"Principles of Yoga Don't Discriminate" - Matthew Sanford

Photo Credit: FiberArtGirl

I had the privilege of attending an on-line yoga seminar with Matthew Sanford yesterday, thanks to Yoga Alliance (and to my teacher, Julie Rosier, who told me about him years ago). He's been practicing and teaching yoga for 30 years from a wheelchair, paralyzed from the chest down since an accident at the age of 13. He said many brilliant things that I tried to capture. One that stuck with me is this:

"Principles of yoga don't discriminate. Yoga poses do."

He went on to explain that everyone has a different outer body, but the inner, subtle body, where you feel yoga, where you experience being alive, does not discriminate. Thus, my job as a teacher is to guide people to experience the subtle body, not just do poses. It's what I hope I've been accomplishing these past 15 years.

My trainer, Esther Myers (d. 2004), conveyed this same, powerful concept through three principals of finding the ground, feeling the breath, and elongating the spine in every pose. She had us explore working with gravity and alignment based on the influences of her teachers, Vanda Scaravelli and B.K.S. Iyengar, and then experiencing freedom and ease with the breath. The spinal elongation that occurs and enlivens the whole body happens, not as a controlled action, but spontaneously when we fully experience the ground and the movement of the breath--that is, when we're conscious of the subtle body, as Sanford emphasizes.

I'm grateful for this foundation that has allowed me to understand, at least to a degree, the universal truths of this ancient, living practice of yoga. And I'm still so thankful Julie's flyer landed in my mailbox all those years ago.