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    Yoga Rahasya 07

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    Yogayeducacion
    1) Mathew Sanford was paralyzed from the chest down after a car accident at age 13. He discovered Iyengar yoga 12 years later and it has allowed him to feel connected to his whole body again. 2) Iyengar yoga is well-suited for people with disabilities because it focuses on precise alignment using props to access poses fully. This allows Sanford to experience poses physically and energetically despite his paralysis. 3) Through his dedicated Iyengar practice over many years with teacher Jo Zukovich, Sanford has gained insights into poses like Uttanasana that he cannot physically do, demonstrating how the practice transcends physical limitations.

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    Yoga Rahasya 07

    Uploaded by

    Yogayeducacion
    1K views5 pages
    1) Mathew Sanford was paralyzed from the chest down after a car accident at age 13. He discovered Iyengar yoga 12 years later and it has allowed him to feel connected to his whole body again. 2) Iyengar yoga is well-suited for people with disabilities because it focuses on precise alignment using props to access poses fully. This allows Sanford to experience poses physically and energetically despite his paralysis. 3) Through his dedicated Iyengar practice over many years with teacher Jo Zukovich, Sanford has gained insights into poses like Uttanasana that he cannot physically do, demonstrating how the practice transcends physical limitations.

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    Iyengar Yoga.

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    1) Mathew Sanford was paralyzed from the chest down after a car accident at age 13. He discovered Iyengar yoga 12 years later and it has allowed him to feel connected to his whole body again. 2) Iyengar yoga is well-suited for people with disabilities because it focuses on precise alignment using props to access poses fully. This allows Sanford to experience poses physically and energetically despite his paralysis. 3) Through his dedicated Iyengar practice over many years with teacher Jo Zukovich, Sanford has gained insights into poses like Uttanasana that he cannot physically do, demonstrating how the practice transcends physical limitations.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    1K views5 pages

    Yoga Rahasya 07

    Uploaded by

    Yogayeducacion
    1) Mathew Sanford was paralyzed from the chest down after a car accident at age 13. He discovered Iyengar yoga 12 years later and it has allowed him to feel connected to his whole body again. 2) Iyengar yoga is well-suited for people with disabilities because it focuses on precise alignment using props to access poses fully. This allows Sanford to experience poses physically and energetically despite his paralysis. 3) Through his dedicated Iyengar practice over many years with teacher Jo Zukovich, Sanford has gained insights into poses like Uttanasana that he cannot physically do, demonstrating how the practice transcends physical limitations.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
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    The author discusses how Iyengar yoga helped them recover from a traumatic accident that left them paralyzed and dependent on a wheelchair. Precision, alignment, and attention to underlying principles have allowed them to continue practicing yoga and teaching others.

    The author found Iyengar yoga 12 years after their accident. Their first teacher, Jo Zukovich, was able to pass on Iyengar's precision and focus on underlying principles through both their paralyzed and unparalyzed body.

    Iyengar yoga focuses on precision and alignment which integrates the mind and body without muscular action. Its use of props also allows people with disabilities to experience poses they cannot physically perform. This 'inside-out' and 'outside-in' approach opens up more possibilities.

    PARALYSIS AND IYENGAR YOGA

    - MATHEW SANFORD

    A catastrophic injury brought me


    to Iyengar yogabut not right
    away. I was thirteen. Our family
    car skidded off an icy bridge and
    my father and sister were killed.
    I broke my neck, my back, both
    my wrists, filled a lung with fluid,
    and suffered an internal injury to
    my pancreas. Of all these
    i n j u r i e s , h o w e v e r, o n l y m y
    severed spinal cord could not
    adequately heal. I was left
    permanently paralyzed from the
    chest down and dependent upon
    a wheelchair. I found Iyengar
    yoga twelve years after this
    accident. Now sixteen years
    later, I am a yoga teacher. I teach
    both abled and disabled people,
    and I have a non-profit corporation that operates a yoga studio in
    Minnetonka, MN in the United States. I have also written a literary book
    about my experience Waking: A memoir of trauma and transcendence
    (Rodale, 2006). But none of this could have happened without the
    revolutionary work of Sri B.K.S. Iyengar.
    It took me so long to find Iyengar yoga because the doctors, nurses, and
    other therapists taught me to overcome my paralysis, to overcome my
    disability. They never told me that something else was possible, that
    there were subtle connections between mind and body, ones that would
    never make me walk again but were essential to a full recovery. Instead,
    Yoga Rahasya

