When asked to write about what the following styles of yoga and practices had in common, the suggestion on the table was to consider them as “softer” styles. I immediately recalled some of my experiences of restorative yoga and Scaravelli, and I really couldn’t say it was softer! Intense and inward, yes. Reflective, somatic and at times confronting, yes. Deeply transforming, yes. Softer, er…sometimes, but as an end result rather than a direct experience of the style, so for me not quite a unifying description. So what links them together? Should they even be linked together!?
In writing about Scaravelli, my good friend and fellow teacher Catherine Annis described this style of practice as ‘less is more’. When I heard that I thought to myself, “Yes, that’s it.” This could be a common thread for restorative yoga, yin yoga, yoga gently, yoga nidra, Scaravelli, Feldenkrais, Inner Axis (Max’s Strom’s yoga inspired method) and TRE (Tension + Trauma Releasing Exercises) all of which are particular styles offered at triyoga.
Less is more.
So how does this common axiom embody these styles and how does it relate to yoga?
It’s easy to say that modern life is full to the brim with activity, movement and the doing of things, certainly such that we experience stress – a great deal of it. It could also be said that modern yoga can provide a direct ‘intervention’ into this frenzy of doing – a way to pause, reflect + connect to something more than the ‘doing’ of life. Perhaps we could even go farther and say that yoga can offer insight and the means to enquire into the nature of self + being harkening back to traditional yoga practice.
To embark upon this type endeavour requires slowing down and becoming present and still enough to perceive what is actually there. The history of yoga practice has much to do with this aspect of refining perception and awareness – to the extent that one is able to penetrate into the nature of reality itself.
Consider this verse from the Spanda Kārikā II 2.4 an essential Śaiva philosophy from around the 10th century (translated by Hareesh Wallis): The state that is not Shiva does not exist in word, thing, or thought. Shiva is everywhere and at all times established as the Experiencer, in the form of felt-sense of whatever is experienced.
In this verse Shiva represents the state of unified awareness and refers to Divine Consciousness or the Highest Reality; it translates to mean auspicious blessings. When we slow things down enough to feel, and allow a spaciousness that is the essence of being to become full experience, then things start to happen that move the soul.
It’s easy to get caught up in the movement of activity and become blind to the presence and beauty of pure being – the Shiva state referred to above. The mind seems to demand/need outward stimulation. But to be able to dive deep into one’s inner world and sensation as this verse suggests, can open up a whole new line of enquiry that brings the moment alive with awareness of what it means to be truly human ‘Being’.
Combine this with the power of the breath, the subtle scaffolding for all styles of yoga present and past, and an emerging power of awareness opens up our relationship with time, place and other. An emerging pattern of unity reveals itself and we can enter into a new paradigm of interconnection.
Less is more…
…opens a doorway into the fullness of experience that characterises the “yoking” that yoga promises – that powerful coming together of perception where subject, object and the act of perception itself merge into a state of pure being. Other styles of yoga practice may result in this experience, and…these particular styles embody a slow, spacious approach that allows for honest, felt sensation that provokes revelation.
Join Anna Ashby + Nikki Slade for their easter urban retreat on April 2nd. For more information click here.
Anna teaches at triyoga on the following days:
triyoga Camden
— Sundays at 5.45-7.15pm and 7.30-8.45pm
— Mondays at 12.30-1.45pm
— Tuesdays at 12.30-1pm
triyoga Shoreditch
— Mondays at 5.45-7.15pm and 7.30-8.45pm
triyoga Soho
— Tuesdays at 5.30-7pm
