You Are Not Immune

What do you do when you get irritated, angry, and flat out pissed off? Do you fume silently? Do you yell? Throw things or maybe threaten people? 

Everyone has this happen. Everyone. You are not immune to emotional upset. Your guru is not immune. The difference is learned coping mechanisms. Most people just react emotionally and often make things worse. Don't allow someone else to be the catalyst for You to ruin your own day.

You can't control what others say or do - you can only control your reaction to them. Actually exercising that control takes practice. Step back, take a breath. No, make that like 10 breaths. Do some push-ups if you're just dying to hit someone. Do something steady and grounding to level yourself off. Just to bring things back to a "medium" space. A place where you can observe and assess rather than just React.

It's never too late to be level-headed. Even if you've already gone and screamed obscenities at the object of your anti-affection - you can stop right now.  Bring awareness to your actions so you can practice what you preach and walk your talk.

You're Doing it Wrong

I often have students, friends, and family members ask me about meditation. They always claim to have tried it unsuccessfully. They say - I can't shut off my mind. No matter what I do I just keep thinking about all these things. In response I like to say - You're Doing it Wrong! In jest of course, because I don't think you can really meditate "wrong".

You can, however, have expectations that are too high, or be judging yourself too harshly - all "wrong".  The monkey mind that swings from branch to branch (or thought to thought) is totally normal. We all have it. So don't be so attached to the idea that you're going to make that monkey stop dead in it's tracks. If you're crafty you can eventually manage to persuade the monkey to play on a single tree, but mostly he's just going to do his thing with or without your consent.

I read an article on Elephant Journal recently that made me chuckle - and I think it puts this common meditation worry into perspective. A little quote from it: "I never force my mind to go anywhere in particular when I sit zazen. When thoughts come, I let them come. When they go, I let them go. Of course there are times when the chugpi is struck three times, signaling the end of practice and I realize that really, I was just pretending to meditate the entire time." His meditation practice sounds a lot like mine so I was amused to read the thoughts that run through his head during meditation.

Read the rest of the article here: Top 20 Thoughts to Think While Pretending to Meditate

Just remember that to sit in meditation is progress. You don't have to be transported to God's palm and have deep psychic discussions for meditation to be "working". It's not about being productive, so just let it go.

Love Your Edge

I'm getting a really late start today. I'm about 3 hours behind my usual self-imposed schedule. After 3 nights of no sleep - last night I slept like a baby rock. It was awesome.

I keep reading that everyone has these poses they HATE. Poses that they just loathe with every fiber of their being. Yoga poses that make them silently curse any teacher that puts them in it. Everyone seems to have at least one. It's what I hear anyway. I literally don't know of any pose that I don't LOVE these days. I love them all. I love arm balances, I love backbends, inversions, forward bends, hip openers, core strengtheners, balancing poses... I love them all. There was a time when I hated handstand, but I did it over and over and over again until I loved it. There was a time when I hated half handstands, but now I'm neutral toward them. I just love yoga that much I guess. *shrug*

My husband hates warrior 2. When I teach, I apparently teach that pose aaaallllll the tiiiimmmmee. When he took my classes twice a week I found out that while I love to teach warrior 2 - people really hate to do it. Maybe that's why I taught it so much. I quickly find my student's edges - physical and mental. I find them and then I put them there. While I obviously balance it out with rest and counterposes and lots of good stuff to pamper them afterwards - I want my students to stare down the edge of their comfort zone - until it gives way and expands. This is how we grow in asana practice. You certainly don't want to go all the way to the edge everytime. A softer practice should be mixed in to keep balance and avoid injury. You don't want to LIVE on the edge, but you want to spend a healthy amount of time there.

You can learn a lot about yourself from your edge. Your mental state, your physical imbalances, how you handle stress... The next time you face a pose or a meditation where you find discomfort or unhappiness - sit with that feeling. Just observe it - without judgement. If you do this every time - eventually that feeling may dissolve.

Where is your edge? What poses do you HATE? and Why?

