Ahimsa, (non harm-doing) is the first of the yamas, or the ethical rules of yogic practice. Ahimsa is the foundation upon which the rest of the yamas and niyamas are positioned, as well as being the underlying “goal” of practice in general. To do no harm is practically impossible as every action creates affect or karma. So living with purity of intention, compassion and acting in way that benefits and uplifts other beings and our world is considered a good antidote to doing harm by default of living.

Compassion literally means to suffer with. However, there is a line between suffering with, suffering for, and being a doormat. When does empathy become enabling? Where do suffering and self-absorption meet? How do we tend to our needs, the needs of others and the needs of the world at large without being consumed by the tragedy of so much need and so much suffering? All questions that I am pondering and perhaps you are too. I don’t claim to have any answers at all, except that I think the answer lies in the question. If we can we all consistently practice asking ourselves, “What is compassion?” and how we can act with absolute compassion towards ourselves and all beings, then I think we’ll find our way into some working answers in the quite near future.

Do No Harm website is a nice offering to helping us all out with reminders to Do No Harm. I’m rocking one their wristbands and it’s bringing that essential second of contemplation into most moments of my day.

The Do No Harm Message:

We seem to be living in a world that is getting less hospitable every day. Look closely at any endeavor our species has engaged in and it appears we are unaware of the harm we do, we ignore the harm we do, we intentionally do harm for our own gain, or sadly in some cases we do harm for our own pleasure and enjoyment.

Has no one taught us to do no harm?

If we haven’t been taught to do no harm, we see no harm in doing harm. We cause harm and shrug it off. We cause harm and laugh about it. We cause harm and brag about it.

Sadder still, our children bear witness to our actions and never learn to do no harm themselves. Above all else we must teach our children, by example and instruction, this basic moral principle of life.

We must begin to make better choices and treat each other, the other creatures who share this planet with us, and this planet we call home with greater respect and compassion.

We believe that the first and most basic moral law is, “Do no harm.” Because we can feel pain and suffering, we can imagine the pain and suffering of others, and we can act accordingly to minimize the harm we cause.

What does “do no harm” mean? Ultimately it means to give thoughtful consideration to our actions. “Do no harm” simply means to consider how our actions may affect the world we all share, to be compassionate in our dealings with all creatures, and not to thoughtlessly despoil our planet.

Doctors are asked to “first do no harm,” why not lawyers, businessmen, religious leaders and politicians? Why not us? Why not now?

It sounds like a simple idea because it is a simple idea, but it may be effective over the long run. Will “do no harm” solve all the problems in our world? Perhaps not, but this is an effort to decrease the suffering in the world and to increase the kindness.

We hope that “do no harm” becomes that little voice that guides our actions.

And we hope you will join us and spread the message “Do no harm.”

Show everyone you care and use “Do no harm” to sign-off in your correspondence in place of “Best Wishes”, “Yours” or “Regards.”

If you have a web site, be proud of your support and add the words “Do No Harm” to the top of your home page where everyone will see it.

Be bold and creative in thinking of ways to expose as many as possible to the “Do No Harm” message, but please, do no harm in doing so.

It is not necessary to mention the source of the message. This is certainly a case where the message is far more important than the messengers. All we ask is that you practice do no harm and take every opportunity to share the words “do no harm” with others.

If you wish to include this essay or link to the “Do No Harm” web page, please do; or if you wish to change the wording or write your own, that’s equally OK with us. If we are to change our world for the better, we simply must share the “Do No Harm” message with family and friends, with neighbors and our community.

RS: Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is the accessibility of yoga. It’s become an industry and pastime that has an image attached to it that tends to appeal mostly to certain demographics, yet at its heart it’s a practice that could be beneficial to everyone. Beyond all the products attached to it, which really aren’t necessary to own in order to practice, I think that most teachers and studio owners want to make classes appealing and available to everyone without veering too far away from the core principles of yoga philosophy. How do you as a studio owner and proponent of community priced yoga address that?

MS: I kind of see the yoga industry as a reflection of everything else that is going on in society. A few years ago when there was a boom in real estate and the financial industry and everything was becoming commercially marketed, yoga was one of those things. All of a sudden it just exploded and became very popular and there was a lot of money to be made. So the idea of yoga became something that was packaged and marketed and sold to the public in a way that happened to be fairly expensive…

People came to expect certain things in yoga studios; they wanted bamboo floors, a giant buddha statue, a sauna, showers, tea…  And that’s all great. It’s amazing to walk in to your yoga studio and feel like you’re on retreat or something, but then essentially the studio is pricing for a lot more than just the classes, and that price tag will exclude a lot of the community and in some ways I think the image of it all moves away from the essential purpose of the practice in the first place. I had dreamed of opening a low-cost studio for years, sans all the marketability and the stuff that came with it.

My original intention was to open a studio in Baltimore, or on the east coast in more needy, more impoverished cities and to make it accessible to people of color, transgendered people, spanish-speaking communities and the segments of the society that definitely were not being served by the popular model of yoga studios at that time. I carried around that vision for years and I asked people to participate with me and lots of people were supportive but no one really wanted to get into it. Then I did my teacher training at Yoga Pearl and when I finished I just didn’t know where I wanted to be or where I wanted to teach. I personally have felt like an outsider in many studios for whatever reason, I’ve had a pretty colorful past… And so I carried that with me and I never quite felt a sense of belonging, but I was looking for it.

One day I was walking along with a friend and I said “I’m just gonna do it, I’m just going to open a studio.” I found a space on Alberta (street) and luckily the landlord was a hippy who didn’t care if I didn’t know a thing about business, and didn’t make me pay a security deposit and just let me move in, and that’s how we came to be. I mean I knew nothing about making it work, I just knew what I wanted to charge and who I wanted to serve and I was extraordinarily idealistic, I thought everyone was going to really appreciate what I was doing, even the other yoga studios I thought would really appreciate it, and then I came to realize that was not the case, because it’s threatening. You know other studios have worked really hard to build their client base and then I came in offering yoga at half their price, and there was this fear that I would take the students. But actually that didn’t happen and my original intention did happen- the people that previously were unable to take classes came, there were artists and musicians and minorities and all these people who also hadn’t felt like they belonged in other studios and that’s not to say that’s right or wrong, but that’s just the way it was… and we’ve created our own little space and now there are lots of people who say “I feel like this is home for me, I really feel like I belong here. I can walk in here and feel like this is my place.” so I’ve done my purpose i guess.

RS: How did you start to practice yoga?

MS: I had spent most of my twenties severely depressed and extraordinarily angry and I started practicing because my friend who had been struggling with an addiction for a long time had gone to a retreat and had learned some yoga. She came back and she told me about it and kept saying “You should really do this.” Finally I found this $5 drop-in studio and I started going there. I was naturally flexible and I found it really easy right away so when I began I was very competitive with myself, and for maybe the first three years I was pretty much focused on the poses and trying to perfect them.

After I began to practice I noticed that I wasn’t as reactive to things, I wasn’t as depressed or having as many severe depressive episodes and I felt like I could get some distance between my myself and what was going on for me emotionally. It just kind of lessoned what was going on at that time which was a lot of depression, anxiety… It wasn’t all better, but it was definitely more manageable than it had been before and it wasn’t consuming me anymore. For the first few years I was just there, or I thought I was just there to exercise. I really wasn’t even doing anything else at the time, I wasn’t studying philosophy or meditating. I don’t think I even understood the breathing for a few years, I was just doing the asana and I was there for exercise and to perfect poses. But the other benefits came anyway and I remember that when I started doing it all the time I started telling everyone about it. It was such a grounding influence in my life.

Three years later I moved to Portland I was exposed to a lot of different teachers and teaching styles, but even before that that I was noticing other kinds of changes. I was more capable of dealing with stress and I became calmer, less angry and less depressed. None of that happened because I was making any attempt to do any of it, it just came from practicing.

RS: How has being a teacher or a studio owner affected your practice?

MS: Simply studying so much and taking a path that requires so much self-study has really transformed the way I practice and teach. Having the opportunity to look at students bodies and to observe them… You know sometimes there are have things about ourselves that we have a hard time admitting or seeing, but when we see it in someone else then we can say, “Hey wait a second, that feels really familiar, I can relate to that.” And so we learn a lot about ourselves watching other people. I’ve learned a lot about myself and my practice from my students.
Being a studio owner has been interesting in that I have learned what I value in teachers and what I admire, and I have adopted a lot of that in my own practice.

