Master the Basics

One of the most powerful teachings I have ever heard about yoga was to first master the basics. In my experience as a teacher, I have seen so many practitioners and teachers struggle to perform complex advanced poses, causing stress to both their physical and subtle bodies. On the other hand I have seen many people "half-ass" poses, just kinda hanging out in poses, dumping weight into joints that were never meant to bear it, and generally cultivating a mindless, distracted practice. Despite what many people may think and the messages we may get from so many of the classes being taught, we might not actually need all the fancy stuff to have a profound yoga practice. At the very least, it would do nearly every practitioner tremendous good to go back to the basics and master both the subtleties of perfect alignment and the utmost capacity for mindfulness and and proprioception, or consciousness of the body in space.

Practicing circular ranges of motion that release and open the joints facilitates the greatest possible access to the muscles of our bodies. Energetically, yoga and ayurveda point to the major joints as gateways to the nadis, the energy channels that feed the energy centers known as chakras, aligned vertically from the base of the spine to above the crown of the head. So, both physiologically and energetically, both practically and theoretically, opening the joints is a wonderful and effective way to begin any kind of practice.

Then, if you really think about it, there are only four fundamental kinds of movement: flexion, extension, side-flexion and rotation. Therefore, even the most advanced yoga postures are just complex and demanding combinations of these types of movement in various parts of the body, often arranged in a challenging relationship to the earth and its gravity. This means that a particularly smart way to advance our yoga practice would be to first practice these fundamental kinds of movement throughout the body in relatively easeful, less challenging gestures.

Then, with time and practice, everything might be possible.