The resting heart, its desire, reaching, and courage.

Rain pours down on this Friday afternoon.
An intimate and beautiful class in Putney earlier this morning:

Working from the place of the full, resting heart: the seat of our intelligence. We felt what we felt and sensed in the heart, all sides: the front, sides, and back of the heart.
We then drew our awareness to the sternum and up to the manubrium.
I have been inquiring into the heart's desire, noticing its arising, and the courage to act on this desire. The presentation of the sternum and manubrium area felt appropriate to explore.

We felt into the hollow space in the central channel of our bodies (the site of our notochord, also known in yogic text as the sushumna nadi), by spiraling on hand & knees, softening, and breathing into the diaphragms echoed in the body (the crown of the skull, the cave of the mouth, the throat, the breathing diaphragm, the pelvic floor).
From this softened place, we explored crawling, and reaching - expressing outward the inner desire to Reach, to Take into us nourishment, and to Satisfy ourselves. I always enjoy these "un-yoga" movements that echo what we did as growing babies and children. It seems that by re-exploring these patterns, we can gain insights about how we move & express right now.

Then there were the courageous, expressive warrior postures, trikonasana, and the balancing ardha chandrasanas and vertical splits. The exploration took us to one of my favorite Angela Farmer postures: dying warrior. The "reach" in this posture is expressed in moving the upper body away from the lower body diagonally, moving the inner body out of the outer body, and in that, beautiful spirals, like a wet fabric being wrung out, are created and noticed internally, as we continue to "squeeze, squeeze, squeeze" inside. Space spac e space space spaciousness.

It seems that courage applies not only to the outward expression of stating and obtaining what one desires in the world, but even more so to diving inside oneself, deep, deeper, even deeper. We are made up of so many layers, and with an investigation, even starting with one organ, like the heart, or one theme, like courage, we can take that to a very subtle, quiet, cellular level and find such richness of explorations right there. I hope you continue to explore!