DJ Dave and the crew from Fog and Smog films (makers of the very clever ” Whole Foods Parking Lot ” video) are back, taking on yoga–and on the make for yoginis–with ” Yoga Girl .”  We spot Vinnie Marino and DJ Drez. Who else makes a cameo?

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Rapper’s Yoga Video

Canada’s Globe and Mail Report on Business magazine has named Lululemon Athletica’s Christine Day CEO of the year . This news comes after the Vancouver-based company was criticized in the media for its new “Who is John Galt?” shopping bag (a reference to the Ayn Rand novel Atlas Shrugged). Day, who came from Starbucks and has served as Lulu’s CEO since 2008, has overseen tremendous growth during her tenure. “Lululemon saw its stock climb to almost $60 this fall, up over 280% from when Day joined the company, and a whopping 250% gain year over year,” according to the article. Day points to the company’s stated values as a driving factor in that growth. “Investing in your health will pay big dividends for individuals and society,” she told the magazine, “elevating the world from mediocrity to greatness.” Of course, the anti-mediocrity sentiment led to Lululemon’s controversial use of the Rand quote . “I believe in a culture of personal accountability and not compromising your values,” Day said. “Atlas Shrugged is both about not accepting mediocrity and being personally accountable for the life you are creating.” But Lululemon has always used inspirational (or what the magazine calls “communitarian”) messages for their logos, such as, “The pursuit of happiness is the source of unhappiness” and “Friends are more important than money.” It’s this selling of ideals, and not just yoga pants, analysts say, that has fueled the company’s enormous success. “Compared to more price-driven products, Lululemon apparel gives its customers the feeling that they’re purchasing a lot more than mere ‘value,’” the article states. “Buy a Cabin Long Sleeve T-shirt and you’re involved in bettering yourself. Pick up one of those cute Lucky Luon headbands and you’re joining a community of like-minded people. … It’s a thing of virtue. Budget in other spending categories if you must, the brand seems to whisper, but don’t stop taking care of your body and building a better society.”

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Lululemon’s CEO of the Year

There are lots of things to love about the practice of kirtan. It’s a chance to practice devotion, experience a meditative trance, or even explore your connection with the world and a higher power. For some people, one of the most alluring aspects of kirtan is the opportunity to connect your voice with the voices of others–to really experience being a part of a community. This is exactly what Kirtan Central founder Daniel Tucker had in mind when he asked people from the kirtan community to submit videos of themselves singing the Krishna Das Classic “Ma Durga.” “As I pored over the videos, two things became evident: first, these people LOVE this song! Whether’s it’s love of Krishna Das, love of kirtan, love of Durga, love of singing, love of God… what’s obvious is the love, joy, and tenderness captured in each video clip,” wrote Tucker in a blog post. “And second: how deeply we crave to be part of something larger than ourselves! There was so much excitement to be part of the “choir,” and I believe that’s one of the places kirtan is healing us.” He accepted submissions from 108 people from around the world and the result is this awe inspiring video. Do you practice kirtan as a way to connect with your community? What are other ways you connect?

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Kirtan Chorus

By now it’s common knowledge that yoga has its roots in Hinduism. For this reason one Seattle pastor says there’s no room for yoga in Christianity. Yoga is demonic, says Pastor Mark Driscoll, and it can’t be separated from its Hindu roots in order to make it acceptable practice for Christians. “Going to a yoga studio to practice yoga as a Christian is a bit like going into a mosque to practice Islam as a Christian,” he writes in a recent blog post . Driscoll makes his case by exploring yoga history and philosophy and citing both Hindu and yoga scholars and passages from the Bible. “My hope is that you’ll begin to see clearly how yoga at its core is much more than a physical exercise but rather a system of thought that contends against Christianity and subtly finds its way into our thinking, habits, and lifestyles,” he writes. This is not a new debate. While it’s probably safe to assume that few yoga practitioners believe that the practice is demonic, many agree with Driscoll’s view that yoga and Eastern spirituality cannot be separated. Even styles of yoga that appear to focus solely on the physical body or that use it as a tool for Christian worship are still in direct opposition to the Christian viewpoint that Jesus is the one and only way to salvation, according to Driscoll. Whether you agree with him or not, you have to admit he makes a compelling case.

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Can You Be a Christian Yogi?

Leslie Kaminoff never expected his humble yoga book to make a splash in 2007. But that’s not what happened. The book, Yoga Anatomy , co-authored with Amy Matthews, sold out its first printing in a month and shot to Amazon’s Bestsellers list, where it’s been ever since. The book is in its eighth printing, is sold around the world, with over 200,000 copies in print. This week, the second edition of the book has been released. We talked to Kaminoff, also the founder of T he Breathing Project , about the book’s makeover: Buzz: Were you surprised that your book has become such a classic? LK: Yes, we had no idea how popular it would be. Buzz: How is the 2011 version different? LK: We’ve added some things that we didn’t add because of previous space and time constraints. Amy has always been the coauthor, and now she’s acknowledged. There are two brand new chapters, and a lot of new material based on the feedback we got. We tried to be clearer and make it easier to navigate. Buzz: Do you think it’s even more relevant today? LK: More and more people drawn to therapeutic work, whether students or teachers, so we’ve noticed quite a lot more demand for higher quality anatomical information than people get in their regular teacher training programs. Buzz: What do you make of the book’s popularity?  LK: Anatomy cuts through a lot of the secular conversations that tend to go on in all of the different schools of yoga. The one thing we all have in common in our body. The function of the body is universal. Buzz: What is your goal for the book? LK: To be a resource for students and for anybody who works with the body. My greatest hope is for it to continue what it’s been, a success far beyond what anyone imagine, Kaminoff offers an online version of his anatomy courses at www.yogaanatomy.net.

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Yoga Classic: New & Improved

The news is everywhere, from USA Today to ABC: A study published on Monday shows that yoga helps with chronic back pain. Published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the study  showed that yoga and stretching equally help people with chronic back pain. In the study, 92 people took a weekly yoga class. Ninety-one took weekly stretching classes. Forty-five people got a book that gave exercise and lifestyle modifications. After 12 weeks, the people who took yoga classes and stretching classes both improved, while the “book learning” group didn’t. However, yoga wasn’t any more effective than stretching when it came to providing relief, which raises an interesting question: Is there a difference between yoga and stretching? Buzz asked Loren Fishman, MD, of Manhattan Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and  Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, who prescribes yoga to his patients.   “That is an excellent finding because it shows scientifically, and again, what we believed from our own experience all along–that yoga helps patients with non-specific back pain. And stretching does too,” he says. However, what the study didn’t measure–the psychological and behavior benefits of regular yoga–is what yoga practitioners know is unique about the practice. “It often takes more time for these types of positive changes to take hold.”

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Is Yoga the Same as Stretching?

An organization doing some amazing work helping wounded veterans has just added another warrior to its ranks. From Nov. 4-6, Ana Forrest will hold public workshops in Tampa, Florida, to benefit the Exalted Warrior Foundation (EWF), a non-profit that has taught adaptive yoga to wounded warriors in military and veteran hospitals since 2006. On Nov. 7, Forrest will accompany EWF teachers to Tampa’s James A Haley Veterans Hospital, one of the largest spinal cord and trauma units in the United States, to meet and work with the wounded there. If you’ve even studied Forrest Yoga, you know that the classes emphasize being fierce, cutting through fear to get to the truth. Working with wounded vets fits right into to this philosophy. “Ana believes that warriors have a powerful place in a culture and society,” explains Elizabeth Pope, a Forrest Yoga teacher who volunteers with the Exalted Warrior Foundation. “In the Native American tradition, the warrior is a very honorable path. Anybody who takes care of the path should be honored.” Students come EWF classes with a range of injuries, including  amputations, brain and spinal cord injuries, and post traumatic stress disorder, and a host of other conditions. Classes include gentle breathing, gentle to more intense stretching, and meditation. “Faced with the demands of both a physical and emotional recovery, yoga allows newly disabled veterans to reconnect both with themselves and their loved ones,” the EWF website states. “These methods of yoga exercises, relaxation, and meditation are keys to wellness that the warrior can practice for a lifetime … [and] will help the warrior reintegrate into their community after leaving the care of the military, returning home to a potentially fuller and more productive life.” EWF works in military hospitals and rehabilitation centers around the country, including Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Portsmouth Naval Hospital, and Brooklyn VA Hospital.

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Ana Forrest Pairs With Organization to Help Wounded Vets

This past Sunday, The New York Times dedicated real estate in its Opinion Pages to reflect upon what Vivekananda meant to yoga in the West, as the 150th anniversary of his birth approaches. Author Ann Louise Bardach reflects on how this seminal teacher, credited with introducing Vedanta to the West, spread yoga’s gospel: “If you’re annoyed that your local gas station is now a yoga studio, you might blame Vivekananda for having introduced ‘yoga’ into the national conversation–though an exercise cult with expensive accessories was hardly what he had in mind,” she writes. In the article, How Yoga Won the West , the author talks about how Vivekananda influenced many great minds of the day, such as Gertrude Stein and Leo Tolstoy, and laments the way modern yoga has veered from Vivekananda’s message that all souls are divine, while imploring Americans to “work and worship”: Yet precious few of the estimated 16 million supple, spandex-clad yoginis in the United States, who sustain an annual $6 billion industry, seem to have a clue that they owe their yoga mats to Vivekananda. Enriching this irony was Vivekananda’s utter lack of interest in physical exertions beyond marathon sitting meditations and pilgrimages to holy sites. To learn more about Vivekananda, visit the Vivekananda Vedanta Network. Photo: Vedanta Society of Southern California

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Vivekandana and Modern Yoga

Photo credit: Jasper Johal for ToeSox From the wide cultural misunderstanding of tantra yoga to controversial ads by some yoga-product companies, sex and yoga is a hot-button topic. The fire was stoked again last week in a series of news stories and blog posts. First, a post on The Daily Beast explored the topic of spontaneous orgasms during yoga class. While it’s no secret that people say their sex lives improve after a regular yoga practice, this was, well, perhaps a little too much information. Then, a group of high school girls in Loveland, Ohio stood up for their right to wear yoga pants after school administrators banned the stretchy pants as too revealing and thus a possible distraction from school work. The girls, dozens who said they were sent home or forced to change their clothes, maintained that the pants are comfortable and no more revealing than a pair of jeans. What do you think? Is it really possible to have an orgasm in yoga class? Are yoga pants too sexy for schools? Are there too many stories about sex and yoga in the media? And does any of this have anything to do with the practice of yoga?

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Sexy Yoga News

Congo is experiencing one of the deadliest conflicts on earth; four million people have been killed in the war there. What can we do about it? Yoga for Congo Women is a not-for-profit that helps women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was started by Ann Richmond, who read an article in Yoga Journal about a woman who had traveled to Rwanda with Women for Women International, an organization that helps women survivors of war rebuild their lives. She went to the website and learned about the violence in Congo. “I was stunned, and felt ripped open inside. I had to do something,” she recalls. Soon after she participated in a Run for Congo Women , inspiration struck: “I could see how yoga could interweave with knowledge and empowerment in a truly unique and beautiful way. On that day, Yoga for Congo Women was born.” Last July, Ann became an official Women for Women ambassador, which means that she represents and advocates for the organization’s programs, holds benefits, raises awareness, and works as a media liaison. The organization had its first event last year in Denver: A one-hour yoga session for all levels, where people could donate, raise money, or choose to sponsor a “sister” through Women for Women. Sponsorship directly helps women in Congo thrive: They enter a one-year program through Women for Women International, which includes rights awareness training, literacy and skills training, food, medicine, and clothing, as well as emotional assistance to recover and heal from the atrocities they have experienced. After the training, they receive seed money to begin their own small businesses. The group has held eight events over the past year, with many more planned for the future. “I have been humbled at how it has grown already, thanks to the love of many people around the country (most of whom are not yogis in any way), and I truly hope to continue to see the Yoga for Congo Women movement grow and grow,” says RIchmond.  

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Yoga for Congo Women

September is National Yoga Month. National Yoga Month was started in 2008 by Johannes R. Fisslinger, with the support from Rachel Levine at the National Institute of Health. Held each September, it’s billed as “an awareness campaign to educate about the health benefits of yoga and to inspire a healthy lifestyle,” according to organizer Sora No. While the month is coming to a close, there are still a lot of free events, concerts, film screenings, Global Malas, and other cool things happening until the end of September. For the culmination of the month, on September 30th the organizers have put together the first annual Time for Yoga Global Community Practice: At 7 pm local time, yoga students are encouraged to practice yoga as an international observance.  “A one-hour yoga practice will be followed by savasana beginning at 8 pm, and a 15 minute meditation for universal peace and well-being at 8:15pm,” explains No. “By participating during your own local time, a wave of yoga will take place around the globe.” Visit the Yoga Month website for events and classes. 

