7/16/26 Live Session Recording (Module 4)

For this session, I was able to be present for the first half and had to come back to the recording to participate in the movement portion. I really enjoyed the discussion at the end that focused on the question of “do participants ever think the practice is too slow and want more?” I think Jen and Alejandro addressed this question so beautifully, and it aligned completely with my experience participating in PYP sessions in the facility I work at.

In my own personal practice, I was discouraged by the few studio yoga sessions I participated in because I felt like I could not keep up or catch my breath. I wondered, “how do people find this relaxing or spiritually centering when I literally can’t even breathe!?” The jail yoga sessions were the first time I was actually able to slow down and pay attention to the sensations in my body (shoutout Madison PYP facilitator Jo- she is the BEST). What may appear to be a “slow practice” actually felt the most invigorating. It allowed me the time and space to tap into what was happening internally which was something I wasn’t able to previously do.

This really laid the foundation for me. Once I found that place of being able to tap into my own body, I was able to feel the benefits of doing anything more “advanced.” Jen said something at the end of the session along the lines of it being more common for folks to ask for more meditation and relaxation than they do for more advancement in movement, and that the movement is often just a stimulus to allow people to actually notice and appreciate what it feels like to relax and find stillness. I had never thought about yoga practice in this way - asana simply as a “stimulus” to help us better appreciate and recognize regulation happening in live time. It’s definitely something that will stick with me going forward in how I view the relationship between movement and stillness.

I found this discussion on satya (truthfulness) to be so insightful and resonant on so many levels. As a facilitator I find it valuable to have these insights into understanding potential barriers to truth so to be able to hold space for the depth of experiences participants may be arriving with- for example, this idea of not being aware that other realities exist that may be more supportive to our wellbeing, when an individual has experienced a reality that may have been harmful or not nurturing--and the fact that as facilitators we have the opportunity to hold space for the potential of inviting in more ahimsa, compassion, and supportive ways of being inside oneself and the world. It's so resonant with me that sometimes we don't know we are capable of experiencing other truths, when we've been exposed to certain conditioning, and sometimes we just need access to the tools and knowledge that there are other pathways.

I appreciate the demonstration of allowing the beginning of class to be an opportunity to create a dialogue with participants about how they are feeling energetically—using inquiry questions, and allowing for responses, and then also intentionally noticing as a facilitator how bodies are responding to the movement options given to learn about how the room is feeling and what the ranges of motion are looking like to better understand how to guide the cues that follow.

the thoughts that have been sitting with me regarding satya are connected to the concept of power. the concept of truth has been rendered essentially meaningless by our president and those who support him, and of course things like AI and other tech further remove us from being able to connect on one source of truth. i was also raised by a mother with psychosis, so my connection to the concept of truth is full of confusion, destabilization, gaslighting, etc. i grew up not knowing what was true, which created a sense of skepticism in me that is hard to shake even when it's unnecessary. seeing this pattern repeated on a national and global scale is terrifying to me. i believe truth is a relative thing, and that it's hard to agree on a singular truth. in the recording i think someone mentioned evidence based practice - i'm also a therapist and grapple with this every day. we were told that science can tell us what the true "best" treatment is, but those studies were run by white men with power, and funded by corporations with power. so even our science-based "truth" is determined by who has the power. of course this is also true in dynamic that include abuse, hierarchy, etc. as a yoga teacher, i think reflecting on this will allow me to continue to humble myself about what yoga "is" and relinquish whatever power is given to me/perceived.