I open my daily Google news alert e-mail this morning and a pattern immediately emerged from the selection.
- WOOD TV8 Yoga for better sleep - informative five-minute video feature on a bedtime routine
- Huffington Post How Laughing Yoga Helped Me Take Relaxation Seriously about this twist. Also see Yogalaff.com
- Globe and Mail Night moves: Sleep yoga may be better than counting sheep- more info about yoga as "foreplay before bed to set the mood before sleep."
- SFGate Restorative yoga for those who want to relax
- Reuters Rwandans reach to yoga as a trauma therapy
I had made a decision to refrain from posting a lot of news items on yoga and meditation unless I could really add something to the content. These short entries were easy to fire off, but others sites, like YogaDorks, do this job well and with a lot more humor that I can muster about the yoga scene here in the States and around the world. I wanted to refocus my blog on my practice, photography, reading, and other assets that a reader would not find elsewhere.
And to contradict what I just said, let me close by pointing to this New York Times article, When Chocolate and Chakras Collide about the trend towards mixing yoga and food. Anything that appears in the NY Times is an indicator of what's happening culturally around yoga.
Labels: life style, news, therapy
I've had to spend the past few days undergoing a major overhaul in our living quarters. After nearly a decade living independently, our daughter Stephanie is moving back into the house so that she can swing it financially while finishing up her studies at the University of Maryland. To fit her belongings in the house and give her some independence, I have moved my study from the basement to one of the spare bedrooms. I am shrinking my work space by half, at least, but I get to put my desk by a window and have nature light for part of the day. Another plus is that I no longer have a TV in my study nor a couch where I can stretched to read commentary on Patanjali while watching the Redskins beat the Oakland Raiders. My cell phone now picks up a good enough single that I can carry on a conversation. I get a wooden floor, instead of linoleum, so I can roll out a mat whenever I feel like it
My family, my wife and me, really, have accumulated too many belongings for the type of house we own, a small townhouse. My wife has her oil paintings, art booms, her doll collections, her sewing and seamstress projects, stacks of cloth. My son never move his old school (community college, GWU undergraduate, UMd postgraduate) stuff out of the house, and is now dropping off his photography displays. Now Stephanie is going to deposit the physical manifestations of her independence and file up the basement.
Needless to say, the move has been brutal physically. I've moved three book cases and their contents, plus desk, keyboard unit, two filing cabinets and contents, and all my computer gear from the basement to the second floor. My back and legs ache from the exertion. Then, I had to put them all together again. I still have three-four more bookcases. I have taken down bedding, mattresses, bed frame, boxes of belongings,
It's also been a time to sort through stacks of books, magazine, correspondence and just plain junk, and decide whether to keep it or dump it. I have tons of stuff accumulated over 40 years (My parents donated my school books and independent reading when I left home). Do I need to keep a book on DOS 6.0 for sentimental value? Am I ever going to get around to reading my collection for Wired magazine that dates back to 2003? Will I ever send that external hard disk that I dropped during the clean up to a certified lab where they can dig the data out? Should I throw out the files for a story that I was going to write about 20 years ago? That's why I was in the basement, the weight and state of decomposition of these stories weigh heavy with their doom, with the squandered human anecdotes and embalmed statistics. I can move the worst offenders into the closet under the stairway that's under the stairs. No light there, not even a naked bulb. I have to bring a flash light to pull out my old tax returns.
There is a pang of nostalgia in this ascension because I've resided in the basement for 10 years. It was away from family traffic. It had a routine -- I was in charge of the washer and dryer, staging the loads so that they could move through the machines at the least expensive power rates in the evenings. I would take advantage because I could give my yoga kit special treatment by not putting them through the dryer, just hang them on a line or hanger. I could grab my dress shirts out of the dryer before they got wrinkled. But, I also had to clean out the kit litter. My wife can never claim that I did not help her with the household chores. I could let my disorder sprawl over the floor and boxes, and no one would get their fingers in them because, except my wife, to clean them up.
