Acro Yoga with Nina & Boris

Nina & Boris are Acro Yoga teachers.

Nina & Boris

Acro Yoga is a blend between yoga, acrobatics and Thai massage, where the typical image you see is one person on the ground acting as a base with another person flying on his or her feet.

I wanted to try Acro Yoga, since I have many friends who enjoy it and also Nina & Boris were highly recommended to me by two of my friends who studied with them in Buenos Aires. The workshop was indeed conducted in a very welcoming manner, with lots of initiatives for everyone to participate, to trust each other and to build a group: singing to the honour of Ganesha (the elephant-headed remover of obstacles), lead-and-follow games, leaning away form each other while sharing axis, spotting a friend who does a tripod headstand, etc.

The sense of trust is very important in Acro Yoga, since the flyer could fall if sufficient care is not taken. Usually you will be three people when practising: one base, one flyer and one spotter. As much instructions were given on how to spot as on how to be the base or the flyer.

Together Nina & Boris can present an impressive range of experiences: yoga, dance, circus, theatre, kung fu, Thai massage... They intoduced us to two different flavours of Acro Yoga:

1. In the morning we did the acrobatic version, where the person who is flying keeps an active body and sometimes performs yoga postures. The pictures below, where I am flying, are illustrating this.
2. In the afternoon we first learned some Thai massage and then got to try the more therapeutic version of Acro Yoga, where the base is giving a massage and the flyer has a relaxed body.

Flying high

An intricate system of support

Thanks to Boris for taking these pictures!

Nina is Swedish but has been living abroad for the last 7 years, so she was very happy to have someone to speak Swedish to. Boris needs to learn too, since the two of them will be moving to Malmö in April next year. They are obviously very good community builders, so I think we will see a quickly growing kula of Acro Yoga in Malmö going forward.

Dancing the Melody

Melodies are important in tango music, and very often they are what comes up when you try to remember a tango. Perhaps you can recall the melodies of "La Cumparsita" and "Vida mía"?

A notion I have often encountered in tango is that you can either dance the rhythm or the melody. I get the impression that dancing the melody is perceived as better, more sophisticated and a more advanced form of musicality in the dance: "Anybody will learn to dance the rhythm of a tango, but only certain advanced dancers are dancing the melody".

Technically, a melody is a sequence of notes that we perceive as an entity in the music. The most important features of a melody are pitch (how high the notes are, not to be confused with how loud they are) and duration (how long they are). If you change the intervals or the duration of notes too much, you will no longer have the same melody. It's easy to see that there is less tolerance for changing pitch than duration - just try it out with a well known melody. Pitch comes first, duration second.

A well known melody

But how would you make a corporal expression of a sequence of pitches? Once suggestion I heard is to be higher above the ground for higher pitches, and lower closer to the ground for lower pitches. This might work on rare occasions, but if performed more than for a couple of notes in a row, the effect would be purely comical.

And this is clearly not what "dancing the melody" is. It's rather a question of reflecting the melodic line in the dance, as opposed to the (often more rhythmical) accompaniment of the melody.

The duration of the notes in the melodic line does not seem to matter much either. In workshops where "dancing the melody" is introduced, the rhythms of the melody are not danced, but it is rather a matter of slowing down the dance, as opposed to following the steady pace of a repetitive, rhythmical accompaniment ("dancing the rhythms").

So, interestingly, when "dancing the melody", you will not take into account the two foremost characteristics of a melody: neither pitch nor duration! Instead you will need to focus on the quality (timbre, emotional expression, etc.) and on the phrasing of the melodic line.

Isn't it confusing to say "dance the melody" when you do not move to the most typical features of a melody? To me it is.

Dancers will achieve greater variation if they at times emphasize the music in a manner similar to the singer or an instrument playing the melody. But to describe this way of dancing, don't ask people to "dance the melody" - it is more accurate to talk about longer and shorter phrases, emphasis and direction in the music. Or to simply say "slow down".

