AIR December Anatomy + Physiology, The Subtle Body

Week FIVE Physical
Session 1: Bones and Joints
Session 2: Spine
Session 3: Hips/Legs and Shoulders/Arms
Session 4: Nervous System

Week SIX Poetic
Session 1: Energy Body and Koshas
Session 2: Nadis and Chakras
Session 3: Breath and Bandhas
Session 4: Gut, Heart, Brain

Week SEVEN Practical
Session 1: Issues
Session 2: Foundations: Feet and Knees
Session 3: Hips/Sacrum
Session 4: Psoas/Lumbar Spine
Session 5: Shoulders and Neck

Week EIGHT Solstice Ceremony

MetaAnatomy by Kristin Leal*

A Note

The month of December is a month where businesses are doing what they can to sell before the end of the year and the next quarter begins. Commercialism is at a high, religious and cultural holidays of many kinds fill the atmosphere with emotion, and yet Nature begins to gently settle in with a metaphorical good book and cozy blanket. 

A significant intention of this program is to honor the natural rhythm of Nature, employing the chakra centers to map out a pathway of transformation that follows an intuitive cyclical flow honoring a non-linear pathway. Though Yoga is a discipline and practice that influences one’s path, teaching yoga is not a pathway of control and as such, neither is this program. As teachers our primary tasks include presence, acceptance and adaptability infused with extending gentle invitations again and again. 

In the second 4 weeks of Level II Leadership we honor air, the heart and the final days of darkness before the light begins to return at the solstice. 

This month, we curl up with a good (Physical and Energetic Anatomy) book, we take time to celebrate all that we have accomplished so far and we nurture and take good care of our hearts and bodies through daily discipline and practice. 

Throughout this month, reading will be supplemented with DIY study of asana minutia, the ways in which asana affect the muscular/skeletal, nervous, circulatory/respiratory, digestive and endocrine systems, and ways to remain stable and safe within asana while acknowledging contraindications and limitations by providing modifications. 

We will return to the chakra system and explore the subtle body, more deeply engaging with the magical mind/body/spirit connection.

Please be prepared for introversion and self-study (in the book and via videos online).
Please be prepared to bring your questions to our weekly calls, and to get practical experience teaching with your partner/pod in our Saturday sessions. Geneva and email will be available for real time engagement as well. 

Take time to calm, center and prepare for what’s to come. 

All my Love,
Kat

intention

My intention over the next seven days is to consciously cultivate an understanding of
the magnificence of the human body via MetaAnatomy and Practice

practice

Practice daily. Use your daily practice this week to cultivate love and connection. Enjoy the Sacred Preparation HEART playlist. We are working with the third chakra Anahata. The practice theme for this month is Balance. See the Virtual Class Studio or Live Class Recordings.

meditation

Practice daily for 3-11 minutes. Use your meditation this week to prepare your will, intention, and actions for growth.

coursework

reading and physical practices (see the platform)

READING

books: Ch. 1-7 in MetaAnatomy

journal

Mind dump your thoughts. Process, receive the lessons, and keep going.

on geneva

Share love, positive insights, and ah-ha moments.

AIR December Anatomy + Physiology, The Subtle Body
Week FIVE Physical

Session 1: Chapter 1: Bones

Session 2: Chapter 2: Joints

Session 3: Chapter 3: Spine

Session 4: Chapter 4: Hips/Legs

Session 5: Chapter 5: Shoulders + Arms

Session 6: Chapter 6: Nervous System

Call Notes
Prep
How important is Anatomy + Physiology to you?
Watch TedTalk

Call Flow
11:30-11:15 am (15min) Opening: Why MetaAnatomy
11:45-12:15pm (30min) Talk Topics: Presence within the pose
12:15-1245pm (30 min) Forum
12:45-1pm (15min) Closing

This week
Objectives/goals:

• to recognize that there is wide variety in the human body and presence within the pose is most important

• to get to know the spine and it possibility for movement and space

• to understand that anatomical uniqueness is the norm

• to understand homeostasis, the spectrum of the SNS / PNS and Create / Restore vrs. flight-flight / rest-digest