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    Vol. 14 No. 3; 2007

    they told me to make my upper body really strong and drag my paralyzed
    body through life. But finally I reached a boiling point. I needed to feel
    my whole body again both what I could move voluntarily and what I
    could not. It was then that I came across yoga what better way to start
    than an ancient discipline expressly dedicated to the union of mind, body,
    and whatever we call spirit. I had no idea how lucky I was that the very
    first teacher I encountered was an Iyengar teacher.
    Jo Zukovich from San Diego,
    California was that teacher. She
    was able to pass on the
    alignment, clarity and precision
    of Gurujis groundbreaking work
    through both my paralyzed and
    unparalyzed body. Rather than
    worrying about maximizing the
    number of asana-s I could do, she
    relied upon the depth of Gurujis
    teachings. She focused on some
    Jo teaching me the underlying
    of its underlying principles. For
    principles behind Iyengar Yoga
    example, in some sense,
    everything in an asana begins from the base; or an asana is always traveling
    in at least two directions, usually opposite ones. By having such a focus,
    we were able to be patient and trust that my progress would organically
    emerge from a solid foundation.
    Iyengar Yoga and Disability
    Iyengar yoga is a perfect match for disability. Guruji opens the infinite
    depth of each individual asana through heightened attention to alignment
    and precision. This reveals the heart of yoga while leaving a physically
    repeatable trail. This is essential for me as a student living with a
    disability because I will only gain full access to a limited number of asanas, let alone an entire sequence. In other words, I have to learn more
    Yoga Rahasya

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    Vol. 14 No. 3; 2007

    from the experience of less. I also have to learn asana-s from both the
    inside-out and from the outside-in. Iyengar yoga is the only yoga I
    have encountered that makes this possible.
    Another obvious advantage of Iyengar yoga is its innovative use of props.
    By helping my body in simple ways, I gain glimpses into the experience of
    physical actions that I cannot perform. For example, by simply sitting on
    a folded blanket while in Dandasana, gravity can become my teacher
    gravity begins to move the inner head of the femur bone in and down.
    Then if I listen inwardly, I can feel on some subtle level the energetic
    experience of the physical action that I cannot perform. I can then follow
    that feeling out through the inner heels and even sense how the same
    feeling helps lift and open my side ribs and chest an action I can perform.
    Thus, my experience of yoga can travel not just from the unparalyzed
    part of my body to my paralyzed part, but also in the other direction
    from my paralysis and back into normal function. This opens a much
    larger world for me.

    I learnt from Gurujis teachings that distribution of gravity, alignment and


    precision integrates mind and body without muscular action.

    Yoga Rahasya

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    Vol. 14 No. 3; 2007

    One of the breakthroughs in Gurujis teaching is so obvious that we often


    forget to think about it as revolutionary: Through the more efficient
    distribution of gravity, alignment and precision integrates mind and body
    without muscular action. Jo and I discovered that this is true even through
    my paralysis. In other words,
    the
    inward
    energetic
    experience of increasing
    alignment and precision crosses
    the mind-body rupture created
    by my severed spinal cord. This
    simple Iyengar truth is the
    cornerstone of adapting yoga
    for people living with
    disabilities. When I teach my
    adaptive yoga class, I simply
    b r i n g G u r u j i s h e i g h t e n e d
    attention on alignment and
    precision to a demographic of
    When I teach, I bring Gurujis heightened
    people who desperately need it.
    attention on alignment and precision.
    My Current Practice As Example
    For obvious reasons, I cannot do Uttanasana I cannot stand, not without
    an amazingly complicated prop set-up, let alone stand and bend forward
    at the waist. Recently, Jo and I have been trying to help me approach
    Uttanasana from other directions. Clearly, there is similarity between
    how the legs work in Tadasana and how they work in Uttanasana. I can
    gain insight into the former by working on Supta-Tadasana (usually with
    some help) but even more so when I work in Dandasana. Then I can build
    on that. Paschimottanasana also holds some similarities to how the legs
    work in Tadasana. Although the gravity is obviously different because
    the legs are resting on the floor, Paschimottanasana does add the change
    of gravity that comes with a forward bend. Thus, it takes a step closer
    to Uttanasana.
    Yoga Rahasya

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    Vol. 14 No. 3; 2007

    Lately, Jo and I have been working with props to increase my experience


    of gravity. I sit on a sticky mat, on the edge of a folding chair, legs
    straight ahead with my heels on the ground on another sticky mat, and a
    quarter round under my feet. I am careful not to aggravate the
    attachment on my hamstrings or the back of my knees by coming recklessly
    into the forward bend. Instead, I put my hands on the seats of two other
    folding chairs for more control and come forward slowly to study the
    experience of the increasing gravity.
    This work has taught me a number of things. The increased encounter
    with gravity has somehow shown me more directly the feeling of drawing
    the inner thighs up (thus deepening the sense of the groins) and its
    connection to a corresponding extension across my sacrum. This, in turn,
    teaches me how to better extend my torso out of my pelvis an insight
    that brings greater relief to my back and applies to other forward bends.
    This insight helps more than my own practice, however. It helps my
    teaching because now I understand better why Prasarita Padottanasana
    is one of the standing asana-s featured within the Iyengar system.
    I live in a different mind-body relationship than an ordinary yoga student.
    The more I practice, the
    more I explore, the more
    I encounter the profound
    genius of Sri B.K.S Iyengar.
    He has left a trail even for
    someone like me. When I
    hear people criticize
    Iyengar yoga for being a
    strictly physical practice,
    I smile and shake my head
    because I am living proof
    that they are mistaken. I
    also know to whom I am When I hear people criticize Iyengar Yoga for being a
    physical practice, I smile because I am living proof
    grateful.
    that they are mistaken.

    Yoga Rahasya

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    Vol. 14 No. 3; 2007

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