Yoga Blog

What Does it Mean to “Be Present” During Your Practice?

I’ve had a number of breakthroughs thus far during my time in the Advanced Studies program. Among the most fundamental is learning what a difference focus makes in my practice. Not just taking a physical pose, or asana, but actually thinking about what my body is doing in the pose. Having a little conversation with all the various muscle groups involved in a particular pose – making sure the proper ones are engaging and the proper ones relaxing – has changed the relationship I have with my body. We used to speak in strained whispers but now we have an active dialogue. All this has come from being present and focused while on my mat.

I read an article recently that talked about how the brain behaves when you repeat activities. When you do something over and over, the brain tends to use neural pathways in the same area each time. And if you’ve done something many times, you can do it without giving much focus to the activity. That allows you to multitask. Like how you can walk and talk on the phone at the same time. At one point in your life, you needed to apply tremendous focus in order to walk. Then after a while, you stopped focusing on it. Since then, you’ve taken millions of steps. And if you’ve done something over a million times, wouldn’t you think you’d be an expert at it? Wrong. We trip, stumble, and fall all the time. Why aren’t we all flawless walking experts at this point? Because when you don’t focus on an activity, you will never do it as well as you can do it and you will not improve.

But when you focus on what we are doing, you get better each time. The brain PHYSICALLY changes the neural pathways that control the activity. This is how “muscle memories” are built. So when your instructor tells you to “be present,” that’s what they mean. By being present you engage the brain. And when you engage the brain, you improve not only your practice at the moment, but your future practice as well.

The biggest risk of yoga is change

kim on 3:27 pm January 18th, 2012 / 5 Comments »

I’m still thinking about that article, which I initially posted about here. Scott Stroud and I take class together on Tuesday nights, and in the car on the way home, he showed me the pictures from the article. OMG those guys, the NYT. As my teacher points out in his response, the paper is trying to increase sales and Mr. Broad is trying to sell books.

I know that’s real, but gross!

John also linked us to the best response I’ve read yet to Broad’s ridiculous piece of poorly edited journalism, from the Ashtanga Yoga Center of New York. I love every word, including his or her slam on Teacher Training Programs and that girl singing The Clash. Like the author, I remember the days of doing yoga, also in New York (for me in mid-nineties) when you could not buy a yoga mat, and when Lululemon’s owner was in Japan selling skateboards to another rich market.

Two best quotes of his/hers:

When there is a great potential for making money, quality is usually the first thing to be sacrificed. Fast food, anyone? It is unfortunate that this is exactly what we are facing now – yoga has been McDona-fied. It has been reduced from a practice that traditionally demanded dedication, discipline, sacrifice, humility, surrender, love, devotion, and self-investigation – and yes, suffering through rigorous practice – to something that one can now learn to teach in a weekend.

I would edit in “sometimes” in front of “suffering” or replace “suffering” altogether with “a lot of work”.

I also totally hearted the conclusion:

To live a life of self-examination is not always an easy thing. But that does not mean that it is not joyous, or have its own rewards, for it can be both of those things.

I made the decision several years ago to change the name of our 200-hour Teacher Training Program to be called Advanced Studies, for this is more accurate a term describing what happens in all Boundless’s Advanced Studies Programs. And, as I reminded my Boundless Yoga class last Saturday, we have been working at Boundless for 10 years to create an environment where everyone learns safely, feels challenged (both mentally and physically), and evolves. I don’t see any reason to do yoga except for these things. I want to evolve, and I want you to do that with me.

That yoga has become, for many who cannot escape the consumer trap of wanting my yoga my way, a drive-through experience, speaks to the fact that change is scary and involves loss. For those of us at Boundless — for those who teach here and who stay for a while to practice with us — we get that we’re in this body not only to own it,  but to know it. We are also in it to feel exactly what our AYNY author said, that:

feeling of freshness, of being clean and free, of feeling that a whole, new world was opening in me.

