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 poetic practices (see the platform)

READING

books: Ch. 8-14 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 SIX Poetic

Session 1 - Chapter 8 + 9 : Energy Body + Koshas

Session 2 - Chapter 10: Nadis + Chakras

Session 3 - Chapter 11: Breath + Bandhas

Session 4 - Chapter 12 - 14: Heart, Gut, Brain

Call Notes
                                                                                                                                                                                                 Call Flow
11:30 - 11:45 am (15min) Openings
11:45 - 12:15 pm (30 min) Talk Topics: Subtle Body: Koshas, Vayus, Nadis
12:15 - 12:45 pm (30 min) Forum
What is your experience with the Subtle Body within your own physical body?At what layer - physical, pranic, mind, intuitive, soul do you experience stickiness and flow respectively? 
Give + Receive feedback 
12:45 - 1:00 pm (15min) Questions and Closings

Housekeeping: Our last call of the year and level is scheduled for next Friday, Dec 22 and then we break until Jan 5.

Openings: quote from Marshall Rosenburg

“To give a gift of one’s own self is a manifestation of love. It is when you reveal yourself (nakedly and honestly), at any given moment, for no other purpose than as a gift of what’s alive in you. Not to blame, criticize, or punish, just “here I am, and here is what I would like,” This is my vulnerability at this moment. To me, that is a way of manifesting love.” 

Subtle Body
I am absolutely enamored with the human body - the intelligence, complexity, the way it all works together and I am equally if not more so enamored with the subtle body. I think the reason for that is it takes the thinking about myself - which I do maybe a bit more because I'm a 4, or its my personality or my nature, the hard-wiring and everything that influences my focus and directs my attention less to what other people might think of me and that vanity and ego that comes along with that and it's more about what's happening inside. So it's a better use of my time than trying to think about how other people are thinking about me. Let me say that again - it's a better use of my time to focus inward. 

It's like this - looking into the human body and the subtle body is a lot like when I was young and I would sit on the beach and look out into the ocean or look up into the sky and consider the vastness of the universe and my little place in it and everything about me would just kind of relax and surrender into that vastness. The subtle body is like that. Working with the chakras is all subtle body work. For today, I want to touch on 3 things: koshas, vayus, nadis

Koshas
The koshas are layers of experience. The grossest/densest layer is the annamaya kosha - the physical body. Its everything chapter 1-6. The next sheath is the pranamayakosha. The pranamayakosha is all things prana, chi, energy, as well as electrochemicals in the body, sense stimulus and response. Its the level of energy. The chakras, vayus, nadis - the subtle body. Next is the level of mind - thought, feelings in the form of emotion, thinking, and thinking about thinking. Its unconscious, sub-conscious maybe conscious, mind. Its thought processes as well and also sense processes.  This is the manamayakosha. Next is the vjanamayakosha - its the wisdom body, higher intelligence, higher self, intuition; when the mind, body, breath are in sync. This is the level we access during meditation - wisdom,  witness consciousness or Pure Consciousness. Finally, the anandamayakosha - the bliss body or the “seed of bliss.”  The subtlest layer, the very thin and fine veil over your truest of true selves - your soul. In Kundalalini yoga, when we say Sat nam - “I am that” , that is what we are referring to. It's so subtle that words are not sufficient in describing it - it can only be experienced. It's where pure joy, freedom, and love are experienced. Here is where we experience the truth that we already have anything we need - our radiant soul and the bliss that comes from knowing it. The koshas are not separate, they are interwoven.

There are two more koshas … The final two layers comprise the ciftamaya kosha, the layer of consciousness that is connected to ultimate consciousness (mahat), and the innermost core, atmamaya kosha, the individual soul.

Vayus
Kristin Leal writes about the vayus in conjunction with the pranamaya kosha and since this month is the heart and the element of air I want to touch on each of these. We experienced the vayu when we did the 4 movements of breath with Cass.

