YogaBudo

I’ve been practicing Hatha Yoga for ten years.  Prior to beginning yoga, I dabbled in dance here and there.  I’ve always considered myself pretty sure on my feet.  I have days when I go to practice yoga and I feel like the force of gravity has somehow doubled itself simply to my own disadvantage.  However, overall, I find my body roots me quite nicely with the earth.

At least, that’s how I used to feel before I started practicing Budo.

I should mention here that I am very new to Budo.  I have but a few lessons under my very very white belt.  But it did not take long for me to find, as I began my study of Budo, that all of my notions of what are and are not balance will be quicky challenged and in many cases completely changed.

A friend of mine once said, “this is like doing yoga - only with someone constantly trying to knock you over..”  Good analogy, really, and it carries far more legitimacy than maybe he even realizes.

When I practice and when I teach yoga, I remind myself and my students to plant their feet.  My particular style of yoga utilizes a locked knee and joint in many cases to stabilize the body in one-legged balancing postures.  We engage the quadriceps muscle, which causes the kneecap to pull up, which is how we “lock our knees.”  On my black sticky mat, this locked knee can serve me well.  I can round down and put my forehead on my  extended leg, achieving a beautiful balance.  I can also kick a foot back into a standing split, all while remaining rooted to the earth - balanced.

However, those locked knees are my enemy on the other mat.  My teacher quickly illustrated for me how very unstable those locked legs were when the right force, angle and momentum contact my body.  It could be as simple as him tapping my shoulder in a certain direction, and down I go.  No longer balanced.  I am learning that in Budo, the knees are soft, the weight bears more on the forefoot and there is a supple ability for the body to shift.  It’s not rigid or locked at all.  On my yoga mat, those softened knees would not serve to root me, but here they serve to protect me.  I am learning.

Ultimately I have much to learn about Budo, much more to learn about Yoga, and a lifetime’s worth more to learn about the real meaning of balance.  Perhaps practicing both will help me to find the truth that there is a harmony between what we need and what we have available to us.  The meaning of balance can change depending on the art we are practicing.  We may lock our knees to balance in a yoga class, or soften them to perform a technique on the tatami.  But balance, even with all its deceptive properties, essentially remains the same.  It’s far more than not falling over, far more than remaining upright, far more than keeping both feet on the ground.  I have yet to discover the elusive meaning, but I am learning.