Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Reflection on the Arlington Center


            Emily Fishman
         CSOS.3452.01: Yoga Theory Culture and Practice
                  Professor Laura Douglass
         Midterm Paper: Reflection on the Arlington Center
                               10/10/12

            For my midterm project, I attended a yoga class at the Arlington Center in Arlington, Massachusetts. It is mainly a yoga studio that is dedicated to the integration of yoga and dharma practice. They offer classes in Iyengar yoga, Vicara yoga, breath and meditation, and basic yoga for toddlers, along with dance, akido and tai chi. Their mission is to provide various types of movement and meditation for all age groups and their philosophy is that everyone is capable of movement and they should go as far as their individual body allows. There is no emphasis on athleticism, but rather the combination of meditation and enjoying the movements within the practice. The Arlington Center serves all ages, from toddlers to middle age-elderly individuals and the center offers classes appropriate for each age group.
The founder and director of the center is Chip Hartranft, who is a trained physical therapist and yoga teacher. He is a student of yoga mainly in the Krishnamacharya traditions, which stem from Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, an Indian yoga teacher and healer who believed in catering to each individual’s body. He is also considered to be the father of modern yoga and the creator of vinyasa yoga, combining breath and movement. Under this influence, Chip has been teaching yoga classes in the Boston area since 1978 to students of all ages, where they are taught to blend movement and stillness. Throughout his career he has established the combination of yoga movement, or asana yoga, and mindfulness meditation, or vipassana yoga. In 1988, Chip founded a program called BodyMindConnection, which is a healing program for people under stress, where they learn mind-body techniques. He is also the author of the book, The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali, which was published in 2003.
The class that I attended on Thursday October 4th was taught by Chip, and it was titled; Yoga I/II, which means that it is a mix of beginners and continuing students. The classes there are divided into three levels; level I, which is ideal for beginners or older students with no prior experience, level II, which is for experienced students and a continuing level for students with one year or more of experience. These levels fit with the Arlington center’s philosophy of catering to the needs of the individual body. This is the same overall philosophy of Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, the yoga teacher who influenced Chip Hartranft, the founding director of the center. The attendees of the class were a wide range of ages from about 30-70 and there were about 20-30 people in the class. Most people in the class knew each other and Chip knew most people’s names, which gave me a strong sense of community within the class and within the center. I also felt extremely welcomed as a new attendee into this community and Chip personally welcomed me into the class. This community setting coincides with the overall accepting philosophy of the center, and I automatically felt comfortable and accepted into the community.
Although I have been to many different types of yoga classes, there were a few elements of this class that were different to me. Before the class began, each student was encouraged to take a yoga block, a blanket, and bolster to sit on. In most classes these items are available, but I have never been to a class where it is the standard to use all of these materials to accompany my practice. In my experiences, usually the beginner students use the block to help them with poses, but in this class every student used the block and they were encouraged to do so by the teacher. The block was not seen as something to assist someone who is having trouble, but rather as a tool to enhance the experience of some of the poses. Also, in my experiences, the blankets are mainly used for shavasana. In this class, the students were encouraged to use the blanket for extra support along with the yoga mat, which I have never incorporated in my practice. This gave a new sense of comfort beneath my body as I practiced.
The main thing that was especially different to me and that I have never experienced before was that the class began with a brief seated, guided meditation. I am used to beginning a yoga class by going straight into seated poses and then into more vigorous poses from there. The meditation at the beginning helped to set my state of mind and consciousness before practicing which gave my practice more of a purpose. It helped me to get into the meditative mindset that I kept for the remainder of the class. This is part of Chip’s philosophy of combining asana yoga and vipassana yoga. After we finished the seated meditation, I still remained within that meditative state while I was completing the movements. I was truly practicing vinyasa yoga by aligning the meditative breath and state of mind with the poses and movement. I enjoyed beginning the practice with seated meditation and then ending the practice with another meditation in shavasana, and I felt that both meditation practices enhanced my overall yoga practice.