RS: What about the aspect of karma yoga (selfless service), do you feel that there is an element of that with the studio?

MS: Oh yeah! I didn’t get paid for a year and a half! and even now we’re not really bringing that much in. But I’m thrilled every day that we’re doing it. I’m so happy to be in this space, I’m so happy to feel like I’ve found some balance between financially supporting myself and staying true to my original intention and I feel like I’ve stayed on track and it’s been amazing. I feel really lucky.

RS: What was your vision for the future of People’s Yoga?

MS: I really like what we’re doing now! I would eventually like to be able to offer a teacher training at lower cost. I would really like to have guest teachers come in and offer their time and do workshops that are also at a lower cost. But for the time being I really just like what we’re doing and I just want it be sustainable and what will come will come and I’ll know it when it meets me.

RS: What is your vision for the future of community yoga studios in general?

MS: It’s interesting because I get contacted all the time now from people starting studios. When we started, I searched the internet and I searched all over to find other studios that were doing similar things and found like, four. I mean, it was really slim pickings. I had one woman in Arizona from Tuscan Yoga who kind of mentored me through the process and since then I’ve had all these people contacting me from all over the country and asking me to mentor them, so it seems to be growing and everybody wants to know ‘how to do it’.

I don’t really know how… I mean, I think it’s got to be unique to each place. But I think we’re seeing a movement away from a mass commercialization of yoga and I think that in the future there’s going to be a seesawing where people will be trying to find their place, their financial footing, and trying to figure out how to stay alive as a business and still stay in-line with the values that yoga imparts. I think it will all wash out in a few years and we’ll find a middle ground, but I’m not really sure what that looks like yet.

I think that everyone who’s doing the community yoga right now is trying different things and eventually they’ll settle on a model that works. In the meantime there are some successes and some failures, some studios do donation or they do $6, $8 or $10 drop-ins or scholarships. Everyone is doing different things and we’ll find what works best eventually. At The Peoples Yoga our price was originally $6, then I went to sliding-scale ($6-$8), now it’s $8 to drop in, but people can become members for $55 a month and come as much as they want or we do discounted class cards if people buy 5 or 10 classes at a time, and we have scholarships available for people who can’t afford those options.

RS: Have you had that many people apply for scholarships?

MS: We have some regular students that we support every month through scholarship and trade. I probably give out five or six scholarships a month. I haven’t had to turn anybody away, which is great, and everyone that has gotten one has used it.

RS: What is entailed in a scholarship? And what do you trade?

MS: They’re awarded on basis of need. Pretty much they’ll get $40-$50 and they can choose to purchase a 10-class card with that or an unlimited monthly membership. So if they purchase an unlimited monthly then it will cost them $5. If they don’t come as often and then want a 10-class card then it’s $20. So they get that option and they’ll get that credit for every month that they apply for it.

Pretty much all the services that we need that we can trade, we trade; our construction, web design, photography… You name it, I’ll trade it! That means it takes months to get things done, but it does get done!  And since we’re doing yoga then we’re also practicing patience and contentment while we wait!

The People’s Yoga is located at 3016 NE Killingsworth St. in Portland, OR
All classes are $8. Scholarships are available.

The yoga industry is booming. In 2009 Americans spent an estimated $5.7 Billion on yoga and yoga related products like clothes, DVDs and books, that’s a figure that’s up 87% from 2004. 72% of those spending are women, 71% are college educated and 44% have household incomes of $75,000 or more. (From the “Yoga in America” Survey conducted by Harris Interactive Service Bureau on behalf of Yoga Journal)

Toronto yogahappening yogis making crow not war

Community yoga is booming! Free, by-donation and cheap classes are making the way into the schedules of most yoga studios, if not making up the entire schedule of many studios.

There’s a lot of bad news these days that we are collectively trying to come to terms with and figure out how to live with and live better so we don’t continue to cause so many disasters (oy humanity… why?), and we as a species and as residents of Planet Earth need contemplative practices more than ever.

So that’s why I’m just so pleased to see trends like community yoga (still missing a wiki entry, if any of you want to get on that… but hereby defined as yoga classes for the community at community prices, sliding scale from free to by donation to under $10) and yogahappenings growing and so quickly becoming important parts of many peoples practice.

Here in Portland I’ve started a site for a schedule of community classes around town (soon to also include free and by-donation meditation classes), and there are similar schedules for the Bay Area, and Chicago that I’ve found, and I’m sure many other places too. It’s my hope that maybe we can all link up and form a nation-wide (world-wide?) network for community yoga. That’s union!

At some point in a yoga class you may have heard the teacher say, “Savasana is the most important pose“. Depending on your reason for practicing yoga you may have found this statement confusing. Why would sava (corpse), sometimes called mrti (death), asana (pose) be more important than dynamic standing poses like warrior one, or strength building postures like boat pose? And why would a pose that asks you to lie still on your back be useful when you came to class to learn how to move?

In most schools of Hatha yoga, the corpse pose brings us to closure by asking us to completely surrender our physical practice. We’re told to relax our muscles, to turn our gaze inwards, to quiet our minds and eventually even cease the effort in the breath. This pose isn’t for sleeping, it’s to practice being a corpse. A corpse no longer worries about things that might have felt important in life but were, in fact, temporary. A corpse ceases to resist union with the earth and gives up its weight completely to become the earth. A corpse does not effort to move towards or away from likes and dislikes, hopes and fears. A corpse gives itself to the movement of the organism that surrounds it and eventually becomes indistinguishable from the organism. A corpse is not the separation that most of us feel in most situations, a corpse has found yoga (union) with the earth and the air. A corpse is not concerned with the past or the future, it is not concerned at all.

In a standard yoga class you’ll practice standing poses first, then move to the floor and practice forward and backward bending and then lie down to finish with supine postures and end in Savasana. In some ways each yoga class takes us backward through the life cycle. In yoga asana we first  learn to stand, then we learn to sit, then we learn to withdraw our senses, and then we learn to rest in awareness. Your life cycle generally goes the other way. Interesting isn’t it? We practice yoga to come back to our inherent stillness and perception, our intimacy with what is.

Practice a few minutes of Savasana every day. Find somewhere to lie down comfortably and feel your body connect with the earth below you, your skin breathe in and communicate with the universe around you. If you are anxious try to deepen your inhales and imagine bringing in clarity. With your exhales try to feel gratitude for something, it doesn’t matter what. Scan your body and notice the places of tension, discomfort and holding on. Approach these places with love; extending appreciation to your body for its efforts, for its strengths and for the challenges you feel, remembering that if you didn’t have challenges you wouldn’t learn. Let your breath, your kindness, and attention spread through each part of your body and imagine that your are saying goodbye to a dear friend, feeling your appreciation and love as you let go. Try not to fall asleep, but stay with the sensations of your body as they become more subtle and as the breath ceases to be an effort. Let your eyes rest back into your skull, there is no need to look outside of yourself. Release your lower jaw and let the tongue fall back in the throat, there is no need to talk. Soften the sinuses, the cheekbones, the ears and turn your senses inwards.

Listen to your inner cues, you’ll know when you’ve stayed long enough. To come out of Savasana, come out with same care and attentiveness you came in with. Deepen your breath into your belly and let it spread out to subtle movements in your fingers, toes, arms, legs, and face. Reach your arms up beside your ears to take a long deep breath and welcome life back into your body. Roll over on to one side and spend a moment noticing what you see and feeling equilibrium in your limbs. Press yourself into a seat and take a few minutes with care to feel your place in the space around you. Try to take the peacefulness and equanimity of your Savasana into the rest of your day and night.

“That is the end of your practice for today, but it’s not
the end of awareness.” – Patricia Walden

Yoga happening started happening in Toronto, and is now happening in Vancouver, New York City and Portland, OR.

Yogahappening creates yoga events in public spaces: in the park, at a gallery, in the mountains, by the sea, the forest, the lake. Yogahappening asks you to pause in your yoga routine and consider the spontaneity of practice somewhere other than where you’re used to, without knowing what style, what teacher, what format your experience will be. Yogahappenings might include an aprés-yoga moment for connection like a picnic or a bikeride, or perhaps there will be a live musician to play for your practice or a storyteller to guide you into savasana dreams.

