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With Me or Against Me
People are asking, “Why is there a culture of silence in Yoga?” Something that often makes people go silent is “all or nothing” and “with me or against me” thinking. It is the idea that everything is black or white and you have to choose a side. If folks don’t want to choose a side, they will often just go silent. When the person speaks up, they get crucified by both sides for not choosing. This results in shutting down the conversation and shutting down the person. You can hate someone’s choices around a particular event but totally still love and respect everything else about them. You can love your…
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Taking Away Attention, Taking Away Power
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Adventures in Mysore India, Alignment and Injuries, Ask the AYP, Teaching Ashtanga, Yoga Philosophy, Yoga Sutras
Yoga Will Not Keep Bad Things From Happening
Yoga is not an inoculation against bad things. It is the science of learning how to deal with bad things when they happen. If you are lucky, you start to view “bad” things as just events and you don’t label them at all. On my last post, someone commented and asked, “how can you hurt yourself when you are practicing Ahimsa?” Easy. Most people don’t wake up in the morning and say. “I feel like hurting myself today. I really want to get in a car accident, maybe get a cold, catch my husband in bed with his co-worker, rip my hamstring, and have to bail my son out of…
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My New Year Wishes For the Yoga World
Forgiveness: Jack Kornfield can say it better than me. “Like the practice of compassion, forgiveness does not ignore the truth of our suffering. Forgiveness is not weak. It demands courage and integrity. Yet only forgiveness and love can bring about the peace we long for. As the Indian sage Meher Baba explains, “True love is not for the faint-hearted.” “We have all betrayed and hurt others, just as we have knowingly or unknowingly been harmed by them. It is inevitable in this human realm. Sometimes our betrayals are small, sometimes terrible. Extending and receiving forgiveness is essential for redemption from our past. To forgive does not mean we condone the misdeeds of another. We can dedicate…
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Alignment and Injuries, Ashtanga Adaptability, Ashtanga Quotes, Teaching Ashtanga, Yoga Philosophy, Yoga Sutras
Yoga Practice in Good and Bad Times
“Your toothache is impermanent, but your non-toothache is also impermanent. With that insight, you look at birth, death, old-age, ups and downs, suffering, and happiness with the eyes of a sage, and you don’t suffer anymore. You smile, no longer afraid.” – Thich Nhat Hanh The Sutras does not say that, “Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of life.” It says that “Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind. ” The world turns, burns, rises and falls. Teachers come and go, hamstrings tear and heal. In yogic terms, the gunas will keep interacting with prakriti and, while I play in this world, I can’t stop it.…
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A Yoga Practice to Wake Up To
In order for our practice to work, it has to be stronger then our negative ideations. If not, Self Hate will say, “is that all you got?” Addiction will say, “come at me, bro.” Suffering will say, “I can do you one better.” I truly love the idea of a soothing languorous practice. But I know me. If my mind and my body is not given a challenge, it will be an hour of negative thinking with incense, pretty lights and singing bowls. This does not mean doing strong sweaty asanas either. It just needs to be something that effectively stops the mind, and perhaps, turns it in another direction. …
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Adventures in Mysore India, Ashtanga Adaptability, Social Media, Teaching Ashtanga, Uncategorized, Yoga Philosophy
Ashtanga Community or Your Community?
Your circle of friends and acquaintances does not represent the whole human race. A few weeks ago, my daughter talked about how she doesn’t understand how McDonald’s is still in business because no one eats there. I explained to her that just because her vegan upper middle class friends don’t eat there, it does not mean that no one eats there. I see similar conversations about Ashtanga. Big blanket statements about what is going on in the Ashtanga community. Ummm…maybe that is happening with your circle. It is not necessarily happening in mine or India or Chicago or down the street at the next yoga studio. We draw to us…
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An Opportunity For Non Attachment
Life is a good and consistent teacher. She is constantly giving us opportunities to be stronger, to go deeper, and evolve. She is always teaching non attachment. Case in point. This morning, I woke up to find out that I am no longer admin of a Face Book page that I started and had no admin but me. Yep. I cannot post on the Ashtanga Yoga Project as the Ashtanga Yoga project. I immediately started searching Google and YouTube looking for hacks, solutions and people I could e-mail. Boy was that disconcerting. This happens all the time. No one knew how to fix it or posted getting it resolved. Like…
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Yoga: The Cure for Phantom Life Syndrome
When students get stuck on a pose, I often use a camera to record them and play it back. Sometimes we think we are doing something and we are not. We practice yoga through the veil of our own samskaras. Samskaras are pathways that, we take so often, that they become second nature to us. If we have always felt or been told that we were lacking, flexible, weak or strong, our perception of what is actually going on can be skewed. Injuries can also skew our perception. Sometimes, what we perceive in our bodies, is not really what is happening. An extreme example of this is Phantom Limb Syndrome.…
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Meeting Hate with Love: Cultivating Compassion Through Asana
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali tells us to practice equanimity/upeksha in the face of wickedness. Equanimity is the ability to remain compassionate and calm in the face of wickedness and the ability to see both sides. Thich Naht Hanh says that “upeksha” means “upa” over and “eksha” look. According to Hanh, upeksha is the ability to “climb the mountain and look over the whole situation. ” For most, this is very difficult. We struggle with the idea that, if we allow ourselves to understand someone who has done an evil act, that we are somehow condoning their behavior. We struggle with that fact that, if we allow ourselves to understand…
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The Bait and Switch
Bait and Switch the action (generally illegal) of advertising goods that are an apparent bargain, with the intention of substituting inferior or more expensive goods. “a bait-and-switch scheme” –Google Sometimes the switch is done by others, and sometimes, we do it to ourselves. Instead of going higher up the ladder of yoga, we switch to something that will keep us in the comfortable realm of lateral movement. Just like lateral movement in the corporate world, we get a different job but we are actually still in the same place. We go from student to yoga teacher but we are still afraid of death. We go from wine to kombucha…