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September 30: Time for Yoga

Any woman with an Internet connection has access to the voices of today’s most influential yoginis, thanks to the Divine Feminine Yoga Telesummit . The free program, which launched with a week of live calls in mid-September and is now available online, embraces the idea that there is tremendous power in owning and cultivating feminine (source) energy and wisdom in your life. Featured teachers on the summit include Sally Kempton, Shiva Rea, Sara Avant Stover, Chandra Easton and others who draw upon the Divine Feminine in their yoga, their teaching, and in their own lives. The summit is the creation of yogi, activist, and former director of the Green Yoga Association , Laura Cornell. “I see the Divine Feminine as a medicine for us as women, and a medicine for our times,” she says. “”It’s just one more piece of pulling together the awareness of women in yoga and celebrating women, healing and empowerment. If we can heal women body and soul, we can heal the world.”

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Where Technology Meets Divinity

From innovative designs that promise to lend extra support and comfort to stylish cover ups that transition seamlessly from the studio to the street, it’s no secret that yoga fashions are becoming increasingly more sophisticated these days. But is yoga clothing stylish enough for fashion week? Apparently so. Fashion designer Vivienne Tam, partnering with Chinese sports brand Li Ning, presented a fashion yoga collection yesterday at New York’s Lincoln Center during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. The “modern women’s dream yoga collection” wasn’t shown with a traditional runway show, but a “‘Live Sculpture Garden,” led by yoga teaching duo Rodney Yee and Colleen Saidman Yee. Twenty yogini models were wore the new designs while they performed a choreographed yoga routine led by Yee and Saidman. Tam, a longtime yoga student, said she created the collection when she had a difficult time finding fashionable athletic apparel that she could wear to the yoga studio and then to the office or anywhere else. “With my crazy schedule, regularly flying back and forth from Hong Kong to the United States, yoga has been the one thing that not only keeps me focused but provides me with a sense of peace and better energy,” she said. The reviews aren’t in yet, but this well-known designer’s foray into yogawear created a lot of buzz in the fashion blogosphere. If it hits, we’ll likely see other designers jumping on board. What do you think? Does yoga have a place in fashion? Or does pairing yoga and fashion take the practice a little too far away from its intended purpose?

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Yoga Collection Unveiled at New York Fashion Week

This Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of September 11. Across the country, yogis are gathering together to reflect, remember, and honor the people who lost their lives and the families and communities who live with the effects of that tragic day. “I feel like I needed to get the word out that it’s never too late to lend a hand to those affected,” says Ashley DiMeglio, who organized a music and yoga event in Congers, New York, on Sunday.  ”Coming together as a yoga community not only heals with our yoga practice but brings us together to share in our hearts how we can unite together for this cause,” she says. For the class, whose proceeds go to September 11 Families’ Association , she asks people to bring a picture of a loved who who died or otherwise affected by events of that day. “The reason for this is to place the picture on their yoga mat to dedicate their yoga practice to them and to send healing energy out to those that need that it.”  Many other teachers and studios are offering free classes, or hosting fundraisers. Here’s just a sampling of the events happening on Sunday. If there’s nothing in your area, why not find a park, gym, or living room to be together, and remember? New York By Love Alone , a free day of meditation on Governor’s Island hosted by The Interdependence Project, the Shambhala Center, the Jewish Meditation Center of Brooklyn, The Village Zendo, Won Buddhism of Manhattan, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and other  meditation and spiritual communities. Some of New York’s leading meditation teachers will provide guided instruction throughout the day. San Diego Yoga for 9/11 is a 3-hour yoga-and-meditation practice to honor the heroes and victims of that day, with proceeds going to the International Association of Fire Fighters Disaster Relief Fund. New Hampshire A 10th Anniversary Yoga Celebration at Zaanti Yoga and Meditation Studio in Wilton will benefit the New Hampshire campaign for a U.S. Department of Peace, and include meditation, mantra, and asana. Seattle Village Yoga is offering a free afternoon yoga class in honor of the day.  

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Reflect and Remember: Yoga on 9/11

The latest entry in the popular field of yoga memoirs is a wickedly funny book with one of the most memorable titles ever: “Yoga Bitch: One Woman’s Quest to Conquer Skepticism, Cynicism, and Cigarettes on the Path to Enlightenment.” The book chronicles a 25-year-old yoga student’s quest for enlightenment via a teacher-training program in Bali. For anyone who has ever fantasized that yoga could instantly transform them into a serene, lithe, uber-flexible and wise-beyond-their-years yogi, only to be rudely awakened to your real-time self doing a face plant on your mat, this story is for you. You’ll commiserate, cringe, and laugh out loud. Buzz recently spoke with the author, Suzanne Morrison, a writer and solo performer, who, 10 years later, is far less cynical but still has a lot to say about transformation, the marketing of yoga, and some of the more fringe elements of the practice. You went to this teacher training seeking transformation. Do you feel that you were transformed by the experience? I do. But if you go home from a yoga retreat believing yourself to be completely transformed, you should have that checked out. Your friends are probably making fun of you behind your back. That’s what Yoga Bitch is about, in many ways: it’s about waking up with yourself again after believing yourself to be transformed. Transformation is a long-term game. It’s something you can’t really see until you look back far enough. But I don’t think spiritual effort is ever a waste of time, even if you don’t see immediate results. One day you’ll touch your toes, having tried to get there for two years. Five years later you might notice that you’ve been slipping into meditation with less drama than you once did.  Last week my new favorite yoga teacher talked me into actually holding Side Crow for five seconds, and that made me feel like a whole new person–until I fell on my face, and then I recognized myself again. Looking back on your time in Bali, is there anything you wish you could have appreciated more that you didn’t at the time? Oh jeez, yes. I wish I had been able to notice that my ego was running amok after my first big spiritual breakthrough. I wish I had actually gotten enlightened. I wish I had seen the face of God while meditating and then marched into the future feeling great about myself. I wish I had thought to ask for the recipe for the amazing and forbidden coconut vanilla milkshake I became obsessed with. Most of all, I wish I had known towards the end of the retreat that 10 years later I would look back on my teachers in Bali and know that they were the best teachers I have studied with. They gave me a foundation in yoga philosophy that opened some incredible doors for me, both spiritually and intellectually. Physically, too–before Bali I looked like a dying dog in Plank Pose. Now I merely look like an elderly dog. Since you did your teacher training 10 years ago, yoga has become even more mainstream. Any thoughts about the yogification of popular culture? Well, it’s fascinating! I have an older friend who recently had a stroke, and his doctor prescribed yoga to help him regain some lost mobility in his legs and arms. I think that sort of development is pretty awesome. I am still conflicted about the way yoga has been used as a marketing device in order to sell everything from herpes medication to insurance plans. We are a nation of consumers, and right now many of us are deeply invested in consuming a particular health-and-wellness lifestyle. We all must be very exhausted or something, that we respond so profoundly to these yoga images, these wellness promises. But we do: if we are told a new car is going to make us feel nourished, calm, at one with nature and spirit because a woman in white is doing yoga next to it, a lot of us buy in. That image is seductive. It sometimes makes me feel like a huge chump. If I see a sun-drenched advertisement featuring a woman with perfectly clear skin meditating while her all-organic flax seed granola waits patiently for her, nestled in a beautiful ethnic bowl, I find myself wanting that granola. That granola, I’m convinced, is going to calm me the fuck down. I’m a total stooge. Then again, maybe it will calm me down. Maybe that granola has special powers. I want to believe in the power of the granola. During your program, you experienced kundalini rising, which for many practitioners is a kind of yogic Holy Grail. Have you ever recaptured that feeling?   I haven’t, although I did get overheated and pass out in the tub once, and it was kind of a similar experience. Seriously, though, I have deliberately backed off a little on meditation and pranayama. That was such an intense experience and I think there’s a part of me that is afraid to repeat it. Which is odd, because it was an amazing, spectacular event. I felt like I could bond with plants, suddenly. But I’ve tried to belatedly take the advice my teacher gave me in Bali. Lou said to let it go. He said that I shouldn’t try to repeat my kundalini experience or try and hold onto it or else it would actually hurt my meditation practice. And he was right: in Bali, I tried to hold onto that feeling for a long time, and it made meditation impossible, because I was always trying to recapture something lost. Now when I meditate I try and approach it as something new. I try not to compare today’s meditation to yesterday’s. This is actually good for my writing, too–one good writing day and you want them all to be like that. Without giving too much away, there’s a part in the book that discusses the health-preserving benefits of … urine therapy. Have you kept up with the practice? Hell no! Once was more than enough for me. Just the thought makes me gag. Interestingly, I recently spent time with my old roommate Jessica, who plays a significant role in Yoga Bitch , and she told me that she doesn’t do it anymore, either. She was hardcore. If she’s stopped doing it, I don’t think there’s a lot of hope for urine therapy to go mainstream. Read more from Suzanne Morrison at suzannemorrison.blogspot.com .

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A Q+A with the author of Yoga Bitch

Who says yoga can’t be funny? Certainly not Dan Damman and Chris Thomas. Together, they’ve written a “mockumentary” poking fun at the yoga world. Offering glimpses of the project through a series of videos , which are quickly going viral, they make light of the commodification of yoga, and the personality quirks of the people who practice it.  The idea started when Damman saw a postcard for a trademarked yoga retreat. He thought the idea behind it was kind of funny, “that someone was offering yogis the chance to embrace their vision, but if they didn’t, they might get sued.” Soon, Damman, a yoga practitioner himself, saw comedy in yogis everywhere, from the people breaking the speed limit to get to class to others rushing into class to steal a coveted spot for their mats. He and Thomas describe their project, called The Yogi™, as “a yoga-positive feature comedy about several fictitious yoga posers competing in the Pose Off of the Century.”   Damman says their work is a counterbalance to the idea that yoga has to be so serious. “When you see a situation that you’ve experienced, and you can relate to it, there can be comedy in it. With yoga, there is comedy because we have to battle our egos all of the time. We can’t observe ourselves, but we can observe other people, that’s how we learn about ourselves.” Visit The Yogi™  on Facebook.

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Yoga With a Sense of Humor

You may have seen the video of Yoga for Wine Lovers , which features an agile yogi practicing advanced poses while simultaneously downing a bottle of red wine. We’re not sure when it happened, but yoga and wine have become a popular pairing. Yoga teacher Dave Romenelli has carved a niche with foodies and wine lovers with his Yoga + Wine classes. Connecticut’s Chamard Vineyard hosts summer yoga classes outdoors in view of the vines. At the Wanderlust yoga-music festival, you can take a break from practice for wine tasting. And that’s only the beginning: other yoga-wine events are popping up at vineyards, studios, and yoga gatherings around the country. We are always fascinated at the way modern yoga integrates other aspects into the practice. But what does traditional yoga have to say about this particular combination? We asked James Bennitt, a Tantric vinyasa yoga teacher in Chicago, and a student of Rod Stryker.  ”There is no mention of alcohol in the yamas or niyamas,” says Bennitt. “However in Chapter 1, verse 59 of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, probably the most important text as far as the physical aspect of yoga goes, there is a list of ‘foods’ that are to be avoided by the yogi and, sure enough, alcohol is one of them.” Bennitt continues: “Believe me, I’m not happy about this as I love craft beer.” He doesn’t say that everyone has to follow these guidelines, but they work for him: “Personally, I have finally come to the conclusion that I feel better if I avoid alcohol all together.  Even small amounts on a regular basis are hard on your kidneys, adrenal glands and liver.  A glass of wine or beer once in a while isn’t the worst thing in the world, but when it becomes a habit, it is depleting to the system, not to mention clouds your judgment.  For me, yoga is very much about building energy as well as clarity–not depleting yourself of them.” How does alcohol fit in with your yoga lifestyle?  

