Breath, Embodiment, & Yoga - Amplifying Your Vitality Blueprint

We can live for months without food, 3 days without water, but less than ten minutes without air.

Yet, we take our breath for granted - inhaling and exhaling is such an automatic part of how our body functions every minute of the day that we rarely pause to notice.

Every single minute, all the blood of your body passes through the lungs to recharge and supply oxygen-rich blood to the cells. But unbeknownst to us, many, many factors are constantly impacting the health of our lungs and the aging trajectory of our respiratory system.

And, we ignore these at our peril.

An estimated 14% of those over 65 are affected by COPD, a chronic, obstructive lung condition, which greatly increases the risk of disease and mortality. And of course, more than ever, the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the vital importance of keeping the lung tissue strong, vital and healthy.

The ability to breathe freely is affected by numerous factors. The natural process of aging - in the absence of preventive factors - will cause a decline in lung capacity. The diaphragm gets weather and the lung tissue tends to lose elasticity, restricting the size of the airways. Tightness around the shoulders, back and chest will restrict the free movement and expansion of the lungs.

Fortunately, like any part of the body, there are many ways to improve the health of the lungs. Yoga, breathing practices and exercise in general have long been recognized as a path to develop stronger respiratory muscles, improve the elasticity and capacity of the lungs, and - by slowing the breath - even to reduce stress and anxiety.

In this innovative 3-part online course, Lisa Clark of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s Body-Mind Centering® Approach will offer an embodiment approach to give you the skills to work more consciously with the respiratory system to amplify vitality, health, and well-being.

Lisa is a master yoga teacher and certified teacher of Body-Mind Centering® and the Educational Director of the School For Body-Mind Centering® Yoga Immersion Series. For the past 40 years, Lisa has worked and studied directly with movement pioneer Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, who developed the Body-Mind Centering® approach to movement and consciousness. This class draws on this work to show how breathing, moving, and asanas, can be initiated from, and sequenced through our organs in the process developing an integrative experience of embodiment and vitality.

Movement can begin in the container of the musculoskeletal structure and flow into the organs. Or, as Lisa will show, our movement can be initiated by the individual organ, or group of organs, and continue to flow through the container, thus creating an inner outer dialogue in our practice. As we learn to sense, feel, and move from our lungs, we begin to experience how the lungs interact with, and offer support for the arms, head, shoulders and spine.

Structural imbalances can originate in the organs. Many issues with the shoulders and neck begin in the lungs. We will look at internal collapse and fixation, and how to re-balance our overall tone, offering new ways to address chronic issues in the shoulders and neck, inflexibility, and ways to increase breathing capability.

We can look to the lungs in asanas to address issues like chronic raising of the shoulders, head integration into the torso, tight immobile neck, and holdings in different areas of the spine.

Class One

In this class we will explore ways to enhance breath articulation by freeing movement between the individual lobes and ways to create more elasticity in the lungs. Lisa will guide you through an experience and understanding of how structural imbalances can originate in the lobes of lungs, ways to alleviate internal collapse and fixation, and you will learn how to create more internal buoyancy and flexibility.

Class Two

Breathing, moving, and asana, can be initiated from and sequenced through our organs into our limbs. In this class we begin to explore and coordinate movements of the lungs with the arms,  head, and spine. Our internal movement choices will increase with a felt sense of compression, expansion, and suspension from the lungs in support of the front, back, and side body.

Class Three

In this class you will learn how to create movement sequencing, internal counter support, spirals and diagonal movements, between the lungs and other structures of the body. Experience how this gives you the ability to utilize multiple pathways of connection and alignment within the asana and your practice.