Boston Healing Blog

Mattie Eisenberg is back in Boston on Sunday, July 19th for a special yoga workshop, Exploring the Four Movements of the Spine.  In this class, Mattie will instruct students in techniques that will help them locate and release compressed areas in their spines.  These compressed areas are what inhibit mobility and cause pain.  Students will also learn how to train their abdominal muscles for maximum spinal support, and master the use of breath, core engagement, and props to optimize spine bending poses. 

This workshop will be a homecoming for Mattie.  She is originally from Massachusetts and first taught yoga around Boston before founding La Vita Yoga, a yoga studio without walls in 2008.  La Vita Yoga is a traveling studio which brings her unique style of indoor and outdoor classes to students across the country.  She is a nationally registered yoga teacher and received her BA from Smith College. 

I was happy to talk to Mattie on the phone the other day at 8AM (Pacific time) about her upcoming return to Boston.

Jade Sylvan: Why is the spine so important?

Mattie Eisenberg: The spine is literally our backbone.  It supports us in everything we do, physically and emotionally.  We think of it as being a physical pillar that holds up our limbs, head, and muscles, but it's also the central channel of our nervous system.  Not only does it support our musculoskeletal system, but our more subtle life energies as well.  The spine is a wonderful column of potential for being alive.  It helps everything flow.

That's not to say the spine has to be in perfect, open shape to feel benefits.  In this workshop I start with the student and do a lot of exploration into the individual spine.  One student may have a very strong, open, flexible spine, and I can help her fine-tune her practice to optimize each expression and work with the openness she already has.  Another may have a pinched nerve, sciatica, or scoliosis and live with daily pain.  For that person I can show how to compensate and use different parts of the body, modified postures and props to take the pressure off the injured areas and strengthen the surrounding areas.  I have found these workshops to be very beneficial for people living with scoliosis and sciatica.

JS: Tell me about your teaching philosophy.

ME: I'm a strong believer in having a sense of humor in teaching.  We all take ourselves so seriously.  Life is too short not to just enjoy every moment that you can.  When things are fun, whatever you can do or whatever you can't is fine, you're just doing it for the experience itself.  Humor helps us not to place expectation or judgment on the process.  To just let yourself do what you can do and get what you can out of it. 

JS: It must be such a unique experience to work as a traveling yoga instructor.  What differences have you noticed in yoga students across the country?  Are there regional quirks in the way people practice?

ME: Somewhat.  Actually I notice more similarity in my students than differences.  It seems like people all over are just happy to be moving around and exploring themselves.  When people do yoga, it seems to make them happy and relaxed.  There's something different about that movement from other exercises which can stress the body to the point of exhaustion.  We've come to call that exhaustion "relaxation," but yoga is physically challenging in a more restorative way.  Yoga comes from a place of rejuvenation as opposed to a place of completion.

I have noticed that the people on the East Coast tend to be more engaged in the intellectual process behind the poses.  They tend to focus on the postures, anatomy, kinetics, and philosophy.  They seem on the whole to be more mental than say, the people in Tuscon.  In the West I see more of a sense of enjoying the movement for the sake of the movement without that need to analyze. 

As for individual differences, sometimes something shows up in a person's approach that's very personal.  For instance, you can tell when somebody puts down their mat and adjusts it ten times that they like to feel in control.  Then there are people who just plop it down wherever.  You just know these people are more laid back and less concerned with things in their lives being "just so." 

Most of all I love the different environments I'm able to teach in.  For instance, I could be teaching in a gym, a resort, or outside in a park.  There's a beautiful freedom when you practice outdoors.  People's egos are way less present when you're not in a confined space.  A space like a yoga studio or a gym brings its own energetic dogma with it.  A gym will bring external competition (how am I doing compared with the others?), a yoga studio internal competition (how am I doing compared with last month?), but outside the competition just doesn't exist.  Expectations affect the way you practice.  There are uses for all these expectations and some may be helpful to different people at different times, the important thing is to be aware and understand what you need.  Yoga is about being aware in the present moment.

Workshop Details:

Back in Boston: Exploring the Four Movements of the Spine will be held at:

Black Lotus Yoga
91 Sydney Street
Cambridge, MA 02139

Sunday, July 19th from 1-4PM

To register email mattie@lavitayoga.com