Focus Yoga: Deep Core Explorations

This month, February at Lyric Yoga, our Tuesday 4-5pm Focus Yoga On...Class is on Deep Core Explorations. Suitable for all levels, we learn some different ways to address the idea of core strength.

How do you define 'core'?

My operational definition of deep core emerges from the work of Liz Koch who wrote The Psoas Book. What I love about Liz's work is her use of language, and how she poetically draws on the language of evolutionary biology, shifting us away from a biomechanical model for exploration to an evolutionary model for self-exploration. (I highly recommend her teleclass as a way to get familiar with her work.)

In our deep core yoga explorations of the physical dimension, we begin with awareness of the bones of the spinal column itself. Then, we go within the spinal column, the realm of the spinal cord and the central nervous system.

Emerging from the spinal column we move our awareness to the diaphragm, and the apparatus of breathing.

In our awareness practices, we visualize our friend, the psoas muscle. If you are not familiar with this muscle, it's your filet mignon. This muscle has some very interesting roles, but I think it helpful to view the role of this muscle from the perspective of a meat-eater; it's the tenderest muscle in the muscular system, and it's supposed to stay that way.

In our first class, we played with psoas muscle and established a relationship with this tender and juicy muscle. One of the students, very new to yoga, got this look of wonder on her face and her comment was, "I can't believe how strong I feel!"

Good stuff. Join us.