Namaskar! Greetings!
Recently, we have been practicing Yoga Nidra in class. Yoga Nidra is like "Conscious Sleep" where 20 to 30 minutes of deep relaxation occurs in Savasana, or the Corpse pose. Usually we do this at the end of a class session for 10 minutes or so. Lately, many have asked me what yoga postures to do for stress, and its related effects, usually manifesting in some dis-ease such as high blood pressure, or even a blood clot related to an injury and subsequent surgery. So I want to share an excellent article from an Indian physician I received advice from recently. Here is a link to one of her articles published at the Aura Wellness site. I hope you enjoy, and find more beneficial information as well.
http://www.yoga-teacher-training.org/2010/07/11/stress-%E2%80%A6-how-to-cope-with-it/
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Our Life Calling
In 2007, I was relieved of a position as an environmental graphics designer at a large international firm in Cincinnati, along with six others. It was the third layoff in the history of the 10-year-old company, and not the last. At the first signs of the housing loan crisis, I decided to sell my bungalow in Northern Kentucky and head west to live closer to family where care giving was becoming a larger concern.
With no business or industry related to my previous occupation to be found in the Ozarks, new employment opportunities looked dim. On seeking out a yoga class, I found none, and immediately decided to pursue certification as a yoga teacher, having studied yoga since the mid-1980s. For about five months I worked as a temp at a Chicago-based manufacturing firm, welding plastic parts on an assembly line, and commuted on weekends for my yoga teacher training at the Arkansas Yoga Center in Fayetteville.
After two years of persistent effort and becoming registered through the Yoga Alliance, I have now found this new calling– teaching regular weekly yoga classes to people in rural, north central Arkansas, including children from the age of five, to older adults up to age 92! It is wonderful, and so are all the people I have been so blessed and grateful to teach!
Finding this calling to providing healthful fitness classes through yoga and the SilverSneakers® Fitness Program for Older Adults, I have been redirected to the path to maintain my own well-being, as well as help others restore and manage theirs. I am now also very happy to manage the SilverSneakers® program for a family-owned business called Shape Fitness, with three gyms in one of the top retirement areas of the country– in Bull Shoals, Cotter and Yellville, Arkansas.
Where, or what is your life calling you to do? Drop a note!
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Current Classes
After the Memorial Day break on Monday, classes will resume at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church on Mondays at 9 and 11 a.m.
Cotter classes are postponed until late summer or early fall.
Another Bull Shoals class may resume if there are five who can commit to a five week session.
The complimentary, Thursday 10 a.m. class at the Peitz Cancer Support House for cancer survivors will run from 6/10 until end of July. Please call 870-508-1457 to confirm class is open.
Host a private yoga class at your home or another venue! Call me at 870-405-7121.
Cotter classes are postponed until late summer or early fall.
Another Bull Shoals class may resume if there are five who can commit to a five week session.
The complimentary, Thursday 10 a.m. class at the Peitz Cancer Support House for cancer survivors will run from 6/10 until end of July. Please call 870-508-1457 to confirm class is open.
Host a private yoga class at your home or another venue! Call me at 870-405-7121.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Free Yoga for Kids!
Since mid-April, 2010, I have been delighted to teach a free class to children in Cotter, AR at the original Cotter School gymnasium. It is a lovely WPA era stone building with a beautifully preserved hardwood floor. Now called the North Arkansas Youth Center, the facility hosts an after school program, Scouts and other groups. Basketball games are still played there too.
An article published in the March/April 2010 issue of Yoga Living Magazine states:
“Overwhelmingly, research shows that children who practice yoga and mindfulness are better able to regulate their emotions, manage stress and calm themselves. They may also choose better foods to eat and engage in more physical activity than children who do not. The studies also illustrate that centered, calm and focused children learn more easily, have better social skills and, in general, are much happier kids.
