Try it for Yourself

Apparently, Buddha had said “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." I find equanimity when I remember to apply that philosophy to much of what I do. I try to avoid rumor mills by returning to this quote and know that there are multiple sides to every story and I need to rely on my own experiences with the people involved to come to my own conclusions. I try to empower myself by trying to do something difficult, regardless of who told me that I won’t be able to. I won’t know unless I try.
 

Buddha was right; everything is one’s own individual experience. Then it occurred to me that as a yoga teacher I say something and the roomful of people do as I say (if only my three cats would do the same, but that’s another story…). So this week we have worked more on students not just taking my word for it. We have worked on them trying different expressions of poses for them to make their own reality of the alignment principles I keep repeating in each class, every week. For instance, I always tell students to use blocks to find parsvakonasana (side angle pose) and ardha chandrasana (half moon pose). Most of the students believe me that using the block will help them maintain the length in the spine that makes the poses open their hips and hearts. Most of them believe me that by using a block rather than resting their elbows on their knees in parsvakonasana will help them retain knee alignment and reduce risk for injuring ligaments on the inside of the knee. But this week they tried it for themselves. After experiencing these poses with the blocks they tried to touch the ground without the blocks. Some of the students can maintain the pose without props but the students that can’t noticed the difference in their breath and body when they collapsed without a block.

Urdhva mukha svanasana (upward facing dog) is another pose we broke down more. I always tell the class to keep their gaze straight forward and most of them do. But some students come from other classes and lift their gazes up to the ceiling. So this week we tried both. The students learned for themselves that when they look up they don’t lengthen their spines as they thought they would. In fact, they collapse in their shoulders and upper chests and fall out of the pose. We also compared two versions of urdhva hastasana (hands up in the air pose) this week. I tell students to keep their palms separated, shoulders turned out so that their pinkies are nearer to each other. But some students come from other classes and put their palms together overhead. So we worked with both expressions and again students recognized that their shoulder blades come off their backs and they scrunch up their necks when they bring their hands together. So they didn’t have to just take my word for it. The students tried it for themselves and noticed the length in the spine and depth of the breath they get when they retain good alignment principles.

The yoga mat gives us so many opportunities to make life our own individual experience. The breath will tell us if we are doing the right thing. Sometimes holding the backs of the legs and bending the knees in navasana (boat pose) is the only way to keep a steady breath and truly spread the collar bones as the pose is meant to be practiced. But we won’t know for ourselves until we turn inward, check in with the breath, and find our own truth. Sometimes we do need to drop into balasana (child’s pose) to settle in before continuing through a vinyasa. We can’t wait for someone else to suggest we use a strap or a block, we need to always be present to our needs at the time and do what’s right. That is the only way we are sure to be true to ourselves, give up struggle, and reduce risk of injury.

The equanimity we feel when our breath smoothly moves from inhale to exhale in a rhythmic cycle tells us that we are doing the right thing. We will find the breath become shallow and staccato-like when we try taking a challenging pose without a prop as much as when we consider engaging in gossip or lies. Again, yoga practice on the mat can guide our lives off the mat.

Staying Balanced

We all are striving to balance something. Perhaps we are learning to balance our time to juggle all the demands required of maintaining relationships while achieving in our careers and caring for our children and/or parents as they need us.

Many of us are learning to manage our money so that we can strike the appropriate balance between saving for the future and spending for the present while we pay off debts from the past.

Some of us may be balancing our words so that we can offer criticism to employees while still relaying the fact that we appreciate what they do for us. Or we are trying to find that fine line between supporting someone in need yet maintaining our own protective boundaries.

Staying balanced may appear easier for some than for others. But no one of us has more time in a day than anyone else does. None of us has learned to grow money on trees. Each of us who cares about our relationships struggles with the way we communicate and support so we avoid misunderstandings. Those of us that seem to balance life’s challenges better than others know that to do so begins with a firm foundation in the form of friends, love, and integrity. But it also requires practice in focus and awareness. One result of this practice is learning to use the breath as a support. Think of the times you have had difficulty maintaining balance, managing your finances, or participating in a difficult conversation. You may have noticed that you were holding your breath. Holding the breath increases blood pressure and overall strain, perhaps making the situation even more difficult through this tension.

Yoga practice can help us learn to balance because on the mat we learn focus, awareness, and breath work that is required to maintain challenging poses as much as to manage life’s challenges. That is what my yoga students and I will be practicing this week. We will maintain balance and awareness in virabradrasana 2 (warrior 2 pose), checking to be sure we have equal weight on both feet and that our eye gaze remains steady over the front fingertips as our breath remains steady and long. We will work on arm balances like bakasana (crow pose) and adho mukha vrksasana (handstand). Sure, those poses require strength and flexibility, but no one will balance in these poses without focused awareness and timing the breath!

