All is Yoga

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?