Prana vayu is the animating force - it's in everything - it's the thing that gives everything movement. 
Samana vayu is movement inward to the center, it the energy of digestion and assimilation.
Vyana vayu is movement outward to the periphery, its the expansive circulation of energy.
Udana vaya is upward  energy, potential, its speech and self-expressing, its growth
Apana vaya is down and out, its release, elimination, stability

Nadis
There are lots. Nadis are tributaries of energy. 3 main nadis are Ida, Pingala, and Shasumna.
Ida is said to run along the left side of the body, it is the feminine, the PNS, the moon, lunar, chill
Pingala is said to run along the right side of the body, its the masculine, the SNS the sun, active, solar. The two weave together connecting at the chakras along the Central Channel, the Sushmna nadi; its the CNS, Its the channel fo shakti, agni, kundalini. We can balance these nadis with nadi shodana or with Chandra Bedana and Surya Bedana Pranayama. 

Forum
What is your experience with the Subtle Body within your own physical body?
At what layer - physical, pranic, mind, intuitive, soul  do you experience stickiness and flow respectively? 
(see pg.74-78 - the Koshas for reference)
I would also love to hear some reflective listening after some shares.  

Continue to engage with the Core Asana Guide

The Koshas: A Yogic Model of Embodiment from Shiva’s Thesis - pg. 11 of Level 1 articles
In the Taittririva-Upanishad, one of the oldest Upanishads (circa 800 B.C.), the body is presented as being composed of seven layers or sheaths known as koshas. This model of the koshas was incorporated into Tantra and Hatha yoga as a method of penetrating the core of the body. The seven koshas are from the outermost layer (annamaya kosha) to the innermost layer (atmamaya kosha). The annamaya kosha represents the gross body or anatomical layer, including the skin, muscle tissue, and bones. The next layer, the pranamaya kosha, is the beginning of the subtle body, and refers to the prana that circulates in the form of breath, blood, and cerebrospinal fluid. The manomaya kosha, the mental and emotional sheath that corresponds roughly to our nervous system, sends and receives signals throughout the body to create our mental and emotional life. The last four layers in the kosha model are even more subtle. The vijanamaya kosha is the wisdom body where insight and illumination occur. The anandamaya kosha is the body of bliss, in which the body is experienced as liberated energy. The final two layers comprise the ciftamaya kosha, the layer of consciousness that is connected to ultimate consciousness (mahat), and the innermost core, atmamaya kosha, the individual soul. Whether the kosha model is thought of as literal or metaphorical, it presents a model of different layers of embodiment and establishes the direction of yoga practice from the periphery to the core layers of the self. This model also implies an explanation of how awareness can become limited to a certain layer of the body while not necessarily negating the existence of the other layers. For instance, many people are aware of muscular-skeletal movements of their physical body (annamaya kosha) while having little awareness of their breath or circulation of blood or energy (pranamaya kosha) not to mention the subtler layers of the body. Within the subtle body however, Tantra yoga conceives of different pathways and energy centers which affect all layers of the body and all aspects of the human being.

from Katonah Yoga Restorative Practice by Abbie Galvin

1st Nature
Developing techniques requires a deliberate effort to disrupt our first impulses that occur without awareness. This is our first nature, that which is intrinsic to us without effort: how our heart beasts, how our lungs breathe, how our stomach processes food, or how we emotionally react.

Our first nature houses our DNA code, our prenatal chi, our potential to grow and learn, and our inherited quirks and virtues. We refer to our first nature as Lunar, magnetically pulled by habit or impulse. It is also our innocence and emotional flashes and urges. They are unconscious, innate, and sometimes/often unexplored. While personality traits are inherited, our behavior is not - that is the realm of our 2nd nature.

2nd Nature
Our second nature is the capacity to be conscious. How we learn techniques and skills to develop personal interest, appropriate behavior and competency. 

Our second nature is Solar, scholastic, with a purposeful aim towards participating well in the world. Through technique we can consciously change course. Yoga is a second nature game. It is a conscious undertaking. 

3rd Nature
Restorative yoga is a third nature experience, accessed from our two natures - that which is explicitly - obvious, what we see, use, and learn. Our third nature is thought, choice, meditation, insight, and imagination - connecting our personal experience with that of the cosmos - that which is not seen - implied. 

