OVER the moon!

My yoga study has instilled in me the passionate belief that yoga postures are not meant to be "performed" OR experienced in two dimensions only!

When we look in yoga books, we often see precise, angular yogis in precise, angular postures. While reading through the accompanying postural instructions, we follow many lines (sometimes pages!) of pointed, targeted, and perfect biomechanical movements. When we practice, we start to squeeze our body into the 2-D visual image we once saw of the pose. Sometimes the experience can be clear, direct and positive. At other times, we feel a rigidity, a hardening, a distance.

Books were my first yoga teachers and I am indebted to the world of inner knowledge to which they introduced me. I knew however that this two dimensional experience just wasn't the real deal. From books alone, my yoga practice felt well...maybe just a little......FLAT. However, when I finally summoned the courage to enter my first real yoga classroom, the tutor suggested that we move through our standing postures as if our body was wedged between two planes of glass! Ouch. This really didn't resonate....

From the beginning of my yoga journey, I was looking for more. Was there room for playfulness, creativity, even joyful exhuberance within the support of good physical alignment?

Many yoga classes and studios later, a favorite teacher showed me how to break the asana mold! In a popular and playful Friday night yoga class, Anusara teacher Moses Brown invited us to expand the MOON. In the midst of our practice, as we moved from Triangle Pose to Half Moon, his voice rang out across the room, "Infusing your standing leg with deep intention, bend your back knee. Reach back with your top arm for your top foot. As you grab hold of your foot, scoop your tailbone forward. From the center of your strength, root down more fully into your standing leg and curl your heart open to the sky!" Ardha Chandra Chapasana.

A revelation!


From the peace and poise of a graceful Half Moon, I curled and arched. Using my breath, I lengthened and opened my spine as if bending sweetly around the support of a FULL bright moon.






What I love so much about the Anusara approach to yoga postures is that well, it IS curvy! Through my practice, I can celebrate living fully in a three dimensional universe! And interestingly, I find this creative freedom by working with good alignment. In each pose, we use universal principles of alignment (an elegant system of loops and spirals) to generate, experience, and manifest our own inner and outer experience with every single breath.


Enter the pose with soulful intention.
Draw into and expand out of the boundaries of the body from the support of our foundation.
Lengthen and curve, ground down and arch up!
Dance and play deeply!
Honour the source of all blessings with the art and poetry of your body and soul!






I taught this pose in my Continuing Yoga classes this week. If you want to learn or delve more deeply into the playful pose Ardha Chandra Chapasana (AKA "FULL MOON" pose!), check out the Yoga Journal article here!

Power of Intention

Every New Year, I find myself in the strange position of both looking back AND looking forward.

Another beautiful year of life on this earth gone by! All of those many moments that seemed so full and rich on their own now come rushing together...A fulfilling year of teaching and practicing yoga. A year in which I have built my own business, moved house (twice), watched my nephew grow from baby into a boisterous boy, learned how to bake a really yummy cake, bought and used (as in actually relied on) a proper diary, mastered the ten minute set up and break down of our new tent, basked in the glorious reflection of Mt. Cook swimming in Lake Pukaki, discovered new supportive and nurturing friends, connected and re-connected with my Anusara and NZ kula, AND turned thirty.

Like many of us, I look back over my year with a mixture of wistfulness, satistfaction, AND relief and then turn to dream (and yes, even sometimes fret!) about the year that is to come. Every year at this time, I take a few weeks off from teaching. Not only to rest, regroup, and focus on my own practice but also to really think about what I want to offer this year in my yoga classes. What is it exactly that I want to share, nurture, and build in my students and in our yoga community?

The word "yoga" is a huge umbrella term for a vast array of different philosophies, methodologies, and approaches. What this means is that almost every yoga class you attend will be a bit different. Even within a particular style of hatha yoga (Anusara, Iyengar, Ashtanga, etc.), each teacher will share their own unique understanding of yoga as they have experienced it themselves.

My yoga teacher always reminds me that we must be clear about where we have come from, where we are now, and what it is that we want to share and offer. As a teacher, I must not only be able to practice yoga but I must be able to effectively communicate my understanding. I must be able to put it into words, to empower language with the truth of my experience. In yoga, this energized, empowered language is called matrika shakti.

When we infuse our words, our movement and our teaching with this power of intention, the quality of what we are offering deepens.

I teach and practice the Anusara method of Hatha Yoga (http://www.anusara.com/) founded by John Friend. Within this system of yoga, I have learned a creative and elegant system of univeral alignment principles that take my body back towards its optimal blueprint for movement (improving my posture, bringing more space into my joints, lengthening my spine, and helping to heal accumulated pain from injury and/or neglect). Using these alignment principles within this physical practice, I remember that freedom, beauty, joy, and creativity are my truest nature! With that rememberance and within the forms of hatha yoga postures, we link the physical movement of our body to a deep place of inner intention.

