Part 3 of Sequencing and Personalized Yoga

As promised here is part three of Sequencing and Personalized Yoga.

If anyone has any questions or comments feel free to e-mail me at blog@yogascope.com and perhaps we can get your perspective onto the front page of this blog.

Re: The Sequencing Thread and Personalized Practice.

From: Carl Horowitz

I guess I should make a few comments on what I mean when I use the term personalized practice. I think I was practicing yoga for about 8 years before anyone had ever asked me, “What do you want from this work we will do together? What are your goals in practicing?” It was a private session with a teacher I truly admire. It is worth understanding that these kinds of questions need to be asked and answered before a teacher can help a practitioner uncover some of the deeper aspects of a personalized approach.

In a group class you could lead a practice that addresses a particular issue in personalizing a practice; you can lead a session that is loosely based on the principles of personalizing a practice; you could even teach the principles themselves. You can also adapt individual postures to the current needs of a student. There are some techniques that can be used to get pretty much everyone into a posture that will be appropriate without practitioners necessarily being in the same posture. But this would be such a small part of personalizing a practice. What I mean when I use that term is so much more that it is hard to explain and it is not really something that I would associate with a group asana practice.

I work with some people who are so high strung and stressed out that they need to do something quite strong before their systems will allow them to let go of some of that stress. I work with others who are so lethargic that they have trouble getting out of bed or getting up the energy to do much of anything. It would be irresponsible to even contemplate similar practices for people so different. A routine for the first type might start with the practitioner standing and might be a very active session finishing with the practitioner in a position lying on the ground resting. This is a very traditional formula. However, a routine tailored to the needs of the second type might start with the practitioner resting on the ground and take the whole session to build up to a mild intensity. A practice for this type of person may end with the person standing, energized and ready for the rest of his/her day instead of the more traditional ending of resting on the ground. If two people so different were looking for group classes it is unlikely they would end up gravitating towards the same ones. And while there are many popular group classes that might be appropriate for the first type there are far fewer that would be appropriate for the second.

I work with people in wheel chairs and people who are athletes; people who practice for physical reasons and people who practice for spiritual ones. I work with people who want a structurally therapeutic approach and others who want a spiritually therapeutic approach. I work with people who don’t want a spiritual approach but would benefit greatly from one and others who don’t want a therapeutic approach but would benefit greatly from one. Interestingly the people who are most interested in a spiritual approach often don’t need much help from me in that regard because they usually already have their own understanding to enough of an extent. Frequently, all they need is encouragement in following their interests and connecting with what inspires them.

In helping such different people develop their own personalized practice, I feel it would be problematic if what I was doing was arbitrarily applying tools and techniques without first considering whether they were relevant to the actual individual. Certain people connect with and understand anatomically based directions to inform their asana alignment while others are helped more by metaphorical imagery to help them understand what they are doing with their bodies. One person’s practice might look like a religious ritual while another’s might look like a workout. One practitioner might gravitate towards the use of yantra imagery for visualization techniques, while another might do better with nature imagery, and a third might benefit more from a contemplation technique that has to do with ways of improving the current circumstances of his/her life. One person might benefit from the use of Sanskrit chants and another might benefit more from the use of Gregorian chants. I had one client who used Nigerian songs which reminded him of his childhood and another who used his guitar and some Beatles songs as part of his practice.

I have also had plenty of clients who would not have been as interested and might have even quit practicing if I had tried to have them chant or use visual imagery associated with a foreign culture’s spiritual tradition in the first place. It is worth understanding that over time people change. As this occurs the techniques that will be most beneficial might change as well. A technique that, at one point, was not useful might become quite valuable as the person’s practice develops, and another technique that at one point might have produced powerful results may no longer be appropriate or may even become harmful.

Without the person practicing present, the only real practical detail that I am capable of disclosing about a truly personalized approach is that a teacher would do well by attempting to match the practice to the current needs of the individual. Based on my experience, one of the best pieces of advice I could give to a teacher wanting to work in this way would be to encourage the teacher to ask his/her clients a lot of the right questions—what do you want from this? how does this feel? what are your interests? your goals? is this working for you? did you feel this?—rather than having the teacher assume he/she knows the answers to the students questions before the questions have even been asked.

I can see a lot without asking but even when I think I know the answer to a question, I would often rather ask in order to let the student put the answers into his/her own words. This is a process of empowering the student to make the decisions that enable him/her to actively participate in the development of his/her own personal practice. It requires that the teacher have a consistent dedication to the process of actively attempting to understand the student more completely; it also requires that the teacher have the receptivity and openness to change his/her conceptions and perspective when the student needs something different than the teacher had originally speculated.