Of course, my wife's solution to this quagmire: sell the townhouse and get a big independent house with garden and storage shed, big closets, lots of windows opening on the east,south and west. Something worthy of our stature. I tell my wife that the market is not prepared for us.
Labels: family, life style, milestone
Gaiam has been one of the pioneers of yoga merchanising, and has a strong cast of yoga instructors: Rodney Yee, Patricia Walden, Shiva Rea, Seane Corn, Jill Miller, Suzanne Deason, Nicki Doane. But Gaiam has broadened its scope to a "Life Style Media Company" so it sells household furnishings, appliances and green living, plus other offerings like travel, online education and even a dating network.
In a way, the Trudie Styler's Warrior Yoga is a blend of fitness and green life style, plus the media recognition associated with rock star Sting and Styler. The bonus material on the DVD include interviews with Sting and Styler and a feature on their Tuscan estate Il Palagio featuring the green technology they're using to be as friendly to the environment as possible. They are pitching their yoga, life styles and even environmental and humanitarian causes (a portion of the sales will go to a UNICEF drinking water project in Ecuador - read more about the plight of rainforest and natives).
Level -- Intermediate: Although there is nothing exceptionally difficult in the poses in the routines, the DVD does not give detailed instructions about the poses so I would not consider it appropriate for a beginner. D'Silva gives good audio cuing as a voice-over so once you've gone through the routines a couple of times, you'll have no problem following up. But if you are a novice, it would be a challenge to make the transitions from pose to pose. Plus, there are a few poses Styler and D'Silva make look deceptively easy because of their years of practice and discipline. That's not to say that a beginner couldn't take shorter segments and work with them until he/she is comfortable. There are two sessions: a 50-minute practice and a 20-minute "express" practice.
London-based fitness empresario James D'Silva clearly takes the yogic lead. He builds his practice with relatively long sequences of poses (like 10-minutes) that focus on one side of the body, and then the sequence is repeated on the "other" side, even though there are many poses that are "neutral" -- facing forward. These long sequences are a lot more than just a Sun Salutation, but less than any of the Ashtanga series. This approach at first seems repetitive. At one point, I had the sensation that I was seeing a video loop, paying over again. But this repetition is really functional: you go through movements and poses repeatedly, each cycle a little deeper.
Grace in movement: D'Silva draws strongly from his background in classic and contemporary dance to give the sequencing a dance-like quality in which poses are strung together in smooth succession so that one asana blends gracefully into the next. I thought his use of the arms, especially the archer-like movements in warrior II, was a stroke of inspiration. D'Silva gives good cuing for breath with movement, and I never got the sense of being out of sync. Since the poses are held for several beats, there is always a chance for you to catch your breath. The pace is moderate and controlled. On the other hand, D'Silva's phrasing (and accent) is different (he's British, dah!) and I noted a couple of pose names that did not jive with asana names used in the States.
For some American yogis, it may take some time to get used to D'Silva's style because it is so studied and choreographed. Compared to most vinyasa sequences, there are few jump-backs and jump-forwards so it seems less athletic.
I've been referring to D'Silva too much. It's Styler's video and she gives a more human stance, compared to D'Silva's near perfection. She modifies some of the poses to a more accessible form. For a woman who's in her mid-50s, she shows that a regular yoga practice has its rewards.
As might be expected from an experienced film producer like Styler, the production quality is superb. In addition, the filming takes place at Styler and Sting's Tuscan villa Il Palagio so there's some extraordinary settings for each practice. Warrior Yoga takes place in the garden, with manicured lawns, trimmed shrubbery and stately trees. Camera angles are varied and interspersed so you get multiple takes on poses, sometimes focusing on Styler or D'Silva, or both of them together. Did I mention that Sting provides background music? Just the right tone for the practice.
What I did not like: the meditation segments. There are two six-minute versions with the same script. The voice-over (Styler in one and D'Silva in the other) is giving instructions throughout the whole segment, no silence, no break, so when exactly are you supposed to meditate? I guess Styler and her team thought they had to give a nod to meditation as the ultimate goal of yoga. It's overkill.
