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about

The other day, my sister’s friend invited her to a different yoga studio for a class.  “I can’t do it”, said my sister. “I’d love to, but I’m not good enough. I suck.”   Fear shows up in funny ways. Tory pictures an entire class pointing at her and sneering.   This made me laugh for about four seconds. Then I realized that whenever a new challenge comes my way – going back to class after weeks away, trying a new kind of yoga, going to a different studio – my immediate, insane response is, “I can’t, I’m too fat.” This is obviously absurd. There is no sign posted anywhere in yoga that says Stay Out If You Think You Are Pudgy .  Nor have I met a yoga mat that hasn’t welcomed my solid thighs. (Oh my god, the mats are too small for my lardy bum! I’ll have to put four of them together!)  Nor, come to think of it, have I ever encountered a yoga teacher who raises one eyebrow and says, “Oh, you think so, do you? If you were enlightened enough to be in my class, you’d be thin.  Now stop crying. You can come to my Class For The Fat and Unenlightened .”    Absurd, excessive, twisted, completely un-constructive, I know. But these are the trolls that leap up from under my bridge when I’m facing something new and scary. Or old and scary for that matter. I like stating my fear out loud. It looks more ridiculous than ever that way. Gives it a loving kick in the head. I suck. I’m too this, too that. Do you have a fear that yoga brings to light? Would you like to kick it in the head? Thanks to yoga for showing me where and how I’d like to be more fearless, and thanks to you for the conversation. Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, and speaker (about All Things Wonderful) from North Bay, Ontario.  Join her on Facebook at Dr. Kristin Shepherd or on Twitter at kristinwonders.

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Yoga Trolls

It doesn’t really matter where you practice, as long as you do. Right? Right. But having practiced yoga everywhere from a church basement to a plush studio to a mountaintop on the outskirts of Katmandu, there’s something to be said for creating a welcoming atmosphere for spiritual practice. The same goes for creating a nurturing and inspiring place for our children to hang out and play and sleep. When Neil and I had Lucien, we were temporarily living in a sublet in Brooklyn. Arranging Lucien’s “nursery” involved setting up a co-sleeper next to our bed. (He ended up sleeping in our bed those first six months, nestled between a yoga bolster on one side and mommy on the other.) Next, we moved to Vancouver and rented a furnished one-bedroom apartment. Neil set up Lucien’s crib in the walk-in closet of our bedroom, and I put some decals on the wall – an airplane, a pink moose. While I loved exploring new places (we were in New York for Neil’s academic leave from Harvard, and moved to Vancouver for his new job at the University of British Columbia), I couldn’t wait to settle down and make a proper nursery for Lucien. The truth was I was completely envious when I walked into my friends’ baby rooms in Boston and Los Angeles. Poor Lucien in his closet!  Of course, he didn’t care or know the difference. At that age he just wanted to be close to his mama and dada.   When Lucien was almost one, on Halloween, we moved into our house – a fixer upper that came filled with character, potential, and a never ending to do list. My first priority was Lucien’s room. We painted the walls with a non-toxic pale green and yellow paint, bought an  IKEA rocking chair   for his nursing corner, and got him some rolling see-through containers for his toys and books.  Since then, I’ve added and subtracted to the room. At  Collage Collage , where I take Lucien for art class, we picked up posters from local artists. Now that Lucien has weaned, the rocking chair is in the living room, and on our summer vacation on Vancouver Island I came across a super cheap stash of vintage children’s chairs, a handmade wooden table, and some old school books and toys that are now my favorite things in his room. Just as I feel at home and at peace in my upstairs yoga corner, Lucien seems content to hang out in his room for hours- playing, singing, reading books, and just generally chilling in his pajamas. Where in your house or apartment do you – and your children – feel most comfortable, most creative, and most inspired?  Jessica Berger Gross is the author of  enLIGHTened:   How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer (Skyhorse),  she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.

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Making Room

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When Ava, my manager, suggested that instead of flying in and out for my Los Angeles teaching gigs last week, we rent a car from Lake Tahoe and take a 16-day road trip through California, I thought she was crazy. That is, until she explained a) all the fun we could have, and b) all the people we’d be able to meet in person.   As a yoga teacher with students all over the world, I know the precious value of creating real relationships with those with whom we share a like-minded practice.   If I had just flown in for my weekend of workshops, and not explored for the week before and after, I would not have sat down with editors and publishers, helped a woman figure out what kind of poses she could do with her cranky knees, or witnessed a stockbroker come to an epiphany about his life over dinner. I would not have visited with my friend Ariel, danced in front of a fireplace, seen Shiva Rea’s video shoot, bonded with Ava, or so much more.   Ariel is a feng shui master. He has said for years that it’s not enough to make space to be who you are right now; you need to create the space for who you want to become. For example, if you want a love relationship to come into your life, you’ll want not only to get yourself ready for it, you also want to pull your bed away from the wall, put a nightstand there, and pour a fresh glass of water each night in anticipation of your new partner.   Energy loves a void, and when you make one in the shape of your ultimate goals, such as abundance, partnership, prosperity, love, or career success, it can start to pour in. If you’re still engaged in the same habits that got you where you are now, and are keeping you there, either resisting your greatness or maintaining the status quo, then new possibilities will have a harder time taking hold.   In this way, when Ava proposed a more intensive trip, but also one that left a lot of room to create new relationships and deepen ones I’ve already begun, I knew it was the right move. Things happened that neither one of us planned, like an incredible meeting that could skyrocket my teaching career and help millions of people be exposed to the healing benefits of yoga and mindful wellness. Sometimes, we want one thing to come into our lives, but the way we think, see the world, and act are not aligning with that which we say we would like to attract.   In yoga, we can easily practice working with this concept. When you breathe, you don’t actually pull air into your lungs. Your muscles pull the ribs apart, the diaphragm drops, the lungs open wide, and then the atmospheric pressure of the Earth pushes air in to fill the space you’ve created.   T.K.V. Desikachar, the son of Krishnamacharya, one of the founding fathers of yoga asana, says that prana , life force, cannot be controlled. We can only make the space it requires to infuse us, and remove obstacles to its flow.   This is why in yoga class, we begin by bringing attention to the breath. If it’s short, restricted, or choppy, we can be pretty certain that we are experiencing the same, on all other levels. The practice of yoga, therefore, is not to force openness, happiness, or health, but to seek out the places where we’re blocked from wholeness, and do the work required to remove those blockages.   In their place, we construct new riverbeds and banks, samskaras or habits, that serve us and take our prana in the directions we want it to go. Then, just like tearing down a dam, the streams and tributaries of circulation, central nervous system communication, lymph fluid, self-understanding, peace, and vitality will organically begin to irrigate your entire system, nourishing you for a lifetime from the inside out.     Core Pose: Making Space Breath   This is a simple breathing technique that will bring you back into harmony with the way the body actually breathes. Come into a comfortable seat. Close your eyes and direct your awareness to the tip of your nose. Without using the more yang Ujjayi breath (no Darth Vader here!), let the breath quietly but fully slide in as you flare your ribs wide in all directions. Note that as you inhale, the lungs fill from top to bottom. As you exhale, they empty out from everywhere at once as the ribs compress.     Listen to your body and notice the places in the side ribs, the front abdominals or around the mid and upper back where you find a jerkiness or stubbornness residing. Hold your breath in for a moment, and move in ways that help to release and resolve your resistance there. If you notice emotions or thoughts arising that cause the body or energy to contract, maintain the rhythm of your in- and out-breaths until they dissipate.   After two minutes of the making space breathing technique, you should feel a difference in the freedom and quality of your breathing, and in your body, mind, and heart.                    

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Making Space

One of you wrote a kind note to me recently in which you encouraged me to discover my “inner teacher” during my home practice. This might involve veering off the straight path I’d been on. What a beautiful idea! Originally, my home practice was basically whatever I remembered from class, in much the same order we do our asanas in class. Not much imagination involved. All hell has broken loose, since. This morning I thought, I’ve got to reign this in a bit or I’ll never be able to go back to class. Today’s practice looked like this: I’m in flannel pajamas, which are far more comfortable than my yoga clothes. I sing show tunes during my Sun Salutations. My secret desire (not so secret now, I guess) is to star in Big! Musicals! I picture some Famous! Broadway! Producer! driving down my very quiet street in Northern Ontario and hearing my voice Soaring! out the front windows, singing, Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better, from Annie Get Your Gun. It’s a tough fantasy to maintain given that I am terrified to sing in front of anyone but my dog. I maintain it nonetheless.   I put henna in my hair today for the first time. It’s mucky, it stinks, and the instructions say keep it on for hours, so I do my entire practice with a goopy head. Toward the end of today’s practice, which includes some completely invented dance moves (in case that Producer needs a Dancer!, not just a Fabulous! Singer!), I find myself saying, “Oh, yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah”, with each forward bend and each spinal twist.  How did my practice become so loud? Savasana, at the end of all this, is a quiet relief. Is this my inner teacher at work? I don’t know. I understand that there is no mention of show tunes in The Upanishads, but something in my practice feels freer and more creative these days. Lighter. Do you have inner teachers?  Are they serious? Funny? Creative? Are they dancers? Singers? (Do you want to do a musical together?)    Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, speaker, and workshop wonderwoman in North Bay, Ontario.  Join her at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at Dr. Kristin Shepherd.

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Inner Teachers

Opinions run hot about nudity in advertising and Yoga Journal’s role in contemporary yoga culture. In the September issue, we published a letter written by the esteemed yoga teacher and Yoga Journal co-founder Judith Hanson Lasater, which expressed her disapproval of advertisements featuring naked women. It’s been a hot topic ever since, and it seems appropriate to offer a few thoughts. First, I greatly respect Judith and her concerns. Over the years, we’ve had conversations about the magazine, the business, the community. More than once, she has called me to share an opinion, in her trademark direct style, and we talked about her September letter before I published it. I appreciate her frankness. I interpreted Judith’s formal note about ads that she feels “exploit the sexuality of young women in order to sell products” to be a message both to the folks at Yoga Journal who make advertising decisions,  (I am responsible for editorial direction only, I have no authority over advertising)–and to the larger community, including the creators of the ads. Clearly Judith’s letter struck a chord, and I’ve read the opinions of many people who agree with her views. Others have written specifically in support of what they see as the artistic beauty of the ToeSox ads ,  in particular, which feature the talented yoga teacher and frequent Yoga Journal contributor Kathryn Budig demonstrating poses in the buff. The diversity of reader opinion isn’t surprising, given the diversity of the yoga community today and the highly subjective nature of the matter at hand. But somewhere in all the heated blog posts about whether nudity equals exploitation and about what Yoga Journal ’s advertising policies should be, I’ve seen a fair bit of frustration and misunderstanding about Yoga Journal’ s role in the community. Over the past 35 years, Yoga Journal has evolved from a nonprofit publication aimed at yoga teachers to a popular magazine read by more than 2 million Americans and supported by national advertising. Perhaps the biggest difference between the magazine Judith founded and the one I edit today is that while Yoga Journal continues to be a source of instruction and insight on yogic practices, it is now also a chronicle of the ever-evolving yoga scene–a scene that didn’t exist 35 years ago and one that some old-time practitioners would, quite frankly, find un-yogic. Yoga Journal doesn’t intend to be a textbook of ancient practices, nor an arbiter of yogic morality. It’s a magazine that introduces people to a world of ideas–sometimes profound, life-changing ideas that they might not otherwise be exposed to. It’s a messy time to be in the business of covering yoga. Some yoga publications that offered a purist’s view of the practice are no longer in print, while “workout yoga” is popular on the newsstand. Yoga Journal remains devoted to bringing a full spectrum of teachings to a wide audience, and it does so while walking the age-old line of art and commerce. Spiritual teachers often say that while monkhood requires practicing austerities, it is actually easier to live in a cave than to practice yoga while living in the world; it’s tough to maintain a quiet mind when deadlines loom, when the kids meltdown, when all kinds of distractions beg for your attention. Yoga Journal lives out in that world–tackling real-life issues of finances, politics (yes, politics in the world of yoga!), and the sometimes-clashing ideals of the yoga community. I’m proud that amid all the chaos, the magazine continues to focus on delivering wise teachings and practical tools for bringing the essence of yoga into our daily lives. We are grateful to have the support of the teaching community, including Judith and the many other dedicated teachers who share the depth of their knowledge through our pages, and the support of our advertisers, which enables us to continue offering world-class instruction, insight, and inspiration for practice. As always, we hope that the magazine we work so hard to bring to you, serves you well. –Kaitlin Quistgaard Editor in Chief , Yoga Journal

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Naked Truths

In the September issue, we published a letter written by the esteemed yoga teacher and Yoga Journal co-founder Judith Hanson Lasater, which expressed her disapproval of advertisements featuring naked women. It’s been a hot topic ever since, and it seems appropriate to offer a few thoughts. First, I greatly respect Judith and her concerns. Over the years, we’ve had conversations about the magazine, the business, the community. More than once, she has called me to share an opinion, in her trademark direct style, and we talked about her September letter before I published it. I appreciate her frankness. I interpreted Judith’s formal note about ads that she feels “exploit the sexuality of young women in order to sell products” to be a message both to the folks at Yoga Journal who make advertising decisions,  (I am responsible for editorial direction only, I have no authority over advertising)–and to the larger community, including the creators of the ads. Clearly Judith’s letter struck a chord, and I’ve read the opinions of many people who agree with her views. Others have written specifically in support of what they see as the artistic beauty of the ToeSox ads ,  in particular, which feature the talented yoga teacher and frequent Yoga Journal contributor Kathryn Budig demonstrating poses in the buff. The diversity of reader opinion isn’t surprising, given the diversity of the yoga community today and the highly subjective nature of the matter at hand. But somewhere in all the heated blog posts about whether nudity equals exploitation and about what Yoga Journal ’s advertising policies should be, I’ve seen a fair bit of frustration and misunderstanding about Yoga Journal’ s role in the community. Over the past 35 years, Yoga Journal has evolved from a nonprofit publication aimed at yoga teachers to a popular magazine read by more than 2 million Americans and supported by national advertising. Perhaps the biggest difference between the magazine Judith founded and the one I edit today is that while Yoga Journal continues to be a source of instruction and insight on yogic practices, it is now also a chronicle of the ever-evolving yoga scene–a scene that didn’t exist 35 years ago and one that some old-time practitioners would, quite frankly, find un-yogic. Yoga Journal doesn’t intend to be a textbook of ancient practices, nor an arbiter of yogic morality. It’s a magazine that introduces people to a world of ideas–sometimes profound, life-changing ideas that they might not otherwise be exposed to. It’s a messy time to be in the business of covering yoga. Some yoga publications that offered a purist’s view of the practice are no longer in print, while “workout yoga” is popular on the newsstand. Yoga Journal remains devoted to bringing a full spectrum of teachings to a wide audience, and it does so while walking the age-old line of art and commerce. Spiritual teachers often say that while monkhood requires practicing austerities, it is actually easier to live in a cave than to practice yoga while living in the world; it’s tough to maintain a quiet mind when deadlines loom, when the kids meltdown, when all kinds of distractions beg for your attention. Yoga Journal lives out in that world–tackling real-life issues of finances, politics (yes, politics in the world of yoga!), and the sometimes-clashing ideals of the yoga community. I’m proud that amid all the chaos, the magazine continues to focus on delivering wise teachings and practical tools for bringing the essence of yoga into our daily lives. We are grateful to have the support of the teaching community, including Judith and the many other dedicated teachers who share the depth of their knowledge through our pages, and the support of our advertisers, which enables us to continue offering world-class instruction, insight, and inspiration for practice. As always, we hope that the magazine we work so hard to bring to you, serves you well. –Kaitlin Quistgaard Editor in Chief , Yoga Journal

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Naked Truths: YJ’s Editor-in-Chief Responds to the Nudity Debate

Last week, my friend and manager, Ava, and I left Wanderlust and took a road trip from Lake Tahoe through Napa Valley and into San Francisco, where I was scheduled to teach a workshop.   Taking a trip like this was fun and freeing–something I hadn’t done since college. I’ve traveled, sure, but mostly on airplanes and highways. It’s been a long time since I’ve stopped to smell the roses, literally, or walked through vineyards, wandered without an agenda, and taken my time getting where I needed to go.   When I left more space around the journey itself, rather than seeing it as useless time between my starting place and my destination, a whole new world opened up. We turned off the highway and into local communities and had adventures I never would have had otherwise, like singing impromptu karaoke into a straw at a local pub or eating an incredible meal at Bouchon in Yountville. A few times we turned off the GPS and just tuned into where our hearts told us to go next. We were led unerringly toward something life-affirming and just right.     It was an experience similar to the one I aim to offer my students during yoga class. I’ve often asked them to pause and even play during the transitions between poses, those moments we often rush through on our way to the “goal” pose. The word “tapas” means “heat,” but it also symbolizes the space we make with the energy and awareness we bring to the present moment. When we release our grasp on achieving the goal and wake up to what’s going on every step of the way, we begin to see how fully we’re surrounded by exactly what we need to evolve, to be happy and fulfilled, and to love our lives.   What you do before you get into a pose dictates its quality once you arrive. It’s the same in your life: The millions of smaller actions you take will determine the strength–or shakiness–of the foundation underneath the more showy milestones of your life.   In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that if you’re not bringing a consistency of mindfulness, spaciousness, and quality action into your transitional periods, you may not reach your goals after all.   If you want to be a financial advisor, but you’re irresponsible with your own money, it’s unlikely that any clients will trust you with theirs. If you do reach your goal on a shaky foundation, it’s far more likely that your dreams will crumble around you, undermined from the very roots (hello, Bernie Madoff!).   Instead, what we yogis practice both on and away from the mat, is making sure that we pay attention to the entirety our lives, not just the parts; and doing so most of the time instead of just sporadically. It’s as simple as taking a deep breath and reminding ourselves that we’re here now. We stop time-traveling to the past or future when we learn that the only thing that will determine our future movement is what we do right now.   This inner road trip is the key to living out loud and enjoying your life holistically today. Not when you have the man, the cash, or have lost that last 10 pounds. Why wait? The power you have to self-generate satisfaction is waiting for you to see it, claim it, and act from it. When you stop, look around, and listen to your deepest wisdom in the space you’ve created, you will suddenly, sweetly realize:You are everything you need.   Here’s a transition that I’ve made into its own pose, to exemplify that every moment is pivotal, not just the flashy, more obvious ones. There’s a whole universe of strengthening and freedom to be found right here, on the journey within.   Core Pose: Parsvakonasana (Extended Side Angle Pose) with Core Circles Variation   When you go straight into Side Angle Pose from Warrior 2, the tendency can be to enter the asana with a over-curved lower back, front ribs jutting forward, and the back body constricted. To re-enter the pose with a more centered alignment and free the habitual hip, low back, upper back, and shoulder tension it can create, we need to exit it, or as I often say in class, back off to move forward.   First, come into the pose from Warrior 2 with your forearm on the front thigh and your other arm over your ear. Notice how your lower back and shoulders feel. Are you core-connected or are your shoulder blades, back muscles, and legs doing most of the work?   Begin to circle your top arm back behind you. Take it down toward the floor and, as you do, turn your torso toward the floor and draw your low belly away from your front thigh and upward, into your sternum. This will activate your core strength, bring length to the tailbone, support to the lower back, and also open the gateway of your front hip joint. You’re not pressing out the low back curve at all with this move, but supporting it from the front of the spine as well as from the back.   Continue to sweep your arm forward now and back up over your ear. Press your feet down strongly; maintain the stability, shoulder fluidity, and core awareness you cultivated during the transition; and enjoy new strength, freedom and areas of stretch releasing in your new, more intentional goal of a pose.                      

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The Road Within

There are days – pushing my stroller up a steep hill, scooping dog poop while answering the phone, trying to meet writing deadlines while Lucien plays at my feet, managing outings and baths and meals and schedules, not to mention making time for my yoga practice-when I could almost forget. How hard it was getting here. It was hard for me to become a mother, excruciatingly so. (Now, in comparison, is the easy part.) Neil and I married when I was 30, and though it seemed prudent to wait to try and have a baby-for our careers to become more stable, to have more of an income, to settle down in one city -I wanted to get started right away.  Maybe deep down I knew. After six months of trying, I became pregnant. We lived in Los Angeles at the time and immediately I changed everything. My diet: Goodbye coffee, hello egg salad sandwiches. My asana practice: so long Mysore series, hello Iyengar. Even the way I thought of myself changed in the instant I saw that plus on the pregnancy stick. In a flash I went from struggling would-be writer to contented mom-to-be. That pregnancy was seven years ago. At eight-and-a-half weeks (that half week was as important to me then as Lucien’s “half” a year after his two years is to me now) I went to the doctor for my first ultrasound. In that fancy office in Beverly Hills I sat feeling out of place but confident in my impending motherhood as I flipped the pages of the magazines laid out in the waiting room. And then the exam. There was no heartbeat. What followed was an everyday nightmare that I know many of you reading this have been through-the blood work and waiting, the D & C, the endless and unexpected free fall of grief. It took a long time for me to heal. One thing that helped was working on my first book, an anthology I edited, About What Was Lost: 20 Writers on Miscarriage, Healing, and Hope . I wrote my story and collected others.  Hearing women’s stories, immersing myself in them, steeled me as I spent the next several years determined to become a mother, but not sure how or when or some days, if, I would. Yoga helped too. In class I felt cared for and comforted, and on good days I felt that everything would be all right. (On the bad days I stared in envy at the gorgeous pregnant women in class, on the really bad days I cried at home on my mat, and on the worst days I stayed in bed.) Now, all these years later, I have my beautiful boy.  As he sings to me and as we snuggle and make believe, and even when I get so exhausted from keeping up with him that I need to collapse in front of hours of reality television in a pop culture coma, I remember, and I feel for all the women (and men) out there struggling-whether with IVF cycles or adoption waiting lists or simply the monthly still-negative pregnancy tests. I’m sending love to all of you and prayers that soon you’ll be with the children you are meant to parent. And believe me, I know how lucky I am. Do you have a story to share? Jessica Berger Gross is the author of enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer (Skyhorse), she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.

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Remembering

I know there are branches of yoga. I know most of us are focused on the physical branch. Some multi-branched yogis don’t love our primary focus on the physical. I think it’s all right. Here’s why: I began with Hatha yoga. But it doesn’t take long before I realize, without any teaching, that yoga has at least a second branch for me. Let’s call my two branches outside yoga and inside yoga. The physical is outside. I love its strength and flexibility, its warmth, love the physical buzzy calm after my practice. At some point on the trip, outside yoga introduced me to inside yoga, a kind of calm, accepting, eyeball-dissolving something, so often accompanied by huge sighs the end of class. And just as the physical branch teaches itself to me, class by class, the inside branch works its way through me, too, telling me a thing or two or twenty that I didn’t see at first. Like the fact that I don’t feel inner peace after every class. In fact sometimes I’m as relaxed as all get out during class and then my head races during Savasana. Go figure. And sometimes I find that lovely, floaty peace without doing a physical practice at all. Sometimes it shows up out of nowhere, while I’m driving or eating or scratching the dog’s belly. Today I saw an old man sitting on a guardrail, watching traffic go by while he picked something from the sole of his shoe, and my heart melted as though he were my grandfather.   Somehow, my yoga practice helps this inside thing happen, even when they don’t occur together. So. There you go. I have two branches, now. Who knows what will show up next, and what kind of tree I’ll be in the end. How about you?  How many branches?  What kind?  What’s your current growth? Thanks to yoga for such gorgeous growth, and thanks to you for the conversation. Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, speaker, and workshop wonderwoman in North Bay, Ontario.  Join her at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at Dr. Kristin Shepherd.

