Magazine: Yoga Journal
Issue: September/October 1997
Author: Todd Jones

CONTACT YOGA

By Todd Jones

Photographs by Bill Reitzel

Nateshvar Ken Scott lies on his back, balancing a yoga student in midair. Her thighs rest on the soles of his feet, her torso and arms hanging completely free, as Tesh gently jiggles and shakes the tension from her body. When he hears her long sigh of release, Tesh begins to stretch her through a graceful series of aerial backbends, sometimes using his feet and hands to support her, sometimes his knees, sometimes his shins. He holds her balanced in an airborne Pigeon Pose for well over a minute, occasionally making tiny adjustments that encourage her to open even more fully. Then they move on, Tesh again shifting the points at which he supports her, searching for yet another auspicious stretch.

This is hardly a typical scene from a yoga workshop. But neither our charismatic and innovative teacher nor the six-day workshop at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in western Massachusetts is quite like anything I've encountered before in the world of yoga.

Billed as "YogaKinetics: Activating the Divine Dance of Energy," the workshop promises to include both "Yogassage and Contact Yoga, partnerassisted posture sequences designed to release blocked energy and open your heart to the kinetic healing of kundalini energy."

While partner work is no longer a rarity in yoga- many teachers have their students assist each other in poses- yoga is still usually taught as an essentially solitary practice, with little overt emphasis on building emotional and physical closeness between students. Tesh, on the other hand, begins the workshop by asking us to hug and introduce ourselves to every other participant. From the very first moment, he makes it clear that rather than avoiding the emotional and physical energies that closeness can bring up, he plans to harness those energies in service of awareness- "awareness of the divine within each of us, and awareness of our underlying interconnection and unity with each other."

In some ways, Yogassage is much like having your own private teacher- a partner to give you support, counterbalancing, and other adjustments that allow you to extend further into asanas than you could safely go on your own. Contact Yoga, in turn, builds on Yogassage; the helper begins to use her body so that both she and her partner are in yoga asanasÐÐor, when they aren't in one of the classical asanas, they are still moving with the same concentration, strength, and extension of energy through the body that asanas demand.

When a beginning Contact Yoga practitioner and a more experienced one work together, the novice focuses on receiving assistance and the more practiced yogi focuses on giving it. When two more experienced practitioners work together, however, the distinction between yogi and helper falls away. The two become full partners, exploring ways of mutually supporting, stretching, and strengthening each other.

Over the past few years, Tesh's intense one-on-one sessions combining Yogassage and Contact Yoga have slimmed, buffed, and centered glitterati like Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore, designer Donna Karan, and rock star Peter Gabriel. According to Ron Serle, a friend of Tesh who has been on the set with him for several movies, Tesh's work with actors helps them arrive fully, with all their energy and attention, in the present moment. "I've seen Woody go into a session with Tesh looking kind of scattered, and walk out totally focused, ready to charge into the next scene. And I've seen Demi start work with Tesh looking out-of-sorts and low, and finish glowing with a radiant goddess-energy."

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Tesh has been a free-spirited innovator since he first fell in love with yoga in the early 1980s. Along with competing in gymnastics as a child, Tesh worked for several seasons with dance and theater companies as an acrobat, dancer, and movement trainer. Burned out from running exercise clubs and teaching aerobic dance classes six and seven days each week, Tesh wanted to find "a better way to serve, to offer my talents and experience to make the planet a better place."

A trip to the original Kripalu ashram in Pennsylvania showed Tesh the path for which he'd been searching- and which he's been exploring ever since. "I watched Gurudev [Amrit Desai, the ashram's founder] doing his posture flow, and I was absolutely inspired by his practice. I'd never seen anything like it. He moved like an animal. It was captivating just to listen to his breath and watch the quietness and relaxation with which he moved from posture to posture. I said, ÔOh my god, this is exactly what I'm wanting.'"