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Buzzed: Yoga and Alcohol

To celebrate turning 40, yoga teacher Sadie Nardini wants to make a splash:  A flash mob in New York’s Times Square. Sardini has called for 40+ women of all shapes and sizes to gather at noon Aug. 18, strip down to their “boy shorts and tops” to show the world that 40 can be fabulous. “I wanted the 91 percent of people who don’t do yoga–yet–to notice the rockin’ anti-aging, fitness and confidence benefits of the practice,” Nardini told Buzz. “Instead of having a midlife crisis, we are inviting fierce 40-plus yogis to create a midlife transformation!” Flash mobs have become increasingly popular and yoga flash mobs are part of that trend. From events on college campuses to London’s Trafalgar Square , it’s a sure-fire way to get attention, whether it’s for a cause or just to create some buzz and change the conversation. On Aug. 24, New York City’s Storm Yoga, an non-profit organization that offers free yoga classes throughout the city, will hold a 3-4 minute Savasana Flash Mob in Grand Central Station, to demonstrate the power of simple stillness.   For those who witness a flash mob unfold, there’s an undeniable hypnotic, calming effect to watching a group of yogis silently come together and practice in unison. Like doing yoga itself. And that’s an impression that lingers. Have you ever participated in a yoga flash mob? What was it like? photo credit: danylophotography.com

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Yoga Flash Mobs Get Attention

If you’ve ever browsed a Lululemon Athletica store, you might be surprised that so many different looks could be created from stretchy fabric. From basic and simple to complicated and fashion-forward, the designers at Lululemon always seem to be dreaming up interesting new yoga wear. Whether you’re a fan or not, their designs are on often on the forefront of yoga fashion trends. Have you ever wondered how they come up with those booty-shaping yoga pants? The Lululemon Lab, located on the corner of West Broadway and Cambie in Vancouver, British Columbia, houses new design concepts, designers working on patterns, and even a team of 20-plus sewers putting together the next season’s clothing. Customers who visit get to see first-hand what goes into the designs, try them out, and provide feedback about the garments, which designers factor into their next creations. “The lab creates, makes, and sells its own line of clothing using the same Lululemon fabrics you know and love,” according to Lululemonlab.com, a website that shares photographs of the lab’s designs and interviews with the collaborators. “Its exclusive forward-thinking line is conceptualized by its very own team of designers, whose inspirations are rooted in local and international fashion as well as guest and athlete feedback.” The lab only makes between 10 and 100 of each piece, and only sells those garments from the lab’s showroom in Vancouver. A select few of these experimental pieces do make their way into the Lululemon stores everywhere. But the feedback that consumers offer influence the creations at the lab and the company as a whole. “Lululemon is based on guest feedback–this is a huge influence in creating our product,” says Lindsay Walsh, a product coordinator and designer for the lab. “The lab is our opportunity to collect that feedback on a daily basis.”

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Lululemon Lab

Wanderlust , the popular outdoor eco-yoga-music event enterprise that has spawned road-trip destinations for adventurous yogis, this year expanded its three-day outdoor festival offerings to include mini Yoga in the City Festivals in cities around the country. Now Wanderlust has added one more to the mix: Las Vegas. To be held in September at The Cosmopolitan, a 3,000-room gaming resort, the event features Anusara Yoga founder John Friend (the Elvis of the yoga world?), Wanderlust cofounder and Kula Yoga NYC creator Schulyer Grant, and musical group Thievery Corporation. Being Vegas, it also features burlesque shows, “dance party beats,” and poolside wine tasting, according to a press release. We’re happy that all those Sin City visitors, tired from binge gambling-smoking-drinking and doing all that other stuff that stays in Vegas, will be exposed to some good clean yoga fun. But we were puzzled about Wanderlust’s “commitment towards making the most socially and environmentally conscious event of its kind” with this location choice. Wanderlust’s founders have set a high bar for their events as being models of sustainability–with comprehensive composting and recycling programs among other laudable efforts. Las Vegas, on the other hand, is a city where 90 percent of the power is generated from non-renewable resources . Its main water source, the man-made Lake Meade, is estimated to be sucked dry , via drought and increased usage demands, by 2021. It’s basically a city that wouldn’t exist without imported water, electricity, and well, just about everything else that makes a place sustainable. We asked Wanderlust cofounder Jeff Krasno about the choice to bring the festival here. From a creative standpoint, he explained, the Wanderlust brand is about being playful and unexpected. Vegas fits well into that notion. He envisions a raised platform where “people walking down the Strip will look up and see John Friend and 400 people doing yoga.” As an event planner, it just doesn’t get much better than that.   And as folks in the business of promoting a healthful, yogic lifestyle, “we like the idea of bringing a shot of inspiration and enlightenment into a place not usually associated with those things,” he added. As for Vegas’ reputation as a place lacking any kind of sustainability inclinations, Krasno said he was surprised to discover that there’s more here than meets the eye. The dancers and performers who work in the shows are active, healthy people, many of whom do yoga, he said. There are even a slew of Whole Foods Markets in the area. And when he went seeking local support for the event, “we got like 15-20 yoga studio partners in a day.” “There’s a scene for it there, underneath all the glitz and glamour,” he said. We applaud Wanderlust for bringing yoga to unexpected places–and heck, the spirited, creative vibe of the festival is quite Cirque du Soleil-esque. And maybe, just maybe some of those collective Oms will help raise the energy of the place. Come to think of it, perhaps Wanderlust is exactly what Las Vegas needs. Doesn’t Celine Dion’s run at Caesar’s Palace end sometime soon?   We just hope that the same Earth guardian spirit so beautifully celebrated at Wanderlust’s Lake Tahoe, California, and Vermont events, doesn’t get lost in the drive for playful and unexpected.  Keep it real, Wanderlust!

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Wanderlust Goes to Sin City

Balancing the business and spiritual sides of yoga has always been a delicate one. An article in Business Week broaches the scramble for yoga teachers to trademark their yoga styles, citing that “out of the 2,213 trademark applications containing the word yoga, more than 2,000 have been filed since 2001.” The original yogi to trademark his style is Bikram Choudhury, who got a lot of slack at the time for his desire to “own” his series of poses. But now, the trend has caught on. From BROga® to Hillbilly Yoga®, many teachers are choosing to go the Bikram route. Hanel then broaches the underlying message: that yoga is going mainstream. As the Eastern mystic practice has spread from hippies to soccer moms to Metallica fans (yes, there’s Metal Yoga™), aspiring gurus are seeing an opportunity in the $6 billion U.S. yoga market. “Yoga today is where the Food Network was 15 years ago,” says Ava Taylor, whose Brooklyn-based Yama Talent manages the careers of 41 ambitious yogis. “Many of these teachers will cross over into the mass market.” We want to know: What do you think of trademarking yoga styles?

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Trademarked Yoga Is All The Rage

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Sadie Nardini

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Samin Nosrat

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Jessica Berger Gross

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Kristin Shepherd

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Sarana Miller

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Stacey Rosenberg

Robin, a local therapist in Haines, Alaska invited me to her home for a private yoga session. She said she had to check the tide schedule to see when it would work. Check the tide? Yes, she lives across Mud Bay where part of the day you can walk across the mud flats, and then when the tide comes in (Haines has the third most changing tide in the world) and you have to canoe across. There are a dozen or so families across the bay that all live by the tide, completely off the grid. I was up for the adventure, so I biked over to meet her. After loaning me a pair of extra tough rubber boots we took the 10-minute walk across the seaweed-strewn mud flats together.  As we walked, I was struck by the color of the seaweed and also at the realization that this was her commute to and from her home in any weather: rain, sleet, snow, hail, wind….this is Alaska after all. On this July day I was still wearing a hat and coat! As I stopped to examine the seaweed she told me about how she had prepared our dinner for the evening. The propane for the stove had run out that morning and her partner had tried to bring the propane tank over in the canoe earlier, but it had been too windy and he had to turn back. Needing to use the stove to boil water she got creative and cooked on the wood burning stove. When we arrived at their home, a three-story cabin perched over the bay, she gave me a tour of her prolific garden. I am continually amazed at the abundance of Alaskan gardens and what vegetables and flowers can do in a short growing season with long, long days. We had a lovely yoga session and delicious dinner with vegetables from the garden and wood stove cooked pasta. After dinner and some greatly enjoyed conversation (Robin’s partner, Dan, is writing a book on the history of the Native Alaskan people) I was informed that we had five minutes left to make it across the bay before the tide came in. We had to leave NOW! Back into the rubber boots I went, and tromp across the bay we did as the tide quickly crept in. Robin told me she thinks about her yoga practice and the support her abdominal muscles give her as she makes the pilgrimage across the bay.  She says she keeps her low belly drawn in and her spine in elongation as she confidently and gratefully makes the journey across. I tried to do the same as I sloshed through the mud and sea weed trying not to fall, my heart pounding in my chest, wind blowing across my cheeks. I was silently hoping I would make it across before the tide came in and that I would not have to strip and wade as I did a previous year when another Mud Bay resident invited me to dinner! Actually, that was great fun as well and its all part of the adventure and life in Haines, Alaska. How can you use your yoga practice during the day? How can you stay connected to the cycles of mother nature? Sarana Miller lives and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sarana is trained in the Iyengar and Forrest Yoga traditions and is a graduate of the Piedmont Yoga Advanced Studies Program and the Forrest Yoga Teacher training program and is currently studying the Sarah Powers method. She also sings and studies kirtan with Jai Uttal.  

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Living by the Tide

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

This is what this blog is about.  Read it.  Love it.

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About this Blog

l What’s new with the Oil Spill in the Gulf? It’s plugged, it’s leaking, there are underwater plumes the size of Rhode Island, the oil is lost? The headlines are kind of confusing, and it’s been a few months so I know it is starting to go out of vogue for the mainstream media, but there are at least a handful of yogis in LA who are keeping it on their radar and are ready to help. Brock Cahill is a surfer and a yogi with a plan. The way he sees it, we can make the most impact if we focus our efforts. His focus, the turtle. His plan: get to the gulf, get a boat, and get to work saving the turtles. He has partnered with Yogis Anonymous and the Insights Foundation to get this grass roots movement off the ground.   Here are a few words of his own on why he chose the turtle and founded Kurmalliance: A s many of you know, kurma is the Sanskrit word for turtle. Sanskrit is the ancient language of India, Hinduism, and yoga–roughly translated our project, Kurmalliance, is yoga for the turtles!  Beloved Kurma is also the second avatar of Vishnu, who, in my humble opinion, is the coolest god in the Hindu trinity. In an age old story, Vishnu comes in earthly form as Kurma to save humanity by hoisting a great mountain up on his shell, churning the seas, and distilling the elixir of life. That was the first time the turtle saved the world. The second is now. The turtle is the totem of this revolution. He is the preserver, the dude who comes to the rescue, and the dude we need now!    He is providing the motivation to get involved and fight for what is right. He saves humanity once again by getting us involved, recognizing that the nectar of life lies with the ocean, and if we continue to kill it, we will be faced with our own death and extinction. Wonder how they knew 5000 years ago that the turtle would play such a huge role in our potential evolution, or our possible extinction. If you want to get involved: to donate . For more information . Join on Facebook . Share with us if you know of any grass roots movements to get people involved in saving the gulf. Erin Chalfant is a writer, yoga teacher and the Web Editor at Yoga Journal.

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Save the Turtles!

The other day at the swimming pool I overheard a conversation that made my heart break. A dad, who seemed well intentioned enough, was trying–at all costs –to get his five-year old son into the water. Now, I understand where this father was coming from. As I wrote about in a recent post [link to swim camp post?], I’ve had my own challenges this summer getting Lucien comfortable with swimming pools.  I’ve tried everything from talking to him about his fears, using music and games, and, I have to admit, even the inducement of a trip to Whole Foods with promise of a wheat free muffin after a swim excursion. But this dad, after offering his own food related reward lost what little patience he had left, and told his son, “Just get in the water! Don’t be a baby!” Needless to say, it didn’t work. I saw something similar at bike camp last week. (Bike camp = three and almost three-year-olds practice on their tricycles or balance bikes for an hour a day for one week, taking lots of breaks for coloring and playing helmut hide-and-seek.) Lucien’s camp mate did not want to get on her bike. The first day she was with her nanny, an older woman who seemed nonplussed by the situation and let the girl be. The next day, Mommy came. And Mommy was bound and determined to have her daughter get on that pink tricycle and take it for a spin. She began with positive inducements (how proud Mommy would be) but quickly went downhill, so to speak, from there.  “If you don’t ride your bike,” she said, “Mommy is going to have to leave you here all by yourself.”  The bike camp counselor and I (she happened to be a young yogi and massage therapist) bit our tongues. I felt awful for both children and was reminded of a yoga class I took in a foreign city that shall remain nameless. Fresh off the plane on my first day in said city I hightailed it to a yoga center in the style I study. Instead of finding a home away from home and relief from tight shoulders post flight, I found an instructor who cajoled, prodded, intimidated, and even occasionally raised his voice at his students. I remember in particular one exercise at the rope wall where I couldn’t quite figure out how to arrange myself. (I’ve never been good at math or driving or spatial relations and my big yoga challenge is arranging my props!) This “teacher” made fun of me to the class–I was shamed, horrified, and though I should have left right then and there, I stayed for the two hour session, feeling worse and worse every minute. That evening, I came down with the flu. Enlightened Motherhood Lesson of the Day: Intimidation and name calling never ever ever work. Should I have said something to that father at the pool or the mother at the bike camp? Would there have been a gentle, yogic, way to offer alternatives to threats and name-calling?   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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Don’t Be a Baby: And Other Things Not to Say to Your Child (Or to Your Yoga Students)

testing code to pull most popular entries from blogs. In the right column you will find six lists… three each from Yoga Buzz and Beginners Blog. Each blog has a list for Most Popular of all time, Most popular since July 1 (could be quarterly), Most popular this week. They have been intentionally left un-formatted.  With a little formatting and perhaps including an excerpt, they could be powerful drivers.

