We are all Flowers
By Alex D’Agostino
I am an artist. When I create new work it’s only after trial and error, discovery and challenge that I can say I’ve created artwork. Teaching and practicing yoga asana have always been an anchor in the cyclone of the creative process. I often return to the idea that inspiration is another word for inhalation.
For the past few years I have been making prints utilizing sources from queer archives and books of magic on leaves from plants that grow at my house.
Naturally when I teach and practice yoga I think of plants. When I think of the pelvis like a terracotta pot of soil, my spine becomes a stem and my head is a flower looking for light. It’s majestic and absurd and incredibly helpful when I consider how to move mindfully from one asana to another. I always emphasize pulling in and up, lifting from the base of the spine to the crown of the head in search of the miraculous, or at least a breath enhanced sense of posture and body.
Normally, I lean into one hip and curl my hands in towards my chest like a raptor or gremlin of some sort. Art-historically this is called contrapposto. It’s elegant and asymmetrical, but not always the best for the body. Asana helps me find the root from my pelvis to grow and blossom from.
I know at this point in my fleshy vessel that bones have impinged, gnashed, and supported a plethora of complicated and highly demanding shapes that may not have been necessarily “the best” for me. That’s fine. You live/love/laugh you learn. Having practiced in charm city for over a decade my body and practice have seen and continue to see a constantly evolving journey through what I will place between a cultural appropriation nightmare and a spiritual awakening.
Personally I find yoga to be a sticky complicated practice woven into industry and ego that can encourage obsession in a way that feels the antithesis of what I understand yoga to be. I’m not sure I could ever say I fully understand yoga, nor would I say I am a yogi. I am constantly learning to adapt and respond to the new information yoga offers. Perhaps that’s why I practice. It makes sense to find contradiction and opposition in a practice that includes movements that ask the body to move in multiple directions at once.
When I enter my body through yoga asana a giant “shhhhh” ripples through my anxious little self and I become content to simply breathe and grow my flower from a sturdy and carefully rooted stem in a terracotta pot.
It’s great to be crooked, imbalanced, and messy in life, especially when it comes to learning a practice that shape shifts with the world around it. When you come to my yoga asana classes , I will share with you as much as I can of what I’ve learned along what I’m sure will be a lifelong path. I will help you find a moment to breathe, “shhhh” that restless chatter and find your body like a beautiful plant rooted in the soil of your terracotta pot.