While being inspired by Amrit Desai's practice and teachings, Tesh was also infusing Kripalu with his own impish, infectious energy. Within hours of their arrival, Tesh and a friend began enlivening the ashram with strenuous and joyous aerobic dance classes that had the residents begging for more. Back then, Kripalu placed heavy emphasis on strict practice of bramacharya- not just celibacy, but avoidance of all physical and most social contact between unmarried men and women. In that rather solemn and staid atmosphere, the free-flowing energy that arose when residents started dancing together created quite a stir. When Amrit Desai caught on to the excitement the classes were generating, he temporarily shut them down.

After consulting with Tesh, however, Desai permitted the classes to resume. The guru insisted on a few adjustments- "making sure that we took time at the beginning to clarify the intention of the energy we raised during the practice, and pausing occasionally to observe and absorb the effect the movement had on us." With this input from Desai and suggestions from residents, Tesh created a marriage of yoga awareness and aerobic dance that was christened DansKinetics. More than a decade later, the program remains one of the most popular offerings at Kripalu, with daily classes as well as a number of intensives and teacher trainings.

While Tesh never became a permanent resident at Kripalu, for several years he spent many weekends and much of the summer there. In recent years, while becoming less involved in the ongoing evolution of DansKinetics, he has continued to innovate and experiment with yoga.

Tesh first began to develop Yogassage and Contact Yoga in response to a simple, practical challenge: how to teach yoga to his son Nathan, who was then in his midteens and living in Toronto. Worried that Nathan had lost his center- "his life was turning into a nonstop party"- Tesh took his son away from the constant stimulation of the city, moving with him to a tepee on 60 acres of largely undeveloped wilderness in the Slocan Valley of British Columbia.

"I started doing yoga with him as a way of connecting," Tesh recalls. "Even though he was only an average athlete, and hadn't been that interested in yoga, he really wanted to change his life. I had so much love for him and wanted so much to give to him that I was willing to try anything. I found myself folding and wrapping my whole body around his to adjust and support and help him strengthen in the poses. If he couldn't get into a back bend like Urdhva Dhanurasana, I'd say, ÔWell, come here and bend over my back and I'll hold you up in it.' Within a year, Nathan went from not being able to touch his toes to being stronger and more flexible than me. I guess that's when I realized how powerful this work could be."

Tesh began to incorporate more and more Contact Yoga into his private sessions with clients. Eventually a Hollywood movie producer on location in Canada tracked Tesh down, hired him as her personal teacher for the duration of the shoot, and was so enamored with his work that she invited him to Los Angeles for several months, introducing him to various friends in the entertainment industry.

"Contact Yoga really took off when I started practicing with Woody Harrelson," Tesh remembers. "He's like a spirit brother to me; we have a great connection. He's also an athlete with a really strong body. So together we ended up taking Contact Yoga to a whole new level." For several months Harrelson and Tesh cotaught a Contact Yoga class at Manhattan's elite New York Health and Racquet Club, and Tesh's clientele in the entertainment industry continued to expand.

As is usually the case, media attention followed the stars, garnering Tesh write-ups in mainstream magazines like Vogue and W. When I saw the magazine photos of Tesh and his partners doing Contact Yoga, I was hooked. The practice, with both partners flowing through mirroring and complementary asanas, appealed to me both as a dancer and a longtime student of physically demanding forms of hatha yoga. Captivated by the grace, power, concentration, and intimacy the photographs conveyed, I itched to try Contact Yoga for myself.

AT THE WORKSHOP

When I arrive at the Kripalu workshop, however, I discover that Tesh seems in no rush to launch us into yoga acrobatics. To invoke in all 25 of us the energetic openness and presence in the moment he helps ignite in his individual clients, Tesh works step by step to forge a group dynamic in which we give to each other the attention, awareness, confidence, and loving support he could personally bring to bear in an individual session.

In our first class Tesh leads us through a ritual designed to create a context for all the work we will do together in the coming week. "We ask that our hearts and energies be opened," he says, "that we come to feel the spiraling of the energy within us and between us; that, as the week goes on, our crown chakras open, too, and we allow our energy and experience to blossom into the thousand-petalled flowers we are."

