Category Archives: Yoga

Sukha

Yesterday was one of those days that I spent most of holding my breath. When I finally exhaled I realized that it was silly to have not done it many hours earlier.  Writing public blog posts can do that to me and even more so when I share them on sites that are not mine.  Here I have my great readers who know my craziness, my opinions and my truth.  In the wild and wooly world of the interwebs one never can guess who might read and react to what I write.  It can be nerve-wracking even if I know what I write is of value.

Thanks first of all to the multitudes of my friends and readers who raced over to MindBodyGreen to read my post yesterday, commented and also shared the bejesus out of it.  I am so humbled to have you on my side and I swear I have your backs the next time you need it!  I was really nervous about my piece which after I hit the send button all of a sudden seemed pushy and opinionated.  I was sure I would get a rash of hate comments from hot yoga practitioners and other readers who thought it was.  I was getting prepared to defend my positions and statements. Seriously.

I did not need to and in fact I got the total opposite reaction.

The New York Times article that spurred that post has erupted in the yoga world with a fury not seen since Etna smothered Pompeii in ancient times.  People feel vindicated, people feel accused and people feel defensive.  There is anger, vitriol and dismay swirling around in the atmosphere in a crazy dance with defense, honor and support.  The winds whipping rain outside my window right now are nothing compared to the letters and verbage spinning on the web.  Every day there is some new angle and some new reaction to read (check out YogaDork’s rundown for the 411 on all the posts) .  It is daunting but to me so exciting that the debates continue.  Whether we are talking about alignment, styles, asana vs. yoga, spiritual vs. physical or specific individuals, people are engaged and excited to discuss what I love.  How can this phenomenon be a bad thing?

Yet in the midst of all this discourse and argument was my post about practicing yoga safely.  While I wanted it to be part of the discussion, I was also concerned about what kind of conversation it would become.  It was written from the heart and how I teach.  It was universal yet highly personal and so I was feeling defensive as soon as I clicked “send.”

Yesterday I was feeling stifled by the concern that publishing my article would be a negative thing and I was overwhelmed with the wait for it to go live.  I knew that if I got on my mat it would be a practice steeped in overdoing it, drenched in resistance without a drop of sukha to be found.  So I decided to take a day off from my practice and get my toenails painted.  I wanted at least one moment in the day to be soft and sweet.

There are days you can battle with your mind, battle with whipping winds and pouring rain, battle with people whose opinions vary from yours and battle with yourself on the mat.  Other days you serve yourself better to take the path of sweetness, of sukha, where you can drink in the ease and the softer edges.  Sukha is that place where rainbows show up outside of the nail salon after you have given yourself a thirty minute mental break.  A small whisper of a rainbow that cuts through the torrential and proverbial rain like a Ginsu knife and then slowly fades before you can snap it. That rainbow is really there whether on film or not.  The colors might have misted away with the clouds, but its message of bright color in the midst of gray chaos has not.

It is a rainbow that reminds you that trusting your words, trusting your self and trusting your path is really the sweetest thing.

I’m on the road again!

I am posting today over at MindBodyGreen about how we can be our own best advocates for safety and health when we practice the asana part of yoga.  So many of my incredible yoga students are aware that I preach these themes (I am fervent that you MUST listen to your own body), but I felt inspired to write about them for the public as well.  Seemed like a perfect post for our #365newbie crew and a great way to return to the beginner’s mind when we tackle the physical aspects of asana.

Our bodies are our temples, dear readers, treasure them!

Agni

Thanks first of all to so many of you that read my last post and plea for community rather than combat.  We yogis/bloggers/people need to support each other and I know by reading it you were all taking the first steps in joining me in this commitment to peaceful engagement.

The post and chats with individuals afterwards really started to get some ideas cooking in my head and heart.  Add to that the fact that I have seen the same Red Tailed Hawk (symbolism: listening to your heart, embarking on a journey of peace and true path) and this yogi has been teaming with plans.  My friends on Twitter shared with me their vision boards and things they do to set the stones in the road they wish to travel.  To put it mildly, I was über inspired!

So I am stoking my Agni not by doing tons of core work, moving from the center or connecting with my Hara on the mat.  Rather the last two days I have spent a decent amount of time off the mat plotting how to acheive things I hope for in 2012.  I am cutting and pasting my dreams, writing them down and also creating ways to make them happen.  I am so excited and lit up with ideas.  Dude, it’s getting super hot in here!

Like the pot of rice cooking the other night on my counter, some of these plans may take time to simmer and fluff to perfection. But I have already stirred the pot with some and created the baby steps to get myself to the others.  This year I am going to use that inner fire to get things going.

