It’s just after Valentines Day, and I got two bouquets of flowers. One from my husband, and one from Sadie Nardini. That’s me. While at the flower store, ordering a nice bunch of orchids to honor the longest-term relationship I’ve ever had—with myself, I noticed that many people were more focused on what to get or do for their significant others, or what they were getting done for them, than how to celebrate their own selves. In fact, out of the 20 or so other people who were there, not one of them were wrapping up blooms from them, to them. When they found out I was, it was like a kitten had popped out of my jacket pocket. Ohmigosh–Thats SO cute!, they said, eyes wide with the sheer quaintness of it all. It struck me then, how weighted we can get towards our external offerings and relationships. It’s more rare indeed to see someone taking themselves out for dinner, and choosing the nice restaurant over the quick fix, or taking the time to appreciate themselves with a love letter, a kind remark or even the simple beauty of flowers. I’d like to see this trend reverse. I began turning it around personally a few years back when I realized I was speaking to, feeding and loving myself abysmally. If I was dating me, I would have been well on the road to a break-up or a breakdown. It’s the same with yoga. When I say I teach Core Strength Vinyasa Yoga, people usually point to their bellies and say, “Yeah, I need some of that!” or “My roommate does Pilates!” As we progress in our practice here in the West, I see many students and teachers are beginning to get so outer-body strong that they have begun to freeze themselves out of the deeper power that lies in their internal core. I was one of them, until my too-tight abs and back muscles began compressing my spine and causing me pain. I knew I had to find some length, and let go of my ego-driven tendency to want to get into the advanced poses at all costs. It’s easy to get externally-focused, and use the outer body too strongly in the asanas, which can harden it into tension or put added strain on the joints, instead of using our outer selves in balance to support a much more profound inner strength. It’s not serving us to practice with a focus on our external bodies only if we want our yoga practice to be a balance of Sthira-Sukha, or stability and mobility. There are a whole lot of things the core is, and one thing its not: just the abdominal muscles. Your spine and pelvis, taking in Prana (life energy), your inward attention, and the muscles that support your skeleton all comprise my idea of the deeper core connection we can each make happen more profoundly in yoga and in our lives. In my teaching, I focus on our Deep Core Line, or the series of muscles that line your legs, pelvis, spine and skull, and I invite students to release any death grip on the poses, and instead focus on a softer strength at the level of the superficial body (Think Rodney Yee’s abs vs. the cover of Muscle Magazine) in order to access the support at true center. This experience of diving inside has a bunch of happy side effects, including empowerment, self-centering, and the ability to rock your Handstand much sooner than if you try to just power into it. In my view, the abdominal muscles should serve the underlying structural strength, not the other way around. When you can move your poses from the outside in, some of the pockets of tension found at the legs, hips and lower back, shoulders and neck will start to dissolve as your inner takes over for the outer, and they both begin to move back into harmony. Best of all, when you move from center as your practice on the mat, you’ll begin to experience vijnana-maya-kosha, a state of all-pervading recognition that who you are is strong, capable, and worth nourishing on all levels. And one day, I’ll be in the flower store, peering into the case to see what Sadie might like best of all, and someone will say “pardon”, and reach past me to grab their favorite tulips. I’m betting it will be you. Core Questions: Where are you on the journey to cultivate your inner relationship as much as your outer ones? And how do you practice this in your yoga poses? Do you think it’s harder to give in than give out? Core Pose: To try moving from your inner body: Next time you’re doing handstand preparations, no matter how low or high you’re hopping now, keep your top leg straight but bend your bottom knee into your chest as you lightly jump. As you kick, pretend you have a golden egg at the pit of your belly, which you’ll squeeze around as you exhale. This will bypass the tendency of your lower back to arch and take the pelvis out of alignment. It will activate your low belly and still let you practice pulling the stacked hips up with the squeeze of your deeper pelvic muscles.
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What’s Your Core Strength?