Within a few moments we are making a version of that lotus flower in the middle of the room with our linked bodies. Sitting in a closely knit, wide-legged circle, belly against our neighbor's back, legs stretching wide alongside theirs, we breathe in and out together. Exhaling, we lean back to recline on the person behind us. Inhaling, we sit up, exhale again, and lean forward onto the welcoming back in front of us.

We go on to explore a long series of partner-assisted movements incorporating elements of both Yogassage and Contact Yoga (see sidebar). By the middle of that first evening session, our group has already relaxed into a level of emotional and physical spontaneity and openness I've seldom experienced in a yoga class, even with groups of students who have been practicing together for years. We giggle, we fall over, we often look like we're playing some bizarre yoga version of that old party game, Twister- and already we're improvising partner stretches and sequences of our own.

In the space of our first few class sessions together, Tesh employs a wide array of exercises to draw us into deeper contact with ourselves and each other. We dance; we do asana and pranayama; we share group massage, Contact Yoga, and Yogassage. We gather in group circles to tell our experiences to each other.

In a variety of ways, Tesh gently invites us over and over to notice and challenge our perceived limitations, to suspend our beliefs about what we can and can't do. Before one class, for instance, Tesh tells us how he survived after being invited to join a dance troupe despite having no dance training.

"I never danced as a child," Tesh begins. "It just wasn't something boys did where I lived. My brothers and I played sports. But I also painted. Whenever I painted, I listened to classical music, and I would see pictures in my mind of a man dancing. I thought of him as Nureyev. I would watch him dance and imagine myself performing the same leaps and pirouettes, and I would think, ÔThat doesn't look so hard. I could do that.'

"Years later, when I became a dancer without having had training, I was constantly asked to do difficult things I'd never tried before. I had to work incredibly hard. But I found that if I could imagine myself doing something- step by step, detail by detail- I could learn to do it. What I discovered is that the body may be limited, but Spirit isn't. If you visualize where you want to go, the body will follow.

"The opposite is true as well. Last year I was mountain biking with a friend on really dangerous, narrow trails, with drop-offs of hundreds of feet, and I started getting scared. I stopped and asked my friend how he dealt with the fear, and he answered, ÔI don't think about where I don't want to go; I think about where I do want to go."

YOGA IS AN ATTITUDE

Regarding the unusually wide range of activities he includes in his workshops, Tesh says, "I think of all of it as yoga. I've never defined yoga simply by traditional asanas. I think what makes an activity yoga is the attitude with which you approach and perform it.

"Whether you're running or dancing or doing asanas, what makes it yoga is an intention to use the energy you awaken for opening to the grace of spirit. One of the reasons I use dance and movement so much is that many people in our culture have a hard time becoming quiet enough inside to tune intosubtle movement of energy in the body. By getting them moving more actively and by assisting them in other ways- like yogassage and Contact Yoga- you create energy they can notice more easily. This makes it easier for them to progress in awareness of energy than might happen just from practicing traditional asanas."

Despite his emphasis on opening all the chakras, Tesh never lingers on practices that might evoke erotic energy- connection between partners at the level of the first chakra. At the same time, he also clearly doesn't want to banish that energy from partner yoga. Instead, he seeks to place it in the context of opening completely to the flow of energy, both within and beyond the body.

Rather than focusing on and building erotic energy when it arises, Tesh suggests that we allow this energy to flow upward and open all our chakras. Normally most people are in the habit of expressing first chakra energy as sexuality. By encouraging us to allow that energy to create a different state of being within ourselves and a different kind of union with our partner, Tesh implicitly reminds us of choices beyond the polarized repression or overt sexual expression of erotic energy.