In the end, I think this video would be a great change of pace if you are looking to shake up your habits on the mat, and break out of standard fare of Americanized vinyasa calisthenics. The DVD was being released today. Trudie Styler Core Strength Pilates and Trudie Styler Cardio Dance Flow will be coming out in early December, just in time for Christmas. Yoga Warrior has lots of teasers to give you a glimpse of what the future ones will contain.
Full disclosure: I received an advance copy of the DVD at no cost. The final retail version may be different. I did not receive any compensation for this review. (Drat! It was hard work.)
Labels: life style, teachers, videos
Labels: life style, news
Seane Corn was the focus on a Speaking on Faith feature on Yoga: Meditation in Action in September last year (How I missed this, I don't know. I suspect it was because I was absorbed by my injured knee). I've mention her before in the blog because of her yoga outreach program, Off the Mat, Into the World. There is a podcast or you can listen online, but there's a lot more to explore that goes beyond the radio program. As a teaser, The video that follows is from Yoga Journal's Yoga from the Heart and was recorded at a conference. Seane mentions that she practices as a prayer for her father fighting cancer, and that touched me because my brother is going through the same struggle. I was in awe of Seane's control and pace during the Sun Salutation.
Seane Corn Demonstrates "Body Prayer" from Speaking of Faith on Vimeo.
Labels: audio, life style, practice, teachers, videos
New York Times Chanting Is an Exercise in Body and Spirit is about the rising tide that kirtan is riding on.
"It has left the churches and the yoga studios because it's such a simple practice," said Krishna Das, 61, who grew up on Long Island as Jeff Kagel and traveled to India in the early 1970s. "It's not about belief in any religions, so people are coming from all walks of life. You give it a try and if it works, you're in fat city. If not, you do something else."
Although kirtan is rooted in India's devotional religions and involves chanting the names of God, Krishna Das says the practice requires no allegiance to any deity or set of beliefs, and he is dismayed that many associate the chant "Hare Krishna" with people who begged on the streets and danced in airports in the 1970s.
As I've said before here, Krishna Das is the soundtrack of my yoga experience. What is really interesting is the fusion that's happening in the United States as musicians and yogis take the Hindi core and combine it with pop, gospel, reggae, hip-hop and rapping, plus all the other world music influences, to produce a unique, innovative sound, nurtured in the small venues of yoga studios and churches. It's part of the mainstreaming of yoga in America. Purists probably hate it and it will never achieve broad popularity, but that's not the point. It's what is happening to yoga itself, starting out with the "pure" Indian practice (which may be a relatively modern application of ancient rites) and then layering on multiple riffs and licks of Pilates, marital arts, gymnastics and dance. The market and society are bending it in new ways that make it more relevant and "marketable" in our society.
Labels: life style, music, news, yoga
Neal Pollack, a practicing Ashtanga yogi himself, writes Top Yogi: Rabbit poses, coconut water, and a Bikram-practicing dance team at the international yoga championship in Slate Magazine from the scene of the sixth annual international yoga championship sponsored by Bikram Yoga:
When I returned the next morning, the room had been transformed into a legitimate athletic stage, with no evidence of the previous night's variety-show nuttiness save a few stray red balloons in the rafters. Everything ran with precision and efficiency. The video and audio were of professional quality and the emcee had a classy, sonorous voice. Most impressively, the competitors, judged under strict and consistent standards, continually wafted into beautiful and magnificent yoga postures.
It was refreshing to read an article in a mainstream outlet that was not pulled by an undercurrent of snarky cynicism or cozy boosterism. Pollack respected the skilled discipline of the competitors and certainly did not commit the sins of other journalists, as reported in his 2005 Slate article, Big Men Stretching: Quarterbacks who do yoga and the journalists who love them. Pollack is also writing a book about yoga culture in the States.