Something unique happens when, as a teacher, you open yourself to the possibility that the student can use your services to help him/herself develop his/her own methods of practice and that what you are doing is actually helping facilitate the process rather than giving the student a preformed routine. There are many benefits to group practices that are well worth acknowledging and in a group setting there are a lot of things you can do to teach based on the principles of personalizing. However, this is not exactly what I would mean when I refer to Personalized Yoga.

Peace.
blog@yogascope.com

Sequencing and Personalized Yoga Part 2

Here is part 2 of my comments on sequencing. I will post the third and final part soon.

The Sequencing Thread

From: Carl Horowitz,

I have a few more thoughts on sequencing.

I think in understanding this process it is worthwhile distinguishing between sequencing and what I would refer to as choreography. Choreography might be a sub-category of sequencing, and has its beneficial applications if understood properly, but the art of choreography and the art of sequencing are different. What I mean when I use the term choreography is that linking of poses in which the focus is primarily aesthetic in nature. Some of the positive aspects of this kind of elegant procession are that it is enjoyable to watch, to perform and to create. This could make a practice more interesting to the practitioner and that could keep some people practicing. However, a possible problem is that there are some practices out there that seem not to distinguish between choreography and sequencing. But choreography does not necessarily have functional benefits; if the individual postures are simply organized for aesthetic reasons alone the postures may not build on each other. In short, choreography, can—although it is true that this does not have to be the case—water down the practice and the result could be that you get less from each posture as a result of how they are linked together. Choreography in the hands of someone who is also skilled at understanding the deeper principles of sequencing can be beautiful and powerful but choreography without this deeper understanding would not necessarily bring an element of greater significance to a practice. And an elegant ordering of the postures simply might not be the most beneficial method of sequencing for a particular practitioner.

A deeper understanding of the art of sequencing would incorporate far more than choreography. One small but important aspect to understand would be how to organize the postures so that they work and fit together towards one cohesive whole. If this is understood you can ultimately get more from fewer postures thereby making practice more efficient and powerful. It is hard to really explain what I mean by this because I feel you need the context of a person to actually work in this way. If you are working with a person and he/she has an issue, say an area of the body that is less willing to open, and you went about warming this area and preparing it for opening and then you progressively moved between postures that would work the region and then open it, and the end result was a release that would otherwise be impossible, the intelligent use of sequencing could really affect some powerful changes within the practitioner. And with the application of sequencing in this manner, the most beneficial methods for the practitioner may not be aesthetically pleasing in any way.

Another tendency I have noticed at times in certain sequencing is what I like to call the “Everything but the Kitchen Sink” effect. The idea in this conception of sequencing is that you are supposed to do every single posture that can possibly be squeezed into the allotted time of practice. The positive aspects of this tendency might be that it can be fun for those who want a sense of accomplishment and because of this it may hold some people’s interest. However, in terms of functional benefits more can definitely be less; and while this kind of “sequencing” can be fine for someone who has no special needs in practicing (which ultimately means that over an extended period of time it is not particularly beneficial for anyone) it can be at best a diluting of the desired effects and at worst a process that helps lead to injury. Moving your body in every direction it possibly can go as many times as possible in a given amount of time can cause conflicting benefits from postures to begin to cancel each other out. And consistently working in this way can ultimately tax the joints and connective tissue of the body; this could be seen as an asana practice equivalent of overtraining.

I feel it is also worth understanding that any sequence, practiced consistently and exclusively over time—no matter how well constructed—has the potential to create problems. The reason this is the case is related to how the human organism habituates to a routine. The result is that at a certain point stagnation will generally occur instead of development. This is related to the concept that, when the body is forced to adapt to change, this process of change and the resulting adaptation in the organism is part of what helps create the stimulation which promotes growth in the system.

Learning how to combine the postures and other techniques to make a practice that creates a unified and cohesive whole, where each posture has its purpose and fits in such a way as to enhance the benefits obtained from the postures before and after it, where the postures and techniques are matched to the current needs of the individual, where the principles of building towards a goal and then compensating against possible unwanted side effects afterwards would only be part of the process necessary to understand sequencing. Ultimately one would want the work to be matched to the physical, energetic, intellectual, emotional and spiritual needs, abilities, desires and interests of the practitioner so that the physical practice and the underlying spiritual process would fit and work together. Understanding how an individual’s needs can be met on all these different levels concurrently is a true and rare art form.

Peace.
upsidedowncarl@yogascope.com
blog@yogascope.com