There is a major difference between the way I share the subtlety of muscle action in twisting vs the way I share the Fire Line. The Fire Line twisting practices are designed to have a more intense strength-building experience, stimulating the sympathetic nervous system. This is the “get up and go” energy that is action-oriented. In this class, however, we go a bit more subtle, including in the muscular system. I talk about using the transverse abdominus- the deepest core muscle- to twist, and that’s a challenging muscle to sense, so it requires a stronger mind/body relationship. While this class can still stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, it may also engage the “rest and digest”, or parasympathetic, nervous system.
Please share your experience and biggest takeaways in the comments below.
From down dog, place one shin forward at whatever angle it naturally lands on the mat
with back toes tucked, reach hips and back heal backward
Keep back thigh internally rotating
Keep front hip engaged – press front knee and shin down, lift hips up
COMMON PATTERNS:
Hips lean to one side or the other – Keep hips up and level using hip muscles
Front knee pain – there are many solutions depending on where the knee pain is coming from, it usually means there is lack of engagement in one area of the hips or another.
This practice had a very specific intention, and that was to call attention to the low back and sacral-illiac joints. There were no fancy postures, just intentional actions. In the comments below (no quiz here), please share your experience with this practice, and your biggest take aways.
CONTRAINDICATIONS: abdominal, wrist, shoulder, hip flexor injury.
ALIGNMENT POINTS:
From bridge pose place hands over head outers shoulder width apart
Use legs to lift hips and arms to press upper body of the ground
Keep elbows bend in order to bring the weight into the hands
COMMON PATTERNS:
Lack of Quad and buttock strength and shoulder range of motion – results in the weight being in the feet, pressure of the back bend will be in the low back, and there will be an extreme wrist extension. Bend Elbows slightly out to the sides and press the pose toward the chest with the strength of the quads and buttocks. Once forearms are vertical then straighten arms while chest is pushing through.
You now have the opportunity to insert your layering poses into your class. If you have a particular style of teaching that you want to use, you may. Otherwise, you may use the vinyasa style sequence and structure that you learned at the beginning of this course.
You will not be graded on the style of class but the sequence does need to make sense. You cannot teach a restorative, Nidra or yin style with peak actions or engagements; that would go against the very foundation of those styles.
We suggest you use the vinyasa structure that was memorized and provided for you but again, this is ultimately your choice and we are happy to support you so long as the Chromatic structure of layering postures are within the sequence.
KEY NOTE: BE SURE TO HAVE A VISUAL DEMONSTRATION FOR THE PEAK POSTURE WITH A STEP-BY-STEP BREAKDOWN AND AT LEAST ONE ALTERNATIVE OPTION TO ACCOMMODATE MULTI-LEVEL STUDENTS. THIS MAY INCLUDE ADDING A PROP OR SIMPLY MODIFYING THE POSE.
For your visual demonstration, you will instruct students to pause their practice and watch you for a moment so they can see the step-by-step break down AND most importantly, watch how you implement the Peak Action or Engagement.
Your next step in preparation for your final is to teach the structure of your sequence without the style – meaning just the layering postures. Practice teaching your five to seven layering poses, exploring what your PTL phrase will be and work on becoming dialed in and comfortable with your verbal cues. Once you feel ready, submit your video to your mentor for review in the quiz that follows this lesson. Your mentor will support you with feedback to prepare you for your final class. You’ve got this!
STEP 1: Create your sequence in written format and submit to your mentor for review. Your mentor will work with you to refine your sequence. We HIGHLY recommend keeping this simple and straight forward. This is not the time for experimental, overly intellectualized and debatable anatomy. Keep it intelligent, simple and obvious as to how the physical throughline applies directly to the peak pose. Upon approval from your mentor, you may continue to step 2, a video of you teaching your layering poses. The full explanation for that part is in the next lesson of this course. Do not get started on this prior to approval as your sequence may end up changing.
We are excited to see your final sequence. Have fun creating it!
While this is not mandatory, I have a challenge for you.