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My Own Branches

Two historical events occurred this weekend on opposite coasts. Chelsea Clinton got married in New York, celebrating with  more than 300 guests. Meanwhile, a few thousand miles to the left, more than 8,000 yogis celebrated yoga, rock and roll and dance at the Wanderlust Festival at Squaw Valley near Lake Tahoe, California. I attended the latter.   My Wanderlust journey began with Annie Carpenter’s 8am class Thursday morning. Smiling volunteers welcomed us to the first class of the festival. Next up on the line-up was Shiva Rea with live DJ Bom Siva and the Mayapuris, who lead us into an ecstatic dance and yoga practice as an informal opening ritual to the festival. We raised the vibration to the level Shiva and co-founder Jeff Krasno (other co-founder Schuyler Grant) dreamed up over 2 years ago while lounging on the terrace of Shiva’s Malibu home. The celebration continued into the afternoon, where Shiva hosted a sold out river rafting party with live music. As we lazily drifted down river in the summer sun,  we soaked in Mayapuri’s kirtan and Steve Gold’s rhythm and blues melodies.   This uniquely epic experience raised the collective conscious vibration of the planet with it’s diverse line up of world renowned yoga teachers and musicians raising awareness of sacred activism including a Yoga Aid event that spilled off the yoga floor onto the hot tarmac; funds were raised for Seane Corn’s Yoga Off the Mat; Baron Baptiste and Paige Elenson’s Africa Project; Shiva Rea’s Global Mala Project; Brock Cahill’s Kurmalliance (Rescuing Turtles from the Gulf Coast Oil Spill). Moby’s Speakeasy talk, “May All Beings Be Free of Suffering: Why I Am a Vegan,” moderated by Kaitlin Quistgaard editor-in-chief of Yoga Journal , was also an event to remember.   Celebrity sightings included world-class sport climbing champion Chris Sharma and Nick Rosen from the Enlighten Up! documentary.  And “non-celebrity yoga celebrity,” John Friend made a surprise appearance on Saturday afternoon, days after The Yoga Mogul appeared in the New York Times , stepping off Beaver Theodosakis’ private Prana plane in time to participate in the Yoga Aid event taught by Seane Corn, Baron Baptiste and Shiva Rea. Ecstatic dance parties included (music headliner) Moby’s epic Friday night performance, a breakout dance session in front of the Natural High booth during Base Nectar’s Saturday night performance (which almost burst open the fences with record attendance), and literally climaxing (a t 8,200 feet) on Sunday afternoon at the pool at High Camp, the ultimate chill-out zone where relaxing yogis and families made way for DJ Dragonfly’s spinning extravaganza. What a weekend!   For more information, go to www.wanderlustfestival.com .    Twee Merrigan is senior teacher trainer of Prana Flow and a sacred activist traveling through America this August to raise funds for the Gulf Oil Spill Clean Up on her Butterfly Effect Tour. Wanderlust was a stop on the Tour to raise awareness and inspire sacred activism.

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Wanderlust Wows with Music, Dance and Yoga

Okay, what is it with triangle pose???? (Those of you who are experts need not read this one. Go back to practicing your one-armed handstands with your legs in full lotus. I adore you, I do. I worship your accomplishments. But today’s thoughts are not for you.) Triangle pose. Pretty basic. Do the triangle thing and reach forward to grab your first toe. For the entire 10 months of my gorgeous, intensive involvement in yoga, this is exactly what happens with my right leg. I reach down, gently grab the first toe of my right foot, and look up to the ceiling. I breathe slowly and evenly. I don’t care if Rob and Cristina (my teachers) count to 29 on this one. Happiness. Not so with my left leg. On my left side, I reach down, all the while thinking, I am so flexible, I am flexibility itself, I am flexibility incarnate and reincarnate. And my hand reaches mid-calf. Not an inch lower. Makes me crazy. I know, I know, patience, kindness, acceptance of what is. Even if what is is a daily reminder of my exaggerated imbalance. All I wish for is balance, I tell myself. So guess what happened this week? For no reason I can think of, my triangle pose has changed! But not the way you think it might. Not the way it happens in fairy tales and romantic comedy yoga videos. Now neither of my hands can reach my toe! I mean it. I just tried it again before sitting here to write. Both sides to mid-calf. Not an inch lower. My thoughts? Be careful what you wish for. I wanted balance. I got it. Is there a pose that drives you crazy? (Okay, if it’s the one-armed handstand with full lotus, you can play, too.) Thanks to the yoga poses that drive us crazy, and thanks to you for the conversation. Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, speaker, and workshop wonderwoman in North Bay, Ontario.  Join her at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at Dr. Kristin Shepherd.

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Poses That Make You Crazy

After moving into my new apartment, the first thing I did, after unpacking, of course, was to place a statue of Ganesh at the entryway. My friend, feng shui master Ariel Towne, says that besides a fountain, the other necessary item near your front door is the little elephant otherwise known as the Remover of Obstacles. When you don’t let negative, sticky energies in, they don’t have a chance to affect you. “Cutting them off at the pass” is a phrase that might apply to what Ganesh is doing there at the front door. Aside from that massive job, Ganesh is also the Lord of Thresholds. Threshold . What a beautiful word. It reminds me of watching wind ripple the wheat fields during my Midwestern childhood. Yet, the concept itself has different meanings, not only describing the doorway itself, but what the doorway represents: a starting point, the beginning of any new journey or transformation. Ganesh is not some magic statue, without which you would have no protection against resistance, doubt, and fear–three of the biggest obstacles of all. It’s the act of placing Ganesh that brings awareness to our own desire to remain free of anything that diminishes or limits our potential to fly. In that sense, he represents that aspect of ourselves that is ready to swing open the door to our next adventure–and ready to step out of our own way long enough to clear the path straight through it. Henry Ford said, “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.” You see, we have the power to either turn our experiences and truths into obstructions, weights tethered to any possible rise in self-esteem, greater awareness, and health; or to remove them.  Yogis have fabulous resistance-busting tools. We can get on the mat and practice, opening tight places and dissolving emotional and mental tension. We breathe, switch our thinking, learn to see more clearly and, by deciding to love ourselves a little more, we begin to widen the very doorway into our own hearts. By applying awareness to each situation we encounter, we open a threshold to our core, allowing our deepest wisdom to sweep through, and away, into the world in the form of our most courageous, conscious actions. In my classes, any time I want to clear the threshold, I ask my students to focus on hip opening. I call the hips “the Gateways,” because they can allow, or block, the energy moving from you foundation into your core. If the gateways are closed, the posture is incomplete and with it, the opportunity to gain the full benefits of the asana is lost. Try the following pose any time you feel a little closed yet feel ready to  make the space you need to cross the threshold into that next, most incredible state of being who you really are. Core Pose: Funky Lunge   This posture clears a common tight area–the side leg and outer hips–all the way from the foundation to your center. When you open this gateway, issues like sciatica may recede, since the piriformis muscle at the side of your pelvis often compresses it. As well, you’ll open the IT band, making this a wonderful way to free yourself from over-closure of the gateways of the hip muscles and joints and, quite literally, be able to walk through any threshold more freely. Come into Down Dog. Step your left foot to your right thumb. With this crossed foot placement, you’ll bring the right knee to the mat. Center your hips, and come onto palms or fingertips, on the mat or on blocks, so that your hands are under your shoulders. Begin to roll onto the pinky toe edge of your left foot. As you ground the foot down, and resist it back towards your hip, roll the outer left hip and upper thigh back and down so that it’s not hiking up toward your ribcage. Inhale, lift your lower belly and wave long through your spine. Exhale, and fold at the hip creases as you bend the elbows to your capacity. Play your edge of flexibility as you begin to straighten your front leg until you begin to feel sensation. Breathe and soften there before moving further into your stretch. If you want more of a challenge, try tucking the back toes under and lifting the back knee as in a Low Lunge. Your hands will walk back to remain under the shoulders for support. Breathe here for one minute, taking small spinal waves on the inhalation, and deepening your fold on the exhalation. Return to Dog Pose, and switch sides.    

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Clearing the Threshold

My mother and I were at the same family gathering on the weekend. Which is not a big deal if you come from someone else’s family, but my mom and I only see each other once a year or so. And that’s a huge improvement after two decades of down right difficult, then jaw-clenchingly tense, and now tentatively willing relationship. (There’s a mouthful.) She looks beautiful. One bionic hip, and two hearing aids (which she’d forgotten at home), but a soft, gentle face and a kind of high, croaky, older woman’s voice. Once planted on the couch, she stayed put. I brought lunch to her while she watched her kids mingle and her grandkids fling themselves around the room with my dog. She did yoga when I was a kid. That was my introduction to yoga, to meditation, to the whole idea of looking inward as a form of health care. It astounds me, writing this, when I consider how central this looking inward is to everything I believe now. It is the core of my work in health care, in theatre, in parenting, and in all relationships. My mother doesn’t do yoga any more.  She can’t get down to a floor and has no local chair yoga classes. More than that, she’s lost the oomph it would take to do yoga at home. When we talk about it, she says, never, never stop doing yoga. It was the best thing ever, she says. People make their own choices. I know this. And yet, if I had one wish today, it’d be that my mom could still do yoga. Or that somehow, I could do it for her, while holding her closer and closer to this croaky heart of mine, which, I hope, is growing more flexible over time. Is there anyone you’d love to hold during your practice? Thanks to yoga for looking inward, to my mom (love, love, love), and to you for the conversation.

More here:
Holding my Mother

My vegetable garden is officially off the charts. It’s all thanks to two people: My good friend Lise who inspired me last summer with her backyard garden, and my green-thumbed next door neighbor Ellen who taught me what to do–from getting my garden beds together, to planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting.  I’m hoping it’s not just beginner’s luck–and that Ellen will help me again next year–because Neil and I are getting seriously spoiled by eating out of our backyard. “The farm,” as we have taken to calling the plots, is ripe with peas, kale, broccoli, lettuce, beets, carrots and cucumbers and scallions and zucchini, with the very beginnings of tomatoes and corn peeping through.  The process has amazed me, reminding me both of motherhood (seeing those tiny seeds blossom into full grown plants) and yoga (with a little time and attention every day, and some   patience, you’ll start seeing results). How does your (yoga) garden grow? Jessica Berger Gross is the author of enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer (Skyhorse), she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.

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In Season

Two interesting, and strikingly different articles caught my eye in Sunday’s New York Times . The first, a book review by Pankaj Mishra that somewhat negatively reviews the rise of yoga in the United States. Whether in the streets of Mysore or on Fifth Avenue, yoga cannot be disentangled from specific histories or specific cultural and economic practices. Of course, the more vulgar aspects of its inevitable commodification in the United States, like $1,000-a-night yoga cruises, ­ought to be deplored. Certainly, the civic or political virtue that results from limber, yoga-toned bodies is not yet measurable. And it would be nice if American followers of yoga, who increasingly define the future of this Indian discipline, would at least occasionally seek something like spiritual transcendence. And the second, a glowing interview with Anusara founder John Friend by Mimi Swartz . The first time I encountered John Friend was at a workshop at a Woodlands community college nearly 10 years ago. At the time I was practicing a stricter form of yoga, and Friend’s joke-cracking and mind-boggling acrobatics — he is famous for his handstands — were something of a revelation. Yoga could be . . . fun ? As Friend led us through the poses, he spoke in a soft voice, insisting that we contain divinity within ourselves and must discover and express our inner goodness to fulfill our obligation to better our world. How to do so was never expressly stated — except for practicing yoga, of course — but I left the workshop feeling better physically, mentally and emotionally. I didn’t know at the time that this was my introduction to what others call “the cult of John.” If Friend could be compared with anyone outside the yoga world — and I am not sure he would like this comparison — it would be Joel Osteen , the magnetic evangelical megachurch minister with the feel-good message and a book-and-television empire. Osteen’s God is loving and forgiving. Osteen doesn’t get hung up on dogma, and thus everybody is welcome. I, for one, am happy to see yoga being discussed in the mainstream media. Glad that it is a part of our culture and open to debate. It’s good to know that people are thinking about these things and that makes it more likely to reach a deeper stream in our society. What do you think? ps- John Friend (@anusarafriend) plans to post his response to the interview today!

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John Friend and Yoga in America

For a modality whose very title, yoga, means “unity,” it sure seems to be chock full of opposites. Our hatha yoga poses are made up of the “sun” (ha) and “moon” (tha). Shiva-Shakti, or ying-yang, symbolize the passive and active parts of our natures, and we’re in constant interplay between sthira (effort) and sukha (ease) on and off the mat. Anatomically, we mirror this duality. Did you know there are no muscles that cross the midline of our bodies? We have the spine in back and the connective strip of the Linea alba in front, which when, you think about it, means that we are really two distinct halves fused together at these junctions. Spiritually as well, we exist as polar aspects of energy, which make up our total prana, or life force. I’ll call these collective energies the shadow and the light. Sometimes (in the cases of love and joy) the energies feel lighter, and other times (like with anger and sorrow), much heavier. Still, any of these energies can be used as pure fodder, fuel that either generates actions that are aligned with us or that steer us sharply from our paths. Since, in another two-sided element of being, our thoughts and actions can either feel more positive (loving) or negative (hurtful), we might make the misstep of placing value judgments on our feelings, deciding that the lighter energies are “good” and that the shadows are “bad.” We want to feel happy and free, and because our dark side may have caused us and others suffering, embarrassment, shame and loss, it’s all too seductive to try and live only on the light side of ourselves. I think it’s unfortunate that being a student of yoga is sometimes understood to mean one must be only light and happy, all the time, and to never feel angry, insecure, or vengeful. In my opinion, this idealized state is not spiritual perfection but a delusion of grandeur masquerading as spiritual practice. Being as we’re human and divine, it’s a great day when we realize that we can be both, and have our yoga, too. Because it’s not an absence of shadow feelings that makes one enlightened. It’s knowing how to alchemize them into conscious, loving actions once they arise that matters. Unfortunately, many of us aren’t there yet. We’ve even decided that there is “good” karma and “bad” karma. But when you look at karma as a concept, it’s judgment-free. It simply means that this or that choice can be more constructive or more destructive to your ultimate goals. Add to this information the fact that, often, it’s not the shadows themselves that are dysfunctional. It’s the way we express them that causes problems. If you shy away from discomfort, in your yoga poses or in life (and if you do one, I can nearly guarantee you do the other), it’s likely that you haven’t practiced with that dark side as much as you need to in order to become strong and resilient enough to bear its intensity. In other words, if you haven’t done this work, you may be prone to reactivity, where some event, inner or outer, connects you to your shadow energy. Before you know it, you’ve thrown a glass or hurled hurtful words at a loved one. Or perhaps you react inwardly and act destructively toward yourself, as in blowing an important deadline because you’re anxious or shutting yourself down out of fear. Picking fights, being disrespectful, participating in family dramas, gossiping, or using drugs or alcohol to cope with discomfort are all ways we let the dark side predominate. We have confused the reactions to our shadows with the shadows themselves, when in fact they are just energies waiting to be harnessed. It’s time to look directly at these energies, without naming or blaming, and use our yogi powers to  channel even our blackest moments from the messiness of reaction into the clarity and empowerment of reflection. From there, we can move forward into actions born of wisdom, not wildness. One way we do this on the mat is, simply put, by no longer resisting the sensations we don’t like, but by embracing them, or at least, softening our resistance against them to allow them to co-exist with the ones you are happier to feel. Say you’re in a five-minute Pigeon Pose, and somewhere around the three-minute mark, your hips start grumbling, then maybe yelling out loud. You were enjoying your moment of Zen, and had the breath under control, but here comes the old familiar hips-on-fire feeling. To deal with it, you start breathing louder, thinking about the grocery list, pondering your fingernails, and turning your attention to anything but the discomfort. Yet, according to yogic wisdom, this might be a powerful place to explore. What if, next time you found yourself in a battle of wills with those inner demons, you–well–just surrendered? Soften and widen the breath. Go gentler into that shadowy night. What happens when you stop fighting and start listening to what your dark side has been trying to teach you all along? When you do this, the monsters inside lose their power to throw you off center, and you’ll regain your inherent wholeness. The promise of yoga is unity, and by opening your heart to all of who you are, you will finally, completely, and nearly effortlessly, come home. The goal yoga may be to become enlightened, or to keep the fires of awareness lit, but we cannot get there without recognizing, and in fact honoring, our darkness. Without developing the sweet embrace of understanding and mothering grace of compassion for all that we are, we will never become whole, but rather just play out our days, quite literally, half-lived. Here’s a variation on a common pose that includes a mudra, or sacred hand position. Get to know it in a way that will remind you, as it reminds me, that wholeness is waiting whenever we widen our idea of yoga to include all its forms. Core Pose: Seated Spinal Twist with Gyan (or Jnana) Mudra Gyan Mudra is the “Knowledge Seal,” a hand position that helps focus your mind, heart, and spirit in a certain way. Start by uniting the tips of the index fingers and thumbs to symbolize the meeting of the awareness that comes from embracing your lower and higher energies. According to the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna was in Gyan Mudra when he imparted the teachings to Arjuna, urging him to use his humanity to express his divinity. Come into your easy seat. Make Gyan Mudra with both hands. Inhale and lengthen your spine at center. Exhale and bring the right hand to the left knee or thigh, and weave your left arm behind your back. Depending on your flexibility, your left hand mudra might peek out around the side waist as you see mine doing here. Take a few breaths here, facing your left side and opening the ribcage. Think of embracing your shadow side, the one you might hide from sight. Illuminate it with your attention and focused breath. Then reverse the pose and reflect on your active, bright, confident side for a few full breaths.  When you’re done with both sides, sweep your arms out and up, and when they meet overhead, bring the palms together in prayer, then down to front of your chest. Bow your head to your hands, a symbol of bringing yourself–all of yourself–into union.            

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Shadows and Light

This week my home practice happened at 5am one day, 3pm the next, and in spurts throughout the afternoon on another day. Not at all on two days. Occasionally I feel disappointed in this, wondering whether I’d finally be able to grab the toes of my left foot in triangle pose if I just applied myself with greater consistency, greater diligence, greater drive.   These same feelings come up when I hear friends say things like, “I haven’t missed a day of yoga in 2.7 years. It only takes 27 years to form a good habit. Only 270 days of boot camp and you’ll be a new woman.”  Etc., etc., etc.  Hearing these things, I slump into a kind of anti-achievement stupor. I have set the bar too high to make the leap and all I want now is a bag of chips and a lousy movie. Same thing goes for every area of my life. Extraordinary colleagues who make Tony Robbins look like a slacker, volunteers who single-handedly bring clean water to very thin children in very small villages, friends who climb absurdly high mountains in Peru for fun and charity dollars. I know these people, and watching them from the comfortable chair in my living room, I sometimes do a little dance with discouragement. Here’s my response to discouragement and disappointment when they’re doing a nasty tango with me: 1. Lower the bar. This may not be Tony Robbin’s advice, but it works for me. If an hour of practice feels like too high a climb, do thirty minutes. If thirty minutes feels daunting, do one downward dog. I mean it. One. 2. Adore myself for doing one downward dog, for giving myself one glass of water (the children in the village may come another day), for giving every little bit of love I can to myself and my fellow human beings. A well meaning hello with eye contact can save us all, some days. 3. Dream, dream, dream. Of the hamstrings I will have some day, the peace of mind, the work and workplace I’d love, the people I’d love to play with all day long. I do this because of an absolute conviction that dreaming serves to pull these things toward me. 4. Ask myself what one, small thing I’d love to do right now that would take beautiful care of me. Do that one small thing and forget everything else. These work for me. My guess is that you have your own wonderful thoughts.  I’d love to hear them. Thanks to yoga for putting all of this in my face this week, and thanks to you for the conversation. Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, speaker, and workshop wonderwoman in North Bay, Ontario.  Join her at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at Dr. Kristin Shepherd.

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Lowering the Bar

As an urban yogi I often day dream about coming to a bustling, messy street square and seeing–instead of garbage and taxi cabs– hundreds of yogis. Wouldn’t that be a sight? Well, Bay Area yogis are in luck because you are all invited to yoga it up in Union Square on August 7. Stephanie Snyder and Darren Main have signed on as volunteers to lead the masses, and just to add a little agave-flavored icing to this holy granola treat; registration fees benefit City of Hope . Here’s the spiel: Yoga for Hope is an event for yoga beginners and experts alike to bring awareness to the benefits of yoga practice for patients with life-threatening illnesses. Join City of Hope’s efforts to expand awareness of the importance of the mind-body-spirit connection is when battling cancer, diabetes or HIV/AIDS. Don’t forget to keep an eye out for Yoga Journal’ s sponsor booth to get a goody bag and magazine. There are also prizes and incentives to raise donations above the registration fee, for more information visit Yoga for Hope. Who says New York yogis get to have all the fun?

Originally posted here:
Yoga in Union Square

In a recent Anatomy of Yoga class with Leslie Kaminoff, we watched a video that I’ll never forget. And hopefully, neither will you. And, trust me, this all has a heck of a lot to do with your yoga practice! It features anatomist Gil Hedley explaining The Fuzz. You can watch it yourself, but be aware that it shows him working with a cadaver. Yet it’s such an important piece of knowledge that I’d like to define this incredible concept for you, and you can choose to view it or not and still take it forward into your daily life. Each night while we sleep, or any time we’re still for long periods, like sitting in a car on a long road trip, our body begins to build collagen fibers. They look a little like cotton candy, and are just as sticky, causing friction between what should be smoothly sliding muscle surfaces. The end result is the stiffness you might feel in the morning getting out of bed or standing up after watching a three-hour movie. Now, this is usually no big deal for those of us with a consistent movement practice. We feel creaky, we do yoga, we’re good. But if you don’t lubricate your joints and move your muscles to break up the fuzz regularly enough, it begins to knit together. Over time, the normal, subtle stiffness becomes limited movement, and even pain as the spider-webbed, bound body tries to move against resistance. Instead of confronting the fuzz, to avoid discomfort, many people simply move less. It becomes a vicious cycle that we often chock up to aging, but really is a cumulative, and mostly avoidable, buildup of fuzz. Now, that’s not to say that all physical slowdown is due to the fuzz, and if we simply stretch more, we will never feel the effects of age. But there is much more we can do to keep our bodies–and therefore our minds–as open, vital, and free as possible. This parallels the yoga teaching about samskaras , the mental and emotional patterns that make up our conditioning. Samskara is a neutral word, indicating simply the actions we take that lead to certain results, but our habits can lead to either constructive or destructive outcomes, depending on our goals. The yogi seeks to strengthen those positive habits that maintain the full range of spiritual motion, and, importantly, dissolve the ones that have become diminishing and threaten to hold us back from reaching our potential of living from love, light, and joy. It’s exciting to see science finding that the same lessons apply to our actual body as well. In fact, I see the two as interconnected, since continual mental and emotional stress, for example, leads almost unerringly to muscle tension, which is a direct physical manifestation of the samskara of anxiety or fear. This is the mind-body connection the yogis have known about for centuries, and though sometimes yoga philosophy can get pretty obtuse, much of it can be translated into the real world as simply as you want to make it. That’s nice to know when you’re looking for tools you can apply today, right this moment, that can help you release what doesn’t serve you, and keep, even amplify, the things that do. Yoga doesn’t have to be confusing. It’s the art of living in balance, and taking actions that fuel your happiness, whatever that means for you. From there, you’ll be inspired to offer some of that goodness to the world through your creative self-expression, and with a burning desire to help those who are still suffering. This is the road map the samskaras offer us: What kind of a life are you carving out through your choices? Is it shaping up as you’d like? If not, then start chipping away at another way of being until it more closely resembles your heart. The next time you’re on the mat, or doing a few Sun Salutes just out of bed, you are not only solidifying healthy habits, you’re creating the potential for new ones to take root in your life in so many ways. Here’s a great all-in-one pose for dissolving restrictive samskaras, and, with them, the fuzz. Do it in the morning just after you get out of bed, and you’ll greet your whole day with more resiliency, flexibility, and freedom from all sorts of fuzz. Core Pose: Low Lunge with Cat/Cow Variation Come into a Low Lunge position with your right foot forward. Your front knee is stacked over the heel, not out in front of it, to avoid knee pressure. The back knee stretches comfortably behind the hip, not directly under it. The front foot and back knee are hip-distance, or about two fists-width apart. Keep your hands on the floor, framing your front foot at first. Take a moment to back off the hips, since you don’t want to sink too far into this pose. This can cause you to overstretch the connective tissue. Instead, lift out of the pose a bit until you can ground the foot and knee, draw in the low belly, and bring your torso upright, hands onto the knee or thigh. You should now feel a stretch in the center of your muscles, not in the back hip crease and front sitting bone only. Your legs are also working to maintain the buoyancy of the pose. Inhale, carve your tailbone long, and arch your spine. Keep the back of your neck long, and lift the chest sky-high. As you do this move, pull your shoulders back and slide your shoulder blades closer. Exhale and round your back. Remember to keep the length in your lower back and roll more through the upper back and shoulder area. Gently lower your chin for a mindful neck stretch. This pose is meant to lift through the back of your heart and spread the shoulder blades wider apart than it is to press out your lower back curve. So although you will activate the low belly fully on your exhalation, lift it in and up towards the chest, rather than squeezing it back towards the spine only. Repeat the spinal motion with your breath for 5-10 rounds, then return to a Down Dog or Child’s Pose, and repeat on the left side.

