ANNA BLUMAN
BREATH STABILITY MOBILITY AWARENESS
VINYASA FLOW YOGA
Class structure
Anna structures her classes with enough repetition so you experience progress, but also variation, so you continue to be challenged. Her sequences work in layers that slowly build in intensity. These layers contain structure, space and freedom to explore. Biomechanically preparing your muscles, joints, connective tissue and nervous system, so that the physical challenges are both safe and available.
Choreographed waves, pulses and flows take you on a playful journey of exploration, inviting you to enquire into the possibility of arriving more deeply in your body and to notice the sensations as they arise.
What is Vinyasa Flow Yoga
Vinyasa flow is a relatively new style of yoga practice that has come out of the Ashtanga Vinyasa School but doesn't stick to a rigid form of movements.
Vinyasa means to place in a special way. It is any movement that is synchronised with the breath. A sun salutation is probably the most well known dynamic sequence of vinyasa movements. It is interesting to know that sun salutations are a fairly recent invention, probably originating from a combination of army drill calisthenic movements in the 1930's, rather than being an ancient practice.
Any movement can be a vinyasa as long as it is synchronised with the breath - raise you arm up slowly as you inhale, lower your arm down slowly as you exhale.
What is Yoga?
Yoga is a practice with physical, mental and emotional benefits. Though we've come to think of just the physical practice as yoga, this is just one aspect of a much larger subject.
Modern urban living is a tough existance. Our nervous systems are continuously bombarded with stress and over stimulation, but we have outsourced most of our natural movement to the convenience of sitting in cars and sitting in chairs. This sedentary yet stressful lifesyle encourages us to ignore our bodily needs and leaves us feeling disconnected, disembodied and often unwell.
It is obvious but it needs saying. Our bodies didn't evolve over many thousands of years to sit in chairs staring at a screen for hours and hours!
Common symptoms include; insomnia, headaches, anxiety, panic attacks, back pain, neck and shoulder pain, hip pain, weak, tight immobile muscles, sticky tight connective tissue and a general sense of not feeling well.
The physical practice of yoga can help. The combination of breath led movements soothe and calm your nervous system, bringing about a state of rest and repair.
Going back a thousand or even just a hundred years ago, our lives were much more active than they are today. So it made sense that yoga in ancient times mostly involved sitting postures. A yoga practice needs to re-address the imbalances of life, so now our lives involve a lot of sitting, it is important that our yoga practice contains movement. It is also why the very dynamic forms of yoga like Ashtanga and Hot Power Yoga are so popular.
The physical shapes (asana) that we make when we practice transform the disconnected relationship we have with our bodies.
Clarifying the fundamentals
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Breath
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Stability
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Mobility
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Awareness
Many of the images of yoga we see in the media, and advertising would have us believe yoga is just for skinny white uber flexible women. The folk at the Yoga and Body Image Coalition are doing a fabulous job of changing this misperception of who can practice yoga
Anyone can do yoga - Every age, race and ethnicity, every class and socioeconomic status, every gender identity and sexual orientation, every size, shape, height weight and dis/ability.
All you need is a body, and you can do yoga.
Who can practice Yoga?
Breath
Your breath is your connection to life Without your breath everything stops.
In our often busy lives, interacting with the world, talking and general stimulation causes us to periodically hold our breath, and this in turn creates a continuous series of stresses to our nervous system.
Your yoga practice reminds you to tune back in to the rhythm of your breath, which in turn calms and soothes your nervous system, bringing about a deep state of rest and repair. By reconnecting with your breath you reconnect with your body and to the present moment, and to what is actually happening.
It is this simple but profound connection with your breath that is where the yoga happens.
Your stability is greatly increased by actively connecting to your foundation. Whatever connects you to the ground; Your feet, hands, fingers, toes, shins, sit bones etc. So that your deep stabilising muscles are actively engaged.
It is important to find a balance of both stability and mobility
When you mobilise with an awareness of your breath and with an awareness of your foundation, you re-awaken a different quality of movement.
Stability
Mobility
Mobility & Range of Motion - vs Stretching & flexibility
The science of how our bodies work is constantly being researched and updated. We now know that it is our nervous system rather than the physical length of our muscles or connective tissue, that control our range of motion.
Flexibility is often misunderstood and overated. Our ligaments keep our joints in place, rather like a seatbelt. Our tendons attach our muscles to our bones and these need to be remain "stiff" to keep them strong and functioning well.
Generally we want to stabilise where we're too mobile and find more mobility where we lack range of movement.
Read more about the science of stretching on Jules Mitchell's brilliant blog
Awareness
"The practice is not in the asana but in the awareness" Julie Martin
By bringing awareness to all of these fundamental qualities. Reconnecting with your breath, reconnecting with your foundation, reconnecting with the quality of your movement, you reconnect with yourself, you arrive back in your body, in the present moment. Letting go of the need to know what is coming next, and the anxiety that often accompanies that need.
This is what differentiates yoga from just exercise. It is also why this style of yoga practice feels so transformational.