Witnessing the evolution of yoga from Vinyasa to Prana Flow to Flow Motion to Your Yoga

February 24, 2009 by Kara-Leah Grant
Filed under Musings from the Mat, Teaching Yoga, Yoga Styles

Sarah Tomson Beyer on Yoga Journal

I love this video (see below)… it’s Sarah Tomson Beyer doing her brand of yoga, Flowmotion – and yes, that’s trademarked. But don’t get upset about it, because who cares, it’s all about the yoga right?

And when I watch Sarah, I see such beauty, such grace, such inspiration… and I want to be able to do that, feel that, be that.

In my own way of course

If you’ve ever bought Yogi Tea, you’ll know that the tea bags come printed with short little sayings – one of which is “You are Unlimited”. I feel that unlimitedness when I watch this video. I feel the seed of potential that lives within all of our bodies to open up, let go, find strength, move and flow.

Sarah has her “roots in the teachings of Shiva Rea”, and offers her own “signature style of yoga”. I confess though, to me it looks like Prana Flow, and in the end, all the names we put on the way yoga is expressed through us are just that – names.

Yoga is yoga is yoga is yoga. It’s connecting to the breath and feeling our connection to All that Is. It’s surrendering the ego self to the higher self and letting the innate intelligence within the body, within the cells, guide our every movement in our every moment.

Of course, it’s hard to “see” in the mind’s eye what this looks like. Which is why I love this video – it visually captures an expression of what I experience Prana Flow Yoga as.

So next time someone asks you, What’s Prana Flow Yoga?, you can send them this video – (use the email link at the bottom of this post).

Take a moment now to watch Sarah flow through her yoga.

Watch her with a blank slate, being mindful of releasing all reactions of the mind, all reactions of the ego, judging neither her, nor yourself as you surrender to the experience.

Can you watch her with a blank slate?

Or is the mind still active?

Leaping and darting and stating and questioning and asserting and proclaiming?

Can you watch her practicing yoga and feel like you could one day practice yoga like that? (No! I couldn’t! I’m too tight! Too old! too fat! Too unco-ordinated! Too ugly! Too male!)

Do you want to one day practice yoga by yourself for the sheer joy of it allowing yoga to be expressed through your body in your own perfect way?

Can you let go of all those limiting thoughts of how you perceive yourself to be and know that even if this is how you are it is only how you are right now in this very moment and in the next moment it will all change.

It will change if you want it to change. If you take the steps to make it change. If you open to the possibility of the seed of potential that lies within you and begin to water and nurture that seed to grow into all you can be.

Look again at the video with that blank slate of the still mind and note how it makes you feel inside.

Do you feel inspired… or put off?

Do you stretch toward the experience, feeling drawn to it?

Or do you distance yourself from it, feeling separate from it?

Hmm… and in this way, observing your thoughts and feelings as they arise when confronted by an experience, so you begin to practice yoga off the mat. So you begin to find the gap that lies within between experience and reaction. And in finding that gap, so you begin to know that you can choose not to react the way you’ve always reacted and so change who you think you are… This is yoga.

As much as this is yoga.

Will you be expected to look and move like this when you come to a Prana Flow Yoga class?

Hell no – I don’t look like this when I practice Prana Flow Yoga… but I do feel like I look like this… that is, when I’m in the flow and connected to Prana and the yoga is doing me rather than me doing the yoga… in my mind’s eye, I do look like this.

And so too can you.

Ain’t that a beautiful thing?

(And don’t think just because you’re a man that you can’t do this, or don’t want to do this because it’s a chick’s thing… check out the video of David Swenson at the end of this article!)

Because in the end, yoga is about joy- the joy of being alive, of being in a body that can move and dance and fly. Like wow! How blessed are we?

Today, take a moment to stop and appreciate your body for what it is. Take a moment to appreciate it – this body of yours that houses your soul, you spirit, your divinity. Take a moment to feel the joy of being able to move – walk, run, skip, jump, leap, dance, twirl, rejoice.

Today, take five minutes to put on your favourite music. Breathe into your lungs, your belly, your bones, your feet and know that with every conscious breath, Prana is flooding your every cell and you are more alive, more connected than you were just a breath ago.

Allow that breath and that music to take you where it will, connecting to and opening to your inner yoga teacher. Feel the dance within come alive as you breathe, and listen, and move.

Feel the joy of simply taking this time to be with yourself, with your body, with your breath…

This is Prana Flow Yoga.

This is Home Practice.

This is where it all begins.

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