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HW 30DYC: Day 18 Eyes closed Vinyasa
Vinyasa yoga with the eyes closed deepens your practice in several areas:
Keeping your balance becomes more difficult.
- Eyes give important information about how and where your body is in space. By closing your eyes you are completely dependent on your sense of posture and sound for orientation. This can make postures which are otherwise easy suddenly become more difficult. Especially postures in stance or postures where you have a smaller footprint become more difficult. You can feel with your proprioceptors in your skin, muscles and joints what position your are in, you can feel with your hands and feet where you are on the mat, and you can orient yourself towards the voice of the teacher. You may even suddenly smell things which you otherwise don’t notice. By closing one channel you create more space to use the other channels more intensively.
- You are more in the moment. It is important to listen to all the instructions of the teacher and not to let your thoughts wander. After all, you can’t just look at the end result and imitate it. If you miss certain instructions you can end up in a different pose. Nobody will see it, because your fellow yogis also have their eyes closed, but it brings you in an other starting position for the next pose, and subsequent instructions will not match anymore. For the teacher it is also an extra challenge to describe the transitions correctly. Students cannot correct themselves visually. Vinyasa with the eyes closed ensures that all yogis in the room are more in the moment. For people who have a lot of trouble stopping the flow of thoughts, practicing yoga with eyes closed can be a good solution.
- You have less visual distraction. You can and should focus more on your body because you have less distraction from the environment. This allows you to feel things you otherwise would not feel. E.g. a certain stretch, a pain, tension, ….
- You literally turn your attention more inward. It gives you the opportunity to really focus on yourself and your third eye. By giving your physical eyes rest, you give extra energy and confidence to your third eye and body; they will keep you in balance. The third eye is also associated with intuition. So through Eyes Closed Vinyasa, you also strengthen your intuition.
It is recommended that the yogis already have some experience with yoga so that they can somewhat mentally imagine the postures. In addition, it is best to keep a lot of contact with the floor, especially in the beginning, so that people can feel comfortable and confident on their mat and in their bodies. During the session or with advanced yogis you can make the support area / footprint smaller and introduce more challenging poses like tree pose or half moon pose 🙂
The pose I have chosen to describe is the side angle pose variation open arms, sometimes also called runners lunge twist. Because both feet and one hand are on the floor and your torso is slightly touching your front leg this is a challenging yet comfortable pose. In addition, opening your arms allows for more freedom to breath, opening your heart and making a connection between the ground and the sky. If you can stand comfortably in this pose, it is a very nice pose to become aware of the Prana vayu (ascending energy) and the apana vayu (descending energy) coming together at a balancing point where you can observe the Samana Vayu. Combining this with attention to your third eye makes this posture even more powerful.
There are 2 postures from which you can easily get into side angle pose variation open arms / runners lunge twist. Runners lunge and Warrior 2.
Here is a description of the pose with the left leg in front, starting from runners lunge left leg in front.
- Move your left hand from the outside to the inside of your left foot.
- Place your right hand on your right hip and turn your right hip out. Allow your right leg and foot to pivot along, this way your right foot comes perpendicular to the mat with the toes facing the long side of the mat.
- Now move your left foot and arm slightly inward, align your left heal with the arch of your right foot. Feel that this aligns your extended right leg, your torso and your bended left leg. Make sure your left knee stays 90 degrees bent. Try to distribute your weight evenly over both feet. If you feel that you are leaning too much on your front leg, try to consciously push the outside of your right foot into the mat.
- Once you feel you are stable, pick your right hand from your hip and bring it up. Extend your right arm all the way towards the sky.
- Now, focus your attention on your arms. With your left hand, feel the connection to mother earth, the support she gives and the upward energy that also comes from it (prana vayu). With your right hand, make the connection with the universe and feel the downward energy coming from it (apana vayu). Feel both energies come together in the center (Samana vayu), in this position your heart chakra. Let your heart open, breathe freely. Connect with your 3rd eye and align all chakras.
- Stay here for a few breaths. And enjoy the silence within.
Move on to the next posture, which from here can be back runners lunge, but also warrior 2 or half moon (quite challenging with the eyes closed 😉
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