A vigorous vinyasa class featuring leg balancing, core strengthening, and heart-opening as you build toward Anuvittasana (standing backbend) as the peak pose. This class opens with a poem by Pablo Neruda and a mantra to honour transformation. Hamstring and side waist lengthening create space for deep backbends. A supine twist and inversion with a headstand or legs up the wall complete your practice.
Style: Vinyasa
Duration: 60-minutes
Level: open
Props: 2 Blocks
Focus: core strengthening, heart-opening, standing backbends.
Location: Vancouver, BC
Music: Spotify Playlist It’s Known We Are Born
Poem to anchor the class:
Births by Pablo Neruda, translated by Stephen Mitchell.
We will never have any memory of dying.
We were so patient
about our being,
noting down numbers, the days,
the years and the months,
the hair, and the mouths we kiss,
and that moment of dying
we let pass without a note
we give it to others as remembrance,
or we leave it simply to water,
to water, to air, to time.
Nor do we even keep
the memory of our birth,
though being born was important and fresh:
and now you don’t remember one detail
and you haven’t kept even a branch
of your first light.
It’s well known that we are born.
It’s well known that in the room
or in the wood
or in the hut in the fishermen’s district
or in the rustling canefields
there is a quite unusual silence,
a moment solemn as wood,
and a woman gets ready to give birth.
It’s well known that we were all born.
But of that profound jolt
from not being to existing, to having hands,
to seeing, to having eyes,
to eating and crying and overflowing
and loving and loving and suffering and suffering,
of that transition or shudder
of the electric essence that takes on
one body more body like a living cup,
and of that disinhabited woman,
the mother who is left there with her blood
and her torn fullness,
and her end and beginning, and the disorder
that troubles the pulse, the floor, the blankets
until everything comes together and adds
one more knot to the thread of life:
nothing, there is nothing that remains in your memory
of the fierce sea that lifted a wave
and knocked down a dark apple from the tree.
The only thing you remember is your life.
The mantra from class:
Om Namah Shivaya Gurave
Saccidananda Murtaye
Nisprapancaya Shantaya
Niralambaya Tejase
Om
The following English translation reflects a general sentiment of the actual Sanskrit words; they rhyme and work together for singing.
—Source for the mantra.
Opening Movement
10-15 breaths to move as you like, options:
Come to Tadasana at the top of your mat.
Wave 1
Tadasana (mountain pose)
Urdvha Hastasana (hands to sky)
Uttanasana (forward fold)
Ardha Uttanasana (half lift)
Anjaneyasana (lunge) variation
Anjaneyasana (lunge) variation
Makara Adho Mukha Svanasana (dolphin plank pose)
Salamba Bhujangasana (sphinx pose)
Bhujangasana (cobra pose)
Adho mukha svanasana (down dog)
Eka pada adho mukha svanasana (3-legged downward dog)
Anjaneyasana (lunge)
Uttanasana (forward fold) with hands interlaced at your back
Uttanasana (forward fold)
Tadasana (mountain pose)
Repeat the same sequence starting on the opposite leg.
Wave 1
Tadasana (mountain pose)
Urdvha Hastasana (hands to sky) and interlace your palms
Tadasana Pavanmuktasana (standing knee to chest pose) with hip mandalas
Anjaneyasana (lunge) variation
Anjaneyasana (lunge) variation
Ardha Hanumanasana (half splits)
Makara Adho Mukha Svanasana (dolphin plank pose) variation
Anantasana (Krishna’s couch)
Parsvo Vasithasana (side plank pose)
Adho mukha svanasana (down dog)
Phalakasana (plank pose)
Chaturanga
Bhujangasana (cobra pose)
Adho mukha svanasana (down dog)
Eka pada adho mukha svanasana (3-legged downward dog)
Virabhadrasana II (warrior 2)
Utthita Parsvakonasana (extended side angle)
Urdhva Prasarita Eka Padasana (standing splits pose)
Tadasana Pavanmuktasana (standing knee to chest pose) with hip mandalas
Repeat the same sequence starting on the opposite leg.
Backbend Sequence
Anuvittasana (standing backbend)
Setu Bandha Sarvāṅgāsana (brideg pose)
Urdhva Dhanurasana (wheel pose)
Cooling Sequence
Jathara Parivartanasana
An inversion of choice:
Savasana or seated meditation to close.