Learning about: Bones + Joints, Spine, Hip/Legs + Shoulders/Arms, and the Nervous System
Journal: take time to reflect
Reading: Chapter 1-7 in MetaAnatomy

• Chapter 1: skeleton, planes of movement

• Chapter 2: joints, ligaments, muscles, fascia

• Chapter 3: vertebrae, muscles of the torso, spectrum of variety between binaries

• Chapter 4: pelvis, bones, foundation (feet/arches), muscles and bones of hips

• Chapter 5: shoulders, arms, wrists and hands
  + Key bones of hatha yoga, Key muscles of hatha yoga, Core asana

• Chapter 6: CNS, PNS, somatic, enteric, SNS, PSNS stress + orange alert

• Chapter 7: Sutras 1:1, 2:1, 2:46

Coursework: read and apply what you are learning to your practice
Geneva: Share love, positive insights, and ah-ha moments as they apply to life and to what you are learning in YTT

Opening: Why MetaAnatomy
I love this book because it gives you everything you need and none of what you don’t.
I also love that it excites my feelings about how magnificent the human body is - how well designed, how beautiful, how detailed and also how different every body is, even within a lifetime.
I also love how she consistently returns us back to the why. Its not so much about anatomy and physiology, it's about making connections, increasing awareness and self-understanding, making space for variety. Celebrating the pursuit of embodiment and ultimately presence.

Presence within the pose
Let's talk about presence within the pose.
Presence within the pose is the indescribably feeling and joy of moving from darkness to light. There is so so much pulling at our attention all the time - externally, but also internally. Let the words you use when communicating with your students provide them with a few of the details needed to make the shape and then the space to feel, breathe, and experience with the shape, the moment they are in. 

We started the fire last month, this month we get to sit by the fire - reading, reflecting, integrating. The focus this month is on anatomy and physiology - the physical, the poetic or subtle, and the practical.

Next month we begin the next level; Spaceship - expansion! Speaking, Seeing, Sharing. Developing your voice, your voice, cultivating a vortex to attract your people - the ones that have been waiting for you to share yoga with them. To get there, you need to go through the heart. The heart is the bridge between the lower chakras and higher chakras. It is the bridge between the body, mind and soul. The clearest communication comes from the heart and I don’t just need this poetically or esoterically. Physically, it comes from the heart, lungs, how we breath and then in how and what we say. 

Ted Talk - How to Speak so People with Listen, Julian Treasure - he outlines what he calls the 7 Deadly Sins of Speaking and 4 Cornerstones of Speaking so that the important things we have to say that can change the world will be heard. 

One of the most valuable bits of advice I’ve received on teaching .. keep the opening brief but potent. Disperse “why” throughout the class. Make eye contact, talk slowly and really listen to what you are saying - as if the words from your mouth are traveling to them and landing in their hearts. A really important piece to this is connecting to your own heart.

YOU are the instrument. You are a vessel. You are the bridge. And what you do or say may have a profound and lasting impact on someone. And that isn’t for us to know really. Our task is to do the work, do our best, and then step back.

In that TedTalk, Julian Treasure shares about the tools of speaking. 

The tools are:
Register - where are you speaking from, speak from the heart
Timbir  - research shows a preference for a rich, smooth, warm voice - like hot chocolate
We don’t want to talk from a stressed place, all up here. We want to speak from here. Not a “yoga teacher voice” but in your voice, but smooth and intentional, mindful. 
Prosody - sign song quality, cadence, rhythm, timing - monotone - no prosody, questions at the end - lots prosody. Major when teaching yoga.
Pace
Silence !!!!
Pitch
Volume
Broadcasting
You can watch the video

So that brings me to self-study and leading yourself.

Self-study
Your voice is a pathway to practice self-study. Listening to yourself, watching yourself like in those videos, are all a way to study yourself. We don't need to dip into narcissism and honestly most of the people who practice with you are there for themself, for their practice and what an honor it is to witness their practice, to be part of it, to influence in a positive way, to guide. And also, to change, to grow and evolve.

side note: Bill Plotkin wrote a book called Nature and the Human Soul - its a big thick book. He writes about different stages of development of the human soul along a soul-centric (not egocentric path). I recommend it. We live in an ego-centric culture. It is refreshing and powerful to live soul-centrically. This practice gives a tools, or tools, to do this. 

