Funky Focus | Balancing Poses & The Niyamas

Let’s Talk Physics: The structure and benefits of balancing poses in our yoga practice.

Written by LJ

Balancing poses are the perfect embodiment of yoga’s physical and mental benefits. They challenge our stability, build strength, and improve focus. Don’t fret! It’s not all big, bold postures like Dancer and Crow Pose- Did you know Crescent Lunge and Extended Side Angle are balance challenges?! This month at Funky Buddha Yoga, we’re diving deep into these transformative postures, offering insights on how and why to incorporate them. 

The Physics of Balance: 

• Center of Gravity: The center of gravity is (not so) simply the point in the body where our body’s mass is equally distributed. When standing/sitting upright, this center is somewhere between your hips and your waist, depending on pelvis shape and your body’s weight distribution.

• Planes of Movement: When we move planes, or change our relationship to gravity (i.e. Holding groceries in one hand and leaning back into the car to grab another bag), this center of gravity can move outside the body, and we need to move our limbs and parts around to redistribute and find balance again. 

• • If you stand with your feet apart and your navel is directly above the center point of your legs, balance is fairly easy. (Mountain, Horse, and Star Poses).
  • If you stand the same way and move your torso toward one leg or to the other (think Triangle Pose, or Extended Side Angle), balance becomes more difficult now that you’ve moved your center away from the center of your base. 

• Base of Support: The wider and more stable your base, the easier it is to balance. This is why we find ease by starting with a broader base in poses and gradually work towards narrowing it. For example, in Tree Pose, you might start with your foot on your ankle before moving it higher up the leg or perhaps placing feet like train tracks instead of tightrope in Crescent Lunge.
  • In Tree Pose, we immediately notice a change in both center of gravity and our base by lifting a foot. When we turn our knee outward, our center is no longer directly down midline, so our bodies naturally lean a bit toward the standing leg to bring us back to center over this new base of support. 

Funky Tip! One-legged balancing poses make our base of support very small, spreading toes and ball mounds of the feet can make a world of difference (duck feet for the win!)  

• Center Over Base: In any balancing pose, maintaining your center of gravity over your base of support is integral to holding a posture. Placing your center of gravity over your standing foot is the simplest way to find balance, and this works great in  one-legged poses like Tree or Standing Leg Raise; here you can keep this point aligned over your standing foot. In poses like Warrior 3 and Airplane, Dancer, and Half Moon, this center of gravity moves, and we then need to adjust our limbs and parts to realign over our base of support. 
  • Center of gravity is a little different for each body but generally speaking, this is deep inside the core around the navel. We might consider a line down the center- for the most part, our weight is evenly distributed on each side. 

• • We also may notice a difference when we shift our center of gravity vertically or horizontally. There’s a little bit of added difficulty when we lift our arms above our head in Tree Pose, or forward in Warrior 3. When our limbs move away from our natural center of gravity, our balance tends to be a little less forgiving, consider lowering arms when the wobbles really kick in! 

• Equilibrium: Balancing involves both static and dynamic equilibrium. Static equilibrium is when the body remains still, while dynamic equilibrium allows for movements and adjustments. Because our bodies are never 100% still (heartbeat, breath), even our static equilibrium is in flux.  Our bodies are constantly making tiny adjustments to keep us balanced, engaging multiple muscle groups and neural pathways. 

• • We might consider the way we use our arms to find equilibrium; like tightrope walkers! Wide arms, or adjusting your arms, can help our static equilibrium. 

Try a little experiment: The next time you stand up, close your eyes and just notice the tiny movements in your lower body, and how that movement slows as it travels to your upper body. Eventually, you’ll find moments of total stillness, before a breath or a sound- Your body is always seeking this equilibrium! 

There are about a billion tiny adjustments we can consciously choose, and nuances our bodies adjust naturally, to keep us aligned. From engaging those tiny foot muscles, to distributing weight more evenly, to activating large muscle groups, we’re excited to dive deep- all in the name of balance! 

So why the Funk do we want to balance?

Balancing postures engage our core container, leg, and even upper body muscles; which all have amazing strengthening benefits. Plus! Balancing poses like Dancer challenge our flexibility, balance, and strength all in one (phew!). These additions to our practice ultimately tie into this quarter’s theme of Stability, offering us an opportunity to balance the mind in concentration and dial into the nuances of our physical practice.  

A few Funky Tips for your month of balancing: 

• Find a focal point! From meditation to balancing, giving our mind (and eyes) something to focus on, something to return to (again and again), helps us to maintain a steady point of equilibrium. Fun fact: this practice is of finding a set focal point is called Drishti (vision, gaze, observation) in Sanskrit. 

• Engage your core! Remember, our center of gravity is deep within the core container- finding engagement here can help our body find stability and support the complexities of balancing. 

• Listen to your body! Always. Props like blocks and straps can help us begin a new posture and go deeper into a familiar one. Listen to what your body is asking for and adapt the posture to suit those needs- rather than the other way around. 

• Breathe! Steady breath helps keep us regulated, stable, and grounded. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. 

Here are a few resources to support this Funky Focus!

Using Props for Balancing Poses w/ Larissa – Youtube 

Eagle Pose for Larger Bodies 

Knee Injury Modifications for Standing/Balancing Postures 

The Niyamas; 5 practices for tending to ourselves.

Written by Larissa

This month, we’ll continue our journey through the 8 Limbs of Yoga in our morning meditations. We’ll continue this slow path by focusing on the Niyamas. 

What is a Niyama? 

