Consider This a Ribbon...

Tied Around My Finger

My poor, neglected blog!  I promise I have a pocketful of yoga posts for you, but life and work have me scrambling right now.  I'll be back soon!  In the meantime, check out how much fun my teacher training class is: 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Just so you know, I have not been replaced by the alien fruit of a giant yoga plant pod.  However, much like a clinging vine, yoga is slowing wrapping its tendrils around every aspect of my life.  I'm sure you already know this.  If you've talked to me recently about anything, I've probably suggested that yoga will solve all your problems...

• Oh, you're not sleeping at night?  You know what you should try for that?  Yoga!  
• Oh, you're feeling congested?  You should do some yoga.  
• Oh, the con queso at your Super Bowl party caused your heartburn to flare up?  Let me show you some yoga.
• Oh, your back is stiff?  I'll send you an article about yoga!  

This has led to more than a few eye rolls.  But it's okay!  I understand that my love for yoga is bordering on the obnoxious lately.  I have accepted that yoga and I are like the seventh graders in puppy love who are scoffed at for smooching in the hallway and who regularly ditch their friends just to gaze at each other while listening to sappy love songs.  But I can't help it!  Yoga and I were made for each other.  

Maybe it will help if I tell you why I love yoga.

(And if you haven't read it already, find out how this whole yoga affair started here.)

First of all, I am me and only me for at least an hour.  While I'm on my mat, there are no outside demands.  I'm not mom or wife, housecleaner or transcriptionist.  I am just a human—an embodiment of spirit—moving, breathing, relaxing, being.  It's a very free and light feeling.  And I love the idea that something that is exercise (oh, cringeful word) can feel so freeing.

Of course, in its beginnings, yoga was not the series of exercises that we most commonly associate the word with here in the Western world.  At first, it was an inward path for a person to search for deeper spirituality, to find a connection with the divine and therefore live more meaningfully.  As it happens, the poses or asanas of modern Hatha yoga are a very efficient way of tapping into that spirituality.  Focusing on the physical work of yoga opens the door for you to consciously yoke the body and the spirit as a whole, rather than two separate parts of yourself that don't get to talk often enough.

If you think about your typical daily routine, how many things does your body do for you without even a second thought?  You brush your teeth, feed your face, tie your shoes, load the dishwasher, run up the steps, tiptoe to reach something on a high shelf.  Each of these actions requires thousands of nerves and muscle fibers to synergize.  While you're holding a pose on your yoga mat, you suddenly have the space and the quiet to realize what an amazing blessing your body is.  You also have the opportunity to give back to that body by paying some much needed attention to it, as well as allowing it to release tension.

On a yoga mat, you learn things about your body that can then be taken off the mat and translated into real life.  For example, last night I went to a power yoga class.  I tend to avoid the power yoga classes.  I am all about the calming, relaxing yoga for renewal that moves slowly and gently.  Power yoga is intense, difficult and sweaty.  I'm pretty sure I had no idea what inner thighs were until I did power yoga.  However, as I'm holding a runner's lunge longer than I think anyone on earth should rightfully be forced to—quads quaking, sweat dripping down my face—my teacher, Corena, says, "Breathe.  You can do this.  You can do so much more than you think you can.  You have to take your mind out of it."

So I did.  I sent breath to those quivering quads, I pushed my feet firmly into the earth, I pulled my abs in, I exhaled the fear of failing.  And I did stumble.  But I held it longer than I ever thought I could.  And I'll do it again.  For longer next time.  Just like any trial in life, the burdens, the stress and the pain are overwhelming.  You want nothing more than to drop it all and run away to Oaxaca.  But when you trust yourself, when you let go of the negative thoughts and patterns, you are suffused with a power you never knew existed.  A power that seems to have come from outside of you and yet is an integral part of you.

And that is why I love yoga.  You should come with me to class sometime.  I think you will love it, too.

Namaste.      

Beautiful Bodies and Bandha Bandhing

After months of anticipation, I finally got to attend my first yoga teacher training classes this past weekend! 

(The classes at Infusion are held once a month on a Thursday night and a Saturday morning, so my training will take 11 months to complete, but I will have plenty of time to absorb the vast amounts of information being poured into my brain and put it into practice.)