Knowing that the physical intimacy of Contact Yoga contravenes the norm in yoga classes (and, for many people, the tacit rules about the kind of touch considered appropriate and comfortable with anyone other than lovers, family, and health professionals), Tesh invites us to consider the sources of these conventions. Yoga, he reminds us, developed in a culture predicated on the maintenance of hierarchies, distinctions, and divisions among people that most of us in the modern West are no longer willing to accept. Ironclad rules separated the different castes of Indian society, and women and men were blocked from ever communicating as equals; women were actually considered inferior beings incapable of reaching enlightenment until reborn as men. And spiritual practices, especially the ascetic traditions in which yoga grew, were almost exclusively the province of men- men who had withdrawn from the world of potentially distracting relationships and responsibilities.

"Sadhus went off into isolation, into their caves," Tesh says, "and they developed these incredible spiritual insights and techniques- and that was an amazing gift to all of us. But in the process a lot of other voices were left out and lost.

"Looking at the world as it is, you can see we just can't afford separations like this any longer. We have to pay special attention to what's been left out, and to those who have been excluded, because their voices may help correct the ways we've become dangerously unbalanced."

As one example, Tesh cites the "voice" of the Earth- the obvious environmental degradation that has so often been the effect of humans on the planet. "We've refused to listen to the Earth for so long that the planet may not even be able to sustain us any longer.

"Fortunately," Tesh concludes, "there's hope." At the very time it's becoming apparent that our alienation from each other and our planet imperils the entire enterprise of human life on Earth, Tesh thinks we are also beginning to develop the communications skills with which we can slowly build a culture not based on division, exploitation, and oppression.

ONE-ON-ONE WITH TESH

Impressed as I was by Tesh's first demonstration of advanced Contact Yoga, I don't fully appreciate the power of this work until I finally get my own chance to do Contact Yoga with him.

As we near the end of one morning session, I find myself imagining how free my spine would feel if I were hanging suspended with my thighs supported on Tesh's feet like the student in the previous day's demonstration. Rolling down to the floor, I see Tesh a few feet away, folding himself into Yoga Nidra, lying on the floor with both ankles crossed behind his head. Without thinking about it, I hitch myself across the floor, tuck myself into Yoga Nidra as well, and reach out to clasp wrists with Tesh. As his hands close around my arms, I feel his breath rising and falling, and for several minutes we rest like this, synchronizing our breathing, rocking slowly back and forth with each inhalation and exhalation.

At some point, an impulse arises to move on- even in the moment I have a hard time telling in which of us the impulse originated- and, as if with one movement, we slowly unclasp our hands and wrists and roll back into mirroring Plow Poses. Then I feel the slightest pressure- Tesh's feet supporting my back- and hear a whispered request: "Bend your knees, let your legs come up, and arch your back a little." As I comply, I feel my body gently lifted into the air. I find myself three feet above the ground, my spine flowering effortlessly into a back bend- without the binding and constriction I usually feel as I struggle to heave myself high enough so that my whole spine can open.

Tesh guides me through a series of positions that recall Bridge, Bow, and Pigeon, adjusting the placement and upward pressure of his feet and hands to both follow and direct me more deeply into the opening. Eventually he guides my hands to the floor, supporting me as I straighten up through a Handstand. I struggle a little to find the deep internal strength I need to lift my legs through the back arch and sweep them gently down to meet my hands for a Standing Forward Bend. For a moment I wobble to one side, and instantly Tesh uses his insteps to catch and support my hips.

Grasping my arms and firmly planting the soles of his feet at the top of my thighs, Tesh says, "Up again"- and suddenly I'm playing "airplane" just as I did with my dad as a child. Tesh directs me to open my legs and drop my torso. As he holds me up he moves his hands to my shoulders, and begins a gentle jiggle and shake that frees my spine exactly as I'd been envisioning.

