By Sam McDonald
Yoga can act as a powerful magnet for couples yearning to reconnect physically or emotionally.
Partner or couples yoga classes in particular can potentially enhance and deepen relationships.
If all that sounds like mumbo jumbo, go talk to Bonny Griffin.
The Norfolk yoga teacher enjoys practicing the ancient art with her husband, Dink. She's eager to persuade you that partner yoga is good for both body and soul.
For Griffin, it's one of the ties that binds.
"It's been wonderful," she said. "It's brought us closer together as a couple. It's a really cool way for us to communicate without having to talk."
Yoga, in the general sense, is a discipline that emphasizes physical alignment, movement, breath and flexibility as a path toward self-knowledge and inner peace.
In partner yoga, participants pursue those same goals by working as a team. Exercises are not sexual or erotic in nature, so partners need not be couples. But pairs who are can benefit from deepened awareness.
"It's just a great way to communicate," Griffin said, who with her husband will teach a couples class today in Virginia Beach. "You learn to trust each other on a different level."
Partner yoga postures involve literally leaning on each other, developing balance, finding ways to offer physical support. While that can lead to mutual insights, it can also be great fun, local teachers said.
"My husband and I try to keep our relationship vibrant through playfulness," Griffin said. "For some of us, it's tough to know how to get started with that. Having someone guide you helps."
Yoga classes are plentiful across Hampton Roads, but partner or couples classes have been offered only sporadically. Often, they crop up around Valentine's Day, when lovers are looking for a special experience.
Janet Abel, who teaches yoga at the Newport News shipyard as well as the Charles Taylor Arts Center in Hampton, said she led a couples class after it was requested by a student. "One of the husbands requested it as a way to get closer to his wife," Abel said. "It's a bonding experience."
In partner yoga, participants try to synchronize their breathing and work together to achieve a posture.
"Like in life, you have to make adjustments," Abel said. "You have to be aware of what the other person needs."
Gabrielle Gerard-Jenks, a yoga teacher in Portsmouth, also said she has taught partner classes in the past and would jump at the chance to teach them more often. "It's a really wonderful way to utilize yoga," she said. "It expands it into the realm of being relational. You are using someone else's body to deepen the impact of a pose … You're also learning how to be careful, sensitive and how to honor someone else, how to take care so you don't hurt them. You're learning how to listen."
Gerard-Jenks considers partner classes a treat.
"Oh yeah, I like to teach it. I also like to do it," she said. "It's fun — a whole other way of moving through space."
Those who regularly practice partner yoga eventually can try dramatic poses such as The Falcon in which one partner, outstretched in a position like a swan dive, balances in the air on the feet of the other.
Some postures are much more simple. In one, a couple sits back to back, cross-legged on the floor.
Tara Lynda Guber, a national expert on partner yoga, has spent years spreading the gospel about its power and benefits. The practice has the potential to strengthen all kinds of relationships, said Guber, author of "Contact: The Yoga of Relationship." She's preparing a new edition of the book as well as a follow-up teaching guide for partner yoga.
"On the yoga room floor, I've seen people transformed," said Guber, a Brooklyn native now living in Los Angeles. "The joy and the fun and the laughter is more important than anything else."
Pulling off an acrobatic pose such as The Falcon can be exhilarating, teachers say. Just as important, though, is the trust that can develop between partners.
"The foundation of any relationship is trust," Guber said. "The gift that we get from trusting is that we begin to feel safe. If we don't trust, the foundation is built on shaky ground."
Other postures encourage calm and clear insights into one's self and one's partner, she said. "Yoga breaks down the shields and creates more intimacy … It's such a fun way to break through barriers and see the other person without having to do anything that brings what we know as fear."
Sex, by the way, is not the intimacy she's describing.
"Intimacy is sometimes a limited expression," she said. "It can come from a great laugh or sharing a great experience. Once you open up the energy of your own body and have someone else doing it with you, you're opening a new world."
Guber said that Valentine's Day is a big sales day for her book. But the point of "Contact: The Yoga of Relationship" isn't to spark romance. She's pushing for something more durable.
"It's great to be in love," she said. "But how do you make the love last? Valentine's Day might be one day out of the year, but wouldn't it be great if we had an open heart 365 days?"