PS: I need to sink a little deeper into this warrior 2 pictured, but it's the only pic I have of me in this pose, so we'll pretend it's "perfect".

Three Times a Day - (Video)

I wanted to share with you this Sianna Sherman interview via Bay Shakti. This is actually part 2 of a four part interview, so go to Bay Shakti for all four parts. Sianna Sherman, for those of you that don't know, is an Anusara yoga teacher. I had the fantastic luck of being able to take a couple of her classes at Wanderlust, and her classes are amazing.

I just wanted to share this particular piece of the interview because Sianna talks about working on a pose and bringing an aspect of play into it - 3 times a day - if you're really working towards this one particular pose. For instance - handstand. As I've written about before, I totally do this. I practice kind of around the clock - particularly inversions and backbends. Anytime I have a lull in my day - I do some handstands. I can probably already do handstands in the middle of the room, but after taking a couple of ugly falls doing that before - I'm slowly working my way back out there. The wall is my crutch and I'm trying to let it go. It's a process.

Great Deeds

"All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning."  - Albert Camus

Light on Reading

As a yogi there are some books you're kind of "supposed to" read at one time or another. For some people that time is when they take the plunge into teacher training - others just wanna read all about it because they're readers. Some of the standard books to know are The Bhagavad Gita, Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, The Upanishads, Ram Dass' Be Here Now, Light on Yoga, The Ramayana, etc. I read a couple of these books during teacher training. I have a couple of these books on my wishlist, and I've owned one of these books for maybe 8 years, but I've never read it.

I'm not really much of a reader as an adult. My eye doctor says it's because I have a reverse astigmatism, so I'm soooo far sighted that by the time my eyes are focusing on something as close as a book they're working something like 10,000 times harder than they should really need to. Therefore, reading makes me sleepy before I finish a single page. It's ridiculous, but totally true. If I try to read a book, I can't focus because I will start falling asleep right away. 

Anyway, so I don't really read much. Maybe that's why I have never read Light on Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar even though it's been on my shelf almost as long as I've been into yoga. I remember trying to read it once early on, but I wasn't really into it. I'm hoping that now - with all my experience, and all my previous studying - that I'll have it in me to read it. I always want to read more, so last night I finally pulled this book out and started it. I'm hoping to actually make it all the way through this time - and fully absorb and understand it. I should totally be able to "get it" now, and I'm hoping it will introduce me to a couple poses I never really do. It should be interesting - and maybe it will provide me with some inspiration for the blog.

Yoga Dreams

Today I want to talk about dreams - yoga dreams. I don't mean the kind of dreams where you dream to one day be a celebri-teacher, or you can only dream of one day doing an advanced pose like Shayanasana. I mean nocturnal visions - subconscious stories about yoga.

I generally don't dream about yoga which is odd considering my world revolves around my practice. I remember when I was in teacher training they said - "Get ready for Yoga Nightmares." I didn't immediately pick up on what they meant, so it's a good thing they elaborated. Once you're a teacher it's a common issue to have actual nightmares about teaching. Sometimes you're having bad dreams about students not listening to you, telling you they hate your class, or even just about trying to teach in a space with terrible acoustics. I thought - am I going to have nightmares about teaching!???! Weird.

It was a long time before I ever had one, but I have definitely had my share of yoga nightmares. I don't remember them, but I know I've had them. I thought of this because recently I had a pleasant dream about my yoga practice - in the dream I was effortlessly drawing my foot up to my head in backbends. So far that I could see my foot in front of my face before I reached for it with my hands. It was strange because I've NEVER dreamed about my yoga practice before in 10 years. It inspired me to get back to my daily practice 'cause I've been slacking recently.

When I did finally practice and do a deep backbend - I did accomplish new things - I easily did full pigeon without a strap. I was psyched. Studies have shown (sorry I have no sources at the moment to back that up) that simply visualizing yourself practicing does bring you some benefits as if you were actually doing it - maybe it works with dreams too.

Tell me my fellow yogis - Do you ever have yoga dreams?