Original post: 
Fuzz Buster

In a recent Anatomy of Yoga class with Leslie Kaminoff, we watched a video that I’ll never forget. And hopefully, neither will you. And, trust me, this all has a heck of a lot to do with your yoga practice! It features anatomist Gil Hedley explaining The Fuzz. You can watch it yourself, but be aware that it shows him working with a cadaver. Yet it’s such an important piece of knowledge that I’d like to define this incredible concept for you, and you can choose to view it or not and still take it forward into your daily life. Each night while we sleep, or any time we’re still for long periods, like sitting in a car on a long road trip, our body begins to build collagen fibers. They look a little like cotton candy, and are just as sticky, causing friction between what should be smoothly sliding muscle surfaces. The end result is the stiffness you might feel in the morning getting out of bed or standing up after watching a three-hour movie. Now, this is usually no big deal for those of us with a consistent movement practice. We feel creaky, we do yoga, we’re good. But if you don’t lubricate your joints and move your muscles to break up the fuzz regularly enough, it begins to knit together. Over time, the normal, subtle stiffness becomes limited movement, and even pain as the spider-webbed, bound body tries to move against resistance. Instead of confronting the fuzz, to avoid discomfort, many people simply move less. It becomes a vicious cycle that we often chock up to aging, but really is a cumulative, and mostly avoidable, buildup of fuzz. Now, that’s not to say that all physical slowdown is due to the fuzz, and if we simply stretch more, we will never feel the effects of age. But there is much more we can do to keep our bodies–and therefore our minds–as open, vital, and free as possible. This parallels the yoga teaching about samskaras , the mental and emotional patterns that make up our conditioning. Samskara is a neutral word, indicating simply the actions we take that lead to certain results, but our habits can lead to either constructive or destructive outcomes, depending on our goals. The yogi seeks to strengthen those positive habits that maintain the full range of spiritual motion, and, importantly, dissolve the ones that have become diminishing and threaten to hold us back from reaching our potential of living from love, light, and joy. It’s exciting to see science finding that the same lessons apply to our actual body as well. In fact, I see the two as interconnected, since continual mental and emotional stress, for example, leads almost unerringly to muscle tension, which is a direct physical manifestation of the samskara of anxiety or fear. This is the mind-body connection the yogis have known about for centuries, and though sometimes yoga philosophy can get pretty obtuse, much of it can be translated into the real world as simply as you want to make it. That’s nice to know when you’re looking for tools you can apply today, right this moment, that can help you release what doesn’t serve you, and keep, even amplify, the things that do. Yoga doesn’t have to be confusing. It’s the art of living in balance, and taking actions that fuel your happiness, whatever that means for you. From there, you’ll be inspired to offer some of that goodness to the world through your creative self-expression, and with a burning desire to help those who are still suffering. This is the road map the samskaras offer us: What kind of a life are you carving out through your choices? Is it shaping up as you’d like? If not, then start chipping away at another way of being until it more closely resembles your heart. The next time you’re on the mat, or doing a few Sun Salutes just out of bed, you are not only solidifying healthy habits, you’re creating the potential for new ones to take root in your life in so many ways. Here’s a great all-in-one pose for dissolving restrictive samskaras, and, with them, the fuzz. Do it in the morning just after you get out of bed, and you’ll greet your whole day with more resiliency, flexibility, and freedom from all sorts of fuzz. Core Pose: Low Lunge with Cat/Cow Variation Come into a Low Lunge position with your right foot forward. Your front knee is stacked over the heel, not out in front of it, to avoid knee pressure. The back knee stretches comfortably behind the hip, not directly under it. The front foot and back knee are hip-distance, or about two fists-width apart. Keep your hands on the floor, framing your front foot at first. Take a moment to back off the hips, since you don’t want to sink too far into this pose. This can cause you to overstretch the connective tissue. Instead, lift out of the pose a bit until you can ground the foot and knee, draw in the low belly, and bring your torso upright, hands onto the knee or thigh. You should now feel a stretch in the center of your muscles, not in the back hip crease and front sitting bone only. Your legs are also working to maintain the buoyancy of the pose. Inhale, carve your tailbone long, and arch your spine. Keep the back of your neck long, and lift the chest sky-high. As you do this move, pull your shoulders back and slide your shoulder blades closer. Exhale and round your back. Remember to keep the length in your lower back and roll more through the upper back and shoulder area. Gently lower your chin for a mindful neck stretch. This pose is meant to lift through the back of your heart and spread the shoulder blades wider apart than it is to press out your lower back curve. So although you will activate the low belly fully on your exhalation, lift it in and up towards the chest, rather than squeezing it back towards the spine only. Repeat the spinal motion with your breath for 5-10 rounds, then return to a Down Dog or Child’s Pose, and repeat on the left side.

Read the original here: 
Fuzz Buster

My office was burgled (what a lovely sounding word! It sounds like water pouring over rocks in a cool stream) on Friday, while I was in a back room speaking with someone. For the first two hours afterward, I thought, oh, this is just like trying to find the toothpaste on my bathroom counter. That substantial amount of cash is here somewhere. I just can’t find it. When the reality of it sank in, my gut writhed for a few minutes. Until–and this is the yoga part –until I realized this is what is. It is exactly like my hamstrings. They are short. No whining about that helps. No gnashing of teeth, no “why did this happen to me”, no “I should have done this or that”. My hamstrings are short. The money is gone. Can’t do much about it. Except. Except that I can look at the situation gently, and positively, and with a lot of love for myself. I can soothe my gut by contemplating the good things that might come from this. I can dwell on how lucky I am to be safe, happy, and engaged in work that will never land me in jail where the food is bad and my yoga props might be confiscated. A sense of humor comes back to me. Which, strangely, helps me wish my burglar friend well. For him (it turns out I met him before, which is why I know he is a him), I wish peace, well being, a relaxed gut, and good life choices ahead. In fact, I’ll go all out and say I wish long hamstrings for him. Somehow I know my own flexibility on this point will help both of us. Here’s what yoga is teaching me: What is, is. I do better when I let go. Looking at everything with peace and love makes it all better. It turns a burglary into water pouring over rocks in a cool stream. How cool is that? Has yoga done this to you, too? Thanks to yoga for the alchemy in this, and thanks to you for the conversation. Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, speaker, and workshop wonderwoman in North Bay, Ontario.  Join her at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at Dr. Kristin Shepherd.

Original post:
Burgled!

Feeling a little burnt out on your yoga practice? How about a little inspiration for your practice from a few of the greats? Check out Krisnamacharya’s totally zen moving Sarvangasana (Shoulderstand)! And from Mr. Iyengar himself: Who, or what, inspires your practice?

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Old School Yoga

The other day, my yoga teacher said something I keep thinking about. “In class,” Louie said, “we practice how to practice. But at home, we practice.” Of all things, this made me think of my date night with Neil this past weekend. On Friday night we went all out–hired a babysitter, made a reservation at a Japanese tapas place by the beach, dressed cute (in a summery dress and sandals for me and a striped button down and jeans for Neil). We had a great time – talking and eating and planning and dreaming – but the bill and the babysitter added up. Then on Saturday, we had a no fuss date night at home. We put Lucien to bed early and I set the table and gathered vegetables (lettuce, kale) from the garden while Neil made black bean veggie burgers and yam fries. We wore shorts and t-shirts and were sweaty from a day out and about in the summertime sun. For dessert, we ate raspberries from the garden. Guess which one was more fun? As important as it is to be out in the world – or in the yoga center – at home with the ones you love is where true practice begins. Jessica Berger Gross is the author of enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer (Skyhorse), she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.

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Date Night

It’s my first week in a new town, having moved from NYC to Austin to focus on yoga, travel and all that it entails for me right now. It’s slower here, no doubt, with a local news story lamenting that the new city Metro system doesn’t have enough people riding it! I’ll soon be parking my grateful derriere on one of the new, cushioned seats (with actual airspace between bodies) on my way to a yoga class. I miss New York, but I’m interested to see what health and yogic possibilities lay ahead for me here. In this transitional period, where cardboard moving boxes vie for my attention along with daily responsibilities (as I write this blog, all my books sit next to me in U-Haul containers, awaiting their freedom), I can’t help but feel, well, empty. This is a specific kind of emptiness, not the windswept sensation after an emotional storm, or the primordial suspension of a deep meditation. It’s more like a mixture of mourning and excitement, so evenly matched that it generates the time-standing-still feeling you have while retaining the breath after an inhale, or letting the exhale slide into a silent moment of nothingness before inspiring again. And when I say, “inspiring,” I mean breathing in and getting back to the creation of my life’s work, my dharma.  This is the calm before the flood, when creative elements will sweep me forward. And I have to be ready to both direct the wave and ride it into places I can’t foresee. It is scary, yet wonderful. I wonder if this could be the Middle Path the Buddha spoke of, or the “field” between happiness and sorrow that Rumi wrote about so eloquently. I think of it as The Void, taken from the Runes, the ancient Viking stones etched with symbols used by those seeking clarity. Here’s one definition of The Void from the Book of Runes : The Unknowable represents the path of Karma–the sum total of your actions and their consequences, the lessons that are yours for this lifetime. And yet, this Rune teaches that the very debts of old karma shift and evolve as you shift and evolve. Nothing is predestined. What beckons is the creative power of the unknown. We all hit The Void at one time or another, sometimes multiple times a day. It’s that pause that seems hollow but that is actually pregnant with possibility, full of creative energy, or shakti, waiting for you to decide which action to take next to direct it into form. The Void itself is often what ignites fear: of the unknown, of letting go, of being alone, of moving to that next level of ourselves, and risking failure and public ridicule to do it. Many people never cross The Void, because of what seems an impenetrable closed door of “I can’t, I shouldn’t” or “I’m not enough” blocking the entrance to the bridge across.   Yet when we practice yoga with as much determination off the mat as we do on it, when we get present and focus on what really matters–living completely, passionately, and without regret–we take destiny back into our own hands, the doorway magically opens, and, Void or not … we leap. Here’s a pose that may help you understand how solid the Void actually is, as you begin to see that you’re always where you stand, and from there, you can channel this veritable ocean of energy towards your biggest, brightest goals. Core Pose: Ankle-to-Knee Chair(Eka Pada Galavasana Preparation) This pose leads to taking flight in the arm balance of Eka Pada Galavasana, but for our purposes, we’re going to start where we are. Running too fast into the Void can cause you to miss out on the information coming at you from the core, and from your environment, a conversation that needs your full attention. Come to the front of your mat, feet hip-distance apart. Bend both knees and generate as much lift from your lower belly as from your lower back. Keep your spine long as you ground into your left foot and lift your right knee mindfully into your chest. Don’t rush; rather, make every moment of this pose an opportunity to find balance again. Once you’re stable, cross your right ankle over your left knee. Roll the thigh outward so your right knee lowers, and sit down deeper. Bring your hands to the chest, palms together in anjali mudra, which celebrates your connection to the Divine, or universal energy. Offer your heart forward as the hips move back to anchor you in this new place of balance and freedom. Take 5-10 breaths here, then return to Chair Pose, and fold forward over bent or straight legs for a few moments before repeating the balance on the other side.      

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Filling the Void

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Parent-baby and parent-toddler yoga classes seem to be growing in popularity, but does it really help the children find their center? Shivani Vora from the Wall Street Journal reports. “A growing number of classes around the U.S. and DVD programs insist kids can reap all the benefits of yoga–but in a less-structured format. They say that yoga is calming for children, teaches them more awareness about their bodies and even helps with their development. But Punam Kashyap, a senior developmental and behavioral pediatrician at the Institute of Child Development at the Joseph Sanzari Children’s Hospital in Hackensack, N.J., says there is very little evidence that the practice can have a positive effect on young children. “It’s a theory, not a fact that yoga can calm babies,” she says. “That said, as long as your child is having fun in a class, it’s not going to harm them in any way.” As parents, we were curious if yoga would do anything to mellow out our small children. We tested three classes and a DVD for comparison. (Read the entire blog for the details of the “experiment.”) Our daughter paid attention for at least half of the DVD before her attention started to waver. She attempted a few of the poses and was fascinated by the animal and nature sounds like a hissing snake and barking like a dog. We aren’t sure if it made her any calmer, but she did have a good time and now keeps asking to “do yoga” to her disc. While the children didn’t seem noticeably more chilled out in the end, yoga did amuse them and introduce them to a practice they can use to de-stress when they’re older. For us, that makes yoga for kids a keeper.” What do you think about kids doing yoga? Are they old enough to reap the benefits?

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Is Yoga for Kids any Good?

You know your child is a yogi in training when: 1. He knows what a neti pot is and can explain how to use it and why. 2. She sings along to Krisha Das and Wah! 3. Not only can he do cobbler’s pose, he calls the pose by its Sanskrit name and prefers if you do, too. 4. When he wears his Ganesh T-shirt, he wants to “sing the song about Ganesh.” 5. He is MUCH more excited about the Babar yoga book than Toy Story 3. 6. Favorite foods include: avocado, peaches, quinoa pasta, steel cut  oatmeal, kale, and hemp milk. 7. The stuffed animals in your house play yoga rather than war. 8. He drinks chamomile tea in a sippy cup. 9. She gets really, really happy when she hears Mama’s off to yoga class. 10. He — see photo above — does a chair back bend off his high chair in the morning just because. How do you know your child is a yogi? Jessica Berger Gross is the author of enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer (Skyhorse), she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.

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Ten Ways You Know Your Child is a Yogi

This morning, I talked with my lovely man about all of your comments on home practice vs. yoga classes. We love both, but he feels pretty strongly about his class last night. He’s been working like a Tasmanian Devil this week and found it beautiful to go to his yin yoga class, during which they are now holding some of their poses for 15 minutes. (Holy moly! Might as well ask me to fly across the Atlantic. Without a plane, I mean.) “What about my face?” he asks. “How could I remember to relax my jaw without prompting?  And my eyes, how do I let those go? Oh, and my throat, I love it when she reminds me to relax my throat. And Savasana is so good when someone else is in charge.” This is the reason I’m going to class at lunch today. There is something wonderful and easy about receiving the practice. Yes, I’m doing the work, and making all the personal choices about how much, how far, how strenuous or not. But, oh, how lovely it is, sometimes, to have my mind settled into each moment of each asana, rather than wondering what I’ll do next, jeez, there’s the dog at the door wanting a walk, woops, that’s my dad on the phone, and all of that. It’s as though, in class, they take me by the hand and just walk me down a path through the woods. I don’t have to choose the path or check my directions or wonder what’s ahead.   Just hold the hand and walk. That sounds good to me today. How about you? Thanks to yoga for being so many things to so many people, and thanks to you for the conversation. Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, speaker, and workshop wonderwoman in North Bay, Ontario.  Join her at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at Dr. Kristin Shepherd.

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Home Practice or Studio?

1.Do your hamstrings become close to the same length at any point? 2. Have you found clothes that contain your gut while doing Downward Dog? (Perhaps you don’t have a gut anymore.) 3. How long did it take you to get the bandha thing going? 4. (This is directly related to #3) Can you lift your bum and legs off the ground when doing Uttitha Padmasana? How long did it take you to learn that?  (Are your arms disproportionately long by any chance?) 5. Has anyone ever snapped a hip in two doing Pigeon Pose?   6. Do you like yourself more, now, than you did before starting yoga? (I do, for the most part. Something to do with the daily determination to be kind to myself, I suspect.) 7. Do you fantasize about teaching yoga? Classes at sunrise? In temples? In India? (If you currently teach yoga in temples in India, do you fantasize about teaching yoga at sunset in Machu Picchu?) I do. I have long, flowing hair and long, flowing hamstrings in these fantasies. 8. Does yoga elbow its way into all of your conversations? (For example, your dentist says you need to replace a crown. You say, that reminds me of forward bends in class today. Your dentist doesn’t understand.)  Most of the people in my life hope this wears off at some point.  9.  Do you still love it?  As much as you did when you were new? That last one is the one that matters to me most. I’d love to hear that it’s possible to love this for the rest of my life. Thanks to yoga for inspiring questions, and thanks to you for the conversation.

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Questions for Yogi Experts

  Now that Lucien is two-and-a-half, friends and acquaintances are starting to ask me whether we’re planning to have another baby. It’s something I’ve been thinking about at least five times a day-okay, maybe ten. Lucien is growing up, already more a boy than a baby. No more nursing, no more carrying him in a carrier like my newborn kangaroo.  Lots of mothers I know with kids Lucien’s age are already pregnant, or home with new babies.  In Lucien’s music and art classes several moms are on maternity leave with their infants, juggling toddlers and newborns. Mothers in his morning daycare (that just ended) are starting to show, too. Each time I bring another bag of Lucien’s clothes upstairs to the storage closet, I wonder if I’ll ever need these baby things again, or if I should give everything away now.   It was difficult for Neil and me to have Lucien. A miscarriage, years of trying, an international adoption application process, acupuncture, fertility treatments…. I know there are many of you out there who can relate. Dare we test fate and try again? Could we handle the disappointment if it didn’t work out? Could I handle going through it all again and this time with an energetic toddler? In yoga we learn will full intention without concern for results, but it is really tough to apply when talking about offspring. And it’s not just that. As much as I love spending most of my time with Lucien, there’s another part of me. The me who wants to start writing another book, the me who wants to delve deeper into my yoga practice-maybe even study with the Iyengar family in Pune, India in a few years-the me that wants to travel the world.  These are all things I can imagine doing with Lucien, but I’m not sure if I could manage making these dreams come true with two children. Dreaming big is important, but so is being practical, and Neil and I have only so much in the way of energy and emotional, not to mention financial, resources. Besides, we both feel more than santosha , contended, by our band of three. And then I think of babies…. And how Lucien’s presence in our lives is the very best blessing, the most meaningful experience imaginable. Much more precious than any book, trip, or retreat.   Maybe it’s ultimately a question of being in the moment. Perhaps now is my time for young children and bathtub Saturday nights, for early morning wake ups and squeezing in my yoga practice and writing when I can. There will be time later for books and India, for work and alone time, for sleep. And yet, I can’t deny the side (is this what it means to hold the opposites in yoga?) of me that’s ready to move on from babies and into the world of three-and-four-year-olds, with kindergarten looking like a finish line of sorts. (Free childcare!  Six whole work hours a day!) On many days, one feels like the perfect number for us.   At age 38, with a history of difficulty getting pregnant, I can’t help but feel like it’s now or never. Can I make a decision and embrace it, either way? Or do I allow myself to remain ambivalent and process these feelings for another few months or year?    How did you decide to have — or not have – one more?  And how, if at all, did your dedication to yoga play a part in the decision?   Jessica Berger Gross is the author of enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer (Skyhorse), she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.

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One More?

Getty Images Starting you kids out young in yoga sounds like a great idea, but would you bring your child to a hot yoga class? In case you haven’t heard, Bikram’s self-proclaimed “torture chambers” are a series of twenty-six postures in a 104-degree room for 90 minutes. It is an extreme workout. Instructors say it’s natural to feel nauseous, dizzy and maybe even black out. This blogger from MomLogic.com starts investigating after a mother brings her four-year-old to the weekend hot yoga class. “At the beginning of the class, this little yogi was trying each of the moves, naturally having trouble holding any pose. By 15 minutes into the class, the poor thing was playing with her water bottle, spraying herself and rolling around on her towel. I am in my mid-30s, and I can barely stay focused for the hour and a half. So I totally understood how this little one was bored out of her mind. As the class continued, she got up and down and tried more moves. Of course her mom kept trying to correct her, but the instructor insisted that she let her daughter learn on her own. Meanwhile, I was hot as hell and wondering, Is this healthy for the child? So of course, back at work, I just had to get an expert opinion. Pediatrician and momlogic expert Dr. Alanna Levine said the following: “I do not recommend that young children participate in Bikram yoga . Children handle high temperatures differently than adults. They have a higher surface-area-to-mass ratio, which means they absorb heat more than adults do. They also have a smaller blood volume, which makes it harder for them to dissipate the heat. Lastly, they have a slower rate of sweat production than adults, and sweating is a mechanism to cool us off. Children are not ‘mini adults’ — and should not be treated as such.” I thought it was only fair to call up the Bikram Yoga College of India and talk to someone there. Jessica, 32, has been a Bikram instructor since 2008. Here’s how our chat went: ml: Does Bikram have a minimum age requirement?  Jessica: There are no strict rules, as long as the child is quiet and well-behaved. There’s a youth category for the annual Bikram competition. Bikram, the founder, has three children, and they all started doing “hot yoga ” at a very early age. ml: How old was your youngest student ever? J: I haven’t have any younger than 9 or 10. Sometimes younger students wait outside during  the standing series and come in for the floor series. ml: How would you respond to our doctor’s claims that Bikram is unhealthy for kids? J: With any physical practice, you should have a doctor’s recommendation. A decision to do Bikram should be taken person by person. It’s case by case. What do you think? Do kids as young as 4 belong in a hot- yoga class? Have you ever brought your child to yoga ? What types of yoga are acceptable?” Read more here .

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Hot Yoga for Kids?

