Saturday, December 13, 2014

Kino on Yoga, Intense Seinfeld-like Emotions and Leg Behind The Head

I just watched the video below, in which Kino talks about something that many of us who have done the Ashtanga practice for a while would be able to relate to: Strong emotions that arise during practice. If you do this practice regularly, you would inevitably encounter times during practice when strong emotions come up. These emotions could range from anger, sadness, feelings of inadequacy about a particular aspect of your life, etc, and they often arise when you are about to attempt or go into a particularly challenging pose.

But in my case, what usually arises is not a particularly strong emotion, but some totally trivial episode in my recent life. For example, I often find myself mentally replaying some particular recent life episode just before I go into a challenging pose like Kapotasana or Karandavasana. Very often, the episode in question is some totally trivial yet somehow personally significant thing--usually something stupid that I recently said to somebody, or something stupid that I recently did, which I am not proud of--and it would just spontaneously replay itself in my mind as I am attempting to get my feet into a lotus position while balancing on my forearms in Karandavasana, or as I am walking my fingers to grab my heels in Kapo.

Well, if it is true that yoga poses activate certain parts of our bodies that store certain feelings, then Kapotasana and Karandavasana must activate the part of my body that stores Seinfeld-like episodes. Not sure if this is a good thing...

Anyway, I suppose I should stop editorializing here, and leave you to enjoy Kino's video. Enjoy!