Slowing it down

What kind of yoga should I start with?

Starting up this blog again, now from Buenos Aires, I will give it a broader spectrum, including tango and other major themes of my life. There will still be yoga-related posts, and lots of people around me show a great interest for yoga.

Banking colleagues at Nordea have asked me for advice on where to start taking classes in Copenhagen. They tend to look for yoga that and keeps your body in good health and that relaxes their minds after stressful days at the office. The tango crowd also takes interest in yoga, as a means to improve body awareness, balance and focus.

I always recommend the aspiring yogi to try a few different styles and teachers. To give you an idea of what you may encounter, here's a brief summary of important yoga styles.

Hatha Yoga is a broad term that basically includes all yoga practices where you work the body (with the aim to "unite opposite patterns"). This is what people in general think of when they talk about yoga. In Hatha Yoga we practice postures (asana), breathing techniques (pranayama), mediation and cleansing techniques. So all classes that you might take in studios will most likely be forms of Hatha Yoga, although they often bear different labels: "Vinyasa", "Power Yoga", "Yin Yoga", "Ashtanga Yoga", etc.

Confusingly, many studios have classes specifically labelled "Hatha Yoga", and here the term is used in a more narrow sense; it means that you will do asana, and take some time to explain how to do the postures well. These sessions sometimes include pranayama and meditation.

Asana - the postures - is the dominant yogic practice in yoga studios. This emphasis has grown dramatically throughout the 20th century. In traditional yoga, asana played a much smaller part, and was more or less a preparation for being able to sit comfortably in meditation. For many Westerners, asana is the most accessible entry point to yoga, and the first classes I took myself were all about asana.

Asana session, Anusara Yoga in Chiang Mai, Thailand 2010

"Iyengar Yoga" is a very widespread form of Hatha Yoga, developed by B.K.S Iyengar, where explanations can be extremely detailed. It will make you do a very healthy yoga for your body, although some find these classes to be quite slow.

Vinyasa is when breath is synchronized with body movements. Classes labelled "Hatha Yoga" usually include some of this, but in a "Vinyasa" labelled class there is often a much stronger focus on the breath leading each movement. In many Vinyasa classes, the teacher will assume that you already know the postures and won't explain them carefully.

Some Vinyasa classes can be very physically demanding, and especially so the "Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga" classes, developed by Sri Patthabi Jois and one of the largest Hatha Yoga styles today. It is often simply called "Ashtanga Yoga" and although originally meant for teenage boys in India, it has become very popular in the West, giving you a great workout and promoting discipline.

Ashtanga Yoga is actually much older than Jois' contribution, and here's also room for confusion. Ashtanga means "eight limbs" and in this yoga utilizes a set of eight different methods for enlightenment. Asana is one, pranayama another, but there's also e.g. yama, which are moral rules of conduct where ahimsa, "not to cause any suffering", is the principal one. This traditional Ashtanga Yoga is also known as Raja Yoga, the royal yogic path, and was outlined by the sage Patanjali in the Yoga Sutra, one of the main scriptures of yogic philosophy.

"Anusara Yoga" is the Hatha Yoga style that I'm mostly into. Just like Iyengar Yoga it has a strong focus on good alignment in postures, to make sure that the practice is safe and efficient. In Anusara we are also cultivating "heart qualities". These are good qualities in ourselves, such as "courage", "kindness", "sensitivity" or "gratitude", which we want to develop further in the sessions, but also off the yoga mat.

Besides Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga, I should also mention the 3 other major yogic paths:

• Karma Yoga, the yoga of action
• Jnana Yoga, the yoga of the intellect
• Bhakti Yoga, the yoga of love and devotion.

Enough for one post, but if you encounter other terms that you would like an explanation for, add a comment about it, and I'll get back on that.
Last but not least: If you want to try yoga, the teacher matters much more than the class labels. Choose someone that inspires you to develop a physical, mental or devotional practice.