Later, when I have a chance to watch the sequence on video, I discover that our whole session lasted just over 10 minutes. While in the experience, however, I find myself so completely immersed in each moment that I have absolutely no awareness of the passage of time. Instead, I'm attending constantly to the myriad subtle adjustments our bodies make to each other. The focused, meditative awareness of myself that I cultivate in yoga- noticing where I'm constricted and where I'm open, where energy flows freely and where it is blocked, where I experience delight in a pose and where I encounter emotional resistance- this awareness expands beyond my body to encompass the whole system that Tesh and I form together.

I experience a remarkably concentrated awareness not just of myself but of Tesh as well, as if I can "see" into his body as easily as I can into my own. I sense the strength and solidity of his support, the unwavering focus of his attention, and I am certain that I would instantly detect the slightest tremor or instability. As Tesh later says jokingly, "It's very easy to stay focused in Contact Yoga- because you have to!" If for a moment we stopped paying complete attention to the flow of wordless communication between us, we could easily lose the equilibrium that keeps me poised atop his body, and someone could get hurt.

At the end of our Contact Yoga session, I feel at once incredibly adrenalized and completely relaxed- as though I could easily lift a car off a pinioned baby, and yet I am perfectly content to sit quietly, observing the sun streaming in through the windows. A mild tingling buzz runs through my body. Colors seem brighter. I feel each breath penetrate me with an unaccustomed tang and fullness. All through the week Tesh has mentioned the awakening of kundalini energy, and I suddenly realize that, in my expanded state of awareness, I may be tasting a tiny bit of that experience.

KUNDALINI RISING?

I've always thought of "kundalini awakening" as a rare, esoteric, lifechanging experience, complete with dramatic psychophysical fireworks and various wrenching and permanent shifts in one's internal landscape. Now I begin to consider that, like big and little satoris (enlightenment experiences) in Zen, there may be big and little energy openings in the body as well. Kundalini awakening does sometimes come in a dramatic way, burning through resistance and blocks in the body and mind, but the chakras can also be opened to kundalini much more gently and gradually, resulting in a less overwhelming increase in energetic receptivity and awareness- exactly the sort of opening Tesh encourages and supports in his teaching.

At the heart of Tesh's yoga lies a passionate vision of what he calls "a world where kundalini energy can freely walk the face of the earth."

Several times in the course of the workshop he mentions that we may finally be ready for a society that invites the full awakening of kundalini energy. Perhaps in the past we haven't understood sufficiently how to communicate and how to work with that energy for such a society to develop, Tesh speculates. Now, he thinks, we may have culturally evolved enough to create containers that can safelychannel the full energy of which human beings are capable.

"I believe we haven't yet seen the form of what human beings can be like," Tesh says. "We don't know what form this would take, because it's never been done; the full range of human energy has almost always been repressed. We're just used to seeing us as we are now- but all our ideas are concepts that keep us created just as we are now created. Yogis who have learned to transcend limitations see that the body is just spirit, that the body is filled with light. There is light at the core of every cell, there is light between every joint, and that light gets released as we are opened. So, each time you practice, you have a chance to find the doorway to your ecstatic state- to release that light. Your yoga might be swimming, it might be putting on rock and roll music and dancing- whatever it is that opens up your channels. If you approach your practice daily in a sacred, curious, unlimited way, you begin to make a space in your life for transformation.

"It's important to honor your limitations, too," Tesh adds, "because otherwise you can hurt yourself. Limitations can be real. At the same time, when you bump up against them, you want to search, to witness, the space around the limitations, so you can see the extent to which they can be released."

All through the week I watch as each workshop participant makes some kind of breakthrough. My own comes in the recognition that I've often reacted in fear when flooded by the kind of energy and joy I experienced in my Contact Yoga session with Tesh. For these few days, I choose to allow this energy to grow, instead of labeling it as anxiety and attempting to damp it down with food and exercise, or distracting myself with a book or with conversations in which I'm less than fully relaxed and attentive. I find myself eating lightly, needing less sleep than I usually think I do; at times, I sense my kinesthetic awareness as a field extending several feet beyond my skin. Even as I seem to be vibrating at a higher energy level than usual, I also feel calmer: content more often with the moment, less inclined to grasp after something more and bigger.

