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Friday, May 17, 2013 by Ivey DeJesus
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Handstand: Turning My World Upside
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I toiled for the better part of a year to
conquer the handstand. Long into my yoga practice, I committed to landing Adho Mukha Vrksasana,
admittedly partly seduced by photos of yogis suspended against the force of
gravity by powerful arms and backs.
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We all have emotional trauma, and it seems the more my trauma releases and quietens, the more I can hear the pain of others. My body, breath and mind hold the memory of the patterns of trauma, not yet fully released. This residual energy primes me to the feelings and patterns of others. I can hear them more clearly. I can feel the energy of consciousness moving through the world.
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Wednesday, May 08, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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Liberate Your Soles On No Socks Day
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After a chilly spring, aren’t your feet itching to walk across the grass and bask in the sun? Here’s a good reason to liberate your soles: Today, Wednesday, May 8, is National No Socks Day. Yogis know it’s good to go bare, but on this day we have equal footing with everybody. Here are four extra incentives to toss your socks and love your tootsies:
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Friday, May 03, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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Finding OM Away From Home
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Have you ever traipsed around an airport terminal in search of a discreet corner for Sun Salutations between flights? Do you shudder at the thought of coming face-to-face with hotel carpeting during Down Dog? Then take heart, because it’s easier than ever to plan a summer getaway without getting too far away from your daily practice. Hotels and airports, recognizing that what’s good for you is also good for business, are rolling out the yoga mat to welcome enlightened travelers.
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Friday, April 26, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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Bring Nature Indoors With Vastu Shastra
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Is spring fever making you yearn to take your asana outdoors? If blustery weather is keeping you inside, consider adding nature to your indoor environment with the ancient science of vastu. Consultant Kathleen Cox, one of the first to introduce vastu to the West, calls it “yoga for your home.”
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Tuesday, April 23, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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Letting the Child (Pose) Be the Teacher
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If someone handed out awards for “most unappreciated asana,” the winner might be Balasana (Child’s Pose). In many yoga classes, this basic pose is used only for transition or rest. Often dismissed as “babyish” by asana enthusiasts, Balasana almost never gets the spotlight. And yet, it’s one of the most powerful poses in the yogi’s tool kit. Here’s why:
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Friday, April 19, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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4 Ways To Connect With Nature On Earth Day
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The first Earth Day was observed in the U.S. on April 22, 1970. Today, more than four decades later, a billion people worldwide mark the day with environmental activism and community events. If you’re looking for a yogic way to observe Earth Day, it doesn’t get much bigger than the Tadasana Festival, a weekend of yoga, music, and consciousness-raising in Santa Monica, CA. No travel plans? Check around for local events like yoga in the park and earth salutations. Or set aside some time to root your home practice in the imagery and energy of Earth:
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Wednesday, April 17, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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Coming Soon To A Theater Near You...
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Mark your calendars, and get ready to pass the popcorn. On May 8, One Track Heart: The Story of Krishna Das, a documentary about chant master Krishna Das, is set to open in movie theaters across the U.S. Directed by Jeremy Frindel (cofounder of the Brooklyn Yoga School) and distributed by Zeitgeist Films, One Track Heart has already screened at a film festivals, earning a couple of awards for Best Documentary. Yogis are sure to flock to the film but, now that KD has rocked the Grammy Awards, it’s fun to imagine even larger audiences getting in line to see a movie about the yoga path.
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Friday, April 12, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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The Gayatri Mantra: Let Your Light Shine
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What verse has been chanted daily for nearly 4,000 years? If you answered the Gayatri mantra, familiar to fans of Deva Premal and entered into pop culture by Cher, you’d be right. No doubt you’ve sung along, chanted it in an asana class, or even studied the Sanskrit words: Om bhuh, bhuvah, swaha/Tat savitur varenyam/Bhargo devasya dhimahi/Dhiyo yo nah prachodayat.
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Tuesday, April 09, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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Do You Need a Guru?
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“Who needs a guru anyway?” It’s a question Western yoga students often ask. But in the wake of yet another guru scandal, maybe we need to change the question to “What is a guru anyway?”
