This past month I’ve been seeing the word “gratitude” a lot, I mean a LOT! From billboard advertisements to the Occupy movement to several of my friends and Facebook followers posting a daily thing they are grateful for. Initially I thought this was really cool! I like the idea of reclaiming this holiday as a time to share gratitude and thanking the people in our lives for their contributions to our well-being.

But as the month progresses and I see that word “gratitude” again and again, I see that the word is slowly loosing its impact and meaning. I see all the external things, people, places, objects that we are all expressing gratitude for as less and less a reflection of an inward experience, and more and more another way we are mass producing an external awareness of what we “have”.

So take a breath, close your eyes, and be still for a minute. Look for that place inside where you experience gratitude. A gratitude that is not dependent on someone or something but simply wells up from inside your deepest Self. To me this is real gratitude, an experience drawn from the heart that can be accessed regardless of the attitude of others, the events of our lives, or objects we have. If you can access this place, use what you experience to go deeper and deeper into it and discover it has no bounds!

If we all spend some time connecting with this place inside, instead of reflecting on the things in our lives that provide a catalyst for a short lived and superficial version of this deeper well inside, we would all have a lot more to be grateful for. The people in our lives would feel that inward experience and benefit from being connected to us in a whole new way.

So this holiday I plan to spend some time quietly with my Self. Looking for the gratitude in my own heart ad sharing that experience with everyone I encounter not through some external exchange, but by really being with them openly and honestly with great appreciation and love.

Happy Thanksgiving <3

Hi All, sorry for the Blog delay As most of you know by now I’m expecting our first child and have been wriggling around this blog entry in my mind since we found out in May...

Here is the West, yoga has been reduced to a series of exercises to help you fit into your “skinny jeans," or just as unfortunately it takes the opposite hike over to New Age Spirituality. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have found a tradition with a lineage and a living teacher that roots itself in history and adapts the teachings to stay relevant, practical, and relatable in my own life.

I started yoga like so many people, as a physical disciple to keep my body healthy and strong. My mother meditated but I saw no connection between the two. No one ever taught me that yoga could be a deeper experience than a set of postures to build strength and flexibility. I practiced yoga this way… and here I find it difficult to even type the word “yoga”...for nearly 12 years. It took me that long to feel safe and confident enough to step foot into a yoga studio... and the experience was unfortunate. The instructor was well-meaning, but tactless and I was singled out in nearly every pose. But I kept doing yoga with the studio and ultimately learned a LOT. It took me another 5 years before I was ready to admit that I wanted to teach yoga.

I looked for a program in Chicago and was really disappointed with what I found. So I did an internet search and found Shoshoni Yoga Retreat and signed up immediately. It never occurred to me that I was going to live in Ashram and that meant I would be exposed to far more than a good work-out. I arrived (with my mom who decided to certify too)! And was transformed. Someday I will write a blog series about that time becoming a true yogini... but today I want to share something else.

Understanding my practice to be beyond the physical, ultimately led to physical yoga practice becoming the means through which I stabilized and balanced my nervous system and mind and prepared for the true rigors of a dedicated Meditation practice.

Now when I talk about meditation I know what most people are thinking...sitting for about 15 minutes a day and trying to clear out my mind, or reflecting on the things that are troubling me....But that isn’t the kind of practice I have learned. I meditate for 90 minutes every morning and 30 minutes minimum at night. I do practices that have been proved through their use over thousands of years. I cultivate the skill to transform the experience of my life into deep spiritual growth by working energetically to dissipate the tensions that bind me. I do these practices so that I can bee a better more compassionate and generous person in my practical day to day life. I am a meditator. My physical Yoga practice is an opportunity to continue to develop the vehicle I will use for meditation. I am a meditator.

So now I must say, thank God!

When I became pregnant, I was immediately thrilled beyond belief but after about three days I started to be sick. REALLY sick. So sick that I have been on bed-rest, have had three emergency room visits, and have been tested and suggested to have had every complication possible... even miscarriage. Through all of this, my regular daily practice (which I have done without fail for six years) has been severely interrupted. My physical practice which I have done for 24 years hit a stand still.

The challenge of finding new space inside myself to practice in a different way and to cultivate patience and creativity in my approach has been priceless. The resulting practice has been AMAZING! I meditate with clarity and compassion and am conscious in my physical practice in an entirely new way. This challenge has helped me understand how to be a yogini in ways I never could have imagined.

In January when I hold my perfect baby boy and sing him to sleep with mantras passed down through generations of realized masters I will be sharing the gifts of centered attention and open heartedness I am so blessed to have been the recipient of.

Om Namah Shivaya!

When I’m training new instructors, I talk a lot about physical adjustments. I think that a teacher who can provide a useful and appropriate touch at just the right moment can invite an entirely new understanding in a student’s practice. I have often seen kinesthetic learners left behind, feeling confused, leaving instructors frustrated by why the student “won’t listen” to them or do what they’re showing them how to do. There is really little understanding of what that style of learner needs, and while self-reflection can be a useful tool for them, nothing replaces a well timed touch.

