Do you experience stiffness around your hips? Are you tired of taking pills for aches around your joints? The root cause might surprise you.

We accept stiff joints or tired muscles as a part of advancing age and continue to live with chronic pain or resort to prolonged medications. However, rigid mobility could mean a malfunctioning fascia. Fascia is the thin connective tissue that encases or supports your muscles, organs, bones, and joints, making it the support system for our body. Any damage to these tissues or wear and tear can lead to joint pains that are often difficult to remedy.

A healthy fascia is flexible and smooth. Limited or restrictive movements due to age or any injury can cause these to grow stiff. Embodied Yoga movement is a unique format designed to reduce stiffness around the fascia.  The slow, patterned postures flow into one another, dance-like at times, and generate a myofascial sling body movement release. The practice softens and strengthens the fascia muscles and muscle chain, especially around the hips and joints. 

Movement is a natural process and is considered the developmental stage in a child's growth trajectory. It is an innate behaviour that sometimes gets hindered as we grow, accumulate emotional experiences, and develop self-limiting patterns. The embodied movement flow aids in unlearning these patterns and revives the intrinsic human nature of curiosity and free movement. The form concentrates on what feels comfortable for your body without creating a rigid structure of how it should be. As we pause during the postures, we become aware of how our body responds to every move. This awareness creates the environment to be at ease during physical movements.

A lot of ailments, as we know, are psychosomatic. The connection between the mind and body goes beyond the level of our consciousness. While heightening our levels of consciousness forms the fulcrum of Hindu philosophy, Yoga is a system rooted in this idea to bring our awareness to the present. The mind constantly oscillates between the past and the future, missing the now. Yoga practices are about grounding oneself in the current moment and learning to be aware of the breath and the now.  

Many of us associate Yoga with just the physical and use it as a medium to gain better fitness. While physical benefits are a given, spiritual gains flow when the practice is passive and focuses inwards. The embodied flow naturally feels meditative because the moves are slow and deliberate. The form integrates multiple philosophies like Hatha, somatic, tantric, transpersonal psychology, and movement meditation. 

The practice follows a layered sequence, integrating one posture with another, moving like a story. We are encouraged to keep our eyes closed and listen to the instructions; our breaths synced with the flow.  The process lets you understand the importance of letting go, accepting our limitations and allowing newer experiences to flow. As a regular practitioner, I feel energized after these sessions. 

Watch this video for a full demonstration of this meditative flow practice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blLCd4ko_II