Tory Schafer

We don't love ourselves as much as we could.

And go, where am I feeling sensation?

How do my knees feel?

And the key to this, because as soon as we start to feel, oh, my knee's a little achy, the mind wants to tell you a story about why.

Going, ah, yeah, that's from when I was young and I was doing foolish things and I fell down.

Go, thank you, mind.

I know that you love dramas.

That soap opera can be there.

That's fine.

But let me just accept what the sensation is as a sensation.

And that starts to bridge the two.

And then after a couple minutes of just observing the mind and the body as it is, you just slowly watch your natural breath in and out.

And that just helps to calm the nervous system.

It takes you from the sympathetic state, which most of us live the majority of our lives in, that fight or flight type of place where the nervous system is overcharged, to a parasympathetic state of I'm willing to be here as I am, almost radical self-acceptance in some ways.

And then once you get your breath going, in a typical yoga class, I'll use the one that Stan comes to, which we call root, which is what we would call a hatha-based class, which hatha is a funny word in yoga because it truly is the umbrella for any physical form.

But the word itself translates to hot, which is hot sun and ta, cool moon, which just simply means there are oppositions in life.

And within that, there's oppositions in your body.

So can we start to feel the...

profound effect that when I wiggle my fingers and press them into the ground, that has an effect on the stability that's going on in my rotator cuff and my shoulders.

So if I have sore shoulders or elbows, am I aware that my fingers actually have a role to play in the integrity of the stability in my joints?