By Leslie Smith
“Yoga is all about relationships, whether it is about community, spirit or your family. It is about making connections– and it is also about witnessing points of view that sabotage this interdependency,” says Seane Corn. Seeing other points of view, even threatening ones, is a good thing, allowing us to make genuine commitments “so we can all live inclusively in harmony and in peace.”
Corn, who lives in California, is one of North America’s highest profile yoga teachers through her teaching, yoga videos, workshops, international travel and charity work, yet she is genuinely humble and constantly seeks input and information from her students and those around her. “Yoga practise will hold up a mirror to the lightest and darkest aspects of humanity.” She specializes in rigorous vinyasa flow yoga, linking poses together in masterfully planned routines, often with a special purpose: to detoxify mind, body and soul.
Regular DeToxification
Getting rid of toxins on all three areas on a regular basis is vital. “It’s not what you are eating, but what is eating you.” Toxins form in the body from the ingestion of food, absorption of environmental toxins (including everything from non-stick cookware to shampoos) as well as stress, mineral deficiencies, repressed emotions and sexuality, and even lack of spirituality or direction in life. All of these, she points out, add up to toxicity in the body, which inevitably results in mental and physical disease.
Toxins are released by sweating. Though saunas are great, the real health benefits accrue from heating the body via physical stimulation. “Physical sweat releases the lymphatic system,” Corn notes. Lymph is the fluid within the body which improves the immune system and goes into the more than 600 nodes of the body, such as tear ducts, urine, feces, phlegm. Dry brushing (using a soft bristle brush or loofah to gently stimulate the skin), vigorous exercise and deep breathing invigorate the circulatory and vascular body system, which in turn leads to lymphatic stimulation.
Sun salutations are an excellent and ancient method of doing just that, says Corn, releasing toxins from joints and internal organs. Certain standing poses directly influence the detoxification of joints, such as the triangle and warrior variations. Vinyasa flow yoga utilizes these poses and joins them in a n intensive workout that accelerates breathing and detoxification, but, she notes, there must be attention to detail. Novices to take non-beginner vinyasa classes can go too far into a pose where it feels “Easy”” to stretch, injuring wrists, lower back and neck. Method and sequencing is vital for vinyasa teachers to avoid student injuries, starting with pose stabilization. Teachers must help students get out of the “soft” areas of the poses into the “harder” areas.
Physical and Emotional Cleansing
In many ways yoga is about spiritual and emotional cleansing, says the 45-year-old teacher. “Some people in the world don’t have to do a lick of yoga.” But even for the likes of Corn, that is not the case. “I’m grateful that there is this tool” which restores balance and insight to our lives–as well as forgiveness. “Yoga is a tool to cleanse us…so we can go out into the world and remember that we are beloved.”
Yoga practise can be done on many different levels, she points out, on one level by performing a simple vinyasa flow, or adding in a strong meditation on an aspect of life that needs to change. “There’s an undoing of limited beliefs that has to occur. All of that you have to bypass. The shadow part of you has to be exposed. My job, my dharma, is to remind people of what they already know.” As soon as there is conflict, she says, a person’s limited beliefs come into play. “Fear kicks in over love.”
Corn is deeply spiritual and bring that mindset to her classes. The death of her father from cancer affected her but made her a more complete person. You can’t know about love until you experience grief,” she says candidly. She often invokes God, or Spirit, not necessarily in the conservative tradition many of us may be familiar with.
“The inability to forgive is a poison you take hoping someone else will die.”
Corn travels 250 days per year to take her message to audiences around the world and to do charity work. She was in Ottawa, Ontario, recently to teach a three-day master class workshop at PranaShanti Yoga Centre. Catch up with her at www.seanecorn.com.
