Yoga is Balance
Andrea Cartwright, 59, bills herself as the woman who popularized yoga in Knoxville, and no one could argue. She's been teaching yoga in the area for nearly 30 years, and has taught a yoga class for UT's non-credit programs every single quarter since 1972. She even had—in the late '70s and early '80s—her own yoga program on Channel 2, Joy Through Yoga.
She is certified in both the Sivananda and Kripalu styles of yoga (Sivananda emphasizes a series of 12 poses aimed at cleansing and refining the nervous system to work for higher states of consciousness; Kripalu emphasizes less intense yoga practices that can be done by ordinary folks aimed at increasing intuition and strengthening the mind-body connection). She is a student of the precision oriented-Iyengar style of yoga. And she is both a licensed massage therapist and cranial-sacral therapist who's worked with prominent Knoxville physical therapy centers and orthopedic surgeons.
She teaches at UT and at Westminster Presbyterian Church; she also gives individual instruction at her office at Chambliss Place in Bearden, tailored specifically to the student—in this case, me. The poses she gives me are, comparatively speaking, small and surprisingly difficult ones, intended to get me in touch with my intrinsic—that is, small and very deep muscles. By the end of our hour together—though all I've really done is execute a simple forward bend without cheating—I'm surprisingly sweaty and shaky.
"I think a lot of people have always thought of yoga as stretching—they're surprised at how much strength it takes," she says. "But though they may not originally come for balance, I think they quickly come to think of yoga as balance."
When she's talking about balance, she doesn't just mean standing on one leg—though believe me, that's a biggie. "I emphasize that it is a balance not only of strength and flexibility, but of inner and outer attentional focus.
"I especially emphasize the balance of intrinsic and extrinsic muscles," she continues. "When you are mindful of the intrinsic muscles—like the intercostal muscles and the short muscles between the vertebrae—you are bringing yourself into a meditative state of consciousness, and your perception does change. You see things around you with fuller awareness."
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