From the Archives: November 11, 2017 A Serious Relationship

A Serious Relationship

        Yoga changes things. Have you noticed that? Once upon a time you decided to start taking yoga classes, fitting it in to your schedule when you had some time or when you felt like you needed to move. Maybe at first, it was very casual. You thought to yourself, hmmm I have some free time, I think I will take a yoga class. Or a group of friends were going and it sounded fun, so you joined in. Maybe you even dropped out at times, going months without taking class, but then you missed it and got online to look at schedules again, to see when your favorite teacher was teaching. Then, maybe you started to follow that teacher, taking as many of their classes as you could. Or maybe a certain style really felt good so you started looking for those classes. Then you found yourself creating a yoga schedule. Something like Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I do yoga at 6pm. Boom! Now you are committed. Now you are in a serious relationship….. with your yoga practice.

This is when you start to really notice the changes. You rearrange other aspects of your life for yoga. Sleeping schedules change because you want to be sure you can get up for that morning class, or because class totally wiped you out and you crash at like 9pm, or if you are really blessed, you get in that mid-day nap! Eating habits change. You start to notice how certain foods make your body feel or realize that eating heavily right before class is a bit uncomfortable, to say the least. You start to crave water! Incense and essential oils hold a whole new magic and you start to use them at home and at work. You chase them around the house to put oils on your kids or your partner. A three day a week practice schedule becomes a daily routine. You start getting up before the sun, eating dinner before dusk and talking about yoga all. the. time. And your friends and family start to think you are nuts!

Now this is the hard part. Our friends and family like us just they way we were. They liked that person that would go to a late movie with them, but the new you looks at the time and says “I can’t. I have yoga in the morning.” They miss that person that would join them for a greasy burger with a couple pints of beer, but now you ask them to join you at the new vegetarian or - gasp! - vegan restaurant. Your friends want to gossip about their co-worker and you tend to try to explain the other person’s perspective with compassion and an attempt at understanding. 

You are different. The yoga has made you more self-aware, more disciplined, more connected. And if you have changed, grown, etc, then the people around you also have to change to allow space for you. Their lives used to hold a square space for your peg to fit right into, but now you have become hexagonal, so their space has to adjust. This can be very uncomfortable for them. After all, they didn’t choose to practice yoga, they didn’t choose all of these changes. They don’t understand. Find compassion for them, most of them will adjust for you, in time. Some may not.

Especially with our closest relationships we can be tempted to accommodate them, to sacrifice the things that have become important to us. I have gone through many phases of changing my practice schedule to make things easier for my partner, sometimes struggling to get it in at all. Everyone has to discover for themselves how to navigate this rough terrain, and it often includes a lot of trial and error. 

The key, I have learned, is to never feel guilty for how your life choices may be affecting those around you. Those relationships are important to you, of course, and taking the needs of those you care about into consideration is a loving, generous, and essential part of a mutual relationship. But I want you to think of your yoga practice as another, very important relationship that requires cultivation, nurturing, love and care. Your yoga practice is probably the most important relationship you will ever have. It is your relationship with yourself. In the end, it is the development of that relationship that will make you a better partner, parent, child, friend, and co-worker. Like Ms. Houston said “Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all!” 

From the Archives: August 5, 2017 My Story

My Story

Each of us has a story. Many of you have probably read my bio: the highlights of my journey to this yoga teacher platform I find myself on. But of course there is more to the story. I always say that at the time I was walking it, my path seemed like a confusing zig-zag of changing directions, dropped threads, and aimless wandering. In retrospect, I see a trajectory of purpose - a clearly projected direction, if not exactly a straight line. 

From little on, I remember that I experienced my world through the physical. I moved. I loved to move! My moods were expressed in movement, my humor, my interests. I absorbed information through physical interaction. Not necessarily an observer or a contemplator, I was a doer. This became more intentional, more structured, more purposeful when I began to study dance. Into adulthood and professional dance, including college studies, choreography, performance, I explored how movement expressed reality, spirituality, and individuality. Through dance, I became aware of commonalities of the human experience. We all have bodies! Our bodies can’t NOT express. Isn’t that amazing! Even the effort to take expression out of our form and movement expresses something to our souls. The human self is not neutral - it CAN’T be. It is the physical manifestation of life itself! 

As a dancer I used to say that I felt the most myself while I was dancing. All facade, all labels, all constructs fell away while moving freely from some inner space of knowing and inspiration. When I began to practice yoga asana, that exploration of self found method. A movement method intended for self-discovery! Amazing! What I was getting glimpses of while dancing was the whole purpose of this movement practice. A journey of the self, through the self, to the self. 