What we learn through the practice of yoga is a way of being, not just doing. For me, it is as much an attitude or approach to living life as it is a system of health and healing for the body. It is not enough to simply "Hold the pose and take five breaths". Each posture gives us the opportunity to delve deeply within our hearts, to examine with curiosity and compassion our places of holding and injury, to taste our unlimited potential, and to ground ourselves fully into our present moment. Each year, each day, each pose, each breath!

Happy New Year!

What a magical and inspiring summer 2007 has offered us here in New Zealand!

I hope that all of you have enjoyed a joyful and nourishing holiday season with family and friends. I look forward to seeing each of you soon and sharing the practice of yoga together in 2008. More very soon!

With gratitude & love,
Katie

Anusara Yoga Weekend with Desiree Rumbaugh

Last weekend an amazing group of 50 yoga teachers and dedicated practitioners from all over NZ gathered in Christchurch for a fantastic workshop with inspirational Anusara Yoga teacher, Desiree Rumbaugh.

(www.desireerumbaugh.com)

Besides a group of my regular and most enthusiastic students, all other participants were completely new to this style of yoga practice.

Over the three days, Desiree wove Anusara's heart-oriented, life-affirming philosophy and Universal Principles of Alignment powerfully into each yoga session.

With her dynamic, empowering, AND down-to-earth teachings, she urged each student towards a new experience of freedom, openness, strength, and trust in their bodies. Her partner, Andrew Rivin, offered gentle, clear, and insightful personal assistance throughout the workshop.

As an assistant for much of the weekend, I was inspired to see so many beautiful unfoldings taking place on AND off the yoga mat.

In the true spirit of KULA or community, we gathered on Saturday night to share a gorgeous meal prepared by Sruti, famed Ayurvedic vegetarian chef, at the serene YaYa House of Excellent Tea. It was a wonderful opportunity to share our ideas and impressions from the workshop and proved to be a great way for yoga teachers to forge new connections with each other and for all participants to meet other like minded, happy hearts!

After seeing the enthusiasm and excitement during Desiree's workshop, I'd like to invite and encourage more senior teachers to come out to the South Island. As I begin to look at the new year, I am newly inspired and dedicated to sharing the practice of Anusara Yoga here in New Zealand. Keep checking this space in 2008 for more local workshops and intensives, new classes, and int/adv. practice sessions!! Please contact me if you are interested in learning more about Anusara Yoga or arranging a workshop or class at your yoga studio.

I believe that the power and heart of Yoga lies first in our deepest intention to remember the goodness and beauty of our own true nature and then to honour this remembrance in open-hearted celebration and full participation in life!

THIS body, THIS yoga

Our own body is our best teacher. In the midst of injury, limitation or physical weakness, this is a difficult thing to remember! My life injuries have taught me more about my body, my emotional response to challenges and difficulties, and my ability to persevere with both faith and self-compassion, than any outside yoga teacher, yoga training, workshop, or book.

As a dedicated yoga teacher, I am diligently committed to ongoing training and continuing education. Each year, I travel overseas for a few weeks to study with my main teacher and with others on the path who inspire me. However, at the same time, what I offer in class is not just the result of any one specific training, memorized sequences, or alignment principles from a manual but it is the product of my OWN experience of being a body, mind, and spirit that practices this yoga every day.

And, every day, MY yoga changes. This body and its needs shift moment to moment. This week, I found in my practice a very troubled knee. My familiar and favorite postures, comfortable from years of dialogue with my body, of wearing into them gently like a favorite pair of shoes, were all of a sudden more of a struggle. Balancing postures on one leg, almost impossible! And, if the physical struggle wasn't enough, then the ego speaks: No time for this now Katie! You're hosting a workshop next week. Body needs to be in peak condition!! These inside voices are very hard to quiet.

I made a choice to back off my usual active yoga practice and spend some time in quiet contemplation with my breath. Letting my breath dissolve back into its natural, undisturbed, unambitious rhythm, I found that I was prepared to better listen to my body. And with this new body and new intention, I pulled out my "mental" toolbox of anatomy, alignment, and therapeutics techniques and went to back the drawing board. In sketching the shape of my practice anew not only was I able to find some relief for my knee but I was reminded again of the profound and precise healing capabilities of the Anusara alignment principles and the heart oriented, self-honouring approach to practice that I try to teach every day.

Within the beautiful flow, softness, release, and flexibility of yoga, there IS a quality of precision. Precision has two aspects. First, there is awareness. We survey the inner and outer landscape, opening our self up to what this moment (this body, this mind!) is offering. Second, there is clarity of intention. On a physical level, this involves setting the foundation of a pose in a way that will best open AND support the body and the heart. With awareness and clear intention, we can make the active choice to align our body in a way that better allows us to have an experience of freedom.

