Royal Yoga Studio

A short note on something I’ve gotten from my work with tango and Landmark: activation of hands and feet.

I’ve always known and felt the energetic connection between activation of the feet (particularly anterior tibialis and peroneus) and stability in ankle, knee and hip, the ability to relax abs and activating lines of energy on the front of the leg, among other effects. This is true in tango as well. Keeping activation in anterior lines stabilizes ankle, particularly when wearing heels. But in my postures I have always relaxed the hands beyond running energy out of index finger. My correlation has been a connection between activation of the whole hand, such as in Aikido, and tention in neck and face and a feeling of blocking energies down that side. The more you can relax, the more you feel, the more energy runs, the more power, the less you are likely to injure, and I expressed this in a relaxed hand.

In the context of being responsible for your life, what is in it, how you respond to it, what you create out of it, I am excited about activating the hands (interestingly enough). It adds a level of intentionality to the form and movement that was subtle, yet lacking, and at least for me, is an expression of responsibility for every part of my practice. As long as the lines running up to the hand are open and the hand is active rather than tense, the power of this ‘mudra’ is noteworthy.

All the yogis in the house, throw yo active hands up!

-A

Coming from Houston to Eugene is both transitioning from megalogopolis to town as much as insanity to peaceful respite.

I’ve given myself most of a year to create what came naturally here and that happened to not be yoga, but my other passion, tango. I became the executive director of the Tango Center upon its near death and now that it is closing this month for good, its giving me the opportunity to look at what it is I want to create here in my new home.

My partner and transformational lover Andria Miguez and I came to a scary moment that gave 2 distinct possibilities as outcomes: being together joyously, or being apart. This ‘death’ distinguished something for me, namely my dysfunctional identity as a teacher and master.

In Landmark Education there is a concept call your ’strong suits’, or identities that you pick up as a youth and carry as ways of responding and functioning in the world. At first these were not easy to see but the easiest way to see them I found is this: What works in your life (work, hobbies, etc) and not in your intimate relationships. Ahhhhhh yes. Work-a-holic = strong suit. Funny guy = strong suit. My first strong suit is prodigy/master, someone who is great at doing everything that he focuses on.

In Houston I taught lots of classes and could get away with not practicing regularly for the last few years. Once I moved here, not teaching meant not actually practicing yoga. 40+ hours of dancing a week with no yoga and you get the picture. But my identity was still not just a yogi but a spiritual teacher, but one who isn’t practicing his spiritual path…yikes. Have you ever been afraid of exposing your deepest knowing for looking bad? The deep-seeded need to look good or at least avoid looking bad. The gift of my near break-up was the gift of myself. I gave up looking like anything I am not. It gave me my practice back. This gave me access to depths of connection and intimacy in my relationship with Andria I could never have imagined (more on this later).

So what are we creating fearlessly?
In addition to an assault