Circular Yoga

"I live in nature where everything is connected, circular. The seasons are circular.  The planet is circular, and so is the planet around the sun. The course of water over the earth is circular coming down from the sky and circulating through the world to spread life and then evaporating up again. I live in a circular teepee and build my fire in a circle. The life cycles of plants and animals are circular. I live outside where I can see this.  The ancient people understood that  our world is a circle, but we modern people have lost site of that. I don't live inside buildings because buildings are dead places where nothing grows, where water doesn't flow, and where life stops. I don't want to live in a dead place. People say that I don't live in a real world, but it's modern Americans who live in a fake world, because they have stepped outside the natural circle of life.

Do people live in circles today? No. They live in boxes.  They wake up every morning in a box of their bedrooms because a box next to them started making beeping noises to tell them it was time to get up. They eat their breakfast out of a box and then they throw that box away into another box.  Then they leave the box where they live and get into another box with wheels and drive to work, which is just another big box broken into little cubicle boxes where a bunch of people spend their days sitting and staring at the computer boxes in front of them. When the day is over, everyone gets into the box with wheels again and goes home to the house boxes and spends the evening staring at the television boxes for entertainment. They get their music from a box, they get their food from a box, they keep their clothing in a box, they live their lives in a box.

Break out of the box!...This not the way humanity lived for thousands of years"

-Eustace Conway as quoted in The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert 

I am reading The Last American Man, by Elizabeth Gilbert. It has been thought-provoking and just provoking in general. I find myself having arguments with the man of which there can be no resolution, because, well, they are entirely in my head. 

 

The yoga sequence I taught this week moved in a circle and could be continued infinitely in easy, flowing circles. One side flowed into the other side, just like the seasons, the revolution of the Earth around the sun, and the other life cycles. Eustace and I have our quarrels, but I appreciate his inspiration for this sequence.

 

1. Begin with 10-15 minutes of gentle to more vigorous warm-ups
2. 6-12 Sun Salutations
3. Downward Dog
4. 3-legged dog, drawing circles with extended leg
5. 3-legged dog
6. 3x knee to nose, "Jack knife" position  
7. Place foot in between hands
8. Lunge
9. High lunge
10. High lunge twist
11. Chair twist
12. Chair
13. Chair twist on other side
14. High lunge twist
15. High lunge
16. Lunge
17. Knee to nose, 3x extending back and forth
18. 3-legged dog 
19. 3-legged dog, drawing circles with extended leg
20. Repeat steps 4-19 now with other leg

It's important to note that starting with 13, you're doing the reverse of the first sequence, but on the other side of the body. You even things out with step 20, where you repeat the "verse" and "reverse" on the other side. I teach this sequence doing steps 4-12 on both side first, then steps 12-19 on both sides, and then finally putting it all together. This sequence can be continued from side to side, continuing the circle.