In France, South America, India, Italy and other countries where social/emotional learning is deemed as crucial as academia, yoga has been part of the school curriculum for over 25 years.”
Now, an elementary school in Mississippi is bringing in a yoga teacher twice a week to help promote children’s health and combat childhood obesity.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june10/obesity_05-12.html
So come have fun with yoga at 3:30 until about 4:30 p.m. on Mondays! Parents are welcome to join in too! Let’s all get and stay healthy!
The Yoga of Kindness
During my teacher training, a type of yoga was spoken of which I not heard before, called “Christian Yoga.” What was spoken about it was not too kind either. Recently I read on a web page about “Jewish Yoga” where the teacher said, “yoga means being kind to your body.” I like that very much. While there are many “styles” of yoga, the physical practice of the postures and balances comprise only about 1/8 of what a more holistic yoga practice is. Yes, yoga is a path one may adopt as a spiritual practice, yet it was developed as an antidote to orthodoxy. It was really about “no religion”. I personally feel yoga is a wonderful way that helps me deepen and inform my personal spiritual practice, both within and outside of the Christian church. And it is very much about honoring Self and others by becoming more peaceful, and yes, kind.
On another recent adventure, I attended a class called Selah Strength, which seems to have been developed by members at the Assembly of God church. Readings from the Bible, especially the Psalms, or Psalter, were read and contemporary Christian music was played. The young instructor pointed to an injury she had from running, and was teaching with a wrapped leg. Yet this was another Power Yoga type of class with Pilates elements thrown in, which many like. She rapidly changed from one posture to another, exclaiming several times how she knew she was pushing the class with an odd apology, “I’m sorry! Not really!” I followed at my own pace, as I always direct my classes to do, as well as reminding you to stop and rest whenever you need to. This way was not honoring the body, nor being kind. I wondered if this young instructor had heard of the Yoga Sutras, a code of conduct on which traditional Hatha Yoga is based. Hatha means to join together the polar opposites of sun and moon, and bringing balance to all the seeming dualisms in our life.
An acquaintance told me once how she needed to feel the pain of a Pilates class, which is again, not being kind to your body. Push only wherever your body can go, as it will let you know. Strained or torn muscles, tendons or ligaments take a long time to heal, and longer as we age. There is also the possibility of doing permanent damage to your body. Many people come to yoga for healing from another dis-ease or condition of body, mind or spirit.
As Gandhi said, “Be the change to want to see in the world.” A wonderful quote I was very happy to see in large vinyl letters at the YMCA hosting Selah Yoga. Selah is a Hebrew word which may be understood as a pause to “stop and listen” or “Let those with eyes see and with ears hear.”
Please be kind and honor your body, your Self, and all others too.
A very good read on merging yoga with Christianity is “Jesus in the Lotus, the Mystical Doorway Between Yogic Spirituality and Christianity”, by Russill Paul. Interspirituality is the theme of this book.
On another recent adventure, I attended a class called Selah Strength, which seems to have been developed by members at the Assembly of God church. Readings from the Bible, especially the Psalms, or Psalter, were read and contemporary Christian music was played. The young instructor pointed to an injury she had from running, and was teaching with a wrapped leg. Yet this was another Power Yoga type of class with Pilates elements thrown in, which many like. She rapidly changed from one posture to another, exclaiming several times how she knew she was pushing the class with an odd apology, “I’m sorry! Not really!” I followed at my own pace, as I always direct my classes to do, as well as reminding you to stop and rest whenever you need to. This way was not honoring the body, nor being kind. I wondered if this young instructor had heard of the Yoga Sutras, a code of conduct on which traditional Hatha Yoga is based. Hatha means to join together the polar opposites of sun and moon, and bringing balance to all the seeming dualisms in our life.
An acquaintance told me once how she needed to feel the pain of a Pilates class, which is again, not being kind to your body. Push only wherever your body can go, as it will let you know. Strained or torn muscles, tendons or ligaments take a long time to heal, and longer as we age. There is also the possibility of doing permanent damage to your body. Many people come to yoga for healing from another dis-ease or condition of body, mind or spirit.
