Lessons From Pre School

Try this simple exercise and see if you can feel the difference.

Stand up straight with your legs together and your feet together or as close as you can. Lift up your chest and relax your shoulders back and down. Relax your neck so your chin is kept parallel to the floor. Have your arms at your sides, making them straight. Then stretch your arms up over your head and reach up as far as  you can with your arms as straight as you can make them. Do this in a way that makes you feel long and tall. Then take your arms out to your sides at shoulder height and stretch them to each side so that you feel very wide. And finally bring them back to your sides. See if you feel differently now.

Now, can you remember back in preschool or maybe day care when the teacher took your hands and had you open them up on a piece of paper and traced around them? Can you remember the feel of having that fat crayon or marker going around each and every finger and your thumb, tracing the outline so that you could really feel your hand? And when you took your hand off the paper, the outline remained on the paper, but also you could still feel the edges of your hand?

If you think about it now and open up your hand you can probably still fell how it might feel to trace around your hand; you can make mental contact with the edges of your fingers, with your thumb, with the sides of the palm and your knuckles.  Now try the same exercise I outlined in the first paragraph: Stand up again with your legs straight and lift up your chest. Then raise your arms up over your head and reach up as far as you can. But this time also feel the outline of both of your hands, feel the edges of each finger. Feel how much more “connected” from bottom to top you feel?  And when you take your arms to the sides and stretch as wide as possible also feel the margins of your fingers and feel what that does. Do you also now feel more of the parts of you in-between?

When you come back to the starting position see if this has made a difference. This ability to connect and feel more acutely is what yoga teaches. See if your mind is more centered, more focused, perhaps even quieter.

Each week one of the teachers at the Yoga Space shares her thoughts and experiences in this blog. Sue Salaniuk is a certified Senior Intermediate I Iyengar Yoga teacher at The Yoga Space,  a studio just east of Dexter serving Saline, Chelsea, Manchester and Ann Arbor.  We have been helping people with their flexibility, strength, focus and stress management for over 14 years. Our next free class is this Friday, May 30 from 6-7 pm. 180 Little Lake Dr #1 Ann Arbor, MI, 48103. www.yogaspaceannarbor.com 734-622-9600