 
February 9, 2011
Finding the Path Through Ego
I have a love-hate relationship with paschimottanasana, seated forward bend. Sometimes I can’t do the posture and I don’t care. Other days, I can’t do the posture and I care a whole lot. Why can’t I do this stupid posture?, I ask myself. I can balance on one foot with my other foot poking up behind my head (dancer’s pose), bind myself into a pretzel in extended side angle, and I’ve got a shoulderstand that won’t quit. But ask me to sit with my legs extended and draw my chest to my knees, and the two year old that lives inside of me—my ego—screams, No way! I don’t wanna! She kicks and screams and refuses to play nice, and I feel it in my hamstrings, my low back, my upper back, and, most importantly, in my mind. My mind says, You’ll never be able to do this posture. And, as long as I allow my Ego to run my yoga practice, she’s right.
I should be doing paschimottanasana every day. It’s the postures we struggle with physically that are the true measure of our yogic progress. A physical struggle is a sign that the ego is at play, not the heart or the spirit. The physical struggle says “If I just try harder!” The physical struggle says “I’m too _______ (old, out of shape, overweight, weak, tired, inflexible, etc. etc. etc.) to do this posture.” The physical struggle is the voice of Ego. And, it’s the path through the ego that leads to an effortless practice.
Think of the posture you have that love-hate relationship with (or a posture you have a hate-hate relationship with). We’ve all got one. Now imagine—what if you made that posture your favorite? What if you took the physicality, the ego’s voice, out of the posture, and allowed your body to do what it does best? Imagine moving with the posture rather than struggling against it. Imagine a place of peace in a posture. A place in the posture where you can say to your ego, “Hey, look, this isn’t so bad.” Your ego can step aside and allow your spirit to shine through. Will it happen overnight? Probably not. I haven’t been that lucky in paschimottanasana. But, there are days where I get into my version of paschimottanasana and I think “Hey, this isn’t so bad.” The path through ego is riddled with obstacles, but it’s a yogi’s job to be persistent, to explore dangerous territory, to imagine, to practice, to experiment. Find your path. Choose the posture that is your roadmap, pack your patience and self-love, and begin your journey.
August 25, 2010
Yoga Retreat
You can google “yoga retreat” and find all levels of retreat—from local studios sponsoring weekend getaways for a few hundred bucks to tropical retreats costing thousands of dollars. I’m sure they’re all lovely, but I don’t have that kind of cash! But, during May and June I felt myself really falling off my path. I needed yoga—but not just a class or two. I needed a full immersion program. So, I decided to take charge of my own practice and design a retreat for myself and, a month ago today, I returned from a self-guided yoga retreat to Chicago.
I took the train from St. Paul to Chicago on Sunday, July 18th, and went to my first yoga class at noon on Monday the 19th. I had gotten a list of several teachers and studios to visit during my time there and I wanted to get started right away. During the week, I attended two, sometimes three, classes a day, for a grand total of 13 classes in seven days. I visited three different studios and tried several different styles: vinyasa, anusara, hot/Bikram, sculpt/definition, and hot power fusion. Each of the teachers I practiced with taught me something new and amazing. I was able to sit in on a workshop focusing on the mythology of yoga—the myth behind how many of the postures got their names (ever wonder the story behind Warrior 1, 2, and 3? Look forward to a future blog on the myth!). This same night, with one of my favorite teachers, I had what I consider to be the best two classes of my yogic life.
I brought yoga books, my journal, and my mat, immersing myself in the yoga culture. As I progressed through the week, the heart openers started to take effect and I became emotional, overwhelmed, and a little raw. Exactly what I wanted. I wanted to feel. To be a student again. To challenge myself in my practice and to learn new techniques to take back to my students here in Minnesota.
Though I didn’t spend thousands of dollars and fly away to some far-off place, the experience I had was priceless. When Wendy (one of the owners of Yoga 4 You) came into the studio tonight our conversation organically led to that idea of retreats and how you don’t even need to leave your own city to take a yoga-cation.