I think looking forward with a plan and with enthusiasm is not really that different from spending a few minutes doing an inner inventory before your practice to see how you feel.  As yogis it is just as important to create a life off the mat that compliments every asana, breath and moment on it.  That path can be cool, calm and in conjunction with your yoga or it can also be fiery, exciting and in conjunction with your yoga.

I am picking the latter.  My hot yoga this year will be off the mat.  I’ll keep you posted on how that Agni-focused approach gets my plans in motion and what new adventures/doors/stories arise as it does.

Heat from the inside to make the outside cook.  Nice.

What will 2012 hold for you?  Do you look to cool it down or heat up your path?

Intentions

I swore I was not going to make a list of my intentions/resolutions/promises for this year but the last four days has pushed me to do at least one.  I will get to that in a moment, but let me begin by saying this post is not about any comments, posts or words directed specifically at me.  Instead what I am going to say is more a global commentary about the recent state of yoga discussion in cyberspace.  It is embarrassing to be part of this yoga community and making me feel ickier than when I had to eat liver and onions as a kid.

Today I taught a free class at a gym where I regularly teach.  I had some of my usual students who have beautiful, strong practices.  I had new students who had experienced yoga before but were coming back after a hiatus and I had brand new students who had never done yoga before today.  I had a little bit of everyone there in front of me.  This, dear readers, is MY kind of class.  I love the mix, I love the challenge of making everyone feel comfortable and I love being able to create a space where every yogi in the room thinks the practice worked in some way for them.  It is not an easy job as those who teach all levels will tell you.  But what makes it wonderful for me is that I am perfectly ok with everyone in the room doing their own thing, listening to their own bodies and not doing what I am teaching if that works for them.  I give permission for differences because the yoga they are practicing is THEIRS.

This past week in the yoga cybersphere there have been a couple of posts on Twitter/Fb, blogs and comments on blog posts that have really made me feel icky.  If these posters/commentors or bloggers had been my yoga teachers I would have walked right out the door of their classes, never to return again. They were neither permissive or accepting, rather judgey and confrontational.  What rubbed me the wrong way about them was the complete lack of space for other practices, language about yoga, and approach to teaching yoga.  These “yogis” went down a dark pathway of judgement about others that was frankly pretty darn ugly.  Judgement, as I have said before many times in my classes and here on this blog, should not be part of any yogi’s vocabulary.

I get it:  you do not like the way these people teach or the way they describe yoga or the way they talk about their achievements.  These feelings are perfectly valid as are the opposite and those neutral to the topic.  But dismissing or berating the approach or the individual because their way is not yours, or worse: saying they are non-yogic is really pretty beat.  There will always be people who do not succeed in the fashion you do, there will always be people who speak differently and those that teach/approach/share yoga in a way that will not work in your practice.  Rather than try to bring them down to a level you are displaying with your anger and dislike, step off your proverbial mat and walk out the cyber door.  You do not have to take their classes, read their blogs or comment on their posts.  You can just chose to go a different way, quietly.

My amazing mixed class today had they followed these yogis I am describing above would have been a nightmare.  They would have spent all their time watching each other, judging and measuring the people in the room and later bashing them in public to the other individuals at the gym.  Speaking about humans in real life this scenario seems preposterous, but on the internet it apparently is commonplace and accepted.  What a shame!

Every day I pick up my elves at school I see this sign outside their art room.  This week I have been thinking about how I would write it differently for the yogis who are constantly creating flame wars and backlash towards others and themselves.

“Every person is a yogi.  The problem is how to remain a yogi once he steps off his mat.” – Nancyism

Just because you practice or teach yoga does not mean you are a yogi.  To be a yogi you must live the practice whether you are in Balasana or in the blogosphere.  The moment you judge someone else and make that judgement public you have ceased to practice. Period.

My intention for 2012 is simple:  I will practice my yoga on AND off the mat.  I will greet those I disagree with in a cordial and accepting fashion.  I will create a space where all the students in my class feel welcome, the readers of my blog feel at home and the yogis of cyberspace feel respected.  I will not engage in flame wars, negativity towards other bloggers, commentors or those that differ in their approach to yoga from mine.  I will not foster judgement, I will foster community.

I will be a yogi.

Yoga is yoga if you practice it.  If you find conflict, take the #365newbie approach and walk away.

Whether it be Anusara, Forrest, Hatha or Bikram, it’s still yoga to me.

Rock it, roll it and live it.  That, dear readers, is my intention.

Vrkasasana

Today I stood still in line at the grocery store waiting for my chance to pay.  The lady in front of me started a conversation about high school reunions and the cashier enthusiastically went on and on about hers.

“The guy that made fun of me now thinks I’m beautiful. I showed him!”

I was starting to get frustrated by the fact they were ignoring the rest of us in line when I realized how their exchange gave me a moment to stop.  I unloaded my groceries and stood in Vrksasana and breathed ten cycles of breath.

