~ Gravity : Power : Yoga ~

After 13 1/2 weeks of caring for our beautiful baby girl mommy and I have called for mercy.  To our rescue, my parents have stepped in and are taking care of the beautiful bundle of sleepless joy for a few days while my goddess of a wife and I retreat to the beach.

Continually missing my littlest girl, I can’t tell you how great it has been for the soul to get away.  We woke up late (7:30 how pathetic is that!) had some tea/coffee, watched 2 dolphins swim about 20 feet off the shore, then swim up to a lone swimmer and “hang out” with him for about 10 minutes, then got on our mats for an hour of UNINTERRUPTED practice.  I led the wife thru a fairly vigorous class, then got her ready for her hot stone massage while I did a smidge of work (that I should have completed yesterday).  Throw in a nap, some home made dinner, and a football game (Ohio St for the wifey) and this day is DUN!

I can’t help but contemplate how important it is, no matter what external events take place, for us as humans to recharge our batteries.   To expand that, we as humans have the ingrained need to recharge our relationships with one another, how else do we make thru this crazy, busy world?!

It’s not too late for you reading this, take this weekend, dedicate it to the soul, dedicate it to just spending time with loved ones and recharging the soul.

So I’m driving along in my car today flipping through radio stations as I always do, why is there never anything good anymore anyways… But that’s not where I’m going with this.  I flip thru a random station that has speed metal playing and I start to wonder to my “zenself” if there is anything positive or if there is any constructive use for speed metal.

As I start to think that it’s all about the rage and negative energy, I realize that as a 12yr old boy, it was such a great way to burn off energy and release some of that adolescent testosterone that was coursing thru my veins.  My question then became, at what point is it time to move on from the young adolescent rage and move towards a more sustainable life?  Can anybody really go thru life listening to that AND become a productive member of society?

OMG, I sound like my father!   Maybe there was something to all those lectures he used to give me about living in society, and becoming a productive member…  Or maybe I just have passed the need for this outlet and have settled into old age.

Who knows, What I do know now, is that speed metal probably won’t be played in any yoga class where I get the opportunity to actually pick the music

Yes, that is meant to be more of a question than a statement.   I started the path of training 8 months ago with the idea that this day would come and I would be “done”.  But I’ve never felt so much at the beginning of a journey as I do at this very moment.  All of the research, all of the reading, and yet, I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of my spiritual journey, my path to the future.

I leave teacher training with a certificate of completion, a certificate from the Yoga Alliance that says I’ve satisfied the requirements of the Yoga Alliance training program, I’ve gathered a new skill, and most importantly, I’ve become a member of a new tribe (as Jen would say).

I can’t wait to see my tribe in the wild, and can’t wait to take this fire and ignite the world!

Look out world, I come with fire!

Yes, I exaggerate quite heavily at times, but man can I tell the difference a week makes.

Feeling a little burned out, exhausted, and still nursing something of a shoulder injury, I decided to take the week off from yoga and just do some cardio type stuff… And since I live in the swamp, that cardio takes place at the local gym.  Even though I’m not going to yoga classes I approach my “asana” for the day, in this case the stair machine, with the same mental state I approach my yoga practice.  Calm, focused on my breath, in that special place of calm.   I quickly remember that the gym is no place for this, there is no place in the gym for gentle focus, or calm.  The clanging of weights, the bumping stereo, the pounding of feet on treadmills.  It got me thinking, I began the practice of yoga (Bikram) as an alternate to my hardcore sweaty workouts, but what I found was so much more.   Now looking at the same place I started my journey I wonder what brings these people to the gym day in and day out?   Is it only vanity, the need to be skinny, or in some cases hulkish?  Do the treadmill masses ever find that piece that is the perfect svasana, the perfect ending to a great asana practice?

Anyways, I digress, back to the aching muscles, and why I started this post…  After a week of absolutely no yoga and only the gym I feel as though I’m wearing somebody else’s body, and not just the skin, bones and all (I’m guessing the 5 slices of pizza and beer are not helping with that problem either).  I wonder, is it possible to find the same physical and mental peace outside the practice of yoga?  Is there anyway to go back to a regular gym practice after doing yoga and other related outdoor exercises?

