Alignment | Feng Shui on the Yoga Mat

My partner and I moved into our new home recently and went through the fun process of deciding where everything would go and finding “permanent” locations for furniture, plants and posters and trinkets based on each thing, each room and the function and feel of all of those things. Some of that is pretty obvious. The bathroom is the center of all things bathroom. The kitchen is the center of all things cooking, eating, socializing. Etc. But what exactly goes where and how? And more importantly why? How should we arrange our stuff, our space?

Naturally, we started talking about feng shui.

Neither of us know too much about it but have been playing on what we know, going for what ends up feeling best. The least amount of space cut off, the most open, and works with the other features in the room. You know, so that things aren’t in a place that feels off or somehow in the way. It isn’t always obvious to figure that stuff out! For example, while arranging our bedroom I wanted the bed in one place facing one direction and his idea was to put it in a completely different place I wasn’t sure about (but in the end is actually a little better). It took trying both locations and feeling them out to both agree that his way just felt better. And there was so much more than the bed to decide on. Does putting any piece of furniture in this corner of the room in relation to the other piece of furniture in the same corner actually work or are we just putting stuff in a place? How does one thing feel in one place rather than another? Weird? Awkward? Unpleasant? Right? SO much to consider. I wanted to see where we were in the process of making the room feel like things were flowing well so I did what everyone else would do: I Google’d feng shui.

In short, feng-shui is a some-5,000 year old art & science tradition rooted in Eastern (Chinese) philosophy based on arranging & centering the energy of the natural world around you in way that offers the most harmony & balance. Feng-shui literally translates to mean wind-water. The basic principles are the Natural Elements and connecting how we align with different shapes, colors, textures, and attributes of our outer environment. It is a deep philosophy with much more than I am going into here, but the idea is that the harmony & balance created is increasing and even creating positive energy.

I mean, that’s yoga isn’t it? A practice of centering energy and organizing our body parts in different ways so things feel clearer and better.

I know I’m not the first person to draw a connection between yoga and feng shui. Feng shui is definitely something I’ve always felt yoga reminded me of. Energy realignment and clearance. A way of transforming the way things are “organized” and “arranged” on and in the body for the better, in as much of a way as we can. In my own practice, anytime I’ve felt a little off in mind, body and/or Spirit (often times I now feel they are all off if one is off), yoga has consistently been like one, big holistic readjustment with a consistently positive result.

The truth is that our bodies already do most of its own big, vital feng-shui on its own. Things get moved around inside all the time for our betterment. It pulls what it needs into different places where it’s needed the most to improve the function and flow of energy! It’s really amazing. When we’re injured or sick, our body knows exactly how to recruit and rearrange to make healing can happen faster. For example, when we break a bone, whatever nutrients we take in that synthesize and support bone growth get drawn to that broken bone automatically so it can heal & grow!

On the mat, we connect to our physical alignment as one way of becoming more conscious of how we orient ourselves in space, which we believe ultimately effects much more than the physical. We practice creating postural foundations with more awareness in an effort to highlight what we call our own optimal blueprint each of us has for our own bodies. As we place our bodies on the mat consciously and set up foundations for each pose which honor our anatomy and the space of the inner + outer we draw our awareness to ways we can find, maintain and create the clearest pathways so that we feel good. So that our poses feel good. We honor our structure- he structure we believe to be the home of our Divine spirit, of Consciousness. Stepping onto our mats becomes a way of feeling alignment, organization, and optimization through our physical orientation, of course bigger and better poses that have a higher potential for success and enjoyment. But beyond all of that, maybe and hopefully also connecting us to knowing ourselves and the harmony on a deeper than physical level.

Alignment becomes a practice of honoring ourselves which in turn allows us to begin the work in each pose with ease. This ease is our harmony. We are physically, mentally and energetically more connected to the shape which also means that we’re more in touch with our practice.

The right and wrong aspect of where things go and how things are “supposed” to be in our practice varies based on how we feel each day. Right and wrong are things I look to stray away from. The intention is to feel our best and have the highest potential. We strive for optimal by way of what the body understands as neutral, closest to the design of our anatomy and in acknowledgement of what unique tendencies we have individually. Off of the yoga mat, we live most of our lives out of alignment physically and each of us is physically unique. But collectively, anatomy is a general commonality which helps us come together to start on the same page.

