Taoist Longevity Yoga

• Maintain the 70% rule
• Put your mind into yourself-your body, breath and energy channels
• All stretches are done with circular movement only
• Stretches open the body to enable better, more complete breathing
• Internal release causes external stretch
• Release internally first, externally stretch next
• Releasing the nerves of the body is the origin of the stretch
• Use the breath to open the body’s energy channels
• Deliberate activation of physical, mental or emotional tension and contraction is avoided
• All physical postures derive from physical, mental and emotional relaxation

Students beginning with Longevity Breathing Yoga often ask about working with their breathing. The breath is central in LB Yoga as well as other arts we teach at Brookline Tai Chi.

Initially, it is helpful to simply notice your breathing, whether it’s happening, how it’s happening. In learning LB Yoga, we first get familiar with the poses. At the same time we are getting familiar with feeling inside the body and noticing how breathing is happening (or not happening) for us individually, without actively trying to change anything. It’s important to spend some time with this first phase before moving on, especially as a beginner. It will help your practice in the long run if you start with learning very clearly to feel your insides and breath, to be able to feel what’s really happening inside.

As we progress in class, we pay closer attention to feeling breath in specific areas of the body. After you feel that you can keep a steady feeling awareness in your body and breath, you may want to move on to understanding breathing in greater depth. Longevity Breathing will be most helpful in this phase, as it is a perfect compliment to Longevity Breathing Yoga practice. Longevity Breathing is a technique developed by Bruce Frantzis and is detailed in two resources – one, in the book Opening The Energy Gates of Your Body (Chapter 5), and the other, the DVD entitled Longevity Breathing (also available through the school). Both take you through a step-by-step process that teaches you how to breath fully, deeply and effectively in your whole body.

In LB Yoga class,  we talk about bringing the mind into the body. Basically, this is an instruction to bring your attention inside and feel what’s happening in your body. In this culture where so much emphasis is placed on thinking and accomplishing externally, this is not always an easy task. We may feel some parts or our insides vividly, while other areas are totally elusive.

Here’s a suggestion to make the process easier. As you get into your alignments, pay particular attention to the balance of lifting and dropping – lifting through the kwa (at the crease where the leg meets the torso), the mid and upper spine and the juncture where the spine meets the occiput – and dropping through the lower spine, relaxing the chest downward toward the belly, relaxing the face. In so doing you may get a feel that you are “taking the slack out” of the whole body. Be sure to do this without creating tension.

Consider the sail of sailboat that is slack and loose in the winds – in this case, the boat is buffeted by random forces; however, by taking out the slack of the sail just a bit, the sailor feels the winds around her clearly and can work with them usefully.

Similarly, having too much looseness in the body when we practice, our minds can be buffeted, so to speak, by random thoughts and sensations, and it is more difficult to feel what’s happening inside clearly. Using alignments to “take out the slack” , our minds will tend to focus more easily and we can feel more specifically what’s happening inside.

Moving from pose to pose can be a challenge. For example, transitioning within the Japanese style sitting poses, props are often necessary, and in moving from one pose to the next, you may feel unsteady as you navigate a new bodypostion and rearrange the props under and around you legs. Until these poses feel more natural and steady, it can be helpful to have two chairs on either side of you.

Using the chairs for support, you can practice transitioning from one pose to the next, and rearranging pillows and props, with more stability – gradually you can experiment with using the chairs less as you become more stable in the flow of the poses.

Lying down is easy and relaxing – it’s also a pose where the mind can wander or we might doze. In Tao Yoga we practice keeping a relaxed and alert awareness in this pose by paying attention to alignments. The feet and the knees are hip-width apart;the pelvis and the torso are relaxed, the legs should have a sense of growing out of the torso; the midriff lengthens from the pelvis the the bottom of the ribs, the spine lengthens toward the head, and there is still a sense of lift of the skull from the top of the spine, the face, the front of the throat and chest relax.

Next you can place your hands on your belly and feel the rhythm of your breathing, as the belly rises slightly on the inhale, and relaxes back down on the exhale. It is helpful to spend a few minutes just feeling and watching your breath.

When you move to the next stage of lifting the pelvis, first press your feet gently into the floor – feel how this action naturally begins to lift the tailbone up and toward the feet; maintaining as much relaxation in the body and breath as you can, continue the lift of the pelvis, allowing the back of the body to lengthen as you lift, almost as though your back body is like a hammock stretching and lifting you up.

As we learn new poses, much attention is on remembering what to do, getting any necessary props situated and getting comfortable. Once in the pose, sometimes we still feel mental distraction from the process of getting there, and usually the breath is affected – it may have stopped altogether, or become more shallow, or it may be that we have lost awareness of what the breath is doing altogether.

No problem – just noticing and gently bringing your attention into your body allows you to feel your breath . Often just noticing your breath with relaxed attention helps it to become more full and deep in the body. And, as you notice what’s happening with your breathing, you can work with relaxing your whole body just a bit more. This greater relaxation allows for fuller breathing in the whole belly, front sides and back.

Focusing on the breath in this way will help you feel more ease in the poses and will allow for a deeper sense of energized and relaxed awareness.