Yogahappenings are an invitation for experienced practitioners and beginners alike to come to their practice with fresh eyes and an open mind to whatever happens to be on the yogahappening menu that day. Participants find out 24 hours in advance of an event, where and when, but the teacher and style remain a mystery until the event. So a dedicated Ashtangi might discover the joy of Yin while someone else who thought yoga was easy and boring might find that Vinyasa is just the challenge they’ve been looking for.

Yogahappenings are the chance you’ve been waiting for to talk to the person on the mat next to you and encourage positive, loving and fun interactions that strengthen the yoga community as well as the larger community.

To find out more about yogahappening you can visit their site and blog, and sign up for updates and announcements via Facebook, Twitter or RSS from the Portland, Toronto, Vancouver and New York.

See you there!

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the passing of Pattahbi Jois, (Guruji), the founder of the school of Ashtanga Yoga. With love, respect and deep gratitude we offer thanks and remembrance to a great teacher, student, scholar, and leader.

AUM
PURNAMADAH
PURNAMIDAM
PURNAT PURNAMUDACHYATE
PURNASYA PURNAMADAYA
PURNAMEVA VASHISHYATE.
AUM

THAT IS THE WHOLE.
THIS IS THE WHOLE.
FROM WHOLENESS EMERGES WHOLENESS.
WHOLENESS COMING FROM WHOLENESS,
WHOLENESS STILL REMAINS.
(Isa Upanisad)

Guruji and Sharat

(The following text is Guruji’s Biography from KPJAYI Ashtanga Yoga Institute)
Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois was born on the full moon day of July, 1915, Guru Purnima day. His ancestral village, Kowshika, near Hassan in Karnataka State, is inhabited by maybe 500 people and has one main street. At one end of the street is a Vishnu temple, just next to Pattabhi Jois’ home. At the far end of the street, just 100 yards away, lies a small Ganapati temple, and just opposite, a Siva temple. Both are several hundreds years old, and are the focus of the village.

Pattabhi Jois’s father was an astrologer and a priest, who acted as the pujari for many of the families in the village. From an early age, as most brahmin boys, Pattabhi Jois was taught the Vedas and Hindu rituals.

When Guruji was 12 years old, he attended a yoga demonstration at his middle school in Hassan. The next day he went to meet the great yogi who had given the demonstration, a man by the name of Sri T. Krishnamacharya, who had learned yoga for nearly eight years from his Guru, Rama Mohan Brahmachari in a cave in Tibet. For the next two years, Guruji learned from his Guru every day. When Guruji turned 14, he had his brahmin thread ceremony. Krishnamacharya left Hassan to travel and teach, and Guruji left his village to go to Mysore.

Guruji wished to attend the Sanskrit University of Mysore. With two rupees in his pocket, he left with two friends. They traveled the 100 plus kilometers by bike, over dirt roads. For the first year or two, life was very difficult. With very little money, he begged for his food from some of the brahmin houses. Guruji attended classes and did his studies. Then, around 1930, he went to a yoga demonstration and saw that it was his Guru. He came forward and prostrated, and they recommenced their relationship, and Guruji his yoga studies.

The Maharaja of Mysore, Krishna Rajendra Wodeyar, had fallen ill. He learned that there was a great yogi who had come to Mysore. Krishnamacharya was called to him, and duly cured him. The Maharaja became a great patron of his and built him a yogashala (school of yoga) on the grounds of the Palace Art Gallery. Guruji was also beckoned to teach the Maharaja on occasion, and was called upon several times to give yoga demonstrations. The Maharaja, who had taken a liking for Guruji, told him, “I want you to teach yoga at the Sanskrit College. You teach. I will give you a scholarship to go to school, free food in my mess hall and a salary.” Guruji, very happy, asked permission from his Guru. Krishnamacharya approved, and the Yoga Department of the Sanskrit College began on March 1, 1937. He continued as the head until his retirement in 1973.

From 1937 until 1973, Guruji earned his professorship at the University, granting him the title of Vidvan. He married, in a love marriage, Savitramma, who came from a long line of Sanskrit scholars. Her grandfather was the Sanskrit and philosophy teacher to the last Shankaracharya of Kanchi, Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati. They had three children, Manju, Ramesh, and Saraswati. Saraswati is the mother of Sharath, born in 1971, who is now Guruji’s co-director of their school in Mysore.

In 1964, Andre Van Lysbeth bacame the first Westener to study with Guruji. Soon after that, more Europeans came. Around 1972, the first Americans came, after meeting Manju at Swami Gitananda’s ashram in Pondicherri. It was at that point that ashtanga yoga began spreading in America, starting in California, and then later emerging in Hawaii. In 1975, Guruji and Manju made their first trip to America. Over the next 25 years, the practice spread through the United States, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, Israel, Chile, England, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Guruji has, for 63 years, been teaching uninterruptedly this same method that he learned from Krishnamacharya in 1927.

Here’s an excellent article about Pattahbi Jois’ life and lineage from Centered Yoga, if you’re interested in more reading.

One of the best detoxifying poses is Mayurasana. This pose is one of the first 15 asanas ever to be written down. The first Yogis practicing asana understood its tremendous health benefits.

Here’s what Svatmarama wrote about mayurasana in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika:
“Mayurasana quickly alleviates all diseases like enlargement of the glands, dropsy (edema) and other stomach disorders. It rectifies imbalance of the humours (vata, pitta and kapha). It reduces to ashes all food taken indiscriminately, kindles the gastric fire and enables destruction of kalakuta (toxins). “– HYP 1.31

This pose is named Peacock not only because of the shape of the pose, but because its strong, tonifying effect on the digestive system. Do mayurasana and you can have a stomach like a peacock’s…

That probably doesn’t mean much to those of us in the west haven’t spent much time observing peacocks, but did you know that peacocks can eat a wide range of foods including poisonous snakes, insects and scorpions and that they are able to digest the poison of these animals without harm? I’m not suggesting practicing this pose should inspire you to partake in a peacock’s dietary habits – but it will help you improve your digestion.

Benefits of Mayurasana
•    Powerful digestive tonic
•    Promotes elimination of toxins, especially from the liver
•    Invigorates the entire body
•    Increases blood circulation throughout the abdominal organs
•    Relieves many digestive ailments
•    Massages and strengthens the stomach and spleen
•    Beneficial to those with diabetes
•    Revitalizes the pancreas
•    Relieves menstrual disorders and painful menstruation
•    Tones and supports the reproductive organs and sexual function
•    Decreases acidity in the blood, especially when performed in the morning
•    Strengthens wrists, elbows and shoulders

Contraindications
Any powerful yoga practice should be used with respect. If you have wrist, elbow or shoulder issues, be very careful about placing your entire body weight in your wrists. Some other common sense contraindications include: pregnancy, menstruation and serious intestinal problems. It also should be avoided if you are dealing with an ulcer, hernia, heart disease, high blood pressure, brain tumors and ear, eye, or nose infections. Because this pose is deeply detoxifying and can release built up toxins into the system, notice if you don’t feel well after practicing it. Reduce the amount of time and the repetitions of this pose and work on cleansing through diet before building up to longer holds.

Instructions:

Kneel on the ground with your knees spread as wide as your sticky mat.

Bring your forearms together and place your hands, palm down, on the mat with the little finger side of the hands towards each other so that the fingers turn back in the direction of your feet. (Experiment in your pose with the spacing between the hands, from the little fingers touch to the hands a few inches apart.)

Squeeze your elbows in towards each other and place your abdomen on your upper arms with your elbows situated at or just below your navel. (Women with large breasts will have some trouble adjusting for this one, some rearranging and humor is required.)

Look forwards and begin to shift your weight from your legs into your arms. At first keep your knees bending out to the sides. With time as you gain balance and strength you will be able to straighten your legs behind you and hold them above the ground. (Another variation is to fold the legs into padmasana or full lotus pose.)

Hold as long as you can maintaining a steady breath. If you are unable to breath then practice keeping your legs on the floor, gradually taking more weight into the arms and pressure into the abdomen. Once you can hold the posture calmly and breathe easily, hold for 10-30 breaths at a time.

Preparations for the Mayurasana
For the wrists:
Extend one arm forwards and with your other hand pull your fingers towards the floor so that the top side of your wrist joint opens, hold for five breaths. Then pull your hand and fingers back so that the underside of your wrist opens and the top side is compressed. Hold for five breaths and repeat on the other side.

