Building from the Ground Up

A foundation built with strength, stability, and careful consideration is important for everything from buildings to relationships to yoga practice. Foundations often need to be revisited, not just at the beginning of a journey but as life presents new twists and turns.

Take, for example, a yoga practice. It will never be exactly the same because the person practicing it is experiencing life and adjusting their foundation accordingly—just as a beginner would be learning foundations anew.

Whether you're a beginner stepping onto the mat for the first time or a seasoned practitioner seeking to refine your skills, grounding yourself in the basics—both in asana (postures) and pranayama (breathwork)—is essential for a safe, sustainable, and transformative practice.

And it makes your practice much more interesting—one that is always evolving, fueled by curiosity, humility, and deep respect and reverence for the practice itself and for you, the practitioner.

Asana Foundations: Stability Before Depth

In yoga asana, we seek a balance between stability and ease. Patanjali's Yoga Sutra 2.46, reminds us of this, "sthira-sukham asanam".

Foundational postures like Tadasana (Mountain Pose), Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Dog), and Virabhadrasana II (Warrior II) may look simple to the naked eye. Still, they are much more involved than that, and the more curious you become in them, the more layers they reveal. These postures also hold the key to understanding more complex movements.

Studying and exploring foundational asanas helps:

• To reduce and prevent injury;
• Find comfort and confidence;
• Engage what needs to be engaged and relax what doesn't;
• Sets you up for a lifetime of evolving practice;
• Build strength, balance, mobility, and body awareness necessary for transition and growth;
• Create attention around patterns and connections between the asanas;
• Understanding of how to modify and accommodate for accessibility.
  

Breathwork Foundations: Dial into the Present

Pranayama, or breathwork, with prana being the life force, is truly the bridge that connects your practice to the present moment.

It cultivates awareness and brings body and mind into a synergistic state of focus. It may be one of the most effective ways to calm the constant fluctuations of the mind and bring yourself peace, if only momentarily, as supported to by Patanjali in Yoga Sutra 1.2, “yogas chitta vritti nirodha.”

Even the simplest breath techniques can profoundly affect your practice and overall well-being off the mat.

Here’s why breathwork matters:

• Techniques like diaphragmatic breathing or Ujjayi Pranayama focus the mind;
• Breathing directly influences your nervous system, offers a tool for managing stress or fear, and enhances attentiveness;
• Deepens your practice and experience of breathwork alone or when combined with asana;
• It prepares you to explore more advanced breathwork techniques, such as Nadi Shodhana Pranayama and Bhramari Pranayama, two of my favourites.

Magical Beginnings

You may or may not consider yourself an experienced yoga practitioner, but do you remember your first class? I do! I remember several of them: in new studios, with new friends, in new cities. Each is marked with emphasis: a new experience, story and memory. Some exciting, fun, inspiring, frustrating, and even painful.

Revisiting the foundations is invaluable. As our bodies and lives change, so too does our practice.

A posture that once felt effortless may reveal new challenges, curiosities, and questions, and a once inaccessible breath technique may offer fresh insights.

Returning to the basics allows us to:

• Be playful again and let go of old patterns;
• Take a fresh look at our alignment and understanding of postures and breathwork;
• Cultivate a growth mindset and humility.

Foundations: The Heart of Yoga

“Yoga is not about touching your toes. It is what you learn on the way down.” – Jigar Gor

Building a practice rooted in self-love, awareness, compassion, and connection to self, community, and the world around you is yoga.

In deep reverence to the foundations of asana and pranayama, we can create a practice of stability and ease, expansiveness and consideration, and one that can ebb and flow with life as it unfolds.

If you’re ready to (re)discover the power of foundations, join me for my Gentle Foundations drop-in class every Saturday, starting March 8, 2025, from 10:45-11:45 am at Elbow Park Community Centre in Calgary.