Connection to Core

As I reassured my students this week, this class was not all core work :)

What we emphasized was drawing your navel to your spine on every exhale - that’s the core connection! I’d like to thank one of my teachers, Elena Brower, for the inspiration behind this theme.

Each time you create that connection in your core, you are fortifying a sense of safety and trust in yourself. And that alignment work benefits you physically: it strengthen your abdominal muscles, it brings ease and health to your low back, and it creates a nice long spine.

In addition, we wanted to give that action, that connection a meaning. And the meaning is a returning to yourself, an arriving: “here I am”. It also creates a sense of presence that fortifies your body and mind. And that sense of presence lends itself to a sense of trust in yourself. I invited students to notice a sense of presence building, and especially during challenging poses or longer flows to focus on that deep connection to themselves physically and spiritually.

So my instruction throughout was “with every exhale draw your belly to your spine and solidify that core connection”. In some poses like cat-cow and Warrior 1 it was easier to access this action. Other poses like cobra it was harder to feel the work. As practice deepened into crow and dolphin and revolved triangle, I encouraged the yogis to feel all the openings they had created already, and to notice what had changed for them so far? What was emerging?

We finished our asana practice with pigeon, tree backbend and seated twist. Thank you yogis for your hard work and your beautiful focus. From my heart to yours, Lynn