“The subtle body  is not only the
secret to the optimal functioning
and alignment of the body, it is the
key to delight, love, understanding,
and good relationships.”

Between Skin and Self
ANN DYER CERVANTES

I wanted to be a dancer. 

After high school I enrolled with the renowned dance department of Mills College. The tiny bit of pragmaticism I possessed at 17 nudged me to choose a double major in Dance and Psychology with the plan that if my dance dreams didn’t come true (which they didn’t) I would seek a profession in dance therapy (which I didn’t.)  However, my intrigue with the body/mind connection that led me both to dance and dance therapy never waned. In the forty-odd circuitous years since this passion eventually delivered me to my life now, as a yoga teacher.

It's still my thing. The way the body and Self live together. My fascination with how the Self moves the body and how movement affects one’s sense of Self aligns easily with traditional hatha yoga’s view of the body as a tool for Self-discovery. Despite this, it hasn’t always been easy to shake the popular notion that “I am my body.”  As a material girl living in a material world I spent years riveted on mastering perfectly aligned poses that gave me firm glutes and vague promises of future enlightenment.

The aspiration to create flawless form, to “do it right,” flowed easily into the cultural current to push my body into popular ideals of fitness and beauty.   As I strived to bring my body under my command, my Self sat quietly in the corner seen and not heard (and a little bored with the whole thing.) As writer Nora Logan writes, “The culture we ingest and the world we live in instills this idea that we must push against our body, to mold it into something it simply is not… How silly that I have not spent more time laying flowers at the altar of my body and adorning her with love, reverence, and jewels.”   
I found some love for my body one afternoon years ago as I gathered with 50 or 60 other students around a teacher in the center of a marly floor of a big warehouse studio in San Francisco’s SOMA district.  A deep groove started to play over the sound system. “OK people, let’s move!” the teacher called out.  Everyone began to sway in place, gently undulating their hips, shoulders and limbs in their own funky way. Throughout the class the teacher gave small  suggestions. “Explore delicacy.” “Let gravity shape you.” “Awaken dead flesh.” “Follow the pleasure.”  

​Minutes in, I was choking back alligator tears as I felt my body and Self reunite like a couple of estranged lovers. After returning from a short respite and a big cry in the warehouse ladies room, I noticed my body moving with greater range of motion, my messed-up shoulder releasing, and a new groundswell of energy gurgling up from some hidden font.

The reunion of Self and skin, sensation and sinew, effort and pleasure drew my awareness into deeper layers of my being, what we call in yoga “the subtle body.” The subtle body is the energetic strata that supports the physical body. It can be felt when we tune into the sensation of movement, particularly its energetic quality. For example, I can lift my arm up, reach it up, float it up, fling it up, punch it up — each of these ways brings a different sensation and a different end result. The physical body and subtle body affect one another. By letting go of dominating my body I invited more of who I am to participate, resulting in greater range and variety of movement with less force.  It’s’ possible to get the fitness we may have originally come for along with greater joy, ease and discovery. If you’re into that sort of thing. 

I’ve tinkered with this approach in my own yoga for a long time.  It has done great things for my practice and my life.  My body feels more agile and alert, my days are full of more curiosity, I am more accepting of my successes and foibles —  and my glutes are as firm as ever.  It’s taken a long while for me to feel ready to bring this work into my classes, which I have only recently started to do.  The little I’ve shared has been exciting; people’s bodies seem to respond a lot like mine did — happily.

The subtle body paves the way for the subtle yogic practices of savasana,  pranayama, and meditation designed  to deliver calm, clarity and connection — three things most all of us are yearning for desperately. 

 The body and the Self.  Still my thing.  Maybe yours, too?