Yoga.BodyTorque -
Transforming the Spine
Researching the practice of yoga and
its impact on the experience of scoliosis
Unlock your spine! Recover joyous mobility. Find grace, ease, fluidity and pleasure in your posture and movement. Enjoy rich full liberated breath.
Coming soon; you can visit http://yogabodytorque.googlepages.com for information and services on yoga, movement and scoliosis
We all inhabit a spiral terrain, from our DNA, the gently spiraling structure of our bones; the galaxy we swirl within.
None of us is truly symmetrical.
Our spines echo this template.
The physicality of a “scoliosis” affects not only the bones and muscles of our architecture, but our connective tissue, our organs, how we read space; our balance. How we choose to move.
The path of my spine is circuitious; I practice, dance, live, within a once nearly 50 degree (now 40 degree) thoracic scoliosis. This experience has engendered a line of inquiry in my yoga and dance/movement practice pertinent to this particular landscape. Its constraints. Its challenges. Its opportunities.
Always within the centrality of my spine I am constantly searching for the delicious and liberating sensation of l-e-n-g-t-h, and for an unravelling,a de-rotation . Building a strength which supports appropriately rather than rigidifies. Creating space within the conversation of spine, of hips, of shoulders, ribs and sternum. Finding an invitation for otherwise compromised lungs to unfurl and for heart muscle, chambers, great vessels to expand. Restriction released. Re-instating the inherent freedom of movement and expression of the curving, arcing river of my spine.
I am formally trained in the Iyengar method of yoga. This form of yoga is known, among other things, for its sensitivity and attention to anatomical alignment and to precision; a doorway to penetration of otherwise dull areas of the body in both ones awareness and in the ability of that area to engage. Working simply, refining the details, paying attention to the interplay of feet, long bones and streaming muscles of the lower limbs, lengthening away from, liberating and uncoiling the spine.
As an anatomist and trained dancer, I find myself immersed in the shifting landscape of these sensations; imaging structures in ways that bring the fabric of my being to life; accessing movement in what I can describe as a process of “experiential anatomy”. Many of these processes are informed by the work of Body Mind Centering; much of my own work seeks to integrate these processes in a way which acknowledges the echo of the land with our physicality - an “embodied ecology”.
Further integral to the practice of yoga in the Iyengar method, is the employment of “props”; particular equipment utilized to facilitate access to an asana (position). Props can be employed in a manner to support the body when we are fatigued, in need of repose or in recovery. In this manner, the judicious use of particular props can lift and open my chest in a manner that makes the simple act of breathing a pleasure; rich, deep, full of expansive movement that reverberates through my structure. It is the use of props explored as an extension of the body, illuminating a clearer intention or direction of the pose, that I have found invaluable in creating great change and freedom within my interior body. In this manner partial poses can be worked in the inquiry toward an element of a particular asana; eg a lengthening of a concave side of a scoliosis. Human developmental movement processes and the ways in which these source and support movement further inform this inquiry.
My practice is a continual activity of exploration within this terrain. On the days I short change myself and do not practice, I know it. It feels as if there is less space in my body; less space to breathe, to turn my body around as I reverse my car out of the driveway; my spine all moving down on itself, hips all tight and grabbed. Its as if the resonance of my breath, my internal waterways don’t have clear channels through which to flow. Which they don’t. Space impeded.
We are made to move. It is not for nothing that we have joints; delicious spaces between bones. And the means to move them. And the ensuing joy, play and delight as we do so. Chose so.
The topography of each scoliosis is unique. Together we explore asana supported by props (equipment) and imagery/metaphor processes in yoga sessions that engage your inquiry into you own experience of change within your spine.
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Individual sessions are also available as single sessions or blocks of 4 sessions.
Contact Narelle to enquire
For more info on Scoliosis you can visit Scoliosis Association of Australia www.scoliosis.org.au