It’s Ten O’clock. Do you know where your feet are?

The original question, “It’s 10:00 pm, do you know where your children are”, somberly intoned just prior to the local news, was eventually parodied by a multitude of stand-up comedians, novelty song artists, and horror movie posters. But the original intent of the line was very serious. The phrase shows up in lots of places.  I have to admit I like to use it in my yoga classes, particularly to draw a student’s attention to a leg that is raised behind them or some other body part they cannot see.  Often the body part is hanging out behind them kid of lifelessly.

In yoga poses, the whole body should be participating.  Yoga means union of mind body and spirit.  We do our yoga poses with our whole bodies.

Often beginners can only pay attention to one body part at a time, but as we progress, and our practice becomes more integrated, we can cast our attention over our whole body.  While this is relevant in all poses, this week I will talk about having your attention on your feet while we are doing planks.

While most planks are felt in the arms or the core, the more the legs and feet work, the easier the postures are to hold.  When the feet and legs are strong, it is easier to keep the core engaged.  One of your core muscles, the psoas, attaches to your lumbar spine and to the upper inner aspect of your thigh bone.  If the legs aren’t activated, this muscle is not activated.  In my Yoga Teacher Training Program, we study the muscles one at a time as if you could activate one muscle and not the one next to it.  But the body doesn’t work that way.  The muscles are often affected by the surrounding muscles.  If you activate the feet and legs in plank, they help to hold the whole body up.  Imagine the difference in picking up a sleeping child as opposed to a child who is actively participating in being picked up.  One is a limp pile succumbing to gravity and the other one helps you.

Here is an example of what I often see student’s feet doing in Side Plank:

Here is what they could be doing:

Here is what I often see from behind when students are in Plank:

Here is a picture of feet and legs actively participating in Plank Pose:

Do you know what your feet are doing in these poses?  Working your feet and keeping your legs engaged will help you in your plank.

Come to class.  I’d be happy to help you.

Tolerations and My New Year’s Resolution to Give up Sugar and Alcohol

On January 1 this year I decided to give up sugar.  I quite frankly was tired of the yo-yoing effects I experienced when I ate sugar.  I would crave it, I’d eat too much, I’d feel kind of wired and scattered in my energy and then I would crash.  Then I would complain about how I didn’t like the way it made me feel, only to give in to the craving the next time.

I did the same thing with alcohol.  I liked to have a glass of wine every night with dinner.  Sometimes it would lead to 2 as my husband and I would relax and catch up with each other’s day.  After the dishes I would find that I was too tired and unfocused to get anything done.  The next day I would have some guilt about that.  Sometimes I would have trouble sleeping.  I would fall asleep pretty easily, but I would often wake up around 3:00 am.  That time, according to Chinese Medicine is when the Liver Meridian is most active.  Since alcohol is metabolized in the liver that seemed to make sense to me.  The next morning I would feel a little tired in the morning and not motivated to get up.  I would complain to my husband that I felt hung over.  He would tell me that I could not possibly be hung over on 2 glasses of wine that were drunk with a meal.  All I know is that I didn’t like how I felt when I woke up but that I would probably give in to the craving to have another glass of wine that night at dinner.

In November of 2016, I took a Vision Board Workshop about setting intentions and manifesting your dreams.  In the workshop, the teacher talked about things she called “Tolerations”.  These were things in your life that were a little out of whack, but you got so used to them that you just tolerated them.  They could be anything, like the light switch cover you forgot to put back up after the living room was painted and then you became accustomed to it and now you don’t even see it.  She also talked about the things you do that you don’t want to do and the things you don’t do that you should.  She said that all of these tolerations were undermining your efforts to shape your life the way you wanted it.

So, I decided to work on those things.

Sugar and alcohol were clearly big tolerations for me.  So, I gave them up.  So far, it hasn’t been too hard.  The third day was the worst when I had a mild headache all day long.  I knew it was a withdrawal reaction and that if I caved in, it would be all over.  I haven’t given up fruit, so I was able to appease my sweet tooth a little with a Clementine or two.

