Biodynamic Yoga at Panther Branch

Photo by Mike C. Peck

Eric Scheider has offered to lead a series of yoga classes at Panther Branch from 5:30-6:30 on Tuesday evenings, before the regular evening sitting. Those will be general yoga classes (suitable for all levels of fitness and experiencing), cultivating awareness, alignment, and balanced action, supporting each other to bring forward the Dharma with maximum vitality into our meditation practices and into our lives. The first class will take place on Tuesday, September 13th. Classes are open to all. 

Eric has been involved in both Zen and yoga practice for many years now, and is certified to teach yoga. He is generously offering to do this for us on a dana-only basis, with any offerings people make to go to Windhorse.

Read on for an introduction to some of the principles of yoga practice as Eric sees them. 

Physical exercise is an essential human activity, necessary for the development and health of our bodies. Exercise is also a vehicle for the cultivation of the total human, yielding emotional, mental, and spiritual benefits. Individuals transform over a lifetime and are vastly different from person to person, from bone structure and musculature to cardiovascular function, not to mention specific disabilities and injuries. There are as many ways to exercise as there are people in the world, and individuals need to find practices that they can enjoy and that are appropriate for their unique physical makeup and fitness level

at any given point in their lives.

In general, though, a healthful exercise regime cultivates a balance of certain elements: Openness/Intention, Alignment/Edge, and Muscular/Organic Energy. These six principles can be paired into three groups: Attitude, Alignment, and Action.

The first pair of principles, concerting Attitude, are Openness and Intention. Without cultivating openness, the mind and body can easily close down under the stress of activity, resulting not only in injury but also in a stagnant and joyless frame of mind. Working with the body safely to increase one’s physical, mental, and emotional vitality requires continually checking in with and responding to the quality of the breath and other bodily feedback. This open and accepting attitude is also the gateway to the deeper benefits of an exercise program. Similarly, cultivating a conscious intention for an exercise program in line with one’s deepest aspirations has tremendous benefits.

The body holds and expresses one’s attitude at all times, spontaneously affecting resilience, alignment, flexibility, and endurance. Forced discipline and harsh judgment—or conversely ambivalent aspiration—restrict the body and limit its resources for healing.

The second pair of principles, concerning Alignment, are Alignment and Edge. Working towards optimal alignment of the body during exercise and other activities allows the body to function most efficiently, for healing to come about most quickly, and for energy to flow in the body most freely. Action with alignment builds resilience; action without alignment causes injury.

Edges are the body’s safe limits of flexibility, strength and endurance. Forcing the body beyond those limits causes a restrictive reaction in the body and potential injury. Respecting and exploring these edges as they naturally expand and contract safely expands one’s capacities.

The third pair of principles, concerning Action, are Muscular and Organic Energy. Muscular energy draws from the periphery of the body inwards, creating stability and strength. Organic energy radiates out from the core of the body, creating flexibility, relaxation, and expansion. Dynamic action is a result of the pulsation between these two energies. The cultivation of strength, flexibility, relaxation, and endurance through exercise reflect these principles.

A healthful exercise regime cultivates muscular and organic energy in balance. Excessive flexibility without muscular strength, activity without relaxation, or vice versa, risks serious injury to the body. Balanced action of muscular and organic energy support one another and facilitate awareness, alignment, poise, endurance, and freedom in both static and dynamic exercise.

Eric Scheider

Although the basic combination of principles described here is so widespread throughout both modern and traditional writing on exercise as to be impossible to uniquely source, my treatment is especially heavily based on John Friend’s elegant Universal Principles of Alignment.