Paul Grilley workshop

I'm almost lost for words to describe the weekend I've had. The Paul Grilley workshop has been truly amazing, eye opening experience, and will no doubt change my yoga practice forever. It's difficult to even start to describe what I've learned, but I'll put down some of the main points.

On Saturday Paul talked about bones and skeletal differences between people. He stated that all movement was limited by muscle and joint tension and bone compression. The first is greatly emphasized in any yoga, but the latter is never discussed. This often leads to a misconception that all asanas are achievable as long as the student puts in enough practice, and that the asanas will always be beneficial - and Paul says (and I most definetly believe him) that both of the claims are false. He demonstrated to us, using real bones, how different people can have such an amazingly different ranges of possible movement just because of their bones. He demonstrated physically, using different people as examples, how some people will never be able to put their ankles around their heads.

This is the most liberating thing I've experienced with yoga. The thought that I'm an individual and that my yoga will be different to everyone else's yoga. For me - maybe because I know relatively little of anatomy - this all made perfect sense, but I was surprised how many people (mostly yoga teachers) had serious problems with the concept. There were so many different "but surely this..." and "what if..." that at some point Paul had to stop answering questions and had to press on with the lecture. In a way I understand that it's not easy to realise that you might not be able to do all those asanas you've been dreaming about because of hard physical limitations - but for me it kind of came as a relief. So ok, there's a limit somewhere out there, but with most postures I'm not even close - and even when I do hit my compression point, it doesn't mean that I'm "done with" the posture as it's still prefectly possible - and likely - that I will get benefit out of it.

Today Paul talked about the meridian theory and chakras. While I found the meridian theory and especially the scientific research behind it most interesting, I was a bit more skeptical about the chakras. We did breathing exercises which I found most interesting: how mentally thinking so - ham when breathing in and out is completely different to ham - sa, and how different people felt it differently. For me so - ham was clearly an invigorating and pleasant experience while ham - sa was almost unpleasant in how it restricted the breath.

This workshop was totally worth every single penny I put into it. Some parts made me see my practice in a completely different light, and some parts gave me lot of food for thought. I'd love to do at some point Paul's full 60 hour lecture series which would go into much more detail than this eight hours did.

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