Share
Copyright © 2010, Newport News, Va., Daily Press
Yoga can act as a powerful magnet for couples yearning to reconnect physically or emotionally.
Partner or couples yoga classes in particular can potentially enhance and deepen relationships.
If all that sounds like mumbo jumbo, go talk to Bonny Griffin.
The Norfolk yoga teacher enjoys practicing the ancient art with her husband, Dink. She's eager to persuade you that partner yoga is good for both body and soul.
For Griffin, it's one of the ties that binds.
"It's been wonderful," she said. "It's brought us closer together as a couple. It's a really cool way for us to communicate without having to talk."
Yoga, in the general sense, is a discipline that emphasizes physical alignment, movement, breath and flexibility as a path toward self-knowledge and inner peace.
In partner yoga, participants pursue those same goals by working as a team. Exercises are not sexual or erotic in nature, so partners need not be couples. But pairs who are can benefit from deepened awareness.
"It's just a great way to communicate," Griffin said, who with her husband will teach a couples class today in Virginia Beach. "You learn to trust each other on a different level."
Partner yoga postures involve literally leaning on each other, developing balance, finding ways to offer physical support. While that can lead to mutual insights, it can also be great fun, local teachers said.
"My husband and I try to keep our relationship vibrant through playfulness," Griffin said. "For some of us, it's tough to know how to get started with that. Having someone guide you helps."
Yoga classes are plentiful across Hampton Roads, but partner or couples classes have been offered only sporadically. Often, they crop up around Valentine's Day, when lovers are looking for a special experience.
Janet Abel, who teaches yoga at the Newport News shipyard as well as the Charles Taylor Arts Center in Hampton, said she led a couples class after it was requested by a student. "One of the husbands requested it as a way to get closer to his wife," Abel said. "It's a bonding experience."
In partner yoga, participants try to synchronize their breathing and work together to achieve a posture.
"Like in life, you have to make adjustments," Abel said. "You have to be aware of what the other person needs."
Gabrielle Gerard-Jenks, a yoga teacher in Portsmouth, also said she has taught partner classes in the past and would jump at the chance to teach them more often. "It's a really wonderful way to utilize yoga," she said. "It expands it into the realm of being relational. You are using someone else's body to deepen the impact of a pose … You're also learning how to be careful, sensitive and how to honor someone else, how to take care so you don't hurt them. You're learning how to listen."
Gerard-Jenks considers partner classes a treat.
"Oh yeah, I like to teach it. I also like to do it," she said. "It's fun — a whole other way of moving through space."
Those who regularly practice partner yoga eventually can try dramatic poses such as The Falcon in which one partner, outstretched in a position like a swan dive, balances in the air on the feet of the other.
Some postures are much more simple. In one, a couple sits back to back, cross-legged on the floor.
Tara Lynda Guber, a national expert on partner yoga, has spent years spreading the gospel about its power and benefits. The practice has the potential to strengthen all kinds of relationships, said Guber, author of "Contact: The Yoga of Relationship." She's preparing a new edition of the book as well as a follow-up teaching guide for partner yoga.
"On the yoga room floor, I've seen people transformed," said Guber, a Brooklyn native now living in Los Angeles. "The joy and the fun and the laughter is more important than anything else."
Pulling off an acrobatic pose such as The Falcon can be exhilarating, teachers say. Just as important, though, is the trust that can develop between partners.
"The foundation of any relationship is trust," Guber said. "The gift that we get from trusting is that we begin to feel safe. If we don't trust, the foundation is built on shaky ground."
Other postures encourage calm and clear insights into one's self and one's partner, she said. "Yoga breaks down the shields and creates more intimacy … It's such a fun way to break through barriers and see the other person without having to do anything that brings what we know as fear."
Sex, by the way, is not the intimacy she's describing.
"Intimacy is sometimes a limited expression," she said. "It can come from a great laugh or sharing a great experience. Once you open up the energy of your own body and have someone else doing it with you, you're opening a new world."
Guber said that Valentine's Day is a big sales day for her book. But the point of "Contact: The Yoga of Relationship" isn't to spark romance. She's pushing for something more durable.
"It's great to be in love," she said. "But how do you make the love last? Valentine's Day might be one day out of the year, but wouldn't it be great if we had an open heart 365 days?"
Share
Copyright © 2010, Newport News, Va., Daily Press
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