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Test: Most Popular List

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

Uh oh. Who would have guessed that 10 months into my yoga life, I’d lead a class? Well, a small class. Three of us and a dog named Emma. At a cottage. I may not know what I’m doing when it comes to yoga, but neither did they, and we all felt certain we’d come to no harm. So we gathered on a deck looking over Big Marten Lake on a gloriously blue Saturday morning. We started with a few Sun Salutations, followed by variations on Sun Salutations. We flowed gently from posture to posture, plank to Chattarunga to upward dog to downward dog. I gave them every tip I could remember (shoulder blades down, inner thighs rotating backward, rooting through hands and feet) and made up several extra. More than once, Jenni said, don’t you mean my left leg forward? And isn’t it the right foot pivoting this time? (I am far more dyslexic than I imagined.) We moved onto slower poses, a ridiculous rendition of yin yoga – ridiculous given that I have not once attended a yin class.  I watch my lovely man do his poses at home and thought they’d be fun to try with my friends. Class was a rousing success. Until day two. During our Sun Salutations, neither Sue nor Jenni can move gently from plank to chattarunga. Not even the first time. Sue says, I don’t remember doing this yesterday. We did, I tell her. We did exactly the same thing. “It didn’t hurt like this,” Jenni says. “Hurt like what?” I ask. “Like hell,” she says, “pointing to her chest and arms.  It hurts like absolute hell.” “It’ll get better,” I tell them, hoping it’s true. And through every Sun Salutation (and we only do five), they collapse like big bags of potatoes from plank to Chattarunga. Smack. Slam. Thud. Thwack. Bang. Crash. The new sounds of yoga. We laughed so hard I thought I’d blow a bhanda. Great lessons from chattathwack yoga: 1.  Yeah for the shoulder and arm strength that comes with practice!!!! 2.  I adore sharing yoga. My only goal in leading the class was for them to want to do it again the following day. They did. Sort of. 3.  Yeah for real teachers, who know right from left, how to start slowly, and how to let us laugh. Have you taught, those of you who aren’t teachers yet?  I’d love to hear about it. Thanks to yoga, for fun on vacation, 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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Teaching!

America’s red-headed sweet heart has been seduced by the spiritual lures of India. Julia Roberts told Elle that she is “definitely a practicing Hindi” after her time in India filming the upcoming Eat, Pray, Love . USA Today followed up on the cover interview with a story Sunday. According to a 2009 Associated Press story relying on The Times of India newspaper, Roberts’ children have been given Hindu names. It quoted a Hindu priest, Swami Dharam Dev, as saying : “I have named her twins Hazel and Phinnaeus as Laxmi and Ganesh, while Henry will be called Krishna Balram.” No word yet on whether or not Roberts’ practices yoga, since of course being Hindu does not require it. USA Today was also quick to distinguish the difference between practicing yoga and practicing Hindism, but couldn’t resist posting an image of Sarah Palin in Tree Pose as an argument for the “poses don’t have to be spiritual” side. (We couldn’t resist either.)   ” Yet, we have been doing Hindu-Lite for years, sampling of the flavor , images and style of a 6,000-year-old faith but with no actual theology involved. Anywhere you look you can find loose chatter about dharma (a way of living leading to spiritual advancement) and karma ( the “neutral, self-perpetuating law of the inner cosmos,” Hindu monk Sannyasin Arumugaswami, editor of Hinduism Today magazine, said in 2006) . Yoga Journal estimated at that time that nearly a third of folks who try the 5,000-year-old Hindu physical and meditative discipline, say they’re seeking ’spiritual development.’ ” Is yoga spiritual for you, or is it simply a good work out?

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Pretty Woman Converts to Hindu Woman

This is the first of a series of blogs by yoga teachers on tour. Join them as they find inspiration to practice all over the world! Seven years ago a friend invited me to his hometown of Haines in Southeast Alaska. I had never considered visiting Alaska and didn’t give it much consideration; however, he didn’t give up easily and started sending me pictures of the river and mountains that persuaded me to visit  the little borough of Haines (pop. 2,400) for a week.   I fell in love with Haines at first sight and have returned every summer since. The people are friendly and generous and the natural beauty unparalleled. I started teaching a yoga class or two at the local community center that also houses the public radio and theater, and now have expanded into leading a full weekend workshop and evening kirtan. An incredible family (Beth MacCready and Gregg Bigsby) who practice yoga and meditation host me at their unique 15-acre waterfront property where the river meets the ocean. I stay in a yert, pictured above. Eagles fly overhead, seals and whales swim by, an occasional moose or bear wander in, and  snow-capped mountains rise out of water as far as the eye can see. It is here, by the sea in southeast Alaska that I have precious time to recharge my battery that gets worn down from living in an urban environment the rest of the year. My month here is a time for me to remember the practice of slowing down, the importance of rest and the healing power of mother nature. My singing, mediation and asana practice have plenty of space to unfold in this unique natural setting.   I plan my workshop with nature as a theme: trees rooting down to grow up toward the sun.  We practice rooting down into the earth with our feet and drawing energy up from the earth through the spine and out the crown of the head, allowing it to open and expand from the sky. We practiced this in Tadasana and through the standing poses. I gave the students a “home play” assignment to practice this extension as they stand and walk throughout the day.  I invite you to join us in this practice as well! Where do you go to recharge your battery? And what makes you feel connected to nature? Sarana Miller is trained in the Iyengar and Forrest Yoga traditions and is currently studying the Sarah Powers style. A student of Jai Uttal, she teaches yoga and leads kirtan in San Francisco. 

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Moose, Yoga and Alaska!

Remember when Ogden took over at Yoga Journal ? So-Cal yogis with a light sense of humor still have time to  catch the internet sensation series, The Inappropriate Yoga Guy on the big screen tonight! Here’s the details: Tuesday, August 3rd at 5pm Laemmle Sunset 5  8000 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90046 Head over there tonight and check out the five short episodes from when Ogden visited Yoga Journal here .

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Inappropriate Yoga Guy Heads for the Big Screen!

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

We’ve all had days like Alexander’s in the children’s book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. In case you haven’t read it (you should) one thing after another happens from the moment he wakes up: from finding gum in his hair, missing out on the cereal box prize to fighting with his big brother, a trip to the dentist, and having a broken nightlight, Alexander wishes he could forget this mess and simply run off to Australia (me too!)–they don’t have bad days there. As adults, and as yogis, we hopefully have outgrown some of these limited belief systems–but somehow it seems like this “bad day” allowance issue still comes up. We wake up and know this day is going to be off, so it is written off as such. What does science, and yoga have to say about that? Steve Schwartz of LifeHacker checks it out: The brain’s facility to simplify, in most contexts, is very useful and beneficial. Our brains develop symbols, or abstract representations of complex ideas, that allow us to connect the represented ideas with other ideas, and to build upon them, without having to keep the full details of every complex idea at the forefront of our minds. In other words, simplification clears our minds, freeing our brains to draw additional connections and conclusions from complex ideas, data, and experiences. But what happens when we simplify experiences with the wrong symbolic conclusion? This is precisely what happens when we conclude that we are having a bad day. We blame our misfortune on factors outside of our own control, in order to avoid analyzing the real reasons things happened as they did (or perhaps even to eschew our own responsibility). Hence, it is easy for us to believe we’re having a bad day. The obvious downside is that once you accept the convenient conclusion that the entire day is for naught, it will actually cause the rest of your day to go horribly awry. Experiencing the world with negative expectations is like viewing reality through a muddy water glass. Your view will be distorted and you won’t like what you see. Schwartz offers a four-step program on how to not have a bad day any day, most of which sound pretty much like yoga to us. In summary: 1.Reflect on the negative feeling you have right now. (Presence) 2.Re-evaluate the situation or events that lead to this stress. (Perspective) 3. Remember that the outcome of the previous minute is not indicative of the outcome of the next minute. (Avoid Samskaras) 4. There is no number four…get on with your life already! (Yoga is now!) Next time you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, try being present and changing your expectation–just like we do in yoga–and see if you have a wonderful, awesome, not bad, very fantastic day. Because some days are still going to seem like that, even in Australia.

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Got a Bad Case of the Mondays?

This summer in my house, nap time is yoga time. The best feeling in the world is listening to my “baby” sleep off his hard morning of play while I settle into my practice upstairs. Then there are the days when he skips his nap.  I go into Lucien’s room, change his diaper and offer him some water, and then it’s back in the crib to try and sleep. I head back upstairs to my yoga corner, feeling exhausted at the prospect of a long, hot afternoon with a tired toddler. I have a few minutes to practice before giving up on the nap completely. It’s one thing to practice yoga when he’s sleeping soundly, but quite another to practice when the monitor is all lit up and red. Here’s a quick sequence* for when you’re tired, and time is short.  It should take you about 30 minutes, long enough for your baby or toddler to have a chance to fall asleep, but short enough so that you can feel refreshed and like you fit in a decent practice–even if a nap is just not happening today. Supta Bahhda Konasana (Take a good five to ten minutes here.) Downward dog Sirsasana  (If headstand is a regular part of your practice–no need for stress today!) Chair Shoulder Stand Ardha Halasana with Chair  (My all time favorite nap-time pose.) Savasana  (Enjoy a long and luxurious rest once your child falls asleep.)    *Sequence inspired by one of my favorite asana books, The Woman’s Book of Yoga and Health by Linda Sparrowe and Patricia Walden    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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Five Poses to Beat the Nap-Time Blues

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

As yogis, we all struggle to keep our practice consistent. We get distracted by life and make excuses to skip one day, then the next, and pretty soon we find ourselves making a lasting indent into the couch–we are too defeated for that one down-ward dog that could turn it all around. It seems like perfectionists catch the worst of this cycle. We like to feel like we are “being good,” “making progress,” and “on track.” Self-proclaimed perfectionist and yogi blogger Daniela Velázquez at TBO.com says “Yoga helps me cope with much of that fretting – until I stop practicing. Then all of the anxiety creeps back and makes me want to crawl in bed instead of working it out on my mat.” And she’s not the only one who struggles with this all-or-nothing mantra in her yoga practice and exercise routine. “‘It makes it hard for people to stay motivated – they have to be perfect in their diet plan and/or exercise plan,’ behavioral psychologist Dean Anderson says. ‘When they inevitably aren’t, they start getting down on themselves. They figure they’re never going to do it,’ says Anderson, who writes for the weight-loss website SparkPeople.com under the pen name Coach Dean. ” Velázquez  says ” Lately, I have learned to let the problem remain what it is and nothing more. Eating a cookie or skipping class is simply that – not an excuse to send myself over the edge. That’s what I have always loved about yoga. Sure, I geek out when I do something I couldn’t before, like my first on-the-wall handstand a few weeks ago. But the emphasis for me has always been on the journey of the practice and the progress I have made to become a happier, more whole person. Once you’re able to do something new (like a handstand), there’s always a slightly more complicated pose to work on (a one-handed handstand). And with more than 1,000 poses in yoga’s repertoire, you won’t ever be able to master them all. And that’s OK. Because each time you practice, you gain a little more wisdom about yourself and the world. It’s about the process of changing, not about each individual event. Perfectionists focus on the outcome, and if they don’t get a perfect outcome their motivation collapses. ” Next time, start with reminding yourself that you are inherently full or whole–lacking in no way. Then press on to practice with willful intention and non-concern for results and see if it feels different. Erin Chalfant is a writer, yoga teacher and the Web Editor at Yoga Journal.

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Yoga for Perfectionists

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

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?

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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.

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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.

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Burgled!

