I just read this morning the New York Times Magazine piece How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body  (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/how-yoga-can-wreck-your-body.html?_r=1) and all the comments.  If the comments had still been open, this is how I would have responded: 

Dear Editor:

First, it is amazing to me that a respected medium like the New York Times Magazine would illustrate its article with photographs showing people performing unsafe, irresponsible postures and calling them yoga.  Second, although there is no doubt that people can injure themselves practicing yoga, there is not more risk incurred than in many sports, or frankly, in driving a car or crossing the street to visit your doctor.  Sure sensationalism sells, but a much more balanced comparison would have been to show the relatively small number of emergency room visits resulting from a yoga 'accident' in relation to those incurred running marathons, biking, or indeed, in the hospital environment. 

Life is risk.  The benefits of investing in a mind-body discipline like yoga (or Tai Chi or pilates) vastly outweigh the chance of injury. Any yoga instructor worth his/her calling (and certification) will remind students to practice safely, within the students' ability, degree of fitness and flexibility.  Yoga is not for everybody or every body.  To my students, I say this: if you are ever in a class where you are being pushed to perform postures that feel wrong to you, simply get up, roll up your mat and walk out.  That simple act of self-respect is the best yoga (union of mind, body and spirit) lesson you'll ever get. 

Yoga is great for kids and it makes you feel like one, even if that wasn't exactly in your lesson plan! In fact, when I started a new class for K-5 at the Weiss School, I quickly realized that it was best to be flexible about the lesson plan and go with the flow.  I always tell my adult students that yoga is not competitive.  Well, try that with children!  They love nothing more than to show you what they can do and challenge each other to contests about who can hold a particular pose the longest.  They love to fall out of a pose yelling 'timber!' and find ways to move within poses.  So far, we have done posture flows to reggae, Jason Mraz and Black Eyed Peas. They also like Krishna Das' chanting and classical music.  We had three periods of silence: at the beginning of the class, during one long Warrior sequence requiring concentration, and during corpse pose when I challenged them to be the most relaxed, heavy bodies they can be.  

As a teacher, I am learning...

I really have to thank yogi and chant artist, David Newman (Durga Das) for my introduction to  Kula Yoga Shala in Jupiter.  If he hadn't chosen it for a recent performance venue, I might not have found my way to this dedicated yoga studio, tucked behind corporate office space on Toney Penna.  As soon as I made my way along the stepping stones through a lovely garden and into the beautiful boutique space, I felt at home.  It was almost as if I had traveled back in time and space to the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health where I took my yoga teacher training and began the transformation from promotional/speech writer to yoga teacher. 

A few weeks later, I took a Kundalini class at KYS with Kim Depasquale and met founder and ceo, Scott Feinberg.  He was interested in adding a Kripalu class and before we long we were sitting down to talk about my joining the community.  On October 15, I start teaching a 90-minute Kripalu class at Kula Yoga Shala, Wednesdays 1-2:30 pm.  Like all my classes, this will welcome all levels, with warm ups and postures accessible to all, and moderate challenges for the more experienced yogi.  Kripalu Yoga, as I have written elsewhere in these pages, is about finding your inner yoga teacher guided by the wisdom of your own body and your experience within the context of the Kripalu method: meditation, pranayama (breathwork), warm ups and posture sequencing.  

Kula Yoga Shala is an unusual business model in that all classes are supported by donation.  The key to a sustainable business based on donations is a strong community of instructors and students.  This is what we are all working to build at Kula Yoga Shala.  Teachers offer their unconditional best to all who come to their classes; students offer fair compensation for the value they are receiving from the class.  I'll let Scott tell you more about how this works. 

You'll still be able to find me at my Tuesday and Thursday schedule at Loggerhead Fitness in Juno Beach.  I hope you will also join me and a talented group of yoga teachers at Kula Yoga Shala.  

Starting tomorrow, I pledge to take as many yoga classes as I can during the month of June as part of Karma Krew's Peace by Peace campaign.  When you sponsor me, you help me improve my skills as a yoga teacher and the money goes to raising the awareness of yoga in under-served populations like children in crisis, the incarcerated, women's shelters, and the like.

  

Thanks for making a difference in our world! 

The debate about whether or not Sanskrit names for yoga postures are necessary in the classroom heated up lately with the New York Times item on a popular teacher (and former model) named Tara Stiles.  She doesn't.  In fact, Ms Stiles prefers to focus on the physical aspects of yoga and leaves what many teachers feel is the essential spiritual core of the practice out of the picture entirely.   Apparently, students who are filling her New York City classes agree with her approach. While yoga was originally developed about 5,000 years ago to prepare one for meditation, it has -- like all worthwhile teachings must -- mutated into a practice for people living 21st century lives with stresses unknown in the past.  Above all, yoga has proven itself flexible, like the people who practice it regularly.  Sanskrit, chanting, incense, can turn many a class into a quasi-religious retreat.  Whatever makes yoga more accessible to more people belongs in the mix.     