Second Job

MattD on 2:41 pm January 13th, 2012 / 3 Comments »

Technology has become a second job we didn’t know we had, ****Alice****said to the March Hare.

** **

While the recent article “The Joy of Quiet” by Pico Iyer in the NY Times is what inspired this particular rant, the conversation about technology’s obfuscation of our lives, the way we communicate, and how we spend our free time has been rolling out of my mouth for years now.  I read the article just before leaving for yoga, went downstairs and heard my housemate talking to his friend about it. It was spreading fast. After class, I talked to Erin Duncan about it, she had read it, and admitted to having posted it on her facebook profile, ironically but understandably falling into the technology loop the article discusses. But if we are going to spread the spirit of technological restraint, social media is the fastest way to do it. ****

** **

There has been a noticeable rise in the discussion of technology versus our lives. A couple weeks ago I saw an advertisement in a newspaper: “Introducing the ‘de-tech’ detox, a holiday without modern gadgets”. Since when did a vacation have modern gadgets? Since when did we feel we had to pay someone at a resort to “gently remind” us, as stated in the ad, to leave our blackberries in the room that does *not*, at extra cost, come with a TV. Pico Iyer mentions Yoga and Tai Chi as activities people are genuinely becoming interested in, as opposed to them being new age fads. The rather long and silly Jan 5th NY Times article “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body” does state: “yoga’s exploding popularity — the number of Americans doing yoga has risen from about 4 million in 2001 to what some estimate to be as many as 20 million in 2011”. I see this meteoric rise coinciding with that of social media and the increasing ease with which to access it.  We are falling down a rabbit hole of technology and yoga is one of the hanging roots that people are grasping for, to slow their inevitable descent into a curious and nonsensical Wonderland. ****

** **

A friend confessed he could no longer read beginning-to-end two paragraphs on a computer, without at least one quick check of something unrelated; facebook, a link to a photo, a fragment of a video, anything. He says he has never felt so lacking in attention. You have too many choices, thus nothing feels like the best use of your time. Or you try to do multiple things at one time, or you choose one thing to do, but afterward feel regret because maybe you could have chosen something else. I think this angst can be called ‘fragmentation’.

** **

No one can deny the usefulness of cell phones, but they also got an early start on warping our lives. Text messaging in particular, they have destroyed our sense of commitment. Before cell phones, when you made a date you had two choices.  You showed up at the time and place you agreed on, or you stood someone up.  Now, there is no expectation that anything will occur the way it was agreed upon, if there was any real agreement to begin with (which is becoming increasingly common). You don’t try too hard to be
on time, because you can always text them with updates on where you are, and somehow that makes up for it. You can cancel at just about anytime, you can offer a change of venue or activity, and things can spiral into a shootout of text messages and phone calls and you finally meet, harried, at some completely different place with a whole new evening.  That’s not ‘spontaneity’, and I don’t consider that fun. That’s stress, and a deterioration of trust and solidity. I recall a chapter in the book “American Psycho” where a handful of late 20’s friends, all at their respective homes talking via a 3 or 4 or 5 way phone call, quibble indecisively about where to go out to eat that night, where to meet up, what to eat, who else should join . . . restaurant reservations are made, cancelled, and the absurdly long chapter ends mid sentence with no conclusion. This satire took place in the late 80’s. Now imagine the same thing with people moving around talking on iphones while using google and yelp to find restaurants. Come to think of it, that doesn’t seem all that
absurd or even uncommon these days.  Makes me think of when you stare straight down on an anthill and try to make sense of what individual ants are doing.