My main reasons for giving up sugar were to feel my best all of the time. I was also interested to see if what people say about giving up sugar is true: I will have less inflammation, my energy will be calmer and I won’t have to worry about my weight.  Not that I worried that much about my weight before, but I have noticed that I have had to be more careful about my weight after menopause.  I’ve been told that it will take about 6 months to feel some of these other effects.

But the most important reason for wanting to give up sugar is that it is implicated in many diseases, particularly Alzheimer’s.  Since my mother has Alzheimer’s and I have been witnessing the effects of this disease first hand, I will do whatever I can to make sure I don’t get it.

So far, it has been 15 days and I feel pretty good.  Last night was especially gratifying.  It was my birthday and friends had invited us over for dinner.  We stayed pretty late, later than I usually would have if I had drunk a glass of wine or two.  I did not feel sluggish.  I did not feel tempted to have any wine at all. (Often when I have a glass of wine, I get sleepy pretty easily.  Cheap date, I know!)   I got up early the next morning to take a yoga class and I felt great!   I was not sluggish at all.   My friends were also very supportive about my sugar abstinence.   Instead of birthday cake they made a giant fruit salad filled with raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, pineapple and all the good fruit that you usually don’t get enough of when you buy a fruit salad in a store or a restaurant.   They had ice cream to go with it.  Usually ice cream is my down fall.  But I knew that if I had any that it would unravel the whole thing, so I stayed content eating my fruit salad.

We’ll see how this goes.  My plan is to try to make it permanent, but my short goal is to get through January.   I have cut out all added sugar.  I do not eat cake, cookies, ice cream and such.  I haven’t changed all of the other things I am eating, yet.  There is sugar in the protein shake that I have in the morning.  I will either phase that out by eating more whole foods or, I will change it to a protein powder that has no sugar in it.   I was able to find a hemp protein powder that is pure hemp with no additives.    I don’t like the highly processed nature of the protein powder, but it has been part of my morning routine for a year now and it has worked for me.  Baby steps for now.  I will revisit the protein powder in the future.

I have a friend who does not eat any sugar and she has been very supportive.  She has applauded my efforts to go against the norm.  Sugar is so pervasive in our society that to not eat it feels like an act of rebellion.  The average American eats 66 pounds of sugar a year!  Sugar is addictive and its consumption contributes to obesity, diabetes, liver damage and heart disease.

I have found it helpful to re-read the book The Sugar Blues by William Dufty.  Hearing about how bad sugar is from an environmental, social and political point of view just reinforces my resolve.

Have you ever given up sugar?  If so, share your success.  If you want to join me, I will be happy to share my progress and all I am learning.

What's on your Yoga Bucket List?

You can often tell which poses a yoga studio practices frequently because most of the students can do them.  Sometime before Christmas, I had one of my classes at The Solebury Club doing Crow and everyone in the class was able to do the pose.  It was quite remarkable!  Clearly, it is a pose I add into the sequence often.  But then we got to Hanumanasana, or split…   Not so much!  Hmmm…

A Split is not a pose I can do.  Or rather, it is not a pose I can do and get all the way down to the ground.  So, clearly I am to blame for not teaching it with any regularity.  I have had hamstring injuries in the past and when injured, I would stay away from such a big hamstring stretch. But still, I cannot take all the blame for not teaching this pose.  My other colleagues who teach similar classes at Solebury are as fond of Hanuman as I am; which means they also cannot get all the way down to the ground, so they don’t teach it too often, either.  Therefore, a lot of our students cannot do a split.  Handstands, yes!  Split, no.

Not that being able to do a Split is a requirement for anything in life, but still I am intrigued, mystified and challenged by the posture.  I want to be able to do a split before I get too old to do it.  It’s a pose on my yoga bucket list!

At The Solebury Club, Karate Sensei Ed Rumick has created a 100 push-up club on Facebook, which anyone can join.  The goal is to work towards being able to do 100 push-ups by the end of the year.  Here is the link if you are interested.  I decided to join.  I hate push-ups, but I have always wanted to be better at doing them because being able to do 100 push-ups will give me more strength to do other yoga arm balances.  Now that is my idea of fun!   There are some in the club who can already do 100 push-ups.  Personally, I think they need a new challenge and I propose that they learn the routine in this video.  Most people in the club can already do more push-ups than me. But, I don’t care.  I would like to be able to do 3 sets of 10, at least.   I did 26 today.  But I can only do about 7 at a time without losing form.