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Friday, April 05, 2013 by Tosca Braun
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Learning To Listen: Embodied Wisdom
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When most people think of the body, “divine” isn’t the first term to come to mind. Most major philosophies and religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and classical yoga, view embodiment as a distraction, requiring control and transcendence through spiritual practice. Yet, some forms of tantra posit the manifest world to be an expression of God. These lineages contend that each facet of the self, or kosha—body, breath, mind, intuition, soul—is qualitatively distinct, yet simultaneously reflective of the same vast diamond of God-consciousness.
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Tuesday, April 02, 2013 by Tosca Braun
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Intelligence and the Body-Mind
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Does listening to your body facilitate addictive behaviors? Blogging last week in Part 1, we disputed yoga instructor Maya Georg’s contention to this effect. Some research actually suggests the body, left to its own devices, demonstrates a keen aptitude for self-regulation. Relatedly, yoga philosophy posits that addictive behavior emerges, not from listening to one’s body, but rather through samskara, ingrained habits or conditioned patterns that underlie thoughts, behaviors, and experience. These interweave the body-mind continuum and cannot be attributed mind or body in isolation.
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Friday, March 29, 2013 by Tosca Braun
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Is Your Body Untrustworthy?
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What does it mean to “listen to your body?” Irritated by the perceived glut of platitudes spouted by yoga instructors, a recent blog by instructor Maya Georg targets this as her top “yoga cliché.” Noting we must “never, ever buy into them,” she shares “If I listened to my body I would smoke four packs of cigarettes a day, drink a fifth of vodka, and eat nothing but chocolate ice cream as I lay on my couch.” While I don’t argue with Georg’s experience, I do take issue with her conflation of “listening to one’s body” with over-indulgence and debauchery.
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Practicing yoga has taught me many things. This week, I finally realized that it is acceptable to behave like an ass, as long you don’t try to deny the fact that your behavior is undesirable. This long overdue realization is probably the one and only pearl of wisdom I have taken from the teachings of Bikram Choudhury.
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This week marked the Spring Equinox, when days and nights are roughly equal, and the Northern Hemisphere is poised between winter’s icy grip and the intense heat of summer. Equilibrium, equipoise, equanimity—these qualities are also associated with yoga. And why not, since the very translation of Hatha Yoga implies balance? “Ha” refers to sun, “tha” to moon, and yoga means “to yoke” or “to join.” When we create equality between the opposites within (solar/lunar, hot/cold, hard/soft), we experience balance. And though it takes time to undo months of over-indulgence (or its opposite extreme, self-denial), yoga includes helpful tools that could qualify as first aid remedies. Here are a few:
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Tuesday, March 19, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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The Axis Of Asana: Exploring the Spine
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The spine is the physical and metaphoric axis of yoga. In fact, one way of viewing asana is that it’s designed to move the spine in all directions: flexion (forward bends), extension (backbends), lateral flexion (side bending), and rotation (twists). By manipulating the spine’s physical anatomy—bone, muscle, connective tissue, and nerves—we impact systems throughout the body. But there’s more to “the core” than muscles and bone.
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Friday, March 15, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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The Third Sutra: Revealing Your True Self
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“Be yourself.” Haven’t we all been given this advice at one time or another? Self-realization is one of the aims of yoga, described by Patanjali in the third sutra: “Tada drastuh svarupe avasthanam” or as B.K.S. Iyengar’s translates, “Then the seer dwells in his own true splendor.”
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Tuesday, March 12, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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Spring Cleaning: Get Back In Balance
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As spring approaches, you may feel the urge to set the stage for new growth by cleaning house or cleansing the physical body. Shaucha or purity is one of the foundational principles of yoga, and ancient yogis practiced six types of cleanses, known as the shatkarmas. Most of these should be undertaken only with the guidance of an experienced teacher. However, some yogic cleanses, combined with gentle ayurvedic practices, make an effective daily cleansing routine suitable for anyone who wants to release toxins and build agni, the digestive fire.
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Friday, March 08, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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Honoring the First Ladies of Yoga
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In India, the mother is considered the first guru, and yet the practice and teaching of yoga was long the domain of men. That changed during the mid-20th century, when several women “midwifed” yoga’s introduction to the West. Today, Friday, March 8, marks International Women’s Day, a fitting time to look at some of yoga’s most influential women.