By the last class session, we participants are cocreating the workshop almost as much as Tesh is leading it. Tesh gathers us into a closely knit circle again, and, as on the first evening, belly against our neighbor's back, legs stretching wide alongside theirs, we breathe and move together. Someone suggests we form a "cuddle puddle," and for a few moments we become a contented, intertwined clump, like a nestling litter of sleeping puppies.

As the workshop ends, I ask Tesh what plans he has for the future of Contact Yoga. He tells me he'll be offering teacher training for the first time this year at Kripalu. He is also working on a Contact Yoga video and a Yogassage manual and continuing to give private sessions around the country.

But perhaps Tesh is most excited about rooting himself again on the land he loves in British Columbia after years of living as a self-described "yoga gypsy." He plans to spend the summer and fall there, teaching daily classes and a number of weekend and week-long workshops. He speaks of a longer-term dream of creating a retreat center on this land, a yoga haven to which people could come "from the four corners of the globe, yellow, brown, black, and white, to use yoga as a tool for listening to each other and to the incredible teacher that the wild land there is."

Several weeks later when I ring him up, Tesh mentions with enthusiasm that he's just contracted with a major entertainment conglomerate to lead a retreat for its chief executives in the southern California desert. I can't help chuckling at the thought. If that group of movers and shakers shares an experience anything like our workshop at Kripalu, I can't imagine that the TV shows, movies, music, and other products with which they flood our society's collective consciousness will ever be quite the same.

Todd Jones is editorial assistant at Yoga Journal.

RESOURCES

Nateshvar Ken Scott can be reached at (250) 229-5209 and through his web site at http://www.nateshvar.com. For information about workshops in British Columbia, contact Mountain Trek Fitness Retreat at (800) 661-5161 or at http://www.hiking.com. For Kripalu Center, call (413) 448-3400.

A SAMPLE CONTACT YOGA PRACTICE

The best foundation for exploring Contact Yoga is a firm grounding in your own asana practice. But beginning yogis can benefit from contact yoga, too. As Tesh says, "The more you practice yoga with another, the stronger it makes your own personal practice. When your partner tells you where to put pressure to help him or her, you discover more about what to do with your own body the next time you're practicing that pose.

"Don't get so carried away with enthusiasm that you become insensitive to the responses of your partner's bodyÐÐor your own," Tesh cautions. "The best protection against this is to begin by relaxing and tuning in to yourself and your partner. You want to be so pranically aware that no one can get hurt."

Tesh advises Contact Yogis- beginning or experienced- to start sessions by breathing together. "If you listen to the flow of each other's breath, you'll begin to connect through that rhythm, and move out of your head and into your kinetic body of energy." Allow your breath to deepen together, but don't strain; take your rhythm from whichever partner has the shorter breath.

Once you start the practice, your partner's breath may not always remain synchronized with yoursÐÐbut her breath can still guide you. If you hear a sudden hitch or catch in your partner's breathing, perhaps you've moved too fast or too far. Take stock: You may want to ease off, or at least wait until your partner's breath becomes longer and smoother again before continuing.

Keep in mind that in Contact Yoga you're creating one asana with two people- not just two asanas that support and extend each other. In most poses, you'll benefit from keeping a degree of muscular engagement with your partner, pushing firmly into the added resistance she offers. In counterbalancing poses (see Figure 3, for example), extend yourself fully away from the anchor her weight provides. If you just release passively into the increased stretch made possible by your partner's weight, you won't get the same sense of connection. It's much like ballroom dancing; you can react more quickly and sensitively if you have some tone rather than complete release in your muscles.

Pay special attention in Contact Yoga to make sure you don't overstretch. At the same time, if you're accustomed to focusing on precise alignment in your individual practice, you may need to relax your expectations a bit to adapt to your partner.

And don't expect a Contact Yoga move with one person to be identical to the same move with someone else. The whole practice is an improvisation which will be very different with each new partner.