For me, the whole competition thing is wrong-headed. I am constantly trying to beat down my own competitive urges on the mat, catching myself watching someone else's wheel out of the corner of my eye or comparing the volume of my ujjayi breathing to the rest of the room. I'm even competing against myself, stacking up pre-injury performance against how I'm doing now. The way the Bikram people explain it, you have to surrender your competitive instincts in order to score in their competition.
One quick word on the attitude problem that Pollack noted among some of the Bikram yogis, who tended to look down on other yoga lineages, like Ashtanga and Iyengar. Bikram followers do not have a monopoly on this mental distortion. My daughter recently helped out at a Shiva Rea workshop and found the assistants and some of the participants really obnoxious. I've heard the "holier-than-thou" shroud laid on the Jivamukti clan. Hell, even Pollack's own Ashtanga school's been known to disparage other approaches. Whenever someone invests as much time, energy and emotional capital into a goal or activity, it's human to justify it as the only "right" choice. But as Pollack points out at the end of the story, once you get on the mat, all the differences should disappear.
Labels: life style, news
NYTimes.com Yoga Classes Play Up the Lighter Side opened the year with a chuckle about the use of laughter in the yoga studio:
"I do think there's a trend toward lightening up in the yoga community," said Kelly McGonigal, 31, the editor in chief of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy (found at iayt.org). "Mostly around the rigidity and humorlessness of doing things 'the one right way' &emdash; always having to get better, feeling like every yoga practice has to be one big self-improvement project."
I was struck by the lameness of some of the attempts at humor cited as examples of a trend in this article. I really had to search for some text to pull out in a quote. I suspect that the context gives more meaning to the words. The point about yoga being taken too seriously is right on target; I am guilty of it myself.
Labels: life style, news, teachers
CHANT 4 CHANGE, January 19, 6:30 pm - 11:30 pm, at Church of the Holy City
Celebrate the Inauguration of Barack Obama on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with sacred activist Shiva Rea, world-renowned kirtan/chant artists Jai Uttal, Dave Stringer, Gaura Vani & As Kindred Spirits and 400 other conscious revolutionaries.
I suspect that this event is going to sell out very quickly. It's a relatively small venue. You can buy tickets at Brown Paper Tickets at $70 a piece. It's for a good cause.
Labels: dc_yoga, life style
My daughter, Stephanie, has been awarded her 200-hour yoga teacher credential by the Flow Yoga Center teacher training program. It's taken her a while, in part because she is so conscientious about fulfilling all the obligations and mastering the material. She took it very seriously. For about six months, she has been volunteering yoga classes at one of the House of Ruth's shelters for battered women. Now she's going to be looking for more teaching opportunities.
Great going, Estef!!!
Labels: life style, milestone, Stephanie, teachers, yoga
Washington Post Happiness Can Spread Among People Like a Contagion, Study Indicates:
"Stanley Wasserman, who studies social networks at Indiana University, said: "We've known that one's network ties are important, but we've never looked at anything on this scale. The implications are you can't look at individuals as little entities devoid of their social context." Others, however, questioned the findings, noting that it is difficult to account for every variable that might affect the outcomes of such studies."Coincidentally, I am reading Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
by Martin Seligman, who's quoted in this article. It's fascinating to see the upside to this approach to the mind. The investigators can apply scientific testing to determine and measure the effects of an emotional state (positive or negative ) in a social network. It also allows society to take preventative actions to safeguard the mental well-being of target populations, like teenagers and the elderly, who tend to be more prone to depression and anxiety. There are simple interventions that can be done without the need for meditation or extended therapy.
Labels: life style, mind health
In New York Times Magazine On Language - Namaste, a yoga teacher and writer Jaimie Epstein gives a primer of the Sanskrit that creeps in the vocabulary of people willing to get on the yoga mat.
Guru means "remover of darkness" and is someone who sheds light on your ignorance. Although the word guru (with a big G) is associated with spiritual guides, anyone or any situation can be your guru (small g) if he/she/it teaches you something, and there is surely no end to the opportunities presented to us every day.