While first being introduced to yoga through dance (some teachers used it as warm up) it was a heart devastating break-up and a best friend that would not let me wallow in tears that brought me to an earnest yoga practice. We started with Bikram, sweating out the previous night’s chemical toxins and poisons of youthfully poor choices. But it was when she took me to my first Ashtanga practice that I heard the angels sing “Aaaaaahhhhhhhhh!” I was home. I know that sounds dramatic but that is what it felt like. Like finally I found the thing my body and soul were searching for. The dynamics of Ashtanga spoke to the dancer in me. The structure and discipline spoke to the Capricorn in me. (Don’t get me wrong - discipline is haaaaaard for me, but I crave it! I thrive in it, when I can surrender to it) It wasn’t long until I knew without a doubt, that I wanted to teach - that I was supposed to teach. 

I did my teacher training with Paul Dallaghan in Thailand. It was intense! I remember after the first week or so, during a check-in meeting with him I said, through tears, that I didn’t think I could do it, that I wasn’t ready, that I was out of my league. He assured me that I could, that I was, and encouraged me to just keep going. I completed that course and didn’t realize until years later, when I first travelled to Mysore, India - the home and heart of the Ashtanga practice - how valuable that experience was. It was so strong and complete in establishing a solid foundation to a life-time practice. I returned from Thailand to Chicago where for four years I balanced waitressing, teaching, solo home practice of primary series (yes, I did only primary series for four years - there is no hurry!) and a partying lifestyle. I was in my 20’s - it was right, for me. 

As I approached 30, I took stock of my life and realized I was ready for more. More fulfillment, more depth, more work, more yoga, more self. So I quit my job, got rid of most of my stuff, put the rest in storage and went to India. I didn’t know where it would lead but I told myself “I will figure it out in India”. After my first practice, while standing outside the shala, floating on a cloud of post-practice awe, I met my future. 

During those 4 years of self-practice, two of my most significant teachers recommended that I practice with Kino MacGregor. They told me that my body type (flexy, not strong) would benefit from her instruction. Great! But she was a traveling teacher and I was not really a traveling student. But there I was in India, drinking a coconut, talking with a woman that I learned she was Kino when someone called her name. (This was pre-social media, I had no idea what she looked like) “You are Kino! I’m supposed to practice with you!” I blurted out. She told me she was opening a yoga shala in Miami Beach and invited me to attend a weekend workshop she would be teaching in a few months. By the time I left Mysore two months later, I had not only registered for the workshop, but had decided to move to Miami and convinced Kino to give me a chance as a teacher at Miami Life Center. I had figured it out.

Miami felt like a rebirth for me - a new life, certainly a new lifestyle. I realize it may sound funny, but I went to Miami Beach, a party mecca, and began a cleaner, more spiritual path. Kino became my teacher (beyond the relationship I had begun to form with Guruji, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, and his grandson, Sharath, the current head of the lineage). Along with guidance from Tim Feldmann and Greg Nardi, my yoga found a new depth, my practice more sincere, more focused and transformation was available. The three of them were teachers and mentors to me for five years and also became my friends. I still consider Kino to be my primary teacher (aside from Sharath) and even though I no longer practice with her daily, she is still there for me to lean on, ask questions, seek guidance. I still too reach out to Tim and Greg - and they are there. While teaching at MLC I developed sincere friendships with other teachers, including Alexandra, Patrick, Emilia and others. There is a bond that is created when you share this journey, supporting each other as students, witnessing each other’s growth as teachers, sharing life moments like parenting. Miami Life Center will always feel like a home base for me. The teachers and students that come from there and are still there, I feel some unbreakable connection to. It is a part of my personal lineage, the line of Parumpara that I come from, and I am forever grateful for those experiences, those teachings, those relationships.

From the Archives: June 9, 2017 Mindfulness - Accessing the Self

Mindfulness - Accessing the Self

What does it mean to be mindful? It is a word we hear often in our yoga classes, but what does it mean in practice? The word itself is actually a bit misleading, containing the word “mind” it implies thinking. Thinking involves a dialogue, storytelling, even judgement. The thinking mind is a tricky beast. It is subject to habits, manipulation and deception. But true mindfulness is beyond thinking, it is simply awareness, observation, and acknowledgment without attaching value judgment or meaning. If we can settle into our awareness as witness we can more honestly connect to our experiences and ourselves.

In yogic philosophy the citta (or what we in the west think of as the mind) is divided into three components: manas, the mind; buddhi, the intellect; and ahamkara, the ego. Manas is the reactive mind that is subject to the variations of the vrittis, those tendencies based on patterned habits, or samskara. It will impose beliefs onto the input it receives from the senses, trying to organize it into a framework it understands and that supports its understanding of reality - or at least the reality that it is currently attached to. It reacts in three common ways, based on attraction, aversion and indifference. It lives on desires and often compels you toward the negative. For example, it is the mamas, mind, that will tell you “My arms are not long enough to do this pose” or “I’m too old to do this” or “I’m not smart enough for…..” 

