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TOMORROW IS THE DAY

Okay tomorrow is the day. For sure.

How was your weekend. Mine was full of yoga! I had Saturday and Sunday off from teaching so was able to engage in two hour practice with really deep leg work both days. Then yesterday I took a 20 mile bike ride. Today my legs are FEELING it.

How do you define yoga? I define yoga as anything that I love to do that takes me into a purer state of consciousness and where I am able to focus on one thing without a lot of distractions. Biking is definitely yoga for me as well as canning. I have been canning a lot since my garden was very lush this year. I will eventually can 36 quarts of tomatos I am estimating.

Teaching yoga is also yoga to me. As my students know, I can really give some messed up cuing. I say right for left, knee for elbow, and bridge for boat. My mind is visioning but the words come out wrong and I don't realize it until the students are looking confused and moving into something I am NOT envisioning. I have been like that all my life. As a child, could NOT get right and left correct. Teaching yoga has really helped me to stay mindful of this.

When I started teaching Bikram style yoga I had to stand at the back of the class so I could tell them to pick up the right foot so I wouldn't say left, etc. Even after practicing the class hundreds of times, I could not say the right word. This exercise helped me. Staying in their perspective allowed me to say the right words. Facing them would throw me off. I have seen teachers who can mirror from the front very well. It is not an easy skill.

So look for the new site tomorrow. I am moving all of this over to my domain and will be blogging once or twice a day.

Blogging = yoga to me.

EXPERTS

I read an intriguing blog post this morning about a blogster who works in the exercise/fitness area who is trying to get a book deal. While she has a popular and informative blog with a lot of good tips on nutrition and training, she is having no luck because publishers tell her she needs to be an expert in the field and have a designation beyond certified trainer, which are a dime a dozen.

Projecting that into the field of yoga, I wondered what would make a person an expert in the field of yoga. Beyond a 200 hour and now 500 hour designation with Yoga Alliance how can you tell who the experts are. Some of them are dead already or you have to go to India.

My advice on this as far as seeking a teacher is to check their biography and look at their training. See if the lineage they have trained in is akin to your heart and be open to new styles. My first experiences with Anusara yoga for example were horrible and I could not understand the popularity, now I am actively seeking more training and have bought a lot of home study materials to figure out what the heck those universal principles mean.

If you are seeking more training as a teacher, my advice is to seek teachers who have trained well. A lot of the teachers I have worked with, for example, actually worked with Iyengar. Look at your favorite teacher and see who they worked with and seek out more that have a similar background when looking for training.

As far as writing a book or promoting dvds, a lot of it has to do with popularity. Teachers who are out there a lot can do this easily without a lot of accreditation. Look out for how they promote themselves. I have seen people who promote themselves as "Master" teachers who I doubt really are. Did someone give them a certificate that says "Master"? Most of the great teachers do NOT promote themselves that way out of humility and modesty. Please.

My blog will move to the new domain within a day or two. New site and more stuff. I will be out of blogspot but you will be able to access the site from here. I have been working heavily on that and it will be ORGANIC and expect to see some changes.

MOVING

Getting ready to move to new site. Stay tuned. Updated blogs.

DEFINITELY YOGAGODDESS

Yes I can't think of anyone who is more the epitomy of Yogagoddess than Christy Turlington. She has long been an advocate of yoga and practices karma yoga in her life off the mat. She is an advocate for health and is involved in antismoking education and working on the elimination of AIDS in Africa. She has a great book called Living Yoga which I linked below. If you are a fan of supermodel Christy you will love Yogini Christy even more. Her book includes a good background on the history of yoga so she is very INFORMED all around. I have always loved her.
Yesterday was pure luxury for me. Sunday is my day of spending a LONG time practicing. Yesterday was 3 hours. My goal is to work up to two hours a day. My schedule only allows for the long session on Sunday so sometimes I split. I could get up at four and get two hours in most days but that would mean for me going to sleep at eight at night.
Actually last night I DID fall asleep at eight o'clock and got up at five to teach 6 am yoga today at Inner Fire. I am trying to figure out the focus for my practice later. Yesterday was a backbend focused practice so today will have to be something else. When I say a three hour practice on backbends that does not mean I do backbends for three hours, it means I have the luxury of really warming the spine up for deep backbends. Usually the apex pose will be viparita dandasana or scorpion. The warm ups include a LOT of cobras, twists, and lunges. Lunges freak people out when they are done long and deep and with a lot of strength. They freak out the accomplished yogi as much as a newbi. It is one of those poses that anyone can do in some form with some modification but in a lot of classes you are just flowing through them and not really getting into the depth of the hip and thigh opening. I love lunges. I also hate them. Also I like to cool down out of backbends with some more twisting and gentle forward bending into some deeper poses that also work into the hips.
I am going to focus on some of the more intermediate poses I have been working on in my classes this week for the intermediate classes and set up for these poses in regular flow.

