In a community yoga class, how do we find that sweet spot where we are warmly connected to the group and still respect ourselves?
When I teach a yoga class, I encourage students to listen to their bodies and offer them validation.
My instructions intend to create our group’s baseline, theme, and structure. However, I invite students to follow that structure while simultaneously being fluid in meeting their needs. To pause when needed or to modify to find their best fit.
But how do we match someone’s energy and still be truthful and caring for our own?
In every single moment, we need to dance. The dance of life is also manifested in being and in yoga. The radical awareness of the circle of belonging and the validation of our inner senses require a revolution of dancing. Just like music, it creates all its elements: harmony, rhythm, and melody to find joy, sweetness, and presence.
Listening to your body does not mean creating a boot camp on your mat while the rest pauses. Practicing presence and mindfulness is our resource to build that capacity of finding the middle and to dance with this feeling, this encounter.
A holistic experience is when there are resonance and coherent waves. In your individuality, you are a source of light, and if your light gets some synchronicity with mine, our collective energy is profoundly more powerful.
Creating exceptionally incoherent patterns or chaotic energies would be too much to process and digest in a group setting. And consequently, the dissonance, would diminish the healing fluid of community.
Therefore, while we dance and pay attention to everyone, we respect collectiveness and do not sacrifice our own needs. We stand for our individuality fluidly and like poetry. And in this process, which is endless, we find renewal.
t. lopez
