Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice

Discussion of physical aspects of yoga (on and off the mat)

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    Web Version of Holiday E-Newsletter

    ByElizabeth

    Dear Friends,

    May your inner light shine brightly for yourself and others through the holiday season.  I wish you all much joy and safe travels.  As I get ready to take some time off and celebrate with friends and family–with a little sojourn in New York as part of the plan–I wanted to let you know the schedule to make it easier to plan.

    There are no Willow Street classes for the rest of the year–though a number of my friends and colleagues are offering what look like a fantastic array of workshops at Willow Street from 12/29 to 1/2.  There is William Penn House this coming Tuesday, 12/21 and also 1/4, but not on 12/28.  There will be two special house practices for regular students on Thursday 12/23 and Monday 12/27.  Please email me if you wish to attend.

    Free class week,, which runs from 1/3 to 1/9, starts the new Willow Street session.  I will be offering two classes at Willow Street Takoma Park during free class week:  restoratives on Monday, January 3rd, and gentle/therapeutic on Saturnday, January 9th.

    In addition to continuing the gentle/therapeutics at noon on Saturdays in the Winter Session (registering is great, but drop-ins always welcome), I will be offering the last Saturday of the month from January to March “Relaxing into Optimal Alignment with Anusara Restoratives.”  After a little gentle stretching and self-massage to bring awareness to the breath and body, we will enjoy the exquisite application of Anusara’s Universal Principles of Alignment to restful and supported restorative postures to release old patterns and invite in the new to find greater ease of body and mind. The workshop is designed to be a great practice for all levels; sign up for the full 3-class series and save $15!  The workshop series–or even just one–makes a great holiday gift for yourself or a friend or loved one.

    Also please mark your calendars in advance for “Yoga for Gardeners,” which is for all levels of yogis and gardeners alike.  It will be on Saturday, March 18th. A portion of the profits, as is my tradition, will go to benefit the Youth Garden at the National Arboretum.

    Peace and light,

    Elizabeth

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    Teaching Less to Practice More

    ByElizabeth

    This morning is the last Saturday in the foreseeable future when, even waking up before dawn, I have to cut short my morning practice to get on the metro to go teach. I have a strong memory of a relatively novice teacher telling me, before I started teaching, that she was going to stop teaching indefinitely because she needed more time for her own practice. At times over the years, when my other job was at its most demanding, I would think about that statement. Mostly, though, I have circumscribed other activities to fit in time for work, teaching, and a full practice.

    It came time to admit, though, after nearly two years of steady study with 0Paul Muller-Ortega, which expanded my meditation practice from 25-30 minutes a day, in addition to asana practice and studying, to an hour a day plus additional practices and more studying, that there are not enough hours in a day for all I want to do.

    I have been teaching on Saturday mornings for a number of years now. I love my Saturday morning students and have embraced the discipline of getting to class to teach.

    The energies have shifted. I will still teach my noon class on Saturday and my weeknight classes, but I will have more time for a full practice and perhaps some extra garden time from this shift. I expect that this time to deeper into my own path will bring new energy and light to my teaching. I hope trust I will see my Saturday morning students at other classes and workshops, both when I am teaching and taking class together at Willow Street.

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    Renunciation v. Discrimination (and Celebrating the Holidays)

    ByElizabeth

    A fundamental precept of classical yoga is that of vairagya or renunciation.  The yogin is meant to gradually renounce all of the life of mind and body until he or she transcends them and sees only spirit.  I have been thinking about how renunciation fits in with the holidays and how we, as a society, have come to celebrate them.  As some indulge to excess and all sorts of tinsel trappings, others denounce the excess as taking away from spirit and renounce the whole thing.  A reactive renunciation of the holidays wholesale because they are so commercialized can feel just as harsh as full consumption of the holidays, as marketed on TV, can feel bloated and unhealthy.

    When we approach yoga from a tantric perspective, the practice is not geared towards vairagya. We seek instead to be fully engaged in life, trying to live each moment, taste each bite, breathe each breath, take each step as a way of connecting more deeply to the spirit.  This does not mean reckless indulgence.  It does not mean heedlessly consuming and taking into ourselves that which does not nourish ourselves or which harms other beings or the earth.  Through practice and study, we develop viveka or discrimination, which informs us of what will enhance our lives and lead us towards a place of light and health.

    In the context of the holidays, to make them truly holy days, the tantric observer will not reject holiday celebrations out of hand simply because they have generally become commercialized and often unhealthy.  Rather, he or she will discern ways to celebrate and honor earth, family, friends, and self that are in alignment with nature and optimize the connections among them.  This may mean picking and choosing how and with whom to celebrate, but always with honor and respect.  This is an art that I am working on personally; sometimes it is hard to know where to draw the line, especially if co-workers or family are living in ways that do not feel nourishing for us.  Then the game is to not seem Scrooge-like to those who think that the holidays are about lots of heavy food and shopping, while we are choosing to honor the season in another way.

