Understanding Centering and Expansion in Yoga Asanas | Heinz Grill & BKS Iyengar

Inner Axis and Outer Space Awareness in Yoga Asanas

What is centering and extension in a movement? On the one hand, joints and vertebrae can widen by stretching. The spine can stretch and become longer. Joints are relieved. Then, in contrast, you can tense your muscles and thus center yourself.

In addition to these muscular movements, there is now also a feeling of an inner center or support as well as a feeling of expansion and width. How do these feelings arise?

Centring

The spine is the central, inner axis. If you experience it consciously and are aware of it, an increasingly stronger feeling of an inner axis, an inner center, arises.

In all yoga exercises, you can learn to develop and experience this center through awareness. You can perform an exercise with an awareness of the inner spine.

This experience is then reflected in the whole expression of the yoga exercise. The exercise has a structured effect and, above all, radiates an inner stability within itself. A certain strength and power that is not muscular strength. The person stands as if centered in themselves.

I have studied many yoga exercises. But this expression is rare. It can be more or less visible in yoga exercises. With BKS Iyengar and Heinz Grill, this expression is very visible in the yoga exercises.

If you contemplate images of these two personalities, you learn to see and feel the expression there very well.

BKS Iyengar Warrior II

Expansion in movement

The opposite pole to centering is expansion in movement. The two belong together. The expression of expansion is very visible in the postures og Iyengar and Heinz Grill, even if the expression is slightly different.

In the asanas of Iyengar and Heinz Grill, there is a sense of expansiveness and space. Heinz Grill describes the expansion with an awareness of the outer space. The expansion is created by first experiencing the space starting from the spine, centering oneself in the middle of the spine in terms of sensation and then expanding out into the space again from this center. The movement thus goes beyond the body. The yoga exercises seem to go on, as if they do not stop where the body ends.

Heinz Grill has developed a particularly strong differentiation. He shows a punctual centering in the chest, in the middle of the spine and a relaxation of the arms. The arms always appear relaxed and light, the center of the spine always very dynamic and wide. His attention seems to remain noticeably in the space around him, he seems to consciously experience it inwardly, no matter how demanding the yoga exercises are. This contrast characterizes Heinz Grill’s asanas. They combine an expression of expansiveness and lightness with inner stability.

With Iyengar, the tension in the limbs is stronger, he aligns himself very precisely with his legs and arms and with him you particularly experience the directions of the body in space, the exact alignment.