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

testing Green Living Blog

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Green Living Blog test

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

I left New York City on Monday with everything I own packed into a trailer, and set out for Austin, Texas, where I will be living for the foreseeable future. Though this was my decision, and I think a good one for my yoga career, my health, and my sanity, today it hit me: Everything I knew about my life in the city is now technically gone from me. My home, my neighborhood, my social scene, my yoga classes, even my local cafe have dissolved away as if in a dream, since I can no longer rely on them to help me feel grounded and secure. I spent a decade getting to know friends, eating at my favorite places, living in an apartment I loved, and settling into a routine that comforted me.  The fact that I know that moving to Austin will be more productive for me doesn’t change how floaty and surreal the world feels right now. Even the ground itself is moving, the highway spooling out and spinning away beneath my wheels. When most everything external literally proves to be as impermanent as the Buddhists and yogis tell us it is, whether it’s a big move we’re going through, the loss of a relationship, a job or smaller transitions, like a well-worn pair of jeans finally kicking the bucket, there’s always a sensation of shift.  These moments of ebb and flow can be unbalancing and scary.   Yoga teaches us about ideas that come from the things other people have lived. We turn to our teachers as guideposts, as those who have navigated similar situations, and emerged victorious using the tools of conscious awareness they then pass onto us. When our studies meet our personal life, and we are asked to walk the walk along this path, it’s a whole new yoga practice, perhaps the hardest one of all. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather endure Warrior 3 until my leg gave out than go through a breakup or a radical move.   When we as seekers of center experience times where all that we thought was real turns to smoke and slips through our fingers, and we’re dealing with the grieving process of moving from the past into the present, there’s a powerful question I can think of that we might ask ourselves: This is happening. Now, what am I gonna do about it? Believe me, when I was in the space of first realizing how much I’d just given up in order to follow my goals, one thing I could have done was totally, completely freak out. I felt the panic rising, as if I was that little bubble that’s supposed to be in the middle of a carpenter’s level, but someone tipped it, and my poor bubble was squished way up in the corner. In that moment could have turned back, canceled the whole crazy Austin idea, and settled back into what I knew.   Then again, my heart is calling me towards something different, and if yoga has taught me anything, it’s to be able to endure uncomfortable sensations in the body, mind, and heart, long enough to get to that atman, the soul, or center of myself. Once there, I can more easily bring myself back to a leveling off place, and find that calm bubble of my core returning to center. In fact, it’s not our inner peace that wavers as life does, but our moveable parts: thoughts, emotions, expectations, perspectives, and even the physical body. When we remember that just because our outer world changes doesn’t mean our innermost one has to, we dissolve the illusion that we are the constructs, and not the constant. So, we can answer our own question by choosing to draw not from our first reactions, but from the stillness inside. Then we can act from equilibrium to move towards the next, though as yet unformed, part of our journey, with the integrity it takes to create the future experience we want to live most of all.   Here’s the pose I did at the Virginia rest stop that helped me remember that … Core Pose: Natarajasana   If you see a statue of Nataraj, you’ll notice he’s standing on what appears to be a baby. Don’t be alarmed–it’s actually a demon. Nataraj is the cosmic dancer, and he exemplifies the power of riding the wave of universal energy rather than being consumed by the dark forces of doubt, insecurity, lack, and fear. Whenever I want to find my ground, and from there, let the joyful dance of life take me where I’m supposed to go next, I make sure to include Natarajasana in my practice.   Stand with feet hip-distance, about two-fists-width wide. Ground into your right foot, and bend your left knee so you can take hold of the outside of the left foot or ankle in your left hand. As you draw your low belly up and lengthen the tailbone down to maintain space in the front and back of your lumbar curve, begin to kick your foot behind you as you reach the chest and right arm forward, or up to the sky as your balance and flexibility allows. The amount of backbend here is up to you, but if you stay rooted into your standing leg and foot you’ll gain the stability and gravity this pose requires in order to inspire its freedom dance.

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Finding Center

In May 1975, the first issue of Yoga Journal –all 10 pages and 300 copies of it–was born. YJ is 35 years old this year, and we thought it only fitting to celebrate with yoga, of course! Our Facebook fans submitted their daring arm balances from all over the world, which you can view in our Arm Balance Extravaganza slideshow . Founded in 1975 by members of the California Yoga Teachers Association (Rama Vernon, Ike and Judith Lasater, Rose Garfinkle, Jean Girardot, Janis Paulsen, and William Staniger), Yoga Journal was created to unite the growing yoga community and provide “material that combines the essence of classical yoga with the latest understanding of modern science.” Read the full story of YJ’s beginnings here. Keep an eye out for more on our Special 35th Anniversary Edition hitting newsstand this fall. Be the first to get sneak previews and other special offers by becoming a fan at www.facebook.com/yogajournal

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Happy Birthday Yoga Journal!

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

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

Sting just started out for a summer tour, and, unfortunately, the only buzz we keep hearing is about this mysterious scandalous tantra stuff. Allow Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, to explain themselves in Yoga Journal ’s exclusive interview . Stephanie Syman, author of The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America , also plans to set the tantric-yoga record straight once and for all in her Wall Street Journal blog: “Traditionally, Tantra refers to a loose and varied collection of practices detailed in the Tantras (Indic texts). Some of its most salient features are secrecy and worship of the female principle. The feature that has most intrigued and shocked observers–both Indian and Western–is that Tantra enjoins the aspirant to either visualize sex or engage in acts of ritual intercourse. The purpose of this conjugation, often depicted as the union of Siva and Shakti, is to reach Samadhi, a blissful state of consciousness devoid of any sense of personal identity. Succeed, and not only do you turn your mind into a “point of awareness,” as Ram Dass once put it, you obtain special powers (siddhis). You could say that we’re all Tantrics now since the most popular form of yoga today, Hatha Yoga, has been a central feature of Tantric practice, and its creators were affiliated with Tantric sects. But as with most cultural imports, our assimilation of Tantra has involved equal parts interpretation and invention. No wonder. Tantric practice is no quick route to sexual gratification. It’s traditionally demanding, complicated, highly formalized, and at times, tedious. And only some types of Tantrics (known as “left-handed”) engage in ritual sex at all. Tantra then presents a paradox: it can involve sex and yet its prerequisites mitigate the pleasure. And while you may enhance sexual performance via Tantric practices, the goal is not to get good at sex, the goal is to alter your consciousness so radically that embodied existence is no longer relevant.” Still curious? Read Todd Jones’ The Truth About Tantra. Erin Chalfant is a writer, yoga teacher and the Web Editor at Yoga Journal.

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Truly Tantric

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

As our nation turns to backyards, barbecues, burgers, bright colors and explosions in the sky, it seems appropriate to celebrate independence in a personal way as well. Perhaps with some yoga? Independence. Freedom. Liberation. Moksha. Most cultures take time to celebrate a form of letting go and feeling open and alive to possibility, and it seems the height of summer is the perfect time for this expression. Your pores are open and warmed by the sun, encouraging your body to release, the days are long and, in most places, the weather is inviting.  What do we, in this modern day, need to do to disentangle ourselves from our oppressors?  What are our oppressions anyway, and why do we feel tangled in the first place? Yoga can help answer all of the above. I woke up with Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” in my head: “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.” This will be my mantra in practice this weekend. Any obstacle I perceive has been placed there by me, and I can also choose to remove it. My morning yoga practice, of course, will be my revolution. Today I celebrate independence from the mind stuff, vritti .  I will not allow myself to be worried about the extra traffic caused on a Friday before a holiday weekend…or the longer lines at the grocery store, or the wait at the bank or how crowded it will be at the park and the beach. These things are fun and they are choices. I will enjoy my liberation with breath, movement, and maybe a little reggae. How will you liberate yourself this weekend? Check out the accidental yogist if you’re in SoCal and looking for studios that are celebrating their independence. Erin Chalfant is a writer, yoga teacher and the Web Editor at Yoga Journal.

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Independence Day

In the midst of wedding season, it seems like a good time to think about what we are committing to when we gaze longingly at our mat or wish we had more time for Namaskar-ing at sunset. In chapter five of the Bhagavad Gita : “The resolute in yoga surrender and gain perfect peace; the irresolute, attached to results, are bound by everything they do.” So, we’ve got to resolutely let go? Sounds tricky. Even if we can conceptualize this, how is it applied and how do we live this truth on and off the mat? Susan Piver at the Huffington Post seems to have hit it right on the yoga toes. Not sure if she does asana on a mat, but she certainly sounds like a yogi in this reflective blog written on her twelfth wedding anniversary. “It’s just now, 12 years later, that I’m finding out what, apparently, I said yes to. I said yes to the unfolding, impenetrable arc of uncertainty. I guess I thought that finding love was an endpoint, that some kind of search was over and I would find home. We would leap over the threshold together into whatever we imagined our ideal cottage to be. But really we stepped through a crazy looking glass. It seems that I committed to a lifetime of delight and sadness, inseparable from each other. Every time I look into my dear one’s eyes and feel how deeply we’re connected, the moment disappears before I can actually hold it–and I have to watch that happen. It’s excruciating. It’s much easier to do this with your thoughts when you’re meditating than with the feeling you get from his breath on your shoulder as you fall asleep. But now I get that I have to repeat this until the end of my life, and that somehow this is love’s road. I didn’t really understand that love does not arise, abide, or dissolve in connection with any particular feeling. It has almost nothing to do with feeling. (Nor does it seem to be a gesture, a commitment to stay, becoming best friends, or anything else I might have thought.) Love has become a container in which we live. Through time, riding mysterious waves of passion, aggression, and ignorance (and boredom), I think we began to live within love itself. At least I did. E ach time I have opened up, extended myself, accepted what was being offered to me, stepped beyond my comfort zone to embrace him, the structure has been reinforced. I no longer have any idea if I love my husband or not. I can’t imagine what the feelings I have for him could be called. I’ve even given up trying to love him. Our relationship is what gives us love, not the other way around. This is how it is. And if you’re looking for a crucible in which to heat compassion, this is a really good one. Someone once told me that compassion is the ability to hold love and pain together in the same moment. So at least we’re learning something, which is what I tell myself. When you find your true love, there is something inside that simply and inexplicably says hello to him. Yes to him. Of course to him. Certainly. Obviously it’s you. There is no choice. I do.” Are you ready to commit or re-commit to your practice?  What poses do you use to remind yourself to commit to surrender? I like Ardha Chandrasana for this balance. Whether you’re getting married this summer, attending a commitment ceremony or finaly ready to take the leap with yoga, this article on celebrating with meaning may help get you in the mood. Erin Chalfant is a writer, yoga teacher and the Web Editor at Yoga Journal.

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I do 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

Yesterday morning, sitting at my desk, hard at work, I would have never predicted that by late afternoon I’d be sitting on a boat with Yogic Arts creator Duncan Wong, eating watermelon and floating down the Hudson River. But that’s exactly what happened. That morning, my manager, Ava, called, inviting me to hop aboard the meditation and reiki cruise that Captain Ike and his Spirit Seeker Journeys crew does weekly. “Get to the boat basin at 79th Street,” she said. “Life awaits!” At first I said no. I had far too much business to attend to, I was comfortably at home with my tea, my computer, and Google, and it seemed unfathomable to peel myself out of the chair and make such a big trek. Not to mention that getting from Brooklyn to some uptown Manhattan dock during rush hour is an almost impossibly long journey. When I hung up the phone, though, I began to reconsider. I could always work, but a boat, a willing captain, and an available body of water is not always as easy to find.  I took a deep breath, got up, and went to find my sunblock. When I got to the boat, I was pleased to see Duncan and Ava there, along with some new friends and yoga teachers I looked forward to getting to know. And bond we did. The day was gorgeous, our ravenous yogi appetites cleared out Captain Ike’s cupboards, and we had so much fun that a scheduled 7:30pm return became 11:30pm!  It was a special day, magical even, and lying on the deck watching the moon hide and reappear between skyscrapers, I was so thankful I’d chosen sailing over Googling. I realized that as yoga practitioners, we have more choices than we might think about the quality with which we live our lives. It’s so easy to fall into our samskaras , mental and emotional patterns that can drive the habitual actions and default settings we’ve been doing for so long. Sometimes it’s like we’re on we’re on autopilot, and that the way we’re living is the only reality there is. But once in a while, we get the opportunity to choose again, to broaden our perspective of what our day could be like, or how our lifestyles, our relationships, careers and ways of perceiving the world could be brighter, more abundant, and could serve us in the absolute best ways possible.  Sometimes I hear myself saying “no” to the unknown adventures that might be found on a different track, because I think, “I can’t possibly do that.” My rational mind then proceeds to tell me why. Well, what if, just once in a while, we let our spirits answer with the big “Yes” born of the question: “Why not ?”  Doing exactly that yesterday, instead of returning phone calls a little faster or making my deadlines a little earlier, manifested a memory I will cherish for a lifetime. After all, life isn’t always going to give us the peace and happiness we want. Sometimes we have to create it from the inside out by doing something revolutionary. So, next time you find yourself deep in a samskara that might be comfortable but not pushing you to be as powerful and vital as you’d like to be, see if you can jump out and say “Yes!” to something radical, exciting, and new.  After all, life awaits. Core Pose: Shakti Kicks I call these Shakti Kicks in honor of the creative fire they spark at your center. If you want to bust out of a rut, this energetic pose is a fast-track to transformation! I use it to help students strengthen the upper body for arm balances and inversions as they practice courage and the hugging into center it takes to re-track towards power and grace. Note: You don’t have to kick this high. I encourage you to start very mindfully, going slower and lower than you might think you can. All my asanas are built from the ground up, specifically to give you the best chance to remain in the integrity of your body’s healthy structure and respect your individual process, even as you’re moving and growing in the pose. So try little hops, and chip away at this pose until you are going farther but still in full alignment. From Down Dog, firm your fingertips into the floor and walk your feet together. Press your big toe mounds into a bandha , or lock. This activates your inner thighs and keeps your legs hugging in for more control as you hop. Bend your knees on an inhalation and look forward between your hands. Draw up through your lower belly as you take small or larger hops. If you’re building strength, or if your wrists or shoulders won’t support hopping, then pretend to hop, grounding the hands down and lifting your hips higher with the low and mid abdominals on each exhale. Otherwise, aim your heels for the sitting bones and land with bent knees. As you hop, exhale strongly for more core support, and keep your shoulder blades naturally down the back even as your hands press into the floor.   Eventually, your hips may hover over your arms and you’ll be able to tuck your tailbone and lift your belly as you root down through your hands and set your feet down lightly. However, even if you’re kicking low, you can still find the dynamic earth-to-core connection that allows you to lighten your landings as you float between the hands. Try 5-10 kicks then fold forward for a few back-body stretching breaths in Uttanasana.      

