Lean In

Finishing up my personal practice today, I sat in a seated forward fold with my legs crossed and my body bent over my legs.  Though this is a simple pose, I noticed extreme discomfort in my IT band and gluteus medius muscles.  I immediately moved up and adjusted my body to ease the discomfort, yet when I settled back into the pose the muscles still felt uber tight.  I thought first to readjust, but then stopped myself and remembered that if it's not a torqued pain, BREATHE into it.  Rather than move away from it, I settled INTO the discomfort and breathed.  I focused all of my thoughts on my breath, envisioning the breath moving directly to ease the pain in my side.  I stayed in the pose and let the breath wash over the tightness.  The trick to meeting my edge was not to move away from it (because then I never could stretch it enough to settle into it and transform it), but to lean into it with the support of my breath, thus giving it just the stretch it needed to loosen up.

So it goes with life.  Often when pain and discomfort roll onto our path, we immediately react by jumping away from it so as to avoid any discomfort.  We hurl ourselves in the opposite direction to not come close to feeling any pain.  As in yoga, so in life, when we lean into our pain and discomfort, breathing to keep us calm rather than trying to move away from it, we are better able to accept and deal with (thus transforming) the discomfort.  Pain is not something we are immune to, nor can we avoid it, whether it's physical, emotional, mental, or social ... discomfort is part of the package of life.  It becomes easier to sit with when we do just that: sit with it and not run from it.  When we run, it doesn't take away the pain.  It simply prolongs the process.  So take deep breaths and lean in.  All will be well ... eventually.

http://www.gobodhiyoga.com/

Awaken Your Kundalini

Tomorrow morning at 8:30 I will be teaching a Kundalini-Style yoga class at Bodhi Yoga (come one, come all!).  Of all types of yoga, Kundalini is one of my favorites!  Yoga chanting is a traditional part of Kundalini Yoga, wherein the practice begins and ends with a chant.  Typically, the chant "Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo" is sung, which is translated to mean, "I bow to the Divine Creator, to the inner knowingness, the teacher, and to the love of God inside me" (learned in Bodhi Yoga teacher training).    Chanting in a group has such a powerful centering, calming, and grounding effect on those involved.  Even just listening to this chant on my iPod gives me the chills.  Here is a sample of this beautiful chant sung by Snatam Kaur.






http://www.gobodhiyoga.com/

Don't Just Do Something...Sit there!

We seem to be engrained with the idea that the faster we go, the more we do, and the further down our checklist we get, the better we are.  We're used to hearing/saying, "Don't just SIT there, DO SOMETHING!"  I remember feeling that my worth was based on how much I DID and what I accomplished.  It wasn't until I had to face a long and difficult battle with depression, in which simply getting myself out of bed each day was a grand accomplishment, that I began to learn that who I am and my worth as a living, breathing being has nothing to do with my finished checklist or my latest bragging rights.  For years I have been learning that independent of ANYTHING I do, my worth and greatness simply ARE.  Who I am at a soul-level, who I've always been, the me that is housed in my mortality could do NOTHING for the rest of my life and yet would still have merit and be worthy of love and appreciation and belonging.  My worth as a living being has its own claim on me regardless of what I've learned or how many degrees or certifications I have.  That's the beauty of being offspring of God.

It took yoga and a summer detached from my normal reality in which I SLOWED DOWN to realize the merit in sitting rather than doing.  I remember attending a Buddhist Zen House for a meditation and worship service as a part of my university requirements, and for the first time that I could remember in my entire life, I sat for 30 minutes straight with nothing in front of me (i.e. book, screen, earphones).  I just had to sit there for 30 minutes.  I knew nothing about meditation at that point, so I just took advantage of the time as best as I could by pondering and thinking about things that mattered to me.  I was in awe that I had actually sat still for 30 minutes with nothing to do but think.  There was no reading, no writing, no listening to talks no music ... nothing.  And I actually found it really refreshing.  And so began my entrance into a world in which just sitting is allowed and even applauded ... where breathing is as worthy of my time as getting my to-do list done.  And now, my goodness, I LOVE the nothingness. 