In a mindfulness practice, we are aiming to avoid this reactive mind. We are aiming to allow the input to come without attaching meaning to it. For example, when a bind in a marichyasana pose is not coming, we allow the information “I am not binding” rather than the judgment “My arms are too short”. Then we try to take our observations further: “What am I feeling in my shoulder? Am I accessing forward fold? or twist?” etc to lead us further into honest observation of our experiences. As we gather information, a new picture, a new reality begins to emerge, one we avoid reacting to and instead allow the buddhi, the intellect, to assess. Intellectual understanding is gained by experience. It must be practiced and then it becomes a part of your personality. Intellectual observation keeps aiming further inward, inward, inward towards the ultimate reality. So what is that? Good question! Keep searching!

Perhaps surprisingly, pain is a means to direct us toward a mindful practice. It provides a point of focus to direct our observation and awareness inward, beyond the senses. Our five senses keep our focus on the world outside of ourselves, the environment that provides scents, sounds, sights etc. Pain takes our attention to the experiences within our own bodies, to our muscles, joints, etc. When the body is giving us feedback that we want to immediately label “pain” we are paying attention to the information. If we can avoid the manas, mind - avoid reaction, avoid judgment, labeling and storytelling - we can sit in witness to our experience and begin to ask questions. We can access the buddhi, intellect. This leads to understanding that becomes our new reality. 

Another way into mindfulness is the breath. Like pain, the breath directs our awareness from the world outside of ourselves to the world within. The breath is something that happens naturally, without thought. But it is also something that we can take conscious control over and move and direct as we choose. As we focus on managing and directing the breath we dive into ourselves, into our nervous system. As we slow and steady the breath, our manas calms and quiets, the reactions are slowed, our emotional reactions are intercepted with observational awareness. We are given space to accept information from ourselves, even observe the reactionary mind from the perspective of the intellect! One aspect of the mind observing the other! It’s fascinating!

With practice, mindfulness becomes our way of being. We sit in witness to our experiences, allowing information to gather without reacting from a place of judgment, without needing to fit everything into our current reality. We allow our reality to change based on the honesty of our experiences. We go deeper and deeper inward, as neutral observer, eventually integrating with the true nature of the self.

From the Archives: June 3, 2017 Time

Time

Tick-Tock.  The sound of a clock marking the passage of time.  In our culture we schedule our days according to the hours and plot our lives along the pages of a calendar.  Even within the yoga practice when we are asked to “Be Present!” and focus on the right here right now, we are aware of time. Counting our breathes we see another student moving effortlessly through some incredible posture.  We wonder how long it will be until we are capable of that.  Or maybe we fear that we are already too old and don't have enough time to develop those postures.  In this world where everything is moving so quickly, give yourself the gift of slowing down.  At least in yoga, don’t hurry!

Rather than looking at this practice only as some track that progresses forward in time like a two hour class or a six day a week practice, realize that there is also a path that moves inward, spiraling into depths of the NOW space.  When you choose to slow down or perhaps by injury or some physical resistance you are forced to, you have the opportunity to explore your practice on new levels. It is easy to become attracted to the forward progression of a yoga practice when flying through a vinyasa sequence one pose to the next or trying to accomplish some difficult bind.  It is natural.  We want to be able to do it all and we rush our bodies towards it.  Inspiration is an essential element of the yoga practice but what is the hurry?  Most often we are looking for some way to measure our progress.  We are looking at how long it takes to become adept at a challenging pose or how long we can remain in that posture, at the same time already thinking about what comes next.  In looking forward to what is currently beyond our reach we miss the potentials available in exploring the depths of the moment we are currently in.  

When we first discover a yoga posture we learn how to place the physical body.  This leg goes here, the arm over there and I look this way, etc.  As we settle into that form the attention moves to the subtler layers of muscular awareness.  We learn where we can release and what needs to remain active, where we lengthen and where we draw in.  Layer by layer we dig deeper beyond the physical sensations toward the energetic ones.  We become aware of prana, life force energy moving through the channels we have opened by placing our body in this certain way.  This energetic experience is a yoga that we would miss if we were rushing through.

Each of us has our own internal rhythm and tempo.  We are drawn to different methods of yoga sometimes based on this internal timing and how it urges us to move our bodies.  While still honoring your own personal clock, try to find a drawing out of each present moment.  The breath not only moves you forward but every inhale draws you inward.  If you find yourself speeding through your sun salutes, lengthen the breath and slow down.  Experience each moment as you move through it.  Allow yourself to really be in your chaturanga dandasana. Feel that exhale spreading out and expanding time so that you can have the space to explore the depths of that experience before moving through into upward facing dog.  Like controlling a movie with the remote control, putting it into slow motion so that you can see every element of a scene, the actors expressions as well as the background details.  Bring that element of discovery to each breath and see every aspect of what is happening to your body, your mind and the sensations of how energy is moving through you.  Rather than just hitting the main markers along the road, fill out the scenery and see everything.  

