Prana Vinyasa Yoga an energetic quality of yoga developed by Shiva Rae. The asanas are more classic, but the practice encourages attention to the breath and movement within each asana and flow of the sequencing. ~ with Carol McDowell ~ 8:00 - 9:30 _ 10.10.06 / 10.17.06 ~
Improvisational Dance ~ A session inspired by Barbara Dilley's Contemplative Dance - improvisational structures that facilitate wild play and kinesthetic delight and consciously make connections with meditation practices - a session inspired by Authentic Movement Practice - working slowly in a safe environment with a partner to investigate habitual and new, or unrecognizable movement patterns ~ with Carol McDowell ~ 8:00 - 10:00 _ 10.24.06 ~
~
"All of a sudden from yoga, we began to dance," said Michael of his experience in Carol's class.
This is true. For two classes, Carol led us through a series of yoga poses (to music) and then on third class, she introduced The Sundown Schoolhouse to dance. Carol liked to use the heart as a point of orientation ("slide your hands along your chest towards your heart and hold them there for a moment, at your heart, and then place them down around your ankles" she would say) in her yoga instruction and this was nice; we never forgot in her class where our hearts were.
We began her dance class with the same series of movements that a small infant must go through—wiggling on the ground before we learned to crawl etc. Then she had us partner up and close our eyes while we just moved (it turns out 'dancing' is a loaded word) while our partner made sure we didn't take a turn for the worse, down the circular stairs, say, or head-first into another Schoolhouse student flailing their arms about. Her most popular exercise, by far, was in having us simply respond to another person's position or movement with our own.