Tripsichore Yoga

I got a taste of Tripsichore Yoga when I attended Matthew Kemp's workshop on Thursday and in today's class with Daniela.  Being an Ashtanga practitioner, I might not have attended the workshop if I had known that the teacher would be teaching Tripsichore Yoga.  I always thought of Tripsichore Yoga as an acrobatic form of dance yoga with lots of impossible poses after watching this video.   

It was an eye-opener for me as I learned how to  incorporate the techniques from Tripsichore Yoga into my practice.     Both classes started with the Sun Salutations (Tripsichore-style) where emphasis is on the breath with movement.   The teachers reminded us to keep our abdomen lengthen, not round our back and keep our shoulders rolled back and down.  

It was an amazing workshop as Matthew showed us how we could attain the difficult poses such as inversions and backbends by working our breath and bandhas as shown in the video below. 

And it was another amazing class with Daniela today as she got us to hop into handstands on our own at the wall.   When one of the practitioners said that she needed to be assisted into the handstand, Daniela asked us to place a bolster at the wall and placed our head on the bolster as we hopped into our handstand.    The bolster managed to take off some of my fear of banging my head on the wall as I tried to hop up to a handstand on my own.  Although I did not managed to hop over to place my legs on the wall; using the breath, engaging my bandhas and keeping my legs working all the time helped me to go higher in my hops which I had never been able to do so before.    

The two Tripsichore classes gave me an insight on the importance of knowing how to work the breath and the bandhas and when we are able to apply this to our practice constantly, it will help to transform our practice.   

"When you open your mind to the impossible, you find the possible."