I've been teaching Kripalu Yoga for nearly 13 years, and my definition of what it is and how it differs from other schools keeps changing.  Last night at dinner with friends, I heard myself say that it is a customized approach where the student is in charge with the instructor playing more of a partner role.  Close, but I had to hand it to Devarshi Steven Hartman, Dean of the Kripalu School of Yoga for really getting to the essence.    

“Our methodology is inquiry-based, which means that a person’s teacher is their own body, their own experience of the asana, the way their breath moves, how micro-movements change the pose.  It’s an empowering approach.  The Kripalu approach to yoga awakens people to their own yoga.  It doesn’t focus on the ‘right’ way to do something.  He's quoted in the most recent catalog.  To get your copy, visit www.kripalu.org.

The Dalai Lama is baffled by the Western concept of low self-esteem.  It does not exist in the Tibetan Buddhist culture, and yet it is the root of much mental anguish here in the weathy nations of the West.  It may be that self-esteem is a by-product of a competitive, upwardly striving culture where we are appreciated only for what we achieve or produce, rathen than for who we are.    Says Marianne Williamson: Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we have learned here. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts.

A regular practice of yoga is one of the ways back to our essential nature, to the love we are born with.  We don't have to be 'good' at it because we already are good at being human. In my classes, I invite students to let go of body concept, who is doing what around them and any preconceived notions of what they 'should' be doing there or getting out of their practice. We focus on the moment, accepting what manifests, the possibility of change and growth. We are relearning, step by step, to love ourselves once again.

Thanks to our friend, JoAnn Young for passing along this wonderful You Tube.  Just try to keep a straight face!

Laughter Yoga Part II 

Last weekend, Howard and I became Certified Laughter Yoga Leaders in a two-day workshop in Miami led by Sebastien Gendry, the founder/director of the American School of Laughter Yoga.  If anyone had told me I could sit in a circle with a group of strangers and laugh for no reason at all, I would have ... well, laughed at the very idea.  But that is exactly what we did. 

I have a theory about how this works that isn't exactly on the curriculum, and it has to do with language and/or sound linked to gesture.  Our brains are crammed fully of memories and sense impressions we aren't even aware of until something calls it up, e.g. Proust's Madeline.  So just hearing Ho-Ho-Ha-Ha-Ha repeated with enthusiasm and forcing your face into a smile can trigger the laugh response.  After that, you're off and running.  Of course, it doesn't hurt that everyone around you is doing the same thing, because as you know, laughter is contagious among social animals like us.   

If this intrigues you, here's an opportunity: Next Wednesday and every Wednesday thereafter at 7:30 am, come join the new Laughter Club at Jupiter Beach, just South of the fishing pier.  We'll breathe, clap and laugh together for about 30 minutes.  Then, we'll probably take a walk or swim, and you're welcome to join us.  No charge.  Laughter Clubs, thousands of them in some 50 countries, are all free as a community service.  Making the world a better place one guffaw at a time?  

Facebook keeps delivering old friends to my virtual door, and sometimes they come bearing gifts like this one: Meditation Oasis (Thanks, Victoria Fann!).  Funny thing is -- since I am both practitioner and teacher of Kripalu Yoga -- I've yet to make meditation a part of my day athough given the opportunity, e.g. in a group, I love it!  So, the seed has been planted and just needs some watering.  When I'm driving up to my class at Re-Flexions (Gold's Gym in Jupiter), I often pop into Stephen Cope's CD from his book The Wisdom of Yoga and listen to him read two chapters about working with new meditators.  In Chapter One, he talks about the Noble Failure, that is, the realization that we cannot still the mind or fix it on an object, in this case, the breath, for more than a nanosecond.  But apparently, with diligent practice, we discover that we can start to witness 'puppy mind' if only for a moment at a time.  I recommend both the book and the website for those of you, like me, who really want to learn how to meditate.  

I consider myself musical although I've never really mastered a musical instrument despite lessons in piano (as a child), once owning and fooling around with a guitar (as a young mother), and taking some voice lessons a few years ago.  I'm certainly musical by association in the sense that my spouse plays piano well, even professionally sometimes, and so I'm around music a lot.  His partner comes over and they rehearse stuff, just for fun and so they will be ready for the next gig that comes up.  And I like to sing, too, despite a rather narrow range.  Now I've decided to learn the electric bass so I can accompany him and his partner. 

What does this have to do with yoga?  More than meets the eye.  For one thing, the way I use my yoga practice is to teach myself to be present for everything that comes along and accept it as it is.  Moment to moment presence, even with limited success, is both humbling and exhilarating.  Learning more challenging yoga postures can fulfill me in this way, and I find some of that presence in learning to play a new instrument: it's the now, and very powerful for that reason (as Eckhardt Tolle wrote).  I find that it's impossible to be distracted while making music, and getting better at it will probably only enhance that focus.   You're reading notes, you're attempting to produce melody and rhythm, you have to pay attention to the way you use your hands, how you hold the instrument, the posture you assume in relationship to the instrument;  everything happens at once.  After enough practice, this all becomes second nature.  Not unlike the fluidity with which more adept yogis can flow into several variations of surya namaskar without having to think.  In either case, you are connecting to a pattern or rhythm embedded in the universe, just waiting to be  discovered ... by you.  That makes it worthwhile, in and of itself.