This made me think about doing a Pose for the Year in yoga.  Hanumanasana is not a pose you can master in one month.  So, I thought it would be a good candidate for a Pose for the Year.  I remember seeing a blog about some gymnastics coach who claimed he could teach an average middle aged man with no flexibility to do a split in 6 months.  I think we need at least that amount of time.

What do you think?  Are you interested?  Are you game?  It would mean that you should expect to see Hanumanasana as a posture at least once a week.  I cannot guarantee I can work it into every sequence, but I want to try to fit it in more frequently.  Also, on the Facebook page there could be sequences, tips and techniques for practicing the pose on your own.  A little stretching everyday can help you get there.

I'll report on my progress and you can let me know how you are doing.

Let me know what you think.  Leave a comment below.

What do Aparigraha, minimalism, not eating sugar and the chakras have to do with writing your Personal Vision Statement?

I know of several people who shared with me that they were writing their Personal Vision Statements for 2017.  What I don’t know is how many of them are first timers or, how many Have done this before.  If you are a seasoned writer of vision statements, you may have been prepared for what happens when you open your statement and read it.  If this was your first time, it might have been challenging to read it.

Writing out a Personal Vision Statement is a lot like making a New Year’s Resolution.  Some people do it, but a lot don’t because there is a high rate of failure.  There is a lot of enthusiasm in new beginnings, we want to make positive changes in our lives, but sometimes making new habits stick is hard.

I have read a few blog posts about how difficult it can be to read a vision statement when some of the things you dreamed about didn’t happen.

In writing your Personal Vision Statement you are encouraged to aim high and see your life as you want it to be in your dreams.  When I opened my Personal Vision Statement from last year, I was pleasantly surprised about the things I did accomplish, but I have to admit I was pretty deflated by the things that did not happen.  There were some big dreams of mine that never got 1 millimeter off the ground.  Hmm…  But, as I always say, “There is a lesson or blessing in everything.”  So, what’s the lesson?  What’s the blessing?

Here’s the lesson:

I stumbled upon one of my favorite blog posts from 2014 called:  Warren Buffett's "2 List" Strategy: How to Maximize Your Focus and Master Your Priorities.  By James Clear.   The article shares one of the strategies Mr. Buffett uses to be successful.

The gist of the strategy is to make a list of the top 25 things you want to accomplish.  It could be career goals, household projects or anything.  After you make that list, you go through it and come up with the five most important tasks.  These are the things you need to focus on and accomplish.

What about the other list?

You get rid of it!

Wait, what?? 

I know!

It seems that a lot of us spin our wheels by spreading ourselves too thin.  Focusing on anything but our top five goals dilutes our efforts.  It causes us to be inefficient with our time and impedes our progress.

List #2 is not the list of things you do when you have a few extra minutes. It is the list of things to avoid at all costs.  These are often things that you do want to do, but they dilute your efforts at the other, more important things you want to do.  Those things pull at you, so you have to carefully avoid them.

In yoga there is a personal practice called Aparigraha which translates as non-hoarding.  Most people usually apply this to not hoarding things.  But the more you contemplate the meaning of non-hoarding you can apply it to many things:  you can hoard a conversation, by not giving others a chance to speak, you can hoard time by trying to get too many things done at one time and then causing yourself to be late.

Did you ever find yourself saying something that you know you didn’t mean?  Or, commit yourself to something you didn’t really want to do by talking too much?  In my 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training we were talking about how important it is to be precise and careful with what you say.  One of the students shared an acronym that helps her with this:  WAIT – Why Am I Talking?

So, maybe in my Personal Vision statement I put down too much, or maybe I put down things that really weren’t important to me just like what happens when you talk too much and over commit to things.  Maybe those things are only “List #2” important and because I didn’t have enough time to go around, they just didn’t get done.  Maybe I should have made the two lists before writing my vision statement.  Was I hoarding goals and accomplishments?   Should I have focused on fewer things but spent more time on other things?

That’s the lesson I’m taking away from this experience: non-hoarding of goals and accomplishments!

What does this have to do with chakras and sugar?