Every time I teach tree pose I feel a bit like it is a choice of safety.  So many students know this pose and rarely practice it in a way that is new or different.  I often feel the same if it is taught in class when I am a student.  We all are familiar with where our feet go, how we press our knee out to the side and maybe reach our arms overhead.  We know tree pose.  I know tree pose.

But today I felt it again with a new perspective.  I was holding the pose much lower than I normally would (foot on shin rather than thigh) so I would not be standing out in the store.  My hands were in my pockets so I could not use them for balance and I was wearing clunky boots so my feet were less grounded.  I had to focus on my breath to keep myself from falling because the busy store had far too much movement to find a drishti.  My focus and strength came from my breath rather than from my feet or my core.  How funny then that I was steadier than I normally am when I am on my mat shoeless and arms outstretched.

If you always do a yoga pose the same way it will feel as fresh as the Blue crayon in the box:  you will know what you get.  For some that familiarity is comforting, but I strive to pull the different hued colors out each time.  Cornflower works on a chill day, Turquoise when I am more energized and Blue-Green when I just cannot decide which direction to go.  I love the range of choices and emotions and how they make me calm or excited.  The levels of feeling that each shade of a colorbrings are so varying that a box of 64 crayons is never boring.

I am striving to bring this same vastness to my practice.  I am hoping to dial-up the levels so that all ranges of color can be experienced with even the most banal of asanas and practices.

Today Vrksasana was not boring or common.  It was fresh and slightly Cornflower tinged. It made my emotional hue go from Scarlet to Peach as it calmed my frustration to nil.  My breath felt warm like the Cafe Au Lait crayon my elf used to draw her puppy later in the afternoon.

Today I found levels of color in my tree pose I did not know existed before and it was a good Orchid colored feeling.

Happy 2012 to all of my dear readers, fellow yogis and good friends.  I hope 2012 is finding you at peace and ready to rock!  The energy pulsing right now is super positive and I am feeling very excited about the year ahead for me.  I see so many possibilities, so many opportunities and lots of fun.  Seriously, I cannot wait to dive in and get going!

Last year I spent nearly every day trying to find my yoga.  Sometimes I was super lucky and practiced on and off the mat, others I was stuck looking for it in only one of those locations.  In truth, there were days that it was a huge struggle to practice any form of yoga and days when writing was impossible.  I tried hard to at least compose a mental blog post even if time to sit and write one eluded me.  To put it blankly, my dear readers, I thought about this blog and what I would share here every single day of 2011.  It was in a hokey phrase: life changing.

For 2012 I want to keep the momentum cooking on my eternal journey to find my yoga.  I have decided that after discovering that the heart of my yoga is off the mat, I need to go back to the mat as a beginner.  I want to be that new yogi who has never heard of Child’s pose or chanted Om.  I want to remember why I came to yoga in the first place, and celebrate the little milestones that made me feel like a rockstar.  I want to start with a fresh mind, a clean slate and a broad palate of things to learn or re-learn.

I will keep posting about yoga with the hash tag #365yoga but will add one for those who wish to join me on a retrospective back to beginner-dom: #365newbie. If you follow me on Twitter you can find others who also do #365yoga or #365newbie by searching for those hash tags.  Let’s keep the cyber sangha growing, let’s support each other on our newly seeded path and let’s remind even the most seasoned yogis that we all are beginners every day, and how.

Today I busted out my new calendars with tight creases and empty squares.  I love the possibilities they hold and all the tales I will record in them over the coming year.  I love looking to the picture on the months of my elves’ birthdays, my birthday and that of my guy.  I love writing “Kripalu” on a coming weekend with a dear friend, and “Sharon Salzburg” in March. I love that I have so many things to look forward to and challenges from which to grow.

I also am cracking the binding on a new teaching journal.  In it I hope to keep track of every class I teach this year, to plan carefully and comment thoroughly and record what I do.  I have never done such a thing in almost 2 years of teaching yoga and I am so excited to begin.  Just like with my own practice, I feel this sense of unspoiled awe at the start of a new year of teaching.  I am a beginner standing in front of the mats in the studio in the same way I am on my own mat at home.

I hope that you will jump in the raft on the rapids of newbieness just like you did as I found my yoga in little places all around me.  I promise to keep writing, daily if I can, with as much honesty and sharing as I have in 2011.  I promise to keep rocking, rolling and grooving in each post and with each experience.  I promise to share kickin’ tunes with each post.  I feel inspired and excited about this adventure!

Examine your own practice and see where you can bring in a clean, new approach. Think of ways you can add freshness and I promise to give you lots of ideas as I trudge along myself.  Share with me and my fellow newbies what you want to explore.  Join me.  We can go back to the middle and around again with a new approach and fueled by 100% pure love of the practice.

Hey newbies… let’s begin, again.