Sloth Medicine: The Beauty of Stillness
Sloth Medicine: The Beauty of Stillness
by Kari Jacobsen
Many of my friends know my spirit animal is the sloth. “I just want the whole world to relax with me!” is just one of many Kari-isms. Though a highly busy, always traveling, hard-working person, my truth is… I love doing nothing!
At the time I took the Forrest Yoga Foundation Teacher training, I was a 28-year-old working as a mechanical engineer in the field of train crashworthiness in Boston. The primary reason I took the Forrest Yoga training was to take a month off of work, just to do yoga… I kind of missed the fact that I would have to teach in a yoga teacher training! In general, I was a nervous nelly every time I had to use my voice. I had a nasally sort of “nerd-voice”, croaking out cues and worried I wasn’t getting cues “right”. I thought I was a horrible teacher. In week three when I led my practice group, which included Ana Forrest as a student, into savasana, my voice suddenly resonated with a cadence and sincerity I had never heard. I realized, guiding students into rest was when I felt most authentic and connected. Prioritizing the practices of relaxation and quiet in the midst of a busy life has ultimately been the journey to which Forrest Yoga guided me.
I had been practicing Yin Yoga as many years as I had Forrest Yoga and so I signed up for a Yin Training, knowing my body and mind craved this platform of silence, stillness and “staying”. Some part of me always feels relief when I come to my yin yoga practice because there’s nothing to do, nowhere to go, and nothing to accomplish! This feels like such a needed break from the usual go-go-go of life. I simply have to get out of my own way and feel. From Forrest Yoga I had learned the power of actively breathing my way through the most challenging asanas and that taught me the focus and feeling. Through Yin Yoga I learned how to follow the natural breath in relatively simple poses and that taught me how to feel what’s there and learn to stay in a different mindset - one of acceptance, rather than expecting and needing change. The beauty I found in Yin Yoga is the skill of following… because Yin Yoga brings in the practice of meditation. You do not control the breath, but follow it. In learning to follow the breath I also discovered I could follow my body’s needs. An inhale, is the body figuring out what it needs, and exhale is the body letting going of what it doesn’t need. And it does that in every single breath we take! Spending time following breath that’s already there helps me let me body know I’m listening to its natural rhythms, its innate ability to find what it needs and follow it rather than lead it.
Another breakthrough moment in my first Forrest training was learning to use my hands to help others. Never before had I used my hands to touch with such awareness. When I took the time to hold someone’s head or chest or feet, I felt an incredible level of sensation. I craved understanding of what I was feeling! I soon took my first CranioSacral Therapy (CST) training and began to have a language for the subtle rhythms of the bones, the tissues, the fluid systems. It reinforced that there is a vast universe moving and breathing and taking care of itself inside each of us. CST is a light-touch form of bodywork that helps to recognize these systems and bring balance to the areas that hold stress, worry, injuries or trauma. As a recipient of CST I have experienced releases of tension patterns I only could chip away at with yoga and discovered profound moments of relaxation and clarity. As a practitioner it gives me more adept intuition and hands-on skills, to assist students relax. This pairing of quiet, slower yoga practices and the kind touch of CST is my most beloved offering as a yoga teacher.
As I continue to teach, I have narrowed in on workshops and regular classes where I can share the gifts of learning how to stay and listen so that we might each have a little more ease and insight for guiding us forward in all that we do. I am pleased to partner with Michelle Cordero in our upcoming workshop, RELAX, on Thursday May 11th, to share our love of hands on work in a deeply restorative workshop. Please join us so that you too can taste the sloth medicine I carry!
LEARN MORE ABOUT KARI AT: www.explodingsage.com
Photo credit: Donna Rossiter