I think yoga is a sport, just like the World Cup. Hear me out. Tuesday was one of those days. I love yoga, love my home practice, love class, but there are some days, some weeks, even, when it all goes off the rails.   This is one of those weeks. I’ve been in hotels two weekends in a row, I’ve seen my share of drive-through windows over those weekends, and my hotel practice has been less thorough than my home practice. I’ve been away so much that my dog rolls her eyes when I come home. The result is that my body and spirit are tired, chunky, and unsociable.   It took Olympian determination to get myself to yoga class on Tuesday. It was touch-and-go all morning. I kept thinking, “I can go home for a break, I can eat, I can read, I can get some work done, I can sit here and stare out the window for an hour.” Most of these options looked much more appealing than going to class. (It’s possible some of you never feel this way. I am determined to like you anyway.) By the grace of Whatever, I get changed, get in my car, and drive to the studio. I lie down, and almost immediately I could cry, I am so happy. Class starts. My left hamstrings have shrunk considerably over the weekend, somehow, I have NO balance, my thighs and rear end burst at the inadequate seams of my formerly roomy yoga pants, and still there is no place I’d rather be. This is where the World Cup comes in.   When we go to class on these days, I think our teachers should welcome us at the door with big, glossy medals. “Would you like a medal today?”  “Yes,” I’d say. “Bronze, silver or gold?” “Are you joking? Do you have any idea how far I’ve come today?The French fries and pizza I have overcome, the hotel coffee, the hours in the car, the dog’s face, and lethargy the size of an oil spill? Give me the gold, absolutely. I am the champion of the world today.” There are days when we should all have medals around our necks. Thanks to yoga for making me show up, and thanks to you for the conversation. Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, writer, and workshop wonderwoman in North Bay, Ontario.  Join her at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at Dr. KristinShepherd.

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Champion Yogis

I just did something so major I have to write it down to believe it. I’m relocating from New York City where I’ve lived and taught yoga for nearly a decade, to Austin, Texas. I’ve decided to relocate so that I can focus exclusively on my health, yoga, travel, and teaching for what I’m calling my yogi artist’s retreat year. After that, I’ll see where I am. The requirements of my burgeoning yoga career are intense, and living in a place like New York City doesn’t make things easy. For example, it took me 4 hours to drive 11 miles to the airport the other day, only to miss my flight. Total cost: $1,600. Austin has a shuttle that goes from my new apartment to the airport in 10 minutes. Total cost: 50 cents. I kid you not. Now, don’t get me wrong. Just like the T-shirts say, I (heart) New York. That’s why I’ve lived there for so long. But it’s time for a change, and specifically, I’m interested in what will happen to my yoga trajectory when I steep in it fully for a good period of time. This will be a Dharma Immersion, if you will. At first, I was torn about whether or not to make such a radical move. So I practiced what I teach. I put fears and judgments aside and thought about what would serve my ultimate goals the best. Right now, I require ease of travel; a location that is equidistant to both coasts and the flyover states; an affordable apartment with enough space for me to film my YouTube and training videos; and a community that values health, good food, and good yoga. A creative environment and a lack of traditional winter weather is just icing on the cake.   For these reasons and more, Austin was an obvious choice for me. The cool thing is, once I chose it, I was surrounded by so many universal green lights that I have to believe the signs are pointing me on the road I’m meant to take now. Before I was a yogi, I would have shut myself down before I ever began this journey. I probably would never have left the safety of the Midwest to try my luck in the Big Apple, or taken any of the risks that have brought me to where I am now. Yoga teaches us how to step out of our own way, remove the veils of uncertainty, and quiet the voices that tell us we’re insane to do what we are being called toward. If we can turn down the volume of our fears, it’s possible to hear that still, powerful whisper of our satya , or truth; that core voice that can move us toward transformation. We do this through cultivating a regular asana practice so our limiting patterns don’t build up and slow us down. We learn to sit in meditation and listen intently until we hear only our inner guide and not the confusing cacophony that surrounds it. We implement our lessons off the mat, do our best to be brave, and lead by example into our next incarnation of who we want to be. Most of all, when grounding is called for, we ground, and when flying beckons, we find out how wide our wingspan really is. The yogi is a shapeshifter, an energetic alchemist who uses the raw materials of experience, relationship, self-knowledge, and prana (life force) to create magic out of what others see as a static reality. Is it the perfect choice for me to take a year in Austin? Perhaps not. Staying in the city has its benefits, too. But we can always go back to what we know. So why not try going forward? Yes, it takes a big leap of faith sometimes. But we yogis have that in spades, y’all. So what is your dharma calling you to do next? Core Pose: “First Eye” Goddess This asana is one I teach and do whenever I want to envision my next move. It stimulates the forehead center, the seat of our intuition, and expands perspective away from the constriction of fear. This is why I call it the First Eye. It’s a primary tool of perception, your mind’s eye, and keeping it wide open will serve you well as you navigate your next steps along your path. Sit on your mat. Bring both feet together, knees open wide. With a long spine, tilt your sacrum and top hip crests forward as you bring your elbows onto the floor or two yoga blocks. Place your thumbs inside your eyebrows, just above your nose. Allow your forehead to release towards the thumbs even as you maintain the open hips and spinal alignment of the rest of the pose. Breathe here for 1-2 minutes, and then come into knees-together Child’s Pose for a few breaths to counterbalance the asana.  

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Moving Forward

  I’m writing this post from Fairburn Farm on Vancouver Island, a working farm and guest retreat where Neil and I have brought Lucien for a week-long summer holiday. The farm is a bucolic, heavenly spot just a ferry ride from our house in Vancouver. The views of forest and mountain and sky from the windows of the cottage we’re staying in are spectacular, but the real reason we’re here, for our third summer in a row, is the food. The guest operation is run by chef Mara Jernigan, sometimes called the Alice Waters of Vancouver Island. Meals here are a true farm-to-table experience. Breakfast is a two course affair starting with to-die-for homemade granola and berry compote, followed by omelets (with eggs and herbs from the farm, and cheese by local artisans) or frittatas or light-as-air pancakes. Dinner stretches out for hours, with each plate a celebration of local, fresh ingredients: sockeye salmon cakes with lentils and greens and green goddess dressing; rich risotto or homemade pasta or fresh from the brick oven pizza; strawberry tarts and (if it’s hot) refreshing sorbets. For lunch (which Mara doesn’t serve) we stop at a bakery in town where they mill their own grain, and bring the bread to the cheese shop next door for sandwiches that we take on a walk into a nearby park.   It’s an idyllic week, and I’m so glad I’m at a place in my life where I can enjoy it. It’s taken me a long time to get comfortable with food indulgences like this. As mentioned previously, I struggled with food issues, and my body image, for years.   When I got serious about yoga in my late twenties, I lost the weight I’d accumulated over the course of my unhappy childhood, and finally learned to eat and like healthy foods. My diet came to consist of brown rice, tofu, vegetables, black beans, and fruit–great stuff. But I soon came to be overly attached to healthy eating. If I was traveling and what I normally ate wasn’t available, I freaked out. If I gave in to temptation and ate a chocolate chip cookie, or a scoop of ice cream, or a slice or two of pizza–even if these were made lovingly with high-quality ingredients–I felt that I’d slipped, and worried that I’d backslide and return to a regularly scheduled program of unhealthy eating and ten to forty extra pounds.   This made travel-and even eating out at new places-hard. It was no fun when I showed up at Thanksgiving dinner or a Passover Seder or even a dinner party petrified of three quarters of the menu.  Or when I’d have a panic attack about “getting fat” on an otherwise romantic (and of course bread filled) trip to Paris with my husband.   As a new mom, I resolved to approach food differently. I didn’t want the scale, or my fears, to rule my life anymore–or our family vacations.  As I practiced more yoga, and studied yoga philosophy, I came to realize that my food fears weren’t in keeping with yoga after all.  The Yoga Sutras say moderation is key, as is non-attachment (in this case to the precise number on the scale.) Becoming nearly phobic about fattening food was embodying neither principle. Through a process of self-study, and the help of a good therapist, I changed. Now I eat healthy most of the time–and enjoy to the utmost the occasional treat.   What indulgences make your life a pleasure? What do you still struggle with when it comes to food and body image? And, how do you model a healthy relationship with food for your child/children? Jessica Berger Gross is the author of enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer (Skyhorse), she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.

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Food Loving Yogi

I’m in Austin, Texas, and last night took a lovely yoga class at Black Swan Yoga. Hillary, the instructor, said something so simple, it was profound. After a difficult Eka Pada Koundinyasana (Pose Dedicated to the Sage Koundinya) variation, which we were attempting during heat and humidity that created a slip-n-slide situation, we returned to a democratic Downward-Facing Dog. As we recovered, Hillary said, “If you were struggling in that last pose, then it’s good it’s over. You don’t have to think about it anymore, because it’s not happening now.” I know that I’ve said and heard countless variations on that theme in yoga classes I’ve taught and attended. Yet something about the straightforwardness with which Hillary spoke made it seem so simple to just let go of the past and along with it, all the weighty entanglements of suffering, guilt, and instant replays. Trying to change the past by keeping it running on a constant mental and emotional loop can end up frittering away your prana , or life force. Likewise, when you jet off into any scenario–imaginary or already played-out– than what is really happening in the here and now, I call it time-traveling.  We time-travel on the mat too, like when you mentally tell off an ex-boyfriend while in Crow Pose or go over your grocery list in Savasana. The danger in always traveling into what has been or what might never be, is that you lose the sensitivity it takes to stay in communication with your core wisdom. That root awareness can only reveal itself when you drop the baggage you’re carrying and turn all your attention toward accessing the tools you have right where you stand. At first when Hillary made that statement, I thought, “Yeah, easy to say, Sister, but try doing it.” Then I remembered one day a few years back. I was standing in the subway, having recently gone through a major breakup, and my heart was hurting. The world seemed colorless and tasteless, and still, everything stung. For no reason at all, I wondered why I was feeling so bad. Was it inevitable? Or was it a choice I was making?  I decided to see if I could put my broken heart on hold, enjoy a day out in the big city, and come back to the processing part later on. In literally one instant, my pain disappeared. Gone, nada , zip. I felt free, light, and happy to be alive and experiencing all that was in front of me. I had a wonderful time before, a little while later, I decided to re-enter the growth process, a sensation that would never again be as cutting or make me feel as helpless as when I thought I had no control over it. I didn’t know that it was possible to allow myself to step into the present so fully as to be immune from the poison of confusion and regret. I’ve employed this skill many times since, and you can, too. It’s as close as a decision, as gentle as an allowing, and as natural as relaxing into being who you want to be, right this minute. Yogis call this process dharana , or concentration. It requires pratyahara , sense withdrawal, another yogic skill of reigning yourself in from obsessively poring over the past or future, and from leaking your chi, or energy. I also call it core power, and when you practice using it to become victorious over the time-traveling mind and tidal heart, you will see more clearly, and without judgment, how you wish to proceed in the only time period that you can do anything about–the one you’re in. Sometimes even teachers need teachers to remind us of this. Here’s a pose variation that can quickly return you to the present; one that gets you grounded plus gives you a taste of all the strength and vitality you hold at center. From there, no matter how life comes at you, you can choose to come right back out at it with compassion, wisdom, and grace. Core Pose: “Core” Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose) Stand with your feet about two fists-width apart. Bend your knees and reach your right fingertips diagonally out away from your right foot, wider than the right shoulder, and press them into the mat. At the same time, press your right foot into the ground strongly. On an exhalation, draw your left knee into your chest using your low belly to draw in and up toward your sternum. Begin to stack your left hip on top of the right and unfurl your left arm to the sky. Inhale as you maintain the tone in your abdominal muscles, and begin to lengthen your bent, left leg out behind you until it is parallel to the floor. Your bottom leg can remain bent or, if your flexibility allows, straighten it. Keep your standing leg firm and foot rooted even as you draw into and express from your center in the pose. Do 3-5 repetitions on this side then bring both feet back down into the starting position. Take a gentle forward fold, clasping opposite elbows. Find your Earth-to-core connection and repeat the pose on the left side.  

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Stop Time-Traveling

Two fantastic things occurred over the last 24 hours. 1. We experienced an earthquake yesterday. Very exciting. It lasted 26 seconds. The dog growled for a few seconds, and the antennae on the TV shook for a full minute. In fact, the quake shook much of the province, which was wonderful, because it led to phone calls with my mother in Ottawa and my sister in Toronto. It’s the kind of thing everyone wants to talk about.  2. I tried naked yoga this morning. My goal was to last longer than 26 seconds. There is no doubt I was shaken more by the naked yoga than the quake. If you haven’t tried it, if your dad is British, say, and you’re uneasy in short sleeves, if you wear flannel clown pants to bed every night and peel your socks off during the middle of the night as you become unbearably hot–if you do all of that–well, we can talk. (If this isn’t you and you’re the type who goes naked to the movies, you have no idea what I’m talking about. In my next life I’ll be just like you.) The first 26 seconds are spent dismayed by the complex surface of my thighs, which look as though they have undergone several earthquakes of their own. Then I forget about them, perhaps because it is hotter this morning than it’s been all summer, and as humid as cottage cheese. My first forward bend makes me sweat. I make it to 40 minutes, naked. I put my clown pants back on for seated postures, to avoid rug burn, I say to myself. I conclude that this naked thing is no big deal. And then something unexpected happens. I move off the rug and onto the wood floor for Savasana. And, oh, oh, oh, the floor is as cool as ice cream on my poached back, so cool that I take my clown pants off again for the last couple of minutes. I press my low back into the floor and when I relax it makes a deep, suction-y, rumbling, farting sound that is the best thing I have EVER heard during my practice.  A soft, funny earthquake of my very own. I am CERTAIN you have things to teach me about your naked (or not) home practice. My ears are quaking. Thanks to earthquakes, to cool floors, and to you for the conversation. Join Kristin at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at http://kristinshepherd.ca

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An Earth Moving Experience

I was out at lunch with a friend in Brooklyn the other day. She’s Israeli, and she enjoys teaching me Yiddish words that seem random. (Like the word for suspenders, or shleykes .) I was telling her about my decision to spend the rest of 2010 engaged in a hugging practice. For the first half of the year, I toured like crazy, a rewarding yet hectic experience of meeting students and studio owners across the country. For the next few months, and into 2011, I’m going to hug in, or streamline and focus as much as possible, on what positively serves my goals of teaching Core Strength principles to people. And I intend to limit the things that drain my energy unnecessarily so that I have more quality instruction to share when I do teach. “Gurnisht!” my friend interjected. “What?” I replied. She explained that in Yiddish, this word means “done” or “a decision made.” That’s it, that’s all, that’s all she wrote. Gurnisht is what we do whenever we choose not to participate in something in favor of doing something else. Yogis go a step further, We aim to bring a consciousness and compassion to our choices, so the decisions we make end up helping us to stay healthy and balanced, with energy to give to the important projects and relationships that nourish us in return. I know that, for me at least, it’s much easier to say yes than to say no. It’s uncomfortable to disappoint people. It’s also intense to keep energy inside that could have gone out to something or someone else, as anyone knows who has ever held Chair Pose for what seems like an eternity instead of running screaming out if the room. The key to balance is to know when a yes or a no will best serve your highest good. Often, my students express anxiety about saying no, because it feels like a negative thing. Well, it inherently is, and yet when we realize that a boundary can be as positive as an offering, our perspective of saying gurnisht might also shift. After all, without banks, a river becomes a stagnant swamp. If we truly want to move anything forward in our lives, it’s important to first identify the areas to which we want to give our commitments. Then, the borders we build with the solidity of our focus around those agreements encourage our energy to flow forward into action. Over time, these positive habits carve a path toward our preferred creations, careers, loves, and life choices. This sounds great, but it is supremely challenging to do, whether you’re saying yes to a wonderful opportunity or no to participating in relationships or responsibilities that take you off track of what you wish to cultivate. Understanding when to employ agreement or denial is a skill we use each time we step onto the mat. In our asanas, in any given moment, we get chances to hug in or expand in infinite ways: Do you want to express outward into Full Wheel or back off in Bridge Pose to protect an injured shoulder or to save energy? Through refining our choices based on what we think will empower our ultimate harmony of sthira-sukha , or steadiness and ease, we learn how to more easily navigate the constant stream of requests coming from within and, once we move off the mat, from the outside world. One could even say that sthira is our no, and sukha is the freedom and joy of our big yes that sthira helps to make possible. After all, there can hardly be one without the other. In our poses and in our lives, we employ not only conscious yeses, but conscious nos. Yoga teaches us that when you choose your dharma, and step into the current of your highest expression of health and happiness, freedom and delight, you undeniably serve the highest good of everyone else around you. Think about that for a moment. We yogis know that even though good is served doesn’t mean it will feel good to say no to drama and yes to our dharma. At times, moving toward our own truth can cause anger, fear, insecurity, and pain–for others and for ourselves. When your heart and your core tell you that it’s time to hug in, and say “no more” to leaking your attention and prana (life force)–instead making room for freedom from suffering and freedom to be yourself–remember the principle of gurnisht and don’t do it! Core Pose: Half Chaturanga Dandasana Just because this is half a Chaturanga doesn’t mean it’s not fully challenging. I see so many students rushing or collapsing through full Chaturanga, and they flirt with shoulder, elbow and wrist strain, instead of reaping the core and arm-strengthening benefits of the pose. This variation will help you back off to go deeper. Coming into effective alignment and generating the freedom of more power and safety means you have to create boundaries all around the pose. Begin in Plank Pose, fingers wide, palms and fingertips grounding. Place your knees down on the mat, not under the hips, but farther back. Remain lifted at the navel with a long tailbone and spine. Reach your chest forward between the upper arms without sinking toward the floor and winging the shoulder blades; they stay firmly on your back. Hug your elbows in, not squeezing the ribs but also not leaking energy by opening too wide. Keep the elbows directly over your wrists. On an exhalation, float your heart forward to maintain the vertical line of your forearms, push the floor with your hands, pull up the side waists and lower belly, and begin to lower, by about 2 to 4 inches. Resist the urge to go to as far as full Chaturanga. Staying higher will keep you working from the belly, or center, of your muscles, so you gain tone instead of stressing connective tissue and joints. Try 3-5 repetitions, holding each Half Chaturanga for 1-3 breaths. Press back into Child’s Pose and rest for 1 minute after your last pose.  

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Hugging in–and saying No

The sigh with the first sip of coffee. The click of my mug when I set it on the coffee table. The grunt when I realize my left hamstrings are still half the length of my right hamstrings. Ujjayi breathing, when I remember to do it. Seagulls squawking outside. The yeah! yeah! yeah! I say under my breath with my handstand and anything resembling a back bend. Heaving groans that ease their way into regular breaths during side twists. The big, fat sighs that settle me into Savasana. Shanti, shanti, shanti, which I whisper to the lake (don’t know why I whisper at home). The tickety-tickety-tickety of Rosie, my dog, who hears me whisper and comes to join me after her own upward dog, downward dog series. It’s worth it just for the sounds, isn’t it? What are your favorites?   Thanks to yoga for the sounds and thanks to you for the conversation. Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, writer, and workshop wonderwoman in North Bay, Ontario.  Please join me at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at Dr. KristinShepherd.

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The Sounds of Yoga

  I just got back from Feathered Pipe Ranch in Montana–my first-ever time away from Lucien and first out-of-town yoga workshop in years. When I got there I had a bad headache and a guilty conscience. Had I made a huge mistake in leaving my two-and-a-half year-old son? Was I a bad parent for ditching him while doing something–studying yoga–that was all about me? How would Neil and Lucien manage to survive a day without me, much less five?   Sure, I was there to study with one of my favorite yoga teachers in the world, Marla Apt. Yes, Neil and Lucien are as close as could be and Neil had half convinced me that I deserved this break. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was somehow wrong for me to be there.   Then we began to practice. Three hours of asana in the morning, two and half hours in the afternoon of asana and pranayama, with time in between and after class to read, think, meditate, talk to Marla and the other yogis, and just be.   Marla is a gifted and generous teacher. Her sequences are magical, her instructions brilliant, her adjustments incredibly insightful. During our time together my asana practice took a serious leap forward. I came to remember something, too: how important asana is to me. As much as I treasure everything else yoga has brought me closer to–yoga philosophy, conscious living and parenting, healthy eating, the creative life–yoga asana is the daily tonic I need in order to make all that possible.   Each day at the ranch I felt calmer, more open, freer. My headache disappeared and my tense shoulders became soft. My guilty conscience eased. I felt more like me. I promised myself then and there I’d rededicate myself to my home practice and my weekly classes with my wonderful Vancouver teacher Louie Ettling in Vancouver. I also vowed to continue studying with Marla whenever possible.   By the way, Lucien and Neil did great. My “baby” didn’t cry once over his missing Mommy as I’d worried he might. According to Neil, whenever my name came up Lucien would smile and say “Momma’s at a yoga retreat! In Montana! Downward dog!” The truth is Lucien loves his Daddy, and feels just as comfortable with him as he does with me.    When the retreat was over, Neil and Lucien picked me up at the airport in Vancouver. “Momma!” Lucien said, and hugged me tight. “You seem so much lighter,” Neil said when he saw me, with a kiss.  I was beaming, breathing, easier in my body than I’d been in a long time.  And committed to staying that way. Do you make enough time for yourself? What part of you practice needs re-commitment? Sharing here may help you keep your intention!   Jessica Berger Gross is the author of enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer (Skyhorse), she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.

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Re-committed to Yoga

I’m about to do something radical. Something I’ve never done  before. I’m about to pack my yoga mat, board a plane, and leave Lucien for five whole days while I go on a yoga retreat.  He’s two-and-a-half and we’ve never spent a night apart. Until a few months ago when we finished breastfeeding, going away without him wasn’t even an option. (I never managed to get the hang of pumping.) I can count on both hands the days we’ve been away from each other for more than seven or eight hours.  My husband Neil has been out of town a dozen times or more.  Not jetting off to a man spa or anything. But every month or two or three he gives a talk or has an academic conference or meeting to attend in Ann Arbor or Sweden or Atlanta.  Lucien and I hold down the fort here. Now it’s my turn. Thanks to my husband (and morning day-care plus a  babysitter) I’ll be studying for five days with one of my favorite  teachers, Marla Apt, at the Feathered Pipe Ranch in Montana. I’m elated–and scared, too.  Sure, Lucien and his dad are as close as can be, but will my baby be okay without his momma? As much as I want to go on the retreat, as eager as I am to study with Marla, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. The day I signed up for the trip I practically had a panic attack and needed Neil and  two of my best friends to convince me to buy my ticket. The truth is, while I’m worried about leaving Lucien and how much we’ll miss one another, I know he’ll be fine, more than fine with his dad. They’ll have a great time. And I’m longing for the chance to rediscover my yoga practice-and myself-while on the retreat. I love being a mom and I love the pace of life with a young child, but  I need a break. What I’m most looking forward to is the stillness, the alone time, not having to run to catch a bus after Savasana. But I’m going to miss my boy like crazy. I’ll let you know how it goes… What was it like the first time you spent a night or two away from  your child or children? Jessica Berger Gross is the author of enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer (Skyhorse), she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.  