** **

When most celebrities and many major politicians throughout the world have twitter accounts that people regularly follow to get news and develop their opinions, there is no real voice of moderation for the use of technology. Have you ever heard a celebrity or politician tell people not to follow them on twitter, to leave facebook alone and go play soccer? No, because social media connects them to fans, viewers, customers, and eventually money and votes. All drenched in increasingly provocative and manipulative
advertisements. People are wandering this bizarre landscape of Wonderland, some as mad as the Hatter, others, like ****Alice****, increasingly fearful and looking for an escape. This technology is no longer just a fun way to post a humorous observation to all your friends and family at once, but a crappy part time job you didn’t realize you had: tag these photos, reply to this email, tweet that joke, accept this friend request, text that person, research these restaurants for happy hour, rearrange that Itunes play list,
check this daily comic strip, respond to that wall post, sign up for online dating, reply to this text, “no I wanna go 2 that other club”…****

** **

Social media like Facebook is a breakthrough for keeping in touch with people, especially for someone who has moved many times such as myself. But when I really think of social media, I think of sitting alone in my room, looking at friends who I can’t possibly see anytime soon, and frustratingly inane comments by acquaintances I don’t care to see again. You may have access to 1,000 ‘friends’ profiles, but when you go to Boundless, you have a handful of real people who all want to be there, are carrying no cell
phones, and are as interested in an hour of quiet as you are. An artist friend of mine derided yoga as “selfish” and I understand the misconception with its emphasis on turning in, focusing on your own breath, your own body, closing your eyes, blocking all else out, but it’s the idea that you are focusing, however internally, *with* others. If private lessons cost aslittle as regular classes, how many of you would regularly attend those over a Monday night class with Erin Duncan and other Yogi’s?  How successful is your private practice at home, alone in your room?

****

There will be many more life altering inventions, the likes of which neither Philip K Dick novels nor Spielberg adaptations like Minority Report can predict, and advertisements will continue to encroach on our attention,and we will have more ways to communicate and less to say, but we will always have one last place to retreat, or should I say, *wake up*: the breath.

****

Link to the Pico Iyer article. ****

lil convo on FB re: yoga

kelly on 1:02 pm January 13th, 2012 / Be the first to comment! »

Not taking sides on this one, but thought you’d find it…. interestinghttp://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/01/12/is-yoga-for-narcissists/

learn to turn it upside down with carol!

kelly on 11:18 am January 10th, 2012 / 1 Comment »

Carol teaches Level 1-2 yoga tonite at 6:30. Check her out! Her class will spend the next six weeks working toward handstand. This week she will focus on the steadiness and ease needed to “kick up” (think lots of hamstring work, three-legged dog, chatturangas). In her own practice lately, she is focusing on the whole concept of steadiness and ease, which she learned from Kim:) Oh, and also forgiveness when she is frustrated in a pose! And clearly, she is loving handstand right now. Love love love. Her nemesis of the moment? Paschimottanasana. Reserve a space online now as Carol’s class is quickly becoming one of the most popular slots on the schedule.

Yoga is definitely not safe

kim on 12:21 pm January 9th, 2012 / 3 Comments »

I am working on the most compassionate response to the New York Times article from January 5, but it’s difficult.

This is an embarrassment to journalism. It’s not even news: It’s a personal piece written by a man who has practiced yoga an undefined number of times, who based on his individual experience has sought out others’ views to validate his own. Reading the article was like watching Fox News Channel.

The goal of yoga postures is to address “underlying physical weaknesses or problems that make serious injury all but inevitable.” To use the body, or NOT to use the body in this life, is to face what we come in with. Our genetic code + our parents’ way of being + early-childhood experiences + myriad other unknown influences = injury and problems. Sitting on the couch and crossing the street can be equally hazardous. Therefore, to engage in a yoga asana practice is necessarily to take on — and for some of us to take “head” on, as headstand is ominously referenced by William — the risk of living in the body.

William uses as his main source a guy who “acknowledges that he has no formal training for determining which poses are good for a student.” Does this mean Glenn Black is not a formally trained yoga teacher? If I didn’t run a yoga studio, I would have stopped reading here.

