Back to India!

Leaving for India today! Looking forward to heading back, and having more time to blog! Stay tuned!

Ganesha!

 

Symbols:

• Big Head: Think big
• Small Eyes: Concentrate
• Large Ears: Listen more
• Small Mouth: Talk less
• Axe: Cut off all bonds of attachment
• Rope: Pull you nearer to your goal
• One Tusk: Retain good, throwaway bad
• Trunk: High efficiency and adaptability
• Blessing: Blesses and protect on spiritual path to supreme
• Large Stomach: peacefully digest all good and bad in life
• Prasada: The whole world is at your feet and for your asking
• Mouse: Desire, unless under control can cause havoc, you ride the desire and keep it under control and don’t allow it to take you for a ride

link

Ethereal

 

“My duty moves along with my song:
I am I am not: that is my destiny.
I exist not if I do not attend to the pain
of those who suffer: they are my pains.
For I cannot be without existing for all,
for all who are silent and oppressed,
I come from the people and I sing for them:
my poetry is song and punishment.” 

Pablo Nuruda 

'Tis the Season

Winter has been in full affect for many weeks now. Somehow, I've gotten used to the frigid temps. It's all about dressing correctly. Then I'm able to enjoy it more. Seriously, I wrap my scarf around my neck like four times around. I've realized what my problem has always been in my winter days of old. It was that I always resisted it! Now, I simply find ways to enjoy it, and honestly, there is something absolutely lovely about a Swedish winter. 

Practicing in winter here brings new challenges. In a good way. Yes, I don't sweat as much or get as warm, but I've learned to add more awareness to what I'm doing as I move and breathe. It brings a whole new dimension in continuing on in the face of change and discomfort. I like it. I move slower. With more intention. I go more inward. Which is fitting for the season.

 

Yoga Teachers, TEACH!

I came across the following article on Huffington Post. Wow, it drove home much of what I've been feeling about the whole yoga teaching scene, lately. In some respects, it has become too new age-esque (Yes, I made up the word) and even cliché. Whatever happened to sticking with the basics, building a solid foundation? I think often as teachers we forget the most important part of teaching and that is the students we teach. If we didn't have them, then what would we have? Offering the highest quality of instruction, being open to learn ourselves, and maintaining our focus to the most important aspect of the job, the students, is where the importance lies. Why get caught up in the side show? Cut the drama. It's as simple as that.

I love yoga. I've been a half-assed student (which might be an asana, I'm not sure) for close to 20 years. I remember the moment I fell in love with the practice. It was at Kripalu. The teacher was Stephen (Kaviraj) Cope. The pose was trikonasana/triangle. Following Kavi's precise verbal instruction and watching him model the pose with his beautiful (and beautifully human) body, I suddenly found that I was suspended in space in an unexpected way, my body draped into an unaccustomed but oddly thrilling design. It can do this, too?! I thought. How cool.

Kavi gave point-by-point instruction on how to find the proper alignment. Once there, we were encouraged to feel into it and then relax, including the awesomeness, including the oddness, the beauty, the discomfort and the enjoyment of not knowing what it was supposed to feel like. His instruction to establish the pose but "relax around the holding" has served me to this day, on and off the mat.

From this, I learned that the first step in asana practice is precision. Each pose has a magical kind of integrity that is awakened only when animated by your body. Without alignment, the integrity goes away. From this precision, an opening of the energetic body is created. The pose then starts to animate you. And the third step, to let go -- of expectation, judgment, hope and fear -- allows energy to continue flowing. In this way, honest transformation, the kind that transcends mere self-improvement, can occur.

Precision. Opening. Letting go. I had never related to myself in this way before, and it changed the way I felt inside my body. I still love yoga for the same reasons, only more so.

Since then, I've been to like a zillion yoga classes: Iyengar, Ashtanga, Kripalu, Anusara, "Power," Bikram, heated vinyasa, and on and on. I'm not a yoga snob, and I pretty much like them all. As long as I shvitz, I don't really care what the style is. Wherever I live, I just go to the studio closest to my house.

