“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
Mary Oliver - Wild geese
Release & Breathe has grown out of my experience as a musician and yoga teacher. In my own struggle with performance nerves that created tension, effort, critical self talk and out of body experience, yoga enabled me to let go.
It became a wonderful resource and support in the many challenging moments of life!
In any field of performance we are striving for perfection. Our greatest desire to deliver, express and perform to the best of our ability carries immense pressure and comparison in measuring up! All too easily creating tension which only works against us.
Hours of mindless preparation further creates struggle and tension, reinforcing a supremely critical inner dialogue.
What does being at one with ourselves actually mean?
In any type of performance or simply in life itself we all want to feel good. There is physical comfort (body) and mental focus (mind). Ease in our technical ability and a clarity in our musical interpretations. Underpinning that is our emotional state of Being. The inner dialogue grounded in mindfulness enables the state of flow.
Being in the present moment is prerequisite for “being one with the music”
I believe all body work enhances our ability to practice and perform more effectively. However, Yoga has an edge due to the beauty of its wholeness, addressing body, mind and spirit. With its focus on the breath it is particularly useful and supportive in ”performance”; the power to bring us into the present moment.
The breath has the power to change us both physically, mentally and emotionally.
Yoga with the fundamentals of grounding and releasing through the breath enables us to experience the bodies natural intelligence.
Breath work organically leads us to a place of meditation; crucial for any self awareness/development.
I work with very gentle postures and sequences that inform the body and wake up our awareness.
These are the core principles;
Exploring gravity, working with grounding to find the line of gravity in standing and sitting. Optimum position in relationship to gravity and our instruments brings us immense freedom.
Tensegrity – exploring the relationship between tension and release. Being able to return to the still point. Working with the body not against it!
Releasing hips and shoulder joints to find space and freedom in movement.
Working with the breath. Exploring tension and release that exists in everything through gentle breath work that we can use in times of stress (performance anxiety).
Exploring our breath in relationship to the spine – awaking and releasing the spine.
Finding our core – we learn to unfold and open from the inside out; this brings freedom and ease to movement.
Exploring the circle of wholeness – left to right connection. Whole body integration.
Finding stillness in movement and movement in stillness through breath work/meditation