This blog and my yoga students will help me to “practice what I preach”. I am charging myself to remember to stay present and to keep breathing when I have that difficult conversation Friday morning with an employee…

Transitions

Spring is trying hard to arrive right now. Where I live, some buds are on trees and some perennials are in bloom. But one day seems like spring only for the next day to turn cold again. I keep putting away gloves and hats only to take them back out again the following day. I love springtime so the transition seems like a good one to me. But still, enduring any change requires more effort than the status quo.

Life comes with many transitions, including relocating, entering or exiting relationships, and starting or ending new jobs and life roles. Sometimes people stay in relationships and work settings longer than they know they should if only because the change itself is so challenging.

Yoga has taught me that even through the impermanence of every situation I can find some stability in my breath and in the goodness of each moment. As in life, the transitions in yoga are least balanced. Moving gracefully from one pose to the next requires focused attention and long breaths.

I have worked on transitions this week by linking three standing poses: vrkasana (tree pose) into virabhadrasana 3 (warrior 3 pose) into garudasana (eagle pose). Any one of these poses is demanding so sequencing them together without letting the floating foot touch the ground is even more of a challenge. Still, once I am in any of these standing poses I can settle in and balance. Moving from one to the next is the tricky part. The best way I have found to approach the transitions is to acknowledge that there is something similar in each. I can build on the fact that the pelvis is level and the hip points aligned forward in each of the poses. The standing foot stays in full contact with the ground to provide stability. And my breath is with me always, helping me to focus and remain stable even as I move. I have learned to be graceful in these transitions by letting my breath move me and quiet my mind. I also am comforted in knowing that as much as one pose is different from the other, some components are constant among them.

Tools I have learned on the mat have helped me to endure transitions off the mat with a little more grace and focus. Even as things change, I love and am loved and life generally is very good. Breathing and focusing through it all makes life’s transitions a little easier. So I take another breath and pull out that winter coat again.

Practicing with Patience

Mindful attention to things around us and a regular yoga practice are effective tools to learn lessons that serve us well off the mat. This week my students and I are working on practicing with patience. We have practiced challenging standing poses such as bird of paradise, arm balances such as astavakrasana (8-angle pose), and forward folds such as parivrtta janu sirsasana (revolved head-to-knee pose). None of these is easy but a beautiful thing about yoga is that every beginning student can take some expression of the pose and that every advanced student will be challenged by some expression of the pose.

So, this week my students with more and with less experience with yoga poses have tried these challenging standing poses, arm balances, and folds this week. Advanced students have fallen out of some of the poses and beginning students have used props to approximate some semblance of the poses. But everyone has tried them – and it appeared as though most of the students had fun trying! They might as well try - holding astavakrasana for five breaths is not going to reduce world hunger, so the risks are relatively minimal although the benefits are substantial. These challenges afford an opportunity to strengthen muscles in new ways and to stretch muscles in other ways. More importantly, challenges on the mat teach patience. No one I know has ever come straight into a beautiful bird of paradise pose the first try. It takes time, practice, and patience to finally succeed. I remind students to use the breath to transition from one pose to the next and to observe their reactions when they don’t quite end up where they wanted to be. Getting into the final expression of the pose is much less important than being patient with the process of getting there. Practicing with patience means allowing ourselves time to develop the strength, balance, and flexibility to get into and sustain the pose. Practicing with patience means accepting our current limitations that prevent a full expression of the pose. Practicing with patience means breathing in the moment without forcing and controlling the outcome. Practicing with patience makes practicing challenging poses more fun.

The trick is to bring the patience we learn on the mat out into the world when class is over. Any challenge daily life throws our way can be practiced with patience, observing our reactions, accepting our current limitations, breathing in the moment, and letting go of controlling the outcome. Practicing with patience might just make life’s challenges more fun.

Finding Peace using the Breath

This is a busy time of year and the frenetic pace doesn’t always feel so peaceful. I’m often overloaded, busy with activities that are added into my already full schedule. It is easy to neglect myself during these busy days, but this is exactly when I need to find time to center and focus. This week I’ve invited yoga students to find peace using their breath.