Last month we worked through the Yamas, which are 5 tools or practices to positively engage with the world. This was in last month’s blog, but it bears repeating: In simple language, Yama = restraint or control. The True understanding of Yama in this context is more like disallowing fear, shame, greed, power, and things of this nature to control you. 

That brings us to this little prefix, ni, which means in, or in and down. Niyama means we take this concept of restraint and now bring it inward; these are tools to look at how we are taking care of ourselves. 

In simple form, the Yamas are how you can be good to the world and all beings, and the Niyamas are how you can be good to yourself. Being good to yourself and the world, being gentle and kind, creating fierce compassion, having a positive impact, and looking for ways to liberate ourselves from egoic and detrimental states of mind; these are some of the benefits of practicing the Yamas and Niyamas. 

The Niyamas in a nutshell: 

Saucha: cleanliness, purity of mind

Santosha: complete contentment 

Tapas: self-discipline, temperance 

Svadyaya: self-study, self-examination.

Ishvarapranidhana: surrender to highest self.

Saucha isn’t just a nice shower (although that feels ah-maaazing after a hot yoga sesh!), it’s the practice of taking care of your body, mind, spirit, and surroundings. This includes the usual physical hygiene practices, but it also includes taking care of your heart- paying attention to what you allow to enter your mind, body, and environment: food, data, news content, friendships, self-talk to just name a few. Cleanliness in this form means looking at what makes you feel vibrant and alive, and cleaning out what doesn’t support that. 

Santosha doesn’t mean you’re always happy (this is NOT toxic positivity). This is the practice of cultivating contentment, even when things aren’t going according to plan. It’s the sometimes difficult practice of loving what is, rather than how we want things to be. You can practice Santosha by taking a moment to just enjoy a breath. When you slow down, let go of any expectation to ‘get to contentment’, and just allow a full, deep, slow breath to move through you, it’s usually quite contentment-inducing. Millions of tiny moments like this add up to a lifetime of contentedness, even though we’ll still experience challenges. Practicing contentment is just like practicing a pose; the more you practice, the better you get at it.  

Tapas is self-discipline, or the practice of wisely guiding one’s body, speech, and mind. It contains the Sanskrit root tap, which means to burn or create heat. It’s said that we burn away that which no longer serves us, as we practice gentle, consistent, and tender discipline to become our truest self. This is not “no pain, no gain”, nor any other platitude that makes it seem like discipline must be hard or difficult. This isn’t about forcing yourself to work hard; it’s being disciplined to rest when you need rest, work hard when that’s supporting you, say no, even when it’s hard, say yes, even when it’s hard. Practicing Tapas allows us to make wise choices toward our own growth, without getting caught up in the end result, nor caught in other people’s ideals of who you are supposed to be. It’s the gentle discipline to becoming you. 

Svadyaya is self-study, or self-examination. This isn’t selfish, nor is it about making yourself the center of attention all the time. Rather, a dedication to getting to know who you really are, outside of the layers of should’s, could’s, supposed to’s, and all the other things in the world that create undue pressure. This Niyama points us toward remembering that we are always changing, always growing; cells dying and renewing, every second of every day. Because this is true, we need to take dedicated time to get to know ourselves, since the Self is always changing. Who you were 10 years ago is different than who you will be 10 years from now, and each version of you is asking for your support. As you get to know yourself daily, you can tend to your needs more efficacy, with more kindness, and with more energy to support others as well. 

Ishvarapranidhana, phew! This is a big one. The breakdown of the word: Isvara means Supreme Being, Ultimate Reality or Collective Consciousness, and pranidhana can mean fixing, dedicate or devote, offer, or surrender. Isvarapranidhana can mean fixing your attention on the state of collective consciousness, devoting attention to a higher power, or more simply, surrender to your true self. We sometimes have an odd understanding of surrender, thinking it means giving up, but it really means letting go of trying to control everything, and trusting the wisdom that lives beyond our intellect. It’s giving your very busy mind a break and leaning into your body’s wisdom and intuition. It’s using both logic and creativity, rest and work, effort and ease, and allowing, rather than forcing, your highest self to emerge. This is deep self-trust, and equally deep humility that we don’t have to have all the answers. 

What’s next? 

PRACTICE. Our mission is Cultivating Growth Through Practice; practicing these concepts is the main key here, as invariably our default mechanisms will jump in when we are in stress; our defaults keep us feeling protected, but not connected. The first step in practice is awareness. 

Become aware of when you are negatively judging yourself in your mind, and when you notice this, celebrate! This awareness gives you the ability to choose differently. Pause, and give yourself some grace. You might say in your mind, “I see that judgmental thought, and I choose hold the pain of judgement with tenderness.” Or, “This judgmental thought is not the whole truth.” This is Saucha (and Satya!).

When you find yourself getting riled up in the comment section, examine what’s making you upset, and take care of that feeling in your body, rather than typing out that hilarious, yet scathing retort. This is Tapas and Svadyaya (and Ahimsa and Brahmacharya). 

We’ll continue to dive into consciously living these practices through practical application in our morning meditations. Join our morning sangha for support, connection, and deep mental rest. 

If you’d like to dive deeper, we invite you to join us for our monthly meditation circle!

Check out our Youtube for an overview of these concepts or a meditation practice to try them on <3

As always, we hope that you join us M-F at 7:30am for Funky Buddha Yoga’s free, live, virtual meditation to learn how to integrate these principles into everyday life <3

P.S. If you’ve enjoyed this and want more depth, you can also join us for teacher training starting in October! Teacher training is a great way to take a deep dive into your practice, not just for teachers. We love not just talking about yoga philosophy but learning how to truly live it. I’ll nerd out with you all day long. Click here to learn more.