Our first nature is what we have inherited, our second nature is what we have learned, our third nature is what we do with it. 

4th Nature
Our fourth nature is ourselves, evolved. Our fourth nature is the integrated whole. 

Setting up conditions using our first and second natures is the act of learning the practice, showing up, following directions so that a state of being in the moment, present, having no distractions is made possible. The result of this doing is the capacity to be with oneself (the most aggravating part for most of us). 

Our third nature is the insight we glean, a new thought or feeling, or revelation from the deepest part of our soul and the highest part of our epiphanies. 

Our fourth nature is the gift we give ourselves, only achieved by conscious work and the investment of time. 

Restoration is not relaxation
Restoration is the work of returning something to its former state and relaxation is the state of freedom from tension and anxiety.

Our goal is reformation. 

The technique of restorative yoga is to embody formal forms whose geometry overtime allows for a therapeutic experience. 

This approach to restorative yoga is meant to reshape a stressed, uninformed, or broken body which helps set up the conditions to redirect a life.

Organizing the body and calming the mind is actually a lot of work - in this you are learning how to be with yourself which supports a conscientious journey. 

Breath
This breath technique connects the personal (you) with the universal (everything). 

On the inhalation imagine a golden thread from the cosmos descending down through the crown of your head, moving through the center of you to the center of the earth.

On the exhalation let the breath ascend from the bottom of your inhale through the center of you to the crown of your head. 

Imagine this golden thread up and down through your personal portal to your personal depths to the core of the planet.

As you inhale you are feeding yourself, filling yourself up.
As you exhale you are releasing unwanted thoughts or emotions that don’t serve you.

By focusing on your breath your mind stays present and your body stays organized. The longer you stay with the pose, with the count, with the continuity of the breath, the more you body is informed and infused with ease. 

Breath work is a dialog between your first nature - lungs that will fill and empty regardless of awareness and a heart that will pump without personal effort, and your second nature - engaging is conscious techniques of breath observation and manipulation. By slow the breath down, the nervous system calms in order to access your third nature - a transcendent experience to galvanize the more implicit self. 

The breath is a limb of the restorative practice in and of itself and when employed with the poses harmonizes the breath with the body and mind. 

Supported Cobbler Pose or Supine Bound Angle
4 Blocks, 2 Blankets, 2 straps

Put the soles of your feet together so that you are in bound-angle pose. Sit at a right angle from your shoulder to your hips to your feet. 

Strap your pelvis to your feet to ignite and generate circuitry. You are held together so you don't have to hold it together. You are stable in your base and ready to open up your front body. 

Set up two sets of blocks: the first set vertically to bolster your lungs, the second set as an upside down T to support your head. Make sure you stay plugged into the earth as you lower yourself onto the blocks and into a back bend. The angle of your throat should be open just enough and so it doesn't flop open like a pez dispenser. 

Place a blanket under each thigh.

Making a frame with your arms, hold opposite elbows over your head or extend your arms out from the shoulders, hands resting on the floor, palms facing up. 

Measuring a right angle
Using a block to create right angles in the wrists and knees sets up our body’s architecture in a stable and functional way. Measuring right angles helps us find stability, rather than winging it on a hunch. 

It sets up our wrists and collar bones as the frame that houses our lungs and hips, and our knees as the frame that houses our kidneys. 

Cat and Cow
Setting up a 90 degree angle.
Flip the Wrist now put a wave in it. 

Hang
As you travel down to your depths, as you shift your weight forward and bend your knees, find the fit of your knees to your armpits, your chest to your thighs, your head to your shins, your hands to your elbows, and your tongue to your palate. This contact ignites energy, awakening the legs. 

Fold and unfold. With each repetition, folding and unfolding you get more joint space, enhanced agility, better contact, and greater stability. 

Pigeon
1-3 blankets, 4 blocks

Fold your blankets in half and place them in the center of the mat. 

From dog pose, swing your right leg over the blankets, resting the width of your pelvis across it. You’re knee resting out on its own side on a diagonal. 

