Becoming Disoriented

It may be an opinion, but handstand seems to be a big deal in the yoga world. Like if you unlock handstand, maybe you're "good" at yoga or something...

This is why I think handstands are a revelation...

Handstand allows me first to be okay with being disoriented. Upon beginning handstand practice, I didn't know how to hold myself up, which was unsettling. Feeling incompetent, I was experiencing instability in a new dimension. In a yoga class, I can put my body in warrior poses and feel successful. Handstand isn't as straight forward (at first).

If I'm okay working in a place where I'm disoriented, I am trusting I will find my own true center: my core in balance. Also, by falling (a lot), my perceived failure won't distract me from becoming oriented. Falling doesn't affect me any differently than balancing; it just is. I can continue exploring in both situations.

In my life, sometimes the direction my studies/work/relationship/ is taking is entirely foreign. Sometimes the explanations around me don't compute or translate in my life or my body, but I can show up willing to be lost, and at the same time willing to be found.

The Power of Grounding

For a while I was looking for ways to deepen my practice and energize it. Where to turn... coffee? Nuts? Something? The answer was way more obvious and simple than I was admitting;

I always practiced on my mat, it seemed like the normal solution. After some reading, "Moola Bandha - The Master Key" by Swami Buddhananda, I began to recognize what I was really looking for: The energy of the Earth. We know it's simple to harness; it's transmitted through touch, dirt to skin. So here's what I learned...

The root Chakra is associated with the Earth and being grounded; stable. A balanced Mooladhara Chakra (located at the base of the spine, the root of the body) serves as the foundation for the rest of the body's energy. In practice, once I felt the mud, grass, and leaves beneath my feet, under the nails of my fingers, I felt something new in my body. I found new energies opening up and infusing my body. I went from feeling stagnant to adventurous...

Another awesome thing I learned being outside is that being under the sun heats the body, yes, but it also brings life and inspiration! The sun stimulates growth in all of nature, including us. It does the same to a yoga practice!

I started practicing outside based on a friend's suggestion, and after some reading on the Moola Bandha I was suddenly doing things I never thought I could! I was standing on my hands... I don't know how to do that... except I do? GET OUTSIDE, you might learn something new! DO IT! :)

INSIDE AND OUT

It's been said many times that beauty is on the inside and out; it exists in darkness and in light, pain and pleasure, imprisonment and emancipation. Why then practice, literally do yoga, only indoors or outdoors? To elaborate:

Why only practice yoga on the inside of your body (physically embodying posture) but not outside (embodying purpose in action)? So we use this as a metaphor for the literal: Why only practice indoors and not outdoors in the elements?

Our natural instinct is to seek balance in life.
When we fall in love, we find someone who balances our excesses and deficiencies.
When we practice, we look to create balance in ourselves; this is how we benefit every relationship in our lives when we take the conscious step, the sacred step (or "vinyasa" in sanskrit), onto our mat.

This idea was born of a vacation...

A friend from Yoga Teacher Training recently visited me on vacation in Rhode Island. Beach yoga! We began practicing in the sand; a first for me. Using a new foundation for understanding such as sand created the opportunity to approach the practice with a whole new perspective and consideration.

Instead of grounding into a yoga mat, I was now gripping the Earth's shores with my hands. The ground isn't so stable; flat stable surface was created by man. The Earth has a softness to it. So to use the sand required a deeper awareness and attention, which actually allowed me to explore a posture that's more difficult for me. The result?

Holding handstand longer!

Maggie's backbend variation, and my handstand on Bonnet Shores Beach, RI

But alas, vacation ended. It's so easy to want to practice constantly with someone like Maggie around! When the time comes to roll out the mat and no one's around, aka my home practice, it's way harder.

BUT HERE'S THE AWESOME PART...

Maggie taught me to bring my physical practice everywhere; inside and out, just as we both believe yoga is a physical practice that takes place inside the body, as well as a way to live life outside of the postures.

giving Maggie's wheel a beachy adjustment

so the journey continues...

Inside

 and out ;)

For your consideration...

When you step on your mat, do nothing but create more love - so that when you step off your mat, you do nothing but create more love. <3 Namaste

Humble Beginnings

We all have humble beginnings; as infants, our mothers would change our diapers, wipe our drool, burp us until we well... we were just adorable. A mother's love is unconditional. She didn't wait until you were full grown to love you;
so why wait until the practice looks a certain way to love it?

Embarking on a new journey often means everything seems like an obstacle. The truth is, our perception is what makes the journey either worthwhile, or total hell! For example, I was blessed with really tight hips. It took me years to sit in lotus, even with a daily practice. It was the releasing and opening that taught me more about myself than being handed the posture would have. I slowly watched how I deal with discomfort, when I want to give up, why I'm giving up, etc.

