Yoga masterclass is designed to help both teachers and students understand and incorporate some of the finer nuances of yoga into their practices. This class is dedicated to the grounding energy of the earth and how to use it.
What Does it Mean to be Grounded?
- Physically it has to do with how the body roots itself to the earth. Our relationship to the force of gravity should be a symbiotic one, and not a constant battle to say upright.
- Mentally and emotionally, being grounded speaks to the idea of staying calm in the midst of a storm. Allowing your emotions or thoughts to run wild can pull you into an eventual breakdown, and lead to long lasting, possibly irreversible conditions.
- Energetic grounding has to do with the way our energy bodies magnetize to the physical body. We hold a charge, much like a battery. The positively charged ions come from the oxygen we breathe, and the negatively charged particles come from the prana, or life force we absorb through air and food. Our physical body is positive and our energy body is negative. Sometimes certain things pull the two apart, and this is very disturbing to our entire organism.
Yoga practice is meant to bring a soothing balance to all these grounding forces. Mental awareness is grounded through focusing on meditative actions, moving or still. Physical grounding happens during asana practice, as the aspirant learns to increase sensational awareness of the body. Energetic grounding occurs as the pranayama, or breath-work, fuels the body with magnetizing energy and firmly seals the two bodies together.
For the Teacher
As a teacher of yoga, you are responsible for providing an environment for grounding to happen. This begins by offering your class is a space that is peaceful and free from negative energetic influences. Candles and soft music help. This is why hard rock or dance beat music, which is very popular in modern classes, can actually hurt the student more than help them. Have the students enter each class with resting or sitting in a calm manner, and always begin the class with the breath.
Learn to recognize the students that come to class with excess vata…always chatting and sometimes disturbing the others in class that wish to relax a bit before starting their practice. Try to keep the students mindful of calming themselves at the beginning of class.
Provide moments of contemplation between poses. This gives the students a chance to feel what is happening from the asanas, and grounds the mental and physical energies into the flesh.
Make sure that you, as the teacher, are grounded. One of the best ways to feel and be grounded is to be around grounded people. If you are a highly strung teacher, then your students may emulate that.
For the Student
There is no need to rush through asanas to try to keep up with a vinyasas that may be moving faster that you are accustomed to. Losing a deep and balanced breath during the practice is a sign that you might be better off in another style of yoga. It is important that you really feel your body, each joint and muscle, as you move through the postures. Why go to yoga if you are going to practice without mindfulness?
Learn to spread your toes and fingers when they are in contact with the ground. This will pull earth energy into your body and give you the strength to push yourself away from the pull of gravity.
Gravity Scan
Start to create a spatial awareness of your spinal column in relation to gravity. Feel the downward pull of gravity against your tailbone, whether you are sitting or standing. Then give the spine an equal and opposite force, using the gravity on the bottom, and lifting and rising through the spine one vertebra at a time. This will release tensions in the nervous system, and help to free the energetic pathway so that kundalini can move upward in an attempt at spiritual liberation.
Originally published on Oct 31, 2011