Depending on your personality, you will have different level of comfort with this - self-study.
We will always have blind spots about who we are - we can t see our own face, the image in the mirror is a reflection, we are reflections of each other.

Leading yourself
Leading yourself goes back to those qualities - those 4 cornerstones of communication:
Honesty
Authenticity
Integrity
Love
You focus on those, you are good.
Keep working with the same format Keep working with the same practice for a while. Get really good at teaching one class and then play with the arrangement of that. You will improve with that method. 

Forum:
How important is anatomy to you? I ask because this will influence how you teach. Ideally, your classes are balanced with good clear anatomically cues, inspiration and space. But, you may be drawn to a more physical practice or maybe a more spiritual practice, or something that is very practical. We’ll start our conversation with that .. and then speak your mind. (3 minute shares). 

1st Saturday Clinic - 9am-1pm
Date: 12.7.24 (within Level 2 Week 5)

Consent
Touch has been abused.
Touch is intimate.
Humans need touch to thrive.
People are more disconnected than ever.
Touch is critical for well being.
Hands on for me has been powerful and supportive and so lovely because I have had skilled teachers.
Well, what kind of touch?

Effective consent
May I
and where and how and why
Be attentive to body language - some may people please and say yes when they don’t mean it. 
Be attentive to tone.
On-going, staying in dialog - don’t assume just because you’ve received consent that you have consent. 
Not corrective - people are not problems to be solved
Nervous system care
Directional touch or Massage, sweet or nurturing/nourishing touch

-To help them go somewhere that they don’t know how to get to, to give them a vision, a map, a route and imprinting it in the imagination and muscle memory - to organize

Resonance
The space between us is alive.

Process
Take students thru / show adjustments
Have one student do all adjustments - with a partner and with the group

Tadasana pg.6
Touchpoints on:
Sacrum and Sternum, Crown of the head
Shoulders: hands to relax or soften shoulders

Utkatasana/Chair p.15
Same as with tadasana shoulders: hands to relax or soften shoulders

To deepen your personal understanding of the pose:
Measures: feet
Chair with block between legs

Ado Mukha Svanasana/Downward Facing Dog: pg. 28
Sacrum: via the sacrum to guide lengthen the spine
For One-legged(or 3 legged) dog: shoe, side body opening

To deepen your personal understanding of the pose
Measures: hands and feet
Strapped arms

Chaturanga pg. 30
Belly: hand to belly to encourage core engagement
Hands under shoulder: to discourage dipping to low

To deepen your personal understanding of the pose
Blocks: under thighs and sternum
Strapped arms

Bhugangasana/Cobra pg. 33
open upper body and ground lower body simultaneously. To do this sit (gently) on calves to ground and/or guide shoulders to encourage the expansion and opening of the front of the collar bones 

Urdhva Mukha Svanasana/Upward Facing Dog pg. 35
Same as with cobra 

To deepen your personal understanding of the pose
Blocks: under thighs
Strapped arms

Warrior 2 pg. 48
press point: same as with tadasana and utkatasana, shoulders: hands to relax or soften shoulders, finger tips to encourage extending the arms

Extended side angle 
belly/heart towards the sky
head of the arm bone/neck support

To deepen your personal understanding of the pose
Block: behind foot, next foot (inside or outside)

Trikonasana pg. 41
foot to hip to lengthen side body and spine
hand to hip, head support

To deepen your personal understanding of the pose
Block: behind foot, next foot (inside or outside)

Ardha Chandrasana/Half-Moon: 
to provide support: hip to hip hands on leg and shoulder

Warrior 1 pg. 45
knee to 90

Pyramid
level and pull hips back

Handstand
Hips
Legs
Feet
Fist between calves and squeeze fist 

Child's pose pg. 3
press points: sacrum, cross-diagonal shoulders, and neck

Healing savasana partner and body work
Bodha Konasana: back to back
Forward Fold: back to back
Child’s pose 
Savasana support