Extend one arm forwards with the thumb side of your hand upwards, bring your thumb down into your palm and wrap your four fingers around the thumb to make a fist. Keeping the thumb side of your hand upwards, bring to tilt your hand down towards the floor. You’ll feel a stretch on the inside of your right wrist, be conservative, this connective issue shouldn’t be overstretched. Hold for five breaths and repeat on the left side.

For the arms:
Bring your palms together with your thumbs touching your forehead, squeeze your forearms and elbows together. Without tensing the shoulders or neck begin to move your forearms away from the face but keep the forearms and elbows squeezing together. Practice this movement while standing or kneeling and be mindful to keep your belly and your back organized, resist jutting the ribs forward and collapsing the mid-back.

To strengthen the back, legs and torso practice Salabhasana
To reduce abdominal discomfort and tone the digestive organs practice Nauli Kriya
Approaching the full pose of Mayurasana it can be helpful in developing the arm and wrist rotation to practice downward facing dog and upward facing dog with the hands turned backwards.

(Here’s Julian practicing Mayurasana with his legs in Padmasana. If you can fold your legs into lotus, the weight of the legs is contained and easier to lift from the ground!)

– From The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, translation by Brian Dana Akers

Nauli is a yogic cleansing exercise, or kriya. Nauli cleanses the internal organs and tones the abdominal region via a side-to-side rolling motion of the abdominal muscles.

Although nauli is not widely taught or used today in most Western yoga classes, in some classical yoga traditions, it was among the first exercises taught to new students, even before any asana was taught.  This allowed the student to use uddiyana bandha and nauli movements within their asana practice in order to bring greater awareness and energy to the asanas.

The muscular actions necessary to accomplish nauli require four movements. Uddiyana bandha must first be attained before nauli can begin:

• uddiyana bandha: an abdominal lock accomplished by emptying your lungs and pulling the abdomen in and up under the rib cage

• madhyana nauli (central nauli): the isolated contraction of the central abdominal muscles.

• vama nauli (left side nauli): the isolated contraction of the left side of the abdominal muscles.

• daksina nauli (right side nauli):  the isolated contraction of the right side of the abdominal muscles.

Although nauli can be taught to people of any age, it is a powerful action that can cause discomfort, or possibly, minor injury. Learning from an experienced yoga teacher is recommended.

Contraindications (things that may increase the risk of injury while doing nauli) vary.  Some say that nauli should not be performed by pregnant women, or people with hernias, hypertension, heart disease, ulcers, or various gastrointestinal ailments. If in doubt, consult a professional.  In any case, nauli should not cause pain. Always practice carefully and with awareness.

Text taken from the website http://www.nauli.org

The following is taken from NPR’s story “The Great Oom: Yoga’s Wild Ride to Respectability”
You can listen to the complete story here on NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’

“Yoga, that mystical art that’s become a regimen for 15 million Americans, came to this country from the East. Eastern Nebraska, to be precise.
That’s where, back in 1889, a 13-year-old named Perry Baker met his first yogi, and American-style yoga was born.
The Iowa-born teenager soon remade himself with a new name — Pierre Bernard — and his exploits, and yoga’s sometimes-rocky journey to respectability, are chronicled in the new book The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America.
Author Robert Love tells NPR’s Guy Raz how Bernard weathered early rumors of rampant sex and drug use, and later an arrest, to lay the foundation for an empire.
“He was so far ahead of his time that it is no wonder that he was lost to history,” Love says. “People didn’t know what to do with him. We want our gurus and our holy men to be soft-spoken aesthetics — here is a true American rough-and-tumble original who happened to be a mystic as well.”
Bernard rose to fame after moving to New York — where he was soon arrested and accused of misdeeds with a young female student. The charges were eventually dropped, but Love says the case in a strange way made the young entrepreneur’s name:
“He was rechristened ‘The Omnipotent Oom, loving guru of the tantrics’ by the headline writers in the yellow press at the time. He became a kind of infamous celebrity.”
Bernard went upscale and created a yoga retreat outside the city for the chattering classes, where entertainment included drag baseball games and even some circus-like acts.
“It was a wild, weird and wonderful thing that he called the Clarkstown Country Club,” Love says, “calling it by this opaque name because yoga still had such a louche reputation.”
But Bernard did develop a loyal following, one that eventually built today’s $7 billion-a-year “yoga-industrial complex.” Yet he’s not widely know today, his biographer says.
“I think he is a missing link in the great story of how yoga moved from East to West. And Bernard was merely laughed off as a kind of a footnote. I hope my book at least puts the record straight and sets up an argument for him as a real pioneer in bringing yoga to America.”"

“The creator of life is inside of me and as long as I can feel that power inside of me, then I will be in good condition and I will be able to help other people. You can’t help other people if you’re negative or if you’re afraid. Never be afraid” – Tao Porchon-Lynch

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thanks to Holly Westergen, the author of ‘Namaste, Bitches’. I have a lot of catching up to do with all of her great posts, but wanted to share this from her most recent:

“You don’t have to give up who you are or become something else. The point is to get closer to who you truly are, not escape it. I got that backwards for a while. The idea is to embrace your contradictions, all of the pieces of you that you love and hate and are baffled by suddenly resolve themselves quite beautifully in a yoga pose. I can’t explain it. But it is kinda like magic. Yoga teaches you to get better at celebrating yourself. And for most of us, especially women, we were never taught those lessons.”

Interview with Ryan Leier- Founder of Yoga For Youth and ONE Yoga Saskatoon

RS: Can you tell me about Yoga For Youth? What is it and what do you do?

RL: We’re a non profit organization made up of a group of yoga teachers and what we’re doing is taking yoga to the schools and communities through physical education classes in the public schools, and in after-school programs or though community centers. Our focus is on inner city youth, kids who wouldn’t otherwise have access to yoga classes. For the last year we’ve been working on teaching the inner city kids and then bringing them with us to different parts of town to teach and demonstrate to the kids at other schools.

RS: How many locations are you in right now?

RL: About 20

RS: Are they mostly public schools?

RL: The Catholic schools have been trying to bring us in and they’re really open to what we’re offering. It’s interesting, the Catholic schools want the whole tradition. They want to know the philosophy, the spiritual aspects and the moral codes. I was really surprised in a good way at how open they were because some of the public schools we’re in just want us to come and teach ‘special’ phys. ed. classes, and teach them fitness yoga. Yesterday I went into the Catholic school and the principle was doing an announcement right before the class and what he was talking about was the courage of Jesus and Martin Luther King to be non-violent. It was Ahimsa. It was great, it matched exactly what I wanted to talk to the kids about; being able to use the poses to develop courage so they could speak for themselves and not follow peer pressure

RS: It sounds like Yoga For Youth is sharing a lot more than just the physical practice of asana with these kids?

RL: Definitely, that’s what our intention is.

RS: Do you find that the kids you’re working with are receptive to the teachings? Are they more or less receptive to the asana compared to the philosophy? Where is their interest?

RL: For some of the kids something has definitely sparked, they know that the yoga practice can take them to a new place. We have some kids who are coming from lots of drug use. We have two girls who are from one of the inner city high schools who are starting to come to the studio now on their own, rather than going out and getting high… They both had serious drug use problems. A few of the kids are embracing it as a thing that has the potential to really change their lives in terms of how they behave and respond to their world. Then there’s another group that’s come in from the sports teams that are coming in to use yoga to get fit and to get them into better shape and prevent injuries. So it’s reaching the kids on different levels and I think that for the most part they’re receptive to what yoga is in its entirety, beyond just the physical practice.

RS: What is the average age of the kids that you’re teaching?

RL: Anywhere from 5 years old to 25 years old… I had a grade 2 kid the other day… I always ask the kids what they think that yoga is, and they say things like “strength” or  “peacefulness“, and one little girl put up her hand and said “Yoga is the art of relaxation.” They’re so smart!

RS: How did Yoga For Youth begin?

RL: A few years ago I was talking to the man who was my religious studies professor in college, he’s a Tibetan Buddhist who’s the head of the department for religious studies here at the university. I was telling him about my teacher Father Joe Pereira who does work with HIV and AIDS and drugs and alcohol addiction recovery in India, (The Kripa Foundation has over 50 locations worldwide. It was started by Fr. Joe and supported by Mother Theresa. Visit FR. Joe’s site here and learn more about his project here.) and I was telling my prof, Dr. Jay that I wanted to dedicate myself to serving Fr. Joe’s mission. Dr. Jay said, “Well, what experience do you have with working with drugs and alcohol?” and I said,

“None.”

“What about HIV and AIDS?”

“None.”

