I have begun to organize my yoga classes around the five elements and seasons of Chinese medicine and Qigong. As I work with my students I am seeing great value in the repetition of what I have come to call “default practices” and I am beginning to organized them seasonally. This corresponds to the first stage, or willful practice phase of yoga. Each day, in my own practice, anxiety arises as I have to choose how to begin. Depending on the day, I have to make a willful choice of what to do next rather than simply finding my body flowing into its own practice. Do I start with Pranayama? a prayer? a physical warm-up? Students often tell me they love to be told what to do in class. No brain weighing the effort and benefits of various activities, just mind attending to present sensations. Both Qigong forms and Kripalu yoga pranyamas, warm-ups, and vinyasa flows help me reduce the number of decisions I need to make in my Sadhana. I generally pick a warm-up sequence and then proceed through it, allowing myself to explore the familiar postures as feels appropriate at the time, but knowing the general sequence I plan to follow. Once I pick the plan, the pressure of decision making is over, I relax, and sometimes find myself moving in a new direction! Then I pick a pranayama or a standing qigong meditation, followed by vinyasa (a fancy name for any yoga flow of postures), or a qigong frolic, ending with relaxation. Once the initial decision is made for each phase of my practice, I too can attend to sensation. I generally include joint loosening movements, self-massage,attention to breath, still and moving postures in a balanced practice. Organizing these elements within the structure of the Chinese medical calendar lends me additional guidance. I feel rather like a poet writing in a given form, narrowing some choices, yet still free to express herself.

Metal, Water, Wood, Fire, and Earth are the five elements of traditional Chinese medicine. Just as Yoga is linked in India to Ayurveda, so is Qigong linked to Chinese healing. Therefore, the five elements are central to the practice of Qigong. Each element corresponds to a different season of the year (the Chinese add Indian Summer or the harvest for the Earth element), a different set of emotions, a color, one of the five senses, a healing sound, particular organs in the body, even planets. In Qigong there are different animals associated with these elements, organs, and emotions, leading to the practice of animal frolics. Not surprisingly, there are parallels between the Indian and Chinese traditions that make it interesting to create seasonal classes that incorporate elements from both traditions.

Currently, when I choose practices for myself or my classes, I focus on the elements of the season I am in, consciously balancing the energies of the moment. My next post will focus on the harvest season. If I am ill or in a particular mood, it may be useful to bring in practices from an element that is not of the current time of year. Healing Sounds Qigong, for example, balances all the elements and can be a soothing practice any time. I often choose all, or just the seasonal sound, for the standing meditation in my practice or classes.

Yang Ying is a former Chinese opera singer who teaches the proper Chinese sounding. I find the precision of her sounds very challenging for my American ear, tongue, lips, throat, and mouth. Maybe I’m just not that vocally coordinated. Deborah Davis simplifies the sounds for Westerners and coordinates them with simple physical gestures that I find very rewarding.