Check out Christy's book. She is also humble. I love true humility and it is hard to find. Really.

THE GATE

Parighasana is definitely a good pose for opening the ribs up. This woman is doing the seated variation but for the past few days I have taught and practiced it in an upright position. Instead of having the straight leg on the floor the hips are upright and the bent knee is at ninety degrees with the hips level. The straight let is perpendicular out of the hip with the bottom of the foot planted as firmly as possible. A block can be placed behind the shin of the straight leg with the hand placed on it and the other arm overhead. In parighasana, eventually both hands grab the foot. Then it is just rotate, rotate, rotate. I am working today on variations on this and it is backbend day for me with a lot of wheels. Yippee! Wheeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Parigha translates into the word gate. Whatever version you are doing to this pose, it is a 'gate' or opening to deeper poses and is still a deep pose in itself. It opens the spine, shoulders, hamstrings, and low back. A pose is always a good deal for you if it goes in all these directions and hits all these places simultaneously. That is why the complex poses are so interesting. They feel very good too. So they hold a lot of potential for joy and emotional release. For this particular pose I don't think it looks that hard, but once I am in it I see and feel the complexity.

So, in yoga, remember, when one gate opens, there is usually another one behind it.

I LOVE ANA FORREST

I am traveling today so just a short post on my GRATITUDE to Ana Forrest. A year ago I attended her nine day Advanced Teacher Training for nine days at Kripalu. As I have posted before. It was the hardest thing I ever did and I can't imagine going to a training that would have tested me more. That removed a lot of fear from me. I just pulled out some advice she wrote for me. "Use your arms everyday. Trust your strength."I did and she was right. With love and gratitude.

MASTER

The master Iyengar. Hard to believe he struggled as much as he did early in his practice, but when he started working with Krishnamacharya, he was weak and had a tendency towards illness.

That move in the handstand doing the walk around would take the removal of a couple of vertebras for me. Talk about intense twisting deep.

He is 93 years old now and my guess is he is in his late 50s or 60s here. I am always amazed at how HUGE and EXPANDED his torso is. It is just so thick. It looks like he grew his ribs into larger bones. His backbend is so beautiful because of the length in the spine. That is hard to achieve. Even if you can do a big backbend and viparita easily, it is probably doubtful that most people can keep that lengthening of the spine. Beauteous. I learn so much from WATCHING. And then trying to emulate. I know a teacher can repeat the same thing over and over hundreds of time before I actually HEAR it.

Because I did a LOT of Bikram classes. Some things I didn't learn until after I started teaching Bikram and repeating the same thing myself and then actually seeing something in a student that I understood it. It is what keeps people so interested in Bikram for such a long period of time.

So one of my next things is exploring that long spine which I already explore, but there is just something I am not connecting to and am not sure what it is. I know it wasn't until I focused on my front spine in backbends rather than the back spine that I started getting and how to get the breath - BACK THERE.

So for my students out there, huge bonus to come in and do that walk around in class. Have a fun day.

PLEASE DONATE

http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/interaction-members-respond-drought-crisis-horn-africa

This is a horrible crisis and heart breaking. I know a lot of Americans struggle but giving is the karma of our lives. This is one cause that is really worthwhile.

YOGA FEET

Lately I thought I had a foot injury in my right foot because I was having pain right below the large toe and it looked funny and swollen. Now I realize that the shape of my feet has changed. If you ever look at the feet of people who have practiced yoga, like an Ashtangi for a long period of time, their feet look much different than the normal person stepping into a yoga class.

