~ Gravity : Power : Yoga ~

Posts Tagged ‘energy’

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!

As a great man once said “I love it when a plan comes together”…  Well, the plan was to get a day where I had both enough energy, and enough time to have an actual, good practice.   WELL, today was that day!  Between being out of commission after surgery, preparing for baby, and now life with a new born, I feel like its been ages since I’ve  been on the mat like that.

The goal (self imposed as it was), was to get back on the mat and kick my own but!  The process to make it happen, extra chaturanga pushups between each set, and don’t forget the inversions… I’m back to feeling like I should be a bat, like I should be upside down… So I did that too.  It all felt so great, welcome back my old friend.

Since my introduction into yoga in 2003, I have found that the best way for me to enjoy the unity of body and mind is to give my self a good butt kicking.  Six months ago I would have argued that for me to have any piece of mind that I would need to be drenched in sweat and on the brink of fainting to achieve that drishti…  Fast forward to June 1 2009, with the birth of my new baby girl, a full time job, the desire to start a new yoga related business, and I don’t know if it’s that I’m just too tired or that I have moved into a new phase of my practice.

Today, IF I get to the mat it will be because I feel it calling, but also because I feel guilty for not visiting with it.  I can honestly tell you that I would rather be laying down on it taking a nap than practicing any type of vinyasa practice.  So what does this mean for the GPY dude?    I keep telling myself “just one good night of sleep and I’ll be back on the mat” but is that all it’s gonna take, can I really make it back from here?

Do people really recover and go back to their old practices, or does practice change forever?   I’m off for some svanasana, catch you later!!!

~ Namaste

So about a week before our little one appeared I had this great idea to setup a blog called yogidad, the idea was to blog about being a first time parent, how it effected my practice, etc. What I did NOT count on was that Id be so freakishly sleep deprived that I wouldnt have the time or energy to lift a computer, much less write about my experiences in the first few weeks. So, untill I get the sleep and energy to get it going, all you power junkies will just have to deal with my baby pictures and rants here!!!! So stay tuned for some of the cutest pics of a baby youve ever seen!!!! Like this one from fathers day!

I won’t say that any of us are sleeping thru the night yet, but things seem to be getting easier.  Either that, or I’m just too delirious from the lack of sleep to know how tired I really am.   But here’s the point, we are starting to find a way to piece in enough sleep to be functional human beings once again, and part of that is finding a way to get yoga back into the daily schedule.

Keeping US up never looked so sweet

Being faced with the lack of time, severe lack of sleep, and overall lack of energy has forced me to dig deep… REALLY DEEP!  To find the memory of what I loved about a daily practice, why I did it before, and conjure up enough of that to get me thru a somewhat respectable asana practice.  I have found that in order to make it work within the new guidelines it has to be fast, quick, and good (did I mention fast?).  So 45 minutes of power, followed by light stretching, and a nap.. UH, ER… svasana that is.

I assume new father yogi’s do this all the time, am I right?   What’s the trick?  Then I look at this picture and all I want to do is snuggle up and cuddle the little pumpkin!

~ Namaste

OK, that may be a little over dramatic, but I’ve been having this problem lately. I’m about 30-40 minutes into my practice and I realize I haven’t ONCE stopped to focus on my breath, in fact, I couldn’t tell you if I’m breathing at all. For a week or so now I’ve wondered where my breath has gone, lost, stolen, forgotten?

As I put on my “Super Cool YogaMix1″ (think cassette labeled as such) play list this morning and started to practice it finally dawned on me. I was singing along with the tunes, and then AH HA, that’s where my breath has gone! I have long heard the debate over music or not, and if so what type, etc… I have always been one to argue FOR, because it gives me energy and brings me into the class. But if I’m singing along I’m not breathing, so now what.

My next attempt (Super Cool YogaMix2) will be less vocal tracks and more along the lines of music I like but don’t want to sing along with. I’ll keep you posted as I see how it goes.

~ Namaste, And Remember to Breathe!
SB

As part of my teacher training I’ve been told that I must practice at home 6 days a week.  I understand the theory, that we must learn how to put together sequences, talk thru the poses, etc…  But I find myself craving classes, I’m not sure if it’s the group energy that I crave, or the fact that I’m with other people (I have to admit, I do not dig solitude, I would much prefer to be with people than without).  But I find myself chastising myself about “going out for yoga” the same way I feel bad when I go out for dinner, instead of cooking a healthy meal for myself.