As Gandhi said, “Be the change to want to see in the world.” A wonderful quote I was very happy to see in large vinyl letters at the YMCA hosting Selah Yoga. Selah is a Hebrew word which may be understood as a pause to “stop and listen” or “Let those with eyes see and with ears hear.”
Please be kind and honor your body, your Self, and all others too.
A very good read on merging yoga with Christianity is “Jesus in the Lotus, the Mystical Doorway Between Yogic Spirituality and Christianity”, by Russill Paul. Interspirituality is the theme of this book.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
A Hot Yoga Experience
For Valentine’s weekend, I finally made it to a commercial yoga studio about 2 hours from Mountain Home to try one of the hottest trends in the yoga world for myself. It’s literally very hot! The 90-minute workout is done in a room heated to about 105 degrees F, or more. There is controversy over the safety of practicing in this kind of heat, and it is definitely not for the weak-of-heart! It is much more about detoxification, in my opinion, which sauna does, only for shorter periods of time with the body in a passive mode.
The original concept of Hot Yoga comes from an Indian man, now California-based, Bikram Choudhury. It is a synthesis of Astanga, or power yoga, emphasizing a rigorous and rapid workout of postures, or asanas. Bikram states that more fresh blood is supplied to the muscles faster, which oxygenates tissue and cells, in theory for safer, deeper stretching in a heated environment. The heart is pumping blood faster, the arteries and veins contract and expand faster, and the asanas are struck faster too. It is a popular trend in North American yoga studios today, where many yogis (students) are in the 20-40 age range, which perhaps explains all the rage. This is the time of life where an emphasis is on the body’s physique, through more intense work-outs.
Call this the exoteric view. A more esoteric yoga practice, (the root word yug means to yoke), is on a deeper level, the methods employed to unite body, mind and spirit, and is really a work-in. It is interesting to note that Anahata, or the Heart Chakra means unstruck. I noted that Bikram actively seeks damages for trade infringements on his style, and the studio I visited labeled their brand by another name. This ownership is in my humble opinion, more about brand-driven or what I'd call ego-yoga, which is not what true yoga is about.
Of course, all one does to improve one’s being is Self-centered to a degree, yet the deeper aspect of yoga calls one back out of the ego driven self and into the world for service to others. Other forms of yoga such as dharma yoga, emphasize one’s works, bhakti is a yoga of devotion to God, or higher power, and tantra is another mystical form. To be serious, all require self-discipline and a lifetime of study and practice.
So back to Hot Yoga. I’d spotted this studio online when it’s ad popped up on Google. I reviewed the web site, and made a note to try it out the next time I planned to visit that city to shop. After locating it, I walked in to an open lobby area with registration desk, beverage cooler and retail displays of trendy togs, essentially two-piece bathing suits, averaging $45 for each piece, and mats ranging from $17.-$60. Several folks, ages 20 to 30 something, were chatting while waiting to enter the classroom. First timers can borrow a towel and mat, which I was grateful for since I forgot mine. Being the elder there, but not the only first-timer, we were told to just lie down if it got too intense, and to stay in the room. Many people experience nausea and dizziness the first time. It was explained it could be “pretty intense.”
We entered a carpeted room, about 20 by 50 feet with mirrors covering the front and sidewalls. Heaters were blowing from mounted units near the ceiling around the perimeter, spaced about six feet apart. A platform was at the entrance door, which was the back of the classroom. I was advised to move slightly forward from where I decided to park, so to not be directly under a heater. Contemporary music started, on the loud side I thought, and the young teacher began rapidly firing instructions through her microphone headset, about being with the moment, and not competing or judging self, or neighbor, as we bowed on towel-covered mats in Balasana. Too much audio competition to start with, I thought. It seemed odd that she stayed in the back, out of sight, so our focus was on ourselves, and each other in the mirrors. One man, who may have been the owner, was front and center, so he seemed to be the model to follow.