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My final research topic for teacher training was a paper on one of ~15 topics.  Being close to my heart I chose “Yoga & Christianity”.  Seems like an interesting topic, right?   I mean I’ve been doing yoga for 7 years and have never once felt like I needed to pray to a Hindu god, or felt like it was contrary to a Christian based faith system, yet have this constant query by Christian friends about “isn’t yoga anti-Christian?”  What I found as I dug deeper really interested me, enough that I thought I’d share some of it.

As I dug into it I found that while the Hindu philosophy of religion is about communing with the Lord, it is very open to the different God figures and believes that all paths lead to the same God.  Christianity seems to be much more threatened by this, is driven by the unified belief that there is ONE God and that all other religions and their followings will go to hell because they do not believe exactly what the Christian church believes.  This seems a little drastic I must say.

This is where I stray from my Christian upbringing, let’s take a Buddhist monk for example, they live their lives in selfless devotion to others and spending spiritual time with God.   Am I to believe that this person is evil and going to hell because they do not believe in Jesus Christ as the son of God?  I cannot, this is where I stray, and at the same time where I find piece in the yogic school of though about spirituality.   The practice of physical asana is designed to prepare the mind and body for meditation (read spiritual time).  How I choose to spend that time, the god that I pray to or commune with is a choice of my heart and not something that is (or should be) taught in a modern yoga class in the U.S.

The Key Topics or findings that bring me to my conclusion are:

• Hinduism is about becoming closer to God
• Christianity is about becoming closer to God (thru Jesus)
• The practice of yoga is meant (in all forms) to bring the practitioner  closer to God (with no specification on who’s God this refers to).

The Arguments:

• One main argument by the Christian church is that yoga teaches that each person is God, indeed we greet each other with the term “Namaste” which roughly translates to “the light in me solutes the light in you” and the belief that we all carry a piece of God within us.   This is a problem for Christianity, but why?  Christianity believes that the “Holy Spirit” lives within us, is this not the same thing?
• The Catholic church is threatened by the idea of people being able to commune with God without their help, and has stated that practices such as meditation and yoga can lead to the devil entering the mind.  Yet this same church encourages its followers to pray on a daily basis and in these same declarations states that tools from other religions can be beneficial to the Christian practice of fellowship if used in those terms.
• B.K.S. Iyengar’s “Light on Yoga” has been proclaimed as “The Bible of Modern Yoga”…   In this text Iyengar Describes Yoga as the “union or communion.  It is the true union of our will with the will of God”…

My Conclusion:

That while yoga originated deep in Indian culture and has ties to Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, what is practiced today is a physical practice in line with the Hatha yoga tradition.  The ultimate goal of practice is to prepare the yogi for spiritual time and bring them closer to God.   As a Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, etc… the definition of God is left to the practitioner.  The original idea being based in the Hindu belief that all God’s are the same God, just with different names and different paths to the same place.

“Yoga is the science of God-realization and Peace, it accepts that “truth is One, Paths are Many.”

I hope this helps somebody on their spiritual journey, researching it and writing it has certainly helped me on mine!

~ Namaste

This isn’t going to be one of those “check out my new playlist” types of posts… This is something far greater!

As each of us goes thru life and evolves in our practice we all make adjustments, moving the yoga room to a different room of the house, practicing at home or away from home.   My big change these days is the constant background noise, it seems the soundtrack of the entire house has changed.   My practice times have become more about when I can fit them in between baby naps, and thus have changed to the soundtrack of the sleeping baby.  In many cases this has become the soundtrack of the white noise machine, or the rhythmic clicking of the swing (the only place she really LIKES to sleep).

I’ve noticed that it is a hard adjustment to focus on my breath and my practice while I pay attention to the sound from the other rooms.  ”Was that a squeak?”  ”Do I need to go do something”….  At first it was a major distraction, but as I become more familiar with the sounds they become a part of my moving meditation and therefore become a part of my daily practice.    This isn’t to say that my practice is no longer disrupted by the shriek of those little lungs, but it has definately added to the sounds of my playlist.

How has your practice changed over the years, and do you welcome those changes with open arms or resist change, wishing instead for the past that you knew and loved?

I often give little thought to the Chakras as I practice, and now teach, yoga. This was for sure the case on Saturday night when we did a 2 1/2 hour Chakra meditation an practice in our TT class, in fact, I found it damn near impossible to stay awake. But that was last night, that is in the past now. Fast forward to Sunday night, it had been a long weekend o TT and my mind and body wer FRIED!!!!