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    Starry Nights, Tantric Yoga, and Pratyahara

    ByElizabeth

    On my previous visits to Sedona in the past year and a half, the moon has been full or nearly full each time.  Even though there was little light from man-made sources, the bright light of the moon illuminated the sky enough that the stars were outshone.  This trip, though, there was only a sliver of a crescent, and then, no moon at all.  In the absence of the moon, the stars blazed forth in all their glory.

    I recently have been contemplating how the practice of pratyahara (usually translated as withdrawal of the senses) fits into a tantric yoga path. Pratyahara is the fifth limb of the eight-limb path of raja yoga, see Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.   In classical yoga, the aim of yoga practice is to transcend the body-mind, and the eight limbs provide the means for that transcendence.  It fits within that paradigm to withdraw from the senses to move towards meditation.  In tantric yoga, though, the aim is not to transcend or quell the body-mind, but to understand that the body-mind is an emanation of spirit and to live ever more full of the light of spirit. The senses are not something to be transcended.  Yet we still practice pratyahara on the tantric path.Why is that?

    I think that in order to remember our own light, we sometimes need to choose to withdraw from the potentially constant stimulation of our senses; we need to pick darkness and quiet so that we can better discriminate between being delighted and inspired by the senses and being bound by craving stimulation of the senses.  If we get completely bound up in the senses and seek only to get more and more stimulated, we will forget the fullness and light of spirit.  We choose, therefore, at times in our practice, to diminish outer sensory input so that the inner light can shine more brightly.  When we return from the inner light to go back to the senses, we are then better able to appreciate the wonder of what our senses bring to us.  It is not unlike how we get to witness the extraordinary magic of the stars when we take ourselves away from the light of the sun, the moon, and the city.

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    Airport Delay (and “Unreasonable Happiness”)

    ByElizabeth

    I am sitting in Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International airport waiting for the plane that should already be carrying me home to finish being repaired. After having done a full hour of practice this morning in my room, having a last delicious breakfast at the retreat center, and enjoyed the two-hour ride with friends to the airport, I find myself perfectly happy to sit in the airport. I am warm and well-fed. I have bought a novel to read on the plane — Lev Grossman’s “The Magicians” — and put aside a philosophy handout to write. The handout, a translation of the beginning of Abhinavagupta’s “Tantrasara” that was given to us by Paul Muller-Ortega to support our meditation practices, teaches us to seek the power of bliss through the practices, this bliss being true knowledge and true freedom. The more we practice, the more we can draw on this power and abide in a state of true happiness. Paul Muller-Ortega sometimes says that we want to be “unreasonably happy.” As I sit here feeling perfectly content after my weekend of practice and community and watching others in the airport get progressively grumpier with the delay, I feel unreasonably happy. I also feel fully motivated to practice and study ever more deeply so that I can abide ever more steadily and this glorious unreason.

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    Going on An “Advance”

    ByElizabeth

    I am sitting at the airport getting ready to fly to Phoenix. At Sky Harbor International, I will join friends, and we will drive together to Sedona for a weekend of study, meditation and other practice, and companionship.

    On the most recent study call, our teacher Paul Muller-Ortega said that we are not going on a retreat. We are not joining together to get away from things, to escape from our lives. Rather, we are taking an opportunity to deepen and expand our practice to live life more fully. Would it not be more accurate, then, Paul suggested, to think of it as going on an “advance” than on “retreat?”

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    “The Kings of Pastry” (and Reflections on Anusara Certification)

    ByElizabeth

    “It will make you both laugh and cry,” said Josh, who is a long-time neighbor and the proprietor of the newly re-opened West End Cinema, which is currently showing The Kings of Pastry.   “I don’t think I will be crying just because a sugar sculpture breaks,” I responded with some skepticism.  “Let me know afterward,” he said, and there the conversation ended.  I needed to get seated, and he needed to help the next movie-goer.

    What I found loveliest about the film — besides getting to surrender to the delicious sensation of being completely awed by the extraordinary technique exhibited — was that there was no competition in the sense of there being “winners” or “losers.”  All of the finalists — I don’t think that this is a spoiler — could achieve the designation of “master” if they demonstrate their virtuosity as pastry chefs within a short period of time under intense scrutiny.

    The movie, in revealing a little of what it can mean to have the talent, passion, and single-mindedness to seek to be a master of a craft, a livelihood, an art, invited me to reflect on when I have been tested and when I have wanted a certain achievement marked by an outer designation.  Undergraduate and law school were highly competitive; by being ranked, excellence seemed to be prized not as much for how it would enable the students ultimately to be better able to serve society and themselves upon having developed a certain required level of mastery, but more for creating a ranking within that segment of society.  The dance world, for me, also felt strongly competitive.  With injuries early on and having developed the “wrong” body, I could not rise to the competition.