The first chakra has to do with your tribe and where you came from.  It’s the group, or groups, you belong to.  When you are little, your group or family provides food, clothing and shelter, your basic needs.  If these weren’t provided for you, or there was any kind of instability in your early childhood, you may have fear and contraction in this area. When your first chakra is clear, you are secure in your ability to make it in the world.  Hoarding is a contraction in the first chakra; it’s not trusting in your ability to take care of yourself and have your basic needs met.

If you are curious about your chakras, I am offering a seven week workshop on the chakras starting this Thursday evening, January 13th, from 6:00 to 7:00 pm at the Treehouse.  We will cover one chakra each week.  This Thursday, we will discuss the first chakra.  You will learn about: its properties, how to recognize the energy of this center, how it influences your life by whether you have any unfinished business at this level and how it affects the choices you make.  You will learn about the chakras through asana, journaling, meditation and breath work.

I have been slow to learn about chakras.  I’ve had some resistance to working with something that I cannot see:  energy centers aligned along the spine?   But, I have taken some courses on the subject that have powerfully influenced me.  I am a firm believer in gravity although I cannot see it, either!

One of the things I know about working with energy is that there are a lot of things that affect my energy.   What I eat influences my energy; sugar being one of the strongest energy disrupters.  My plan, as I dive deeper into these energy centers, is to fine tune my own energy to become more adept at sensing it without interference.  I have given up sugar.  If you are interested in working with your energy, I recommend that you pay attention to your energy and take care of and cultivate your energy through good food choices, adequate exercise and sleep, as well as working on your mental and emotional states.

As I craft my Personal Vision Statement for 2017, I will start off by making two lists and carefully selecting the 5 most important things to work on for the year.  I will be working on improving my health through better diet and continued exercise.  And I will be working with the energy of my chakras to find balance and remove the obstacles in my path!

What will you be doing for 2017?   Join me either in the giving up of sugar or in learning about the chakras. 

Om Gum Ganapatayei Namaha 
(The chant to Ganesh, the remover of obstacles)

7 Steps to Get Younger Every Year

An article in the November issue of AARP Magazine about how to be "Younger Every Year" caught my eye. I liked their advice and the fact that they covered three main areas: physical exercise, diet and emotions, but I still thought it was incomplete.  Here is their list of the 7 Steps to Getting Younger Every Year:

1. Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life.

2. Do serious aerobic exercise four days a week for the rest of your life.

3. Do serious strength training, with weights, two days a week for the rest of your life.

4. Spend less than you make.

5. Quit eating crap!

6. Care.

7. Connect and commit.

And here is my take on it:

1. Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life.

   • Being active is important.  We all know that if we don’t use it we will lose it.  Exercise has been shown to be beneficial for cardiovascular health, muscle building, balance, bone density, mood elevation and maintaining memory.  Definitely do this!

   • AARP recommends 4 days a week of aerobics and 2 days of weight training.

2. Do serious aerobic exercise four days a week for the rest of your life.

   • The recommendation is to do 45 minutes of aerobic exercise a day four days a week.

   • Aerobic exercise changes your blood chemistry and makes it less acidic, which means more anti-inflammatory.

   • It reduces you’re your risk of heart disease and some cancers by 50%.

   • It reduces your risk of Alzheimer’s by 40%

   • There are many forms of aerobic exercise to choose from: bike, jog, swim, hike,...    The important thing is to choose some form that you like to do and get out there and do it.  Put it into your calendar and commit to doing it!  You might want to read the book Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin or The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg to help you commit to healthier habits.

3. Do serious strength training, with weights, two days a week for the rest of your life.

   • While aerobics keeps you alive and moving, strength training offers you a better quality of life.  Without strength training you lose 10% of your muscle mass per decade after age 40.  You suffer the same loss of bone density.  This means that by age 60 you have trouble getting out of a deep chair!

   • I love to lift weights, but not a lot of yogis do.  I find that lifting weights enhances my yoga experience and vice versa.

   • Get an app on your phone to create workouts, get a trainer at the gym, do free weights, machines, bands or body weights.  Do something!

4. Spend less than you make.

   • Overspending creates stress!  Live within your means, or, as the comedian Kevin Hart says, “Stay in your own lane.”  Don’t try to keep up with anyone else.