I believe that the very act of setting up on the mat to move or wiggle is an act of honoring where we are, what we feel and the power and need to rearrange things in one way or another so that when we are done, things feel better in as many ways as possible. Maybe our mind feels clearer. Maybe our hip feels less tight. Maybe an ache is relieved. Maybe we feel taller. Maybe a stress is decompressed. Maybe our breath is longer and fuller. In my experience, if we go for one, just like we practiced last week, the possibilities are endless and often come in package form in bits and pieces. There is a way to get our bodies to connect to even the hardest of things with a sense of simple and gentle understanding. And then from there, the energy works more highly. In class, I have been relating the idea of energy flowing within the body to a flow of energy we already understand at least a little bit - circulation. We want that to be full and we want that to be free. When energy, like our circulation, is decreased, obstructed or restricted there is less harmony and more work is required. Rearranging things to find a more neutrally balanced spacing of things shifts the feeling of effort and allows for the true challenge and true potential of the pose to freely be experienced and expressed. We don’t have to work as hard as we maybe thought we did. Muscles aren’t fighting so much to keep a limb lifted. We get to feel a hint of the floatiness we’ve heard our teacher mention in class.

From my understanding, feng shui is not a practice of saying that other ways of arranging and connecting to external objects and their energy are necessarily wrong. It’s more a practice of acknowledging that there might be ways that don’t necessarily support the highest flow of energy and then doing based on that. In the Anusara yoga practice we understand neutral and optimal alignment similarly. It’s a guide and a roadmap that we can access and work into our bodies so that they can feel the joy of an enhanced way of being. We become aware of what the foundation is and then we do it. It’s the first step to discovering that a-ha moment or that moment in class where things “click” for us. After some time we maybe find that type of experience begins to trickle into more of our lives. More things feel like a-ha moments, more things start to click. Things align and flow with ease.

This is what we have been practicing being aware of in class this week. And technically every class is always alignment based, even if the theme isn’t centered around it or the physical practice is focused on it. Anusara yoga is a style of yoga that focuses heavily on alignment. Because of that, there is more time, energy, and care put into that aspect every class. It is the first step of everything we do physically and the first most important principle before the rest of the pose is prioritized. It’s not the only way to practice. It’s one way with a high intention: more freedom with the body and ultimately more freedom overall. We are setting ourselves up with awareness to create more space, more flow of positive energy, creating positive energy and even radiating that positive energy outwardly which changes the way the pose feels on the outside and the practice feels beyond our mat space.

I have always believed that the yoga practice is a pretty general systemic way of increasing function and freedom. No matter the style or its commitment to alignment and anatomy. It still offers that potential and service. But beyond that, there comes with that an intimate practice of spending time with ourselves to deliberately understand the intricacies of our design, how we move and how we are moved. We align what we can get to most easily and understandably and in the process start to also align everything else along with that. We get to participate with parts of ourselves that are out of reach, less in control of, and interconnect. To me, alignment has been the #1 way of feeling and understanding that where we put things matters. As a practitioner, finding practices over the years that connect me to my alignment has helped me gain a higher awareness to when things don’t feel good or right. And that when I realize that, I also know that whatever is off can be adjusted. There’s nothing wrong with me.

Depending on the amount of time we have or have not spent working in the ways that the yoga practice invites us to work, we can often find ourselves doing more or less work to even simply find neutral alignment. Neutral doesn’t mean natural which means it can often feel like a lot more work than we imagine it might to focus on something as “simple” as where we put our feet and how to place them. In the same way, depending on how things are organized or not, deciding to free-flow the energy in a room could be anywhere from a little work to a lot. In class Tuesday, I related some of what happens in the yoga class to the idea of Spring cleaning to achieve something like feng shui or its result - which we all know is a big project of getting into as many rooms and compartments as possible and clearing things out to open it up. Because we all know stuff gets stuffed everywhere somehow and we just can’t get in and do all of it all the time. We’re lucky yoga is something we can be guided through. It’s like asking a cleaning company to come over or for Marie Kondo to come and help you perform a miracle cleansing of your home with you. It can be easy to clean out and reorganize some spaces. Other areas on the other hand are harder to get to, require more time and energy and sometimes feel like an overwhelming project that doesn’t seem to end. Going inward to connect to the body within the body is a process and a journey toward connecting to who we are on the inside. Finding what’s been stored, collecting. Seeing what’s been piling up in a corner. Maybe looking at a room as a whole and just seeing if the way things have been arranged is functional, if it feels good. And so, like with all things we practice on our mats, alignment and learning to connect the anatomical dots to make things easier rather than harder takes time to learn.

This is not a technical practice of fixing or correcting what is wrong. It is a practice of recognizing where things feel their best and then simply adjusting.

We are bodies, vessels if you will, made up of and full of energy and it just isn’t always flowing freely. It gets blocked sometimes. A lot of the time! And so we rearrange and find where things may feel better. If we can align on our mats and find something that brings the body closer to feeling good, we believe that offers us space. Space to breathe more. Space to feel more. For some of us it’s one less little battle in our poses. It’s one less thing to worry about it. One less disruption, distraction and obstruction to how we feel and flow in the class. Clearer channels and pathways, less blockages where we feel trapped or limited.

When we align our bodies on the yoga mat I believe we are feng-shui-ing ourselves over and over again. We gain the priceless gift of feeling harmony in our bodies, enjoying being in our bodies more and feeling how that special organization we’ve created expands how we connect to everything around us.