Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice

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

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    September Newsletter (web version of e-newsletter)

    ByElizabeth

    Dear  Friends,

    Even in this hot, dry week, three weeks before the formal start of autumn, the harbingers of seasonal change are coming.  When I sit to meditate in the morning, it is still not quite light out, the scent of the leaves starting to change is evident when the wind blows, apples and winter squash are gradually replacing the summer fruits at the fresh farm market.

    Fall tends to be a busy time of year for us as a culture, and my calendar is chock full with work, workshops, plans to visit friends and family, volunteer work, and the offerings of our great city, but it is always important to take time to pause and enjoy the sweetness of being.  It is just when things are at their busiest, that it is most important to carve out the time for some yoga.  I’ll be doing lotsof my own study and practice to make more joyous offerings for you.

    William Penn House on Tuesday nights continues to be a welcome haven for regulars of all levels and more occasional visitors.  Drop in and join us any time.  More info on my website at www.rosegardenyoga.com.

    My Willow Street classes of the Fall session start on Saturday, September 25th — flow (level 2+) at 8:45 am and gentle/therapeutics at noon in Takoma Park.  It is always great to register for the full session to help get the benefits of the regularity of class every week, but drop ins are always welcome.

    If you have been curious about the gentle/therapeutics class or have friends you want to introduce to the class, please join me at noon on Saturday, September 18th, when the class is offered as part of Willow Street’s free class week.  More information about free class week and the regular session and workshops are available on-line at www.willowstreetyoga.com.

    Mark your calendars for upcoming workshops:  Hanumanasana:  Nemesis No More, Saturday, October 16th and Thanksgiving Day Fundraiser for Oxfam, both at Willow Street Yoga, Takoma Park.

    Hope to see you soon in person and virtually with the blog (it’s now way easier to subscribe to the blog; just a few clicks from the home page) and on Facebook.  As always, feel free to email me with any questions, comments, or just to connect.

    Peace and light,

    Elizabeth

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    What If?–Part II

    ByElizabeth

    Yesterday I asked about setting an intention to be blissful in every thing we do for a day. Having the intention is a good start (I might not even have thought of such an intention without my yoga practice). What I really want is to be able to manifest that intention. For me, I know that it is important for me to live more consciously and with more subtle discrimination (viveka) if I am to come close to living such intention.
    A rare few live in bliss without effort. For the rest of us, that is why we have the practices. So we can practice moving into and resting in bliss.

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    What If? (an Invitation)

    ByElizabeth

    What if for a whole day you did every single thing with the intention of becoming blissful? If you have them, taking care of pets or kids or elders? Every thing that you did at work? How you went from one place to another? Every morsel of food and drink you selected, prepared, and ate? All your errands? Your getting dressed and undressed? Your correspondence?

    Would you even need to “practice yoga” by doing postures or meditating if you were living yoga–fully unifying the day to day with the conscious intention of experiencing the full bliss of consciousness at every moment?

    Why not try it for a day and see what happens? And then let us know.

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    Another Storm Passes Without Any Rain Falling Inside the Beltway

    ByElizabeth

    What’s a gardener and concerned for the trees and the health of the planet citizen to do?  I’ve got enough water in the rain barrel to water the vegetables and herbs once or twice, but what impact does that really have?  At work, people were grumbling because it was cloudy.  They seemed shocked when I advised them that we are an inch under normal rainfall for August and have a fairly significant deficit for the summer despite the July rains.

    Wouldn’t it be great if we could move some of the flood waters that have fallen only a couple hundred miles away to irrigate our fields without disrupting our eco-system?  Part of me just wants not to know about the consequences of global climate change, but it is hard not to notice that all the weather patterns I used to know and understand do not seem to apply quite the same way anymore.  What do we do when the systems and practices we have in place for our ease, comfort, well-being, and understood day-to-day peace of mind are disrupted?

    Yoga will not fix the big outer problems, but it can provide us with the steadiness and ease needed to stay present and be flexible in the face of crisis, upheaval, or disease.  It can also provide insight into how we can live in better alignment.  In the meantime, I am practicing gratitude.  I know how blessed I am that, so far, the wild upheavals I read about in the news have not kept me from all the food and comfort that a person could possibly want.  And I pay attention, because to be ignorant ultimately never serves ourselves or others.

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    What a Good Murder Mystery Can Teach Us About Sadhana

    ByElizabeth

    Surely that’s what life was all about?  Opening doors and peering through them–perhaps even finding the rose gardens there… (Colin Dexter, The Dead of Jericho)

    The good murder mysteries — the ones that teach much about human nature and do not dwell graphically on gore and violence — can teach us much about the power of sadhana (yoga practice).  The best mysteries are ones in which the protagonist teaches us by his or her investigation into the mystery that with careful, steady discipline, the application of well-developed technique and study, consistent effort, and an openness to trust intuition tempered by discrimination, we can reveal to ourselves the truth of the matter.  The truth revealed is not just the identity, means, and motive of the murderer (mystery solved), but the knowledge of the extraordinariness of human being in all of its manifestations, both good and evil.