That said, I also am a huge advocate of the student’s right to refuse to be adjusted for any reason. Sometimes students just want to focus the mind and find touch distracting, or maybe there’s an experience in their past that makes touch challenging for them. Maybe they’re injured and nervous, or have had a negative experience with physical adjustments in the past. The reasons for not wanting to be touched are as many as there are students in the world, and days in a week. As instructors, we need to make room for this.

So, how did I figure this one out? Well, unfortunately the hard way...

I was a relatively new teacher teaching some years ago in a health club with a group of students I knew well, aside from one new woman. She was very friendly and outgoing with me and seemed very comfortable with the group. So towards the end of the class, I decided to do a simple partners yoga exercise. It wasn’t a “big pose” or a very “handsy” assist, and it seemed like a nice community builder. So I watched my class excitedly partner off until I noticed that one man and this new woman were on opposite sides of the room and still looking for partners. I took a moment and suggested that they work together. The woman said in a pretty relaxed way, “Well, I have an injury so I would prefer an alternative.” I said, no problem and partnered with the man myself while giving her a simple version of the pose to do on her own. The interaction was fine and she also seemed totally at ease with the exchange. After class my students were asking a few questions as they departed and I noticed she was sort of hanging out, waiting for me. She waited until everyone had left and approached me apologizing for not wanting to do the partner pose. She began to tear up and proceeded to tell me that she wasn’t comfortable being touched, especially by a man, as she had been attacked recently and sexually assaulted. I pulled myself together, and did my best to really help her feel supported. But this experience was a huge lesson for me about how I worked with touch, whether my own or as partner work, in a yoga class.

So I started to implement various tools for making it normal and comfortable to refuse touch in my classes. Whenever I teach, even with students that I have worked with before, (because every day is different) I take the opportunity when they are in their first devotional/child’s pose to ask permission and suggest that if they would prefer not to be adjusted for any reason today, just raise a hand. I will see them and be happy to skip over them while adjusting. There are a myriad of ways to get permission I just find that any private exchange between each of them and myself really helps us all get on the same page. I ask every time I start a class (just once, so it doesn’t become a whole new tension) and have only very rarely had anyone prefer not to be touched. But I keep asking.

Then this week after a class at a local gym a student approached me and told me somewhat emotionally “ I just wanted you to know that even though I never raise my hand and ask not to be adjusted, what it means to me that you ask. It completely changes the way I receive your touch and the quality of that interaction. I just thought that you should know that I feel so taken care of and respected every time you ask.” She became tearful and I welled with gratitude. I was amazed that even a student whom I had been adjusting for some time now, noticed this care and attention as she was moved nearly to tears by her own sense of being respected.

So the point? Never take it for granted. Any of it. And remember, it’s about your student’s experience not about you or your agenda for their growth.

Namaste (I mean it ),
Bhakti

Tags: Teachers, Physical Adjustments, Students

In a lunge (high or low) there are a few key principles of alignment that you’ll want to keep an eye on.

• Remember to align your front knee directly over the center of that ankle to protect the integrity of the patella-femoral joint. When the knee travels beyond the ankle the patella, or kneecap receives the burden of your weight. This joint is a lever that assists in knee flexion/extension but is not designed to bare weight.
• Also make sure the knee doesn’t splay out to the right of left. Often this is a sign of weakness in the VMO (Vastus Medialis Oblique) and indicates a need for inner thigh engagement.
• Watch the toes. Are they gripping? If so, more core support is needed to help the body support the pose from the inside out as opposed to the extremities tryintg to stabilize your strucure..
• Try to keep the midline engaged. Without moving your feet draw the front foot and back foot (or knee in low lunge) towards each other as if you were going to pull them together. This engages the pelvis floor and gives core support to the pose.
• Drop into the lunge, but only so far. Once you have the flexibility to drop into the lunge creating a straight line from the front knee to the back foot (or knee in low lunge) stop there. At that point you will stop focusing on the “stretch” and start engaging the legs more, finding supportive synergist muscle strength.
• If you’re in the low lunge and wanting more stretch, push the back shin and top of foot into the floor to engage the iliopsoas and receive a greater stretch.

Have fun and get those legs strong!

Well, it’s officially spring! The temperature is slowly on the rise and it’s raining...a lot, and most people are frankly a little nuts, LOL! Spring seems to bring with it a sense of off-centered-ness. This is a season where we can virtually feel ourselves trying to break through the sludge of the winter months and be reborn into the sunshine of summer. It’s a time of transition and change and these are two things that we, as human beings, can’t always seem to maneuver with clarity or with much insight into our own condition. This week in my classes I’ve been really focusing on the tools of Yoga as a holistic practice, so that we may observe what Pantanjali states in the Yoga Sutras is the primary goal of all forms of Yoga, “Stilling the thought waves of the mind.” I invite you to use your time on the mat with mantra and mental focus to train the mind to stabilize and remain clear through all the transitions ahead....I will be doing the same