5. Quit eating crap!

   • I love the AARP article on this one.  It says, “Don’t eat crap!  We all know what crap is.  Just don’t eat it!”

   • Crap is also defined as “dead food”.  This is food that has no nutrients.  It is called dead because refining takes out almost all of the vitamins, minerals and fiber.  It’s tasty, digestible and you can eat a lot of it without feeling full. But since it is lacking nutrients it is not fueling our bodies.  It can make us fat and sick.

6. Care, connect and commit.

   • We are social animals.  We need other people and we need to feel needed and connected.  Work on your friendships, they matter more as we age.  Get a pet to love and take care of if you are an animal lover.  Make time for your friends and family.  Volunteer.

7. Meditate and relax.

   • Our lives are stressful.  And for a lot of people the stress never turns off.  Yoga, working out, being with friends, having a dog or cat that loves you and meditation practices can’t take away the stress of modern life, but these activities can create a pause in the stress of your day.  Often, that pause is all we need to break the cycle of stress and let our natural endorphins and hormones take over and heal our bodies.

   • 20 minutes, twice a day is what is recommended for meditation or relaxation.  There are apps you can use for meditation, or you can just set a timer on your phone and put your feet up for twenty minutes!

Vinyasa Pose of the Month for January – Planks

Yoga is a balance of strength and flexibility.  We need to be strong but not rigid.  Being strong gives us a firm foundation and clear boundaries.  Being rigid keeps us stuck, frozen in one place.  In being flexible, we need to be resilient, able to change and go with the flow, but not so flexible that we can be pushed over.  This is as true in our yoga postures as it is in life.

We will begin this year by developing our strength by working our core in the various forms of Plank Pose.  Our core connects our upper body and lower body together, protecting our spine and integrating our postures. Think of Plank Pose as Tadasana in alternate relationships to gravity using different arm positions.   Tadasana is the first version of Plank.  Use this posture to check your alignment for each of the other versions.  Each version of Plank should still look like Tadasana.

There is Plank pose with the arms held straight out in front of the body.  You can do Plank pose on your hands or on your forearms.  The forearm version is not just for people who have wrist issues.  When practicing Forearm Plank, make sure that you keep your forearms parallel.  In either version of Plank, make sure your hips are in line with your body, not high like a tent and not low like a hammock.  There is also a moving version of Plank called “walking plank”.  This is where you transition back and forth from Plank on your hands to Plank on your forearms, one arm at a time.

Caturanga Dandasana, or Low Plank is a harder version of Plank and relies more on upper body strength than just core.  Make sure that your elbows are stacked over your wrists and your shoulders are kept in line with your elbows as you hold this pose.

The next version of Plank Pose is with the arms straight out from the shoulders in the side plane.  This is Side Plank or Vasisthasana. It works your oblique muscles, or the abdominal muscles that wrap around the side of your body.  Even though the body is tipped over sideways, it should still look like you are holding Tadasana.  Don’t sag or arch!

You may have never thought of Handstand as a version of Plank, but it is Plank with the arms overhead.  Again the body should look the same way it does in Tadasana.  It should not look like a banana.  If the ribs flare out you have lost your core.  Of course, there is a Scorpion version of Handstand that is more difficult.

Reverse Plank is the last version, with the arms in the back plane of the body.  This works the muscles in the back plane of the body including your hamstrings and glutes.  People often think of core as just abs, but the posterior chain muscles are just as important to keeping our spine stabilized, supported and our posture well integrated.

Working our core in these versions of Plank Pose will set us up for a great beginning to a New Year!

I’ll see you in class!

Karin

Three Steps to Crafting a Personal Vision Statement

What do you want to do or be when you grow up?  It is a question my 18 year old hears often.  He says he feels the stress of trying to decide his major.  But, as adults, do we ever hear that?  Or think about that?  In my parent’s generation you worked for one company and retired with a good pension, but that doesn’t happen anymore.  Most adults have a couple of career changes.  How many of us are still doing what we went to college for?  Can we reinvent ourselves? And if so, what is it that we want to do?  We can bump along in our jobs and keep doing the same thing, one year blending into the next.  Or, can we steer our ship and create different adventures?