    The support, encouragement, and mentoring of the pastry chefs in The Kings of Pastry — although clearly only a select few were finalists — highlighted for me what it can mean to strive for excellence without having it be structured by win-lose/pass-fail competition; it only makes the world of pastry better if more of the pastry chefs are true masters.  In this regard, watching the movie led me to think about what it was like to work for Anusara yoga teacher certification in contrast to my earlier education.  When I was working for my Anusara certification, the standards for achievement of the “goal” were still very high, but it was not about winning/losing or achieving/failing.  It was a period of intense study, practice, learning, and humbling experiences.  On being certified, I knew that the efforts to be certified were just the beginning.  Part of the reason for being so deeply challenged to be certified, to meet the level of initiation (in Sanskrit diksha), was to see if we would continue studying and practicing at that rate out of love and deep commitment.  It took going through the process and addressing all the old emotions and patterns of reaction and response that came up in the context of being tested to help me to start fully appreciating the difference between being in a competition and seeking the best we can be for ourselves and for others in our work and study.  When I started to have a lived appreciation for the distinction it carried through to all aspects of my relationships in life.

    Without answering them, The Kings of Pastry opened for our own contemplation the questions of what does striving for excellence or mastery mean for the one on the path and for those on the path with him or her?  How does coming face to face with an obstacle when being tested or finding out that one has or has not received the public recognition impact the rest of one’s life, one’s sense of self-worth, and one’s relationships with family and friends?  It was an sweet act of film-making to bring these questions to the viewer’s awareness in a way that is completely engaging and endearing.

    Yes, Josh, I got a little teary-eyed towards the end.

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    “It’s All Good” (and Voltaire’s Candide at the Shakespeare Theater)

    ByElizabeth

    Last night I went to see the revival of the Bernstein musical version of Voltaire’s Candide, now playing at the Shakespeare Theater’s Harmon Hall (discount tickets available), which was absolutely a delight — fantastic staging and direction, luxurious costuming, enthusiastic performances.  Throughout his journey, which is beset with cruelty, hardship, natural disaster, and other mishaps wherever he goes, Candide sings of his tutor’s optimistic advice that “all’s for the best in this best of all possible worlds.”  The application of this philosophy leads to some silly results, including the Monty Python-worthy lyric “it’s a great day for an auto da fe.”

    I have a friend who, after telling me of various life challenges and griefs, inevitably signs off with the phrase “it’s all good,” though I am not sure she believes it.  I thought of her repetition of the phrase “it’s all good,” while I was watching the musical.  Later in Candide’s travels, he encounters a second philosopher scholar who (I’m paraphrasing loosely) contradicts the “it’s all for the best” philosophy of Candide’s tutor by telling Candide to just look around and he will know that things are not in fact always for the best.  A fluffier version of  the debate in the novel, as to whether things are all for the best when there is so much cruelty and devastation, is interwoven into the rest of the play.

    I’ve never had a desire to wear the t-shirt proclaiming that “it’s all good.”  I look around me, and I simply do not believe it.  I do believe wholeheartedly, though, Voltaire’s premise that we have the responsibility to “cultivate our garden.”  As my teachers John Friend and Paul Muller-Ortega espouse, we should “respond from the highest,” regardless of what we experience and encounter.  By having our response make the best of all possible worlds from things that are not evidently for the best, we bring more light into the world, whatever is our world view.  I can only hope that with steady practice of yoga and meditation, I can keep ever truer to these teachings when I am seriously challenged.

  • Happy Thanksgiving (and some self-massage techniques)

    ByElizabeth

    I wish you all a day in which you recognize and celebrate inner and outer abundance.  Show your body how grateful you are for taking you around in this life-time with a few minutes of self massage (and share with your friends and family).

    First, take care of your feet–those of you who are regulars know the routine (sorry no pictures).  Then, with reverence and gratitude for the practices, the earth for supporting you, and what and who brought you to the mat, come into balasana (child’s pose).

    In balasana — you can also do this sitting in a chair at a desk or table; just put your head down the way you did in elementary school — leaving your elbows and forehead resting on the floor or table, bend your elbows so that you can massage your upper back, neck, and head without having to use the muscles you are massaging to massage them.

    Try squeezing the back of your neck.

    Or finding some spots that would benefit from giving gentle pressure and motion.

    Massaging the scalp usually feels good.

    When you are done with the self-massage in child’s pose, come up to vertical to sit on your heels.  Then dig your fingers into your hair or the scalp and squeeze.  This will help get energy flowing and brighten your day.  (Be careful:  doing this too frequently might give you big hair.)