Add Contrast to Your Practice

Myth & Movement is the new weekly Vinyasa Yoga series by Zarouhi Grumbar. In this series of courses, you are invited to explore the stories behind the popular yoga poses and how they relate to practice and life as you weave them into fun and challenging sequences with arm balances and inversions to help you find the magic inside to discover and real potential. Perfect for experienced and advanced yogis.

Based in London with a young family but originally from Trinidad & Tobago, Zaz & # 39; Teaching style nurturing and empowering, paying attention to the focus underpinned by her study of applied anatomy. She insists on self-knowledge and on discovering all that you are capable of.

The yoga tradition is so incredibly rich that the vast majority of us in our practice are without question just scratching the surface of what this 4,000 year old practice has to offer in all its facets.

Especially in the West, despite our awareness of the various aspects or limbs of yoga and the knowledge that it is not just about stretching, we tend to focus mainly on the outside and thus on our asana practice. But also in physical practice we have the opportunity to delve a little deeper to discover the meaning of the poses and what they teach us. This is like walking into a messy room, believing that we are looking for one thing and yet discovering so many others.

During the sun salutation, how often do we notice or ponder the stories and meanings behind some of the postures? In the Warrior I pose, for example, we embody the mighty warrior Virabhadra, who was sent to avenge the wrath of the god Shiva over the death of his beloved, only to realize that anger and violence are not ideal solutions to a problem, and Uncovering compassion and forgiveness is key as we bring our hands back to earth.

It is easy to imagine that the poses named after certain Hindu gods are the most important ones with fascinating stories – like Hanumasana (the full divisions, named after the depiction of the monkey demigod Hanuman as he was for loving his best Friend) or Natarajasana (dancer pose named after Lord Shiva that shows the ability to be fearless in the face of change) … energetic. Even if we don't do the most complete or advanced variation of a pose – and I know my own yoga journey is constantly evolving, like all of us – every step of the pose's journey, from preparation to our individual expression, still includes learning for us, in the fiery commitment (called tapas in yoga philosophy) that we bring into our practice.

Chaturanga Dandasana, four-part staff pose, reminiscent of the tradition of accepting learning from a teacher and ultimately understanding that our teachers or gurus can appear in many forms – from other people to things in nature and the degradation of the "stick" symbolizes the devotion of our ego to accept learning from all of our teachers, no matter how ephemeral, how big or small.

As we examine the myths behind the postures and consider their importance in practicing the postures, color and contrast are added to enhance the experience of our practice and what we can get from it.

In Myth & movement, a series of level 3 vinyasa courses that focus on the stories behind the asanas. Angle pose and flying scissors (astavakrasana and koundinyasana, asanas named after two wise sages who opposed the opinion), triangle pose (learn what the lines of Trikonasana represent in our lives), peacock and feather peacock pose – the arm balance and the forearm stand (Mayurasana and Pincha Mayurasana, discover the surprising strength of the peacock!) and many more.