You’ve likely heard me share the story of my best friend who handed me the book, Way of the Peaceful Warrior. This is the book that suggested I try yoga, so needless to say, it changed my life.
I met Julia on a beach at sunset. She was alone and I was alone and there was a whole lot of beach for us to each be in our own world. I had every reason not to say hello; after all, I came there to be by myself. It was obvious she did, too. I felt drawn to say hello but hesitated because that would require walking toward her, which would mean a lot of awkward minutes as she watched me approach.
Thoughts raced through my head. What if she just wants to be alone? Will she think I am one of THOSE guys looking to take advantage of a situation? What the heck will I say? There is no reason to have a conversation; we have nothing to talk about. I walked down to the water and watched as the waves washed over my toes. I looked up at the sunset and remembered that earlier in the day, I whispered a prayer to the universe. “I am so lonely; please bring someone into my life”. I then heard a different voice respond with “You can ask for whatever you want, but if you do nothing to step toward it, nothing will ever change.”
It was that internal response that gave me the courage to walk over and stumble over a hello. Years later, Julia would reveal to me that she’d been crying just before I walked over, but I was too caught up in my own insecurities to even notice.
It wasn’t a smooth conversation at all but then she asked, Do you play guitar? I had no idea where that came from.
“Yes! How did you know that?”
Julia laughed and reminded me of my necklace, which had a stone in the shape of a guitar pick on it. I felt like an idiot. “I just moved in with a lady here whose son plays guitar. He’s heading to Boston next week to start school at Berklee College of Music.”
“Is her son’s name Matt by any chance?”
“YES!” she said.
“I’m the one driving him there. He’s a good friend of mine, and that’s where I went to school. My name is Matt, too.”
We shook hands and from there the conversation flowed naturally. To this day, I consider Julia one of my best friends, mentors, and accountability buddies. I hate her half the time because she keeps me in check, always making sure to challenge my comfort zone, and ALWAYS shaking up my perspective. Honestly, I don’t know where I would be if I hadn’t taken that awkward step into conversation that day.
My challenge to you is to find someone in the training, either in the Facebook group or in your small group, that you resonated with and reach out to them. Tell them you enjoyed what they had to share in the training and that you would like to stay connected in the future. This might have already happened naturally for you, but sometimes it requires an extra bit of courage to step toward something or someone, even though it may not work out. The worst thing that can happen in this case is you don’t stay in touch, which would put you right where you are now. So there is nothing to lose and only a potential relationship to gain.
There is much in this session that you will find supportive and useful. Thank you to everyone that participated live to facilitate the conversations that allow us to further develop our understanding of the Chromatic system and Intention. I suggest taking notes while watching, but you can also enjoy the notes from trainee Jenna who kindly submitted hers for all of us to benefit from.
Session Notes (taken by Jenna Short)
Chromatic Sequencing
NOTES
Review of where everyone is in the course
Target stretch– muscle group that you are lengthening throughout the entire class that may be an attribute of your peak pose.
Your target stretch is not just passive. Facilitated stretching and isometric actions encourage neuron connections between the body and the brain, which builds proprioceptive awareness.
Neuromuscular connections are formed when we bring awareness to muscle activation. The feedback from the muscle travels to the brain. What happens when we activate muscles intentionally? You gain more body awareness.
Just as you stretch throughout a class to gain access to a peak pose, you can also strengthen a muscle to access a peak pose. This strength action is the Peak Engagement.
PEAK IS NOT THE IMPORTANT PART OF A CLASS. What IS important is the body and muscle awareness that allows access to the pose. You encourage your students to engage muscles and make them aware of where in the body they are feeling this engagement. In effect, you are teaching them that taking action produces results. The peak pose is the RESULT of your body awareness. The purpose of peak is simply to support the awareness process.
The Chromatic approach is body awareness over flexibility. Ideally your students take what they learn on the mat, reflect, and bring this new awareness off the mat.
This approach teaches our students valuable lessons about failure. If we do something and it fails, we reflect on the actions we took that lead to the failure or the undesired results. If the results are not yielding what you want, you don’t change YOU, you need to change your ACTIONS.
