconscious flight or fight reactions that accompany struggle or force are replaced with conscious effort of moving into form, from doing into being.

As you hold the pose in this manner and allow yourself to feel, releases happen. Here the whole body mind complex begins to move back into balance and ultimately  into wholeness.