Monthly Archives: March 2012

Yoga in India – it’s not what you think

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Shruti Pandey

Shruti Pandey

I recently spoke to a friend who teaches yoga in India. She said when people call to inquire about her classes, it all follows a surprisingly similar pattern:

“Hi. I read you teach yoga. Can you tell me what exactly you teach?”

“Sure – I teach asanas, followed by a relaxation at the end.”

“Oh – I assumed it would be meditation and pranayama. Do you teach that?”

“Well, not really. I teach mostly the postures and deep relaxation.”

“Sorry, that doesn’t really sound like the right thing for me.”

You have to digest that: People calling up for yoga classes in India simply assume that it’s meditation and pranayama that will be taught. They don’t care that much about the asanas. To them, yoga means something else. Yoga, that’s a way of living. Not a way of stretching yourself, sweating until you’re able to mold your body into pretzel postures, and then for days relishing that feeling of success. I guess many of them would just shake their head (no, not the head wiggle that means YES) when being told what became of yoga in the Western World. Continue reading →

What Type of Tree (Pose) Are You?

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Woman-in-Tree-Yoga

Photo courtesy of Mama & Baby Love

Exhale.  Bring your hands to your heart in mountain pose (tadasana), engage your core and find your strength; feel grounded.    Shift your weight to your right leg, and feel roots growing from the bottom of your right foot deep into the earth, firming you to the ground.

Feel the roots grow and establish a stable trunk into that right leg.  Lift the weight off of your left leg, and come to the ball of your foot.  Rotate your left hip open and place your left foot at your right ankle in a kickstand.  If you feel stable, move your foot to the inside of your right calf, or even further up into the inside of your right thigh.  Press the left foot into the right leg and right leg into the left foot equally to help you maintain your balance, and feel.

Extend your tree limbs toward the sky, and notice what kind of tree you become.   Are you a strong, sturdy oak?  Maybe you’re a flowing weeping willow. Or, do you quiver before you find your stability like the adaptable Cypress? Continue reading →

Is Yoga Right For Me?

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We can’t seem to get away from the great yoga debate that’s raging these days in every news outlet across the country – does yoga help or hurt? I emphatically believe that if a practice woman-in-yoga-seated-posehurts, strains, or stresses, then it’s not yoga. It can challenge us, help us find our edge, and raise our potential – yoga can, should, and often does all of those things. But that’s a fine line – the distinction between hurting and challenging.

So how do we know if yoga is right for us? The only way to know is to try, though there are some basic guidelines to follow when starting a yoga practice:

1.) If you’re new to yoga, seek out a class that’s labeled beginner, basics, gentle, or restorative. These classes generally have teachers who are trained to specifically help beginners get comfortable with a class. They are usually welcoming and warm environments that encourage learning and questions. You could also pick up a copy of a beginner yoga DVD. When I first started practicing, I used Rodney Yee’s AM / PM DVD all the time. It was a great primer for me and even now I sometimes take it out to review a simple, solid beginning routine. The basics always have something new to teach us. Continue reading →

So, I Closed My Eyes, & Practiced from the Inside Out

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women-eyes-closedLately, I’ve become more connected with my personal yoga practice than ever before.  Rather than dutifully unrolling my mat, going through the same warm ups, sun salutations, and 4 or 5 standing postures for 40 minutes, I start in savasana and just listen.

While I  feel good after my morning asana and meditation, there have been times (admittedly), that I had to muscle myself a bit to get my butt on the mat. Of course, once I begin, I know why I’m there.  My body always feels more alive after the physical part of my practice.  But, recently, my meditations were becoming more and more thought-filled. I’m talking, unstoppable-freight-train types of thoughts.  This wasn’t the meditation I’d fallen in love with during teacher training.  So, I stepped back, paused, took in a full breath and saw clearly what was happening. My routine was becoming…well, routine.  I was going through the motions like I used to at church mass. I wasn’t really practicing yoga.

I realized that I wasn’t getting much more than physical wellness out of my practice, because I wasn’t giving much more than my physical presence. And, my meditations were so full of distraction, that by the time my “zen alarm” went off, my mind was even more chaotic, as if I’d been watching television. Something had to change. Continue reading →

Leap: The Real Problem with Yoga (and It's a Wonderful Problem to Have)

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Reblogged from Christa in New York:

Click to visit the original post

I went to an event yesterday and in all of the ending hoopla, the organizer asked everyone to join him in signing up for his new mission. To be entirely fair, I applaud people who put themselves out there and clearly explain who they are, what they care about, and what they intend to do. I wish more people were as transparent as this organizer.

Read more… 320 more words

Lovely post to end the week from one of my favorite bloggers, Christa Avampato. Namaste, Christa NYC!

Do You Bark Your Truth?

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truth-abe_lincoln-word_cloudThere’s a quote in the book Bad Dog! by Lin Jensen that I try to come back to when I feel I’ve lost direction and an inner compass, “If we are true to the steps we take, the travel makes sense and the journey confirms itself.”   In essence, if we are putting one proverbial foot in front of the other from a place of integrity, the journey unfolds before us and becomes less of an effort born of suffering.

