Parts is Parts

“Only the adult blocks free expression by separating the parts from the whole. The child says “I run,” “I jump,” “I sing,” not “I am toeing out,” “my shoulders are back,” “I walk on the balls of my feet," until the adult has split his attention, making details the focus.” 

--- Mabel Ellsworth Todd, The Thinking Body, pg 281

Ok, the alignment thing never ends with me. Maybe it's because I'm teaching alignment right now, so it's quite in the forefront of my mind. Today yoga asanas seem to have become a series of 3-5 cues about where the feet, pelvis, arms, and focus go. So students learn the poses as a series of cues, instead of having their initial experience of the pose be from the essence, or energetic of the pose. The whole of the pose. The Whole. Trikonsansa. What are you? When I ask my students "who are you in this pose? What are you saying in this pose? What is the "personality" of this pose?" it's almost as if they have no idea what I'm talking about. Especially when they keep asking me where their hips go or what they are "supposed" to look like. Sometime I think to myself "who cares - how does it feel?" "How does this pose relate to you? to your life?" And sometimes I say it. Out loud. In class. Without apology. 

So doesn't it seem that this approach is taking us away from the Whole? And isn't yoga about union - self with Self - aka the Whole. So we have dissected into parts the very vehicle (yoga asanas) that was supposed to bring us to wholeness in the first place? 

Hmmmmmmm.

There. I said it. Out loud. In a blog. Without apology.

You may wish I'd just shut up already. But I won't. Without apology. But with love.