This is where a personal vision statement comes in.  I am often inspired by Oprah Winfrey.  I remember reading somewhere about how the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley inspired her:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

 Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul. 

To become the master of your fate and the captain of your soul takes vision, planning and chutzpah!

First step: Personal Research

Your personal vision statement captures what you want to be, do, feel, think, associate with, and have an impact on by some date in the future. It is closely aligned with your most important, or core, values. Use the value identification exercise to guide you through this process. Think about your personal vision statement as a personal development strategy.

It's good to create or revise the "personal vision" you have for your life periodically.  Your goals and values will change as you change and age.  What motivated you at twenty will probably be different from what motivates you at 60.   A compelling vision can help you succeed and be more satisfied with your life.

Importance of Having a Personal Vision

Numerous experts on leadership and personal development emphasize how vital it is for you to craft your own personal vision for your life. Warren Bennis, Stephen Covey, Peter Senge, and others point out that a powerful vision can help you succeed far beyond where you'd be without one. That vision can propel you and inspire those around you to reach their own dreams. I've learned in my own life and in working as a psychologist that if you don't identify your vision, others will plan and direct your life for you. I've worked with too many individuals who late in their lives said, "If only. . . ." You don't have to be one of them.

Senge defines vision as what you want to create of yourself and the world around you. What does your vision include? Making a vital change in an area such as health, technology, or the environment? Raising happy, well-adjusted children? Writing a book? Owning your own business? Living on a beach? Being very fit and healthy? Visiting every continent? Helping others with their spiritual development? What are you good at? What do you love to do? What aren't you good at now, but you'd like to be? All of these important questions are part of identifying your personal vision.

Use the following Value Identification Exercises to think through and start to craft your personal vision. It's adapted from many sources and should prompt you to think and dream. Find a place without distractions such as a quiet table at a restaurant. Answer as many of the questions as possible, and discuss your responses with someone you trust.

First Step - Value Identification Exercises

• What are the things I really enjoy doing?

• What brings me happiness and joy?

• What were your two best moments of the past week?  Why?

• How can I incorporate more of that into my life?

• Three things I would do if I won the Lottery:

• Issues or causes I feel deeply about?

Circle your most important values:

• Having integrity

• Spirituality

• Being fit and healthy

• Having a nice home and belongings

• Leaving the world a better place

• Having fun

• Learning and improving myself

• Making others' lives easier or more pleasant

• Enjoying my family

• Others? (Add your own)

Things I can do at the good or excellent level:

What I’d like to stop doing, or do as little as possible:

Did any of these questions trigger some ideas about what you'd like to be doing with your life? If so, keep thinking about the questions and your answers, and continue your personal research.

Identifying your strengths

It's now time to pull together your research and write a Personal Vision Statement. Your vision must be unique and appropriate for you, so I offer the following Personal Vision Statement only as an example:

I am more physically fit, almost finished with my formal education, actively involved in two close personal relationships, meditating regularly, having fun every day, and making at least 75% as much money as before doing work that I love.

Notice in this sample that the person included several areas of life (physical, intellectual, social, spiritual, emotional, and career). It's a picture of how the person sees himself/herself and is written in the present tense.

Use the following tool to synthesize what you've learned about yourself and to write your own statement.

Second Step – These are the main things that motivate me, bring me joy and satisfaction.

My greatest strengths, abilities, traits, things that I do best are:

At least two things that I can start doing, or do more often that use my strengths and bring me joy are:

Something that I need to work on or improve upon that would serve me:

Things that I need to let go of or delegate: 

Third Step – Crafting Your Vision

There are a couple of rules to follow for writing your personal vision statement

Always state things in the present moment as if they are already true.

See yourself in that situation.  What are you wearing/ What is your hair like?  What is the geographical setting? What time of day is it?  Who are you with?  What does the air smell like. Engage all of your senses to make the scene as realistic and believable as possible.

Extrapolate outward.  How does your doing your vision impact the world around you?  How does it make the world a better place?

Dare to dream big.  Experts in this field say that most people dream too small.   Reach for the stars! 