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Feathered Pipe Retreat

You’ve probably heard at least something about the record breaking three-day tennis math between the United States’ John Isner and France’s Nicolas Mahut, but you may not have heard about the interview with Isner where he clearly qualifies himself as a yogi–immersed in willful intention without concern for results. “Especially once the match got past, you know, 25-all, I wasn’t really thinking,” said Isner. “Hitting a serve and trying to hit a forehand winner is the only thing I was doing.” When it did conclude, Isner dropped down to the court, rolled on his back and kicked his legs in the air–sounds like Ananda Balasana (Happy Baby Pose) to us. And we aren’t the only ones feeling inspired by Isner’s presence; Matt Harvey has put out all call for people to tweet tennis inspired haikus to his account @wimbledonpoet. To watch highlights: ESPN Sports And to write a haiku about it: @wimbledonpoet

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John Isner: Yoga Champion

What’s with the naked theme? I write a blog about loving home practice, and you, some of you, write in that you love naked yoga. I write a blog about favorite poses, and you write in about naked yoga. I write a blog about meditation or chanting or acting, for goodness sake, and some of you (is it the same people? The Naked Yoga Alliance? I don’t know!) write back that you love naked yoga. Billy Connolly, the marvelous Scottish comedian, writes that he loves an ordinary love life with his wife. A meat-and-potatoes kind of lover, he is.  He’s all about comfort. It takes some self-assuredness to admit that. I feel that way about yoga. I love yoga in my flannel pajama bottoms. I start with two t-shirts and peel one off as I warm up. Sometimes I start in socks. This naked thing? I don’t know. It’d be like grocery shopping while naked, or bowling while naked, neither of which is ever going to happen, so don’t feel you should write in about those. Besides, where I live, anyone in a canoe can see me unless I downward dog in the dark.   All right, all right! I’ll try it. I’ll try it in the dark (by the park, for a lark, with a shark. I’m going all Dr. Seuss in my nervousness.). I’ll let you know how it goes. Thanks for the conversation, I think. Kristin Shepherd lives in North Bay, Ontario. She is a chiropractor, workshop facilitator, actor, writer, and parent of two grown children and a perpetually infantile dog.  Check her out, fully clothed, at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at Dr. Kristin Shepherd. 

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Why Naked Yoga?

New York Yogis are truly the toughest, most dedicated yogis around. Thousands of mats covered the streets in Times Square and shut down the city center in order to salute the sun  and share a concrete-penetrating AUM! Check it out: Images courtesy of Lem Lattimer.

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Solstice Celebration!

Hundreds of fellow yogis celebrated the Solstice in Times Square , and Yoga Journal was on the scene. Dana Flynn from Laughing Lotus and Alanna Kaivalya taught to hundreds of eager yogis in the heart of the city that never sleeps. If one can yoga here, one can yoga anywhere. Here’s a preview of some blissful yogis…stay tuned for more updates in the coming days. Did you go to this event? Share your thoughts below and post your images to our Facebook page.

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Solstice Yoga in Times Square

When I began practicing yoga, I studied at a beautiful, inspiring, and decidedly glamorous yoga center in downtown New York City. The students saluting the sun beside me were often dancers, actresses, and models-including some big name celebrities like Russell Simmons, Woody Harrelson, and Christy Turlington-all very nice, but I couldn’t help but be intimidated.   Celebrities aside, I used to compare myself to the glossy women in my classes. They were skinny; I wasn’t. They wore high heels, designer clothes, and carried expensive handbags; I wore Converse sneakers and thrift store dresses, and ported my stuff around in a $5 Strand Bookstore bag. More important to me, they had their poses down. Handstand? Headstand? Five wheels in a row? No problem. I was struggling to simply follow along. Now I look back with compassion on the 20-something me. I must have looked cute in my bargain finds. And so what if I didn’t have my asana practice down to a science! It’s called being a beginner, right? These days, I don’t compare myself to others very much in the yoga room, but I do have to stop myself from making comparisons when it comes to Lucien and other children his age. It’s a mind game, and no good for anyone to compare where each child is at when it comes to the particulars of developmental stages. Last year at this time, moms and nannies would come up to me in the playground looking really worried. “He’s not walking yet?” they’d exclaim, as an eighteen-month old Lucien crawled up the stairs and down the slide. And my mind would race with all the worries I had about my slow to walk, not yet toddling toddler.  Nowadays, when people on the playground hear him go through his musical repertoire-don’t get me started on how many songs this boy knows by heart-I get questions about his crazy verbal skills. No, I am not drilling him with flashcards, he just happens to love language and all things musical. Of course, secretly, I can’t help but feel something like pride when mothers and nannies are impressed by Lucien’s rendition of “This Land is Your Land” or “Three Little Birds” or “Seasons of Love” but then I realize that’s a false reality.  The minute I let myself buy into the praise, is the minute I have to also buy into the fears. Is Lucien “too” shy and bookish? How are his motor skills as compared to the other kids his age? Should he be racing down the sidewalk on his balance bike rather than slowly investigating it in the backyard? All of a sudden I’m back at my glamorous yoga center, beating myself up for not yet mastering those advanced poses, rather than embracing the beauty of that 20-something me.   One of my early teachers, this one in Cambridge, Massachusetts, liked to tell us to keep our eyes on our own mat, to not compare our practice to anyone else’s. Great yogic advice-and it works just as well on the playground, too. Next time someone on the playground makes a comment about Lucien-whether praise or a concerned worry-I’ll try and smile graciously, and then let the comment go and get back to some quality time with my boy.   Jessica Berger Gross is the author of enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer (Skyhorse), she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.

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Monkey Bar Mind

I’m sitting at the Indianapolis airport after an enjoyable weekend presenting workshops at CityYoga, Nikki Myers’ fantastic studio. I know of Nikki through her program, Yoga of Recovery, which gives addicts holistic tools for navigating the intense waters of their addiction and preventing relapse. She’s a living example of using the power of awareness and yoga to change a life from destructive to constructive, from suffering to happiness and even joy.   We had many conversations throughout the weekend, and it struck me how the yogic process of transformation that Patanjali outlined parallels the foundations of a 12-step program. Both Nikki and my mentor, Leslie Kaminoff, are fond of pointing to the Serenity Prayer popularized by Alcoholic’s Anonymous:   Grant me the courage to change the things I can, The serenity to accept the things I cannot change, And the wisdom to know the difference.   Whether we struggle with substance addiction, eating disorders, or perhaps less obvious dysfunctions like giving over our power in relationships, thriving on stress and anxiety, or stubbornly muscling our way into every pose, we can all learn something from this deceptively simple concept.   Translated into yoga philosophy, we can align the idea of changing the things we can with tapas , or heat, the first part of the three-fold practice of kriya yoga. When we engage in tapas, we invoke our yang nature by taking actions that shine the light of awareness on our issues and work to dissolve the obstacles we find in the body, mind, and heart.   Then we practice Ishvara pranidhana (devotion), surrendering to the bigger perspective. Here we release our desire for the realities we don’t like to change. For example, the weather here is horrendous. My flight is going to be delayed for two hours and I’m going to miss a fun gathering back in New York City that I was really hoping to make. But I can’t force my plane to be magically un-delayed. So I have a choice. I can get upset and suffer or I can get a hot chocolate and enjoy this unplanned time to catch up on some writing. This step is actually one of not of acting. Instead, it’s knowing when to stop, step back from the struggle, and turn your attention to something that you are able to shift.   Finally, we travel deep inside along the clear path created by the first two actions, and enter into an inner contract called svadhyaya , the practice of self-study. In this place, we gain the wisdom to know which road to choose in any given moment.   As someone who once struggled with an eating disorder and extreme co-dependence in relationships, I can tell you that it takes a mountain of fortitude to be able to say no to the seductive pull of instant gratification and a false sense of security. Yoga doesn’t actually give us this strength, but it does offer the opportunity to discover where it’s been hiding within us, like stumbling across ancient cave paintings while hiking. Asana and meditation help us to remember that we have the ability to remain in full integrity when confronted with our addictive tendencies. They also illuminate the darkness when our hands are about to reach out for some external–and false–sense of security. Above all, through the yogic journey we discover that we are truly everything we’re seeking when we reach for that drink or smoke, or are tempted to cling to that person: absolutely alive, confident, soothed, loved, and in mastery of our own happiness.   So next time you feel like indulging your craving or addiction with something that’s not going to serve you, get to the mat. And, baby, start a revolution.     Core Pose : Low Lunge From Downward-Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana), step your right foot forward and place your back knee on the floor. Your front knee should be stacked directly over the right heel. Draw your low belly in and transition up to rest your hands on your front thigh. In this pose, it is easy to be passive and sink so far toward the floor that you’re in danger of overstretching your connective tissue, which can cause inflammation and de-stabilize the joints. You can also pull so far out of the pose that you don’t allow the muscles to hit that sweet spot of increased flexibility. Use your awareness to find the middle path of engaging your muscles, sending your hips back, and backing off to go deeper, as a light stretching sensation arises in the belly, or center, of the muscles (not within the joints). Remember to keep your tailbone long and spine lifting to maintain space in your low back. Take 10 to 20 breaths here then return to Down Dog. Switch sides.

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Healing Addictions–of all Kinds

I can do a handstand! I’m 48 and I’ve never said that before. We learned in class the other day. Rob said to try it if you’re ready, and I thought, no way, that’s not going to happen for me.  Like playing in the NBA, like leaping from the Eiffel Tower and landing on two feet, like flying to Mars. That’s where handstands belonged for me. Then. We discuss. We prepare. We approach. We inhale one foot up, and exhale the other up.  Okay, I have to fling mine up.) First try, no go. Which is understandable because it’s about 75 miles from the floor to the wall when you’re upside down. Second try, same thing. Third try, same thing. Then Rob comes over to help. Just slightly, by showing my feet where the wall is. “Look at a point on the floor between your hands this time,” he says. And on my fifth try, I fly to Mars. I swear to God, that’s what it feels like. And yes, my ribs are half way across the room, and yes, I need to reach with my heels. I need to do about 300 things to improve my form, but I DID IT!!!!!! The NBA, the Eiffel Tower. A handstand. I read somewhere in Yoga Journal that a Handstand can change your life–they’re right! It has.  I feel invincible. Have you tried? Do you hope to? Is this old hat for you? Do you love it? Tell me, please. Thanks to handstand for changing my life, and thanks to you for the conversation. Kristin Shepherd lives in North Bay, Ontario.  She is a chiropractor, workshop facilitator, actor, writer, and parent of two grown children and a perpetually infantile dog.  Check her out at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at Dr. Kristin Shepherd.

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I am Invincible

I used to think asana practice required a yoga mat, sweats-or maybe even “yoga clothes”-a quiet indoor space, and time. (Lots of it.) Lately, Lucien has been teaching me that none of these are necessary. Thanks to my two year old, I’m starting to realize-after more than ten years of consistent practice-that yoga can be practiced in spurts, a pose here and a pose there.  Yesterday we were in the backyard gathering vegetables from our garden for dinner. I noticed that both Lucien and I were in Malasana pose as we clipped and gathered the kale and spinach. Later that evening during Lucien’s bath, my husband Neil and I were amazed to see Lucien sitting in Virasana for twenty minutes straight while he played with his rubber duck and wooden boat.  This morning, when Neil and Lucien came to wake me up, Lucien put one hand on a laundry hamper temporarily stashed in the bedroom, and stretched the opposite side leg onto the bed, inadvertently coming into a beautiful Utthita Hasta Padangustasana. (He’s a natural.)  I’ve decided to take a lesson from Lucien and add a pose here or there into my daily activities-a shoulder stretch while I’m at my desk working, a triangle pose while hanging out with Lucien in the kitchen. The other day Lucien skipped his nap-a bummer for me since I’d been going all day. He wasn’t sleepy, but I needed a break. While Lucien played on the floor in the living room with his trains, I laid down next to him in a bare-bones Savasana.  It was just a minute or two or three, and I was in my jeans, but you know what? It was bliss. What poses do you mix into your day?  What has your child taught you about yoga lately? Jessica Berger Gross is the author of enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer (Skyhorse), she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.

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Malasana in the Garden

I’ve been away from yoga class for almost two weeks. Granted, I’ve done lots of practice in hotels, other people’s basements, and on the deck of a cottage in beautiful morning sun, but jeepers, I miss class. This morning someone asked me if I have a dog. “Do you like yoga?” I replied. “No,” she said.  “What does that have to do with a dog?” “Nothing at all.  It’s just the only thing I can think of right now.” I have lots of these conversations when I’ve been away from class. I miss my teachers, who are kind and excellent at what they do, and funny while they’re at it. I miss the other students, most of whom are strangers to me, all of whom love what I love and are therefore friends of a kind. I miss the sound of people breathing in unison. I miss the gorgeous, quiet yoga music they play during Savasana. I miss that dopey feeling that comes from a fully relaxed body and mind. And I miss chanting om together at the end.   You forget how lovely all of this is until you’ve been away for a little while. What would you miss if you missed two weeks? Thanks to my home studio for being there tomorrow (I’m so excited!), and thanks to you for the conversation. Kristin Shepherd practices yoga, theatre, public speaking, writing, and chiropractic in North Bay, Ontario. Contact her at kristinshepherd.ca and at Dr. Kristin Shepherd on Facebook.

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Missing Class

My Tuesday noon class follows a morning of work for me, work which involves reasonably serious conversations with reasonably serious adults. Then I whip into my office at 11:30, change into my yoga duds, and drive over to the studio, arriving ridiculously early for my 12:15 class. In fact, when I arrive, they’re still sweeping up Cheerios from the floor.  Moms carry babies on their hips, all of them completely relaxed after a moms-and-tots class. I love this. I put my mat down in the back corner, and dream about being a yoga baby. In this dream, my body has no resistance. I flop forward and sweep my hands across the floor. My head turns like an owl. I do somersaults for the fun of it.   In this dream class, I laugh whenever I feel like it. I also sing: This Little Light of Mine, or Baby Beluga, or You Are My Sunshine. I dance while I sing. We all do, in this class. I eat the odd raisin or Cheerio off the floor.  I drink hot chocolate out of one of those sippy cups.I hang out in Child’s Pose when I get tired.  I have a nap if I feel like it. And someone carries me out at the end. I like that part the best. I am so into this dream that by the time my real class starts, I am about 4 years old. Do you have a dream class? I’d love to hear about it. Thanks to all of you yoga moms and yoga babies for the inspiration,and thanks to you for the conversation.

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Yoga Babies

One nice thing about being sick a couple of weeks ago was that I had time to finish a wonderful book, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting , by Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn.  Normally I tend to avoid parenting books–when I have time to read I want to read “adult” material such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Yoga Journa l (of course), a novel, or a new smart and funny memoir like Meghan Daum’s Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House. Luckily, I found my way to Everyday Blessings.   Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn (the well known mindfulness meditation teacher) lovingly weave together their takes on parenting and spiritual practice, illuminating how much each can add to the other.  They describe parenthood as an 18-year spiritual retreat–complete with a live in meditation teacher.  (My teacher’s name? Lucien.)  In chapters about each stage of childhood–from birth to toddlers to teenagers–they offer concrete ways to bring consciousness and connectedness to parent-child relationships. Much of what I read in this beautiful book was in line with what Neil and I have naturally been doing with Lucien–making time for the precious in-between moments of daily life by dancing in the living room, singing songs and making music, drawing and creating, listening and hugging, taking walks in nature and around the neighborhood, reading the same story five times over, without complaint, surrendering to the rhythms of childhood in all sorts of ways.  Before reading Everyday Blessings , I’d done these things because I sensed they were good for Lucien, and because the moments just felt right. After reading, I realized that these moments of connection with my child are my spiritual practice. Time to go dance. Jessica Berger Gross is the author of enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer (Skyhorse), she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.

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Everyday Blessings

Hi guys, I hope you haven’t been feeling left out of my outfit picks, because this week is all about the men! I know many of us, ladies included, often fall back on the standard black and white palette, but don’t be afraid of a little color. It radiates such great energy. I also know you certainly don’t need a hat in yoga class, but this one by Prana was so cool I couldn’t resist. Overall I was impressed with Prana’s men’s collection. Nice basic pieces with a few suprises thrown in. I also adore Toms shoes for men and the ladies, great style and a great cause. the details: Impact Sleeveless shirt by Prana $32.00 Ultra Shorts by Patagonia $55.00 Straw Fedora by Prana $32.00 Paper Tote Bag by Peasants and Travelers $88.00 Grey Heezen/Burlap Men’s Stitchouts shoes by Toms $58.00 Revolution Natural Sticky Mat $90.00

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Wish I was Wearing: Dude Duds

Photo: Rows of lettuce and greens growing in our vegetable garden. Growing up, I struggled with my weight. I used food for comfort and companionship, taking bowls of potato chips and pistachio nuts to my room where I’d hide out from my unhappy home–eating, reading, and dreaming of my escape.  Throughout my teens and early twenties, I bounced between “good” periods of eating relatively well and exercising moderately and “bad” phases when I’d eat bagels and cream cheese for dinner, and then again for desert.  As you’d imagine, my weight went up and down–I was sometimes thin, often chubby, and occasionally undeniably overweight. When I was 29, I did some serious soul-searching, turned my life around, and lost the excess weight once and for all.   As I chronicle in my book (see below for info.), yoga and yoga philosophy helped me dig my way out of depression, and change my relationship with food.   I’m 38 now and, thankfully, food is no longer a struggle for me.  I eat when I’m hungry, favoring whole grains and lentils and vegetables and fruits, with the occasional splurge on pizza or a chocolate croissant.  The suburban girl who didn’t eat or know much about vegetables is now a gardening mom, growing carrots and kale and lettuce and spinach in the backyard.  Having struggled with food and body image issues, I’m committed to helping my son Lucien develop a healthy relationship to food.  That’s easier said than done. Lucien is a relatively adventurous eater, trying tortillas and pakoras when we’re out, chomping on cooked carrots and brown rice and beans and tofu slices at home.  A snack for Lucien is a brown rice cake and cheese, not a bag of chips or cookies.  So far, so good, right?  But life with Mommy is one thing, and then there’s the “real” world.  A child at morning daycare celebrates a birthday by bringing in cupcakes with enough sugar to make Lucien skip his afternoon nap; a friend comes over with a packaged and processed snack Lucien has never seen before, but desperately wants to try.  I don’t want him to be afraid of food, or think of certain foods as forbidden.  But at the same time I believe his diet is a crucial component of his physical and emotional health. Those whole grains and veggies and dairy and lentils are his daily vitamins–literally.   Things will get more complicated, I know, when he gets a little older.  He doesn’t yet know about McDonalds, hasn’t tried candy, or heard about soda.  My plan? To keep the fridge, pantry (and garden) stocked with healthy food, and show him how yummy it can be to eat like mommy and daddy.  I’ll keep you posted, and I’d love to hear how you’re coping with feeding your toddlers a yogic diet. Jessica Berger Gross is the author of enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer (Skyhorse), she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.

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Enlightened Eating for Toddlers

When I began my yoga teaching career, I thought I had to be perfect. I felt the need to know as much as possible and be able to master every yoga pose. I wanted to be able to make Dharma Mittra’s calendar jealous. So I spent hours each day doing yoga, reading about yoga, and then doing more yoga. The end result? Not the perfect body or a ninja-like command of postures that would make Ana Forrest cry. Just chronic injuries and a constant feeling of self-doubt. “Am I good enough yet? No way!” seemed to be my mantra. Then one day, I was at a toy store shopping for my niece’s birthday. I turned a corner and saw a little girl trying to shove a Tonka truck into the garage of a Barbie house. (Just for reference, a Tonka truck is big, bulky, about the size of a shoebox. A Barbie garage is made for a tiny pink convertible.) This kid was starting to get more and more frustrated and upset because the truck wouldn’t go in. So she started to pound it wildly against the little plastic garage and cry. I realized that what she was doing was exactly how I was approaching my yoga practice. My teaching was, and is, geared toward teaching real people real yoga, and giving them the freedom to be right where they are, even as they take transformative actions. My classes are never about attainment, but about the joy of play, curiosity about what will best serve us in each moment, and, of course, a deeper core awareness of who we really are. I wasn’t practicing what I preached, and that discrepancy, in my mind, didn’t make me better than my students–it made me a hypocrite. How could I tell a room full of people to be themselves, to relax and go with the flow, if I wasn’t willing to do the same? I needed to cease my unattainable quest for perfection and allow myself to be as imperfect as I am. Not in a bad way, in an organic, honest way. So I stopped trying to shove my truck into a Barbie garage. I am no other teacher, woman, or person but myself. I shifted my style of practicing yoga to a kinder, gentler one. Now I don’t force, I play. I don’t aim for increasingly difficult variations, I enjoy backing off to go deeper inside. And, importantly for me, I offer my body room to breathe, days off, and a loving awareness of what it really needs. I’m not saying that we should all stop wanting to attain our goals, in yoga or elsewhere. But we should strive to enjoy the harmony that comes with aligning what you do with who you really are, not who you wish you were. My personal style is still vigorous, but now a softening has occurred within it. I built a Tonka garage–or acquired a Barbie car, as the case may be–and now my outer life fits its own inner dharma , or nature.   What can you do next to take actions that better represent who you really need and want to be? Here’s an asana that can help you study what that is and gain insight as you move forward. CORE POSE: Parivrtta Trikonasana (Revolved Triangle) variation This posture gives you an opportunity to stay centered in your core connection then decide what expression or action (aligned with your best interests or not) is right for you today. It’s really a mindfulness meditation disguised as a physical movement. But then, aren’t they all? From Down Dog, step your left foot forward and come into a Low Lunge. Your fingertips should be under your shoulders and your arms straight. Maintaining strong legs and a centered pelvis with navel pointing at the Earth, begin to unfurl your left arm toward the sky.  You can look up or down to stretch the neck. After a few breaths here, try grounding your front big toe mound into the mat as you wrap your left hip around behind you to move the leg straighter. Make this stretch a journey–don’t rush towards the goal of a completely straight leg. Meanwhile, keep the right hand under the shoulder instead of immediately crossing it to the outside of the left foot. This will provide you with more stability for your foundation, so you’re more likely to remain grounded and core-connected as you spin. Sense when the urge to express begins to throw you off center, and then turn the navel to the left. Keep your hips, back knee, and toes positioned as if still in lunge position. From there, play with revealing the heart exactly as your body allows.

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Striving for Imperfection

While chemotherapy can save your life, the process is brutal and difficult to say the least. Patients report sleep loss, loss of hair, little appetite, and a general sense of dis-ease. But a new study –to be highlighted at the next meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology–finds that doing yoga in addition to chemotherapy improves sleep, reduces dependency on sedative medication, and helps patients make the transition back to a normal life. When Bloomberg Businessweek picks up on the story , it’s real–in a stodgy, establishment-oriented, Western medicine kind of way. The study, performed at the University of Rochester , enrolled 410 early-stage cancer survivors, and found that after four weeks, those who did yoga regularly reported significantly improved sleep, reduced fatigue, and a higher quality of life. Lead researcher Karen Mustian, Ph.D., M.P.H.,an assistant professor in Radiation Oncology at Rochester, crafted a practice focused on breathing exercises, gentle asanas, and restorative postures. The video routine, YOCAS (Yoga for Cancer Survivors), is not yet available for one and all, but Mustian notes that any regular practice of restorative yoga is likely to yield similar results.   Your doctor might not yet be ready to jump on the yoga bandwagon; your insurance probably won’t cover it. But why wait for the system to catch up to this breaking news? This is one “alternative” treatment that’s perfectly safe to prescribe for yourself (or for friends and family who might be suffering in the wake of cancer treatment). Better rest, peace of mind, and an improved sense of wellness are a great buy at $15 a class. Or find a donation-based studio, and you can reap the benefits for even less. If you can’t manage to get out and about, dig out your VCR and get yourself a copy of the late Esther Myer’s excellent video, “Gentle Yoga for Breast Cancer Survivors” . Take a deep breath, stretch, and remind yourself that though Savasana might be helpful to you now, you’re not a corpse yet!