Labels: life style, news
Today's Wall Street Journal published Yoga Bears: It's No Stretch to Say Traders Are Taking Deep Breaths on the front page. The article explains how financiers, traders and hedge fund managers are seeking refuge in yoga:
Yoga, of course, has been growing in popularity for years in the West. The magazine Yoga Journal estimates that about 15.8 million people in the U.S., or 7% of adults, now practice it. Today, studios and private teachers in New York and London report increasing demand from financiers. Allianz SE's Pacific Investment Management Co., D.E. Shaw & Co. and Karsch Capital are among the companies playing host to yoga classes.
Of course, the article is sprinkled with dollars figures about assets and total yearly sales, as appropriate for a business publication, but it does provide a glimpse of how one slice of the market is reconsidering yoga. Apparently, some clients find it hard to chant aum, but every yogi modifies the practice to his/her own needs and skills. In effect, these heavy payers are subsidizing yoga as a viable option in the US market.
Leslie Kaminoff at e-Sutra spotted the article first, so a tip of the hat to him.
Labels: life style, news
I've been taking some class of Forest Yoga from Christine Peterson at Thrive Yoga. So I was bouncing around my usual surfing points and came across an audio interview with Ana Forest herself at Yoga Peeps. I listened and was impressed by her life story and attitude towards yoga (I was already impressed by her yoga performances). She is exploring the depth of yoga by bringing the optics from her Native American heritage and her own physical handicaps:
"What I've been found, no matter what age we are, we can build healthy muscle tissue or we can rot. And the choice is always ours. And I'm not into rot."
Forest Yoga classes are intense and physically demanding, focused on physical core strength and body integrity. They hurt, but I know that they target areas that I need to strengthen to get to the next level. I find it a nice counterbalance to vinyasa classes that emphasize ease of movement, balance and flexibility. There are not many instructors that are certified to teach Forest Yoga, so probably the easy way to incorporate some of her techniques is to her DVD Strength & Spirit at her website. If you want to read articles and interviews, she has an exhaustive selection.
Labels: life style, practice, teachers
NY Times Kripalu, a New Age Retreat, Makes Hard Choices in Finding the Courses With the Most Appeal looks at the business end of running a life style center:
But behind the scenes in a crowded second-floor suite at Kripalu's sprawling lakefront campus here in the Berkshires, things are a tad less restful. Beneath a long expanse of whiteboard and corkboard plastered with thousands of color-coded sheets and dots laying out each day's offerings from 2007 through the end of next year, phones ring ceaselessly. Gaps between projected and actual attendance are tracked like stock prices, and self-proclaimed visionaries and healers are subjected to the scrutiny of veteran vetters.
My daughter, Stephanie, went to Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health earlier this year and thoroughly enjoyed her stay. It was both nurturing and intellectually challenging. If anything, she was overwhelmed by all the offerings that were available. It's really a great opportunity to get unplugged and into a different realm. For Kripalu, this approach is a big change from its era as ashram and HQ for a guru. When your staff is no longer working for room, board and guidance to nirvana, then you've got to be ready to fight for survival in the consumer market. It's the same with yoga studios, which are competing with fitness centers and spas, martial arts and tai chi, with the price of gasoline biting into discretionary spending. Do you put a $100-140 into your monthly unlimited yoga pass or in the tank?
Labels: life style, news, Stephanie
I accomplished two things that will clear away some time: I canceled my subscriptions to the New York Times (weekend) and Time magazine. My wife had taken out the subscriptions as gifts for me. I found that I never found the time to read through the Times on Saturday and Sunday while Time was in my briefcase for reading on the metro, which meant that I have not been making progress on my stack of books. Just as when I eliminated the Washington Post a few months ago, I could not say that the time investigated in reading these periodicals helped me towards my life goals. I decided that the only way to zero in on my priorities and cutting out the extraneous. I can still get news on the Web and I can trim my subscription budget a little. More subscriptions will probably bite the dust as they come up for renewal.