The dates have been circled in big orange marker on my calendar, and while I've looked at them every day, I've been putting off blogging until the "real thing".  My initial thought was to blog once a month along with the training, but that has felt sparse this month.  I keep jotting down little yoga tidbits that I want to share with you, and so I've decided that rather than keeping them in my pocket and giving them to you later, possibly smooshed and covered with lint, maybe I should share them while they're still fresh.  I can't promise that it will be much more frequently than once a month, but based on the fact that I wake up thinking about yoga and go to sleep thinking about yoga, chances are good that you'll have more of my yoga thoughts than you can handle.  Which is okay.  You can just share the leftovers with your friends!  
Class this week was devoted to the study of anatomy.  I think it was a wonderful place to start, since the body is what yoga is all about.  The word yoga can be translated as "to yoke", and I like to think of it as a way to harness the mind and the body to work together like a pair of oxen.  We are using a gorgeous book called The Key Muscles of Yoga to study the human form.  So as we learned the names of different bones and muscle groups, we also learned which poses strengthen and stretch which areas.  The illustrations show the muscles and bones in action in the different poses.  It is fascinating.  Check out some 360 views of the poses on the author's webpage, Bandha Yoga.  


As they lectured, the teachers frequently had us take a pose to feel in our own bodies where the muscles were situated and how the poses changed as we engaged those muscles.  I kept coming to back to the thought that the human body is such a miraculous creation.  It's so intricately designed, each part has a place and a purpose, and everything synthesizes to generate life, breath, movement and beauty.  To me it is such a testimony that there is a divine creator who gave life to each of us.  I am so thankful for this beautiful body, this gift my Father in Heaven has given to me, and I'm truly excited to learn more about it and take better care of it.  


I also had to laugh, because as part of anatomy and musculature, we talked about using the bandhas.  Bandhas (pronounced like bond-ah), also called "locks", are groups of muscles that lend extra strength and power to poses when they are engaged.  One of the bandhas, the mula bandha, is located at the perineum.  (For the uninitiated, the perineum is the length of tissue and muscle between the anus and genitals. Try to draw it up towards your belly button-- without squeezing your buns together!  It's hard, huh?!)  Nothing bonds a class faster than everyone squeezing their perineums simultaneously.  "Hey there, neighbor!  I only met you today, but doesn't that mula bandha feel great?!"


I think we should regularly practice it in groups and call it "Bandha Bandhing". 






So here is to another month of practicing yoga and learning as I go.  I can hardly wait 'til February! 

Om Namah Shivaya

1/1/11

Happy New Year!  Doesn't the date have a magical ring to it?  It is filled with ones, and nothing is more fresh and new than starting at the number one.  Every year the calendar encourages us to make a new beginning. For me, this usually means picking a few goals and doggedly writing them down, knowing that within three weeks even my most well-intentioned plans will have derailed and I will be disappointed in myself.  However, this year promises to be different.  This January 1st is the first day of what I am going to call My Year of Yoga.  I am going to spend the year working on a daily yoga practice and studying to become a registered yoga teacher.  (To begin at the beginning and read more about how I got started on this journey, click the tab above or click here.)

To kick start this year full of challenge and discovery, I attended a yoga class being offered by Corena Hammer at Infusion on New Year's Day.  This was no ordinary stretching and breathing session.  For one thing, we worked for TWO HOURS.  For another, we were accompanied by a live musician, Leraine Horstmanshoff, playing the guitar, drums, flutes and didgeridoo and also singing.  She started us out with a call and answer, repeating this phrase:  

OM NAMAH SHIVAYA

"I humbly bow to that Light within me which I am  becoming."

Lifting my voice with the others in the class was a transcendent experience that brought tears to my eyes.  What a perfect theme for this year, a quest to more fully embrace the divine potential within myself while accepting the idea that the reward is in the becoming.  In fact, I recently read another quote in a book called Hatha Yoga Illustrated that expressed a similar thought: 

"This quest for happiness is not so much a striving to acquire something that exists outside of us as it is an innate desire to remember something that is part of our very nature."

As Corena started making us work, I could hardly believe the woman on my mat-- singing Sanskrit at the top of her lungs, sweat rolling down her face and dripping off her nose, pushing further than she had ever pushed before-- I didn't recognize her, but I liked her.  I want to keep her around.  I want to see what else she can do and where we can go.  Together.