The emphasis on meditation in the class and practice was different from what I have experienced, but I found this emphasis refreshing in our culture. In my experience, I think that the practice of yoga in our culture today is often characterized as athletic and competitive. The main focus is on the outside body and perfecting the poses. It is not usually encouraged to modify the poses to the individual body and or to respect the body’s limitations. Meditation and breath are often not seen as equal components in modern day yoga practices, as they do not serve the outside body appearance. I feel as if this important component to yoga practice has been lost within our culture of superficiality and physical appearance. Although I was not used to this incorporation of meditation, I experienced it as very refreshing to our culture today.
The class was influenced by the teachings of Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, whose most prominent underlying teaching was “teach what is appropriate for an individual.” He was an Indian yoga teacher and ayurvedic healer who is recognized for reviving hatha yoga in the 20th century, and considered to be the architect of vinyasa yoga. The class and the instructor exhibited many attributes of this philosophy and the characteristics of vinyasa yoga. Throughout the flow of the class, the students were encouraged to do each of the poses to their fullest extent, but the teacher, Chip, was constantly providing modifiers for each person’s body and emphasized that the practice is about our individual body. He enforced the mantra, “Don’t look at what other people are doing, they have different bodies,” along with, “Each person has a different skeleton, the poses look different on everyone.” His words and teaching style is following the philosophy of Krishnamacharya because it is underlining the theme of the individual body and that the personal yoga practice is about each person’s unique qualities. He would often attend to many of the student’s needs while we were in poses, especially difficult ones such as sideways plank. He came over and adjusted my wrist placement so that I was able to experience the pose to the fullest while responding to my body’s unique needs.
Most of the poses throughout the class were someone vigorous, such as sideways plank, warrior I and warrior II and triangle pose. Chip only instructed the class on a few major poses and the pace of the class was quite slow, so we were able to experience the poses for longer periods of time. The fact that it was slowly paced allowed me to fully experience each pose and include the meditation and breathing components. Since the class was so slow paced, the type of breath I was exhibiting was the tamas breath, which is slow, heavy and relaxed. The tamas breathing style enabled me to be aware of each breath while I was doing the movements, which brought me to a fuller state of relaxation and body awareness. I think that this slow style of yoga is very beneficial to the body because the body is able to feel the full benefits of each pose from remaining in the pose and breathing for longer. Since each person’s body is different, each person is experiencing the poses differently, and as Chip taught the class, he truly acknowledged this fact.
The class was very centered around vinyassa yoga and the philosophies of that type of practice. Vinyassa yoga is combining the movements with the breath, which causes the body to be fully aware and within a constant flow. One of Chip’s main teachings is to integrate movement (asana) with breathing and stillness. These components were incorporated by holding the poses for a longer period of time while breathing deeply, which facilitates the body to experience movement and stillness through the pose and through the breath. Although the class was slowly paced, there was still a constant flow between poses, which caused there to be a sense of energy as well. Chip encouraged the students to breathe during each pose to receive the full benefits of the pose, which is the overall philosophy of vinyassa yoga. He fully believes that the breath is just as important as the movements and the two must be integrated to achieve the benefits of the practice. The practice ended with shavasna, or corpse pose, where the mind is in deep mindfulness meditation, also a form of vipassana yoga. This is integrating the peaceful breathing with the mindfulness meditation of the mind and obtaining that certain state of consciousness, which is also an active component of the practice. I feel as if my practice came full circle beginning with seated and guided meditation and then moving into flow and breathing and ending with mindfulness meditation in shavasana. It placed the importance on the state of consciousness during practice and the important component of breathing along with the equally important component of movement.
From this experience, I believe I have learned a great deal about my practice of yoga and myself. I opened myself up to a new experience where I learned about the importance of breathing during my practice. I now have new body awareness from remaining in a pose while being aware of my breath and my state of mind. I now understand the integration of movement and stillness and how that is possible within the flow of vinyassa yoga. I also understand this practice on a different cultural level, and how it compares to our modern culture, where breath and meditation are not seen as important as the outside body.










Sources
1. Ruiz, Fernando Pages. "Krishnamacharya's Legacy." Yoga Journal.
Yogajournal.com. Web. <http://www.yogajournal.com/wisdom/465>.








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