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Survive and Thrive

I’ve had a really busy week. It involved cramming four days of work into one day–today. I ran around this morning not very like a Buddhist monk with her head cut off. By the time I got to yoga class at noon, I was disappointed with myself and my roller coaster relationship with the world. This is no time for me to be social. But. But it is my only chance to get to class this week, unless I can find one while traveling over the next few days. And it’s a drag chanting om by myself. So I climb the stairs, get changed, and put a mat down. I don’t look at anyone. Class starts, I hang over my feet, and I breathe.  I can’t tell you how this saves me on a day like this. Before too long I look at my teacher, I begin to smile at the way his count of 5 is far more like 39, and I hear the breathing all around me. Toward the end of class, we’re in a sitting spinal twist. I’m enjoying it. It’s easier than it was last week. I glance up and meet the eyes of the woman on the next mat. “Turn the other way,” she says. “What?” “You’re turned the wrong way,” she whispers. She has no idea how right she is. I turn the other way and find the twist exactly as difficult as it was last week. Then I take a second to glance around the room at these people who are kind enough to share a room with strangers in the pursuit of something kinder, stronger, and more flexible than the rest of the day. And I belt out om like my life depends on it when class ends. Thanks to my neighbor for turning me around and thanks to you for the conversation.

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Turning me Around

I’m in Omaha to teach a workshop, but since I had the weekend free, I decided to drive to Chicago to catch a soccer game, or football as it’s known in the rest of the world. It was the Chicago Fire versus AC Milan, a world-class Italian team. Since I love the game and have never seen a live match, I decided this would be a great place to start.   Football is known as The Beautiful Game for its breathtaking fluidity and graceful skill.   You can see it exemplified by the Brazilian national teams in 1958, 1970, and 1982. A friend, who is also a soccer player, explained that when kids grow up playing football in parks or on the street in countries like Brazil, where some of the most gorgeous playing styles originate, they are free to be creative, take risks, and play with abandon. When organized teams and rules and structured positions get involved, not to mention the financial influence and pressures of playing at the top levels, it gets harder to invoke the more expansive spirit of the game. The essence of joga bonito , or to “play beautifully,” is at risk of being lost.     When it comes to yoga, life, soccer, or anything we do, some structure can be necessary. We align our poses, we pay our bills, and we join teams.   However, focusing only on the outer form of any activity can pull us up into the head, and in that place, it’s easy to forget the heart.   I used to be fixated on lining up my big toe just so, or by making sure there was always a perfect line from my middle finger to my elbow to shoulder in Warrior II. And don’t even get me started on Handstand. Then one day I ran into John Friend at an ashram, and asked him, “If there was only one thing you could teach your students from now on, what would it be?” I thought for sure he would pick some physical alignment point, a loop or spiral that was particularly crucial. He thought about my question for a good long moment, smiled, and said, “I would tell them: Always remember to float in the heart essence of every pose.”   His answer literally took my breath away. Human nature is one of goodness and creative energy, or shakti, as John might point out. As yogis, we not only try to line up with these aspects through the principles of alignment, but we have a responsibility to embody them from the inside out. Instead of creating poses that look good from the outside but feel nothing beyond the muscles, asanas can become a dance from the core, expression organically rippling outward from our inner connection to joy.     At times like this, watching AC Milan’s incredible Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho sassily back-kick the ball with his heel and laugh, even though there is a lot at stake, I again remind myself of this. Getting stuck in the mind or in rules, responsibilities, or stories can squeeze the life out of real moments like a mental boa constrictor.   Within your own structures, can you let go? Can you allow a deep soul-sighing relaxation to occur and a lightness and passion to arise–and let yourself play The Beautiful Game every day from the heart?   Here’s a pose to help you remember how.   Core Pose: Half Bound Ardha Chandrasana   I call this pose Flying Bow, because it makes the shape of Dhanurasana (Bow Pose) with the top arm and leg, and allows you to feel like you’re floating the pose high above the Earth.   It also lowers the head in surrender to the heart, and cultivates the rooted freedom that is the goal of any yogi.   Stand at the front of your mat and bend your knees. Fold into a gentle forward bend, widen your hands slightly more than shoulder-distance apart, and come onto the fingertips. Power your right foot into the ground as you bring your left knee into your chest. Take hold of your left ankle in your left hand.   Maintain an engaged lower belly and long tailbone as you begin to roll your left shoulder back and lift your bound leg toward the sky as you straighten your standing leg. Try to press the left foot into your hand, and arch into a heart-opening backbend. Remember to ground the standing foot, especially the big toe mound, for counter balance.   Aim for 5-10 breaths here then release into a forward bend with bent knees before doing the pose on the other side.     Note: If this pose isn’t accessible to you with a straight standing leg, try bending the knee, using a strap to hold the lifted foot, or just reaching for the foot as best you can.        

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The Beautiful Game

I’d love to thank a couple of Yoga Journal readers who commented on a blog I posted about morning practice. Both Ty and Kelly said things about wishing they could summon the discipline or the inspiration to do morning practice.  I found myself shouting back to them when I read their lovely comments.  Turns out they can’t hear me when I’m shouting. So I’ll say this in writing. First, there are experts to listen to.  So don’t listen to me unless it inspires you. I’m a yoga weenie.  So new I squeak. But here’s one weenie’s thought on the subject of building a home practice. I started my home practice in three minutes one night on my living room carpet. I did it because I found Friday tough.  I loved my Tuesday class but I was doing drive-bys on Fridays. Do you know about those? You drive to class and your car goes right by.  You drive by again and you end up at home, eating S&V chips and wishing you had some willpower. I was up to it on Tuesday but not at the end of the week. So I did two Sun Salutations one night. I liked it. It grew slowly, slowly from there. Three Sun Salutations. Four Sun Salutations and a quickie Warrior II. Five Sun Salutations, Warrior II, and Savasana. And so it went.   One of the huge reasons I’m so into yoga is that it is DELICIOUS. In my home practice, I follow delicious as it gets bigger and longer.  It’s like following a trail of chocolate brownies, but better. To Ty and Kelly, I hope this is helpful in some way.  If not, keep looking and you’ll find the answer that inspires you.  In the meantime: thanks to all who comment for your thoughts, and thanks to you for continuing the conversation.

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Following Delicious: Build Your Home Practice One Bite at a Time

Spoiler alert: This post is for viewers who have already seen the series finale of LOST.  Did you see last night’s Lost finale ? Help me out here, fellow yogis. Having struggled (largely in vain) to follow all the abstruse clues and connections throughout the show’s six-year history, I was tempted–in the end–to draw a very simple conclusion. Here it is: The characters on the island were there to burn off their karma and get liberated–not just from the island, but from the wheel of incarnation altogether. Forget good and evil, black smoke and white smoke, polar bears and logoed sharks, the Dharma Initiative and the “others,” and all those other distractions. In the end, they were simple window dressing. The real story for these characters was–as it always is–internal. They were waking up, realizing interconnection, and learning that the self is eternal, transcending time and place and circumstance. (That dance we saw between the truth of “none of this matters” and “all of this matters”–pure Tantra.) By the time they gathered in that chapel at the end–did you get a glimpse of that groovy stained glass window with the Om symbol?–they were beyond the cycle of birth and death. (”There is no ‘now’ here,” Jack’s dead father, Christian explained.) They were not just drenched in the white light of the island’s heart, but rather completely enlightened. Do you agree? Have an alternative theory? Share your thoughts: What the heck WAS that all about; sounds like yoga to me, but what do you think?

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Finding Yoga in LOST Finale

“Hold that for 5 breaths.” If you’re new to yoga, I’d like to give you some great advice: never believe this. It’s not going to be 5 breaths. It’s going to be about 27 breaths. It’ll go like this: The teacher starts out well enough: that’s one breath (then an adjustment to someone’s left hip and some encouraging advice), that’s two (if you just hold your shoulder back a little…ahhhh, that’s good), and that’s three already (I’m at twelve!), that’s four (and if you’d like a challenge, now, if you’d like to go a little deeper, try this) that’s four and a half–and now with a slight smile the teacher somehow manages to count: that’s five. It’s twenty-seven breaths for me. At first, I laughed at this. Then I resented it. Once I said out loud, “That isn’t three, it’s seventeen!” Today I see it a bit differently. Today I understand that it’ll take years, maybe five years for my shoulders to open. Maybe it’ll take seventeen years for my hips to open enough to do a full lotus. It’s more than that. Maybe it’ll take 27,000 breaths for me to relax into a pose without pushing and straining and achieving the whole time. Maybe it’ll take 270,000 breaths to enjoy the time I’ve been given in each pose and beyond: in each relationship, in each mouthful of food, in each hour at work, in whatever I’m learning today. You get the picture. It’s the new math. I wonder what you’re learning in your 27 breaths. I’d love to hear. Thanks to Rob and Cristina for yoga math (Bring it on!), and thanks to you for the conversation.

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New Math

This week I have an appointment with one of the biggest TV networks. I’m slightly excited but mostly just curious. I’m not sure what will happen, only that I’ll sit with a few producers who have never met me in order to explain, in 45 minutes or less, who I am and my idea for a show. Actually, according to Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink , I will have more like 2 to 4 seconds.   Gladwell’s research shows that people can tell in this short a time whether they like, trust, or are attracted to you, or if they feel a situation is right for them.  These judgments are made based on your appearance and the inner energy that people sense from you, before you’ve even said a word. Yogis have known this for a while. Only we call it prajna , or inner wisdom. Since I can only pick out an outfit that represents me (check, including my lucky nickel necklace), eat well and do my yoga so I’m healthy (check), and go in there prepared and with my best intentions in mind (check), my inner wisdom tells me to surrender the rest and enjoy the moment for what it is. Yet the thing is, this 4-second knowing isn’t always accurate. Sometimes people who dislike each other at first meeting end up becoming lifelong soulmates. Or you can make an assumption about someone and be totally off-base. (I once saw what I thought was a homeless couple in Los Angeles, and then realized it was Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt dressed in the grunge fashion of the day.) There’s a fine line between the instant awareness of truth that comes to us when we live close to our center and the snap judgments born of fear, ego, or confusion that often masquerade as intuition. In life, which can be loud, unpredictable, and filled to the brim with other people’s assumptions, opinions, and perspectives, it’s important for the yogi to meet the world from a place of inner quiet and the kind of understanding that wells up from somewhere deep inside. But to really trust that truth, instead of thinking or rationalizing it to death, you first have to be able to hear it. The yogic art of pratyahara , the fifth limb of  Patanjali’s eightfold path of ashtanga yoga, can help. Pratyahara is the action of drawing your attention back to the core of your being, where all voices are muted except for your innermost one. The life-changing thing I’ve learned through yoga is that it’s much easier to draw inward when you don’t try to resist the outer cacophony of the world at large or even the internal noise generated by your mental and emotional plat du jour . Instead, the yogi learns to exist in two places at once–engaging in relationship with outer stimuli and yet constantly checking in with her core wisdom.  I think of this as a kind of dual drishti –where your gaze and attention simultaneously remain on the world around you and the world within. And until you learn to hear that wisdom, seeking inner guidance will be more like asking a random stranger how to get somewhere rather than creating a road map for yourself–of yourself–that you can use anywhere and at anytime. The following technique can help you develop pratyahara and stay in communication with your inner navigator through all the adventures that lie ahead!   Core Meditation : Dual Drishti Meditation Come into Sukasana (Easy Pose). Root your sitting bones into the Earth and feel a corresponding lift of support through your lower belly and spine. Close your eyes and breathe slowly and evenly through your nose. Bring your awareness first to the sounds and sensations occurring outside of you, in the room and beyond the building. Then notice the sensations on your skin, the thoughts rolling through your mind, and whether your heart is calm or in emotional turmoil. Simply observe all these things as if you were people-watching from a sidewalk café, holding onto no one thing in particular for long. Whatever predominates in your focus, witness it, and then let it pass. Let your breath help you soften any urge to resist or engage any of these sounds or feelings. Even as your attention remains on this first aspect of your experience, bring it to the subtler peaceful space at your center. You can focus on the pit of the belly as a symbolic location for this core, but then let the calm, abiding energy become part of your whole being. As you remain conscious of whatever is going on externally, use its ebb and flow to provide context for what is unwavering deep inside of you. Can you train your attention to be present in these two places at once? When you do, you’ll begin to notice that as you hone your inner gaze, the outer one will soften and broaden, dissolving its power to limit your vision into judgment or reactivity. Breathe and be with this practice for 5 minutes or more.                  

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Learning to Listen–to Yourself

I used to meditate.  I’d sit up in bed with my dog Salem cuddled next to me, trying to watch–and then release–my thoughts for ten or twenty minutes each morning.  It wasn’t easy finding the discipline to sit. Every morning I struggled to get myself to meditate before making coffee, but meditation left me feeling clearer, less anxious and slightly less attached (in a good way) to what would happen to me that day. Then I had a baby. Photo: My dog Salem keeps me company while I meditate. While it took me six months to return to asana practice, it was two full years before I could even think about renewing my morning meditation practice.  Finally, a few months ago I read Dani Shapiro’s new spiritual memoir, Devotion .  Her descriptions of starting a meditation practice inspired me to want to sit again. To be honest, I was equally motivated by the exhaustion-induced headaches I was getting most afternoons, which I hoped meditating could help alleviate. I realized I was craving peace and quiet–two things not exactly found in abundance with a toddler running around–and with no spa vacation or silent retreat in my immediate future, mediation seemed a cheap and relatively doable option. Nowadays, I sit for twenty minutes in the morning – in Virasana (Hero’s Pose), perched on a wooden block in my yoga corner first thing after brushing my teeth.  Something about starting my day calmly changes everything else that comes afterward.  While meditation used to feel good, now those few minutes of quiet feel essential. Of course, meditating with a lively two year old in the house is a challenge.  Finding the time to meditate has meant getting up a little earlier, changing our morning routine, and bargaining with my husband Neil about what time he leaves for work. And there are times–when we’re sick, or when Neil travels for work–that meditating in the morning seems impossible. On those days, I try to make child care my meditation.  (Here I am reading my son a book, here I am changing a diaper, mindfully…) But now that I am once again meditating most mornings, my life truly has changed.  Well, my life hasn’t changed, but the way I feel about my life has: I’m calmer, happier, more free. I’m less exhausted by the evening, and I find myself making saner decisions all day long. If you would like to start or re-start your meditation practice, my advice is to start small: Try two minutes of quiet sitting a day.  (You can gradually add on from there, but the key thing is to just get started and get into the habit.)  If I don’t meditate first thing I never will, but this won’t work for everyone.  Maybe your two–or eventually twenty–minutes will be in the evening after you put your baby to sleep, or right after dropping your child off at preschool, or at your desk right before an important meeting. Don’t worry about technique.  Just find a comfortable seated posture and let your thoughts go.  Keep bringing yourself back to the present, to the feel of the chair or block or cushion beneath you, or perhaps remember your breath.  (I like to focus on the sounds outside my window: rain, birds, wind, even a car driving by.)  Allow yourself the freedom to take a break for a sip of water, or a stretch.  There are no rules.  On the best days, maybe just for a moment you will feel your consciousness lift. Are you a mom who mediates? How do you carve out the time?  How does it change the rest of your day? Jessica Berger Gross is the author of enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer   (Skyhorse), she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.

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Making Time to Meditate

This week I’m in Los Angeles for meetings with two TV networks to discuss a show idea. We’ll see what comes out of it–could be something or nothing. This is my week of practicing no expectations, and it’s hard not to “what-if” the situation to death, let me tell you! In the midst of preparing my show proposal, I got an email from a Facebook friend, Scott. He asked if I could reach out to someone he knew who had been following my videos online and might need a word of support. I told him it would be my pleasure, and started a sweet and rewarding correspondence with his friend. In gratitude for my help, Scott asked if I needed any graphic design work done–a logo, something for my website, whatever. I realized that my dowdy Word document proposal could use a little makeover to get ready for these meetings. So I asked Scott if he could take a look and add some flair. He not only designed an amazing logo, he added touches all over the proposal, including a front and back cover. Basically, he took my pumpkin and turned it into a chariot, something I never could have done on my own. The amazing thing is, he asked for nothing in return. When I asked what I could do to repay him, he said, “No way. I just know how it is, to want to chase a dream–a destiny–and to be able to get assistance makes the experience even more transforming.” Then he said one of the most noble things I’ve ever heard: “It would go against my beliefs if I was able to help you and did not.” Wow. Double wow.  Of course, this selflessness made me want to give back to him even more strongly. We each have something to give: a skill, assistance, a door that only we can open for another. When we do this without thought of reward, it becomes seva , or selfless service, according to the yogic path. Now, some people believe that if they help one person, they’ll have to help everyone. That’s only true if you’re not willing to set boundaries or are not sensitive to when your help is truly moving someone forward. It’s responsible to say no when doing so would be a drain to you or not a healthy support mechanism for the person. But none of us can do it all alone–and there are times when to refuse help is just plain energetically greedy. This ends up manifesting more lack for everyone involved, and the karmic wheel continues to turn.  The yogi learns to know the difference. If we consciously and freely offer seva at pivotal moments, we not only gain the energy of awareness and freedom in our own lives, we do one better. We help to change the world by letting in more goodness and more light. If we would all remove roadblocks for one other, while still focusing on our own life’s work, think of how much farther and faster we could go. Core Action: What could you do to make a clear road ahead for someone you know?  Core Pose: Malasana Twist This is a fantastic posture that gives you the benefits of a twist, low-back releaser, and hip opener all in one. It will free more energy for you to give–out, or in, as you wish!  Enjoy. Come into Malasana (Garland Pose) with feet wide and toes turned out the same direction as your knees.  Place your right elbow inside the right knee, and revolve your chest to the left as you stretch your left arm into the air. Lengthen through your spine as you breathe to release out your side and back body.  Hold for 5-10 breaths then switch to the other side. End with a forward fold in Malasana. Reach your arms in front of you, resting palms on the floor, and relax for a few breaths in this neutral posture.  

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Paying it Forward

Celebrate the summer solstice by unrolling your mat in the world’s most serene, sun-drenched environment: Times Square. No, really. Join hundreds of fellow yogis on June 21 for Solstice in Times Square , a massive group yoga experience taking place at the intersection of Broadway and 7th Avenue between 46th and 47th–right in the heart of the square. The point, according to organizers, is to find tranquility and transcendence even in this, the world’s busiest, noisiest place. It’s true what they say: If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere! The event is free, but registration is required. Sessions begin at 7:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m., and 3:30 p.m. Sign up fast–there’s a 6 p.m. class, too, but it already has a waiting list.

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Mind Over Madness

I mentioned I was visiting Toronto on the weekend, going to a new yoga studio for the first time, and doing a class with my sister (and my nephew, it turns out). I was nervous about venturing away from my home studio, and I wanted to share a few things I learned from toeing my comfort line: 1. Sun Salutations are not so different from place to place. This makes me very happy. No matter where I travel–now–I can find a home. Makes me feel warm all over, thinking that. 2. Speaking of warm all over, the studio I visited was a few degrees warmer than my home base. It only mattered when I stood up from one of those hanging my head poses (just a second, I’ll look it up – aha!) when I stood up from Prasarita Padottanasana (Wide-Legged Forward Bend), and came the closest I’ve ever come to fainting. Maybe that’s peri-menopause. Maybe it’s a surge of some fantastic yogi energy. I don’t know; it’s a new yoga mystery. 3. The chanting was completely different in this class. And it was fast. It was like trying to sing the Italian national anthem. 4. Bandas. What are they? I think I understand the idea of Bandas, but I do not have any control over them yet. Foolishly, I asked our teacher Oliver to pick a pose for our photograph (see above). This pose (I’m not looking this one up. I’ll look it up when I’m 76, when I might be able to do it!) requires some Banda control. It’s his favorite pose. It’s my least favorite pose. I just sit on the floor and make faces. 5. Speaking of faces, my head was recently shaved for a theatre production. I look like a 13-year-old boy at the moment. It’s not my favorite look. It occurs to me that I may never end up on the cover of Yoga Journal. 6. I love my sister Tory and my nephew Stefano. There’s nothing like doing a yoga class with people you love.  7. I learned again that I adore yoga. Thanks to everyone and everything that brought me here, including Tory, Stef, and Oliver. I’d like to know who would you love to do yoga with, if you could do it with anyone? Thanks to yoga for helping me grow, and thanks to you for the conversation. –Kristin Shepherd

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Cover Girl

Photo: On vacation with Lucien on Vancouver Island, a few months after moving to Vancouver, BC. As I posted last week, mommy-and-baby-yoga class at 6 weeks postpartum left me in tears. Instead of using asana to get back in shape, I did a lot of walking in the park. I also started going to an exercise class for new moms at a small local gym. Normally, the gym scene isn’t for me, but for some reason while my son Lucien protested the mommy-baby yoga class, he was perfectly happy to be plopped down on the mat with the other babies at the gym, listen to loud music, and watch his mommy sweat through a series of squats and lunges. So I went with it. (Lucky for me, the instructor was a yoga-loving dancer and she threw in the occasional dance or yoga pose.) When occasionally Lucien did cry, a very built man named Moe who worked the front desk would come and hold him while answering the phones. By the time Lucien was six months old, I’d lost most of the baby weight and regained feeling in my core. But I really, really missed my yoga practice. Meanwhile, we’d left New York, where we were living during my husband Neil’s academic sabbatical, and moved across coasts and countries to Vancouver, Canada where he’d taken a job as associate professor (with tenure!) at the University of British Columbia. UBC offered me a part-time teaching job in their creative writing department, too. On an earlier trip to Vancouver, with ten-week-old Lucien in tow, we’d fallen in love with the mountain views and fresh air and healthy lifestyle. But now that we’d landed there for good we started to worry. Had we made the right decision to leave the Northeast? Lonely and overwhelmed in a new city, with a new baby, I needed my yoga practice more than ever. And so, at six months post-partum, it was time for me to rejoin a regular weekly yoga class. Starting over with a different teacher was just one of the many adjustments I’d have to make to life in a new city. Fortunately, my new teacher, Louie Ettling, was just the person: caring, encouraging, and super knowledgeable to help me find my way back to my yoga practice. Louie welcomed me to her weekly two-hour level 2/3 Iyengar class, on the condition that I start my home practice up again, even if that meant just one pose a day. I was skeptical. Going to a Saturday afternoon class once a week was do-able; Neil could watch Lucien. A home practice was another thing. I didn’t know how I could fit even one pose a day into my life with a not-yet-sleeping-through-the-night infant, a house search to conduct, a new neighborhood to navigate, and a looming book deadline. Louie suggested Viparita Karani, (Legs-Up-the-Wall pose). That, I figured, was something I could do. Even if it meant holding my son on my lap while I stretched my legs up that wall, or doing the pose while watching television, I committed to one pose a day–slowly, with many ups and downs that I’ll write about later–I regained my practice. Are you a mom wanting to establish, or re-establish a home practice but feel totally overwhelmed by the prospect? Could you start by practicing just one pose a day? How about one pose a day for just one week? It could be Legs-Up-the-Wall pose, Headstand, a forward bend like Janu Sirsana ,(Head-to-the-Knee Pose) or even a particularly yummy version of Savasana (Corpse Pose). Don’t think about committing to an entire hour of practice–just think one restorative, rejuvenating pose.Please leave a comment and let me know how this changes your week. –Jessica Berger Gross Jessica Berger Gross is the author of enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer   (Skyhorse), she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.

