In our Yoga Blog we will report on yoga news, trends and happenings throughout the world.
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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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Friday, March 01, 2013 by Kathleen Bryant
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Kirtan Makes History...Again
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Last month, yogis thrilled to the news that kirtan wallah Krishna Das was not only nominated for a Grammy but also slated to open the ceremonies in Los Angeles. Though he took the stage before nearly 30 million turned on their televisions, Krishna Das sang to what was likely the largest kirtan audience in the U.S. in 87 years, since Paramahansa Yogananda led 3,000 people in a call-and-response hymn at Carnegie Hall in 1926.
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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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