While it’s totally true that we are shaped in modern day by the chair, and not by squatting, it is a blatant misunderstanding of what the rest of us are doing in yoga class to say that “urbanites … strain and twist themselves into ever-more-difficult postures.” Some do. And many don’t. Our journalist goes on to quote the untrained teacher saying, “many schools … are just about pushing people.” Some people need to be pushed, and that’s what they sign up for when they take class. Being pushed can help you lose 1o pounds. It will help you tone your abs (Hey 1045 am 1/7 Boundless Yoga class — like I said! ) in ways you won’t do on your own. It can help you feel part of a larger effort, in which everyone around you is working hard to be better.

This leads me to the main weirdness of this article by a guy who is just too worried. “The yoga community” that “long remained silent about its potential to inflict blinding pain” (is he serious with the inflicting and the blinding pain.) has in fact done just the opposite. Texts far more ancient than Black’s surgery-inducing practice warn all over the place against the dangers of yoga. It’s a serious practice, and it can f* you up if you don’t respect your teacher, and if you don’t respect yourself and pay attention — just as Black points out, and William thankfully includes early on the article.

The yoga community I am part of includes teachers who have studied for many years. Some have been injured, and just as many have not. The injuries arise for two reasons: 1) The too-trusting student is in a class with an untrained teacher who is not paying attention. This means the teacher is giving instruction to a faceless, nameless group of people that live in his/her head — s/he is really teaching to no one but himself or herself, to satisfy his/her own ego. The student trusts this person to be paying attention and “goes too far.” The student does not have enough confidence or knowledge, or OMG just inner wisdom, NOT to move toward the injury. This is a sucky reality of parts of the yoga market. Today. And yesterday. And forever, because people always want more than what they have. As people, too, teachers are fallible BUT. It is up to the teacher to take on the sacred responsibility of “paying attention” more than anyone else in the classroom, and to teach her/his students to pay attention. This can only come with training. Formal training for chrissake.

The 2) way that students might injure themselves in a yoga class is in fact if they are doing yoga in someone else’s body: a body they wish they had, one they used to have, one they will never have. They are doing yoga inside the body of the ego, which does not consist of the bones, muscle and gristle (or for that matter, the OOH SO SCARY NECK WHERE STROKES START!). Ignoring the message of the breath, which is designed to be the lie detector for the brain, they keep going, over years and years (like Glenn Black and William Broad), when their body continues to tell them to stop, or to slow down, or just to do something different. This student will injure himself/herself no matter what teacher is in front of them.

The bottom line is yoga saves lives. It is helping to save the planet. The teeny percentage of people injuring themselves in yoga are doing so because they are using the body, AND they are trying to do so in a healthier way. What could not be published in a newspaper that has fewer readers than there are yoga practitioners is that injuries can actually be OK. They are sometimes just part of the practice.

What should have been published in this article is that injuries are totally avoidable. If you align your movement with your breath, and you allow yourself to learn from a well-trained teacher, you will always use yoga to transform into being happier, healthier, and better balanced. Yoga teaches you to listen to your body, and the body never lies.

Namaste in a nutshell

kim on 11:38 am January 9th, 2012 / Be the first to comment! »

Compassion is a mega emotion like fear. It can underlie all the other feelings we have. The opposite of fear, compassion is a bija, or seed, energy in the body that when present softens everything the right way. Especially the heart and eyes. When we experience compassion we can be doing anything, even (or especially when) disciplining a child. Compassion does not mean to be nicer; it means to take in totally the experience of the person or thing you are interacting with. It’s “namaste” in a nutshell.

how yoga ruined my life

kelly on 11:18 am January 9th, 2012 / 4 Comments »

hi everybody!

Tons of you i’m sure have seen the much talked about article in the NYT  .. it’s called “how yoga can wreck your life” and if you ask me, its introductory image speaks as loud as any of its words. (it’s three actors doing yoga poses in costumes with silly faces and bad form.) Still, i found some portion of the message valid.