The way we do one thing is the way we do everything; running from a stretch is the same mentality we hold when we run from our fears and responsibilities (though you very well may be a rockstar who deals with things head on, in which case, yeah GET IT!).


You don't need to have every pose; create the ones that make you happy!


Pictures are fun, so here are all the beautiful people who I did Yoga Teacher Training with! This is our family :)

Why do you push yourself? & in what direction is that push leading you?

Practicing at home vs in a studio can facilitate very different experiences. At the studio it's easier to stay motivated because of the energy that's working to our benefit all around us. The thing that many people will say is that they see others in a beautiful posture and they want to get there, so they don't give up.

Eventually, hopefully, we turn so far inward that it doesn't matter if we're in a studio or at home; it's the same yoga.

Studio practice can be a wonderful tool that allows us to connect to each other while home and self practice allows for a unique intuition to guide the soul. In a studio, when someone around me is breathing really well, it encourages me to stay linked to my breath, no excuses. If they can do it, there's no reason I should be cutting myself off from life and oxygen. If I feel myself running on empty and giving up, I know I'm only encouraging others to give up. We have to keep going! It's only a moment, and it could change someone else's. When we push ourselves, we inspire others. Life's about inspiring others.

Personal side-note: for a long time my practice was about achieving and striving for perfection. I wanted something to show for my blood sweat and tears. Type-A and all that jazz. It sounds shallow because it is. The yoga helped me realize that this was how I was leading my life, not just my practice. Yoga allowed me to break free of the habits I was making myself a victim of. Lately I've been playing around with taking extended breaks from my practice, and I found this:

If we're growing because we seek perfection, it's not growth for the right reasons. Perfection doesn't exist, and if we're chasing it, what is the destination other than a lonely island of one?

Connect, breathe, ommm <3

We're never entering a pose, we're creating it. 

Each time we step on the mat it's a fresh start. While we're creatures of habit, we recognize that fresh, while scary, is exciting. We like being successful, so we tend to return to the places we know we can flourish. Mountain pose: nailed it! Turn it upside down into handstand... maybe not so familiar, but fresher and more likely to teach us something.
Take kids for example: While they may find they absolutely love hide-and-go-seek, they know they can't use the same hiding spots each time they play. What worked once may not work again. A habit of using the dog's toy pile for security may have the exact opposite effect because they've used that solution before. Translated to relevant terms, if we go through the same variations each time we practice, we're creating a rut where we keep finding ourselves hidden. Why go through life hiding? We can find ourselves on our mats if we just push past the desire to "be good" at it all. ((If we study any one phenomenon here on this Earth, we can learn about every other thing. Children, adults, plans, animals, anything.))
When kids play, they're not just passing time. They're evolving and absorbing. Soaking in the fruits of our labor happens the instant we make a choice that serves our breath and our intention in the present moment. Instant karma. Staying present to the stimuli we are taking in now allows us to choose learning over comforts. These choices don't just affect our own experience, because the impact reaches our person, and then we reach others in our lives with that energy. All stemming from that one choice grounded in the willingness to explore and capacity to be fearless. If we can do it on the mat, we can do it anywhere. In fact, big changes on the mat are often a reflection of big changes off the mat.
We're powerful beyond our wildest dreams, and if we take that fresh step, we can create a fresh world. "Be the change you wish to see in the world." - MK Ghandi

Because pictures are fun, here's a happy (lion) baby!

Take on the consciousness of the pose! You are a warrior. You are a happy baby. A lizard. A crow. You are a bird of paradise. You are everything. Every pose, every emotion and every being. We are all part of the same creation, living with and interacting with the same environment. So hum - I am that. That I am.

For the record, babies actually do this. And they LOVE it. You're not a hiding child, you're a (happy) lion! And if you haven't uncovered it  yet, start looking for a fresh perspective! The dog toy pile smells bad after a few minutes anwyay.

O hayy

All energy is neutral unless otherwise directed.

We have the ultimate control over our own karma. Whether we embrace the present truth or dismiss it is our perception of our life. Perception is a choice, and as a physical being, we are not perception itself. Our moods are constantly changing, so we are not our perceived state. We are consciousness.Once we separate ourselves from the senses and the physical body, we come to see the purest and most basic form of being is already contained within us.

Choose to see the light in every day, in every person, in every moment, and your energy will reach others. This is how we can change the world. Forgive. And healing will come in its time.

So this post is some heavy-duty catch-up!

First time yogi! Masiha shared that his favorite pose was up-dog after his first taste of yoga because it felt really good. He made me think about what the postures are really meant to do for our bodies... While there are advanced postures that are more challenging, they are always meant to feel GOOD. If it feels awful to hold a posture, we won't come back (and at this point we've missed the correct alignment or proper breathing). However, if it were easy, we wouldn't come back either.