After I had begun studying meditation and practicing yoga my mom clipped out a newspaper article for me entitled, "Don't Just Do Something, Sit There!"  The article spoke of the great benefits of slowing down enough to sit still ... to bring meditation into our lives.  It's a new concept for a lot of us: sitting ... emptying the mind ... being still.  Surprisingly, it's NOT a waste of time.  Really grand things happen in stillness ... internal things that can't happen when our pace on the outside pushes us too fast and hard.  Few experiences in life compare with the one when your mind really does become clear and releases the thinking burden it doesn't even know it's carrying.  "Be STILL and know that I am God."  It has been in the stillness in which I've been able to connect with that Source and my own true nature better than in many other ways.

So if your little inner critic is on your case to get moving and do something, feel free to let go of that voice and replace it with an allowance to just sit still.  It really IS okay to not just do something ... and rather, just sit.

http://www.gobodhiyoga.com/

Transforming Sadness

One of the reasons that I have pursued yoga teacher training is because as both a therapist in training and a yogini in her evolution, I find a powerful connection between the power of movement and emotional healing.  I feel that my certification in yoga teaching is an important piece of what I will utilize in my work as a therapist.  Tonight I read a meditative healing exercise in Yoga Journal for working with sadness, loss, disappointment, and/or heartache which aligns directly with the philosophies I use in helping therapy clients (i.e. learning to sit with difficult/painful emotions without masking or numbing them, nor pushing them away/burying them).  Rather than trying to move away from your emotions (thus allowing them to get buried and stuck inside), try sitting with them and letting them move through you.  Try this experiential and see how it works for you:

Working with Heartbreak

Sadness can be a powerful doorway into the heart. The next time you feel loss or sorrow, try this practice for transforming sadness.

By Sally Kempton

1. Begin by fully feeling your sadness. Perhaps there's a sense of heaviness associated with it, or you feel tears rising. Become aware of the sensations in your body associated with the sadness. Feel the sensations as fully as you can. Breathe with them. Let go of the story.
2. Let your attention drop into the heart area. Sense that you are breathing in and out through the heart.
3. Bring the energetic sensation of sadness into the heart area. Simultaneously, become aware of a field of space or sky stretching out behind you. Imagine that it has a color, maybe gold or deep blue.
4. Begin to breathe the feeling of sadness in through your heart and into the sky behind you. Then breathe out, imagining that you are breathing out the sky, with its color, through the feeling in your heart and into the room. Continue this for a while.
5. Think of others who might be suffering sad feelings. You'll find images coming up quite spontaneously—people who lost loved ones, people who failed at something important, people you know, people in the news.
6. Inhale with the sense that you are taking in these people's sadness, letting it pass through (not remain in) your heart and dissolve into the beautiful sky behind you. Exhale, breathing the color and spaciousness of the sky back into the sad people. It's important here to breathe the sadness through the heart and into the sky, and to breathe the sky back through the heart and into the sad images you have drawn in. You're not holding the sadness in your heart, but rather, using the heart as a portal to let the sadness dissolve into the spaciousness of the sky.
7. Pay attention to the inner states that arise as a result of this practice. There may be an awareness of your intimate connection with all others or a sense of the impersonal nature of sadness. As you practice this over time, you may notice that it does arouse feelings of true compassion, love for yourself and others, and a recognition of your own soft heart.   http://www.yogajournal.com/wisdom/2514?utm_source=MyYogaJournal&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=MyYogaJournal

Come try moving meditation (the bodhiflow class) at http://www.gobodhiyoga.com/.

Personal Practice

As a part of the yoga teacher training certification, I am required to spend 20 hours doing personal yoga practice, which includes just my mat and me.  Before taking the teacher training I always only attended yoga classes or practiced yoga with a DVD.  I remember hearing my yoga teachers talk about one's personal practice, and I couldn't imagine doing yoga on my own.  I didn't feel like I'd have known what to do.  Now it makes more sense to me as I've been studying the poses and sequences more thoroughly.  The idea of a personal yoga practice in which I learn to listen to my body's needs and move accordingly feels exciting and nurturing.  Although attendance at class is definitely a favorite of mine, the fact that I can practice on my own, with no teacher nor dvd feels very liberating and relieves some of the stress I sometimes feel when living in a schedule and trying to get to class.  As I envision my post-summer life picking up again with school and internship and the trillion other things I do, I feel a great sense of relief in picturing myself on my yoga mat alone in my apartment in Boston, taking care of yoga in my own way without having to rush off to a yoga class.

