Yoga with Melissa

Yoga for Unwavering Focus in the Attention Economy | Yoga with Melissa 494

07.26.2019 - By Dr. Melissa WestPlay

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Hatha Yoga

This hatha yoga class with balancing flows and probably more joy than you realized was possible with yoga blocks is going to be the most fun you had all week, plus it will help develop unwavering focus. The yoga sequences will develop strength in your glute meds and glute max. This hatha yoga class is chocked full of stability and mobility movements for your shoulders and hips using the yoga block.

I have to give props to Jenni Rawlings @jenni_rawlings (on instagram) for her inspiration with the blocks, she loves to refer to her passion for block work as evil block work.

Also my friend Laura Goellner from Laura G. Yoga and @lauragyoga on instagram for the amazing half moon balancing sequence.

Check out Karen Copeland (a fellow Canadian, YAY!) @pilatesplaceyyc (on instagram), because she majorly inspired my cat pose variations this week.

Check our the amazing @caitlincasella Caitlin Casella on instagram for lots of great ideas too. I kind of ran out of room in this class to integrate some of the ideas of hers that I was going to use, but I still want to shout her out.

In this class I give a one minute dharma talk at the beginning about information overload in the attention economy and the premise that this causes our attention to diminish.

We live in a time that you can access any piece of information and contact anyone you like. We have instantaneous information and connection. When we live in an information abundant society we are trained for attention scarcity.

However, I would like to challenge that premise today.

Many of us have been practicing yoga and meditation for decades.

We may be trained for scarcity and poverty of attention in the attention economy with excess information, but the converse is true, when we practice yoga and meditation we are have continually been trained in developing our capacity for awareness, interoception, and to stay for awhile, to have deliberate absorption and immersion in a sustained activity for a prolonged period of time.

In this yoga class we will continue to develop our capacity for awareness in an economy that suffers from lack of attention. We will do this by focusing on our breath in long holds and balancing postures.

As practitioners of yoga and meditation, we have an abundance of awareness, focus and concentration from our practice of yoga and meditation and the dominant thinking in the attention economy is just another way that we are fed the deceit of scarcity and poverty in the age of information overwhelm.

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