As you explore the yoga practice as a landscape you will find less urge to rush forward.  The forward will reveal itself to you along its own time line, learning new postures and progressing organically.  You will be less focused ahead of you as you will become present in the richness of the moment.  When you discover this depth available in the yoga practice you can realize that it is present out there as well, in the world beyond the mat.  In your jobs or relationships, wherever you give your attention and energy, slow down, fill out the scenery, look at the details and explore its textures.  The future will come, that is an inevitability.  Extend your breath and experience the depth of time as well as its length.

From the Archives: April 23, 1017 Pain

Pain

Am I really going to write about this? This controversial, slippery, nuanced topic…. Yes. Yes, I am. There are so many routes of discussion on this topic, but I will attempt to stay in the neighborhood of one. In the yoga practice, pain comes. It does. A completely painless lifetime of practice is unrealistic to say the least. Pain is a dialect in the language of the body in it’s effort to communicate with the mind. 

What I want to focus on here and now is navigating your practice while experiencing pain. To get on your mat or not to get on your mat - that is the question.  

As a student I was taught to do the practice no matter what. Don’t rest. Don’t avoid postures. Practice through the pain. Yes, I practice Ashtanga and I am aware of the reputation that can follow the Ashtanga method due to this very topic. But the idea of practicing through pain has been widely misunderstood by students and almost as widely misrepresented by instructors. Ashtanga does not ask you to ignore the pain you are receiving and shove your body into the most contorted version of the asana you can. This is dangerous and completely antithetical to what a yoga practice should be. What it does do is ask that you steadily meet yourself on your mat, day after day, through every fluctuation, transition, and evolution. As your body shifts from feeling amazing to feeling horrible, visit with it. Get to know its mood swings, attitudes, and beliefs. As a teacher, I urge my students to come to class if they are feeling pain, even and especially if it is a sensation that they would like to label “injury”. Sometimes there is a legitimate injury - often this is obvious immediately, due to intensity, type of sensation, inability to move, etc. Sometimes it takes exploring what is possible to be able to identify what is not. 

Practicing through the pain is a means of investigation, a way to develop inner awareness and build skills. We get on our mat, visiting the familiar postures, with a deeper level of mindfulness. When the mind/body communications system is active, via the nervous system, with messages of pain, we can use the sensations to guide our approach, our methodology, alignment, muscular effort, breath, mental patterns and emotional reactions. When that sensation of pain arises, we can pause, breath, make small adjustments to change the sensation. Less pain now? Has it shifted to tension rather than pain? Soreness now? Completely gone? Ok, now we have experienced that in this position, if I make this adjustment, I have less pain. Perhaps that means that this is the appropriate alignment, approach, etc. Perhaps it is a matter of recognizing where your true stopping point is, what the honest expression of the pose is for you in this moment. (Don’t let what you want to do take over for what you can do.) Now you have learned something! If you continue in this way, day after day, you learn more and more details about the correct method of achieving the movement you want with less or no pain. Eventually the injury heals, or the strengthening processes, or the transformation is complete and in the meantime you have developed a new movement pattern, new strengths, and new inner awareness. 

If, on the other hand, a pain arises in the body and you take that as a signal to rest, stay off your mat for a few days, etc. Pretty soon, if it is not an actual injury, the pain will subside and disappear. You will feel better, ready to get on your mat. After the first day, or week, the pain will return. Why? Because you are practicing in the same way, with the same patterns, same alignments as before - the same way that caused the pain in the first place. You gave your body rest, enough time for the communications system to go offline, but you didn’t learn anything new. Nothing changed. This cycle will continue to repeat until either you decide to give up the practice, or you really really hurt yourself, or you finally decide to get back on your mat, even when it hurts and figure out how to do the work in a way that hurts less. 

On the flip side of avoiding pain is ignoring pain. With both tendencies, release your urge to self-judge. Sometimes, it is true, you get on your mat and realize that there is very little asana possible with the sensation you are experiencing, and making adjustments to approach and alignment have very little effect. If you tend to over-do it, push too hard when your body is experiencing a shift, opening, or strengthening, it is important to recognize it, check yourself, and choose rest. It is ok to rest. Rest is also a part of practice. The longer you practice and investigate the sensations that arise, the feedback from your body, the easier it is to identify the situations where practice is most beneficial and also those times where rest is required. You are learning the language of your body. Remember, you don’t know what you don’t know and learning doesn’t happen when you stay in bed.