How do we withstand?...

I have always been fascinated by the solitary tree - what is its story, how has it been able to withstand what others seemingly have not, what is its secret?
This week I have been lead to the very same question within my practice? How do we maintain the ease at our centre amidst chaos and struggle without becoming rigid, how do we balance firmness and ease? 

My teacher Matthew Sanford always says “Strength without a sense of direction is violence, strength with a sense of direction is grace.” I think this is part of the the key, but how do we explore it in practice.

I want you to start with the sensation you were working on last week, to come back to laying over the rolled blanket, find the softness and ease in the abdomen, the opening in the chest. You have to know the sensation of ease first so you know what you are trying to come back to. Experiment, what is the difference if you belt the legs or not, if you weight the legs or not?

Then play with Adho Mukha Svanasana - Downward Facing Dog Pose:- 

• What if you support the heels on the skirting board or blocks?
• What if you put a block or a thick book between your thighs?
• What if you raise your hands on blocks or a chair?
• What if you start in Adho Mukha Virasana, tuck the toes under and extend your heels back towards the ground in order to lift your legs and unfurl fully into the pose by taking the direction of the heels as your lead?
• What does bunching the fingers towards each other reveal about your direction in this pose? What does opening them again reveal? How can following that sense of direction make the abdomen and the organic body of the pose feel more like it does when you lay over a blanket?
• what if you placed a tennis ball under the top of the sacrum and another one under the back of the skull (make sure it is on the bone of the skull not the soft flesh beneath it) lay like this with your legs bent for a while and allow the sensation of length in the spine - then revisit dog pose - what has this revealed to you about the sensation of strength, grace and ease in a pose?

Notice how using the legs well helps support the ease in the organic body. I have attached a sequence of standing poses - if you want to take this inquiry further see how that remains true in the poses in this sequence, work out the sense of direction first to help you find grace and ease in the pose. 

By first finding our sense of direction, looking within, using discernment and recognising what truly moves us then allowing it to guide our action we are able to move sustainably with grace. We are putting our strength (however much or little we have) in service of something rather than wasting it by forcibly trying to push on in a direction that may not be helpful to us.

We are using props, taking support where we need to in order to quieten the noise of effort and look within, to maintain our centre of gravity and reveal our sense of direction. Look again at this second image of the tree from a different angle, notice it is not quite as solitary as it at first seems. Part of how it stands with grace is the deeper connection to something greater than its self sensed deep within its roots. There is community.

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