  • Breathing Exercises to Aid Sleep

    ByElizabeth

    A regular brought a friend to this week’s group house practice.  When I asked whether there was anything about her health or practice I should know to enhance her experience in the class, she advised me that she had been having trouble sleeping for the past few months in response to an event in her life.  I did not ask about the event, but offered some of my favorite practices when I am not easily falling asleep:

    1.  gentle ujayi breathing with the exhale twice the length of the inhale.  We were sitting up, but this is great to do in vipariti karani (legs up the wall pose).

    2.  chandra bhedana (the moon breath).  This is similar to nadi shodana (alternate nostril breathing) except that for every breath, the inhale is through the left (ida or chandra nostril and the exhale through the right (pinga or surya) nostril.

    3.  This one I learned from work place yoga teacher Kathy Rowley with whom I took lunch time classes at the Department of Labor for a couple of years.  I am not sure I remember it exactly the way she taught it, but it works:

    Start lying on one side.  Take sixteen deep breaths, keeping count of the breaths, with the exhales longer than the inhales.  Quietly roll to your other side and take another sixteen breaths.  Continue switching sides, slowly and without disturbing growing sleepiness, each set of two doubling the number of breaths you take.  After 16 on both sides, then 32 on both sides, then 64, and so on (though so on is unlikely).  Let the breaths get slower and deeper and when you get to the point where it does not seem right to switch sides, then you let yourself sink into deep relaxed sleep.

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    A Key to a Steady Home Practice (Letting Go of Preconceived Notions)

    ByElizabeth

    One of the things most likely to keep us from having a steady home practice (whether asana or meditation or both) is being unable to live up to our own expectations or preconceived notions of what is a proper or good home practice.  If we think that we need to do a certain amount for an established length of time or that we have to feel fit enough to do a particular range or poses than inevitably we will be challenged in practicing regularly in a busy life.

    It is good to have a set time and place for our practice and to try and practice for a length of time that will foster the growth and balance in ourselves that we seek from our practice.  To stay steady, though, we have to be flexible with our expectations.  When we are sick or injured or exhausted, it will be appropriate to do restoratives or a gentle practice rather than a more vigorous one, even if we are accustomed to doing more advanced asana.  If we are pressed for time, even if we like to spend 45 minutes to an hour in the morning, perhaps we will do 25 minutes.  If we usually meditate in a special place in the house, but we have to leave for the airport at 6am, we can find a quiet moment to breathe for three minutes before we leave the house and then meditate on the plane.

    This morning, for example, I knew that the only opportunity to have a walk would be early morning because the electricians are coming for more work towards installing the solar panels.  Having a walk on days I am working at home is critical for my ability to sit at my desk and concentrate.  Instead of doing my usual 45-60 minutes of practice, which gives me time for some asana and pranayama before sitting for meditation followed by savasana, I chose to sit for 25 minutes and then go for a walk.  I will practice more this evening when I am off work.

    Once we give ourselves permission to be flexible about how much to practice and what, then it will be easier to stick to practicing.  I think it is far more important to practice several times a week than to have a practice that is thorough and “by the book” but is only done sporadically.  What are your challenges in developing a steady practice?  If you have a steady practice, what has helped you stick to it?  Have your expectations about what a practice should be interfered with your practicing?

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    “Inspiration Cards”

    ByElizabeth

    I adore having a library and will rarely say no to a philosophy text or a book about anatomy, therapeutics, or yoga methodology.  I am less interested in “self help” types of books or gadgets.  Every once and a while though, I come across something that truly supports my practice and my teaching.  When I first went to Inner Harmony to study with John Friend in mid-2003, there was an altar in the corner of the practice room, just at the entrance.  On the altar was a set of cards (a little smaller than 2″x2″).  Each card had a word in English, the devanagari, and the sanskrit of the word transliterated into our alphabet.  Following the lead of others who had been to Inner Harmony for previous retreats, at the beginning of the day, I would select a card and think about how the word on the card might inform my practice and intention.

    At that time, I was first starting to use Anusara’s “heart-oriented posturing language,” using a theme for class that was designed to lead the students into a deeper place in their hearts through their asana practice, and I found that the cards were an excellent source of inspiration.

    Even though I first bought the cards in 2003 to serve as a basic class preparation aid, I have continued to use them regularly for my own practice and contemplation.  Often, the word that appears resonates with something that is of immediate concern.  The day after Becky (my beloved cat who lived to be 21) left her body last year, I went to the set of cards, which I’d not used in a couple of months.  The card that I selected at random (like picking a card from a deck when someone is showing you card tricks) was moksha — liberation, and in classic yoga, literally liberation from the body.  I was moved to tears.

    This summer, with myself and my students, we have been working on manifesting intention.  As I’ve blogged about previously, I invited us to think about an intention.  Whether an intention is something basic with the body or mind or something more universal, whenever we seek to manifest an intention, ultimately it is because we want to be more blissful, more open, and more at peace with ourselves and others.  The question becomes how do we use our practice both to discover an intention and to seek to make it manifest.  To help me with the contemplation of this question, I have gone again to the cards as a source of inspiration.  This week, the card that turned itself up was racanatmakata — creativity.  “Perfect,” I thought, when I saw the word.  Creativity is a human reflection of the wild, pulsing, diverse and ever-extraordinary dance of all being.  When we open to our creative impulse to allow things to unfold, we can witness the fullest range of possibilities and the variety of paths to manifestation.