A long time ago, I stopped caring who the teacher was, too. (Apologies to all the incredible, devoted yoga teachers out there.) This is because I stopped being able to count on the skill of my instructor. Some time in the last decade, I found that deep knowledge of asana was replaced with an unchanging posture sequence spiked by a coaching vibe. I don't care for this, particularly. It's not that I don't like repetition; I do. I actually prefer it. But I don't want just anyone getting all up in my grille with their ideas about who I am and ought to be. First and foremost, I want them to know a lot about asana practice. If their knowledge on this score is great, I would maybe trust them to sneak in some ideas about life. Otherwise, hold the deep thoughts. I can tell when you're posing, so to speak.

And so I arrive at the point of this post, which is already turning into a bit of a rant. (Apologies.) Yoga teachers, I would like to be taught by you, not "invited" to do this or that. "Make it feel good" is not an instruction. Neither is "do what feels right to you" or "this is the pose I suggest, but if you prefer another one, go ahead." When I hear things like this, I can't help but sneak a peak around me. Often, people seem a bit confused, like they're supposed to know what this means but don't. Most interpret it to mean something sloppy or embarrassing. They may start rolling around or making some kind of baby sounds.

"Do what feels right" is actually a super-advanced instruction that requires tremendous self-awareness. Unless you know the proper alignment of a pose, doing what feels right is not a release into an internal energetic shift but more of a self-indulgent collapse.
Please, before offering too many choices, help the poor guy with his shoulders up about his ears in Downward Dog. Give the young woman who is jutting forward with aggression in Warrior Two permission to rise up out of her waist with elegance instead. I'm not saying we all have to become mini Iyengars, moving our femur bones about and whatnot, but it would be so awesome to focus on meat-and-potatoes alignment. The basics.

Encouraging us to do what we want is more often than not an encouragement to fidget, and I'm already pretty good at fidgeting. I excel at doing random stuff just to entertain myself. I would love to hear a yoga teacher counsel stillness. Waiting. Silence. Space. Allowing discomfort rather than chasing it off. What I really need to practice is the discipline of being with my experience, not creating endless distractions from it.

We live in a culture that eschews discipline as punishment. The truth, though, is that through discipline we find spontaneous, self-arising freedom. On the yoga mat or off. As a student or a teacher.
Discipline begins with coming back to the basics, over and over. Only then can real transformation occur. As the great transpersonal educator and psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo said of music, "spontaneous innovation can only arise from repetition," and this is one of the smartest things I've ever heard anyone say. Ever.

Beloved yoga teachers! I "invite you" to stop inviting us, your students, to do anything and instead to instruct us clearly. Teach from a place of your own inner knowing, from your own intimacy with the practice, from having screwn (yes, a made-up word) it up a thousand times, gone back to the mat, worked it out again and learned each pose from the inside out of your own body.

Don't humor us. Teach us. Don't overestimate our skills or the body's ability to take care of itself, which we so easily confuse with wanting to feel good/look good/deny the realities of age, injury and anatomy. Don't assume we need you to make us feel good or create any type of experience for us whatsoever. We can definitely create our own experience -- but only when your authentic (honestly attained, personal) wisdom is there to anchor it. The example of your personal presence will always be a thousand times more instructive than your words.

Deepen your practice and deepen it some more. Commit to your own journey, and from that commitment allow love for your students to blossom spontaneously. Then take your seat as an adept and teach us what you know.

- Susan Piver   

Link to Article

Refining Your Dropbacks

87 and Still Practicing Yoga

What a great attitude on life! I love her name too, Tao. Absolutely beautiful and stunning at 87 years old.

Drop Back Tips

 

Above are tangible tips for dropping back by Certified Ashtanga yoga teacher David Garrigues. I prefer teaching the overhead position when dropping back as well. Take a look.