He said, “Well you’ve trained to be a teacher and you’re working to coach kids in basketball… Have you ever thought about serving yoga to the kids before they go through all the things like addiction and health problems and using yoga to reach them first?”

And I realized that’s where my strength was so I decided to put together this foundation. It’s been growing over the past few years, and hopefully it will continue to grow.

(Fr. Joe Pereira)

RS: Is Yoga For Youth still affiliated with Kripa and Fr. Joe?

RL: He supports it. It’s not really affiliated but he’s given me his blessing to teach as many kids and train as many teachers as I can.

RS: How many teachers do you have working with you right now?

RL: We have 8.

RS: Are they all teachers who have been your long-time students? Did you train all of them?

RL: Most of them have been my students for a long time or I’ve trained them. I want to keep it fairly consistent right now in terms of the kinds of things we’re teaching and the style of yoga.

RS: You began offering a teacher training last year, can you speak a little about it?

RL: I believe teaching yoga is something that really comes through if you have a practice. Someone who teaches, I think, really needs to have a daily practice or the integrity of the teachings doesn’t really translate. At the training we try to teach people how to practice yoga in their daily life beyond just the asana, beyond the 60 minutes or 90 minutes in a class, but in all other aspects of what they do and how they live.

This past year it was a ONE Yoga training and Yoga For Youth training, so anyone that did it could teach Yoga For Youth… In the future the training will be specific, either ONE Yoga or Yoga For Youth. Right now I’m working on our mission statement and developing an 8-week program with different sequences and a class every day with a different focus.

RS: What do you envision as the future of Yoga For Youth?

RL: We were working towards actually getting it into the provincial or at least city-wide curriculum, and I found it’s really difficult. Now we’re looking at getting it into more community type programs like after-school groups where the kids and parents can come and practice. In the inner city schools the thing is that you need to be there right after school gets out, otherwise it’s really unlikely that the kids are going to be able to find a way to come back for the group.

I would love to see it in the curriculum in Saskatoon and maybe even across Canada in different cities. I would love it if we could work with a behavioral specialist who would come in and research what the affects of yoga are on the kids. I think that if we could convince people of the value, we could make it a part of the school curriculum. Ideally I would love to see yoga be a part of every kids school day, 5 minutes of meditation and 15 minutes of poses. It would change the schools and the people completely.

RS: What is it about a yoga practice that’s different from sports or theater or other hobbies? What about yoga would help someone be more aware and more loving or encourage those traits?

RL: Yoga gives people the tools that they need to become comfortable in their own skin and to make good, conscious choices rather than following peer pressure or rather than following habitual ways or cultural standards that aren’t always kind, loving and truthful. I think that yoga helps people to connect with their personal power and their ability to love themselves and others.

Yoga also brings people to honor their bodies. In class we encourage them to come from their hearts and their feelings and intuition rather than doing poses because they’re competitive or because they think everyone else is doing it. It makes them mindful of their actions, their words, their thoughts and it empowers them to learn what they can do and what they can go through. We challenge people in yoga classes, we put them into situations on the mat that are really hard and we make them stay in it and find comfort and just breathe through it even when things get tough. I think that the longer someone can stay in a pose that’s safe, but is challenging and uncomfortable… That learning to work through their physical challenges and discomfort makes them more tolerant and loving people who are accepting of others and accepting of life.

RS: Where do you get your financial support? Do you receive any government funding through the schools?

RL: We receive individual donations and we do fundraiser/karma classes to buy mats and pay teachers.  We’re definitely on the lookout for a mat company to sponsor us if you know of any!

It’s been difficult to get funding through the schools because they have to be a bit wary of religious affiliations, or I guess, what can be seen as religious affiliation. I talked to a woman with the school board yesterday and the first thing she brought up was that some of the parents don’t like yoga being taught in schools because they think it’s religious.

RS: Other than some parents who are concerned about potential religious conflicts, how has the response been from the other parents, kids and teachers? Does it seem like there is some kind of general attitude or response to your program so far?

RL: For the most part, everyone really loves it and they appreciate it and they want more of it. The more time we spend in one school, the more the parents and the teachers see what the possible benefits of yoga are and what yoga can do for them and the kids as human beings. Beyond building strength or flexibility, the teachers notice that the kids are calmer and more focused. The teachers see them actually using some of the principles of yoga like kindness, truthfulness, and non-stealing.

RS: Can you say a little about the perception that yoga is a religion? How do you teach mindfulness and spirituality without teaching religion, or do you? Is that a part of your program?

RL: We talk about things a bit differently. We don’t talk about God but sometimes in Savasana we say things like “Let that force that is breathing you… Whatever you think it is… Let it take care of you and relax with it.” We talk about surrendering and letting to the earth and to the sky like with the native spirituality. Sometimes we use language like soul or spirit, but if we do use that language or if we talk about Jesus or the Buddha, we make sure to say that it’s just one way of describing things. We use a lot of language like joining with your highest self or conscience, and what we’re talking about is the power of love. I guess we use the word love interchangeably with god.

The inner cities have lots of Native American kids whose tradition has really been suppressed and dishonored in Canada so we often incorporate certain aspects of their tradition, like the elements, the earth, sky, fire and water into our teachings. And at the end of the class when we say Namaste we also say words from Crazy Horse, “I salute the light within your eyes where the universe dwells. For when you are at that place within you and I am at that place within me we shall be one.”

We like to honor those teachings of the Mother Earth and the Father Sky. We’re on sacred land, here on Earth, and also as our bodies and in our minds we’re sacred.

What we’re teaching is not religious. We’re not asking them to be any certain way. We’re empowering the kids to really be themselves and we’re basically teaching them that at the core of who they are, they’re no better, no worse, no different than anyone else, there’s no superiority and no inferiority. We say things like “Have a proud heart and a humble chin”. What this program is doing for these kids is uplifting the kids that really need to be uplifted who are shy, insecure and maybe unhealthy. And it’s helping to humble the kids that have learned to bully or look down on their peers. The program works to bring young people into their center where they really are perfect and there’s nothing wrong with them and there’s nothing to prove. We’re trying to teach them to connect to that part of themselves. I think that’s really the heart of what yoga is.

Click here to view the embedded video.

RS: What inspires you most, what motivates you to do what you do?

RL: Just looking in these kids eyes when they’re connecting to their source. What inspires me is these kids that are just shining and to be able to help them keep that shine and make it stronger. If we go to one school with 300 kids and 1 kid ‘gets it’. If just one kid understands the simple teachings of yoga it could have a huge impact on their whole life. If one kid came and said “Oh wow! That was really cool, maybe when I get older I’ll go and study that.” Or like a lot of these kids that we’re teaching now, maybe they’ll be inspired to become yoga teachers and teach their peers and stay on the path towards a peaceful and mindful life. I think that’s worth all of the time and effort that we put in.

RS: If you could design a t-shirt what would it say?

RL: LOVE!

But I also like Muhammad Ali’s poem that just says, “Me, We.” Because we’re all in this together, whether we like it or not or realize it or not, we’re all one, we’re all here on Earth together and we have to help each other out.

(Feed The Yogi will being selling Yoga For Youth T-shirts on the site in the next few months. Keep an eye out for them, all proceeds go to YFY)

Ryan and his lovely daughter and teaching assistant, Kiyah

Photo from 'Nude Yoga Girls'

My friend Roseanne Harvey, genius behind “It’s All Yoga Baby” had an interesting post the other day about new, nude trends in yoga, and as she said “the precarious relationship between yoga, nudity and sexuality”. She talked briefly about the work of Abby Winters who started Nude Yoga Girls (which features exactly that ok… so graphic content warning here), which is a site that I had seen about a year ago but hadn’t thought about much since then. I remember at the time thinking… “Great. This practice that I love that has actually helped me to finally come to peace with my body is now going to turn into yet another tool to objectify the female form.” I still feel pretty much the same in essence, though Roseanne has brought up some interesting points that have made me rethink my opinion and come back into the question.

Ultimately I think that as we muck through the messiness of human existence we have different levels of obsession that we need to work out. Obsession with the body in its form, function and appearance whether directed towards others or towards ourselves is just that… Obsession. But what is the line between obsession and appreciation? Where does confidence become egotistical and where does humility become shame? Yoga as the gift that it can be offers us the objectivity to observe our desires for extremism and identification. I think that the real question is, will we delve into the deeper questions that are beyond the form, function and appearance, or will we stay with how things look from the outside?

