week 10

     This week's journal entry is on the reflection of tantric practice within the classroom setting during yoga. As I understand it, the idea of tantric is the combination of all life energy (prana) joining and working together as a dynamic system, or even in some instances, the force of defying not only gravity of potentially cheating death as well. This practice comes from the idea that our inhale breaths give us life, while our exhale is prana leaving our body, or in other words, life itself leaving us. As a way to reflect this idea of tantric learning, Hatha style yoga seems to really shine a light on the idea of balancing all life energy by the merging of both masculine and feminine energy. And with the definition of Hatha literally translating to a force between the sun and the moon, the modality of hatha yoga encompasses the tantric way of living. Ideally, I have been seeing my personal favorite instructor, who happens to specialize in hatha yoga, so the definition on paper gives so much more clarification to what i feel during practice. And sure, prana being the life force in us is found everywhere (even in food) but the marriage of asanas and controlled breathing in Hatha yoga is a perfect example of the mechanics of tantric.