WITH CREATIVE YOGA
Back in the early days of my teaching journey, I called my business Creative Yoga and it had a huge emphasis on connection and relationships. This area of interest was mainly generated due to my own frustrations. While attending classes I would be having these wonderfully expansive and wholesome experiences, so I would feel fantastic – and interconnected –with those around me. But then everyone would exit the class with barely a glance at the others they had shared the experience with! And this frustration was amplified by then often having to attend less ‘conscious’ events and activities as a way to meet others.
After all, life is all about relationships, our relationships with ourselves, with other people, and with the world around us. I’d find virtually all classes effective as a way of facilitating our relationship with self, and in some classes, the teacher may also reference our broader relationship with the world around us. But rarely was our relationship with other people – even those in the same class as you – referenced. You would think there would be more of a correspondence. Motivated by this, I instinctively set about to ‘be the change’, as they say. I set up specialist ‘social’ yoga classes, along with classes for singles and couples, featuring partner yoga, connection exercises, and humandala yoga (where all participants form one giant interconnected asana – great fun particularly with big groups!) And then we’d have a social gathering after class too. And it was great! So, we’re going to look at how you can use yoga as a way of strengthening your relationships. But firstly we’ll look at how it can help to strengthen your relationship with self, since these two things are irrevocably linked.
You can’t really escape amplifying your relationship with yourself during a class since it’s such a strong mirror for all your patterns and tendencies. We spend a lot of time with our attention outside of ourselves. But during a class, there is a transition in perception which heightens your awareness of your own faculties – how you are feeling emotionally, the raw physical sensations within the body, what you are thinking, and even that most subtle aspect of you, your connection to spirit. So you get the chance to become more attuned to your impulses and instincts and also to observe how well you are treating yourself, both in the moment of practicing, but also in the reflections that happen in the more meditative parts of the class (where of course we also have some quality time to reflect on how we are treating others too!).
Remember yoga is a practice, a practice for what you do off the mat for the rest of your life. How good are you at truly listening to your body sensations? For example, it can be a tendency to constantly push ourselves or to do what we think we should do rather than listen to how we are feeling, and this will show itself in your practice. And this is important, as understanding the nature of our own energy at any moment helps us discern whether we feel like being in a connection, or being alone. Sometimes we feel more Yang, outgoing, and sometimes more Yin, inward, and being aware of this (and that we undulate between these two polarities) allows us to communicate our needs better and more clearly to those around us.
Another effect of this sensitivity facilitated by practice is that we also get a more accurate perception of how we are actually feeling about someone, whether it’s a stranger or a lover. We place great emphasis on our visual perception, but being more aware of your body helps you feel on so many more levels, and gauge more accurately what feels like the right physical and emotional proximity with someone at the moment. You genuinely start to notice if your body and mind wants to open or close to the presence of the other. Yoga also helps us cultivate our ability to assert ourselves, and be receptive too, and both these dynamics are essential in relationships. Sometimes we need to express ourselves, and sometimes we need to let people in!
Asana practice allows us to explore this – some days you might feel really strong and assertive in a posture, other days you feel more receptive in it – even if it’s the same asana! But of course, we also have asanas that play with these dynamics, think Warrior compared with Svasana! Try it – can you be ‘receptive’ during practice, or are you always ‘trying’, tense, pushing? Observe how comfortable you are in the more ‘Yin’ receptive poses, and if you are someone who always likes to be ‘doing’, which can scupper our receptivity to life around us, I’d heartily recommend trying some slower-paced classes such as yin yoga which challenges you more to just ‘be’! This can be excellent practice for being more receptive to your partner.
Moving into the subtle realms, yoga of course works on the chakra system which helps clear stagnation from chakras which can negatively affect our perception. Whilst we all have unique shapes, forms, and individuality, to our energy body (which is also what contributes to our unique chemistry with other people) heavily congested chakras can create a filter and projections through which we see the world, which can be significantly tainted. Congested chakras can also inhibit our sensual capacity across the entire spectrum (dependent on the chakra function) from sexuality, sensuality, to heart connection, to our ability to communicate and have a more intuitive level of connection with our close relations.
So as we’ve already explored, while all yoga helps our sensual awareness and chakra function, you could also try various styles or asanas which can work more specifically, or consciously with chakra dynamics, depending on what you need. I’ve found Tantra yoga particularly helpful as the class narrative can really lean into exploring each chakra function and also help to create more of a transition and understanding between our sexual and intimate lives and our practice. That being said, all styles can focus on particular chakras, so depending on what you instinctively feel drawn towards it can be good to experiment with different classes – and then observe how those classes appear to affect the various chakra-related faculties within you. I notice for example, when I attend a Dru yoga class I can feel more expansive around my Heart, whereas other styles impact me differently.
Finally, it can be healthy for your relationships and intimate life to try practicing or attending some classes together – not necessarily all as of course you may attend some classes more with a focus on your relationship with self. Since yoga heightens sensual awareness, it can be good for your intimate life to spend time together
after class when you have a greater sense of appreciation for the simple pleasure of connection and the subtle chemistry across body, mind and spirit.
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