Move Slowly, Move Skilfully
Enjoy a fast and fluid class but not sure how much you’re progressing? Discover how slower paced yoga improves your movement skills, building strength, stability and range of movement.
I know that most people, including me, love a flow! But if you want to improve your movement skills (and here I’m including strength, stability, flexibility and range of movement), then slow down your flow to be more skilful, specific, accurate and easeful.
When we take the harder and faster approach, as in a continuously flowing faster class, accuracy is easily lost because you’re going to recruit muscles that aren’t specific to the movement you’re doing. It’s like picking up a free weight that’s too heavy, and you start to sway because you’re using parts of the body that aren’t required for that specific movement.
When movement is continuously fast, fatigue sets in more quickly which affects accuracy. It’s really difficult for even very experienced yoga students to be accurate all the time when moving quickly from one pose to another. The same principle applies to sports like tennis when 2 players try to 'out hit’ each other in a rally, it often results in an error with the ball going out or into the net. As a spectator, you can see the hard and fast build up to the error when a change of tempo to a soft ‘drop shot’ could have won the point!
In a speedy moving flow with many transitions, you’re often into the next posture (asana) before being fully in the current one. The boundaries between poses become blurred and you’re often not in any particular posture as the asanas morph into blended versions of each other. This is ok if the intention of the version or blend is made clear. But if this is not the case, it isn’t specific, accurate, thorough or complete. A slower flow with clearer transitions helps you to be in poses more completely as you’re doing one thing at a time.
Not only is each asana (or version of an asana) specific because of the parts of the body it recruits, postures are specific in their energetic effects. Some poses are more calming (like forward bends) and others are more activating, like back bends or chair pose (Utkatasana). So whizzing from one to the other can be a little unsettling for the mind.
Rests, pauses and resets are essential parts of a flow that allow the body and nervous system to to recover and recalibrate between phases of intensity. This makes it easier to remember for next time, which improves learning and skill building. When learning more challenging and technical poses, which require more a more nuanced understanding, going slowly definitely more helpful!
A flow feels great as it gets the blood flowing but it needs to be paced with ebbs and flows. If it’s continuously fast paced, you’re thinking ahead about the next thing rather than enjoying the pose you’re doing, When we’re moving fast it’s as if we’re going somewhere else. Being mindful implies being present in the here and now, noticing and paying attention to what you’re feeling and doing. And when we’re more tuned into our bodies through movement, it’s so much more enjoyable!