Students are often surprised by the instruction to notice, notice breath, notice sensation, notice thoughts.  But the act of noticing is more powerful than most of us imagine, even for people with a mature spiritual practice of one sort or another.  For me, noticing is a way of pausing, stepping back or out of the stream of one thing following another that makes up life, and appreciating each moment as it happens. 

When you notice your breath, you can get a good reading of your emotional state and, by changing your breath, deepening and slowing it down, for example, you change your emotions.  Try this the next time you get angry or upset.  

Noticing sensations in the body is rewarding in and of itself because it helps you appreciate what an amazingly complex organism you are, how respiration, digestion, the behavior of hormones, are happening simultaneously with no help from you.  And with some practice in noticing, you may also develop a refined sense of when something is not quite right, and address and possibly prevent it from developing into a more obvious symptom.  

Noticing thoughts is the first step in learning how to disidentify with them, possibly the most important spiritual practice we humans can adopt.  In noticing how our minds work, what kinds of things come up all the time, we begin to free ourselves from conditioned and habitual patterns of consciousness.  We become calmer, certainly, but also more aware, clearer, creative, kinder, more loving, and more in touch with our true self.  

Yoga, says Patanjali, author of the yoga sutra, is to "still the patterns of consciousness."  All schools of meditation aim at the same goal.  Noticing is a practice in and of itself, and you don't need a meditation cushion or special place and time to do it.  It's available right now.     

In August, my spouse and I were at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health for a weekend.  We've come to think of Kripalu as a spiritual home, a place where we can let it all hang out, do lots of yoga with great teachers, learn some new practices, meditate, dance, and just be quiet together.  But on that weekend, we were in for a surprise, when in the middle of our own workshop on deep relaxation, we heard repeated peals of infectious laughter from the next room.

Turns out we were next door to a workshop on Laughter Yoga, a technique developed in 1995 by Dr. Madan Kataria and his wife, Madhuri Kataria.  The idea arose from an article written by Dr. Kataria on the health benefits of llaughgter.  He started the first Laughter Yoga Club in Mumbai, India.  Although the first club disbanded, Dr. Kataria continued his research and that simulated laughter provides the same benefits -- releasing chemicals that reduce stress and lower blood pressure -- as spontaneous laughter.  There are now 6,000 Laughter Yoga Clubs worldwide in 60 countries. Check out this You Tube video with John Cleese and see if you can keep a straight face.

face

Shopping for some mala beads -- all the better to do Mantra Meditation -- I stumbled on YogaBasics and immediately signed up for the free membership and newsletter.  High production values and lots of free stuff, even at the Basic membership level.  Particularly like the sequencing of postures accompanied by photographs.  Check it out and let me know what you think. 

(BTW, I bought rosewood malas, an 108 strand.  Last night, I led a mantra meditation for the first time, and my Spiritual Circle loved it.  Some of us went somewhere we were not eager to return from.  Hmmm.)

• A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.

• An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
  

• A loss of interest in judging other people.

• A loss of interest in judging self.
  

• A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
  

• A loss of interest in conflict.

• A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom.)
  

• Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
  

• Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
  

• Frequent attacks of smiling.
  

• An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
  

• An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as an uncontrollable urge to extend it.

I'm probably not the only person who is thinking about living more frugally and simply these days.  It feels like the yogic thing to do to respond to unfolding realities.  So, here's an item about stuff from a cool blog I discovered: On Simplicity

Three Things You Bought (or Received) and Never Use

High on my list are books about yoga that I couldn't resist at the time and have only skimmed.  I have quite a library in case you you're interested.  I am also a sucker for yoga accessories.  Anyone need a slightly used meditation cushion?  Anyway, enjoy the site.  It will make you think.

Fellow Yogis,

Use to be when the going got tough, the tough went shopping.  Today, they're likely to choose yoga to get them through the rough spots of life (see below).  Ancient tool for skillful living as relevant today as ever.  

From The New York Times: Memo to the Uneasy Investor: Be Strong

Brent Kessel, the president of Abacus Wealth Partners, thinks yoga offers some crucial lessons. Mr. Kessel, a money manager and financial planner in Los Angeles who is a longtime yogi himself, noted that most people try to get rid of their fear of the markets through some kind of external action, like selling.

“This is where yoga comes in,” he said. “It’s the practice of breathing through discomfort. You intentionally put your body in postures that are right at the edge of discomfort and then cultivate the ability to stay there. You tend to find it passes if you give it time, but instead we rush to the Internet to trade on our portfolios.”