Intuitive Flow
with Tracey

Our bodies instinctively move towards balance. In yoga practice, the focus overall is to move everything towards balance. We learn in our very first session to do one side of a pose and then the other. We also learn to balance our less dominant side, sometimes the weaker or less coordinated side, and focus on the subtleties required to strengthen that side. Guidance sometimes is given to practice longer or with additional repetitions on the side that requires more support. These are all efforts to bring the skeletal-muscular systems into alignment, thus balancing our bodies. But in an intuitive flow practice balance occurs in interesting and beautiful arrangements. There is so much to be discovered as this moving meditation and dance unfolds.

Be curious in your intuitive flow. The idea rests in watching the intelligence of the body unfold, and in learning to listen to and trust the unfettered communication delivered by your breath's ability to move your body. Observation of this process unfolding will give you so many new pathways to discovering relationships between poses and new ways to arrive there. You will find your practice unfolding like a prayer.

Give yourself permission to sit or lie still on your mat until the spirit moves you. Sometimes an intuitive flow leads to long periods of stillness. Resist the desire to move from a memorized list in your head of past poses promoted by a fear that nothing will come to you. Wait until the energy, driven by your breath, leads you to connect with the sensation that is calling from within. Letting body intuition teach you yoga can be a radical shift.

These guidelines along with some of the reminders below will hopefully lead you to an ecstatic, ultimately balanced practice that gives you exactly what you need in the moment.  As you watch and experience your practice unfolding, it is often revelatory to see the ways in which the body chooses to balance the right and left sides, and the forward and backward movements. Intuitive flow can enhance and even change your practice and your idea of balance...forever.

Breath is key
Observation becomes revelatory
Thinking-driven movement is discouraged
Sensation is celebrated
Trust is established
Alignment is unnecessary
Balance comes through unexpected pathways
Enjoyment is encouraged