Seize the Day!

As many of you know, I am hosting Desiree Rumbaugh (http://www.desireerumbaugh.com/) for an Anusara Weekend Workshop this December here in Christchurch. Desiree is a senior certified Anusara teacher and world renowned for her vibrant spirit and inspiring teachings! Her workshops and retreats aim at powerful personal transformation and self-expression, leading each student to celebrate their own greatness through the practice of yoga! If you've enjoyed your yoga journey thus far, I strongly encourage you to take this opportunity to study with a master yoga teacher.

In this weekend, you will experience the simplicity, strength, and fun of Anusara yoga. By aligning our body with nature and balancing effort and surrender in each pose, we consciously and steadily train our hearts and minds to help us have a more positive experience of each moment.

Find the full weekend schedule and link to more info on the sidebar to the right.

Freshness

In class last week, I kept returning to the theme of "beginners mind". For me, the season of Spring heralds not only a fresh beginning (and blessed end to the chill of winter) but also a fresh perspective. This sense of freshness is key I think to yoga as a lifelong practice. As a "yoga teacher", I am not immune to the feelings of stagnation, isolation, even boredom and depression that can arise when I sit on my mat and have to face the "stuff" inside. Not every day is instant inner peace... As I continue to practice yoga, an important and regular part of my practice is learning how to keep cultivating this freshness.

What do you think of when you hear the word fresh? For me, I immediately think of the lemon. Its clean, crisp scent. The light, playful taste that dances and zips across the tongue. How it lightens and transforms even the heaviest dish. I think also of the feel, smell, taste of the early morning air. Freshness has both a quality of spaciousness and also a clarity, or cleanness about it.

On the yoga mat, we can practice finding freshness every time we fully open to the breath--as it is--without expectation, without judgement. With each exhale, we release whatever isn't serving us so that the inhale arises naturally and easily, full of new possibility and potential. We can maintain our clarity, our intention to be present by connecting to our foundation and then softly engaging and hugging to our core. In each pose, we return to the breath, and as we move into and between each posture, we find the place where we feel a sense of spaciousness and freedom. Why choose to be anywhere else?

At the start OR end of your yoga practice, if you find your energy and spirits are still dragging, try lying for 5 to 10 minutes in a heart-opening, supported savasana. Fold a firm blanket in half and then half again, lengthwise. Sitting in front of the long end of your blanket, lay down on your back so that your whole spine is slightly lifted and supported all the way up to the back of the head. If you feel discomfort in the neck or shoulders, add another blanket to lift and support the head. Allow your arms and legs to fall open to the sides and the body to soften and sink into the earth with each exhalation. Without forcing or changing the breath, feel the inhalation expanding your side ribs, spreading and lifting your collarbones, and moving across fronts of the shoulders. Enjoy the feeling of lift and vastness in the heart, each exhale softening the body and mind more and more into your present moment.

Sacred Pause

I need to recover a rhythm in my heart that
moves my body first and my mind second;
that allows my soul to catch up with me.

I need to take a sacred pause,
as if I were a sun-warmed rock
in the centre of a rushing river.

Dawna Markova

Anusara: Awake and Celebrate!

When prospective students call me, the first thing they usually ask is what kind of yoga do you "do"? More specifically, they often want to know how I differentiate what I do from other teachers and other styles of yoga. I always struggle with how best or how well this question can be answered.

Hatha Yoga is the physical practice of yoga postures (asanas) and almost every yoga class being taught in the Western world (Anusara, Iyengar, Ashtanga, Bikram, etc.) IS a form of Hatha Yoga. In fact, most of the modern gurus who continue to inspire and inform the development of yoga today--BKS Iyengar, Sri Pattabis Jois, TVK Desikachar, AG Mohan--all had origins with the same teacher and same lineage, Sri Krishnamacharya.

With so many types of hatha yoga out there, it is easy to become confused about what kind is "best" or "true" or most "genuine". Just as we recognize there are many different religions and spiritual paths to best suit the cultural, geographical, and psychological natures of particular people, there are also many paths and approaches to yoga that will appeal differently to you.

"The best yoga practice can be defined as the one that WORKS." (Donna Farhi) For YOU--your unique structure, mind, heart.

I practice and teach hatha yoga that is guided and inspired by study with my yoga teacher John Friend (founder of Anusara yoga) and many other senior teachers in the Anusara tradition. I continue to study and teach this method because it resonates deep in my heart. At the same time, my practice also incorporates the work and wisdom of other brilliant teachers (of yoga and life) including Donna Farhi, TVK Desikachar, Judith Lasiter, and Chogyum Trungpa Rinpoche.

"Anusara is a hatha-yoga system that is based on a Tantric philosophy that sees the world as an embodiment of supreme consciousness, and that the essence of that is truly auspicious. There's an absolute goodness in the essence of all things and all people...The practice of Anusara helps us to gain a recognition, a deep understanding and a remembrance of this truth.

And so this practice is about awakening. Through our practice of yoga we learn skillful means of participating in and living our lives fully to bring greater happiness, greater health, and more beauty into the world."
John Friend

My intention is to teach yoga in a way that is dynamic, playful, supportive and FUN! Moving with the natural breath, we use the Anusara Universal Principles of Alignment as a means to unfold and reveal an expression of the inner spirit. Each posture becomes an opportunity to soulfully celebrate the heart. Every student's abilities and limitations are deeply respected and honoured. With the support of the kula, or community, we play deeply on our yoga mats to discover what IS possible in the present moment.

Self Unbounded

I've recently started reading a new book on Ayurveda, the Indian system of health and healing, often called the sister science of Yoga.