Sometimes the most inspiring practices are like the one Masiha shared with me. They are fresh and honest, almost child-like. In fact, children can be the most inspiring yogis of all. They laugh as they come to a roadblock, and laugh even harder when they fall.

Coming into the postures for the first time is disorienting and we recognize that the body is acclimating to something foreign. As we return to the mat, we feel like we have achieved knowledge, and we worry more about failure because falling means we have lost the knowledge we worked so hard to gain. The good news about this theory is that knowledge is it is based in past experience. Yoga is about the intelligence of the present. So when we rely on knowledge, we lose space where intelligence can inspire union. So falling can be the most important aspect of the yoga because we are finding a balance. An acupuncturist pointed out that we all have energy deficiencies, which means every day we fall out of balance, we live off balanced. So why would our body be the one thing we take so seriously when it can be a powerful metaphor to play with?

Finding the inner child can be rejuvenating. Maybe make a play-date out of it!

"When we are inspired, we inspire others." - Cara Bradley

Verge Yoga's owner Cara Bradley held a class to benefit breast cancer awareness and research. The class was taught round robin style, rotating between 8 of Verge's most senior teachers. Once a beautiful full room of 41 yogis took final savasana, there was complete stillness. Only the sounds of breathing all around.
Cara began to speak of connections, the kind we can uncover within ourselves. Finding the Self means seeing the Self in all others and realizing oneness with creation.

What this means to me is that all things composed of matter deserve respect: our environments and the people in them. Everything from the toothpaste to the computer is to be treated with gratitude. So when we move through our worlds hastily, rushing to get ready in the morning, banging drawers shut and spilling cereal in the kitchen, we waste the condition of the world we live in. When we pause to appreciate the warmth of the water we wash our skin with, or actually look into the eyes of the person we are having a conversation with, we connect to what we're really here to do.

"Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know."
-Pema Chodron

Injuries can often feel like a major setback, and it's hard not to become frustrated with the body as it reaches its limits and begs for a rest. A physical block isn't the body breaking; it's the mind's inability to show the physical body compassion. Why do we reinjure ourselves? It's because we're pushing beyond the body.

Personal sidenote: My own hamstring was healing after a year of modifying my practice. I was only going into the splits on one side, and learning to be okay with the differences that both sides of my body present. The yin and the yang. The rational and the creative. The masculine and the feminine. I finally got into a split in class 10 months after the initial tear,and tears welled up in my eyes: it was finally healed. It was time to return! So excited, I dove wholeheartedly into my practice. I don't know when, and I don't know how, but I was so excited to have my full range of motion back that I missed my body telling me it was too much too quickly. I retore my hamstring within a month. Now, I can't walk on it without pain. I have to take 3 weeks to 3months off from my practice.
As depressing as this first was, I know now that I can't be superhuman. My body deserves the most attention and respect out of my practice, not the ego that's excited to have the familiar feel-good sensations. I have been given this opportunity to learn and respect myself, and take a break. Who knows what I'll find off the mat?!
Now the real yoga begins...

Also, here's a cute video to think about!

Does it ever seem like after a yoga practice, the mind is even MORE cluttered than before?

Sometimes we second guess ourselves and allow doubt to rule the experience. Doubt comes from fear, and it is said that there are only two emotions: love and fear. If fear is in control, love cannot enlighten the practice or its benefits.

The answer to all of those questions is simple. Part of you already knows what the answer is, but again doubts: It's enough. It's always enough. It's always enough. A little yoga is always better than no yoga, so when it doesn't feel like "enough" of something, know this: it's likely not the end of your day. There's still time. If you miss today, it's not the end of the week. If you miss the week, it's not the end of your life. And if it's not the end of your life, it's not the end of the world.

And just because this may come across as one of the cheesier posts, here's some delicious looking cheese:

A great yogi presented an important question: How do I use the muscles I've found?! Here's something that might help: search for them in the simplest place possible: Tadasana, conscious mountain pose. If you can find that engagement when your body is totally relaxed, you're more likely to find it when you're doing something a little more complicated.

This will protect your wrists from any  abnormal pressure! You want to bend until you're 100, keep your body in a painless and peaceful condition

Finding the Edge

The physical practice is meant to present a challenge. The problem is it's difficult to use our intelligence to distinguish where our edge lies. Once we outline our boundaries within which we are comfortable, we are free to play and push that edge further so we grow each time we return to the mat. A beautiful teacher offered a new way to look at this concept this morning by saying our edges should never be sharp.