On the aside, all the recent posting on It’s All Yoga Baby and Elephant Journal about this topic is leading web browsers with tags “naked” “yoga” and “girls” to our sites. So comment and let’s keep the conversation going!

Michael Stone is a psychotherapist in private practice, lecturer, yoga teacher and author. He co-leads the Centre of Gravity Sangha, a community of Yoga & Buddhist practitioners in Toronto and travels internationally, teaching in academic, yoga studio and conference settings. Michael offers courses and retreats that focus on integrating yoga postures, breathing practices, meditation and textual study. His research and teaching explore the intersection of committed spiritual practice and social action. Read his complete bio here.

Michael will be coming to Portland in late September to give a 3-day workshop hosted by The Yoga Space. In preparation for his upcoming visit I had the good fortune to chat with him the other day about his work, his philosophy and what ‘the intersection of committed spiritual practice and social action‘ really is.

3/3/10 Interview with Michael Stone

RS: What does it mean to have a yoga practice that includes all aspects of daily life and how does one go about making that happen or being mindful of that?

MS: So many people define yoga as a verb. It derives from the root ‘yug‘ which means to unite or to connect one thing or yoke one thing with another; the breath with the body, the mind and the spirit, the soul and god or whatever your vocabulary is. But actually the term ‘yug‘ is taken out of its verb form when it becomes ‘yoga‘ which literally means that everything is already inherently united. You don’t need to unite one thing with another because, in fact, everything is already inter-permeating everything else.

I like to translate the word yoga as intimacy, literally being one with everything. But I think that sometimes we get a little bit inflated about what our ideas of intimacy or oneness might be. Maybe we want to be one with pleasure or what we think is beautiful, but do we really want to be one with loneliness or one with pain or one with war… And really do we want to open up and be one with everything? So the core of the practice of yoga or the heart of yoga is really opening up to the reality of how life really happens, not the way we want it to happen or the way we think it should happen. And to recognize that underneath all of our ideas about how we think life should go, everything is inherently intimate. We are connected with water and with plants, with culture, with great art, and with friends in ways that are bottomless. What interests me about yoga practice is how the various limbs or practices of yoga can wake us up to that level of intimacy.

RS: Please explain what you mean by various limbs.

MS: Well, for Patanjali there were eight limbs of practice and I like that model. Especially for us westerners who I think live lives that are very compartmentalized. We can think that one part of our life is spiritual and another part of our life is more material, but actually that’s just semantics. Our lives are psychosomatic; they’re emotional, they’re spiritual, they’re political, they’re economic. You can’t separate any of those spheres. Everything you do is emotional, spiritual and political. If we think about the mind, the body, and the body politic as interconnected, then the eight limbs that Patanjali outlines really makes sense. Starting with ethics, including taking care of and waking up the body, releasing the internal patterns of breathing and then also moving into deeper states of meditation that help us see though the self image that we’re totally addicted to.

Having a path that makes us look at all aspects of our lives really makes a difference. Some people ask what the difference is between yoga and western psychology, and I actually think one of the biggest differences that Patanjali seems to suggest is that if you really want to change, the first thing you should look at is ethics. The first thing you should look at is the quality of your role in your relationships. In western psychology, maybe because of the Victorian times, we are afraid of talking about ethics. We tend to think of ethics as rules, rather than as suggestions for how to give attention to the quality of our relationships. It is quite fascinating to think that if you really want to change your life, to become more altruistic and creative, and less concerned with yourself, then you can start by paying attention to ethical practice like nonviolence, honesty, not taking what’s not given freely and so on…

RS: What you’re saying makes me think of a conflict between some approaches to yoga and spirituality where it seems that many emphasize the idea of ‘detachment’ from life and what I hear you saying is that it’s not at all detachment, but actually some kind of extreme merging, and as you say, intimacy with what life is, or happens to be doing.

MS: In the yoga tradition there are two words that are used that like twins and they’re never separated, one is abhyasa and one is vairagya, meaning practice and non-attachment. The core of our practice is non-attachment. Actually I would go further and say that for mature practitioners we practice non-attachment to our practice as well. But to begin with, what we mean by non-attachment is that what we cling to the most when we really give attention to the way that we create suffering in our lives is the fact that we are always compulsively fixated on ourselves. When we dream, we are always the main character. When we think almost all of our thoughts are stories about ourselves. Even when we create enemies or project nations to be our enemies, that is all to secure our own view of how we think things are. So what non-attachment means is not clinging to self image. It’s easy to practice non-attachment to your bicycle or your apartment or maybe even to some of your possessions but internal renunciation means not being attached to your view, not being attached to your self image.

That’s wonderful philosophy but what that actually looks like is engagement. The definition of non-attachment is engagement because when I’m not attached to how I think things should go then suddenly I’m open, I’m free and I’m engaged with how things actually are…So you and I don’t know each other, but I know a few things about you. The more that I learn about you the more it can also shut down an experience of really getting to know you because I might have some preconceptions of who you are and what you are like. That’s an example of non-attachment. If I can notice how my ideas about you and my ideas about me actually get in the way, then I can be open to seeing beyond those ideas.

So again, non-attachment actually means engagement. The more that I can learn how to not cling to how I think of myself and how I think of others, the more I can open to the interconnectivity that’s possible when I’m fully present. It’s really important to understand this point because yoga is about engagement in the world, it’s about action and it’s not about passivity. The teaching of karma reminds us that everything we do has an effect, so it’s really important to understand that you can’t be free of action. Every time you have an action, there’s an effect.

RS: One of the preconditions to the practice of abhyasa and vairagya is the release of raga (attachment) and dwesha (aversion), that you have to release your mind from the polarity of like and the dislike… How does that affect one’s actions?

MS: Raga and dwesha are both forms of clinging. It’s not so much about feeling bad or feeling good, but rather our attachment to feeling good and our tendency to lean away from what doesn’t feel good. When we learn how to work with our patterns of reactivity which are raga (attachment) and dwesha (aversion), then we can start to see how they operate in each moment of our lives.

The heart of the practice is being able to reduce our reactivity. We live right now in an attention deficit society where people are highly reactive. It takes its toll on our bodies and it takes its toll on our relationships because in highly reactive modes we can’t recognize intimacy when it shows up. Maybe I would even go so far as to say that the thing most of us fear the most is intimacy, because intimacy threatens our reactivity and most of us hold on to our reactivity because that’s the way we know ourselves.

It’s a funny paradox I think… I don’t want to say that you get rid of your reactivity because as human beings we’re always going to have reactive patterns. I think it would be naive to think that you can get rid of attachment and aversion. Rather, you can just see them operating, and seeing them operating you can get enough distance from reactivity that you can watch it operate instead of being hooked into it.

RS: So you’re saying that the practice is first developing the ability to see our own patterns of reactivity and then being able to observe them, and then perhaps we can become less reactive in how we act?

MS: Yes. You talked earlier about western psychology and some things you’ve read and I think that this is a good time to pick up on that. What’s so brilliant about western psychology is that it helps to really recognize our patterns of reactivity and it helps us to see how our patterns of reactivity are chronic, historical, and relational. What yoga really teaches us is how to see those patterns and notice how they’re impermanent, how they’re empty of self and how they’re malleable. That way when we see our patterns we can learn how to let them go and we don’t get as hooked into them and I think that’s really the heart of the yoga practice.

RS: In your interview in Ascent you talked about a moral obligation to practice. Is that what you meant?

MS: Exactly. When I see my capacity for anger and my capacity for greed, hatred, confusion and envy, and when I learn how to work on the yoga mat, or on the meditation cushion, or in relationships with my particular patterns of strong emotions, then because I see those potentials in myself, my practice becomes a profound form of social action because I’m not planting those seeds in my mind, but I’m also not planting those seeds in my body or in the body politic.

Every individual is a corner of culture. If we see that, then working with our patterns of reactivity is also working on a small corner of culture. By not contributing those negative patterns our practice becomes a practice of social morality in some way. When I said we had a moral obligation to practice it might sound like an overstatement, but what we see is that most of the problems in our families and in our communities are not separate from us. We have the capacity for all of the negative states that we perceive outside of ourself and we have to learn how to work with those states if we don’t want to contribute them to the culture.

RS: In your bio it says that your research and teaching explore the intersection of committed spiritual practice and social action. I often wonder about this fine line of taking action in the world and being aware enough to notice whether or not the action that we’re taking is helpful or needed or even wanted, in the case of trying to help other people. What is the intersection of social action and committed spiritual practice and how does one keep the other grounded in reality?