Technique

"I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude." - Bruce Lee   

My technique is daily practice. It's as simple as that. Easy, no, not always, but a straight forward, direct approach. I guess you can say, there are no magic bullets. At some point and probably not in this lifetime, the practice in itself will have to fall away. No longer needing to be identified with the tool, but able to sit in the state of yoga alone. Perfect oneness. Hmmmm. Sounds wonderful. Can't say I know what that is like in my everyday living. Though, I've tasted glimpses. Tiny little trickles that keep me hanging on - knowing somewhere deep within the spaces, filled with conscious breath, will reveal the light, moving stillness brings.

I've had an interesting past several months. I took the opportunity to practice with a number of guest teachers. Self-practice is my bread and butter in between trips to Mysore, but I guess you can say I'm always curious about well known teachers. From awesome, to decent, to down right bad, I've experienced it all, and everything in between, and what I've found is there is always something to be learned by various teachers. Always. It's inevitable, there will be those we just won't resonate with, while others we'll hang on to every word and instruction like a treasure. It's never one size fits all.

Sometimes I'm left wondering what is really being offered? Did I sign up for an experience of staged charisma and a bagful of techniques to buy into? What happened to the internal alignment? Is this only about perfecting asana or is it about entering into the places inside left unopened? I don't have the answers but the yoga industry more and more is sounding like some type of new age "please fix me because I'm broken" type of thing, that well, seems to work for some and keeps them feeling as if they are doing yoga.

"It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential."            - Bruce Lee

There will always be differing points of view and it takes time to filter through it all. Understanding what feels good in this moment for me has become an important factor. I had one teacher out of the blue tell me I'll break my knees doing Bhekasana (Intermediate series) in the manner I was doing it, which not to mention, was clearly instructed to me by another very well known teacher.  Huh?! Well, to date, my knees have felt really good, and I just don't seem to understand the fear based instruction being offered. The attitude didn't feel good, and in the process my knee was tweaked by being pushed into something that the teacher felt structurally I should have been doing, that in the process totally bypassed the energetic component. Which is often missed. One thing I have learned, through experimentation, if a teacher breaks me, at least I know the practice will heal me.

I've been around the bend enough to tell the difference between being adjusted from the core versus the periphery. What do I mean by this? Well, an adjustment that aligns the energy to the central axis of the body versus molding it into an external structure, hence a "yoga journal" pose - alignment that may look good in the magazines but is all wrong energetically and therapeutically. It is easily felt. It feels like connecting only to the periphery. No internal engagement. It's so interesting, and even though the experience didn't feel good and had my knee popping in and out of place for several days afterward, I really learned the difference, and felt it in my body clearly from the experience. At least for that I can be thankful. A light bulb moment, knowing that, hey, I'm on the right track here. After 15 years of yoga practice maybe I know at least little bit about the mechanics of my body.

As a teacher, I have learned to see where there is no energy flow. It goes much deeper than just looking at the structure. Is there a free flow of energy running through the circuits of the body? Where is there dead space? It's amazing how many of us carry dead space in our bodies, and it's beautiful when it begins to awaken. Through time, a sixth sense begins to develop in feeling/sensing where these areas arise in students. With much to still learn, the subtleties and unseen parts, the spaces, are what leave me fascinated, and undoubtedly knowing there is a vast amount to discover and realize.

"A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at." - Bruce Lee 

Ashtanga yoga is an energetic practice. On so many levels. The importance of getting the body circulating first is key to the development of practitioners starting out, hence the internal alignment. I've seen how time and time again when starting from this point, through consistency, the practice and the body start to take shape. Which we see externally. The by product.

Exceptional teachers will adjust the body in a manner which will further the engagement or alignment internally. I have felt it many a times with experienced teachers coming from this place. Where when moved, I feel the central axis of the body more pronounced through the adjustment. The interesting part is how it looks on the outside may be amply different from person to person depending on what stage they are in - the further beauty of the Mysore method of practicing and teaching - working individually while having the energy of the group to carry one through.

