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Not That Person

Last month, my BFF Nicla and I went to Costa Rica for my 52nd birthday and there was one particularly interesting leg of the journey.  We went on an amazing horseback ride through the rainforest and across the black sandy beach (side note: if you haven’t been to Costa Rica, go.). It was pouring rain–as…

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My Handstand Teacher

A very famous yoga instructor taught me how to straddle press to handstand. That may or may not surprise you, but this will: She was never my teacher. Not online, not offline, not ever, anywhere, any time. But then again, she was. You see, this woman and I used to take all the same classes…

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You Will Never Achieve Your Potential

We all need goals in life. We all need purpose. Without them, we are corks in an ocean, letting life happen instead of living life on purpose. You can have any kind of goals: relationship goals, financial goals, health goals, yoga goals… But if you set goals to achieve your potential in one or more…

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fire! fire!

By Shana | May 7, 2012

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…

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guru shmuru

By Shana | April 26, 2012

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…

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flip that switch!

By Shana | April 25, 2012

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…

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the end.

By Shana | April 23, 2012

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…

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yoga and addiction

By Shana | March 25, 2012

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),…

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i admit it! i’m guilty! guilty! :(…

By Shana | March 9, 2012

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…

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is john friend just being a good yogi…?

By Shana | February 29, 2012

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…

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wait! don’t go!

By Shana | February 28, 2012

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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the best yogi alive!

By Shana | January 20, 2012

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…

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wait a minute!

By Shana | January 19, 2012

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…

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hold the applause…

By Shana | January 9, 2012

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…

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yoga…the most dangerous activity on earth!!!

By Shana | January 6, 2012

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…

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THAT guy…

By Shana | January 4, 2012

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…

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$#!+ some very famous yoga teachers have told me…

By Shana | January 2, 2012

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…

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confessions of a yoga douche

By Shana | December 30, 2011

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…

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building core strength for handstand

By Shana | December 28, 2011

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…

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the only person who wants to hear me sing…

By Shana | December 28, 2011

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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paying the yoga bills

By Shana | December 27, 2011

i know a yogini who had $30,000 in debt with target. yes, target. please don’t ask me how…i can only imagine. anyway, seven years passed and the debt still wasn’t paid. target was still knocking down her door for payment and she was indignant. according to her, if seven years have passed, the debt should…

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sex sells!

By Shana | December 26, 2011

so, there have been some comments about my incredibly glamorous hairstyle in yesterday’s youtube video. perhaps i should reshoot with something more fabulous. afterall, sex sells, right? i’m sure the yogis thousands of years ago would never have shot a video like this without at least a stylist and some strategic make-up! what was i…

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freestanding handstands! happy christmukkah!

By Shana | December 25, 2011

for your holiday gift, i spent hours if not days looking for the perfect present. it basically came down to a candle shaped like jesus, a latke doorstop, or this…a video on how to do a freestanding handstand (adha mukha vrksasana) in the middle of the room. yi-ha! right? check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPEuNlDQ2eM&feature=youtu.be

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holiday aparigraha

By Shana | December 24, 2011

forget about the list of things we want during the holidays–the jewelry, the cars, the houses in the hamptons–and let’s talk for a second about the things that we need. any day of the week, you can hear yourself with that list. it’s a great topic of conversation. “i really need a new pair of…

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