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Saying Yes

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

All this World-Cup-inspired team spirit reignites the debate about yoga as a sport. Bikram has been lobbying for a Yoga Olympics for ages. One need only watch the New York Regional Yoga Championship video from New York Times to conclude that yoga is VERY challenging and amazingly beautiful and fun to watch. There are of course pros and cons to having all this attention in the yoga world. Those opposed say yoga cannot be judged and that doing so misses the point entirely. Supporters say exposure inspires children to get involved at a young age.   What do you think about yoga as a sport?  And what about some of these crazy poses…is that even good for you? More advanced poses here: Extreme Yoga Poses Join the debate: Can that be Good for You?!

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World Cup Yoga?

by Kathryn Budig I was so excited when Elena Brower, Goddess of yoga, invited me to demo at the maha event–Yoga in Central Park–but once I added up my financial sum for taking off, my numbers were looking dangerously high. Dismayed, but happy to stay off of a plane and knowing all is as it should be, I decided to watch the live stream from the genius boys at Yogaglo .  Soon after, thanks to the my home-away-from-home (aka my Facebook page) , I saw that Flavorpill was hosting two simultaneous events. One in Miami and one in Los Angeles with Tara Stiles. I shot Ms. Stiles an email and was RSVPed for some yoga poolside at The Standard hotel–yes, welcome to LA! I began my day at 4:30am; disgruntled to find that my green tea canister was empty. I chugged two glasses of water and took out my angst in the form of a Facebook update. The Om-tastic New Yorker, Cyndi Lee, comically replied, “5:30am? — green tea? — this is when I realize I don’t live in LA. Good luck!” I chuckled to myself thinking of the contrasts between this day in NYC vs. LA. Green tea, albeit healthy, does sounds a bit wimpy next to the vibrato of a black cup of coffee.   Then I thought of the yoga events.   Ten Thousand yogis gathering in the vast and majestic Great Lawn of Central Park, and where is the Los Angeles equivalent? Clearly, amongst scantily clad poolside peeps at a posh West Hollywood hotel. Hey, you’ve got to accept a person or place for exactly who or what it is, and Los Angeles–you certainly are pretty. Everyone was so pretty, in fact, that I wondered if the hotel hired True Blood physique-worthy people to lounge next to their pool to make it look good. Let’s not forget, Tara Stiles –our teacher for the event–is a Ford model. Very apropos. That said, Tara is a good midwestern girl who now resides in New York City with her studio, Strala.  Any midwesterner is a friend of mine, and upon meeting Tara in person, I was very pleased to feel her instant geniune warmth, love and goofiness. A true down-to-earth girl. We strolled gracefully (okay, I lugged my Manduka) past the pool, took off our sunglasses and decided whether we wanted sun or shade.  The group of roughly 30 people placed their mats, applied sun block, and the practice began. Tara led us through a well-rounded hour class with sun salutes, lunges, gentle twists, standing poses and time for inversions, backbends and some good hip loving. The initially too-hot sun felt amazing as we opened our hearts to a refreshing rooftop breeze to balance out the heat.   The facade of this event was tres LA, but the heart of the event was pure yoga. There is nothing more powerful than a group of people uniting to breathe with intention, to soak up the sun and learn how to light up from within. The irony is that the New York version of the solstice celebration of light was rained out. One big OM and a round of salutations was all they squeezed in before the show was shut down due to lightening. My intital reaction was sympathy for how frustrating that must have been. Then I laughed. Here I was, comparing Angeles to New York all day long.   Green tea verses black coffee.  A hip West Hollywood pool verses the vast green of Central Park. Sunglasses verses reading glasses. US magazine verses The New Yorker. Sun verses rain. What have I learned? Balance. We are all connected. Rain or shine, we are all yogis unified, coming together to show the world that yoga has the power to heal and change the world. Anyone can do yoga–in the park, at a pool, or even from a computer at home. All it takes is the will and intention to do so, and let me just say–10,000 yogis–that’s a pretty sight. Kathryn Budig is a Los Angeles yoga teacher and writer. Kathryn is an arm balance rockstar who teaches challenging vinyasa flow classes at Yoga Works.

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SoCal Solstice Celebration

One of the world’s largest yoga classes proved also to be one of the shortest. An estimated 10,000 people showed up for yoga in Central Park on Tuesday only to find–mid Surya Namaskar–that lightning and rain would cut the solstice celebration short. Legendary yoga teacher Elena Bower lead the mass of yogis. Participants on the scene say even the rain and thunder could not dampen their moods or destroy their inner peace. One of the greatest things about yoga–and New York City–is its ability to unite young and old, and people from all parts of the city proudly waited in long lines for a chance at this great coming together of community in the park. As they waited, they did what yogis often do: yoga. In the end, the day will be remembered as yet another lesson in willful intention with non-concern for results. Aerial image by Geoffrey Goodridge / Michael O’Neill Photos by J oe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan

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The Faces of Yoga in Central Park

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

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

Last night I did something I never thought I’d do in a million years. I quit teaching. More specifically, I’ve stopped teaching my public classes during the week. This is a very big deal for me. I have been holding weekly classes at various studios for 15 years, and it’s so surreal that next week no classroom will await me. There are, however, a lot of other things on my plate and I’m going to now use the time between teaching workshops to focus on taking care of the details that maintain my career: writing, planning curriculum, creating new content, and making meetings. I’d also like to fit in a social life! I know that I’m lucky and blessed to be making this decision at all. Yet walking away from my classes was a real challenge for me. I adore my students, many of whom have been with me for years, and at any other time in my career, I would have been over the moon to have a room full of eager faces awaiting me each night. But it’s not doing anyone any favors when I’m gone for three weeks at a time. You just can’t cultivate consistent relationships that way. I find that the more I work toward my dreams, the reality of living my yoga gets more intense. The types of choices I must make have shifted that way too. It used to be that my options were more clear-cut, between something I wanted and something I didn’t. For example, I once had to pick whether I wanted to become a telemarketer for a tobacco company or teach yoga at a popular studio. Now, as I refine my options, it’s getting tougher to tell which road is best. Like this choice: Giving up my weekly classes in order to fully focus between travel engagements, or trying to do it all and reaping the benefits of every possible teaching opportunity. It’s often easier when the choices life presents to us are no-brainers, but how do we navigate the ones that are confusing? Yoga teaches us that there can be bhavana, or a healing quality, to the choices we make and actions we take. I say “can be” because we also have the power to choose the path of duhkha, or suffering. In my own experience, I see each fork in the road as an opportunity to do something that’s either constructive or destructive to my ultimate goals of creativity, health, love, and happiness. And, like anything in life, which direction your next step follows depends on a variety of factors. You must take into account your goals, core values, state of vitality, personal needs, other opportunities, and your current circumstances. A year ago, giving up my classes would have been ludicrous and potentially harmful to my goal of teaching only yoga. But now, the responsibility and energy they require is keeping me from giving my full attention to the other responsibilities I’ve taken on. When you keep moving towards bhavana, and walking the way of more life, more love, and more freedom, you’ll begin to see that even the most seemingly unclear choices suddenly come into sharper focus. Do you want the chocolate cake or the salad? The answer to both questions may be yes, each for good reasons. But which is going to invite in your highest, most integrity-filled and conscious self-expression? It depends. And which choice is right, right now, is entirely up to you. Core Pose: Root Release I teach this posture to help students access the healing energy at their source. You can do it between poses or any time you want to unlock and unleash the creative, nourishing, vital force that’s found in the pelvic area. Lie on your back. Bend your knees and cover your kneecaps with your palms. Press down strongly on your knees so the thighbones deepen into the hip joints. You want to ground through the leg bones, not pull the knees into your chest as you do in some other poses. Relax your legs and hips completely, and, maintaining the downward pressure on your knees, roll your legs in circles, shake them out, and dissolve any areas of tension you might have accumulated during your practice or your day. Enjoy the root release for one minute then move on to your next adventure.  

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Making the Tough Choices

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

For the rest of my life, when the subject of PopTarts comes up, I’ll either have to tell shifty-eyed lies or I’ll have to tell the truth. I’ll start with the truth right now. I’ve been away all week at a theatre festival.  This means hotel beds, hotel roommates, late nights, and crazy food–meat or soy balls covered in sweet sauces, served on toothpicks that really add up on your plate. More cheese and crackers than you’ve eaten in your life, and the kinds of sweet squares we all serve at weddings, funerals, board meetings–you know these things. Day One. I begin the week like an angel.  An hour of yoga at 5:30 am in the hotel gym.  I grab a corner of the room, squeeze myself between two treadmills and a wall-to-wall mirror, and do my best on a concrete floor covered in stained indoor-outdoor carpet.  It isn’t class, but it’s okay. Day Two. At 5:30 am, I do 45 minutes of yoga, which is pretty great given four hours of sleep and a really puffy face. (Is it the salt?  The meat/soyballs?)  It’s no fun staring at a bloated version of your own face in a mirror the size of Canada.  And all those people thumping on treadmills, jeez.  Not to mention CNN on the TV. Om. Day Three.   At 5:15 am, because my roommate is snoring and I can’t sleep anyway, I do 30 minutes of yoga in the hallway outside my room on the 10th floor of the hotel.  The carpet is thicker here, and I’m not up to the social thing with the weightlifters, the runners, and the mirror. My face is the puffiest yet.  I’ve been eating sauce balls at midnight for three days.  Why don’t I stop eating them?  I have no idea. This was a good morning of yoga.  I prepare for a wee Savasana at the end.  I lie down. Suddenly a man emerges–naked–from the room across the hall to retrieve his newspaper from the floor outside his door.   He yells.  I yell.  Then he screams: “I’m sorry!” and flees back into his room. I am too rattled for Savasana.    Day Four. I don’t do any yoga this morning. Instead, I sit in the hallway at 5am and read bad news from the newspaper outside my door.  I open and eat the first PopTart of my life.  (It was in a goodie bag we were given on arrival.  I laughed at the absurdity of PopTarts then.  I’m not laughing now.)  It is not my finest moment.  Not my finest day. Day Five.  At Home. Here’s the lesson for me: I’m human.  I do well on some days, and some days I forget everything I’ve learned about yoga, decent food, and kindness to myself. I can hardly wait for class tomorrow. What reminds you to get back to your practice? Thanks to PopTarts, naked men, and meat/soyballs, which help me understand, again, how beautiful yoga is. And thanks to you for the conversation.

