BLAH BLAH BLAH...
a yogi’s lesson in grammar
so, a friend of mine was telling me about this party he went to. of course there was a ton of alcohol and basically everyone was smoking pot. there were people doing coke–maybe harder stuff. married people were making out with other people…who didn’t happen to be their spouses. general debauchery, you could say. i…
Read Morewow! this yoga thing really #%@$#$%@# calms me down!
so, my yogathletica classes are, admittedly, really hard. and the other day one of my regular (and quite strong) students was struggling through a challenging posture when she suddenly just stopped trying and with tears in her eyes and a choke in her throat implored me “i thought yoga wasn’t supposed to be stressful! i…
Read Moreyou can probably ignore this one…
poor cobra. poor updog. these guys are like the tragically neglected stepchildren of the vinyasa family. there are a lot of poses that you can watch and fake, but these ain’t two of them. taken in broad strokes, you get a whole bunch of hyperextended elbows, collapsed lumbar spines, and clenched shoulders and necks that…
Read Moreshhhhhhhvasanaaaaaaaah!
savasana. you love it or you hate it. (and if you love it, it’s impossible to understand how anyone could possibly hate it.) ultimately, this posture of complete relaxation is the actually the most challenging pose of all, as the mind is the hardest of all the muscles to control. throughout your entire asana practice…
Read Morefire! fire!
so you’re in this yoga class, in some lunge for an extraordinary amount of time, and your leg is burning off. if you don’t get out of this pose, you’re just going to die…but the teacher is rambling, pontificating about some sutra or guna or something and the pose has no end in sight. your…
Read Moreguru shmuru
when i was a kid, i was obsessed with john stamos. my bedroom was wallpapered with every teen beat poster of him i could find. to me, he was a god. why? i guess because i thought he was cute…i mean isn’t god cute? enter high school…my fabulous drama teacher happened to have also been…
Read Moreflip that switch!
for my first year or two of yoga, i had no real introduction to arm balances or inversions. i had seen them in photos, but that’s it. they looked freaky and scary and there is nothing you could have done to convince me that i could actually do one. this stuff was for people who…
Read Morethe end.
a few years ago i was in a workshop where the instructor was trying to teach us how to press up into handstand. all around the room, desperate yogis were jumping, hopping, kicking up…anything they could do to get into that handstand. then there was me. the only person in the room stuck in uttanasana…
Read Moreyoga and addiction
it’s no secret by now that yoga is a fabulous tool for overcoming addiction. in fact, you can find “yoga for addiction” or “12-step yoga” in studios all across the globe. a large part of any dedicated yoga practice, in fact, is the overcoming of our habits and addictions (no matter how big or small),…
Read Morei admit it! i’m guilty! guilty! :(…
i love asana. inversion asana. standing asana. twisting asana. balancing asana. any kind of asana asana. and i love alignment. knees bending, arms straightening, heart lifting. the whole thing just gives me purpose. but i’ve been in class lately, listening to teachers, taking themselves way too seriously, preaching fire and brimstone about the “traditional” way…
Read Moreis john friend just being a good yogi…?
Brahmacharya—literally, under the tutelage of Brahma1—is the one of the Yama, or codes of Universal Conduct, found in Patanjali’s “Yoga Sutra”. As BKS Iyengar defines it, Brahmacharya “means the life of celibacy, religious study and self-restraint.”2 When examining the true meaning of Brahmacharya, it is interesting how divergent the published interpretations of this precept really…
Read Morewait! don’t go!
i can pretend it doesn’t bother me, but it does. i hate it when someone leaves my yoga class early (unless, of course, they warn me before class). okay, maybe it’s my ego getting in the way…i promise i’ll work on that…if you promise not to leave my class early. here’s the thing. i’ve taken…
Read Morethe best yogi alive!
think of who you perceive as the best yogi/ni alive. and then let me guess. is it that guy who can stand on his head without any hands? or that girl who can press up to handstand…even in her underwear? ooh! ooh! i know! it’s that guy who can stand on one hand, with one…
Read Morewait a minute!
time is relative. i know it seems concrete. a minute is sixty seconds, is 60,000 milliseconds, 1/60 of an hour. pretty definitive, right? and when someone (say, me) asks you to hold a yoga pose–let’s say a handstand–for a minute you think, “no! that’s forever! i can’t hold that long! you’re just being cruel!” but…
Read Morehold the applause…
i can do some funky stuff. i love arm balances and inversions and i work really hard on them. so, when my teachers need a demonstrator, i’m often the one who’s asked to demo. and i’m totally cool with that. in fact, i enjoy it. but somewhere in the past five years or so, it’s…
Read Moreyoga…the most dangerous activity on earth!!!
in the last 24 hours, i’ve been inundated with clients, friends, family, and strangers emailing me this link: How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/how-yoga-can-wreck-your-body.html?emc=eta1> By WILLIAM J. BROAD and if you teach yoga in the western hemisphere, i assume it’s come across your email a time or thousand as well… but on the off-chance…
Read MoreTHAT guy…
you know when THAT guy comes to your class…? he’s handsome in a just-the-way-i-like-it kind of way… he’s got on the harvard business school sweatshirt…and you confirm that he’s a grad… you ask what he does…yes, successful… he at least looks like he could be jewish…but his pants are on… every time you say something…
Read More$#!+ some very famous yoga teachers have told me…
my classes have always been small…one or two handfuls of dedicated and very hard-working students. yogathletica classes are unique, unlike most any class out there (definitely way unlike the popular classes), and egotistically ungratifying. my classes are for people who want to work on some seriously tough challenges, regardless of the outcome. i’ve never been…
Read Moreconfessions of a yoga douche
so there’s this picture going around the internet of a guy doing a modified pincha mayurasana (forearm balance) in the middle of a bikram studio with a bunch of indignant girls sitting around, utterly unamused. on it is the caption “don’t be a yoga douche”. it’s gotten hundreds of “likes” on facebook, followed by hundreds…
Read Morebuilding core strength for handstand
in my last video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPEuNlDQ2eM&feature=share), i showed you how to do a freestanding handstand in the middle of the room. consider this the prequel, showing you how to build and utilize your core strength specifically for coming into these slow, controlled handstands. we will work with the wall as a tool for learning how to…
Read Morethe only person who wants to hear me sing…
i have this one client. she’s 44 years old and has severe down syndrome. i’d say she has the mentality of about a one-and-a-half to two-year-old and she is purely incredible. we’ve been working together for two-and-a-half years now. she can hold half-moon longer than just about any of my students and–even better–she tells me…
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