MS: Well the intersection has some history behind it. Traditionally, one of the models for spirituality in the Abrahamic religions, but also even in the yoga practice in early Buddhism is a model of ‘vertical transcendence‘, which means, “If I can wake up then I can be free of suffering and I do a practice so that I can become enlightened.” What’s really interesting about Patanjali is that he gets rid of the word ‘moksha‘ or gets rid of the word ‘enlightenment‘ and he doesn’t use it. I like to call his model ‘horizontal transcendence‘, which means that the purpose of my practice is not for me to wake up but the purpose of a practice is for all of us to wake up together. That way my practice includes plants and animals and other people, architecture, city planning and good food. That way we practice cultural awakening.

We don’t have time to go practice in caves or inner sanctums, in fact I don’t think there are even that many caves or forests left where you can go move and practice. I think instead we need to use the conditions of our life as the vehicle for waking up. If the conditions are your particular city with all its imperfections, then that city becomes what you use to practice. I think that in our secular age it’s really important to focus on practicing in a way that deals with the imbalances of the entire world rather than just our internal imbalances, because the fish really need us, and the frogs and the rivers need us and they need us now! They don’t have time for us to get enlightened, and maybe enlightenment is a holdover from another age and doesn’t really apply to us anymore.

RS: It sounds like what you’re saying is that there’s a difference in ideas about enlightenment. At one point enlightenment was perceived as something that was “beyond all of this” and what I hear you saying is that enlightenment is a connection and deep involvement with “all of this”.

MS: My understanding of enlightenment is that it’s waking up to the inherent interconnection of everything. I think every human culture throughout history has needed to find a way to reach the transcendent. Sometimes the transcendent was imagined as something beyond the body or something beyond the self, culture or the material plane. But actually, what if we push further and see that the transcendent actually means connecting with something that’s bigger than the stories you tell about yourself and your life? Then we see that we can have that experience with other people, we can have that experience in the natural world. You can have that experience eating an apple. To really drop in to the experience of eating an apple is to recognize your interconnectivity and your place in the world.

What I’m arguing for, if you will, in my recent book “Yoga For a World Out of Balance” is to see that we need to become more material… People say that we’re materialistic but we’re not really. We don’t love the material. I think we need to learn to love the material and then as we care for the material we see that the material is spiritual and there is no separation.

RS: One of the cornerstones of western psychology is the the development of the ‘ego’ or the sense of self, and this sense of self is critical to being functional in the world. Yet we also have to get beyond it if we want to engage in intimacy like you’re saying. How do we maintain enough of it so that we don’t end up institutionalized?

MS: So many people talk about the self as the ego, or they say that the goal of spiritual practice is to get rid of the ego or kill the ego or get beyond the ego. Well, the only people I’ve ever met who actually have no ego are institutionalized. We need an ego. An ego is really healthy and it’s sacred. The purpose of practice is to cultivate an awareness that allows the ego to be flexible and porous, not fixed and rigid or stuck in historical patterns of reactivity, and also not inflated or deflated,and not propped up and also not judged. The self is not something to get rid of, the self is just a conglomeration of stories that we tell ourselves or that have been told to us. But seeing the self as just an encyclopedia or an anthology of stories helps unfix those stories so that the self becomes more of a process rather than a structure. The self does exist and it does function but it’s not hard and it doesn’t have a “core” that is eternal or fixed. The self is plastic, or to use a new term in neuropsychology the self is ‘elastic‘, and that is wonderful to know.

Your identity is not fixed. Who you think you are is not fixed. Your sexuality is not fixed. Your career is not fixed. Your relationships are not fixed… It’s all flow. Within that flow there’s great freedom, but from the perspective of the ego it’s scary because we want to fix ourselves and define ourselves. How many young people learn that they’re attracted to someone of the same sex and then they do a lot of work to define themselves as a dyke or a queer and for a while that’s so helpful because you can say what you are. But then maybe once in a while you’re attracted to someone of the opposite sex and then it screws up your definition of yourself as queer. That’s such a common story and I use it because it reminds us that the self flows in ways that are more like water than structured. We’re a lot more like trees than cars.

RS: How does that relate to the “anarchy of the gaps”- two systems that meet to point out the shadow of the other system? It sounds like in order to allow something to be elastic you do in fact need to see it in its function as a system, which include the gaps inherent in the structure of a system.

MS: Every system has a shadow or gaps. Nothing can be organized into a system, life just doesn’t work that way. Stephen Bachelor has a wonderful term that he uses in a book called “Living With the Devil“, and the term he uses is called ‘anarchy of the gaps’. The reason why I like that term is because anarchy refers to the fact that all systems are resilient and they self-organize. For example, a computer is not a good example of a self-organizing system. When it breaks it’s broken, and only now are we learning how to recycle them. But a forest is a good example of a resilient system. When there’s a forest fire and you go walk out into the black charcoal several months after the fire, that’s usually the time in the forest when there are the best wildflowers, because the forest is resilient.

We need to be resilient; we need to get depressed, we need to stay in bed sometimes for a month. We need our relationships to fall apart because we need to fall apart and regroup, and this is part of the healthy resilience of a person. I call that anarchy because it’s an example of how human beings internally and also culturally know how to self-organize in order to create balance. That’s something that I trust in ecologically, spiritually and politically and it’s something which is far more interesting than hierarchy. Two systems never quite fit together because each one has a shadow. And that’s why you need different systems to point out the shadow of other systems. Where systems don’t fit together, there’s so much vitality there… and that’s the anarchy of the gaps. I think that western psychology and yoga philosophy don’t totally fit together, but the places where they don’t fit together is way more interesting that where they do fit together.

RS: When a system collapses in on itself; when the forest burns or the relationship falls apart… Is that the self-reference point where we can meet up with our own shadow? Do we have to totally fall apart and then regroup to see it?

MS: There’s a good story about Charles Darwin, where after he finished “The Theory of Evolution” he experienced a deep depression. He noticed how when people become depressed they stop going out, they stare at the ceiling, they stay in bed and they don’t have sex. Darwin’s whole theory is based on the fact that we are driven to reproduce… But a person who is depressed is not thinking too much about that. After a few years of contemplating depression he realized that maybe depression had a purpose, and maybe it was an evolutionary purpose which was to slow us down and to make us look inward and see what’s valuable and what’s important in our lives.

I think that’s a good example of what you brought up because a lot of our symptoms have a purpose. You know this as a yoga teacher, you see people fall apart and they do everything they can to try and get back together and get back to work and to get their hamstrings working again. But you can also see how when people fall apart and their lives start to unravel, there can be something so creative and magnificent in that process if we’re patient and open enough to really see our lives that way.

RS: That brings us back to what we started with today talking about the attachment to pleasure and pain and learning to open and be with the experience that’s happening right now.

MS: If you go deep into your yoga asana practice and you really practice in a way that includes drishti, which is gazing, and bandhas, which are the bonding of breathing and our attention span, and pranayama, which is the un-restriction or the un-restraint of internal energetic pathways in the body… Then our practice becomes very psychological. Within a focused and concentrated asana practice we start to work not just with feeling good in our practice, but we move deeper into the realms where we learn how to really be present with strong emotions and turbulent thoughts and then that becomes a very deep form of meditation so that when we’re off the yoga mat we can use that kind of patience and attentiveness to serve others and to take care of ourselves.

RS: If you could put a message on a T-shirt, what would it say?

MS:  emptiness:compassion

Michael Stone is the author of three books, as well as other writing and articles. He is based on Toronto where he runs the Centre of Gravity Sangha and he travels and teaches internationally.
Michael will in Portland the weekend of September 24, 2010! This is what he has to say about that weekend’s offering:

“I feel inspired offering a workshop in Portland because in my imagination Portland, as a city, is an experiment that seeks to integrate urban life with creative ways of addressing social, ecological, transportation and economic issues. And the land along the coast is beautiful. Friday evening I will give a talk about the ways in which Yoga can be brought to life in this culture at this time without needing to escape our lives. We will explore the way yoga postures, meditation, ethics and art, all form a well-rounded path that allows us to practice deeply and then express our practice in everything we do.

On Saturday and Sunday we will look at yoga postures in subtle ways that focus on the internal pathways of the breath, proper gazing, and alignment techniques that allow us to turn the postures in vehicles of concentration. From there we will slow down asana sequences and see how practice matures not by adding more and more poses but by tuning into the psychological as well as physical patterns in mind and body. And we will do all this while having fun!”