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PopTart Yoga

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

I was at a meditation retreat last week. Do you know what they’re like? Grainy, leafy food in portions your pet fish couldn’t survive on, no talking, no reading, no car keys, no wallet, no calling home. It isn’t Club Med. Just meditating, dawn ’till after dusk. It can be lonely. But some fantastic things happen.    Here is one very cool thing.  Picture this: 5am, maybe.  (No watches.)  Still dark out, anyway. I come out of my room each morning, slowly and silently, and head toward the meditation hall, dressed in pajamas. As I walk down the hall, every third or fourth door opens, and another person in pajamas comes out, quietly closing a door behind her.  We look like something from a zombie movie, except that some of the zombies have mats under their arms. We walk in bare feet to the hall where we each pick a spot on the floor. We begin our practice. All you can hear is breathing and the soft thuds of feet jumping forward and back. It’s impromptu Mysore.  No one organized or announced it. It goes on for perhaps forty minutes, people drifting in and out of the hall.  All of this happens before we begin meditating for the day. And, holy mackerel, even though we don’t speak, don’t even look at each other for the most part, even though we’re about to begin another grueling day of seated meditation, I am deliriously happy. I don’t want to leave the impression that meditating is awful from start to finish. Other very cool things that happen on these retreats are an empty, quiet head and a sense of peace that will knock you over if you let it.  I love it. Days later I can still feel it. I feel a need to express some thanks to these zombie yogis. They were my family away from home.  We showed up for each other first thing in the morning on days when it mattered. So to these men and women I don’t know, and to the ones I do know but didn’t say a word to: thank you, thank you, thank you.You made meditating a little easier, and you made me fall in love with yoga all over again. Thanks to yoga zombies for making me fall in love with yoga, and thanks to you for the conversation.

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Yoga Zombies

Yesterday I stopped into a coffee shop for my near-daily dose of hot chocolate.  It’s my only vice. (Well, unless yoga counts.) While there, I struck up a conversation with a woman who was stuffing straws and stirrers into her back pocket. She saw me looking at her and said, “If I don’t hide these from my daughter, she’ll make musical instruments or little plastic families with them, and I won’t be able to get her to take a nap!” We both remarked how little it took to spark a kid’s imagination. “I wish we could do that as adults,” I said, wistfully. She nodded in agreement, like adults do: solemnly and rationally. Then, straws firmly in pocket and adult caffeinated beverages in hand, she walked away. Later, as I walked down the street, I was struck by my statement. Had I really strayed so far from the path of adventure and childlike delight that I had to say I wished I could do that again? Here I had a hot chocolate in hand and yet I was drinking it like an adult: while I walked to work, instead of like a child, reveling in its yumminess.  Sometimes I feel that the older I get and the more responsibility I accept, the more chronic Boring Adult Syndrome becomes. I want to turn swizzle sticks into trumpets and stop and climb trees instead of just rushing by them on my way to a meeting. Though, really, the only thing stopping me from engaging in life in a fresh and exciting way is myself. The concept of an “inner child” is used in therapeutic parlance, for example, to designate such a hurt part of us that needs to be protected. But I’m in the mood to reclaim that concept and bring my inner child out to play. In yoga, we call this lighthearted and energetic dance of spirit lila , or divine play. It’s a call back to freedom, laughter, and the simple joy of living.  When we access it, we spark a delicious sense of aliveness that makes life that much more worth living. On your mat, are you so focused on getting through a challenging practice that you forget to lighten up and let your life energy flow through the poses? Do you pass by park swings without a glance, or sit down for 5 minutes of glee? Isn’t your office desk due for some bright purple flowers, just because? Opportunities for lila are found everywhere, even in the most somber or painful moments. This week I invite you to open your inner child’s eyes, see from a whimsical perspective, and allow yourself to take advantage of doorways into happiness wherever and whenever you can. Here’s a pose to help you find the way in: Core Pose: Breath of Freedom in Chair Pose Come into Chair Pose (Utkatasana) with feet and knees together. Bend your knees and keep the tailbone long and belly lifting. On your inhalation, open your arms wide behind you and arch your chest. On the exhalation, round in, chin to chest, and hug yourself with both arms. Repeat the movement as long as it’s comfortable. Try and go beyond the physical alignment to infuse the pose with vitality and a sense of gratitude for being alive. You’ll bring a sense of wonder and energy to it that will make it not just a pose, but a living experience of lila.

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Calling on Lila

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

Purple is a powerful color–it’s also associated with royalty, mystery, and even magic. Maybe the next time I need an extra boost to my own magical powers I’ll try wearing something purple. I think my favorite part of this outfit is the top. I love how it creates the layered look all by itself–like magic! the details: Breathe Easy Yoga Tank Top, Nike Bliss Cover Up, Nike Mynah Crop pants, Lululemon Yoga mat, Lululemon Flip-Flops, Old Navy Earthlust Water Bottle, Vickery Lotus Garden Body Butter, Pacifica Perfume

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Wish I was Wearing: Power Purple

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

Photo: Blissed out in my favorite restorative.  It’s Lucien’s nap time, 2:30 in the afternoon, and the house is blissfully quiet. I’ve been going all day, in full productivity mode–writing, work emails, laundry, and a few hours of Lucien-care.  What I really want to do now, in this precious hour before afternoon playtime and dinner and bath, is curl up on the couch and watch Oprah. But it’s time to do yoga. (Lucien’s nap time is the only time of day I can consistently fit a home practice in.)  I wish I could say I bound off the couch and into my yoga corner every afternoon, but the truth is that most days I have to drag myself there. More often than not, my practice is a restorative sequence done wearing wool socks.  Some days I rally for standing poses and active back bends. Usually, though, I take a “yoga nap,” as my close friend Kristen Rentz Lewis, fellow mom and author of  YogaNap: Restorative Poses for Deep Relaxation,  calls it.   My absolute favorite restorative pose right now is Ardha Halasana , Supported Half-Plow Pose with a chair.  It’s helped me with everything from headaches to exhaustion, from anxiety to getting over a cold.  The catch is–I can’t get into the pose comfortably without doing several other poses first.  And so, I begin my practice.  Supta Baddha Konasana (Reclining Bound Angle Pose), Ado Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog Pose), a headstand, a shoulder stand with the chair.  My baby monitor is on, and yes, I confess that at first I do check my iPhone in between poses for incoming emails!  But twenty minutes in, I’m always glad to be practicing.  Most days I manage to practice for an hour, and sometimes even more.  And then, if Lucien is still sleeping–fingers crossed–I get on the couch and see what’s on Oprah. Whether you’re a stay-at-home mom with a never ending to-do list, or at the office all day and need every moment at home to take care of your household and connect with your children, give yourself the gift of at least a few restorative poses done at home, in a quiet place, each week. Here are some great resources for developing a restorative home practice: The Woman’s Book of Yoga and Health: A Lifelong Guide to Wellness   (see the chapter on restoratives) by Linda Sparrowe and Patricia Walden Relax and Renew: Restful Yoga for Stressful Times   by Judith Lasater YogaNap: Restorative Poses for Deep Relaxation   by Kristen Rentz What’s your favorite restorative pose?  How do you spend nap time?   –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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Yoga Nap

Are you a Kundalini chant lover? Think you might be? You can find out for sure if you sign up for this year’s Spirit Fest Kundalini Yoga & Music Festival, September 17 to 19 in High View, WV. The festival promises three days of “blissing out” to the best of Kundalini chant, and has the line-up to back up the claim. Snatam, Gurmukh, GuruGanesh Singh, Mirbai Ceiba, Nirinjan Kaur, Sada Sat Kaur, Sat Kartar, Gurunam Singh, and Satkirin Kaur Khalsa–Kundalini chant superstars, each and every one–are on the bill. You can expect lots of singing, sunrise Sadhana, group meditation, and exquisite vegetarian fare; you can hope to be thoroughly uplifted and transported by the experience. Why are we telling you about this now? So you can sign up early and save some money, of course. Since the event is happening at the Timber Ridge Camp a range of accommodations (and prices) is available–you can camp in a tent, sleep in a dorm, or reserve a private room with a private bath. Children are welcome (so plan accordingly). –Hillari Dowdle

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Sat Nam Sing-a-Long

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

Last night I went to ninja school. OK, that’s not its technical name, but the ancient martial art of ninjitsu is one of the forms I will be studying each week at a dojo in New York City. I’ve been interested in martial arts since I was young, but it took me until now to sign up for a class. What does this have to do with yoga? Well, after 15 years of practicing asana, I wanted to shake things up a bit. Specifically, I am attracted to the experience of beginner’s mind that is foundational in every mindful-movement style. And what better way to do this than to become an actual beginner at something once again?  I can easily bring a sense of the beginner’s perspective in the form of curiosity and openness to even my most repetitive yoga poses. And I learn a lot that way. But it’s not the same as actually beginning a new process.  There’s nothing quite like the feeling of stepping into the complete unknown and confronting the real fear that arises from doing something that you never have before. But as I entered the dojo for my first class, I understood that what I was experiencing wasn’t fear as much as it was excitement. I also recognized that this would be another opportunity to practice saucha , or cleanliness. Now, I took a shower and came into the dojo without perfume, and with nails clipped and hair back as instructed. But the type of cleaning I’m talking about goes deeper than the outer form. By purposefully stepping into a situation where I had no idea what to expect, I was organically cleared of expectation. I didn’t have a historical context to compare this moment to or experience to draw from. So I just listened, and enjoyed the clarity that comes from finding oneself with a washed-clean mind, heart, and history. My yoga practice had actually prepared me well for the movement, alignment, and knowledge of balance I needed to get through the class. I learned to stand more solidly and fall more consciously, partnering with another center of gravity in a dance with my own. But the best part about the experience was knowing that I was capable of being cleaned out on all levels, creating the space to take in a whole new view of the world. If you feel like you’re stagnating, coasting on what you know, or if you are mentally cluttered with perspectives that aren’t serving your growth and fullness of experience, try becoming a beginner. It doesn’t have to be a huge commitment. Sometimes just breaking your routine, hiking along a different path, or listening to another kind of music can spark this saucha of spirit.  The relief from the weight of your experiences will be well worth it. Core Question : What can you do to move outside your comfort zone and try something you never have? Core Pose : Crow Pose I often use Crow as a way to bring students into the unknown, so they can play at their mindful edge and move into beginner’s mind with integrity. These three approaches should get you there, no matter what level you’re at now. Go at your own pace, and don’t rush into anything you’re not ready for. 1) Flying: Plant your hands on the mat, fingers wide. Lift your heels and hips, and squeeze your elbows and knees inward. Round through your back to access core strength then float your heart forward until your elbows stack over your wrists. Keep hugging in and up, and work on flying high. 2) Jumping Back from Crow: If Crow is a breeze, maintain the containment of elbows over wrists, then hop your feet back on an exhalation into Chaturanga Dandasana. Proceed through your vinyasa to Downward-Facing Dog. 3) Jumping Forward into Crow: From Down Dog, walk your feet together and take small hops toward you hands on your exhalations. As your belly pulls in to help you lift up, your knees will widen to touch your upper arms. Over time, you will refine this action to transition into the pose without touching your feet down at all.      

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Cultivating Beginner’s Mind

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

I go to two yoga classes a week, but I do my own practice at home every single day. I adore it, and I wouldn’t miss it for much. It’s still dark when I get out of bed, I shuffle to the kitchen and make a coffee (perhaps when I am a real yogi I’ll drink something healthier), drink half of it, set the timer on the microwave, and begin. The first three Sun Salutations feel a bit tight, a bit creaky. Even my mind is tight and creaky. I’m thinking about getting my hands positioned correctly, thinking about rotating my thighs inward and pulling that lower belly in (something I have no idea how to do, still). Heels closer to the floor, shoulder blades down, etc. You know all of this. Then something or someone–some larger part of me, perhaps–begins to well up. The rabid thinking slows down. Something warm and delicious takes its place. I begin to feel more generous with my positioning. I feel happy all of a sudden, and light. Some days, about ten Sun Salutations in, this thing takes over and I go crazy, like a whirling dervish. My breath pours in and squeezes out, I’m warm from the inside out, I am strong, I am beautiful, and I am huge, somehow. Unconstrained. You should see my Warrior II pose. I fill the living room. I fill the house. I love those days. This morning was one of those days. I’d set the timer for 70 minutes and was so enormous by the end of it that I didn’t hear it go off. Best Savasana ever. Does this ever happen to you?  Thanks to yoga for making us huge, and thanks to you for the conversation. –Kristin Shepherd