Labels: life style, news
Mike Albo (or the Underminer, as he likes to call himself), Crossroads Films YouTube basecamp or standard website, parodies the yoga studio scene and the one-up-manship that taints the environment. It's very wicked and sounds true. Enjoy!
Fat People are Doing It! Yoga and The Underminer
Labels: life style, videos
I bought a wrist mala from YogaBasics Japa Mala Beads. Twenty-seven beads on an elastic cord. I see the mala beads as a constant reminder that I can take my practice with me through out the day. The slight pressure on my wrist or the beads between my fingers and thumb can be evocative of the healing and strength that I develop on the mat, just as I often feel the same reaction to certain songs or kirtans that often serve as the background music to my practice.
My daughter gave me a full mala for Christmas, two years ago, which I keep hanging near my monitor at home. It's a bit bulky to carry around and I can't put it around my neck while at work. The wrist mala is more inconspicuous and more meaningful to me than wearing one of those colored plastic wristbands that symbolize various causes, like yellow for Lance Armstrong's campaign for cancer research.
YogaBasics Japa Mala Beads has a wide selection of full and wrist malas, as well as bags and boxes to store them. Diverse materials range from gemstones to hand-carved bone to wood.
Labels: hardware, life style, meditation
Following up on my inventory of physical achievements, I want to clarify why that list was important for me. I am negotiating a new contract with my body. When I went through childhood and adolescence, I was laboring under several handicaps about how I perceived myself:
- Trauma: At the age of six, I had an appendectomy. I had felt a pain in my side for several days, but did not recognize it as a serious symptom. I kept asking my mother for aspirins. I was at school when it worsened substantially. After school was out, I tried to walk home, a mere two blocks, but that distance seemed as if it were two miles. (The sense of distance is still engraved on my mind; when I went back last year, I saw that my sense of dimension had been blown out of proportion.) I did make it home. The crossing guard saw that I was doubled over in pain, and got help. I was rushed to the hospital for an emergency operation because it was close to rupturing. While recovering from the operation, an infection set in and I had to stay another week. I was conscious when the doctors drained the abscess. I remember the putrid color of the pus as it flowed out of my belly and into the metallic pan. This was also my first separation from my mother so it must have been traumatic for me to spend the evenings and nights alone. When I went home, I was hit with several other childhood illnesses, which kept me out of school. I ended up repeating first grade.
- Wimp: I had allergies that caused asthma and skin rashes. I did not participate in organized sports or engage in fights or quarrels because I feared an almost pre-ordained defeat because my body could not defend me, it would break first.
- Feet of clay: I had a fungal infection under my toe nails and on my soles. My nails were very disfigured by the time I was a teenager. I did not want to show my feet in public, which meant that I hated going to the beach or the pool. The biblical metaphor of having feet of clay seemed to apply to me. About eight years ago, I saw a dermatologist and had the condition treated. I don't think I could have started practicing yoga if I had not first cured my skin condition; I would never have taken off my socks.
The unspoken conclusion of these visceral experiences was that I could not trust my body. It was going to fail myself. If tested, it was going to break. What's more, I could not anticipate when and how it would betray me. So I discounted it; I ignored it; I concentrated my efforts on a mental realm, in a fantasy world that consumed my energies during childhood and then intellectual efforts once I got into junior high and found that I could distinguish myself in the academic world. I did not participate in sports because I could never push myself to the maximum because I misinterpreted the exertion required for sport competition as a warning that my body was near its limit and close to a breakdown.
Those perceptions of my physical body have followed me for 40 years, shaped my self-image and conditioned how I dealt with the physical world.
