Level One

The first level of movement: Level One

In level one you introduce a brand new movement to your mindbody system. This has neurological, physical, mental, proprioceptive, increased spacial awareness, spiritual, emotional, and energetic impacts on your body and mind. I think of every new pose or movement pattern as opening up a new way to experience reality, no matter how slight it may be. This process occurs through the sequence in which you perform movements. To learn these brand new movements, visualization is a helpful tool. Your physical and energetic body will be activated in different sequences, like a song. There are only so many notes to play, yet there are an infinite amount of beautiful songs that can be created. Learning the preverbal “notes” of movement will allow you to one-day construct your own symphonies.

By introducing new movements, you change your orientation and perspective. handstands and flips are the two most obvious examples. The body learns to deal with gravity in an entirely new way. Organs function differently with this new relationship to gravity. You experience grounding through your hands and gravity forcing blood to the head for a change. Properly aligned handstands are effortless because it takes advantage of the same skeleto-muscular structure which allows us to stand, and actually helps us fix our standing posture. If two people are placed in zero gravity, one performing a properly aligned (yoga) handstand and the other in upward facing salute, It would be impossible to tell who is doing which pose. Inversions literally flip your world upside down. Flips, on the other hand, are disorienting and require a massive amount of strength, coordination, and proprioception. Not only do new patterns change your perspective, they change your ability as a human. There are very few times in most people’s lives when they are forced to cope under such rapidly shifting circumstances with equal amounts of velocity and force as found in a back flip. Any change in physiology is preceded by a change in the brain and nervous system. This means your brain literally changes as you develop your body and its abilities. This could lead to all kinds of benefits like increased creativity. New solutions based on your creativity and physical ability start to pop up everywhere.