Moving mindfully with the breath is always soothing and calming. But this week we have been working with prolonged and sustained exhales to accentuate the effect. Longer exhales slow the body and by doing that I always feel more peaceful. Prolonged exhales in sustained forward fold postures like eka pada rajakapotasana (pigeon pose), janu sirsasana (head to knee pose), and upavistha konasana (wide-angle seated forward fold pose) are especially effective to find peace within. Even as the muscles around the hips resist the stretch, long exhales help to dissolve the resistance. Prolonging the breath while stretching the hips and hamstring muscles teaches us that we can be still with the resistance, let go of the struggle, and come deeper into the pose. Being patient in the forward fold rewards us with more flexible muscles and a calmer demeanor. It is a lesson that we can use the breath as a tool when we find ourselves resisting insane schedules and communication challenges off the mat. Long exhales help to manage our regular life struggles.

Long exhales help me to embody one of my favorite quotes, “Peace: it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.” (unknown) Whatever is going on around me, whatever challenges that come my way, my breath is always with me to locate that peaceful state.

Centered Stillness

I start all my yoga classes and home practices with at least 5 minutes of settling in to center the mind. Last night several students seemed apprehensive, fidgety, and not completely sold on the idea of using their precious time this way. I got the idea that they thought the time “wasted”. Or perhaps they are unfamiliar, therefore uncomfortable, with the stillness. We are all used to doing and are less likely to spend much of our time being. However, yoga practice is intended to be mindful, to slow us down, to find stillness in movement. That is what makes it yoga rather than stretching and calisthenics.

Focusing on deep breaths helps to transition from whatever happened prior to practice to time on the mat. Centering helps to still the mind and body, releasing any emotion - from anger and frustration to fatigue and elation - so that we can be completely present for our practice. Being centered prepares us to move mindfully. It can prevent us from being careless; something that often results in physical injury.

Centering is a yoga practice that I take with me into my life off the mat. It helps me to focus and be present for the activity I am about to start. A few breaths are all I need to transition from one emotion and place to the next. What would happen if you took time to center yourself before beginning a meal? How might your gym routine benefit if you transitioned from a stressful day at the office before starting weight training? How might a confrontational meeting with your spouse or teenager differ if you took time to center and find stillness breathing deeply for several minutes before the discussion?

Maybe with practice you can come to value time used to center and prepare your mind and body as you transition to the next activity. Maybe you can become more comfortable with stillness.

Learning to trust our breath to lead the way

My yoga students worked with a challenging balance vinyasa in class this week. We moved from ardha chandrasana (half moon) to parivrtta ardha chandrasana (revolved half moon) and back for a total of four of each pose on each side. There was much laughter as several people fell out of the pose and returned to the challenge. Finally, several students learned the lesson I hoped to convey: trust your breath to lead the way.

These students found that when they focused their attention and moved one component at a time, using the breath to lead the way, they were able to enjoy a dancing flow, they got "into the zone" and were less likely to wobble. Move with your breath: Inhale, arm up gaze up; exhale, arm down gaze down; inhale arm up, gaze up; exhale, arm down gaze down...

I invited the students to set an intention for the rest of the week: trust your breath to lead the way. They will take their practice with them off the matt and into their life if they use their breath to let go of struggle and move mindfully, as a dancing flow, whatever challenge life offers. At first glance, the yoga vinyasa or life challenge might appear impossible or overwhelming. But to break it into components, trusting breath to lead the way, it all becomes possible and even fun.

Moving and attention

Moving without attending to what we are doing can result in anything from vehicular homicide to a stubbed toe to a broken phone. We all have done three things at once without really paying attention to any of them - carrying too much upstairs to save a trip, I thought I was being efficient in making the most out of a trip up the stairs. Rather than efficiency, however, I end up dropping the smart phone in my hand and smashing its monitor. Not only have I not saved time, but now I'll need to have the phone repaired or replaced and I actually lose time in inconvenience while I don't have my phone. Another example - I wonder how much time I've really saved by sorting and reading the mail while something is on the stove only to burn whatever I wasn't watching closely and need to start the cooking over again. And certainly, no time is saved walking while we are doing three other things only to fall and injure a leg and end up in the emergency room waiting for x-rays.

The opportunity to practice mindfulness presents itself many times a day. Today as I juggled too many things in two arms I recognized that I was headed for disaster. I set things down, took a few deep breaths, picked up half of the items, and committed myself to two loads up and down the steps. Not only did I avert disaster, but I achieved what I needed to do with a more relaxed outlook. The task took only a couple of extra minutes but I felt more leisurely than the rushed feel of being overloaded.  

Now, to remember next time I feel overwhelmed to: Stop - Breathe - Attend to one thing at a time.