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Some Days We Are Enormous

Watch the latest news video at video.foxnews.com Yoga and mysticism: Not the kind of thing you see much of on Fox News. But, lo! Andrew Harvey appeared on the “Fair & Balanced” network on May 7 to speak about his new book, Heart Yoga: The Sacred Marriage of Yoga and Mysticism . The great teacher –former professor of religious studies at Oxford, epic spiritual quester, multi-dimensional mystic, and founder of the Institute of Sacred Activism–kept his eyes closed during much of the segment. Maybe this was to maintain inward focus while sharing his vision of helping anyone who practices yoga “taste and feel the divine energies in their bodies.”  Or maybe this was to shut out the cluelessness of his host, religion correspondent Lauren Green, who fumbled with her headset,  and mmm-hmm, right, mmm-hmmed her way through Harvey’s explanation of the chakra system, and bumbled every reference to yoga life (”Most of us in the West are used to a yoga that just helps us to lose weight…is it Brikum? Beerkam?). One wonders what die-hard fans of Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee must have thought of Harvey’s explanation  that all of creation is “a shattering white diamond light that is actually manifesting the whole cosmos” and that the human body itself is “dancing light consciousness.”  Once can only hope that those who tuned into the clip by accident were touched–if only a little–by the profound teachings of a modern master. Tune in by design, and you surely will be. –Hillari Dowdle

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Light on Fox News

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

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

I stare at my feet at the beginning of each class. We hang for a bit before we chant ohmm and get peaceful. It’s while we’re hanging that I look at them. I love my body. After ohmm, we spend a few minutes contemplating how we’re standing on our feet. Our teacher tells us to put our first toe down, then our fifth toe, and then try to lift the middle toes. I can’t do this. My middle toes head off toward the big toe–gripping the floor like drowning swimmers hanging to the side of a lifeboat for their lives.  So far, I am unable to convince them that we’re on dry land. Relax, I say to them. Ohmm, for God’s sake. I love my body. My right foot is in a brace. It’s a long story, but I’ll be in that brace for a while longer. It means I don’t hop anywhere on my mat. I shuffle. Underneath the brace my right lateral malleolus (the outside ankle bump) looks like Mr. Potato Head. I’ll paint eyes on it for Halloween. I love my body. The truth is that there are perhaps ten things about my feet that aren’t gorgeous and that don’t behave in the manner in which I’d prefer. And here’s the thing. I could easily say the same about my hips (What do you mean, open? Open my hips?), my arms (My elbows won’t turn that way unless I break them.), my hamstrings, which are shorter than short, even my face, which has completely relaxed about four times in my life. And on and on. Today, hanging over my feet, it occurred to me that love is a decision. Things are beautiful or not, loose or not, strong or not, potato-heady or not. So what. Love is a decision. I love my body. Thanks to yoga for helping me love me, and thanks to you for the conversation. –Kristin Shepherd

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I am a Beauty

Photo: On the subway in Brooklyn, New York with a 6-week-old Lucien. As I posted the other day, practicing yoga was the furthest thing from my mind when I brought my son Lucien home from the hospital. By six weeks post-partum, though, I really started missing asana. The doctor who’d performed my c-section gave me the OK to exercise, so I gathered up my energy and my son’s overstuffed diaper bag and ventured out to our first mommy and baby yoga class. This was something I’d dreamt about for years. How fun to teach my baby yoga! Too bad Lucien didn’t see it that way.  He cried from the moment we entered the yoga center until we left an hour later. He pooped twice in the first 45 minutes–I spent half the class in the tiny Brooklyn-sized bathroom changing him–and the rest of the time he wailed while I tried to put him down on the mat long enough for me to get in a couple of poses.  I ended up leaving the class in tears and feeling like a complete failure. All the other moms and babies seemed to handle the class fine.  What was wrong with me?  With us?  I felt isolated. I felt like a freak. (And honestly, with twenty-five pounds to lose, I felt fat.)  Would I ever practice again? Would I ever feel like myself?  Would I ever get my favorite jeans back on? Have you tried Mommy and Baby classes?  How do you make it to your mat?

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We Flunked Mommy-Baby Yoga

I have a confession to make: I splurged big time on this Stewart + Brown dress a few weeks ago after seeing it on one of my favorite blogs.I wasn’t sure if it would be worth it and I thought I might end up sending it back, but it is the most comfortable dress I’ve ever owned. I was sold the moment I took it out of it’s package. Instead of a chemical smell you sometimes experience with new clothing, it smells like fresh cut wood. The fabric is amazing and the dress itself is one of those styles that’s pretty much flattering on everyone. Now If I could only splurge on the rest of this outfit to go with it. the details: Eva Smock Waits Dress, Stewart + Brown RGB nail polish in Haze (Contains no Formaldehyde, no Toluene) Poetry Mid Calf Boots, Qupid (Vegan) Ashley Watson Kestrel Purse, Beklina  (Made with recycled, reclaimed leather) Stella Sheer Eau de Toilette Spray, Stella McCartney

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Organic Outfit

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

Hey, it’s already May! That means Memorial Day weekend is coming up, and it’s time to get out your Birks and start looking around for some hippy-dippy fun. One good option: the Lightening in a Bottle Festival at Oak Canyon Ranch in Irvine, California (just south of L.A., y’all). It’s a full-on music festival–featuring more than 50 acts over the course of four groove-infused days. But there’s also plenty of yoga–workshops on AcroYoga, Rasa Yoga, Five Elements Buddhist Yoga, and more (including a workshop called “Yoga in a Bottle: Living Your Creative Destiny”). Factor in movable art installations and a good-karma emphasis on Earth-friendliness, and there are plenty of good reasons to be here now (or get there then, as the case may be).

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Get Your Groove On

Photo caption: New mommy kale, tofu and rice When I got pregnant, I’d been studying yoga for more than a decade. I vowed to have a yogic pregnancy and birth experience. I attended prenatal yoga class faithfully. At nine months pregnant I was doing headstands and chair shoulder stands. I imagined my labor would be like a very intense weekend yoga workshop–really hard, but something I’d get through with breathing and the proper motivation. Afterward I’d leave the hospital with my baby, feeling like myself again in no time, ready to practice yoga at home while my son napped.  Could I have been any more naive? Of course, plenty of women do have wonderful baby-in-the-bathtub births, but my labor lasted for more than 24 hours, included an antibiotic drip from the beginning, and it was so excruciatingly painful that I couldn’t say no to the epidural. At the last minute, I had to have an emergency c-section. Recovering in the hospital, my baby spent 48 hours in the NICU, resulting in major problems with my milk supply.  And one day after returning home with my son Lucien I had to be rushed to the ER because of massive swelling in my legs. When I finally got set up at home I couldn’t feel sensation in my midsection, and my postpartum doula had to practically stage an intervention to get me to stop taking Percocet.  For the first six weeks, every ounce of my energy went to nursing Lucien, recovering from the surgery, and trying to grab some sleep when I could. I didn’t unroll my yoga mat once–and to be honest, given how much pain I was in, and how insanely tired I was, I didn’t really see how I was going to anytime soon. Looking back on it now, the most important step I took during those first few weeks was totally re-conceiving my idea of a yoga practice. Although I’d studied yoga philosophy, asana had always been at the core of my practice. As a new mom, I came to think about practice more broadly, in terms of self-care. Since I was breastfeeding, the most yogic thing I could do for my baby and me was to take several minutes three times a day to eat a healthy meal.  If I couldn’t sleep for more than a couple hours at a time, at least I could get energy from good food.  On mornings when my doula came over, she’d prepare me a protein packed salad with a sliced hard-boiled egg and chick peas. In the evenings, my husband Neil often made me a bowl of sauteed kale, baked tofu, and brown rice.  It wasn’t the same as a downward dog, but it was a start. Are you a new mom hoping to rediscover your yoga practice?  Are you feeling guilty because you haven’t gotten back onto your mat or dusted off your meditation cushion?  Why not start simply, by asking your partner or best friend or mom to make you a special, healthy lunch or dinner? Take a few minutes to eat in peace and quiet, away from your baby.  Definitely don’t nurse while you’re eating! Savor the prana from the food on your plate, and relish the loving way it was prepared for you. Know that with this small step you’re on the (long) road to recovering your yoga practice. Share your favorite new yoga mom meals here!

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The Yoga in Tofu

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

Kristin Shepherd is one of our newest bloggers. Join her as she takes on the challenges of yoga from the perspective of a newcomer in her new blog Beginner’s Mind : — I don’t know a hootkatassana from a pranayama. Yet. Although I have done bits of yoga over my lifetime, I only jumped in the deep end seven months ago, with regular classes and then my daily practice at home. What I do know is the deliciousness of yoga for a beginner (I can breathe! I can turn my neck in the car!), its frustrations (the clothes! the inflexibility!), and the way yoga becomes a part of everything else that happens during a day.  The way you drive your friends and family mad with yoga talk, the way half of them join yoga because of your ecstatic ranting. It feels as though i have come home after 48 years. I’ll bet some of you can identify.  I hope you’ll join me. — Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, a self-proclaimed theater freak and a yogi.  She’s a relative newcomer, and says she really, really knows how it feels to be 48, a bit tight, and a little wobbly. Kristin finds herself happiest, so far, in the back row of every yoga class.

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Introducing Kristin Shepherd

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

I’m back from Sedona after shooting my new DVDs, resting up from the wild ride that was last week. And when I say “wild,” I mean it. To be transplanted from the concrete jungle that is Manhattan–where the closest I get to flora are the bouquets sold in front of every deli, and my fauna sightings consist of dogs on leashes and the occasional subway rat–was quite the experience. When I arrived at the location, a plateau in Red Rock State Park overlooking a basin and surrounded by rust-red mountains, it took my breath away. I took a big chance and decided to film the whole thing using a live microphone instead of adding in the sound later from a studio recording. Alas, the wind, sun, and occasional rain didn’t care that we were shooting a yoga video. Viewers will hear and see it all, just as it naturally happened. The light shifts, the dust swirls, and at one point I felt like I was in the middle of a Harry Potter -esque duel of elements. At one point, I was blown right off the mat in a Warrior Two–something you might usually only see on a video outtake. I came to the location thinking everything would be peaceful, leaving us to our Zen creation. Once I’d been there for 5 minutes, however, I knew I’d have to shift my expectations and transform how I would approach the experience. Yoga teaches us that the inability to go with the flow, instead trying mold the outer environment to suit your inner needs, is the greatest cause of suffering. This week I want to return to the idea of aparigraha , or nongrasping, and show you how to use it to your benefit when situations arise that you don’t expect. There are two choices whenever you find yourself in a state of duhkha , or suffering, because something’s not going the way you’d hoped. You can hang onto your expectation in a state of stress and strain, or you can shrug your shoulders, turn towards the new information, and say, simply, How can I turn this to my advantage? The great thing about aparigraha is that if you’re holding on too tightly to one perspective, you’re just as capable of picking up another, more empowering one, and holding it instead. The transition from “this cannot be happening” to “this is my teaching” is a hard at first. But like anything, with practice, it gets easier. Just as every yoga pose that challenges you and feels uncomfortable is another call to learn to move from a state of resisting intensity to using it to serve your ultimate goals. For me, it all comes down to not needing to control everything and thinking I know what needs to happen for me to be content. Instead, when I stepped on that mountain and things started getting crazy, I didn’t. I looked around, took a deep breath, and thought, “Here we are. Now, what are we going to do with it?” I heard from the directors that the footage we shot looks incredible, and that the wind adds to the teaching instead of detracting from it. But I still made sure to mention at the beginning of the video that we were in for quite a ride, and used it as a way to show that I was practicing what I teach. Even if it hadn’t turned out so well, I would have embraced that, taken it inside, and turned it into a learning experience to help me become wiser, stronger, and more prepared for the next time. We can all do this, no matter how easy or challenging the teaching that shows up may be. Remain watchful, open, and resilient. And when the opportunity arises for you to alchemize a disappointment or fear into something wild and free, grab onto it with both hands. Core Pose: Poet’s Pose (also known as a variation of Half Moon Pose, or Ardha Chandrasana, variation) This pose presents a wonderful way to experience the ebbs and flows of balance while striving to remain inwardly centered even when you topple over from the strong winds of change. As you approach it, remember to keep your breathing even and your drishti , or gaze, on the ground beneath you. Stand toward the front of your mat, feet sitting-bone-distance apart. Bend your knees and place the fingertips of both hands a little wider than shoulder distance in front of you. On an exhalation, bring your left knee into your chest and activate your lower abdominals and natural low back curve in and up towards the ribs. Maintain a long tailbone and open heart as you begin to open your left hip to stack over the right. With your core engaged, begin to lengthen your left leg out behind you at hip height, and unfurl your chest and left arm to the sky. Keep looking down as you play with bending your right standing leg and lifting your right fingertips off the floor and into your chest. Contract your topside waist as you press firmly and evenly into the floor with the right foot. Straighten your standing leg in time. Hold for 3-5 breaths. Return to Standing Forward Bend and give a sweet exhale through the mouth, releasing any tension you were holding inside. Repeat on the other side. 
    

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Embrace the Unexpected

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