What I've also come to discover is the vast difference felt with those teachers who continue to work with a teacher themselves even if they have reached a certain apex in their work, especially in the tradition they are teaching in. It means a lot to me, and I seem to connect to those who continue working with teachers or go to the source so to speak or have done so long term. It is a different experience when practicing with those who use the name to further their reach as teachers but in the end don't really respect where it is coming from. Because in the end, what are we promoting?

“Zen is not “attained” by mirror-wiping mediation, but by “self-forgetfulness in the existential ‘present’ of life here and now.” We do not “come”, we “are.” Don’t strive to become, but be.” - Bruce Lee

Happy Thanksgiving!

There's much to be thankful for. A practice in gratitude.

Here in Sweden it is just any other day - any other snowy day to be exact - winter is in FULL affect right now! And so, I take time to count my blessings, big and small, and feel the beauty and grace that surrounds me like a warm, cozy blanket. Gratitude does exactly that - it warms me.

Have A Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! XOXOXO

A Tradition

For those who aren't familiar with my history, well, I'm a Buckeye. I graduated at The Ohio State University and was a cheerleader for all my years there. So, I guess you can say I was intimately involved with game day. The memories are still a part of me and somehow I have a feeling they always will. They were good times. Go Bucks! Beat Michigan!

Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation

Many of you have heard about my experiences with the liver and gallbladder cleanses. Following the guidelines of Andreas Moritz and totally blown away by the results of his recommendations I was then inspired to browse his other highly recommended book. A wealth of information, I especially appreciated the chapter on living in tune with the bio rhythms of the earth. It's fascinating, and a true testament to how our bodies naturally want to be healthy and in state of homeostasis.

No. He isn't a physician which in a way comforts me, especially when he has found his way to radiant health while previously suffering from ill health. When it comes to health I always look to the author as an example, and he truly is. It has to be an experiential experience. I've already been experimenting with some of his recommendations when comes to my daily routine and it's been wonderful. Prevention is key, and why not do little things to keep everything in check? It's like having my own health insurance in a way. It's really good stuff!!!

Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation

“Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence,
without you moving, slicing the noon
like a blue flower, without you walking
later through the fog and the cobbles,
without the light you carry in your hand,
golden, which maybe others will not see,
which maybe no one knew was growing
like the red beginnings of a rose.
In short, without your presence: without your coming
suddenly, incitingly, to know my life,
gust of a rosebush, wheat of wind:
since then I am because you are,
since then you are, I am, we are,
and through love I will be, you will be, we will be.”

—	Pablo Neruda

Lino Miele {Navasana}

Effortlessness.

giggle.

"Give me, for my life,
all lives,
give me all the pain
of everyone,
I’m going to turn it into hope.
Give me
all the joys,
even the most secret,
because otherwise
how will these things be known?
I have to tell them,
give me
the labors
of everyday,
for that’s what I sing"

- Pablo Neruda

Richard Freeman Discussion

Metamorphosis

One of my dearest friends from across the pond sent me this poem. We always like to give each other anecdotes, inspirations, and support over cyberspace. Though not always as good as the real thing it's a testament to how important it is to continue to stay connected. I feel so much love and appreciation to those who have continued to encourage me even through all my faults, foibles, and periods of withdrawal. Yes, we are one. I love this.

"Called beyond the confines of this 

Chrysalis by a force I cannot see 

or name, I am compelled by pain 

And something bigger than myself

To leave the protection of all that I

have known. There is struggle, doubt, 

an awkward setting forth. Finally I 

Break free of the cocoon and find 

myself surrounded by air and light. 

I dare to act, still not knowing what

I am; instinct, or maybe faith bids me 

move forward, make the leap, explore

this mystery of change and fight. 

I find myself with wings that dwarf

my former world. Unfurled, they dry 

quickly in the sun. I who expected 

to spend my days crawling, now

teach myself to soar. Such a rush 

of wind and freedom - that first 

flight teaches me more than I had

learned a lifetime of crawling."

- Unknown