Consider a clock face underneath you. Public bone forward towards 12 o’clock, right hip and left hip squared facing 3 o’clock, 9 o’clock, your coccyx behind you at 6 o’clock, and your perineum plugged in below you.

Fold forward and rest your armpits over vertical blocks turned in a diagonal for comfort and fit, resting your forehead and sternum on another two blocket at the lower height. The blocks inform and support the structure of the pose, enabling you to relinquish habits that lead to pain, stiffness, and compromise. If you are very flexible the block provides boundaries in lieu of sensation. 

Seated forward fold
1 blanket, 1-2 straps, 1 block
The hinge in the hips is similar to standing forward fold. The pose is to release the muscles along the back of the body. The back is like a carapace (or shell) protecting the front body, which is our potential. Folding increases circulation to the pelvis, reducing anxiety, allowing the breath to slow down so that the heart rate can slow down, which coaxes us deeper into the experience of the pose. Here we enter the realm of reflection and memory, our minds mining our depths as we swim in the ancestral waters of our first nature. 

Fold your blanket in half to sit on, tip your pelvis forward so that you are sitting at a right angle.

Bend your knees and hinge forward from your hip joint rather than rounding your back. Shimmy back until you are sitting on your perineum. By making a connection between your perineum and the blanket as well as a connection of hands to feet, knees to armpits, thighs to chest, you are setting up conditions for drawing energy through the whole of the pose. 

Place a block between your legs on whatever height is comfortable and rest your forehead on it to release the back of your neck. 

The wave of your neck is the same measure as the wave of your lower back so as you release your neck, in time and over time your lower back will release. 

Strap your chest to your things by making a look around your hamstrings and your back - this will help you feel held and safe so you can stay longer. 

15 breaths. Extend your front body forward in a backbend to create more length in your back. 15 - 30 more breaths. To come out, keep your knees bent, look forward, unfold yourself to a right angle, letting the front of your body (your potential) lead the way, letting any burden fall off your back.

Frog (Supported Child’s Pose)
4 blocks or bolster, 2 blankets

Roll up two blankets and place them in the crease of your knees between your hips and heels.

Position yourself on all fours. Reach back with your hips to set back on the blankets. Fold your torso forward from the crease of your hips. Bring your feet together and knees wide. 

Place a block vertically under each armpit (like in pigeon). Depending on you, you may want to add another block underneath the first block so that your pelvis and torso are on the same plane. Place a block under your sternum and another under your forehead to support and release your neck. Or use a bolster. 

Child’s pose supported with scaffolding. 

Folding the chest over thighs engages hips joints, our biggest and most important joint. This pose is a forward bend. Like others in this family, it is a therapeutic tool for contemplation and going inside oneself. This supported pose soothes the nervous system and can soothe a tender lower back. Our back is ironed out by elevating the four corners of our main frame (shoulder-shoulder, hip-hip) with blocks. 

Consider the back as one’s shell, reflecting and holding memories. As we take this shape the shell releases tension and develops malleability, mollifying (reduces severity) ones past.  The back becomes more yielding, better able to be a support rather than a burden. The fold in the legs is therapeutic for one's ankles and knees while the hinggin of the hip creates stability and grounding. 

“Our culture seems to solicit an overuse of the explicit; to extend, participate, stretch, stive, move and complete. A restorative practice is a bid to be with one-self, to attune to the creakings and whinings of a settling body like that of a settling house. Then, enter it and just as subtly renovate it, re-structure it, refit it, in order to function better, so that the implicit (our souls) can be discerned.” 

The breath goes into and out of the lungs.

“The lungs exist in the space between the collarbones and the bottom of the rib cape. However, when the imagination sends the breath to the pelvic floor, or even the legs and feet, the lungs themselves respond by expanding.

When we imagine the breath entering and filling spaces in the pelvis, the hips and thighs, the involuntary musculature response hitches the mind to primal energy sources in the sacrum, as if putting the key in ignition.

Using one’s imagination can stimulate breathing on a profound level and enhance the health of our body, the clarity of our mind, and the potency of our self-expression.”