Notes of practice
“With your feet on the air and your head on the ground,
Try this trick and spin it, Yeah, Your head will collapse,
But there's nothing in it and you'll ask yourself:
Where is my mind?”
~Pixies
Note of practice
I have been in Sydney for two months and experienced the city in a quite unique way; not long after I arrived, the city went into lockdown by the outbreak of the Delta variation of the covid-19; This becomes an opportunity to recognize the nature of my intentions, not only through its natural origin of desire, rather to its constraint, a chance to choose where I would like to put my head-on.
-Where the head goes, the body follows.
After last week's training with hañsa yoga, I have been mapping and observing the influence of the position of the head and its relationship to the rest of the body; Also its correlation of the quality of my thoughts with the impact of how I perceive and feel my current circumstance.
Most of our senses are located in the head, as Vincent mentions “ what happens in the head happens faster than the rest of the body… it Is close to the source of interpretation and motor pattering”; so the head is prone to get out of alignment, to get distracted, What we are constantly distracted about, influence our perception, and it gets reflected in our actions and movement.
So the practice was to recognize if the heads allow for adaptation? Pose by pose, and if the head can return to an optimal position, understanding optimal as the most supported way for the body at that moment.
I started by mapping my head, touching something tangible, intentionally directing pressure to specific points to generate an experience that I can use as a reference for my movement.
At moments I got distracted, losing the rhythm and balance, but it was interesting to compare what was happening in my head internally to how I perceived it by following the consequences of my actions.
So this is becoming more a practice of appreciation, to appreciate is to accept, being grateful for what I have, and trusting in my original intentions, to find stability within the fluctuation of my own perceptions.
As Vincent points out: “There are a number of wonderful journeys and explorations yet to be presented around the head structure and around the body”.