BLAH BLAH BLAH...
are your goals holding you back???
when i was just a wee lass of maybe 14, my father handed me a dumbbell. it was some random dumbbell, whatever weight, and he asked me how many times i thought i could curl it. sporty spice that i was, i picked a high number–say, 50–and he handed me the weight and told me…
Read Moreyou complete me yoga-ly
here in america, we say “hi” and we say “bye” and, so far as i can tell, those words in their deepest, most profound translations mean “hello” and “goodbye”. it’s really nice that we wish that the “bye” is a good one…that’s how thoughtful we americans are! 🙂 in india, they say “namaste”. it’s sort…
Read Morehow you know you've arrived
what level are you? surely, you’ve been asked that before. so, what do you answer? level one? two? three? (that’s clever yoga-speak for beginner, intermediate, or advanced). how do you know? because you can do a handstand? because you can’t do a handstand? actually…neither factor matters one bit. and if you think it does, you’re…
Read Morehow you know you’ve arrived
what level are you? surely, you’ve been asked that before. so, what do you answer? level one? two? three? (that’s clever yoga-speak for beginner, intermediate, or advanced). how do you know? because you can do a handstand? because you can’t do a handstand? actually…neither factor matters one bit. and if you think it does, you’re…
Read Morep-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-poker face, p-p-poker face!
staring contest! no smiling! (but you can blink!) and what does this have to do with yoga at all??? well, a big part of yoga is practicing non-reactivity. and… we all know that when we feel emotions, our facial muscles tell our story. we’re happy, we smile. sad, we frown. did you know, however, that…
Read Morego manduka or go home!
(disclosure: i was neither paid nor asked to write this blog post, but wrote it entirely because of how much i believe in this product. i do, however, receive commission on sales related to my links.) for more than ten years, i have practiced on, loved, and clung to my beloved manduka black mat pro, whom i affectionately call…
Read Morei’d rather be…
So I’m driving down Wilshire Boulevard today and I see this license plate holder that says “I’d rather be doing yoga.” And it really gets me thinking. For two reasons. One, is that yoga is not something you do (at least not in the sense that most Angelenos think it’s done). Yoga is something you…
Read Morethe more i know…
when i took my first teacher training, i was sure i already knew everything coming in…and at least as much as my teachers. i was merely taking the course to get my certification, as a formality. i mean, i already had almost a year of experience. i was teaching. i could do inversions in the…
Read Moreplaying with peanut butter
thomas edison, one of the greatest inventors of all time, didn’t just pop a lightbulb out of his ass and become famous. in fact, it took edison a purported 10,000 trials before he came up with the bulb. first, he tried everything he could think of. he even went so far as to try to…
Read Morea 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…
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