Transitions are key.

This month I have thought a lot about transitions. Transitions from rural to urban environments, and from vacation time to work time. Transitions as travel. Transitions from one state of mind to another. And the most central and basic transition of all: the transition from life to death.

It has made me appreciate the time we need to feel we properly moved from one state to another, and how jarring it feels when we don’t. I have written about this in another blog-post.

I was reminded again today of the need for structured mourning rituals, to hold us as we move through the complicated emotions that accompany death.

It has also made me appreciate transitions in yoga asana practice. We sometimes think of transitions from one pose to another as just that: a transition, dead-space, transactional, the necessary movement to take us from Virabhadrasana II to Utthita Parsvakonasana.

But ideally, transitions are not transactional, they are intentional and slow enough to help us stay in our bodies, to hold us through the movement of change, much like rituals do for mourning and travel. My absolute least favorite vinyasa-based classes have always been those where the names of poses are called out without focus on the transition.

I try to teach with this in mind. You’ll let me know if I succeed.