Here’s the retreat we came up with:
Choose a Saturday and clear your schedule. Get a babysitter. Send the husband to Menards. Sleep in. When you wake up, make yourself a light breakfast and read the paper. Meditate. Then, grab your mat and head out the door. Your first stop is a salon for a manicure/pedicure. Don’t skimp—remember, this is replacing a thousand-plus dollar trip to Tahiti. After the mani/pedi, head to Yoga 4 You. Take 2 or 3 classes, back to back. Yes, you can. Then, after you’ve had the most enjoyable savasana ever, roll up your mat, float to your car, and head to your final destination: the salon for your Swedish or deep tissue massage. Spring for the extra essential oils—you’re worth it. When you’re all done, assuming you’re not too blessed out to move, head home. Now, here’s your final job: journal about your day. Observe how you feel physically, mentally, spiritually. Have a glass of wine or another favorite relaxing beverage. Then let your family back in the house and draw a close to your personal yoga retreat.
Do this, then write me here and tell me all about it! I can’t wait to hear about your experiences and discoveries.
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May 30, 2010
Intention
What do you bring to your mat? I tend to bring stress, exhaustion, anger, desire, inadequacy, and competition. On the good side, I also often bring excitement, relief, gratitude, and passion.
Last weekend I did a four day advanced yoga teacher training in St. Louis Park. The training went from Thursday through Sunday. When I went to my regular practice on Wednesday, Lisa, my teacher, said “Kelly, your practice has grown even from this weekend!” I was pleased she had noticed—I certainly had. What was the difference? My intention.
So many of us come to our mats with a goal to “be better at yoga.” We even call it practice—a word that implies working toward a goal of perfection. The change in me from the weekend of teacher training was a forgiveness of my weaknesses and an intention directed toward loving my “practice” for exactly what it is. To be with my breath as much as it is with me. To not punish myself for my tight hamstrings, my weak core, my injured shoulders, or my left foot that naturally turns slightly out. I kept my knees bent, my feet apart, my arms a little wider above my head.
Friends, you would not believe how much energy my attention to my weaknesses was taking! Once I was willing to let go, suddenly I wasn’t running out of breath. I didn’t take child’s pose out of sheer exhaustion. I was, in short, experiencing yoga rather than practicing it.
Consider your intention. Consider why you practice this amazing yoga. Is it to build a stronger core? Than forgive yourself falling out of a balancing pose. Is it to breathe? Then forgive yourself weak shoulders. Dig deep, within, for it’s a question we all must answer for ourselves, and find why you are practicing yoga today. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, today. Embrace that intention with everything you have… then experience yoga.
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May 3, 2010
Growing up on my yoga mat.
Some days I come to my mat as a grown up. I’m ready to let go of my day, practice my postures, breathe my breath, and go home a calmer, clearer person.
Other days, I come to my mat as a teenager. Defiant. Uncooperative. An attitude of superiority and “I know everything.” And, it’s these days where I remember how hard being a teenager was—and how it’s a place I never want to return to.
So many of us are teenagers on our mats. We fear trying new things, but we know we need to in order to grow. We check out the bodies of those around us, comparing, then look away because we don’t want to get caught looking. We measure ourselves against the people on the mats in front of us, feel slightly superior to the person on the mat behind us. We wonder where to sit and how to talk to people. We want the teacher to notice us and approve, yet we worry when we get adjusted—“what am I doing wrong?” “Will I ever get this?”
Being a teenager on the yoga mat is a blessing and a curse—just as it is in life. It’s a time of tremendous discovery—figuring out who we are as people separate from our parents and friends. It’s a time to develop talents and hobbies, fall in love, and live with few cares and responsibilities. On our mats, it’s a time to play, to take yoga not-so-seriously. To feel the security of not needing to be an expert. And, if we can approach our practice with all the good of a teenager—the curiosity, natural wonder, desire for maturity—it can be an amazing place to be!
A yoga practice is so much more than postures. It’s being reborn and having a second chance to “grow up”. Being a teenager is a part of this process. Some days we will come to our mats thinking we’ve got it all figured out—only to be humbled by a difficult sequence or posture. Other times we step to our mats thinking that we are inadequate and that we will never measure up to the person next to us—only to find out in the lobby after class that she admires our Warrior II and thinks she’ll never be able to do it as well as we do.
Yoga is not about competition, comparison, self-deprecation, or ego. It’s about finding our path—growing up—by using breath, knowledge, and guidance from instructors and fellow students. The next time you approach your mat, think about your age. Not your true, physical age, but your yoga age. Know that even the most awkward stages of our lives possess beauty and necessity, and that we are not alone in the process. Some days we are children, some days we are old souls. Every day, we are yogis.
