Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Horse Yoga Walkabout: Walk and stack

There will be pictures.

In the meantime, we learned to walk from our four-legged horse yoga teacher today. And walk, and walk, and walk. Walk and stack, walk and stack.

Stack refers to our tadasana (mountain pose) yoga posture. Out in the round pen, we find our feet and we practice stacking our bones and feeling our bone stack as we hold the weight of our head (all 13 pounds of it). Gary isn't giving us a lot of time today as he does one of his famous drive-bys. He walks into our midst, which we take as encouragement to join him in movement.

So off we go, bringing awareness to the front of our hip joints and the base of the big toe, and we inhale or exhale and walk off. One of our friends is having some knee issues, so we set her up in a rhythm of walking for four breaths, stop and stack, first one leg and then the other, and walk off again.

Another of our friends keeps looking downward, so her walk stiffens up, so Gary does a gentle drive by and gives her a little bump.

Another friend is walking in a manner that is balanced, but her steps seem a little short to me. I ask her to walk it out more boldly and she swings into action and Gary falls in line right behind her. He licks and chews (translation: "I like it.") As they move, I have a little chat with our other friends.

It's time to learn the "Don't f&#* with me walk." Look straight ahead, take a wide stance, walk wide-hipped, with intention. (Many women walk with a narrow half-moon kind of walk, which is hard on the hip and knee, and stand with their knees locked, so we are getting into changing these habits with Walkabout.) Gary begin to follow this brisk and bold walk, licks and chews.

We take a break in the shade as we've been walking for over 30 minutes now. One of our friends mentions how as she walks, she has a tendency to track in the direction of whoever she's walking with, so it becomes practice time. Two at a time, walk in a line together. They set off, Gary follows and then it's 3 abreast - two humans and a horse.

The two humans take a break, the other human steps up, starts walking serpentines and figure-8's, Gary gets in line, leading by following. Then it's another human and then another, and it's a line dance in the round pen, walking with grace, intention, and the sheer joy of walking.

2 comments:

  1. Mediation yoga
    Yoga has been known worldwide for some years now and it has become very popular on the entire planet. Millions of people engage into it for various reasons everyday. But even though it has tremendous benefits and millions of people stand as proof to that, there are still some that do not really believe in its health benefits. But can those contradict the millions of people whom have already tried and benefited from it

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello Saddam,

    What are your thoughts about walking meditation specifically?

    ReplyDelete