Jump Back|Jump Through: Finding Yourself in the In-Between
by Bibi Lorenzetti | Newburgh Yoga Shala | March Theme of the Month
What does jumping back have to do with coming home to yourself?
For me, everything.
Asana practice has never really been about the postures themselves, but rather the place you come into contact with through the vessel of asana. It has always been about meeting myself where I am — an experience that is spaceless, timeless, beyond form. The body becomes a vessel, a means of using the physical to transcend the mental. Something that opens to door to a far richer plane.
This is where I want to begin — not with technique, but with an invitation to look beyond what you see and into the philosophy of Yoga. Because everything in yoga is bigger than it looks.
The Blanket We Live Inside
In the classical language of yoga, there is Purusha and Prakriti — pure consciousness and primordial matter. Their interplay is what gives form to this reality. We are not separate from this dance; we are expressions of it. The observed and the observer, always in relationship.
The body is that relationship made tangible. Think of it as a blanket — a beautiful, intricate, constantly shape-shifting blanket draped over something vast and luminous. Take the blanket off completely, and there would be nothing to move. The body is not the obstacle. It is the vessel, therefore a great blessing.
And yet — we often carry it like a weight. Gravity, mass, the stories we tell ourselves about our limitations. We look in the mirror on a hard day and we see something we don’t like. But that perception? That's the mind. Always the mind. The body is just responding to what the mind believes.
What yoga offers is a reversal: use the mind to perceive the body from within. Feel it as a conglomeration of things constantly in flux, constantly becoming. From there, something shifts.
Bandhas: The Bridge
This is where the bandhas enter — a technique to perfect and use as a bridge between worlds. When we engage these energetic locks, we are unbinding ourselves from the purely gross and connecting ourselves into something the Sanskrit texts call the pranic body, the subtle architecture underneath the physical one. The bandhas don't just stabilize the posture; they reconnect us to the macrocosm. They harmonize our inner pranas with the larger prana of existence.
And when that happens? Weight changes. Not on a scale — but in experience. The body that felt heavy becomes something we move through rather than something we move against. The idea we have of ourselves shifts because our mind becomes bound to a greater understanding of this physical experience.
This is the secret hidden inside jump backs and jump throughs.
Jumping through is surrender.
I surrender my idea of what my body can do. I surrender my sense of limitation. I surrender my thoughts about what this looks like, what it should feel like, whether I'm doing it right. I offer my effort — and then I let go of the outcome.
Nothing to move. Just merging.
The words — jump back, jump through, float, lift, engage — are offerings we make to the parts of ourselves that grip to this limited idea of I-ness. Asmita - the ego Self - needs something to work with, some story of progress and control. And that's fine. That's the lila, the play. But underneath the words, underneath the effort, something quieter is happening. Something is remembering itself.
The Moon Knows
In Ashtanga yoga, we observe moon days — Purnima, the full moon, and Amavasya, the new moon. These aren't arbitrary rest days. They are a recognition that we are not separate from the rhythms of the natural world.
Our bodies are mostly water. And water moves with the moon.
Here's a detail I love: in traditional Indian temple building, the wood used for construction was often cut during a full moon — when the sap, the juice, was most concentrated. That natural moisture acted as an insect repellant, protecting the wood for centuries. The trees cut at the new moon, with less sap, were more vulnerable. Everything has its moment of fullness, and that fullness serves a purpose — even protection.
When the moon is full, we are full too. Emotions run high. Energy is ungrounded, charged. The invitation of Purnima is not to push — it is to rest, to balance the fullness. To do practices that are restorative, inward-looking, devotional. To cool the fire (Pitta) before it burns through what it was meant to protect. To release accumulated emotions with gentleness rather than force.
The new moon, Amavasya, is different. This is the time of silence, of releasing old patterns, of setting intentions in the dark. The dark moon invites deep introspection — fasting or eating lightly, chanting, ancestor rituals, sitting in stillness. It is not an absence of energy but a gathering of it, underground, invisible, preparing.
Now bring this awareness inside a single practice.
If we imagine one month of practice as a complete lunar cycle — waxing, full, waning, dark — then the shape of Ashtanga maps onto it beautifully:
Standing sequence: the fullness of the moon — bright, strong, present
Seated postures: the wane — moving inward, deeper, slower
Finishing sequence: the new moon — stillness, integration, savasana as the dark night before rebirth
We begin somewhere in the middle, between dark and full. We arrive as we are.
But within this arc — what are the jump backs?
The jump backs are the micro-moons. The small, rhythmic pauses and transitions that keep the brightness circulating, that prevent us from burning out in the seated postures, that maintain the thread of aliveness through the whole practice. They are the moments where the experience of ‘I’ surrenders, where the mind is asked to get out of the way, where the body briefly lifts and flies and lands — and the prana keeps moving.
Without them, we could get stuck in the fullness. We could exhaust ourselves in the seated depth. Like the moon affecting the sap in the trees the jump back is what balances the prana.
The Invitation Spirals Outward
Here is what I keep sitting with this March:
If we can integrate these moon-like pauses into our monthly practice — taking rest on full and new moons, honoring the rhythm — and if we can feel the same principle alive within each individual practice — the wax and wane of effort and surrender — then the real question becomes:
What would it look like to bring this into our lives?
Where in your day do you jump back? Where do you pause, reset, let the charge complete before building again? Where do you honor your Purnima — your fullness, your need for rest before you overflow? And where do you sit with your Amavasya — the dark, the quiet, the fertile unknown?
The practice is a like our playground. The mat is where we rehearse.
Jumping back is not a yoga trick. It is a way of living. It is a tool for self observation, an opportunity to practice courage, surrender, vulnerability…and learn to release, again and again, the weight we were never meant to carry permanently.
And in that releasing — we find ourselves. Not by adding anything, but by returning to what was always here underneath the blanket.
Nothing to exchange. Just merging.