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Making it to the Mat

I know what you’re thinking… harem pants, really? Really! I love them and I know you can pull them off.  I also adore this yoga mat bag-finally a bag large enough to fit my yoga mat, towel, and whatever else I need to pack in there. the details: Carry All Yoga Bag, Prana Seamless Carefree Cami, Be Present Harem Pant, Athleta Inspire Bracelet, Fossil Harmony Yoga Mat, Jade Yoga   eQua Yoga Towel, Manduka   Tree Garden Curtain, Urban Outfitters   –Ali Zeigler

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Wish I was Wearing: Tangerine Threads

Last week while on a trip to Japan with my husband, yoga teacher Jason Crandell, I got to witness the true meaning of yoga, or union: On a sunny Saturday morning, more than 700 yogis gathered together in a grassy park outside of the sleek Roppongi Hills mall in Tokyo to take part in the Yoga Aid Challenge. Now in its fifth year (and with events throughout the year in seven countries), the Tokyo Yoga Aid participants raised more than 1.2 million yen  for local charities. The reward for participating? Practicing together in the park while 12 well-known teachers led a two-hour class. As each teacher took 10 minutes to share their teachings with the crowd, I was struck by how beautifully diverse yoga is: Ms. Michiko Minegishi took to the stage with dramatic music and her inspiring students behind her, Duncan Wong got his groove on while sharing his Yogic Arts style, former San Francisco Bay Area resident and Anusara Yoga teacher Mark Shveima (he now resides in Kyoto) showed his hard-won skills by leading the crowd in Japanese. ”Lunge-en-a-pose-u!” said Shveima and the students obliged him with a High Lunge, arms extending skyward. American teachers (like my hubby) and Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa shared their portion of the practice via translators. Despite the teachers’ stylistic differences, the mixed class came together seamlessly. As the practice ended and all 700 of us put our arms around each other and sang with Gurmukh “We are the people, the people of love. Let us people, love today” I was not only feeling the love, I was feeling blessed to have experienced such a sense of union even though I was so far from home. The video I put together above shows just a few highlights from the day. –Andrea Ferretti

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It’s a Small World

Just when you thought there wasn’t any good news flowing forth from Washington…it’s time for Yoga on the Mall ! The event–happening on Saturday, May 15–is basically a ginormous group class led by teachers from participating D.C. studios. Yoga Week  organizers say no experience is necessary; just show up with your mat and some snacks, and join the flow. The practice will be broken into consecutive 20-minute sessions that become progressively more challenging as the day wears on.  Since YOTM starts at 1:00 and ends at 5:00, you can make it your experience a quickie or a real marathon. (And oh yeah, superstar teacher Shiva Rea will be on hand to give you adjustments!) Hopefully the positive energy generated will spill out toward Capitol Hill. Couldn’t we use a little more love in our political environment? –Hillari Dowdle

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Capitol Idea

The other night in class, a student came up and said, “I thought I was coming for a workout and I ended up getting life lessons, too!” Turns out he needed to hear what I was offering in order to understand the way out of a specific struggle he’s been dealing with. Like we say in yoga, when the student is ready… Before we begin our physical poses, I always gather the class for a Karma Talk. This is when I lay out my intentions for the practice and encourage students to set their inner dedication so they can align with it as they move on the mat. My talk that night was about how we all say we want good karma, but we might not realize that the outcome of any situation that is most beneficial to us is also one directly created by us, through the choices we make in each moment. In other words, we don’t just follow our dreams, we make them happen. What we do now, and more specifically, how we do it and from what intention, can either create harmony or discordance with who we really are. Have you ever heard an Om at the beginning of class that sounded like each person chose a different note on purpose, but by the end of class, it’s become united? This happens when we all pay attention not only to the outside but the inside as well; to know ourselves better in that place of sattva , or calm equilibrium. As a teacher, I see so many students straining towards the external look of a pose, going too fast, leaping at the wall in handstand, not breathing mindfully. When our confidence and life’s meaning rests only in the way we look and what others think of us, and our sense of security forever shifts with the things we have (money) or don’t have (money), we have lost sight of one crucial thing: Our core connection. Yogis might call this satya , one’s ultimate truth, or even atman , the soul within us. Other philosophies say it’s hara , a state of living from center, or simply, coming home to oneself. This isn’t accomplished by having one huge, enlightened experience in meditation and then being set for life.  You have to get your hands in the dirt now and do the work it takes to plant those seeds of action so they may come to fruition in their own, often in surprising ways. The beauty of yoga, or the practice of living out loud, is that you don’t have to worry about what kind of flower or tree your seeds will become. If you practice the three steps to transformation–make space, go inside, then take actions that best represent you–then the rest is coming just as it should. How freeing to know we can just spend our time cultivating the courage to dissolve old limiting blocks and stories, listening to the core connection we make with ourselves, and then trusting our inner wisdom enough to follow through with actions that we know are coming from our best self. So, what’s your next core action? Better yet, how will you undertake it with integrity, grace, and without placing the burden of needing to control the outcome on the featherlight power and magic inherent in pure doing for its own sake? Let us know! Core Pose : Siddhasana Side Stretch and Forward Fold Siddhasana pays homage to those who have transcended their external fixations and returned home to a state of calm awareness.  You can make space, listen in, and choose as wisely as a Siddha when you take time to practice from this intention. Come into Siddhasana (Adept’s Pose) with one foot in front of the other. Place your right palm onto the floor to your right, and with a long spine and lifted side waist, reach the left arm over your ear. Bend your right elbow and breathe new space into any constriction you feel around the lungs and chest. If your neck feels uncomfortable, turn your gaze to the floor or right ear to right shoulder and let the head gently drop for a sweet stretch. Take 5 or more breaths, and then switch sides.   After completing both sides, inhale and sit up tall. Exhale and fold forward with palms or forearms on the mat. Take at least one minute here, bringing breath into your back body and releasing past habits and beliefs that block you from accessing your inner wisdom and truth. Then listen to that subtle yet powerful voice within for your next direction.

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Creating Good Karma

New York yogi alert: If you like the idea of helping at-risk city kids get access to the practice, check out the Yoga at School program at the Integral Yoga Institute .  Yoga teacher Erin Wilson works with the kids at James Baldwin High School , an end-of-the-line transfer school for kids from all over the city–kids who’ve had it tough or been in trouble but still want a chance at a brighter future.  “For a lot of these students, violence is a way of life–they’ve been involved in gangs, they have friends and family in prison, they come from tough economic situations,” says Wilson.  “Yoga empowers them to exercise self-control. It teaches them compassion for themselves and for others. It shows them how to deal with the stress of being a teen and to live a life of peace.” See the concept in action Friday, May 7, at the Integral Yoga Institute (227 W. 13th Street; 212-929-0586). Join Wilson for a special Yoga class at 7:30 p.m., followed by a presentation from the student participants. There will be free vegetarian cuisine, music, and a silent auction to benefit the program. It’s a fundraiser–if you want to pay it forward, your donation will be most welcome. (There isn’t a suggested minimum, but Wilson says something in the neighborhood of $25 would be helpful.)  Who knows? Perhaps your participation will lead to a future of perfectly peaceful rides on the D train.

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Benefit the Future

I’m getting ready to go to Toronto to see my kids. My sister has lightly suggested we go to one of her yoga classes while I’m there. I’m nervous. I’ve been at my home studio for about seven months. It’s all I know. What if Sun Salutations are different in Toronto? What if I’m dying half way through the class, and I have to spend 45 minutes in Child’s Pose? What if my pants won’t stay up and my shirt won’t stay down? (Granted, this happens in every one of my own classes, but it’s different in a room I know.) Argh, it’s like starting all over. Holy Mackerel, the phone rings. It’s my sister: she says she just finished the toughest yoga class of her life. Her hair gel poured into her eyes, she was sweating so hard. A little ominous, perhaps? Ok, slow down, maybe try some yoga. I walk into my home studio and a woman puts her mat down beside me and says, “I’m new, and I’m nervous–is there anything I should know?” I almost cry. In this second I realize I’ve been at this yoga business for a few months, and that feels good. I am absurdly happy to welcome her and to assure her that she’ll be fine. I am a welcome-wagon maniac. I spent the first two months of yoga avoiding eye contact, too worried about my pants, my shirt, and my uncooperative body to let myself relax into things. I am shocked to see it can be done differently. So, this weekend I’ll try to go in this foreign studio as an aspiring yogi: breathing, present, willing to play with others. And I will humbly do Child’s Pose the entire time if I have to. I’ll let you know how it goes. Thanks to yoga for the lesson, and thanks to you for the conversation.

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Home Sweet Yoga

Yesterday I taught in a state of emergency–literally. I’d traveled to Nashville for a weekend of Core Strength workshops at three local studios. My visit coincided with the worst flooding the city has ever seen and a subsequent call for a state of emergency. Unbeknownst to me or any of the students, at one point we were on our mats while a tornado touched down a mere six miles away! Driving to back to my hotel, I saw homes under water up to the rooftops. People have lost so much in such a short amount of time–photos, their favorite chair, mementos from childhood and from their children.  My host here in the city, yoga instructor Rommy Hussey, and I were talking about how hard a teaching that must be. It’s a letting go unlike any most of us will ever have to deal with–on a material level, at least. I invite you to take a moment to send lovingkindness to all the beings in Tennessee and everywhere, who are suffering right now. When I showed up to the studio this morning and a few dedicated yogis joined me, I realized that this really is our practice: to surrender to what is, to breathe, and to move forward, even in the worst of times. To me, this is the essence of Ishvara pranidhana , translated as “devotion to the Lord,” which was Patanjali’s call to soften through the pain, the destruction, the unwanted and the intense. When we drop resistance to reality, and cease the fight against what we don’t want, we are infinitely more able to receive what we do: the healing, the loving, and the broader perspective that brings us all home to center, regardless of the storms and winds of change that come and go outside. CORE POSE: Circling Camel (Ustrasana), variation This pose will help you make more room for breath as it opens your heart center, helping you embrace any situation as a learning experience and reminding you of the inner strength that resides at your core. Kneel at the front of your mat, toes flexed beneath you. Firm your lower belly in and up, and lengthen the tailbone. Bring your left hand onto your hip or left heel if you’re more back-bendy. Reach your right arm up, and inhale as you circle it back and down onto the right hip or heel for a shoulder stretch. Lift the left arm on your next inhalation, and circle it around on the exhalation. Repeat for 3 to 5 rounds, maintaining core support and the length of your spine. End in a full Camel Pose with both hands on the hips or heels, lifting your chest higher from the back of your heart.   For a good counter position, rest in Child’s Pose for 10 breaths, knees together, and wave your hips gently from side to side.

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Surrendering to What Is

Yesterday one of my students told me that another teacher called her out in class, saying, “You’re trying too hard.” This puzzled her. She didn’t think she was overdoing it, but then again, maybe the teacher saw something she didn’t. Perhaps she was running over herself and maybe she wasn’t, but it’s an interesting concept. When does striving toward a goal become stressful and when does it create transformation? This is why we say that to practice yoga is to walk the razor’s edge. There’s a fine line between too much sthira (effort) and too much suhka (ease), and the more we come to the mat, the more intimately we get to know it. The balance inherent within these two polarities, the “field,” as Rumi would say, where growth meets freedom, is known as santosha , or contentment, one of the niyamas of the yogic path. Niyama means observance, or something that you do that helps you line up with your inherent equilibrium. But this can mean saying No to something (straining to do a handstand when you’re not ready) as often as it asks you to say Yes. As yogis, we learn the art of knowing when to take action, and, importantly, when not to, in order to achieve a consistent state that is without aggravation or inertia; not moving too fast or lagging behind. So, how can we tell when we’re trying just hard enough in yoga, and in life? After all, neither our dreams nor our handstands are gonna just create themselves. As a teacher, the first thing I look at is your breath. It’s a pretty good gauge to let me know when you go off the rails.  If you can’t breathe slowly and deeply, or you sound more like Darth Vader than a smooth ocean wave, it’s time for Child’s Pose. I’m also checking out your alignment, specifically the foundation and core connection. If you’re in that same handstand, but your back is arching and your elbows are bent and wavering, then you’re not really in a handstand at all. You’re in a misaligned and compressive backbend that the wall is preventing from going into full (and injury-prone) expression. It’s not getting you where you want to go, which is to balance without the wall someday, with firm support from your arms and abdominals. What actually happens when we try too hard is that we simultaneously fall into the mire of inertia. We shoot ourselves in the proverbial foot because by overworking, we actually lock ourselves out of the possibility to access deeper muscles, deeper wisdom, and inner strength. We give ourselves over to ego, the anxious mind, the hyperactive body–anything external that we think can get us “there” faster. And instead of moving forward, we collapse. The first step in dissolving these non-santosha states is to be here–to pay full attention to how you feel. If you’re anxious, or numbed out, you might be trying too hard or not enough.   Once you notice the places in your life where you want control or that cause you to stress out, you can practice releasing a bit to allow the inner you to shine. This is why in class I often say you must back off in order to go farther. Then, when you’ve taken it down a notch, you can take it back up again, only this time, using the strength that serves you, in alignment, to express your most powerful center. This is when santosha arises organically. In the end, my student decided she wasn’t working too hard, but she did promise herself that she’d keep an eye out for when she was.  I’ve seen her take Child’s Pose more often, and I smile when she does, because I know she’s focused on playing the razor’s edge. And that’s the practice. CORE POSE: Core Handstand, what else? This asana is a microcosm for your practice of remaining in santosha. Remember, all the benefits–strong arms, open shoulders, core strength, courage, balance and detoxification–are available to you in every moment when you remain in alignment. Getting up to the wall is an added bonus–not something to rush into. Step 1: Stand a few feet from and facing a wall, and place your hands on the ground in front of you, fingers wide and shoulder-distance apart. Then bend one leg while the foot grounds firmly and directly under the sitting bone. Lift your other leg, maintaining level hips. Press out actively through the lifted heel. Step 2: Take small hops to help push the standing leg off the ground. At the same time, press down through your hands, lift your navel toward the sky, and begin to lengthen your top leg. You don’t want your low back to overarch here and tip the seat and legs behind you, as this will cause you to lose core strength and power.   To reconnect to the lower abdominals, bend the standing leg as it leaves the earth and draw your knee into your chest. Also, exhaling as you hop will firm your core muscles and prevent your spine from compressing or wavering as you lift. Step 3: Once you can hover in the knee-to-chest variation, keep all the stability you’ve created in the arms, torso and pelvis, and lengthen the bent bottom leg to meet the top one! Note: If at any time, your breath gets ragged, or your arms or spine begin to move out of alignment, you’ve crossed the razor’s edge, and it’s time to back off to re-find your balance.      

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Playing the Razor’s Edge

Our star blogger Sadie Nardini has been blogging with Yoga Journal since February. As we add more bloggers to our Yoga Diary line-up we thought it was best to give Sadie her own blog home as well. You will still be able to find her posts on Yoga Diary but if you want all Sadie, all the time, you can tune into her new blog home of Core Values . To read more about Sadie check out her introduction .

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Introducing Sadie Nardini’s New Home

Jessica Berger Gross is one of our newest bloggers. Join her as she embarks on her yogic journey into motherhood: — Who has time for yoga? That’s how I felt when my amazing son Lucien was born two years ago. I went from having a daily meditation and yoga practice to losing both and starting from scratch.  In my new blog Enlightened Motherhood , I’ll chronicle how one mom (part-time writer, part-time college teacher, part-time stay-at-home parent) struggles and attempts — and sometimes  manages — to stay sane and live a yoga-inspired life in the real world of diapers, deadlines, and toddler meltdowns. — Jessica is the author of enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer (Skyhorse).  Originally from New York, she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.

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Introducing Jessica Berger Gross

No question: The Gray Lady has gone ga-ga for yoga. Monday’s New York Times Sunday Styles section features an above-the-fold feature on the “yoga rock star” (not really) Greg Gumucio and his East Village studio, Yoga to the People , which offers classes on a donation-only basis.  These kinds of “dharma yoga” classes have long been an occasional offering at enlightened studios around the country–providing access to those who might not be able to attend class otherwise. The Times’ story, penned by Mary Billard, includes a running list of other New York studios that offer donation-based or reduced-cost yoga, including Strala Yoga , Yoga Vida , and Do Yoga and Pilates . But it overlooks Dharma Yoga Brooklyn , which opened in Park Slope in March.  Every class on that studio’s schedule is donation-based–even the mats and towels are available for whatever fee you care to offer, and a donation-based bookshop is in the works. Dharma Yoga co-founder Lily Cushman (her partner is Jeremy Frindel) has every confidence that donation-based yoga will continue to thrive in the outer boroughs, too–it may even shape the future of American yoga.  As is the case with Yoga to the People, higher class attendance means viable monetary yield even though some students may choose to donate nothing. “When people ask how we’ll make it, we just say we have faith–in ourselves and in our students,” says Cushman. “It’s so nice to spread the teachings and give back to the people.”  What do you think of donation-based yoga? Is dharma yoga available where you live? Is this the yoga wave of the future?

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Dharma Initiative

Finally, an event dedicated to playfully defying gravity. Got plans for Columbus Day? No? Then mark your calendar and consider attending the FIRST-EVER AcroYoga Festival , happening in Oakland , California , on October 8, 9, 10, and 11. The event will feature plenty of yoga, acrobatics, and Thai massage.   And, oh yes, there’s music, too: Jai Uttal, M.C. Yogi, and the Mayapuris will be on hand to rock the proverbial house. What we’re really looking forward to, though, is the nighttime “Bollywood Jam” carnival, to feature circus performers, henna tattoos, and music galore. Cotton candy or no cotton candy, count us in!  

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Playtime for Grownups

Forget yoga class, this is the perfect outfit for the entire weekend. I love that these pants are called the “Tool Around Pant” because I need to do a little more tooling around. It definitely sounds better than rushing around, which is what I do most of the time. I also need a new yoga mat, and the tree graphic on this one makes me happy. the details:  Rivera Bra Top, Athleta   Organic Cotton Tool Around Pant, Athleta  Sonata Sweater Cover-up, Athleta Tree of Life Yoga Mat, Gaiam  Om Yoga Bag, Asraistyle  Brass Stone and Leaf Bracelet, Asos Life is but a Dream photograph, Alicia Bock 

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Fabulous Fern

I’m in Sedona this week filming my next two DVDs. I’d heard that this area is ideal for spiritual quests and uniting with your source energy, which is why I wanted to shoot here.  In addition to completing the videos, I have a goal: To find my spirit animal. On my time off, I’ve kept my eye out for the symbol of my spirit in animal form, something that the indigenous North American cultures hold sacred. The first two days, all I saw were ants and flies. I began to wonder if it was possible to have a spirit insect instead. Then today, while I was out walking, two jet-black ravens suddenly appeared and stood in my path.  One was tearing apart someone’s old sandwich and the other stood silently looking at me. We studied each other for a long moment, and then the sandwich-free Raven flew away, gorgeous and free, and the other remained to finish its dinner. I was both disgusted and awed by these creatures, and though I’d been hoping for something cool like a wolf or a scorpion, I realized how perfect these spirit guides were for me. Ravens are believed to be keepers of wisdom and secrets, and one of their jobs is to help those they are linked with become better teachers. Plus, since my take on yoga is that it’s found everywhere, both in the ugliness and the beauty of life, these two ravens taught me to remember to not only seek my lessons in comfort and ease, but also in times of discomfort and even when I don’t make myself proud. Like anything, spirit guides may or may not be “real,” but anything that leads us into a deeper awareness of ourselves is a tradition I can get behind. In yoga, we say that self-recognition in seemingly external sources is another way to practice svadhyaya , or study of the sacred and of the Self. Whatever leads you to directly contemplate your highest inner nature and use your actions to create a lifestyle of integrity is sacred study. Your svadhyaya might be a rock song, a Pablo Neruda poem, the Yoga Sutra, or a quiet walk in the woods. My ravens are only me, introducing myself to who I really am. Today, I invite you to keep your eyes open for your animal spirit and your ears tuned for voices of wisdom that may come from any and all directions. Maybe you’ve already got one speaking to you or maybe your guide will meet you along your path in an unexpected way. When we walk with presence and an open ear, we’ll receive our teachings that much more easily. So, who’s whispering to you–from you–right now? Core Pose: Eka Pada Galavasana (also known as Flying Crow) It’s as close as I could get to the raven, and it’s a great pose for teaching svadhyaya in action: moving from Earth to sky using your deep core connection. At any step along the way, if you find yourself losing integrity, back off, check in, find the pose variation that brings you to your personal edge of transformation, and play there.  In time, you might go farther physically. But either way, you’ll be accessing your source of presence and wisdom right where you are. 1. Come into Utkatasana (Chair Pose) and cross one ankle over the opposite knee.  Bring your palms together at your chest. Stay evenly grounded on your standing foot and begin to hinge forward from the hips. If possible, place your elbows in front of your standing leg’s shin, lift your belly in and up to lengthen the spine, and breathe. 2.  Bend forward and plant your hands on the floor shoulder-distance apart. Spread your fingers wide and parallel your wrist creases to the front of the mat. Dig deep to hook your top foot snugly around the opposite arm, and press your knee into the same arm. Lean from your heart and gaze forward as you align your elbows over your wrists. Root down through your hands, press your arms into your shin, and lift through your belly as you raise the standing foot off the floor. 3.  When you can hover in step 2, float the heart forward and simultaneously lengthen the back leg for a full flying variation.

