the mat, the blank page, the floating pool
Nancy Yates--my co-teacher for this coming Saturday's Poetry in Motion, poe-yoga workshop--has written an article as part of a training she gave to yoga instructors. It is called "Illuminating the Possibilities" and it is about adapting the practice of yoga instruction for students with visual impairments.
Here are some of her guidelines from the article:
--don't omit: adapt when possible
--the mat gives a student their own private space; they can feel freer with movements
These guidelines read like lines in a poem to me. They undulate and take on light. I like thinking about the yoga mat as a blank page. How the blank page can be adapted, especially at times when it is not possible to have words for things, or perhaps, there are too many words. The mat/page can become a small clear pool where we can float. And where what can't be written can be translated into sinking/rising, an experiment in (resting lightly upon) language--which is a surface. An effortless exercise in which the student's body is held by the aquatic surface of words and new words come.
Here are some of her guidelines from the article:
--don't omit: adapt when possible
--the mat gives a student their own private space; they can feel freer with movements
These guidelines read like lines in a poem to me. They undulate and take on light. I like thinking about the yoga mat as a blank page. How the blank page can be adapted, especially at times when it is not possible to have words for things, or perhaps, there are too many words. The mat/page can become a small clear pool where we can float. And where what can't be written can be translated into sinking/rising, an experiment in (resting lightly upon) language--which is a surface. An effortless exercise in which the student's body is held by the aquatic surface of words and new words come.