NEW SITE

You will be redirected in six seconds to the new site:

www.yogagodess.com

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.