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The Animal Within

This weekend, I’m leading a three-day Core Strength Immersion in New York City. After writing my post about respecting limitations while still seeking transformation, I decided to make a public statement, not only to the 60 students in the room, but all the future yogis who will watch the Immersion (it’s being filmed): Let your poses be imperfect. That’s right; I’ve hit a tipping point in my teaching where I am becoming much more interested in what a student can do to be more honestly themself in a pose, and I care much less how straight they can get their front leg in Triangle. For an instructor who doubles as an anatomy geek, it may seem unusual to hear me say this, yet nothing could be more my style. Symmetry, or perfection as we sometimes think of it (the “perfect” body, relationship, or handstand), is what you get in a office building, with its level surfaces and, straight lines. Balance, on the other hand, is what nature does, and it’s wild and free, yet comes to find its own equilibrium after all. Think of a river, which meanders here and there but ultimately reaches its source.   In your yoga poses, and your life–have you been remaining sensitive to your state of balance, or straining for symmetry? If it’s the latter, this may help give you perspective: There is not one thing in the human body that runs in a straight line. Our bones, blood, and breath all move in a spiral motion. Our nerves, spine, brain, joints, GItract? Not linear either. Yet so often, we strive to attain linear poses that our bodies are not made to reach. We want to be in alignment in a way that’s healthy and balanced, but it’s easy to let symmetry-seeking creep into the process. The end result can be a hardening of the outer body, layering on more and more  tension as we try to grip and force ourselves into pre-conceived geometry. Instead, there is a way of balancing this sthira (strength) with sukha (ease). A way to allow our spinning, waving, spiraling selves to soften enough to find the true edge, dissolve areas of tension, and still move forward into what is our unique optimal alignment. I speak from experience, because I used to be militant about doing every pose “right.” In my quest for the perfect body on and off the mat, I developed an eating disorder as well as a ton of yoga-related repetitive stress injuries. Along the way, I did reach my goal of handstand without the wall. What I did not attain, however, was any sort of happiness or joy. Therefore, in my opinion, I wasn’t practicing yoga at all, but dukha , or suffering. A focus on perfection will always circle back to the big D. Later in life and yoga, I got so sick (literally) of forcing myself into a box, that I began to seek out studios and teachers who advocated mindful, individual adaptation over form. I noticed that most of these teachers were over 40, many of them much older. Their physical asanas were very different than mine, yet the message is so freeing: Take this practice, poses, lessons and all, and make it yours, without apology or regret. Approaching 40 myself, I can tell you that a relaxation occurs after a certain amount of time struggling and failing to reach absolute symmetry. You see it in the attitudes of certain grandparents, and it shows up in the practices of longtime yogis.  The amazing thing is, once I let go of my quest for the unattainable, many of the poses, like the hovering jump-forward that I could never before master, became available to me. Yoga, ultimately is a path of personal transformation, not perfection. Reclaiming this aspect of your practice gets you into direct connection with your core, and asks that you express your truth to the world in the way that’s best for you. When we remember that our growth and spiritual awakening happens only to the extent we can get present, get close to our inner nature, and take actions from integrity–none of which have a thing to do with a false ideal of perfection–life becomes wildly, strangely, perfect after all. Core Pose: CAT/COW VARIATIONS Sometimes, I feel like anything not on the the mat is forbidden territory–or “hot lava,” as we called it in my childhood. Yet venturing outside the rectangle can be just what you need to find pockets of tension, and then move and breathe to release them. Come onto your hands and knees. Take a few arches and curls of the spine, then begin to move creatively as you listen to the cues of your body. Move your head, your arms, and even legs to serve your goals of equalizing support and freedom. Spend a few minutes in this pose, adventuring in your own way!

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A Better Balance

Photo by David Lauridsen for The New York Times Did you see the story about Demi Moore in Sunday’s New York Times Arts & Leisure section? It was a stylish, if perfunctory, update on her career. (She’s back! She’s better than ever! But now she’s playing the mother!) But what drew our eye was this aside, in which writer Jennifer Steinhauer explains a fallow period in Moore’s career, a time in which the actress disappeared from the Hollywood radar to focus solely on family: “It was not that she retired, as was widely reported, she was just resting, a career Savasana.” End of sentence. No long-winded explanation–or short-winded one, for that matter–was offered. This surely is a cultural turning point–we have reached such a level of yoga saturation that Savasana has become a common-usage term, in need of no definition, no parenthetical aside, no translation–even in a mass-market newspaper of record. Will the moment be memorialized by Ben Zimmer in an upcoming On Language column? We can only hope so!

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Corpse Bride

Last weekend at the Yoga Journal Conference was a whirlwind, and a whole lot of fun. Since I wasn’t teaching until Sunday, I had the opportunity to take some classes. I studied with Gary Kraftsow, Desirée Rumbaugh, Seane Corn, and Leslie Kaminoff. I was in the audience for Deepak Chopra’s evening talk, and I listened in for bits of talks from Matthew Sanford, Beryl Bender Birch, and Rodney Yee. I narrowly missed Julie Gudmestad and Bo Forbes, but I’m hot on their trails, too. Over the years, I’ve studied with just about every well-known yoga teacher there is, and many others. What strikes me is that although we share the same title–yoga instructor–we can be so different in just about every way: personality, poses, focus, knowledge, opinions, and communication style. Yet this weekend, the core message was the same from everyone: Find balance, live in balance, and take actions from balance. I heard it again and again, in every conceivable way. I was fortunate to have conversations with the people who put on the conference, and this parity was also part of their vision of creating a community offering where people could be equally exposed to the healing benefits of yoga, no matter what teacher they resonated with the most. It did my heart good to hear this. I’ve seen pockets of separation in the yoga world, stemming from a “my style, your style” mentality. It’s the reason why I specifically didn’t want to create a style of yoga, but rather a “take” on yoga that anyone could use, whether they’re an Ashtanga yogi or a Kundalini practitioner. The thing is, there are many doorways into your true nature, all that lead to your inner teacher in the lifelong process yogis know as svadhyaya , or self-study. If you can honor that the guru you seek is so often the Self, then you are less likely to dismiss teachers that don’t work for you or revere the ones who do. (You also won’t hang on to blame, anger, and resentment in relationships of any kind.) You can thank your teachers for the fact that, whether you choose to embrace their ideals or not, they have helped you remember who you are–and who you aren’t. In this way, they have all been instrumental to your growth and transformation. This view can bring more sukha , or ease and freedom in everything you do. Yoga can be frustrating, because the lessons from different teachers are sometimes contradictory, and there can seem to be no clear “right” way to do it. But that’s also the wonderful thing about this path. It’s yours alone.  The practice asks you to gather information and listen to your instructors, but then ultimately to turn inward and claim the personal style of yoga that you need at that moment, and to keep the channels of inner communication open for a lifetime. Yoga is a journey that always, and unerringly, leads back to you. That is both its greatest challenge and its most fabulous gift. Core Question: Are you able to thank your teachers; ones you liked, and ones, well, not so much, for helping you realize who you will and won’t be? Tell us about your experience! Core Pose: Utkatasana Twist (Chair Pose), variation This twist will help you turn inward as you remain grounded, centered and balanced–all good tools for your inner teacher practice. Stand with knees bent and feet and knees pressing together. Inhale your arms up, keeping your spine long. Spin your chest to the left as you place your right elbow onto your left knee. Roll your left shoulder back and engage your obliques to help balance the work of the arms with core strength. This twist has a twist: Look down instead of up for a sweet stretch of the neck and shoulder. Remain here for 5-10 breaths then move into a gentle forward fold. Return to Chair Pose and repeat on the other side.

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Thanking All Your Teachers

I’m traveling to the Yoga Journal Conference today. Yesterday, I knew I had to pack and gather my workshop materials, but strangely perhaps, instead I went to school!   I have what I like to call Yoga University every Wednesday afternoon. I gather with other teachers at The Breathing Project in Manhattan to sit with Leslie Kaminoff, author of Yoga Anatomy .   For two hours, we learn as he leads us to experience how the wild world of anatomy links together with breath, yoga poses, and the philosophies of our practice.   Even though I had to prepare for this trip to Boston, I couldn’t miss class. Every time I attend, I learn something new–something that totally shifts my perspective on one level and that applies to other areas of my teaching and my life.   For a yoga teacher who relies on new ideas and offerings, this is so precious. Continuing my education helps me keep it fresh each time I appear in a workshop setting.   Yogis might call this shift to a new layer of consciousness vijnanamaya kosha , or wisdom sheath–a new awareness that transforms all other aspects of how you relate to yourself, the world, and Spirit. Oprah would call it an Aha! Moment.   Not only am I a complete anatomy geek, I love finding new parallels between yoga and the body. And these insights completely shift my understanding. Like how the deep front line of muscles running through the body that Tom Myers discovered (his book Anatomy Trains is a must-read), represents a more stable core connection with ourselves.   If we tend to use the outer body instead of sourcing our strength from deep inside, we can actually cause more tension in our poses instead of less. Or how the psoas is actually a sensory organ that can help draw us into a more subtle yet more powerful inner inquiry (thanks, Leslie!), which Patanjali said was a necessary step for transformation.   And, if a student over-grips their poses from the outer body, I’ll bet you $1 million that she also has that same habit of reaching outside of herself before looking inside to her own wisdom, capability, and self-esteem in all her other relationships, too.     Sometimes, shift happens when you least expect it, and when you didn’t know anything needed changing. Today, how can you expand your horizons and spend time broadening your perspective? To do this, seek out someone who knows more about something than you do. Learning from a master in their field, even if it’s not your area of expertise, can give you insights into so many other things.   My favorite? Sitting with much older people who are masters of life experience. Your gurus are everywhere waiting to lead you farther into a more expansive vision of who you are.   Yes, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. But it’s my firm belief that sometimes for the teacher to appear, the student has to go out, sign up for a class, or otherwise make the effort to find the teacher.   Creating transformation is not a spectator sport.   Lord knows I’ve been out of actual college for a while, but the excitement I have, and the vitality that my weekly Yoga U brings me, is immense. Now, I have to go grab my pens and notebook, and head out for my aha! afternoon.   More next week from the conference!   Core Question : Have you had experiences that caused you to learn more on all levels? How did you find them or did they come to you?   Core Pose : Uttanasana to Tadasana Transition with Exhale   Here’s a whole-body/mind shift you can try during your next practice to help support the low back more effectively as you move through a common transition that can place undue stress on the spine.   When you exhale, your abdominal muscles contract, hugging the abdominal cavity and cushioning the spine from the front. This stops the lumbar curve from over-compressing during the fulcrum of movement from forward bends up to standing, which is when a lot of yoga-related injuries occur. You can avoid this by adding an extra breath into your Sun Salutations or whenever you come up into Mountain Pose.   From Uttanasana, inhale and look forward with a long spine. Now exhale, pull in the low belly, and begin to rise, sweeping the arms out to the sides. When you are three-quarters of the way up, begin an inhalation, filling the pose as you reach Tadasana with your arms extended.   Exhale your palms to your heart or fold forward again to continue your flow.    

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Make the Shift

(photo by Jon Ewing ) Salutations to the Washington Monument and 1,700 people enjoying the freedom of yoga. Rising up into Warrior I, my eyes took in the tip of the Washington Monument piercing a cloudy sky, and I offered my Sun Salutations to independence, freedom, and all that makes me proud to be American. After a couple of days in Washington DC brushing up on our national history at the American History Museum (seeing an Edison lightbulb, the flag that inspired “The Star Spangled Banner” and President Lincoln’s top hat), it’s hard not to feel a little patriotic. And after seeing the sea of yogis stretched across the National Mall on Saturday morning, it’s hard not to feel ecstatic about how our nation is embracing yoga. The event, organized by Lululemon Athletica as part of Washington’s National Cherry Blossom Festival, drew a great crowd–the unofficial count was 1,700 people. It was a site to behold! And so cool to be a part of this moment in history, when yoga is becoming as American as apple pie. In an hour-plus class led by Peggy Mulqueen , we breathed together through everything from Hanumanasana (Full Splits) to Bakasana (Crane Pose) to partner Navasana (Boat Pose). Onstage, local teachers, including Yoga Journal’s May cover model Faith Hunter , and a few guests like Ashtanga yoga teacher David Kyle treated the crowd to an impressive display of power and grace. Beneath giant American flags, and on top of a rainbow of sticky mats, there was a spirit of freedom–and a lot of free spirits!–in the air. 

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History in the Being

Time to do your home practice but not feeling it today? Pop in Yoga Revolution Volume One –a compilation CD that features songs from “yoga music” superstars like Donna DeLory, Krishna Das, Deva Premal and Miten, and Snatam Kaur as well as from genre benders like Sheryl Crow, Angelique Kidjo, Sarah McLachlan, and Peter Gabriel. The collection is uplifting and energizing–perfect for vinyasa flow. And since proceeds from the sale help provide access to yoga for underserved kids around the country, you can feel good about making an investment in this aural upgrade. BONUS : Fun to listen to off the mat, too, Yoga Revolution Volume One is the perfect tunage to see you through even the nastiest traffic snarl. Ponder the message behind Ziggy Marley’s “Love is My Religion” (it’s track 11), and you just might find yourself hitting the repeat button instead of the horn. (Buy it at amazon.com , for $14.99.) What’s your favorite yoga music?

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Lend an Ear

I had every intention of writing my blog first thing this morning, after running out for a quick breakfast. Three hours later, I’m back at my computer after a super adventure I never could have predicted. I’m in Toronto, preparing to present at a yoga conference this weekend, but today I’m completely free. After a healing hot chocolate, I wandered the streets for a while. I stumbled across St. Andrew’s Church, a gorgeous structure that’s also home to the 48th Highlander’s Museum, Toronto’s first and only Canadian Highland Regiment. Yep, kilts and all. Lucky for me, it was open and I was greeted by a lifelong member of the regiment, W.O. Ron Denham, C.d. (Ret’d). Ron was pleased to show me around, and brought the uniforms, flags, and pieces of history alive with his profound knowledge and storytelling flair. I heard about his meeting with two queens, a king, his love of tartan, single-malt, his country, his heritage and his respect for Lieutenant General Arthur Currie, who bucked convention by refusing to grow a moustache, being less-than-stellar on horseback, and developing a reputation for expending ammunition before his men’s lives. He wasn’t popular with the other by-the-book officers, but he was a leader among his men, and went on to become the Commander of the Canadian Corps. Now, war and its aftermath makes me sad. But I couldn’t but feel reverence for the men and women who bravely went off to fight for something they believed in. I felt enveloped in the weighty cloak of their choices. My time at the museum brought up so many yogic themes and questions that I will offer up to my classes and students over time. What struck me most today was how life’s surprises are waiting for us around every corner, where we might not think to look. Today I invite you to make space for what you might not know. If you’re in your millionth Downward Dog, and you think you “get” this pose, the very next time you do it, you might be surprised with a revelation. One of the defining characteristics of a yogi is the willingness to let go of the preconceived plan or judgment and allow new experiences or perceptions come to you. Prana, or life energy, doesn’t like to be controlled. In fact, the secret of life and yoga is that life energy cannot be made to do anything. We can only remove obstacles like stress, tension, and clouded ways of seeing, thereby creating the space necessary for life force and insight to flood into us. And it will. As Robert Frost says in his poem The Road Not Taken: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I– I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” Sometimes, when we stop micro-managing every step, and instead allow prana-invoking moments of sweet surrender, we begin to nourish the sthira (spaciousness) side of our poses and ourselves. Only when we can release our grand illusion of control, step off our beaten paths, be still and ask,”What’s next?” will the most thought-provoking moments of inner inquiry appear, and rise to meet us. Core Question:  How will you make space for your next Super Adventure? What happened when you did? Core Pose: Five-Minute Yogi’s Choice During your next home practice, your teaching, or perhaps even right now in your chair, take five minutes for an unplanned pose or flow to arise from within. How does your body need to move? What is your breath teaching you? Instead of doing the pose from your mind, try being the pose more, listening to your inner cues, and letting your energy and breath dictate the movement. Even if it looks nothing like a classical yoga asana, go with the flow anyway. It’s your Super Adventure moment!

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My Super Adventure

We just love hearing news about schools introducing kids to yoga. And it seems that Canadian schools really understand the many benefits that yoga practice can offer students and are leading the way in making time on the mat an accepted part of a curriculum. Now, thanks to  Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows Board of Education,  Vancouver’s  school district 41 in is approving yoga  for school credit. Other  Canadian schools  also offer high school credit. We want to know: Do schools in your area offer school credit for yoga? 

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Yoga Earns School Credits

On Saturday, Seane Corn came to teach at my home studio: YogaWorks in SoHo, NYC. I’ve taken one workshop with her before and really enjoyed it. Plus, we see each other around on the conference circuit. So, since she was right in my ‘hood, I decided to enroll in her weekend classes on vinyasa sequencing. When I arrived on my mat, multiple people, some of them my regular students, came up to me with baffled looks on their faces. “Why are you here?” someone said, as if I had nothing left to learn. My answer was the same as it always is at moments like this: “I know what I know. I want to find out what I don’t know yet!” And I learned a lot, or as Seane might say, I remembered more of what I already know in her daylong sessions. I’m proud to show my students that my role as a teacher doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped being a student. Knowledge is fluid and always evolving, just like I am, and my teaching will mature and shift as I do. I refuse to hide my process of studentship for fear that my students will think I’m less of a teacher. I’m confident in my abilities and my unique perspectives on yoga, so I rest in my truth, and let others think what they will. It reminded me to remind you that life gets so much easier when you stop seeking approval from those around you and instead focus on accessing your deepest truth, or satya. If you lose your center the moment someone else has an unfavorable opinion of you, you’ll become everything for everyone, but very little of yourself. When I began teaching yoga, I would change the way I taught based on every student’s critique. In one month, it led me to teach faster, teach slower, talk less, talk more, make it easier, make it harder, and on and on. It was maddening, and my truth was lost in the quest to please everyone. Nowadays, I come into a workshop, speak my truth (which is not the only truth), give them a million percent of what my spirit is directing me to offer, and then I go home. Most people love it, a few think it’s pretty good, and there’s almost always one who can’t stand me.   And you know what? That’s OK. It used to bother me for days if I got negative feedback from someone. But as I teach more, I see that will always be the case, no matter how I change my message. So I stick to my core. Finally, I’ve learned to go into any classroom with one intention: I’m not here to cater…I’m here to teach. In your life, you can spend all your time and energy shape shifting to accommodate everyone’s needs or you can focus on living from your center. This is the exact moment when taking it personally transforms into the practice of giving it personally… …and you need no one’s stamp of approval but your own to do that. Core Question: Have you ever over-compromised your truth to please those around you? What happened when you decided to be fully yourself? Core Pose : Crossed Navasana with Fists of Fire This is one of my signature Core Poses. It’s meant to draw you out of your head and down into your center. Come into a cross-legged position like Sukhasana (Easy Pose). Place one foot in front of the other. Inhale, roll forward as you reach up, and lift the hips a few inches off the mat. Exhale, roll onto your sitting bones, engage the navel and low back in and up as you lift knees and feet higher. Repeat 5 to 10 times, then end in a forward fold from Easy Pose.

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Living Your Truth

Everyone’s favorite supermodel, Brazilian beauty Gisele Bundchen, practices Anusara Yoga. She talks about how yoga kept her fit during her pregnancy in the April issue of Vogue. You can read part of the article here . In it, you’ll learn that her son Benjamin Rein Brady was delivered at home in a water birth, her new line of natural skincare Sejaa (“seja” means “to be” in Portugese) is launching today, and that

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Supermodel Gisele Bundchen loves life and yoga

According to Malcolm Gladwell (whose book “Outliers” I’m devouring right now), the people who are most successful in their fields, like Bill Gates, Canadian hockey stars, and top NYC lawyers, to name a few, all have one thing in common: They have each spent over 10,000 hours involved doing their craft. This isn’t the only indicator of what we in yoga would call “mastery,” but it’s a big one. Now, before I stumbled upon my first yoga class all those years ago, I was pretty close to reaching master status–in dysfunctional relationships. I’m certain I put in nearly 10,000 hours dealing with them, before yoga taught me to get clear about–and steer clear of–toxic partners. I spent the next 15 years quite differently, focusing most of my time and energy on comprehending what yoga meant to me, then clarifying how I could best share my Core Strength message with others. Whenever drama arose in my life, I used it to deepen my practice, not take me away from it. After reading the book, I calculated that I’ve spent about 32,000 hours practicing, translating and teaching yoga. I’m not seeking recognition, though that seems to be a byproduct of making myself accessible through mass media. To me, true success means that one has attained such a deep level of integration with what they’ve practiced that it becomes a part of them, and they can use it to more powerfully share their talents and voice with the world. But, just like the polarities of ha-tha or the sun and moon energies of yoga, developing a deep identification with an activity can become a negative samskara, (ingrained habitual actions). In other words, mastery can have a dark side. Those 10,000 hours can either help you attain your greatest goals–or hold you back from them. It all depends on what you’re practicing. Are you practicing health? Or misery? Today I invite you to notice where focusing the majority of your time, energy, and perspective and start a full-time job of mastering the thoughts, actions, and worldview that will serve you best. Core Question: What are you in the process of mastering? Anxiety? Negative thinking? Or maybe empowerment? Your life’s work? Crow Pose? Abundance thinking? Share your process, and inspire us by your example! Core Pose: Breath of Freedom Lunge — To throw off the weight of old, limiting habits and welcome in the new, come into a High Lunge. Inhale, reach your arms back, palms facing out. Exhale, curl your back and tailbone, tone your navel in, and embrace yourself for a job well done! Repeat 5 times or more, then switch sides.

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Mastery or Misery?

Actress Chloe Sevigny must really love yoga because she is talking it up all over the place! We aren’t sure what style she practices or where she places her mat. But this winner of a Golden Globe award for best supporting actress in a TV series graces the April cover of Elle UK and talks about her new three-times-a-week yoga practice, which makes her feel “strong” and “limber.” (She also credits yoga with boosting her libido.) In a recent interview with NPR , Sevigny talks about how yoga helps her with her scoliosis so she feels straightened out. Check it out: Our friends at YogaDork found some morsels of the interview here . Which celebrities have you noticed taking up the practice of yoga?

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Chloe Sevigny Loves Yoga

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell signed a

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Historic Legal Decision

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell signed a

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Historic Legal Decision

California Pacific Medical Center is honoring one of our beloved yoga teachers. CPMC’s Institute for Health & Healing  has selected Matthew Sanford as the recipient of its Pioneer in Integrative Medicine Yoga Journal conference in Boston this April. Congrats, Matthew!

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Congrats to Matt!

I’m reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Outliers” right now, and boy, does that guy ever know how to change a worldview. Each time I finish one of his books, my perception of life shifts. This time around the book reminded me that everything we come into contact with–whether it’s a relationship, a challenging situation, or even a yoga pose–gives us the opportunity to choose how we want to look at it, and how we’d like to use the energy of it (constructively or destructively) to meet our goals. Gladwell calls this the ability to “customize” our surroundings to meet our needs. In this paradigm, we never again have to be the victim of someone’s choices; instead we become the master of our own design. In order to make this leap, especially when an experience is dragging us down–a bad breakup, for example–we must remember one thing: truth is relative. I kept ‘truth” lowercase on purpose, because the little “t” signifies the things we think, do, and see. In yoga, we call Truth with a capital T “Satya.” Satya is our foundational nature, our birthright of light, love, and inner goodness. When we rest in Satya, we are already that which we seek to become. Our happiness begins to exist independent of external circumstances. Everyday issues lose their power to easily dim the brightness inside us. To access the big “T,” we must remember that we exist in a state of inherent equilibrium–our cells, our breath, our bones, and muscles are all naturally built to balance stability with mobility. For example, in our yoga poses we push past our point of equilibrium, then at some point the body is going to “go polar,” toward too much strength (which will create tension), or too much freedom (which can lead to injury). Life is like this, too. Go polar with how you view it (”I can’t attract money…I’m terrible at relationships…there’s too much competition…that will never work…you did this to me…”), and you’ll be stuck in the diminished worldview of the little “t.” Try to remember, as you look around from day to day, to widen your perspective. Do this by remembering that love and opportunity and capability do surround you, no matter how restricted the options may seem in the moment. They’re not. Practice broadening your view of the world and your place in it, by realizing that much of your truth is relative, or changeable, by you, at any time.   Then, change it to something that empowers you and suits you better. You’ll return to your original Satya-state, and polarity will dissolve back into the clarity and ultimate abundance of true center. And that rocks. Core Tip: Today, walk around as the rock star you really are, and see what a difference it makes! Let us know what happens, and how you’ve changed your truth to serve your goals. Inspire us! Core Pose: Breath of Freedom Lunge In your High Lunge, keep your tailbone and side waist long, reach your arms back, palms facing outward, and breathe. Sweep away old, limiting stories, and invite in all the truth that aligns with your greatest Truth. Be you fully for 5 to 10 breaths here.

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Remembering Truth