What to do with your Vision Statement

Seal you Vision Statement and put it somewhere where you will find it in December of 2017.  I taped mine to the December page of my calendar.  Open it on December 1st, of next year and read it!  You may be astonished at everything that happened over the year.  Some things may not have happened, but that is ok.  Reflect on those things and see if they are what you really wanted, or you just thought you wanted, or thought you “should” want.  Then after some contemplation, start the process over again.  Revise, rewrite and reimagine!  Here’s to your best year, yet!

Learning to Relax.

The pose of the month for December is Savasana.  That does not mean that we will spend the entire class in Savasana.  Just like every other pose of the month, we will spend maybe 10 or 15 minutes working on the featured pose.   (And, if you are lucky, you will get a lovely Savasana assist by yours truly!)

So what do we need to work on in Savasana?  Aren’t we just supposed to relax and do nothing?  Absolutely, but how many of us can do so?  I know many students who cannot stay for Savasana.  They don’t see the value in “doing nothing”.

But relaxation is so important, it breaks the stress cycle.  We all know how stress is bad for our body and immune system. (You can read about how harmful stress is for your body here.)  While we cannot avoid stress in our lives, we can take steps to promote relaxation and Savasana is one of those ways.

We live in a high stress society.  I am amazed at how many people cannot relax.

All during class I am cueing, cajoling and encouraging my students to engage this, or straighten that, or hug towards the midline, or extend out.  When we finally get to the end, it is time to relax and let go.  Often a strong and sweaty practice is conducive to letting go.  But, I am surprised at how much tension some students can still be holding onto in their bodies during Savasana.

Sometimes during final relaxation, I will go around and adjust a few people. I usually let people know I will be doing this so I don’t startle anyone (and I allow people to opt out).   I approach them quietly and touch them gently before lifting their arm up and slowly wiggling it.  If they are relaxed, the arm should move like the empty sleeve of a jacket.  But more often than not, the arm comes up rigidly and the person moves the arm with me, anticipating which way I am going to wiggle it.  Some students are unconsciously helping me, even though I tell them I don’t want them to help.  It is not unusual for the arm to stay up in the air even after I have let go of it.  When I quietly tell the person that if they were relaxed, the arm would not stay up in the air by itself, they often smile and let the arm down.  Then I begin again.  I ask students to “let go”, to “play dead”, “relax”.  Some people simply cannot do it right away.  It takes practice.  We are so used to being on guard, to protecting ourselves from being taken advantage of, of not allowing ourselves to be vulnerable.  The result is that we cannot let go.

I discovered what I need to do is to prepare people for relaxation; to tell them at the beginning of class what they need to do at the end, to describe what I see and feel in people’s bodies when they are tense.  This seems to help a lot.  In a society that values doing over being, we need instructions on how to relax.

Here are some tips on how to relax:

1. Plan a place and time to relax (if this is done outside of your regular yoga class.) Showing up is 80% of the work!

2. Determine the amount of time you have to relax and set a timer. It is easier to relax when you know how much time you are willing to give.

3. Make yourself comfortable. You should be lying down on the floor.  Place a blanket under you if the floor is hard and you are not on carpet.  Use blankets, bolsters or pillows to support your body in away way to insure you stay comfortable.

4. Make sure you are warm. As you lay still you will feel cooler than when you were moving, particularly if you were sweaty.  Put on an extra shirt, socks or even cover yourself with a blanket.

5. Use an eye pillow, if you like, or cover your eyes with something like the sleeve of a shirt or a hand towel. This does two things for you: First, it creates darkness which is more conducive to relaxing.  Second, it weighs the eyes down and helps to keep them from moving around.  (You don’t need something heavy on the eyes, just a gentle suggestion of weight.) Eye movement stimulates the brain and we want the brain to slow down as part of the process of relaxing.

6. Commit to stillness. Sometimes when I lay down for Savasana I may feel as if I am too fidgety to relax and all of a sudden I have these itches and twitches and urges to move.  90% of the time, if I ignore these urges, they will go away.  It seems that they are the mind’s resistance to staying still.  The mind wants to be stimulated.  If I am able to resist movement I begin to relax.  Now, 10% of the time, you may actually have to scratch that itch, move your leg or grab another pillow.  You have to use common sense here, but don’t be fooled by your restless, monkey mind or you will never be able to relax.

If you don't have the time or inclination to relax at home make sure you come to class during the month of December to work on it.  You’ll be glad you did!