We then began pressing into a series of asanas on the mat, then stood and began deeper stretching, and balances, moving quickly into a flow or sequence of movements, stopping or holding briefly, then repeated the flow, pausing before starting a second set, then continuing to the next sequence. Two young women in the front row, perhaps in their early twenties, exhibited great flexibility with their forward and backbends, and obvious experience with the program. A few guys also exhibited agility and discipline, but I held my own along with other neighbors. There was no judgment, only an acknowledgement of where each is in the here and now. The class is definitely not for beginners, or those with no yoga experience at all. There is a “Lite” version, and a “Power” class.
I thought the pace of transitions could be harmful. The names of the asanas was not always correct, or had been modified, another brand so to speak. By moving too quickly from one deep stretch into its counter stretch, or through opposing muscle and joint groups, especially through the spine, put one at much higher risk of injury. There was no individual assistance, just a continuous stream of moves. Breaks for very brief rest in savasana was called for twice while I participated, then the door was opened to allow a breath of cool airflow. Water breaks were also called, very briefly. One could, of course rest whenever they chose. Sweat poured off bodies, towels were quickly soaked. I kept up for a good 50 minutes, then rested and observed. On the second door opening, I thought the class was about over, as one fellow left the room. The class rested in savasana again, so having already paused awhile, I decided that was enough for me, so I gathered my borrowed towel and mat, and scooted out into the cool lobby.
In summary, Hot Yoga may be worth trying, provided your overall health, flexibility, stamina, experience and confidence with Hatha yoga is good. While Hot Yoga may help provide a detoxification, there are many other ways to achieve this, such as through yoga kriyas of fasting, sauna, hot baths and other deep cleansing practices. I will probably try it again, perhaps the Lite version, then eventually a Power class. As always, know your limitations, and honor your body.
The original concept of Hot Yoga comes from an Indian man, now California-based, Bikram Choudhury. It is a synthesis of Astanga, or power yoga, emphasizing a rigorous and rapid workout of postures, or asanas. Bikram states that more fresh blood is supplied to the muscles faster, which oxygenates tissue and cells, in theory for safer, deeper stretching in a heated environment. The heart is pumping blood faster, the arteries and veins contract and expand faster, and the asanas are struck faster too. It is a popular trend in North American yoga studios today, where many yogis (students) are in the 20-40 age range, which perhaps explains all the rage. This is the time of life where an emphasis is on the body’s physique, through more intense work-outs.
Call this the exoteric view. A more esoteric yoga practice, (the root word yug means to yoke), is on a deeper level, the methods employed to unite body, mind and spirit, and is really a work-in. It is interesting to note that Anahata, or the Heart Chakra means unstruck. I noted that Bikram actively seeks damages for trade infringements on his style, and the studio I visited labeled their brand by another name. This ownership is in my humble opinion, more about brand-driven or what I'd call ego-yoga, which is not what true yoga is about.
Of course, all one does to improve one’s being is Self-centered to a degree, yet the deeper aspect of yoga calls one back out of the ego driven self and into the world for service to others. Other forms of yoga such as dharma yoga, emphasize one’s works, bhakti is a yoga of devotion to God, or higher power, and tantra is another mystical form. To be serious, all require self-discipline and a lifetime of study and practice.
So back to Hot Yoga. I’d spotted this studio online when it’s ad popped up on Google. I reviewed the web site, and made a note to try it out the next time I planned to visit that city to shop. After locating it, I walked in to an open lobby area with registration desk, beverage cooler and retail displays of trendy togs, essentially two-piece bathing suits, averaging $45 for each piece, and mats ranging from $17.-$60. Several folks, ages 20 to 30 something, were chatting while waiting to enter the classroom. First timers can borrow a towel and mat, which I was grateful for since I forgot mine. Being the elder there, but not the only first-timer, we were told to just lie down if it got too intense, and to stay in the room. Many people experience nausea and dizziness the first time. It was explained it could be “pretty intense.”