Finally, don't forget to play and have fun!

Here is a Contact Yoga sequence you can use as a point of departure. The instructions are only guidelines: Listen to your bodies moving together, and let yourselves discover how to best support, stretch, and engage each other.

1. PARTNER SQUAT

Begin in a squat, holding hands with your partner as pictured in Figure 1.

Don't let your buttocks sink toward the floor. Instead, extend your weight back through your sitting bones without straightening your knees. Allow your shoulders and upper back to lengthen and release completely. Take a moment to synchronize your breathing with your partner's. Visualize the energy of your breath rising up your spine, energizing each chakra in turn, and emerging from the crown of your head to merge with your partner's energy. As you exhale, allow the wave of the breath to descend through your bodies until you feel connected at the root chakra, and then feel the upswing of energy again on your inhalation.

2. LIFTED PARTNER SQUAT

Lifting your back and head to vertical, rise up as high as you can on your toes, extending up through the knees and down through the tailbone and sit bones. You can further extend the back upward by grounding your upper arms on your own knees, or straighten your arms and release your shoulders, leaning back against the counterbalance of your partner's weight.

3. COUNTERBALANCED HAMSTRING STRETCH

Bring your heels back onto the floor and straighten your legs, extending back through the sitting bones. Release your shoulders completely, making sure you allow your full weight to extend away from your partner.

4. PARTNER CHAIR SIT

Bending your knees, step toward each other and rise to standing. Come close enough so your knees will meet your partner's when you bend them again. Begin to descend your sitting bones toward the floor. You can take the thighs parallel to the floor (Figure 4), or stop partway down for a less challenging version. Releasing through the shoulders and leaning slightly away from your partner while maintaining a straight back can intensify the work in the quadriceps.

5. SQUATTING PARTNER ARCH

Continue to bring the sitting bones toward the floor and arch your back, rotating the upper arms outward, lifting the breastbone toward the ceiling, and allowing the head to release back.

6. COUNTERBALANCED BACK ARCH

Again rise to standing, bring your knees and thighs to meet your partner's, and move into a standing back arch. Experiment with the optimal position of your legs; you'll receive a different extension depending on how close you keep your thighs toward your partner's. If you and your partner are exceptionally strong and flexible, you may even be able to do this with your hips and pubic bones touching.

7. PARTNER BOX POSE

Return to standing and step far enough apart so that you can both bend forward to 90 degrees without bumping heads. Place your hands on your partner's shoulders. As you both bend forward, slide your hands down your partner's back so the weight of your hands and arms exerts a gentle downward pressure moving your partner's shoulder blades into his body. Extend through the spine rather than arching the lower back.

8. STANDING BACK ARCH

Again return to standing, face away from each other, and stand back to back. (This is an excellent place to pause and reconnect your breathing with your partner's.) Keeping feet on the floor, one partner begins to bend slowly forward while the other comes into a gentle back bend. You'll have to explore to find the best position for your backs, the place where your partner's support allows the most continuous and fluid arch for your spine. Optimal hand placement will also vary depending on the relative heights of the partners. Linking elbows may work well, or you may prefer to reach up to the tops of your partner's shoulders, as pictured here.

9. LIFTED BACK ARCH

If the standing back arch feels comfortable to both of you, you can try this next variation. The arching partner extends his arms overhead. The supporting partner grasps the upper arms, extending them and rotating the palms toward each other to further open the shoulders and chest. Then the supporting partner bends his legs a little more, bringing the arching partner up slightly higher on his back. The supporting partner's hips should form a perfect ledge, with the arching partner's buttocks nestling into the supporting partner's lower back. Finally, the supporting partner straightens his legs, lifting his partner into the air.

10. ADVANCED LIFTED BACK ARCH

If you're both completely comfortable and secure in the Lifted Back Arch, the supporting partner can bend his legs and bend forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. Arching partner bends at the knees and (with his partner's assistance if necessary) tucks his feet around the tops of his partner's thighs. His elbows can also help keep the arching partner's feet in place. To return both partners to standing, simply reverse the movements used to get into Advanced Lifted Back Arch, Lifted Back Arch, and Standing Back Arch. Switch roles, and repeat these three poses.