In order to complete my yoga teacher training and qualify for certification by the end of this week (my goal), I have several things left to do, one of which includes 8 more hours on my mat in personal yoga practice.  In the 12 hours I've already done, I've started becoming familiar enough with the practice that these last 8 hours seem like they'll be a nice experimental plot of space and time through which I'll delve deeper into knowing my body, the practice, and the internal peace that accompanies a regular and consistent yoga practice.  Whether it's a class, a dvd, a youtube video, or your own personal practice, I invite you to delve into your practice to see what greater depth and knowing you can experience.

Yoga.  Mmmmmmmm.

http://www.gobodhiyoga.com/

The Iliopsoas--A Means to Smoother Transitions

In my anatomy study I recently learned a few things about the Iliopsoas, the strongest of the hip flexors, and an important group of muscles used in standing, walking, and running (not to mention lunging in yoga).  See photo here: http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&client=firefox-a&sa=X&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&biw=1200&bih=639&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=tiLCMS9HpY7_2M:&imgrefurl=http://venixflytrap.net/2010/12/07/ow-my-iliopsoas/&docid=uOY9TUJDOcj_IM&imgurl=http://venixflytrap.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/iliopsoas.jpg&w=160&h=246&ei=vIw2UOvhNKWxiQLt7IDQAg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=129&vpy=323&dur=504&hovh=124&hovw=81&tx=95&ty=95&sig=117355545460020260684&page=1&tbnh=124&tbnw=81&start=0&ndsp=27&ved=1t:429,r:9,s:0,i:142.

Often in yoga, when moving from a downward facing dog into a crescent lunge, triangle, or warrior II, our leg will not automatically come all the way forward to meet the planted hands on its own.  Thus, it becomes necessary to help the leg forward with the hand.  A major reason for this is due to tightness in the Iliopsoas.  Here is a stretch to help this muscle loosen up a bit, allowing the leg to move into position more easily.

 
Or, try this sequence taught to me by Syl Carson (http://www.gobodhiyoga.com/), which is very helpful in stretching the iliopsoas and working you into a smoother transition from downward facing dog to your lunge, triangle, or warrior poses.

First

 Then slightly lean back and bring up your left arm

Then plunge forward with your left leg (right arm comes up)

Next lean into your lunge

Then slightly arch your back

Lift and hold your back leg with your hand

Then all fours

Child's Pose

And finish up here...

Then do it all on the opposite side!

Happy transitioning! 



http://www.gobodhiyoga.com/

Quinoa, Red Pepper, & Cucumber Salad with Avocado and Lime

Yoga practice feels so cleansing and refreshing.  Couple your practice with cleansing and refreshing food to feel even better!  Here's a recipe that may give you just such a refreshment:

Quinoa, Red Pepper, & Cucumber Salad with Avocado and Lime

Kosher Salt
1 cup quinoa
1 garlic clove,  pounded to a smooth paste with a pinch of salt
1 large shallot, finely diced
3 1/2 tablespoons fresh-squeezed lime juice, plus more as needed
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium red pepper, halved, seeded, and finely diced
1 small- to medium-sized cucumber, peeled and seeded, if necessary, and cut into 1/4-inch dice (about 1 cup)
1/2 cup roughly chopped fresh cilantro, plus sprigs for garnish
2-3 ripe avocados, sliced

1 Bring a large pot of water to a boil, and season generously with salt.  Rinse quinoa under cool running water, lightly rubbing it between your fingers for a few seconds.  Add it to the boiling water and cook until tender, 12 to 15 minutes.  Drain the quinoa well and spread out on a baking sheet to cool.
2 Put the garlic, shallot, jalepeno, and lime juice in a small bowl.  Season with salt and stir to combine.  Let sit for 5 to 10 minutes.  Add 1/2 cup of the oil and whisk to combine.  Taste; add more salt or lime juice if necessary.
3 Put quinoa, red pepper, cucumber, and chopped cilantro in a medium bowl.  Drizzle about half the vinaigrette into the bowl and gently fold to combine.  Taste, and add more salt, vinaigrette, or lime juice if needed.
4 Arrange the sliced avocado on a platter or individual serving plates.  Season the avocado with salt and drizzle the remaining vinaigrette on top.  Spoon the quinoa salad on and around the avocado.  Garnish with cilantro, and serve immediately. 

(Yoga Journal, p. 36)


http://www.gobodhiyoga.com/