I sat on small metal bleachers set up on a patch of grass at the fairgrounds, completely mesmerized as I watched Bob Baker’s marionette puppets on the “stage” a few rows below me.
At 5 years old or so, I guess I didn’t see the strings, because I seriously thought these puppets were magical and real. After all, they were moving, they could talk, and they were having the most fun adventures.
For a few years it was the one thing I really wanted to do at the fair, even before the midway rides and games. We planned our visits around the showtimes, and it was usually the first stop.
At some age I realized there were strings, with people holding them and making them move. Though the puppets weren’t alive and “real,” that flutter of excitement I felt watching them as a child was.
I remember longing to go with them on their adventures. Little did I know that many years later I’d be having a kind of puppet adventure of my own.
You see, the Sanskrit term for doing yoga with the yoga wall is yoga kurunta. Though kurunta has a few definitions, a common meaning when put together with yoga is a wooden doll or puppet. Yoga kurunta refers to using suspended ropes in a yoga practice, like aerial yoga or yoga on the Great Yoga Wall.
Practicing yoga with the Great Yoga Wall allows you to come alive and experience a magic even better than what I saw as a child at the fair. It empowers you to do things you didn’t think were even possible on your mat and in your life.
Only instead of someone else standing over you, moving the strings, and controlling your movements, you do.
Safely Deepen Your Practice
With the Great Yoga Wall, you decide how long or short the yoga wall belts are, and you can adjust the length and position based on the pose, the shape of your body, and how deeply you want to stretch.
The “puppet strings” (wall ropes or belts) safely hook into the wall and offer endless variations to the postures. Poses that seemed out of reach become within your grasp with the help of the Great Yoga Wall.
Sirsasana (Headstand) offers a great example. If you’re one of the many yogis who struggle to do the pose in a way that doesn’t compress the upper thoracic and cervical vertebrae, the Great Yoga Wall offers a way to practice the pose suspended with no pressure on the spine.
Even with your feet on the ground, you can experience different, more profound expressions of the postures that you already know how to do. The Great Yoga Wall gives you the ability to open up the body in deeper, more satisfying ways and offer greater relief than you can find on your own.
Sure, you can do Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Dog) in any class, but what if you were able to take a little weight off your arms, ease the stretch in the hamstrings a bit, deepen the bend in your hips, and stay for 5 minutes to find more and more length in your spine? The Great Yoga Wall helps you do that.
When you need a little extra support and stability, the Great Yoga Wall plays the role of a partner who’s got you and won’t drop you.
The benefits you get from working with the Great Yoga Wall offer one case when “strings attached” is a good thing.
Like any practice or craft, there’s a methodology to help you make the most of it. I’ll be sharing the techniques that make practicing with the Great Yoga Wall safe, effective, and magical in the next 3-day Great Yoga Wall Level 1 training coming up May 6-8. Doors for registration open soon. Click here if you’d like to get on the waitlist to learn more.
Magic Beyond Your Mat
A more profound magic can happen when you enliven your yoga practice with the Great Yoga Wall. As you hone your ability to do more and more things that you didn’t think you could do on your mat, you learn to trust yourself more. When you build that belief in yourself, you begin to realize something.
Whether you’re playing on the Great Yoga Wall or simply moving through your life, you control the ropes more than you realize.
You get to choose how much interaction to have with that toxic person in your life.
You call the shots on whether to ask for that promotion.
You get to decide how you manage your time and energy.
I recognize that privilege makes acting on your decisions a lot easier for some people than others, and that sometimes you might feel like you have no choice. Though acting on your decisions or living with the consequences of them might not be easy, you have the ability to choose.
By practicing with the Great Yoga Wall, you build the muscles of exercising choice, of doing sometimes hard things you didn’t think you could do, and of learning to trust yourself.
Whether you’re pulling the strings on the Great Yoga Wall or in your life, you have the opportunity to “plug in” and experience the magic for yourself. I’m so grateful to be on that journey with you.
Tell me…have you experienced the magic of the Great Yoga Wall? How did it help your practice, both on the mat and in your life? Let me know in the comments!
In wellness, joy, and inspiration,
Tami