Over the past four years, I have been moving slowly, gradually and hesitantly towards a new awareness of my body, a prolonged dialog between my body, mind and spirit to reach a new agreement about how all three hang together and establish a different interface with the outside world. I did not even know why yoga and pranayama felt so "right" to me when I started back in early 2004, or why meditation has been so liberating. But I have kept engaged in this new flux and have gradually changed the terms of the partnership. I am reverting to childhood and the primal tasks of walking, running, bending, lifting, extending. I even find myself re-examining something as fundamental as how I take each step, what parts of my foot are employed and when, and how that changes translates up my limbs and changes the way that I carry myself. It's a much bigger challenge than becoming physically stronger, more flexible, more skillful at moving my body. In a sense, I am taking ownership of my whole body and exercising full dominion over my personal space, rather than being confined to my head. It requires a greater command of sense and awareness. and an extension of my will through my core, out to my fingers and toes -- and beyond.
That's why this physical side of change has taken on so much significance. If I am able to run five miles or push myself into wheel or crow pose, that small achievement means that I can take a childlike joy in possessing my body and its capabilities.
Labels: blessing, life style, philosophy, practice
Susan Bowen has announced the start-up of teacher training at Thrive Yoga. ISHTA Yoga founder and pioneer, Alan Finger, will be leading the four-month process. Alan knows a lot because he was born into a yoga-inspired family, knew original thinkers and grappled with translating these concepts into the U.S. culture as a business and as a philosophy. He co-founded yoga studios, like the Yoga Works studio in LA and the Yoga Zone studios in NYC, which later became the Be Studios.
The training will start in late March, mostly on weekends, and last until June. At 2:00 on January 20 at Thrive Yoga, Alan and Susan will present an overview of the program. Alan is actually based on New York City so he will be commuting a lot next year. I might add that you can take the course without wanting to become a teacher; it's an intensive gateway into a deeper understanding of yoga.
ISHTHA is an acronym for the Integrated Science of Hatha, Tantra and Ayurveda, and also a Sanskrit word meaning that which resonates with an individual's spirit, according to Alan's website. With Katrina Repka, he wrote Chakra Yoga: Balancing Energy for Physical, Spiritual, and Mental Well-being (Shambhala, 2005), which synthesizes his long evolution as a practitioner, teacher and thinker. There are also a bunch of Yoga Zone videos available that feature Alan.
Labels: life style, philosophy, reading, workshop, yoga
What am I reading now? Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain
This whole groundswell of enthusiasm for Buddhism, mindfulness and meditation is sweeping into the business of tending to the mind. If Freud once laid down the law for understanding the contradictions of the human mind, now it's a spiritual practice without a supreme being. I've mentioned before that I like the idea that Buddha developed a sophisticated set of psychological protocols for relieving with human suffering.
What got me started into the book is that the transformation of human spirit can be manifested by remolding mental habits, but also actually alterations of physical manifestations, like spawning neurons and a thriving hippocampus. As someone who has felt the undertow of depression and literally sensed the physical change that it brought on me, the idea that I can take action to heal myself is an uplifting lesson at this stage of my life.
The BrainReady blog gives a rave review of the book.
Labels: life style, philosophy, reading
New York Times Between Poses, a Barrage of Pickup Lines: the YouTube video mentioned in this article is funny, though it's not ready for prime time. I just can't recognize a facsimile of a real yoga class in the video but that may just be an issue of production values. But the pretext of the video is a real issue and I've seen the phenomenon in a few of my classes.
Flow Yoga, my downtown studio, gets mentioned in the article because it has a Thursday night social get-together, and even has plans for speed dating.
This story actually opens an ethical issue of human relations on the yoga mat, especially when teacher-student interplay moves outside the yoga studio and especially when sexual chemistry is thrown into the mix.
- New York Magazine Class Action: Amy Sohn examines some of the more base instincts and sounds Sex and the City, but she makes some valid points.
- Ethical Imperatives and Sexually Responsible Behavior veteran teacher J. Brown explains his own evolution in dealing with students.
- Ascent Questionable Conduct Luci Yamamoto discussed the boundaries of sex, power and yoga. Also see Letters to the Editor
- Whole Life Times Yoga's Silent Scandal
- Self Compromising Postions - another take on the teacher-student relationship.
