August | Body Language

Painting by Filippa Edghill

It’s an interesting experience to spend any length of time focusing only on your mind-body connection. As a teacher and student, I often wonder what brings people to yoga class. Do they like to practice? Have they come for something specific, like a workout or a stretch? Or do they feel a strange and unnatural disconnection from themselves—one that they can’t quite articulate or understand fully—and hope that yoga will provide some insight? Whatever the answer is I always marvel at the fact that we have all taken time out of our day to do a bunch of poses on a mat together. And to be honest, I think that speaks for itself. Maybe we crave movement, self-expression and tactile connection more than we know In yoga we are able to find a lightness of being, even if only for a moment.

For me, movement is everything. I spend much of my time thinking, learning and actually doing it and luckily, many other people have done the same. So, I’ve compiled some of my favorite quotes and artworks that have so beautifully given a language to the complexity, nuance and joys of the human body.

I hope you enjoy!

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Painting by Filippa Edghill

“We cannot hate or be angry without an organism that hates or is angry. We cannot love or hope without expecting, actively, movingly, physiologically loving and hoping and expecting. Hate, anger, love and hope are not psychological states existing in some mental vacuum, they are somatic states that exist in the entirety of a living organism.” - Thomas Hanna, “The Body of Life”

“Our body is a tool for joy” - Sierra Quitiquit

Photo by Woody Gooch

“Human bodies are governed by intrinsically intelligent patterns” - Douglas Brooks

“...form and figure trigger a different thought in different people because we've lived different experiences.” - Filippa Edghill

Illustration by Sony Rooney

“Our bodies are dissected in media, our hearts get broken, our skin is bruised in pursuit of adventure and the hardest of all our bodies survives the pressure that we put on ourselves because of external standards of beauty.” - Filippa Edghill

“The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.” —Leonardo da Vinci