Come on!  I know what you really come to class for:

I’ll see you in class!

Karin

The Ten Building Blocks of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher

Becoming a great yoga teacher is a lot like becoming great at anything else.  You have to work at it and commit yourself to the path that you are on.  It takes time as Patanjali says in the Yoga Sutra:

sah tu dirgha kala nairantaira satkara asevitah dridha bhumih  Y.S. 1.14

“When that practice is done for a long time, without a break, and with sincere devotion, then the practice becomes a firmly rooted, stable and solid foundation.”

One of the things I firmly believe in regard to the practice and teaching of yoga is the quality of patience and being able to sustain your learning over a long period of time.  One of my favorite teacher training programs I ever participated in was a 200 hour Iyengar program.  We met twice a month for three years!  I loved the fact that I had plenty of time to ask questions and steep myself in the teachings.

As much as we would like our strength, flexibility or our rehabilitation from an injury to happen overnight, we all know that it takes time for our body to change.  As your body changes, so does your understanding about the postures change.   Some changes happen faster than others and some changes are not linear; they may be plenty of setbacks on the road to progress.  That was why I liked the three year program so much.  My understanding of postures changed over time as my body changed. I wouldn’t have known to ask certain questions until I felt the changes in my body.   I know a lot of people would balk at a three year training program, however, so I adjusted my program to take place over one calendar year.  We meet every Wednesday from 12:30 to 6:00 pm.  This way you get the benefit of a true immersion while having ample time for some changes to take place.  (For those students who cannot commit to every Wednesday for an entire calendar year, or who want to spread the financial payments out over time, you can take individual modules and complete the training in two years!)

These Ten Building Blocks are the steps I followed on the path to becoming a good teacher.  They are based on the things I wanted to know and learn, the questions I was asking.  These form the foundation of the modules I offer in my 300 hour Advanced Teacher Training Program.

1. Foundation and General Form of the Poses – seeing Tadasana in every pose

2. Knowing the poses from the inside – developing your own practice

3. Anatomy and Physiology – Another way of learning about the poses from the inside

4. Sequencing – the magical art of opening the body

5. Voice and cueing – It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it

6. Philosophy/Themes – Creating a yogic experience

7. Therapeutics – What to do when something hurts

8. Meditation – Knowing yourself

9. Pranayama – Breath, the vital life force

10. Energy and Intuition – Because it is more than just physical

If you are interested in taking the next step to becoming a better yoga teacher, you can enroll in my Advanced Teacher Training Program by calling Erin Lento at 215.862.2200.

I look forward to working with you!

If you have more questions you can ask them in the comments below.  And/or, you can attend the Open House I am holding next Saturday, December 10th from 1:00 to 3:00 at The Treehouse.  Details can be found here.

If you are not ready to commit to the whole program, you can register for the individual modules. (That way you can experience the longer immersion that I was talking about above.)

2017 Curriculum Planning

I am beginning to plan my yoga curriculum for next year.  I always plan the year in advance.  I like not having to wake up in the morning and worry about what postures I want to teach.  I don't always rigidly adhere to the plan, however.  One of the nice things about having a plan is that you can choose to use it or not.  Not having a plan means you are always making it up as you go along.  Some creative things can happen that way, but not consistently enough for my tastes.

I sometimes sit down with my colleagues and formulate a plan collaboratively.  One of the things I have noticed is that yoga teachers and yoga students don't think the same way about which postures they want to work on.  I remember soliciting feedback last year from students.  Not many responded, but those who did requested mostly basic poses like Wheel, Triangle and Savasana while my colleagues put down arm balances like Fallen Angel or One Arm Handstands!

I think that most yoga students want to leave the planning up to the teachers and they are happy to just show up to class and do what they are instructed to do.  But, there are occasions when students want to have input and give feedback.  So, if you do want to give me your two cents for next year, now is the time.  I have created a 10 question survey here. Please click on the link and let me know what you want to practice next year.  I'm sure I didn't cover all the bases in my questions.  I just wanted to prime the pump and get your creative juices flowing.  Feel free to answer the survey and/or add any comments you might have just below this post.

While we still have the entire month of December to go for this year.  I am looking forward to a wonderful 2017!