Tuned In

Where: Hudson River Park, NYC
When: October 3, 2009

Yesterday I did yoga with my eyes closed. It was kind of an accident - the muscles on one side of my lower back were feeling twingy, and I was having trouble focusing on them throughout the pose, and was therefore making the situation worse. So I closed my eyes briefly, and was able to concentrate not just on my QLs, but also on the rest of my body, in a way that I had been completely unable to access before. I hadn't realized how distracting it is for me to have my eyes open, how quickly I drift into thought and stop paying attention to the pose.

I also rely heavily on my eyes to determine whether my alignment is correct, which is a little crazy since I don't exactly have the best perspective to determine that. So I left my eyes closed the whole time, even through the jump backs and throughs, and I was shocked by how accurate I was able to be about placement, how well my body knew the territory, and how much stronger the poses felt when I just let my body figure out what the right adjustment was.