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Tuesday, March 05, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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4 Ways To Unleash Your Downward-Facing Dog
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Downward-Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana) is one of the first poses that yoga students learn, on its own or as part of Surya Namaskara. Because it’s a familiar favorite, the tendency is to slip into Down Dog like a beloved pair of sneakers, often without noticing that the arches are sagging or the heels are worn down. To keep this asana fresh, approach it with a beginner’s mind:
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Tuesday, February 26, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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8 Ways To Prevent Yoga Injuries
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Last year
New York Times reporter William Broad started a firestorm of words by painting yoga as a body-wrecking fitness fad. The response from the yoga community was passionate and ongoing. Many teachers, however, regard yoga injuries non-news in the West, where we approach yoga primarily as a physical fitness regimen rather than as a system of personal transformation. To protect yourself from injury, focus on yoga’s history as “inner-cise” versus exercise.
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Friday, February 22, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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The Second Sutra: The Heart of Yoga
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When Patanjali outlined the practice of yoga two thousand years ago, he used a form of short, easy-to-remember sayings that could be recited or chanted as slokas, the Sanskrit root for the English word “slogan.” Today we know slogans as catchy phrases used to promote products or sum up larger ideas, like “It’s the real thing,” or “Be all that you can be.” But if yoga has one ageless, all-encompassing slogan, it’s Patanjali’s second sutra:
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Yoga in yet another treasured American institution, the military, has recently spurred frustration among evangelicals. Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, expresses that “the military seems intent on driving religion out and replacing it with wacky substitutes.” No form of spirituality, Perkins contends, is “as constructive as a personal relationship with God.” These grievances highlight important ideological differences and misapprehensions as to what, exactly, meditation is. Do modern conceptualizations of mindfulness preclude “a personal relationship with God?” Or do they transcend such artificially-rendered binaries?
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Thursday, February 14, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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Yoga, A Cosmic Love Story
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Scarlett and Rhett. Rick and Ilsa. Elizabeth and Darcy. All great stories remind us that when we look beyond the maya (illusion) of daily existence, we can glimpse the profound. And every timeless romance of fiction and film mirrors the grand cosmic union of Shiva, the Lord of Yoga, and his consort, Shakti.
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Tuesday, February 12, 2013 by Tosca Braun
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Does Playboy Yoga Fuel Stereotypes?
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A recent blog posted the nude Sara Underwood yoga video published by
Playboy in 2009, reigniting controversy as to the broader role of nudity and
sexuality in yoga. Clichés of beautiful, bendy,
hyper-sexed “yoga goddesses” are memorialized on Playboy’s yoga
website, in a paean to the homogenous images of “yoginis” that
litter pop culture. Such depictions engender fears that female yoga
practitioners will be reduced to sexual objects, reinforcing stereotypes.
Nonetheless, to the ire of feminists, Playboy has been featuring strong women,
including Olympic athletes, for decades. But is something lost in translation?
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Friday, February 08, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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7 Ways To Inspire Your Meditation Practice
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You commit to sit, and then you learn how. The next stage of
meditation is sustaining your practice day in and day out. For many of us, this
is the hard part. But don’t wait for inspiration to come to you, like a bolt
from the blue. Instead, take an active role, tending the sparks of inspiration
and coaxing them into the inner fire
of tapas or self-discipline. Here are seven ways to keep the flames
burning:
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Tuesday, February 05, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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Just Do It: Meditation Tips and Techniques
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“A drunken monkey stung by a scorpion” is an often repeated description of the mind. It lurches and spins from thought to thought, dwelling on the past, daydreaming about the future, latching onto one distraction after another. The harder you try to pin it down, the quicker and wilier it becomes. Anchoring the mind in the present is not easy. It takes dedicated practice to calm the waves of the mind for meditation. Or, in the words of that great Star Wars yogi, “Do or do not. There is no try.” But with its countless benefits, meditation is one of the most important things you can do for your overall health and well-being.
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If someone offered you a vacation, no strings attached,
would you take it? Sure, why not? If you had the key to peace, contentment, and
better health would you use it? Of course you would. Is meditation already practice
part of your daily routine? Are you new to the idea of meditation? Or are you
like me, an on-again, off-again meditator?