Five Thousand years ago yoga was practiced by one man, teaching one man how to do it, it was as much, if not more, of a spiritual journey as it was about the physical asana.   Today, yoga in the mainstream is about exercise (for the most part) and why it is on the menu at almost every gym in the country.  At the same time, people are starting to realize the physical benefits, and if they stick with it long enough, the mental benefits…  But I wonder:  is it safe to say there is more than just that?  Think about the interaction you have as you meet more and more people in your regular yoga classes, do you get that same feeling of connection with the people you meet in Tae Bo (no offense Billy, just the first group class that came to mind)?

I have to say, after a few months there is a very good chance that most of the people in the class could be practicing at home, yet they come back, pay their 15 bucks and join in the group love, there has to be more to it than just the class.

Is it possible that this is the new realm of yogic connection?  If you stick with yoga long enough you are bound to realize the benefits of a yoga friendly lifestyle,  and dare I say, that you would have more in common with a fellow yogi than you would with most of the “dance to the limit” class attendees at the gym?

It’s 9:43 on Sunday night, I have been laid up for almost 3 weeks now and I’m feeling like a total slug.  My body is to the point that I feel like I could probably practice a nice easy flow, but oof, I just don’t have the energy.  So as I sit here thinking that tomorrow will be the start of a whole new era, that I can start fresh tomorrow….  That’s right, tomorrow I will do better, tomorrow will be a whole new day!  Right!  I’ll have the motivation and the time, and the….   I can’t help but feel like that whole “there is only now” doctrine is completely lost on me at this moment.

But OH well!  Tomorrow is a new day, and tomorrow I will make a difference!

I’m by all accounts a lazy A.D.D. child.  I have trouble stopping to focus on a single task, but find it easy to hop between many different things on a normal basis.  

With the addition of Yoga teacher training to my schedule I am required to meditate 6 days a week for at least 5 minutes each.  I approached this task like so many others in my life, I didn’t get it, didn’t like it, and therefore was planning on doing the 5 minute meditation on a daily basis.

What I have found thru practice is SO much better than I can probably articulate in this post.  During the Kishan Shah Aurvedic weekend workshop, he gave us a quote which I cannot remember exactly, but the jest of it was, the mind can only process one thought at a time.  The mind is capable of processing one item at a time, but does so very quickly.  The more I thought about this, the more I realized this was in stark contrast to the way I had taught my mind to work all my life.  I have spent my life thinking that my mind was more like a bee in a jar, and that if i always had something else for it to move on to, I’d eventually get everything I needed done.

The reality is, that when I hop between many different things rarely do I complete them in a timely manner, and many times they are left unfinished until the last minute.

As I work on my daily meditation, I find that I am indeed able to focus for longer periods of time, and as a result, am actually training my mind to go back to a state of handling and processing one task at a time, then moving on to the next task.  The net result is that each task is completed quicker, and much greater care has been paid to each task.

If I had know this AND had been willing to try meditation when I was a child, I wonder how my life might be different now?   Knowing that young boys (mostly boys) need exercise to burn off additional energy, does it make sense to also teach them meditation to help calm the mind and prepare it for the day?

Do you know any children who meditate, or any ways to get children interested in meditating, let me know!

I just finished my second day of Yoga teacher training (22 to go), and I’m well on my path to enlightenment.  I had a great realization in class today.  I live with a fair amount of pain on a daily basis, back, neck, etc…  I do Yoga because the net gain is that it makes me feel better, inside and out.  I realized today that there are modifications, and ways to make poses less painful than I thought they had to be.  This is not to say that every pose is painful or intolerable, but to say that with everything that I do, I feel a small amount of pain and that there may be other ways to do something that accomplish the same goal, and without the added pain of doing it “hardcore”.

I also learned today that what I was being taught, wasn’t necessarily the best thing for MY body.  This gives me a reason to pause, to think about each pose I practice, is there a better way for me?

Teachers and students, break out of your molds, do things differently than you normally do.  Wide set arms in Down dog, mmmmm..  Not stacking the hips in Half moon, O YEA…  And the big one for me today, squaring off the hips in triangle, WOW! what a difference.

Play around with what you “think” is right (don’t hurt yourself) and see if any modifications bring energy back into your practice!