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January 31, 2010
Finding Time for Yoga
With impending deadlines looming in many facets of my life, finding time to do things that are important to me is at the forefront of my mind. It seems that, for most of us, when we start to get busy we first sacrifice our own activities in order to “get the job done.” One of the biggest questions I get from new yogis is “how often should I do yoga?” This question is asked with an expression of curiosity, but also a tinge of anxiety. The real question they’re asking is, “Do I have enough time to do this yoga and see benefits?” Yes, you do. Yoga isn’t about sacrifice—it’s about fulfillment. Taking a bit of time to find your center through a yoga practice will ultimately give you more time for both your obligations and the activities you enjoy.
Ideally, yoga should be practiced daily. Many people hear this and automatically think, “well, I don’t have time for that.” And, thinking of yoga as driving to the studio, taking an hour long class, and driving home—maybe that’s not possible every day. Maybe you can commit to taking a class at Yoga 4 You three times a week. The other four days, redefine your practice! Use a DVD or find time to be alone in a quiet room in your house. Guide yourself through the postures. As you attend more organized classes, you’ll begin to see patterns in the sequencing—warming up, Sun A, Sun B, some balancing, some spine strengthening, and, of course, Savasana. Use these patterns to develop your own personal practice. Yoga Journal’s website has some great tools for developing your own sequence. It is possible to do yoga every day even if you’re not able to make it into Yoga 4 You seven days a week.
Sometimes, though, taking even an hour for ourselves at home isn’t possible. On days when you know you’re going to be extra busy, handle your yoga the same way you handle family dinner: by planning ahead. Slice out a few minutes throughout the day, beginning when you wake up, to take a posture or two. Wake up the body in the morning with a downward-facing dog. Over your lunch break, do a forward fold with some gentle twisting. Take a moment at your desk, close your eyes, and do some deep breathing through your nose. Before you go to sleep, lie down and take a five (or ten!) minute Savasana. This is yoga!
Yoga is about fulfilling your life, and it is flexible. It can fit into any space you create for it, and it doesn’t matter if that space is a minute or an hour, one day a week or seven. Yoga doesn’t judge, feel abandoned, or obligate people who practice it. It is simply there, patiently waiting, each and every time you bring yourself, mentally or physically, to your mat. Carve out some time each day to practice your yoga. Breathe. Be fulfilled.
Namaste.
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January 20, 2010
Namaste! My name is Kelly. I’m honored to teach for Yoga 4 You and to be able to write this blog. I'll be sharing my thoughts with you weekly (or more often, as they occur to me) about anything related to yoga. If you have questions or requests for topics you'd like to read about, click here and share them with me.
Today's topic: Why Yoga?
My yoga journey began on October 24, 2007. There's a whole story about my "beginning yoga," one I may choose to share in a later blog entry, but the start date is important for one reason: it's completely insignificant. It wasn't January 1st. It wasn't my birthday. It wasn't a full, blue, half, or eclipsed moon. It wasn't even the start of a week, as I recall. It was, simply, the day I unrolled my mat (purchased at Target for around $30), and began my journey. Since that day, I've heard a lot of feedback from friends and family ranging from positive and supportive to negative and wondering what kind of voodoo I've gotten myself into...but everyone wonders "why." Why yoga?
What I had to find out for myself is that the answer changes. The "because" is floating and ever-changing. My first "because" was related to my weight. Why yoga? Because I want to lose weight. That "because" stayed for a few months. Then, it started to shift. It became, "because I love how I felt last week and I want to feel that again." It became, "I want to see if I can do that posture this week--I was soooo close last week!" It became, "I need one hour where I can't think about anything but my breath and my body."
The benefits of yoga are infinite. They are physical, mental, and spiritual. They extend to the family, friends, co-workers, and overall environment of the practitioner. And, whatever your answer to "why yoga" is, it's the right answer. Yoga will help you lose wight. It will help you de-stress. It will help you focus. It will help you become more flexible. It will change your world.
It will also challenge you. Make you struggle. Push you to your limits (and past them). Make you shake, sweat, grunt, and cry.
It will give you one hour of the day when you have nothing to focus on but your breath and how you move--not work, not your kids, not dinner, not what you should have done, not what you have yet to do today.
Why yoga? Because. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. You have your own reason for your yoga. I have mine. And, I've got news for you--if you haven't been to a class yet and you've thought "Hmmm...I wonder if I should try yoga..." That's your "because" in disguise. Why yoga? "Because I wonder about it." And don't wait for a special day--today is special. It doesn't need to be January first, or your birthday, or a Monday night, or a weekend, or the day you're starting your diet, or the day your kid goes back to college. Start today because you're wondering about it today.
Namaste.
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