​Protean: “tending or able to change frequently or easily.” 

Our culture, for the most part, sees the body as fixed and unchanging.  It’s not uncommon to hear the body described as a machine.  Yet, the reality of the body is not set in stone.  It is a living, breathing, changing, dynamic entity that responds to what we do . . . or don’t do.  Your body is constantly rebuilding and repairing itself.

If you’ve embarked on some new activity, whether it be bike riding, swimming, gardening, hiking, belly dancing, or a particular form of yoga practice, you’ll have observed how quickly the body begins to reshape itself.  When I cycled the hills of San Francisco, I had massive thighs and zero body fat.  After a few years of riding horses, my body shape changed from a cyclist’s body to the ballooning inner thighs of an equestrian.  With each passing year of intensive riding my hip, buttock and back muscles got stronger . . . and tighter.  One day I attempted a lotus variation and discovered my hips no longer had the pliancy to externally rotate to that degree . . . but the stability and strength acquired from riding also made my lower back less prone to aches and pains.  Now I’m swimming, and the body is once again metamorphizing into the softer, rounder, and smoother seal-like musculature of a swimmer . . . a body totally different to that of a long-distance runner or the pared-down frame of an Ashtanga yogi/ini.  I’m fascinated and enthralled by the plasticity of the body, although admittedly, it takes a bit more effort to acquire or sustain change as we get older.

What is the nature of your protean body?  How is your body adapting and evolving? 

As part of my Deep Dive series held at Flow Wellbeing in Christchurch, I’m offering a “Bending Over Backwards” class as a way of exploring how we maintain graceful lifelong erect posture through gentle, frequent, and strategic extension.  If you tend towards stiffness and immobility in extension, this workshop will be a delightful way to release and unwind spinal tension.  If you tend toward hypermobility, you’ll come away with new tools to stabilize the most vulnerable shear points in your back and restore the strength and stability of your vertebral column.  Because it is not inevitable that you will devolve into human version of the cashew net as you age . . . daily we create the body of tomorrow. 

Time and date: 1:00-3:30 pm Saturday, August 6, 2022

Booking: Flow Hot Yoga

Warmly from a cold, South Island winter,

Donna