Then the music started, it wasnt that zen Yani crap that makes me want to go deeper into my nappy place, it was rockin hiphop and all sorts of other lively tunes. I decided it was time to give every last bit of anything I could muster, time to leave it ALL on the mat (so to speak).

I want to share what I found in all of this, my 6th Chakra, of all things! By the time I hit svasana i felt like my brain was being electrified, like something had changed in my body and mind. One classmate commented that she thought it was the 3 minute inversion, I have no idea, but well find out!!!

in the wise words of Tina Fay
I want to go to there

So, as you know I’ve been a power yoga junkie for years, I’ve argued for many of these years that the only way to inner peace is for me was to kick my own butt physically.   Fast forward to 2009, I’ve had on again, off again, issues with my levator scapulea for years.   After my most recent shoulder and neck issues I’ve taken a moment to look at what power yoga is doing to my body.

This isn’t a “look how big my muscles are” post, but that is part of it.  As I looked in the mirror I couldn’t help but notice how large my anterior deltoids are becoming, along with well defined triceps, yet the posterior deltoids are almost non existent.   Doing a little pondering I realized that once I made the transition from a good balanced flow to a power style with an emphasis on inversions, floating, and power arm balances, I lost the whole isometric toning benefits of a daily practice.  I realized that “floating” was a mixture of a pushup and a military press.   Thinking in these gym terms, I realized that everything we do in yoga would be what I would consider a “chest and tri” day at the gym.   All activities are forward facing lifting and lowering the body against gravity, so in effect my crow to handstand was basically giving me a 170lb military press (great for the anterior deltoids and triceps).

I’ve asked my fellow yogi’s and teachers the same question:  ”what in a power yoga class is the gym equivalent of a back & bi day”?

I can’t come up with anything that is the muscle building equivalent of these chest and triceps exercises.   The great part of this question is that EVERY single one of the yogi’s that I asked first responded wholly and fully that the back and biceps were worked just as much as the chest and triceps…  Then after thinking about it each came back to me and agreed, there is indeed nothing that builds these muscles the same way.

All of this is to get to two places:

1) Can anyone out there give me a better argument for what builds “back & bi” muscle (hint, holding the arms in warrior 2 does not build your biceps or back muscles, it tones, and strengthens them, but does not build bulk of any real measurable value)?

2) If power yoga is a great alternative for a “chest & tri” day, what about the “back & bi” day?

Think about it and let me know your thoughts.

This week in teacher training we did a class on Ayurveda and how it relates to yoga, life, and health.  I was curious about my dosha and how it related to my life and practice.  I find that I am a generally very tired person, lack energy, and that lack of energy has been an ongoing theme in my life.   After taking the quiz I find that I’m a vata / pita.  At first I thought that could not be, I mean the Kapha is the one that has the lack of energy, right?.  But the more I studied the vata / pita the more I realized that it really was me.

From the whatsyourdosha.com site: “Vata mind/body types need a lot of sleep or they become groggy and ineffective.”   I can’t tell you how long I’ve know this and have just never listened to my body, MAN can I be ineffective !  A few years back I started sneaking a nap into my day, and I was amazed at the difference it made.  I thought I was just meant to live in Spain or some other civilized country where a siesta was an acceptable form of afternoon activity.

After reading more into it though, I have found that it is indeed a great alignment with my bodies needs, and one of the great reasons why my wife and I are so very different in our sleep needs (no honey, I’m not just lazy!).   It also explains a lot about my life, my grounding, and why I’ve always struggled with something that was always called A.D.D.  (and that’s not Automatic Death Disease for those SNL fans out there).  The vata balancing yoga practice is also one that is much less power, and much more centering and designed to calm the mind.   Since I started training and have had to practice on my own I have felt like I have been slacking off, that I haven’t been pushing myself like I would if I’d been in power classes all this time.  But what  I realized this weekend is that my body has been driving my practice, and has been driving me in a way that I should be going.

In all of this, I’ve learned that listening closely to what my body and mind has to say is so very important to building a life and practice that are in line with my dosha.   Maybe there’s something to this science thing after all!