What is Katonah Technique?
In the Katonah practice, we pride ourselves on our ability to move into shapes with ease having developed the technique to use props to our advantage. Our Katonah Technique class will help you expand your practice beyond the mat in this multi-dimensional class.
1. 🪑 Explore utilizing chairs to sustain postures
A chair offers four points of contact and provides stability to sustain a pose longer. This enables you to substantiate your lower body that supports whole. Chairs are referred to as scaffolding so that we can
relinquish our personal efforts, as we wrap ourselves around, through, above and below them, in order to achieve an archetypal form to help us get out of our own way.
2. 🧱 Blocks to change angles and scaffold
Blocks enable us to create more efficient boundaries to open up framework. We refer to blocks as bone because they support the structure of our forms and help us develop a larger frame for the functioning of our internal organs. When we create better function on the inside we construct ourselves better on the outside.
Blocks are used as measuring tools to hold us accountable to finding 90 degree angles. They can also be used as a therapeutic boundary so that we can let go of our personal boundaries.
3. ⏳ Sandbags to plug in
Sandbags mimic muscle in a way that creates a two-way conversation and an exchange of energy in postures. When a sandbag is placed, it adds the dimension of weight and an immediate chance to be plugged. When we are plugged in, an element of safety sets in and the investment in a shape allows our neurology to move somewhere else.
4. 🪵 Wooden poles to defy boundaries
A pole creates a boundary that helps us find the middle to organize ourselves in time and space. By moving the pole around, through, above and below ourselves, we access more spaciousness in every joint, particularly wrists and shoulder joints.
As we manipulate the linear pole in all directions, we make finding the middle more available and gaining further in perspective.
5. 🦿Straps as Ligaments
Straps hold us in forms and allow for the release of the muscular grip of effort so that we can move through shapes without our habits and impulses. Straps act as ligaments because they hold and stabilize joints to support our structure. Ligaments, like straps, ensure that bones and joints sit in the right place, enabling us to move and bend with more facility and ease.
Eventually, as we progress in our practice, our imagination takes over the job of the strap, moving us deeper into the joint space that the strap initially informs, binds, wraps and supports.
🚀 Transcend your personal habits and develop technique with us. Join an upcoming Katonah Technique Class on Mondays 7:30-8:30pm