So often, we are just “going through the motions” with little recognition of what got us to the present state or why we’re continuing on a given path.

Let’s go back to the dog theme.  Have you ever known a dog to lie or put on a facade? No.  Dogs are brutally honest in their demeanor and actions.  Hungry? Eat.  Happy?  Wag tail.  Threatened?  Bite.  Nowhere does the dog engage in the inner struggle of what they should do vs. what they want or need to do.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you live selfishly without regard to how your actions impact others, but if you start to trust your gut and become aware of your truth at the core,  your perceptions shifts which may even change your path.  In either case, the struggle and suffering begin to wane. Continue reading →

Namasafe: 10 More Reasons to Practice Slow-Ga

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chinese-pond-turtleThanks to the much blogged about NY Times article by WJ Broad on the risks and rewards of yoga, we’ve all had to do a bit of introspection when it comes to our teaching and personal yoga practices.  I know that as a beginning yoga student in 2001, I was extremely concerned about “how good I was doing.”  Having originally discovered yoga as a way to improve my tennis game, I was in a competitive mindset from the get go.

I would constantly crank my neck to get a peak at the students beside me without regard to how long they’d been practicing, and I’d force myself much deeper into poses than my body was ready for.  I know this now having injured myself in the past not listening to teachers and not listening to my body.  It wasn’t yoga’s fault.  It was mine.  I don’t know why I thought I didn’t have to pay attention as acutely as I did during tennis coaching, but alas and a lack.   When you begin training for a marathon, you develop a slow and achievable schedule to build up endurance and strength.  Yoga is no different.  But more importantly, yoga isn’t about “achieving” anything.   In our uber competitive society, we don’t know how to just sit still; to slow down and let the practice unfold for us.

I’m sure my students get sick of my incessant reminders about going slow, easing off of a pose and the ever present reminder that I’ve liberated from a number of mentors, “Remember the 11th commandment, thou shalt not covet thy neighbors pose.” Continue reading →

Awaken Your Inner Dragon

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According to Chinese tradition, 2012 is the year of the dragon.   While most western myth depicts the dragon  as a fire breathing beast to be feared, eastern traditions revered the two-dragons-heart-shapecreature.  In fact, in Chinese culture, the dragon symbolizes power, wisdom and fortune and  is regarded as a divine beast.  I’ve always felt a connection with the mystical, winged, serpent.   There’s an alluring freedom, strength, and creative spark that the awakened dragon flames to life.

I had the absolute pleasure of attending an intensive weekend yoga workshop by Sean Tebor of Dragon Tree Yoga Center in Santa Fe, entitled, “Waking the Dragon.”   Through a series of non traditional asanas (poses) that harmonized yoga, creativity, and even some martial arts, we awakened our “dragonian” spines from the tips of our “tails” to our heart centers.  Like a dragon born of fire, I emerged from the experience feeling supremely balanced.  Fluid yet grounded.  Energized, but relaxed.   But, most of all I awakened with a renewed purity of mind and heart.

Continue reading →

The Guest House – Awareness of All of You

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guest-house-front-doorOn a daily basis, I become more acutely aware of thought as separate from self.  In fact, a mentor recently suggested, as Rumi did, that I should treat my influx of thoughts as guests in a guest house.

We can’t “turn off” our minds, for in doing so, we are in struggle.  But, if you look at your thoughts as transient guests that come and go, you see them as separate from the house, the self.  Sometimes there are writing works or poems that so completely capture the human element that you take them with you wherever you go.   No poet better describes the concept of guest house than Rumi. Continue reading →

Celebrate Small Victories (and defeats)

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small-victories-workplace-ecard-someecardsI laughed pretty hard when someone posted this image on their Facebook page last week.  It says, “It’s the small victories that prevent me from jumping out the window.”  Besides being funny, it got me thinking about how often we let the little victories go unnoticed and how often we let what we feel are “defeats” take over our happiness rather than see both of them as an opportunity to learn and grow.

We have all had that atrocious week at work or particularly gnarly fight with a loved one.  At the time, situations may seem so insurmountable, you can’t possibly imagine any light.  When you’re in amidst the muck, it seems impossible to step outside of your mind and try to find the lesson, or better yet to see the situation for what it is.

It might seem “Pollyanna,” but several years ago I decided to try and find the silver lining in any situation.  No matter what is happening, I try to take a step back and see the big picture.   In February, I was hit with a couple of large back to back home repair bills. In a former time period, I would have sunk into a pit, seeing only the negatives of the money flying out of my pocketbook.  But since the shift in my perspective, I celebrate the fact that I have a home that I can repair.  I’m grateful that I can afford to pay for these substantial repairs, and I’m supremely thankful that everyone in my life is happy and healthy.  When you walk backwards up the spiral of tumbled dominoes and step out of the maze, you see a beautiful design of interconnected pieces that individually have tumbled over. Continue reading →