For more information in registration for this workshop please visit The Yoga Space.

Salabhasana variations are simple backbends performed while lying prone (on the belly) that prepare the body for deeper backbending practice by strengthening and lengthening the muscles of the back, legs and “core”.

There are many variations of Salabhasana, here are a few:

To prepare, first lie on your belly with your fingertips below the shoulders. Concentrate on lengthening the tailbone towards the heels, there should be a slight pressure of the pubic bone towards the floor, which will cause the naval to rise away from the floor, maintain these actions while practicing the variations. Activate the legs by pressing the toenails down, the inner thighs spiral in and up.

Ekapada Salabhasana (one leg locust pose)

Lie on the belly with the legs extended backwards, the inner ankles together. Extend the arms forwards on the floor beside the ears, the palms turned down.
On the inhalation, lift the head, chest, right arm and right leg. Do not flex the head too far backwards, keep the neck long and relaxed and the right should drawing away from the right ear.
Try to keep the frontal hip bones on the mat and the shoulders even, so the right side of the body does not tilt upwards, rather the muscles of the back and leg lift upwards.
Keep the knees straight, the right arms elongating from the shoulder joint and the right leg elongating back from the lumbar spine.
Hold for five breaths and release on the exhalation. Repeat on the opposite side. Practice 1-3 times on each side.

Salabhasana A and B from the Intermediate Series of the Ashtanga Tradition

Lie on the belly resting on your chin with your hands palms up along your sides, the legs together with the edges of the big toes touching, heels slightly apart so that the inner thighs spiral in and upwards. Follow the same alignment principles for Ekapada Salabhasana.
For Salabhasana A roll the shoulders up and back as you slide the shoulder blades down and in. With an inhale, lift the head and legs using your back muscles to arch up. Keep your arms to your sides, using the tops of your hands to press down into the floor broadening the shoulders and the collar bones.
Keep the neck level, the legs strong and gently squeezing together, and your tailbone lengthening. After 4-5 breaths, lower with an exhale. You can rest with your forehead to the floor, or on one side of your face.

For Salabhasana B, from the A variation, slide the hands forward, palms down, until the forearms are 90 degrees to the floor. Press the hands down and back and slightly out to the sides as if you were trying to scoot forwards on your belly. Keep reaching out through inner legs. Hold for 4-5 breaths and release on the exhalation.

Bhujangasana (snake or serpent pose)

Begin lying on the belly with the legs extended hip-distance apart and the hands spread wide underneath the shoulders. Draw the elbows in close to the ribcage.
On an inhalation, firmly press the pubic bone, tops of the feet, and thighs into the floor, lift the shoulders up and back as you press into the palms to lift the chest off of the floor.
Maintain a connection in the front of the body between the lower ribcage and the top of the hips, engaging from the pubic bone to the belly button. Allow the tailbone to slightly drop down, as you try not to over engage the buttocks muscles. Lift from the sternum to the top of the head, maintaining an equal openness through out the spine. Stay for up to 30 seconds breaths. On an exhalation, reach through the crown as you lower the chest back to the floor. Keep the elbows hugging close to the body to engage the tricep muscles and avoid the shoulders rounding forward.

For an advanced variation of this pose and to increase the stretch in the thighs, bend both knees bringing the feet towards the head. Make sure to maintain connection to the pelvic floor and deep abdominal muscles.

Benefits
•    Strengthens the muscles of the spine, buttocks, and backs of the arms and legs
•    Stretches the shoulders, chest, belly, and thighs
•    Improves posture
•    Stimulates abdominal organs
•    Helps relieve stress

Contraindications/Cautions
•    Headache
•    Pregnancy
•    Serious back injury
•    Students with neck injuries should keep their head in a neutral position by looking down at the floor; they might also support the forehead on a thickly folded blanket.

Watch out for
•    Jutting rib cage
•    Shoulders in the ears or tensed  trapezius
•    Lifting too high on the arms and over stretching in the low back
•    Collapsing in the lower back and losing connection with the legs and pubic bone
•    Tensed face, keep your gaze downward cast towards the nose to relax the optic nerve

Absolutely Ashtanga is a great website and asana resource run by Sacramento Yogi and teacher Bill Counter. Happy Bending!

An assortment of 4th and 5th series Ashtanga postures. Practice safely please! (All pictures and yogis are featured on Absolutely Ashtanga!)

Happy Valentines Day!

Regardless of the plethora of possible associations you might have to this particular holiday, it’s never a bad excuse to explore the essence of the day… The heart.

In western society yoga and meditation have started to receive recognition from the medical community as to their value for cardiovascular health and aiding in the prevention of circulatory and heart-related illness.

In yogic and tantric traditions the organ of the heart and the energetic heart or the ability to love and feel emotion is located in the fourth chakra, named Anahata Chakra. Chakras are described as discs or wheels of energy radiating through the body, that govern certain principles. When they are balanced and healthy a person is unified in their ascending and descending qualities (heaven and earth, grounding and inspiration). If chakras are out of balance or disturbed they can cause physical, mental and emotional illnesses as well as inabilities to function in certain ways.

Anahata Chakra is located behind the thoracic spine in the region of the heart and is related to the thymus, located in the chest. The thymus is an element of the immune system and the endocrine system. It is the site of maturation of T-cells which are responsible for fending off disease. The thymus is adversely affected by stress.
The Anahata Chakra is the fourth of the seven major chakras of the spinal column or central channel. Key issues involving the heart chakra involve complex emotions, compassion, tenderness, unconditional love, equilibrium, rejection and well-being. Physically Anahata governs circulation, emotionally it governs unconditional love for the self and others, mentally it governs passion, and spiritually it governs devotion

The middle chakra is the meeting point of heaven and earth, Anahata means “unstruck sound” this is the place where ether becomes matter through the vibration of sound or speech. To locate the chakra press one hand into the center of your sternum or breastbone and the other hand at the corresponding point in your back, between your two hands is the energetic heart chakra. You can visualize the shape of the chakra as two triangles, one pointing upwards to symbolize the masculine/ yang/ ascending energy and one pointing downwards to symbolize the feminine/yin/ rooting or descending energy. The two triangles overlap and at the center is twelve pointing lotus radiating light into the body.

If you dig the new age vibes, check out this psychedelic youtube heart chakra meditation! Congratulations if you’re celebrating the more enjoyable and pleasant aspects of the heart chakra today, if, however this day is inspiring you to feel blue instead of red, you may appreciate The Heart Sutra which reminds us that as delightful as some forms (of people or chocolate) may be, all form is ultimately empty.

xoxo- Love Renee

(Raji Thron is pictured here demonstrating Ashtangasana. Please don’t try this one at home, unprepared or unsupervised.)

Ever wonder what pose is which one, where and how? Good thing there’s this kick-asana (ooh…) web index of asana variations complete with notes, references, instructions and bibliography.

And if you’re wondering what to do with all these poses, check out Yoga Journal’s online sequence builder!!

Oooh! Goldmine!!

I love it when I find amazing web resources like iHanuman. Hanuman the monkey-faced god of the Hindu tradition is considered to be a symbol of Bhakti (devotion) and love. As one incarnation of Lord Shiva, Hanuman represents good fortune and benevolence. iHanuman pays tribute to the namesake as an online community of yoga teachers who are dedicated to serving the yoga community through “karma” events (yoga events to raise money for certain causes), with an extensive digital library where you can find everything from a led yoga class to talks on yoga and medicine to audio recordings of Hanuman stories.

iHanuman also features webhosting for teachers, an online shop and other offerings.

This is definitely a resource to share and grow, please encourage your yoga teacher friends and studios to get involved.

Thanks to my friend Robert for bringing this recent New York Times article to my attention, it was sincerely one of the most entertaining 15-minute reads I’ve had in a while.

It seems to me that the point of both yoga and food get lost a lot. The practice of yoga is one that has so much potential to help those of afflicted with the human condition (otherwise known as extremism), to find some kind of gentle place in between; appreciating what’s here (like the home of this body which needs nutritious sustenance to live) without getting too carried away with the impermanence of what’s here (like this body eating any particular meal). And how lucky we are to have a meals to eat at all, whether they’re vegan, meaty, served on china or eaten with hands.

I’d be very interested in hearing your feedback and opinions. Comments please!