Curiosity

I love reading but I haven’t read a purely fiction book in quite awhile. The closest book I haven’t gotten is The Prophet, The Gita, The Buddha, and Siddhartha…That was until last week when I bought The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. It was so fascinating I finished it in a few days and bought the second book of the trilogy Catching Fire, which I finished last night. I loved that when I was reading these books my attention was so focused. I was so curious, interested, and fascinated that I read and read for hours.

When I taught at Avenues Yoga on Thursday we talked about this (more than half of the class also read this pre-teen trilogy and were very excited when I referenced it).  These qualities of curiosity are wonderful for getting me in the moment fully with attention. We can use the same qualities same qualities in our asana practice to help cultivate attention. Being curious if the body is doing what we are asking it to do. Inquiring to see what will happen in the next breath. Being sensitive to our experience noticing the difference of stability and erratic. This was a great get to know and feel your body class as the students worked toward trikonasana (triangle pose). The principle I focused on was muscular energy and it is so fun to watch students as they examine and feel their muscles to see the slightly let down look on their face when they realize their muscles are not engaged (been there done that) and then see their delighted face after poling their muscle and finding it firm.

I taught lots of hip openers leading up to trikonasana. I explained the importance of using muscle energy when working hip openers because if the muscles aren’t engaged the part of the leg that will be getting flexible is the knee, we don’t want to get our knees more flexible. But when the legs are engaged and you rotate the leg it is the hip that will be getting more flexible. This is particularly important if a student has a history of a injured knee.