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Tuesday, January 29, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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Ganesha, the Remover of Obstacles
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As January comes to a close and New Year’s resolutions begin to lose steam, helpful advice abounds: Use positive affirmations. Visualize a successful outcome. Find a workout buddy. Good suggestions, all of them. But how about calling on the ultimate “workout buddy”—a supreme being and the master of kundalini energy? If you haven’t already guessed, I’m talking about that great yogi known as Lord Ganesha.
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Tuesday, January 15, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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Jyotish: Get To Know Vedic Astrology
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If you couldn’t resist checking your horoscope to see what the new year holds, you’re not alone. Astrology is firmly embedded in popular culture, familiar as one-size-fits-most newspaper horoscopes and famous as that hoary pick-up line, “What’s your sign?” Little known in the West, however, is the astrology of the yogis known as Jyotish, or the Science of Light.
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Tuesday, January 08, 2013 by Tosca Braun
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Releasing What No Longer Serves
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Do you experience “negative, unwanted thoughts” that may hinder your New Year's resolutions? A new study in the journal, Psychological Science, suggests that writing down such thoughts, and subsequently discarding them, may result in a corresponding mental release. From a yogic perspective, releasing what does not serve invites deeper integrity and alignment with one’s intentions and self.
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Tuesday, January 08, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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Yoga Teacher Helps Sandy Hook Responders
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Weeks
after the December 14 shootings at Sandy
Hook Elementary School, yoga teacher Linda Antignani read a news story
about the police officers who were first on the nightmarish scene. Many were
struggling to cope with the trauma, but the town’s insurer wouldn’t cover
post-traumatic stress-related illnesses, and several officers were nearing the
end of their paid sick leaves, still unable to return to work. Because a number
of yoga students at Antignani’s studio, Mother’s Embrace Yoga in
Shelton, CT, are police officers or married to officers, the story hit her
especially hard. “I was feeling very helpless,” she admitted.
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Tuesday, January 01, 2013 by Meredith Sims
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Top 10 Yoga Stories of 2012
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What
a memorable year in yoga! We’ve seen stories ranging from controversial to inspirational and everything in between. We look back and highlight some of the
year’s most noteworthy topics.
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Friday, December 28, 2012 by Kathleen Bryant
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The First Yoga Sutra: The Power of Now
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“Now begins the study of yoga.” In this simple, yet rich,
translation of Patanjali’s
Sutra I:1, Atha
yoganushasanam, immediately we see how succinct and pointed the sutras are,
centuries of knowledge distilled to a single thread. There are dozens of English translations of the
Yoga Sutras, some simple
and conversational, some scholarly.
You’ll even find a few online, including this brilliantly
cross-linked version from Swami Jnaneshvara, or this
practical contemporary translation from an Ashtanga instructor, each
commentator offering a valuable and unique perspective. It’s also valuable to listen
to the sutras and repeat them in the manner they were presented originally.
Rhythmic chanting not only helps with recall but also works on a subtle level
of vibration, going beyond the intellect to deepen your understanding.
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Monday, December 24, 2012 by Kathleen Bryant
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9 Ways To Build Your Yoga Community
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You sweat together, cry together, and support each other physically
during asana practice, but do you and your yoga classmates support each other outside
the studio? If your yoga home is a safe space for growth with friends who
inspire you, count yourself lucky. If you’re longing to create a yoga family,
here are nine simple ideas for starters. Though most are geared toward teachers
or studios, students can pitch in to launch ideas and build momentum.
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Friday, December 21, 2012 by Tosca Braun
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Does Mindfulness Blunt the Conscience?
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Mindfulness in
schools: It’s the latest buzz, prompted in part by rapidly-proliferating
programs such as Goldie Hawn’s MindUP. In the wake of recent publicity, a
blog by Vancouver schoolteacher Tina Oleson argues that non-judgmental
awareness (a core teaching of mindfulness) risks “interfering with the child’s
ability to heed his sense of right and wrong.” Yet Oleson’s critique belies a
fundamental, if understandable, misconception of “non-judgment."
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Wednesday, December 19, 2012 by Kathleen Bryant
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The Gift Of An Open Heart
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The winter holiday season—whether you celebrate Christmas,
Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or solstice—is a celebration of light within darkness. It’s
a time of year associated with friendship, abundance, gifting, and other joys.
Tragically, the darkness within that light has come to include seasonal
depression, family drama, and even violence, from a mall in Oregon to an
elementary school in Connecticut.
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