In her book, Absolute Beauty, Pratima Raichur gives a definition of beauty as "the experience of seeing/feeling the Self unbounded." I found this definition immediately resonated with me and I began thinking of times I'd recently been in the presence of "beauty". Hearing soulful music at the Arts Festival, re-reading one of my favorite Gary Snyder poems, watching the sunset over the Southern Alps. What was it exactly that made these experiences beautiful? The composition of sound, colour, texture, or light? All no doubt play a part. However, what I remembered most strongly wasn't anything external but how being in the presence of beauty made me FEEL inside....

A feeling of being bigger than myself. More vast, more free...and connected somehow to the larger flow of life.

In yoga, the essence of the Self is always unbounded. Always completely free and already completely full. It is known in Sanskrit as satchitananda--truth, consciousness, and bliss. As my teacher John Friend says, "There is no work to be done, nothing to be accomplished other than the true joy of existence itself!"

Yet, how often do we feel this way about our Self? It seems that part of our experience of being human is that we FORGET. We get cloaked, we have bad days, we argue with our partner, we hate our job, we're tired of winter. But these experiences, this forgetting, is not necessarily a bad thing. Because they allow us the bliss of getting to remember the beauty again. So we see the sunset, and we read the poem, and we kiss the loved one and we think....Oh, yeah!

On the mat as we move through our postures, we taste sachitananda in those moments when we experience the Self, OUR Self, completly unbounded. We must release the striving to achieve a "perfect" pose and the need to compete with the person practicing next to us. We can choose to occupy the space of freedom, the place that both opens and soothes, where we remember and celebrate the bigness inside. We can choose to practice in a way that reveals and enhances the beauty that is already present within us.

Afraid to Dance

Last night I went to see the Mamaku Project play in the Central City. Sitting in the erected marquee "tent", I was spellbound by the smooth, exotic, tribal, and downright lusty sound of the brilliant female singer and the musicians that accompanied her. An unusual but harmonious and perfect grouping of brass instruments, various percussion, and one very mischievious accordion!
Not usually shy when it comes to a boogie, I was surprised to find myself reluctant to get up and dance...

The marquee had been set up for "seated" viewing. Banquettes rimmed the outside walls and in the center circle, right in front of the stage, the entire wooden dance floor was covered over by table and chairs. Sitting, sipping sauvignon, and simply watching the soulful music was clearly expected. However, the music presented a real problem as it powerfully compelled you to MOVE YOUR BODY!

Yet, as I sat in my seat tapping my feet, moving my legs, and swinging my shoulders, some part of me felt embarrassed to have such a primal response to the sound. Near the end of the set, when body finally beat out mind, I went up to the front of the room and joined the group of renegade dancers. I wished I had been brave enough to be there all night.

Why was I so embarrassed at showing a clear, physical, and passionate response to the music? I looked around at all the people sitting and watching the vibrant display and wondered if they were feeling the same internal struggle...And where does it come from--this strong and frequent restraint of our basic body "being-ness"? Why did I want to curb or hide this desire to move that emerged from a deep, instinctive, and ancient place inside?

I made an internal resolution to never again, when music and sound compels, pass up on the opportunity to dance. To be proud to move my body to the same beat of the earth, the stars, the heart.

Reread a line from Mary Oliver before bed...."You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves..."

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

Like water to a duck?

Recently one of my students commented that Kiwis survive winter in Christchurch because of a healthy amount of hardy stoicism. A few hours later, I was sitting at YaYa with a fellow US expat who groaned as she exclaimed, "I wish I were a duck". Hmmmm...there IS a connection here!

During the past week of unrelenting rain and frigid temperatures, my friend had envied the ability of Christchurch bird life to frolic, eat, swim, and go about their daily business while seemingly unfazed by the heavy weather. There's a famous phrase I'm recalling..."Like water off a duck's back"? That night I looked up the definition of stoicism, finding "indifference to pleasure and pain". Reading that I wondered... does being "stoic" imply an inability to experience the difference between the two or that a choice is made to view both from the same/equal perspective? Perhaps two sides of the same coin?

Sensing positive material here, the Sanskrit word MAITRI floated out of my mental yoga glossary. Often translated as "friendliness", Pema Chodron (an American Buddhist nun and one of my favorite spiritual writers) describes MAITRI as, "complete acceptance of ourselves [and the environment around us]...a simple direct relationship with the way things actually are." The cultivation of MAITRI or friendliness is key staying present to where we actually are, in each particular moment.

Our culture has a very low tolerance for discomfort. We turn on, switch off, and tune out with any number of technological aids to avoid pain, cold, boredom, vulnerability, and loneliness. On the yoga mat, practicing MAITRI involves learning how to stay with physical sensation and stay within the free movement of breath as we skillfully play our edge. We have the option to blast past our capacity, shrink from possibility, OR explore the area where our past experience meets a new horizon. When we cultivate an attitude of "friendliness" toward our body, our thoughts, and our environment, nothing that emerges is the enemy. We practice remaining open and receptive to whatever the moment brings.

Pema writes that the practice of MAITRI is "coming back to the immediacy of experience...By simply STAYING, we relax more and more into the open dimension of our being." Off our yoga mat, we practice "staying" when we can remain open and soft at our center even while the world around is shifting and changing--workplace chaos, screaming children, difficult relationships, and yes--even the enduring rain and bone chilling cold of July in Christchurch.

While the water may not so easily "run off our backs", we CAN practice accessing the same quality of acceptance, receptivity, AND endurance of the moment as our friendly local ducks. No matter what the weather or life throws at us!