When you help your students connect the neurological circuit from action to sensation, you empower them to to reflect on their own actions. From here, they can discern (viveka) whether those particular actions are serving them or not. This might be one of the most valuable lessons you can help your students learn.
“You may not be their best asana teacher, but you provided them the space for self-reflection, and they will remember you for it.” -Sharon, 300 Hour YTT
Fundamental and Balancing Actions
If gravity is assisting you in stretching and lengthening a muscle, as in the hamstrings in hanumanasana (split), it is best to do the opposite. In this case it would be a balancing action – engaging the muscles that are lengthening. In the case of hanumasana, you could cue to squeeze the legs toward each other, which would activate the lengthened hamstrings and help to prevent over-stretching tendons. In full wheel, gravity is weighing you down, making it hard to stretch abs, so you engage your already lengthened back muscles against gravity. Another example of a balancing action is the standing split. Try to micro tuck the standing sit bone to engage the hamstrings that are lengthened.
Fundamental action in standing splits – top leg glutes and hamstrings are activated to resist gravity as you press your heel toward to the back of the room to shorten your top hamstrings/glutes.
Again – a balanced action is the engagement of a muscle that is already lengthened. And if the force of gravity is forcing the muscle to lengthen, its best to chose a balancing action to protect from over stretching.
A fundamental action, on the other hand, engages a muscle that is already shortened. If I bend my elbow, my bicep muscle is contracting- shortened. Now if I actively squeeze my bicep muscle, that is a fundamental action. An example of this would be activating my quads while in a seated forward fold. Why would I want to do this? Activating the quads in this pose can help improve joint alignment and stability at the knee and it releases the hamstrings through reciprocal inhibition so lengthening happens in the belly of the hamstrings and not in the tendons. Can you think of other poses that would use a fundamental action?
How can I incorporate all of this into the classes I’m already teaching?
Add in one element at a time to understand it in your own sequencing and you will start to understand it in their bodies and then your creativity will start to flow.
The peak helps you to wrap your mind around the concept you want to teach and gives direction to the class, whether or not you get to the peak or not
Don’t dumb down your teaching but teach what is true to you and bring your class up. Everyone walks in wanting to achieve. A peak posture helps the ego stay on board, but ultimately the peak gives us a path to walk upon. If you offer an incredible experience but never make it to the top of the mountain, your students will still remember an incredible experience. The peak is simply our way of organizing the experience for our students.
You want to get your students to internalize your cues without you being there all the time to verbalize them. At some point, their bodies just know what to do.
A physical throughline is like a theme of a well-written book- a message that keeps repeating until the conclusion. Make a choice for your physical through line. Of all the muscles that required to strengthen and stretch, choose one of each that you feel will provide the greatest access to the peak pose. This is challenging for most teachers. Once you understand all that is required, it’s hard to limit the focus to one muscle group to strengthen and one to stretch.
Action Cues:
Consider your PTL. How will you get your students to engage the muscle or move their bones accordingly? Brainstorm the myriad of ways you could. Write those ideas down and place them under the category of “action cues”.
PTL Phrase
Select the action cue that has the greatest revelatory power to give students an AHA moment in their practice and repeat this throughout your class. The goal – the phrase- triggers immediate awareness and action in your students’ bodies.
Layering Your PTL-Phrase:
Practice speaking your PTL Phrase in your selected layering postures. How would you say it from each elemental standpoint?
3 Types of Learning
1. Auditory: The student who learns best from verbal cues is an auditory learner.
2. Visual: The student who learns best from demonstration, active demonstration (doing the pose as you cue), or with a visual reference is a visual learner
3.Kinesthetic: The student who learns best from hands-on adjustments, assists, or a “kinesthetic touch” is a kinesthetic learner.
To unveil and ignite the potential of our students we must honor the individual ways that people learn. Observe how your students are picking up information and integrating it into their bodies. If you have a limited time for alignment cues, it is beneficial to know who will respond to your verbal delivery and who may need another form of delivery.