- Common Ground Posing Problems (same as the Whole Life Times article) by Lisa Maria
- Gawker Rodney Yee: Caught In Pants-Down Pose? - now we start naming names. And back to the YouTube video.
- Business2 Yogis Behaving Badly
Labels: life style, news, philosophy
Get ready for the next big world yoga event: Global Mala Project: on September 21-23, the United Nations International Day of Peace, the Fall Equinox and my birthday!! Big yoga names, like Shiva Rae, Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa, Seane Corn and others are organizing it. A variety of causes, from trees to AIDS to ware orphans are being supported by the fundraising campaign.
The only local DC studio supporting the initiative so far is Little River Yoga in Annandale/Alexandria, Virginia. This will probably change soon.
In Sanskrit, mala means garland or a string of beads used to count mantras.
Labels: life style, philosophy, practice
I am months away from being 58 years old and the 60-years-old milestone is just around the corner ("Do not go gentle into that good night..."). My generation may have been pioneers in introducing yoga and other Eastern disciplines in the States, but I don't see a lot of them out on the mat. What lessons have I learned from yoga and fitness in general? None of the following is earth-shattering, but I just want to list them.
- A senior body is on a steady downward slope of entropy. Having a practice may slow the decline or, more hopefully, reverse it. Taking a week off can be a real setback to keeping fit. You need to do something everyday.
- Muscle strength is acquired more slowly than during early adulthood, and recovery from exertion takes longer. For me, that works out to taking two days of vigorous yoga and taking a day off for more restorative or yang yoga.
- Flexibility can be changed over months of work, not days or week. My sense is that it's much harder to change fascia than muscle tissue.
- Balance seems to be the slowest factor to come around. I still feel that I need a wall nearby, just in case.
- The natural weight gain that comes with age is really hard to get rid of. My extra 15-plus pounds really weighs me down through a 90 minute practice, and even gets in the way of certain poses.
- My metabolism seems to function at a different level than younger practitioners. My breathing rhythm seems to be a lot faster than the pace given by instructors, too, especially once we've built up some heat. This may be due to pre-existing diminished lung capacity (I was a smoker for too long): I am still surprised by nuanced improvements from pranayama.
- The key qualities that I need to cultivate are awareness and acceptance -- awareness because I need to perceive and know where I am and how far I can go, and acceptance because that's the starting point for change and emotional release.
- Use it or lose it. Given these conditions, anyone should always have a fitness practice and never abandon it in the first place.
But in the end, yoga is yoga. Even if I cannot transform myself in the equivalent of Ana Forrest or Dave Williams, it will still reward me in other ways that have nothing to do with my body.
Labels: blessing, class, life style, practice
I have subscribed to the eMusic online music download service. I selected it because it had the most unrestrictive policy on digital rights and an extremely inexpensive subscription system. I pay $10 a month and I can download 30 songs. That can be deceptive because if I want to download Bach's Goldberg Variations, I am going to buy the equivalent of 32 songs and use up my monthly allotment. But it still comes out less than for most CDs and even the 99 cent per song services.
With eMusic, you are not going to get the latest pop and rock songs on the big labels. I've been interested in building up a collection of classical and jazz music, as well as world or New Age stuff that goes with my meditation and yoga. I've grown attached to some of the songs that the instructors play during a class. Because eMusic is dealing with a lot of small or independent labels, you're going to get a mixed bag of talent and repertoire, but it's going to be interesting exploring what's available.
Exception to the rule: Paul McCartney is distributing his latest album, Memory Almost Full, through eMusic, among other circuits, so you can get some top-billed musicians.
Labels: blessing, life style
I got up at 6:20 this morning and did my pranayama and meditation before sitting down to breakfast. I felt proud of myself. I don't think it had a lasting on my day -- lots of tension at work that seeps into my bones and muscles and weighs me down like wet clothes. I did not have much of a chance to do anything else in the day because it was my wife's birthday and we went out to eat with my son in the evening.
Obviously, the real trick will be to do this a full week to make it a habit.
Labels: life style, practice
