Movement as Prayer

Qoya Inspired Movement honors yoga as a time-tested philosophy and practice of human development. With reverence for its lineage and teachers, we explore an approach to the practice that focuses on integrating mind, body, heart, and spirit by invoking an intention and moving it through our body as a form of prayer. 

The common term "yoga" is often defined in the West as: a set of postures (asanas) and breathing exercises (pranayama) that increase strength, flexibility, and balance and integrate mind, body, and spirit. 

Sri Aurobindo, a visionary, avatar, author, and yogic leader, teaches the definition of yoga as “applying knowledge, action, and love in service towards the evolution of consciousness.” Deepak Chopra describes yoga as a state of being in which the elements that compromise your biological organism are in harmonious interaction with the elements of the cosmos. In yoga, your desires and the desires of nature are one. 

In Qoya Inspired Movement, we invoke the spirit of yoga to explore our movement as prayer. When we lift our arms, align our bones, and cycle with our breath, we embody the prayer of our intentions. In doing so, we move beyond the tendency to confine prayer to our thoughts and instead declare our actions as prayer. We use movement as a powerful medium for expression and communication with the divine inside and around us, and we claim the body as sacred. 

When I first traveled to India in 2006, a woman came up to me at a temple and asked if I was a yoga teacher. I said yes, and the woman told me she had an important message. She said, “You have to teach them that yoga is prayer, not just exercise. Promise you will teach them.” It was a profound moment that I am still living into, and I invite you to explore with me. What does it feel like to offer our movement as a form of prayer?

LET’S MOVE TOGETHER

I invite you to either do a yoga sequence with me in the video to explore one approach or do one on your own or with another yoga video or class. 

During and after your yoga, I encourage you to explore how you might invoke movement as prayer in your own way, with postures or a sequence that feels resonant and reverent to you.

WATCH

REFLECT ON DAY SEVEN

REFLECTION 1: How does exploring movement as a form of prayer feel in your body? 

REFLECTION 2: How else can you integrate this approach of movement as prayer into your life?