First, i’ll jump on the ship most respectable yoga teachers will ride and say that if you buy into any of this B.S. you’re aligning yourself with a body of teaching that is frankly low-quality, piss-poor, and hardly yoga at all. Then, i’ll tell you about the validity i noted in his message.

The oddest thing about the article to me is that the main guy they’re talking about is blabbing on about “yoga” as if it is a “thing out there.” A thing that can come and get you while you aren’t paying attention and oh my goodness! “wreck your body.” This is a blatant way that people who have not claimed their personal agency in the world present their problems. It’s called having a victim mentality. Google it.

Before you decide to lock yourself in your house and hide from the yoga monster, let me clarify a few points. Yoga is a practice. Therefore, it requires a practicer. That would be you. Or me. Or whomever is practicing at that moment. In its most essential form, it’s all of us. Practicing yoga. That means, we are the dictators of whether or not yoga “wrecks our bodies.” If something feels like it is “wrecking you,” might i suggest you stop doing that thing? This is not rocket science, but it is worth saying twice. If any practice is wrecking your body, you should stop doing it or change your approach. That’s called having personal agency and ruling your own body. You are the boss. Asana and yoga are vast.

The squirrely part emerges when you examine the nature of any student-teacher relationship and observe that there is a possibility for any student to defer to their teacher’s instruction to such a degree that they carry on forth despite signals in their mind-body that are saying RED ALERT! I’M BEING WRECKED. I will clarify first that at Boundless Yoga, our teachers honor YOU. You are the practitioner, and you are the absolute 100% boss of your body at any given moment in class. Our teachers are just that. Teachers. And they can and will offer you the highest quality, very best, information they have at any given moment.

So – in short. I don’t think this guy’s imaginary yoga monster is going to come to your house and wreck your body, but as you may recall, I did say i felt some of his message was valid. strongly so . It’s this. asana is not a panacea. I firmly believe with my entire body that yoga is a MIRACLE. but the idea that asana is a cure-all for everything — that is a viewpoint that can be taken to an extreme and could hurt you. Believing that asana is the path to resolving all of your ailments is something that could cause you harm. The practice of yoga has eight limbs, and asana is only one limb. Further, your dharma and your karma both shape what the correct action for your unique body is at any given moment. I think this article is cool – bc it’s timely — bc more people are embracing the mystery and the miracle that asana is in 2012. And as they do, like any wonderful creation, it’s possible to over-indulge ones-self. Remember to maintain a sense of balance in your world, in your mind, and in your relationships – especially with your teachers. Then you will not need to fear that the yoga monster is coming to get you. Rawr.

in dharma,

kelly

kim weeks is back on saturdays!

kelly on 6:24 am January 5th, 2012 / Be the first to comment! »

So, as many of you, Kim has been teaching Seeing Bodies on Saturday mornings, which has been incredible. This week, she returns to teaching the Saturday morning Open level class at 10:45, and to teaching the Level 3 Yoga class on Thursday evening. I am so thrilled to share this news with you all and to welcome her bright energy back to the studio. Anyone who studies with Kim knows she provides a beautiful, clear direct line to the teaching your body needs that day. Her ability to communicate specific body needs to an individual and a group is unparalleled. I’m writing to remind you to take advantage of the chance to study with her. Sign up now online to reserve a space in one of her classes, and let me know how it goes! Can’t wait to hear about it. namaste, kelly

new levels and class types

kelly on 6:18 am January 5th, 2012 / 1 Comment »

Check out our schedule! The studio has added several new class styles including Hot Yoga and Power Flow yoga. There are also new levels, numbered 1-3, and you can read more about all of these here!

Our emphasis is always on quality instruction, helping you succeed, and sharing the teaching that has been shared with us. Your body is truly your key to success in 2012. Come to class, or sign up for Seeing Bodies to explore how many tools there are available to you to keep yourself aware and engaged this year.