The Continuum of Yoga

October, 2018

(The following is an excerpt from the upcoming book: "The Continuum Of Yoga, Evolution In Practice" by Bobbie Ellis)

As a culture, in these uncertain times, we need something different when we are in the presence of the body. We are called to become a vessel, a conduit of embodiment. In modern culture where everything is becoming mechanical, from our movements to the way we care for ourselves, somatic embodied practices are rising in popularity. There is a deep calling to come home to intuition, receptivity and alive sensuality that can only be found in the quiet moments of your own attention. This level of practice cannot be found in a book, or a set form of practice; these can only give you a context in which to meet yourself with a strong and gentle heart.

The Continuum of Yoga developed out of my deepest need to recover my own embodied life. Having been in the yoga traditions for 35 years, and then spending 20 years committed to Continuum practice, I discovered that Continuum helped shape and inform my yoga practice and what I call The Continuum Of Yoga.

My practice became a journey back to my intuitive self-knowing. The postures, breathing techniques, meditation, and ideas continued to fall away in the way I was used to exploring them. Instead, they became a container to feel into the fluid moving from within, like the slow tides of the sea and it’s many changing currents.

As I honed my own empowered way of feeling what rested just underneath everything I learned from other teachers, traditions, and books, words like strength, core, grounding, fluidity, flexibility and balance took on new meaning. I began to feel what these words were on a sensory level rather than as thoughts in my mind, or something to try to achieve from someone else's experience and discoveries. The way I practiced changed from a group of specific postures, breathing techniques, and meditation tools to an open meeting with what I was feeling into in the moment I placed myself on my mat. This meeting unfolded into a creative expression of sensing and feeling my way towards the liberating non-conceptual adventure of my own body, a biological miracle, as territory for transformation and delight. In doing so, my outer life took on deeper and deeper levels of meaning as I felt into deeper and deeper levels of practice from the inside.  In purely meeting myself just the way I was, I let go of ideas about the way I wanted to be. I stopped seeking to become something more, and in that meeting, things really began to change.

In The Continuum Of Yoga, we use posture preparations as a container to more openly explore movements that are fluid-like, spiraling, undulating, wave motions, spreading, drawing outward and down, and in all directions. We use sound to help relieve the body of compression and to stimulate the fluids within so that we can sense and more deeply feel that movement over time. After a while this “fluid intelligence” begins to inform us in movement ways that range from very small and slow to quite dynamic, directing us towards what is most helpful in the heath and well being of our biological selves we call “body”. In my research with Sanskrit language I have found many bridges in yoga and continuum that are astounding!

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