We've all heard the arguments and articles claiming that Yoga is dangerous/harmful to the body. The harm, however, is never the asana. That is to say, the postures themselves are not the culprit, but rather the ego behind them. Ego wants to push the limits, so when a sharp edge presents itself, the ego recognizes nothing more than another time to push forward.

(Let's be clear here, while our western definition of ego tends to have a negative connotation, in a Yogic sense, this is not always so. Our egos are composed of all of the layers of the self we pile on from the moment we are born. Any answer to the standard, "Tell me about yourself," would do well in this category. So ego isn't the "I am better than you," but rather the "I am X". (Mother, brother, cousin, teacher, water boy, swag, etc.))

So when we say the ego is the real culprit here, we mean to say there's a void we're trying to fill by pushing our limits to the point that the body's condition worsens. Why push? We want so badly to be GOOD. To do the right pose. Here's the kicker: the perfect pose does not exist. Part of us already realizes this, too. Perfection is unattainable. It's human nature to want it even more knowing this. It does not serve to judge the desire to do yoga (and all other things in life) well. This is an instinct that allows for continual growth. With a little compassion, one can check the integrity of the posture by noting the breathing. An honest answer will present itself because the body is not the ego. The body continues while the mind fluxuates. Once the mind is still, the body can be seen in its true form. This being said, you are not your body. You are not your mind. You are consciousness. Your body is a divine metaphor that is yours for rent. It is a gift.

So long as you are breathing, you are in full control. When you are in full control, no one else can control you - this is the concept behind the Martial Arts.


You're already perfect.

"Heartbreak opens for even breaking is opening ... My spirit takes journey, my spirit takes flight, and I am not running. I am choosing. I am broken. I am broken open. Breaking is freeing. Broken is freedom. I am not broken; I am free." - Dee Rees Through the Character of Alike

Welcome to the newest Yoga Blog!

Here you can expect to find (in the VERY near future)posture-clinic-type posts, videos, podcasts (yes, free yoga classes!), and interviews with inspirational yogis.

The purpose of this blog is not to delve deeper into the practice of the blogger, but better yet, delve into YOUR practice. The internet is a great resource that we may dismiss because it doesn't quite scream, "transcendence". Who says we can't use YouTube to learn headstand?! No one's going to know...

Now For Thought: Our yoga mats serve as mirrors for our lives (PAUSE & Digest this idea if you haven't considered it ever or in a while); if we're in Dhanurasana and the yogi in front of us has a deeper backbend, how do our thoughts suddenly change? What if our backbend is deeper? Same thoughts? Probably not. The challenge of yoga is to stay present to the breath, allowing the ego to drift away, stilling the waves of the mind. There is no expectation to fill, so the yogi in front of us is truly just an expression of our own yoga. When we leave the mat to look at theirs, we're allowing the mind to get distracted, and often times this leads to a lack of compassion for our practice or the one in front of us. It's not worth it. A posture that is not present, that is to say one that is not being fueled with a conscious breath, is actually 10x less effective than one where we are using full inhales and exhales to anchor us to the present. The benefits lie in the breath. The secret lies within the silence.

Try this one: stand in Tadasana, mountain pose. Breathe deeply. Pull up on the kneecaps to engage the quads, tuck your tailbone and suck the navel in, engaging udiana banda, the abdominal lock. Shoulders fall heavy down the back so the collarbone can rise toward your chin, allowing the lungs to breathe larger. Close the eyes and watch your body move on its own. ((Those little sways are the body's intelligence leading us towards balance; the body is smart. Always trust your body, it has no ego, just truth. While our thoughts may drift, the body is present. It does not ignore a tight hamstring because we're low on toilet paper in the apartment and the girl next to us just let out a vegan fart.)) NOW, here's the fun part: still in tadasana with eyes closed or holding a blurry gaze, a drishti, lift up all 10 of your toes and feel the corners of your feet rooting down into the ground. Even out the pressure along the edges of your feet and on the ball of your foot, and one by one, drop down your pinky toes. Then the next toe drops, and the next etc. until you reach your big toe. Notice how the toes aren't gripping the ground angrily, but rather holding a strong connection. Now that the body is fully engaged, you are in the present. The purpose of an assana is to make a conscious choice about every part of the body, even the tiniest and seemingly most irrelevant extremeties, we are fully aware of NOW. The most powerful moment there is. There is no "I", no "out there" or "should be doing/have to do/not good enough to do..." there just is. This is freedom.

If you haven't found freedom in tadasana yet, you're far from being alone. This is much of why we all keep returning to the mat!

Drink lots of water and eat lots of kale "Once you've controlled your mouth, what [food] goes into it, what comes out of it (what you say), you've controlled much of the mind." - Scotty Schwartz

Here's a sneak preview of the fun videos to come!
How's Your Inversion Practice?