We entered a carpeted room, about 20 by 50 feet with mirrors covering the front and sidewalls. Heaters were blowing from mounted units near the ceiling around the perimeter, spaced about six feet apart. A platform was at the entrance door, which was the back of the classroom. I was advised to move slightly forward from where I decided to park, so to not be directly under a heater. Contemporary music started, on the loud side I thought, and the young teacher began rapidly firing instructions through her microphone headset, about being with the moment, and not competing or judging self, or neighbor, as we bowed on towel-covered mats in Balasana. Too much audio competition to start with, I thought. It seemed odd that she stayed in the back, out of sight, so our focus was on ourselves, and each other in the mirrors. One man, who may have been the owner, was front and center, so he seemed to be the model to follow.
We then began pressing into a series of asanas on the mat, then stood and began deeper stretching, and balances, moving quickly into a flow or sequence of movements, stopping or holding briefly, then repeated the flow, pausing before starting a second set, then continuing to the next sequence. Two young women in the front row, perhaps in their early twenties, exhibited great flexibility with their forward and backbends, and obvious experience with the program. A few guys also exhibited agility and discipline, but I held my own along with other neighbors. There was no judgment, only an acknowledgement of where each is in the here and now. The class is definitely not for beginners, or those with no yoga experience at all. There is a “Lite” version, and a “Power” class.
I thought the pace of transitions could be harmful. The names of the asanas was not always correct, or had been modified, another brand so to speak. By moving too quickly from one deep stretch into its counter stretch, or through opposing muscle and joint groups, especially through the spine, put one at much higher risk of injury. There was no individual assistance, just a continuous stream of moves. Breaks for very brief rest in savasana was called for twice while I participated, then the door was opened to allow a breath of cool airflow. Water breaks were also called, very briefly. One could, of course rest whenever they chose. Sweat poured off bodies, towels were quickly soaked. I kept up for a good 50 minutes, then rested and observed. On the second door opening, I thought the class was about over, as one fellow left the room. The class rested in savasana again, so having already paused awhile, I decided that was enough for me, so I gathered my borrowed towel and mat, and scooted out into the cool lobby.
In summary, Hot Yoga may be worth trying, provided your overall health, flexibility, stamina, experience and confidence with Hatha yoga is good. While Hot Yoga may help provide a detoxification, there are many other ways to achieve this, such as through yoga kriyas of fasting, sauna, hot baths and other deep cleansing practices. I will probably try it again, perhaps the Lite version, then eventually a Power class. As always, know your limitations, and honor your body.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Eyes (of the Heart) Wide Open
It seems we can’t stay alert enough to everything going on in our own daily life, let alone the world’s. So we come to a discipline such as yoga, to return to the center of our attention span which resides in the mind, and to our heart, with a residence that truly resonates throughout the body. While our hearts go out to all who suffer in any way, anywhere in the world, we must also re-mind ourselves that we too, need loving thoughts focused inward, to our heart center for our own self-care and healing, so we may then put that loving care back out into the universe. Be gentle on yourself, and with others, ALL others you meet. Try to think loving thoughts to Your Self as you lie in bed at night before sleep, and as you wake in the morning. And spiral those thoughts of comfort and love to those nearest and dearest to you, on outward to your neighbors, community, region, nation and all on Earth. Know that somehow, someway, somewhere those thoughts are felt, and DO matter.
Be gentle with yourself, and let your lovingkindness and compassion radiate out from you in all directions. And keep breathing, and loving, deeeply....
Namasté
Be gentle with yourself, and let your lovingkindness and compassion radiate out from you in all directions. And keep breathing, and loving, deeeply....
Namasté
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