Our feet, for the most part, lead very inhibited lives, constrained for the most part in shoes that do not adapt to our feet, but really the opposite. The feet conform to the shape of our shoe preference. I had an aunt who wore NOTHING but pointy toe high heels and the shape of her feet looked like the shoe in her later years. She lived until age 92with bunyons and toes that turned in from both sides. She never complained of pain either but when she aged her body weight moved FORWARD because of the shortness of her step. She was a pretty tough old bird though.

The popularity of athletic shoes probably took women down a few notthes from the high heels but tight shoes still constrain the feet and don't offer much for the natural curves in the foot. Flip flops may be worse. Flip flops are fashion shoes now but people tend to take a shorter steps and a more pronounced step. Also the wearer tends to scrunch the toes, which is not entirely disimilar to the old tradition in China of binding the feet. Ouch. No thanks.

So what to wear? I normally buy brands that promote comfort and fortunately they are not all ugly any more. Dansko and Born are two popular brands and they even have dress options. The best tool for retaining the health of your feet is awareness. I know my awareness of feet in yoga has shifted a lot in the past year of my yoga practice. Thus the shift in something, not sure what it is yet, is causing some temporary discomfort but now seems to be adjusting into a new shape. My feet are definitely wider.

Here are some yoga tips for healthy feet.

1. Keep the focus on the feet first in standing poses. Really assess whether the whole foot is planted.

2. Notice where the weight shifts in poses. Does it shift to the right or left? This could cause or be the result of pelvic instability and thus can affect your low back.

3. Can you spread the toes and move them around easily. The wider the ability to spread the toes and root them, the more you have control of the finer muscles and tendons in the feet. The foot is complex, not simple.

4. Can you lift the arch of the foot? This also affects pelvic stability and the energy livens up the inner thighs all the way up to the front of the lumbar.

So the feet affect the back. Who knew?

Finally, do you struggle in balance poses after years of practice? If so, go to the feet first. Try to stabilize the feet. Without stability in the feet, there is no balance pose. So start from the bottom and work it upwards.

STERIODS AND YOGA DON'T MIX

The 100% yoga guarantee or your money back:

You won't turn into a pinhead. Check out the uddiyana bandha! Dude needs some men's lululemon shorts. Those speedos are a little low. The Bikram class is in the next studio!

AVIDYA IS ANANDA

The more I learn, the less I know.

Recently I passed my five year mark in teaching yoga. I love looking back at those first few classes. I was SO fearful but felt I had SO much to offer from my experience and yoga practice. I remember being gripped in FEAR when I had to walk in those first ten or so classes and try to lead a 90 minute Hot yoga class. I am sure I tripped over my language, had horrible timing, and messed up quite a few times. I think that FEAR comes from being a little absorbed in, well, MYSELF. It wasn't until I let go of ME in teaching, and starting realizing this is an act of seva. I have to be there for the students FIRST. That is what really makes a good yoga class, but is probably the hardest lesson for a novice teacher. And as you continue to move into your comfort level, the:

EGO will come back into play. Oh, yes it will. Then the class will feel sucky to the teacher. Then you learn the next act in teaching, removing yourself. Look from the outside. Sit on the ceiling, look in the window, OBSERVE, be a SEER.

In any teaching capacity, people are looking to you for some level of KNOWLEDGE. In yoga, that can come in many forms. Many students are looking for spiritual insight. They want to learn to live their lives better and they are hoping you can help them. This is a HUGE responsibility.

Others want to learn PERFECT PRETTY POSES, in perfect alignment. They are looking for the correct method.

Some want to have fun and play.

All of this is good, but no one can offer it all. Well a few can, the REAL masters of yoga. I am really into Anusara now and think John Friend does a good job of all this and makes it look effortless and I know it isn't. It is hard.

Knowledge is really just what you know RIGHT NOW. You know more than before and you will learn more. Patience is one of the harder skills in yoga. People who come to the mat with patience never struggle in yoga. It is a beautiful thing to observe.