asana: a living breathing organic orchestration of your entire system that is conducive to bliss!

Yoga Somatics with Ateeka explores asana from a fluid-body perspective . . . the breath is the first direction from which the life movements of asana emerge.  You are encouraged  to feel into asana that allows your authentic somatic identity to emerge. Asana becomes a very personal experience, as you inhabit your own sensory experience in your own unique body, physically and energetically. . . as you move, you will learn about your own inner territory and your potential for bringing yourself creatively forth into the world around you.

What is “asana”?  It has been defined in so many different ways by so many different sources.   Traditionally speaking, Patanjali asserts that asana is a “steady, comfortable seat”  and a limb on the eight-limbed path of Raja-Yoga.   

Yet, as we open wider and accept the asana as more than just a postion, the form (asana) itself becomes a living entity . . . not just some “clothing” that you impose upon or dress your body with for a little bit of time on a mat.

Living entities are in constant motion and change . . . albeit at different rates sometimes imperceptible to our human eyes

In its own language, the asana (Yoga Somatics refers to as a “gesture”) invites you towards relationship . . . towards interaction, towards rapport. . . towards getting to know YOURSELF through the mirror of the other and in this case, the other is the movement/form/gesture that you are playing in.   Asana becomes like a lover.  When we make love, we roll and embrace and kiss and play and bend and merge and separate and flow and spiral and twist and laugh and sound and breathe .  . . asana can also live like your lover .  .  . inside of you . . . be in constant relationship with the changing form.

Some thoughts about asana from my commentary on Patanjali's Yoga Sutras

II.46 Sthira sukham asanam

Asana is an organization of the body to feel “landed” and in pleasurable comfort.

Asana essentially is a position conducive to bliss

II.47 Prayatna - `sainthilyananta samapattibhyam

Asana becomes landed and pleasurable when one let’s go of efforting and focus widens naturally well into the infinte.

II.48 Tato dvandva na bhighatah

As we release the efforting, the gap between life’s natural dual state, the state of polarities, becomes less wide and we feel more centered and in union. Efforting less evokes a parasympathetic response of the nervous system which returns blood flow towards the organs, towards the center of the body . . . thus the feeling of “centered”.