Mastery is a concept that is often mistaken for perfectionism. Mastery is far from perfect. It is more a way of practicing than an end result. Anyone who is masterful at something embraces the rigor of its challenges and doesn’t give up or walk away when they get bored or feel defeated. Mastery is discipline.
We often say we have mastered something when we will never forget it – like riding a bike. That doesn’t mean you can’t develop your bike-riding techniques or learn different styles of riding. But once mastered, you will always be able to balance on the bike, as long as your body is physically capable. It’s like that with language. If you learn a few words of a language and never use it, you won’t retain what you learned. But if you immersed yourself in that language and used it even in times when you frustratingly couldn’t find the right words to express yourself, then you will have a certain level of mastery that will stay with you forever.
As a musician, I had so many aspirations with my guitar playing. There were so many skills I wanted to learn so I practiced a little of this and a little of that, a little of something else. Teaching myself in this way, I mastered nothing. It wasn’t until the final year or two of my professional career that I buckled down and focused on one thing at a time. In that last stretch of practicing, I developed the most I ever had (with exception of the first year, where I buried myself in my guitar all year). In that last year ,I limited my study to three guitar solos. I studied five seconds of each solo for one hour a day. I slowed down the music to half the speed to work out every movement of my fingers. I was determined to get inside the musician’s experience and play it as if I was them. This was intense but incredibly special. I didn’t settle; I was relentless. Had I begun that approach earlier, my life would look differently right now as I’m sure I wouldn’t have transitioned away from it.
However, it was PERFECT timing because that year I was also beginning my yoga practice and without realizing it, I was applying the same concept to my physical body. One bone, one joint, and one muscle at a time, immersing myself in videos and books while I studied my body from the inside out.
Once I transitioned to teaching, I took the same approach, still not quite realizing what I was doing until later on when I began teacher trainings. Then I noticed the major difference between students that kept things surface level and those that were relentless, even in the face of their own internal struggles. It was frustrating at first because I didn’t understand why everyone didn’t see the difference. Later I realized that not everyone has the same intention for teaching or practicing yoga that others do. Not everyone is seeking their highest potential, and not everyone is willing to step into the fire of transformation for their unknown potential. The fear of the unknown is stronger than the excitement of possibility.
You have a real opportunity to step into your potential, given the depth of study you are putting yourself through in this training. You have not been offered a surface level “feel good” vacation from reality-style training; you are being asked to immerse yourself and transform the way you understand your body and mind and your ability to communicate it. Keep in mind where you are going and keep stepping forward. Be relentless about your potential so that when you do take that vacation you will be able to relax, knowing you put the fullness of your heart into this experience.
Now that you understand the elements and you’ve practiced with them, it’s time to implement them into your teaching. The following exercise may be redone several times as a practice to develop your proficiency in your voice. Before submitting your video, I highly recommend completing steps 1-4, until you shake off the nervousness, break through your blockages, and start finding your authentic YET versatile range of voice.
Remember “comfortable” is not the same as authentic. Comfortable is a result of repetitious practice – Authenticity is your willingness to show up entirely as yourself. We all have ALL the elements within us, and they look and sound different from each other; that’s what makes us unique. Discovering our blocks within any given element gives us the chance to uncover what’s underneath it all. It’s usually way deeper than we would expect.
Create a new sequence using a peak pose, peak action, 5-7 layering postures.
Teach your layering postures and film it (15-20min maximum).
Listen back and observe your use of the elements. Write down time markers where you shift to a new element.
Write down which element you think you struggle with the most
Share the video and time markers in the Quiz to follow, so your mentor can watch and listen.
Note for your mentor which element you feel most challenged with and why.
BLACK FRIDAY SALE!
Congratulations, your 30% discount code has been applied and will be reflected at the very bottom of the checkout page.
All Immersions & Immersion Bundles are included in this sale.
To get more info on each immersion click on the photo.
On Demand and Lifetime Access To all
BLACK FRIDAY SALE!
Congratulations, your 30% discount code has been applied and will be reflected at the very bottom of the checkout page.
All Immersions & Immersion Bundles are included in this sale.
To get more info on each immersion click on the photo.
On Demand and Lifetime Access To all
