Meditation in Movement
By Corey Ann | October 17, 2009
Second day, 5 hours, check.
My sacrum hurts. Seriously, ya’ll. I think it’s because I sat for 2 hours on cold, hard ground with no cushion last Sunday. And all we do in class right now is SIT on our yoga mats. I was the young child in class, consistently moving around, laying down, sitting on my blanket, leaning against the wall. Most of the other students were sitting cross legged straight up. I can barely do that for 5 min, let alone 5 hours. Sheesh! But seriously, my sacrum hurts.
Sacrum comes means “sacred” in Latin. (big jump there, eh?) So the most sacred part of my body hurts. Ow. Granted, I do not consider the sacrum to be the most sacred part of my body. But our teacher did challenge us to think about what we consider the most sacred part, and what we consider the “center” of our body.
Class was good today. The first half was all about anatomy and hips and legs and foundation and muscular structure. I took 4 pages of notes. Fantastical. We talked about why we even do asanas (poses) in the first place. “Stillness of the mind” was the general response - doing active poses allows us to still our mind. If you told me to sit still and clear my mind, my mind would go crazy. It would not be clear. But doing poses allows my mind to practice focusing on my body and on the present and eventually helps me move to a place where I could sit, be still, and clear my mind. Stepping stones, if you will.
So that’s how we got to the idea that yoga is “meditation in movement.” Me gusta mucho.
The second half of the day was spent on philosophy and breathing. In all honesty I was much more interested in the first half of the day, but that is my challenge, and I am working on it. 
She did introduce a cool concept called “Kaivalyam” which means - freedom or liberation from connectedness to materials. Our teacher talked about the concept at first meaning “alone” or “liberation in aloneness” which is something I am definitely connecting with right now. In fact, my liberation in aloneness is what is providing the time/option/ability to do the teacher training. If I had more connections to the material world I would probably not have done the training.
Also, today we learned that the correct pronunciation of the word “yoga” is actually “yog.” This is throwing me for a loop. In all of yoga (think: yog) the “a” at the end of words is silent. So Tadasana (ta-dah-sa-na) is actually pronounced ta-dah-san. This is the correct way to prounounce the sanskrit words.
Tomorrow class is from 9am-2pm. More updates to follow. Lovelove.
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2 Responses to “Meditation in Movement”
Comments
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October 18th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Long O or short O? Does is rhyme with “dog” or does it sound like yoga without the “a”? Very interesting…
October 18th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Jessi- Yes it’s just like “yoga” without the “ah” sound. So, not like dog. Crazy, right?!