11. PARTNER TRIANGLE

Remaining back-to-back, keep your buttocks touching and step your feet three to four feet apart. Turn the front foot out 90 degrees, and the back foot in about 15 degrees. You'll need a little space between your feet and your partner's in order to balance. (With some trial and error, you'll find a position in which you can lightly but firmly press your buttocks and upper back into your partner's.) Come into Triangle with your bottom hand on your partner's shin and the palm of your top hand pressing into your partner's. For a more advanced version, you can each reach your top hand around to your partner's upper front hip bone, gently rotating it upward and back toward you.

12. STANDING PARTNER TWIST

In Partner Triangle, clasp both sets of hands together. Inhaling, take the bottom hands back toward the back leg as you rise to standing. Rotate your torsos to face each other, keeping contact at the hips and extending your arms strongly away from center. On an exhalation, unwind so you are again back-to-back, and repeat Triangle and Standing Twist to the opposite side.

13. STANDING FORWARD BEND

Again turn to face one another. One partner comes into forward bend, shoulders pressing into the thighs of his partner, heels grounding strongly into the floor, and sitting bones moving toward the ceiling. The supporting partner grasps the back of the other's hamstrings, assisting the upward motion of the sitting bones.

14. LIFTED STANDING FORWARD BEND

Keeping the bending partner's shoulders firmly pinioned on his knees and maintaining a firm upward grasp on the upper thighs, the supporting partner lifts the bending partner off the floor by leaning his weight backward, pulling with his arms, and straightening his back. To protect your lower back, do not muscle your partner up; this movement should come almost entirely from simply shifting your weight. The bending partner's knees remain to the inside of his arms. For a more advanced version, wrap the legs around the outside of the upper arm as if approaching Turtle Pose (Kormasana) or Tittibhasana.In either case, this pose is a spinal release rather than an active stretch. The active partner can provide a gentle sway from side to side to encourage the bending partner to release his spine completely.

15. SUSPENDED RELEASE

Both partners need communication, trust, and a sense of experimentation for this pose. It also demands a degree of strength and balance on the part of the supporting partner. (A sense of humor and a willingness to fall once or twice can be a big help, too.) If you're especially daunted by the supporting partner role, practice it first with a small, light person. (Kids usually love it.)The supporting partner lies on his back, legs and arms stretching up perpendicular to the floor. Bending his legs at the knees, he places the soles of his feet on the very top of his partner's thighs (toes pointing out, heels facing in). Suspended partner bends forward at the hips, placing his hands on his partner's. Coordinating their actions, the suspended partner moves forward to bring his center of gravity directly over his partner's hips as the supporting partner straightens his legs.Once balanced, the suspended partner opens his legs wide, and releases completely, allowing legs to float in the hip sockets, and spine and arms and head to dangle freely toward the floor. The supporting partner can shift his hands to his partner's shoulders, collarbones, or midback, and give a gentle jiggle with hands and feet to encourage even more release.Let your partner know when you're ready to return him to the floor (or, if you're the suspended one, when you're ready to come down). The supporting partner simply bends his knees and gently pushes his partner back toward vertical.After a few moments, reverse roles.

ENDING

To complete your Contact Yoga practice, take Savasana (Corpse Pose), either separately or with the soles of your feet lightly touching your partner's. See if you can sense your partner's breath through your feet; if you can, breathe in unison with him. Bring your awareness to the chakras at the center of the soles of your feet, and open them to the corresponding chakras on your partner's feet. Listen to the story these feet tell you about your partner- and be willing to let that story be different from the one you think you know. Then allow your conscious mind to drift away like mist rising from a still lake.When you're ready, come to a cross-legged sitting position. Namaste to your partner, acknowledging your gratitude for the practice you've shared.