While doing certain Asanas, my yoga teacher instructs about “watching the posture” and while doing Bhujangasana, he says to focus on the centre two places below the navel. Some yoga teachers stress on focussing at the stretching effect. Should not there be a standard pracitce of focusing on the breadth and the posture while doing all Asanas? Kindly let me know. Thanks.
Breathing control and the correct posture is important and the rest will fallow.
Visit my website and check out some of the postures/ instructions.
Kind Regards
www.yogainthesky.com.au
Hi Hiren,
You don’t say how long have you been doing yoga so I shall assume you are a beginner to intermediate. The ideal would be that students are completely aware of every aspect of the asanas while doing it, i.e physical, mental, emotional as well as spiritual aspect. But in reality most people can’t be aware of all these aspects at once, their concentration is just too scattered. So what we as teachers do, we slowly get the student to concentrate on one aspect of the asana, in your case the awareness of Cobra pose is in the Svadhistana chakra, so your teacher draws your attention to the chakra. Gradually the teacher will ask his/her students to be aware for example of breath as well as the the corresponding chakra for the pose until the student has cultivate enough concentration to have full awareness of all aspects of the asana while doing it. You can imagine that this takes years to develop, and that the place of concentration will always differ from teacher to teacher and this is what makes yoga beautiful and unique. Point is eventually if you persist with your practice you will get to the same point where all yogis are - full awareness.
Hope this explains some of it to you.
if possible , keep looking at a mirror, or make sure that your body is exactly symetrical , make sure that ur body or muscles do not move and stay like a wood. this is how concentratiion is to be done. your body should be like the lingam (stone ) and not like a peice of flesh and blood.make sure that u relax ur body and not tighten ur muscles.
Thanks Everyone.
Kind attention:Pandara
I have been doing yoga for twenty years and while do agree that the subjectivity and innovation that teachers can bring can add to the “beauty” of Yoga, there has to be some standardisation in certain aspects. What I basically wanted to ask was that should not there be a particular chakra with each Asana if it has to be there.
Secondly, when you say mental, emotional and physical - awarness of all, what exactly do you mean? Awareness of physical to my mind would be watching the whole posture with a specified centre( chakra or whatever which should be standard if it is not) and emotional and mental would probably mean watching the thoughts and sensations as they arise? That is my understanding.
To sum it up, like in Zen, are you not supposed to watch your breath and posture ?
Your expression “scattered atention” is very interesting. Is it always undersable - creative people are supposed to have it. You must have heard of convergent and divergent thinking.
[quote=Hiren;9225]Thanks Everyone.
Kind attention:Pandara (See my answers at your requests)
I have been doing yoga for twenty years and while do agree that the subjectivity and innovation that teachers can bring can add to the “beauty” of Yoga, there has to be some standardisation in certain aspects. What I basically wanted to ask was that should not there be a particular chakra with each Asana if it has to be there.
Personally I don’t agree with the word standardisation, inherently it implies attachment. But yes from a certain point of view standardisation is needed, but it might differ from tradition to tradition. In my training as a teacher I have been taught (also by my own teacher) that each asana has a chakra associated (the spiritual awareness) with it upon which you can focus while doing the asana. For each asanas this is different, but there are groups that focus the awareness on the manipura, others on anahata etc. The breath, where it centre in a specific asana was also taught as well as the physical awareness for each asana. Mental and emotional awareness was aspects which was added by my own teacher when I started yoga, the aim of these was to draw attention to how yoga change your mental and emotional states as well. I still find these most appropriate and I teach them as well to my students.
Secondly, when you say mental, emotional and physical - awarness of all, what exactly do you mean? Awareness of physical to my mind would be watching the whole posture with a specified centre( chakra or whatever which should be standard if it is not) and emotional and mental would probably mean watching the thoughts and sensations as they arise? That is my understanding.
Your understanding is correct, now try to watch them all simultaneously during an asana, it is liberating. Just remember the chakra is not on a physical level. So although your attention is drawn to the physical counterpart on your body, what really should happen is the intuitive awareness of the energy of the chakra.
To sum it up, like in Zen, are you not supposed to watch your breath and posture ?
These are only parts of the bigger whole. Again as I have said the ideal is that awarenss whould be on the whole, but that most people can only focus on the parts, and again I say with training and years of development you can come to a point where the only awarenss is full awareness of all the aspects of the asana.
Your expression “scattered atention” is very interesting. Is it always undersable (I don’t understand this word and cannot find it in my dictionary so I assume you mean understanding???) - creative people are supposed to have it. You must have heard of convergent and divergent thinking.[/quote]
This is if you assume that all people who do yoga are creative.
Hope this clear it up for you.
Why is it you’d like a standard practice? Put another way, what purpose do you think such a thing would serve in yoga and in your life?
Standardized practice leads to a lack of diversity. Lack of diversity leads to dogma. Dogma does not facilitate the growth yoga provides and will continue to need if it is to serve mankind through the times we have in front of us.
It must be malleable. Is that a good fit with “standard practice”?
[QUOTE=Hiren;8915]While doing certain Asanas, my yoga teacher instructs about “watching the posture” and while doing Bhujangasana, he says to focus on the centre two places below the navel. Some yoga teachers stress on focussing at the stretching effect. Should not there be a standard pracitce of focusing on the breadth and the posture while doing all Asanas? Kindly let me know. Thanks.[/QUOTE]