Many people think of yoga as a practice that involves only the manipulation of the physical body in various shapes and acrobatic flows. However, we must remember that this outer "shaping" and outer framework is there to support the opening and flow of the inner channels, the inner body. We don't practice yoga to tear our bodies apart. There must be integrity, cohesion, even the setting of boundaries and limits on movement in order to better and more deeply expand inwardly.

In life, many of us choose to commit ourselves to just one person. Most often, we share a physical living space with this person. And, by making this choice, we certainly limit our personal freedoms. It is no longer always an option to do what we want, when we want, with who we want. However, within the context of this limited cohesive relationship, we find inside a greater capacity for intimacy, abiding respect, deep friendship, deep trust, and persevering love.

May we joyfully embrace and celebrate the limits that come with this embodied experience of life! May we find on our yoga mats a way to explore with openness and curiosity those limitations of the body that naturally arise and those limits that we create for ourselves in search of better support for our expression! May we use precision in our practice to not only to heal and prevent injury but to always connect back to the clarity of our intention--to draw together rather than pull apart!

Inner Body Bright

As a lover of stars, fairylights, candles, lanterns, and anything that twinkles brightly, I have always been intrigued and inspired by the beautiful Indian celebration of Diwali or Deepavali, the Festival of Light. The Sanskrit word Deepavali can be defined as "an array [or row] of lights that stand for victory of brightness over darkness." During the five day celebration, people light earthenware lamps, decorate their homes with candles, and burst brightly coloured firecrackers at night.

Although the festival is marked with the lighting of external flame, the esoteric celebration of Diwali is the deep honouring of the inner light, known as the "atman". The part in each of us that is beyond the body, the part that is pure, infinite, and eternal. When we remember and celebrate this inner light, we awaken to our truest nature. We recognize that there IS something within us that is unchanging, always good, full of beauty, and ever present!

My main yoga teacher John Friend has always stressed two main reasons for practicing yoga. First, to remember our innermost spirit and our deep connection to the universal. What a practice this is itself ! How often do we walk through our day remembering this... and 2) to then fully participate in this life in a way that celebrates and honours our universal nature.

In my classes, I often use the term inner body bright to describe the soulful feeling of expansion, lift, and vitality that gives the heart a buoyant fullness. It is not something that can be felt by simply puffing out the chest, drawing the shoulders back, and lifting the chin. It is an inner remembrance of a deep truth--that we have something beautiful and worthy inside us to joyfully express, fully experience, and to share with others.

It is this remembrance that gives your backbends that awe-inspiring and painfree arc, that lifts your shoulders away from the earth in forearm balance, that floats your spine effortlessly skyward in Warrior II. And it is this remembrance of inner light that you see shining out from eyes of classmates and friends at the end of each yoga session.

Why bother practicing at all?

I think it is a fair assessment that most of us feel like we just don't have enough time in our lives these days. We struggle to balance obligations at work and home and wonder how and where best to fit in time for ourselves. Sometimes we believe that it isn't even possible!

Although many students rarely miss their weekly class, they tell me that finding the time, inspiration, and energy to practice at home very challenging. While acknowledging they feel more relaxed, more spacious, more positive, and really recharged after our yoga sessions, they struggle to carve out the time to make yoga practice a regular part of their day.

The beautiful thing about yoga is that you don't need to spend an hour and a half practicing each day in order to feel its benefits. Even a short practice of a few minutes--with a small selection of poses, mindful awareness of the breath, and a short relaxation--done regularly can shift your whole perspective, giving body and soul a boost!

I'd like to share this "practice parable" from A Flock of Fools: Ancient Buddhist Tales of Wisdom and Laughter From The One Hundred Parable Sutra (an English translation by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt).


PARABLE 1: WHY BOTHER PRACTICING AT ALL?

A man decided to go walking in the heat. He quickly became lost and dehydrated. He continued walking, and the more he walked, the worse he felt. Soon, he was so tired and dehydrated that he began to see mirages of water. He chased these mirages, desperate for relief. The more he chased the mirages, the worse he felt.

Miraculously, in his wanderings, he stumbled upon a real river. He sat at the river's edge, and looked at the water longingly. Another wanderer passed by, and asked the dehydrated and exhausted man why he did not drink from the river. "Clearly you are thirsty," he said. "Why don't you help yourself?"

The dehydrated and exhausted man said, "Oh, this river is far too much for me to drink. I could never finish it."


We don't need to drink the whole river in order to quench out thirst!! A little bit of practice that soothes and satisfies the soul serves us better than waiting until the "perfect" time, "perfect" body, or "perfect" inspiration presents itself.