Foundations of Asana: Mobility, Stability, Alignment, Strength, Space

November 17, 2012 -- Foundations of Asana: Mobility, Stability, Alignment, Strength, Space

There is a trio of steps in our progression in asana practice, no matter how long we practice.  First we learn to move in ways we either don't know about, or are unable to.  Once we have mobility, we provide supporting actions that give stability and give proper limits to the new movement.  Third is balancing movement and stability to create space.  The space we create in this way gives us access to new movements, new degrees of freedom that were out of our range of possibility before we found that space.  At that point we begin again with the three steps.  These three steps also happen to correspond to the three gunas: rajas (movement), tamas (stability) and sattva (space, luminosity).  These are the three universal characteristics of everything in nature.