Santa Asana: Yoga Gift Certificates for the Holidays

Consider giving a private yoga session as a gift this holiday season.
Gift Certificates are available for half price ($35 instead of $70) until January.  Please feel free to call/ email to further discuss details.

The goals of a private appointment can vary upon the individual. 

These could include:

- a new student wanting to have a more private experience before attending a general class

- the need for guidance in developing a personal home practice

- injuries and limitations which require extra attention and modifications from a teacher

- the need for customized guidance in stress-reducing techniques

A private appointment will include a fifteen minute interview/assessment to define your goals and then a one hour session of instruction.  A follow-up email will include a summation of what was covered during the appointment as well as a  list of exercises to continue on your own.

"Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life..."

Unending Love    -Rabindranath Tagore

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times...
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man's days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

A Soft Loss

Your hair stays pressed against your head as we lift you away from the pillows.
You are so pillowy.
You are so pilled. 
The doctors have peeled you away from me with every prescription.
Aging made lighter, these last few years made feathery.
I miss your crackling laughter, I miss your love stronger than steel.
In my sleep, as you sleep, it all seems real--
I feel it and I know it: 
I am losing you.
But this soft, easing away
is harder than I could have ever imagined.

Occupy Yoga: Social Action for the 100%

Photo Credit: Derek Beres

Occupy Yoga: Social Action for the 100%

Inspiration from this blog,"Change does begin within; cultivating calm, poise and compassion immediately resonates with others. Knowledge, action and sometimes occupation are integral components to making the world a better place for everyone. At certain times, this is done with an OM. At others, a vote."

Reflection of You

The thought of your death
returns me to infancy.
Suddenly I am crawling beneath the covers
sucking my thumb in the dark.

All the tears you once soothed away
now rise heavy.
Racked with sobs
that have been waiting, pushing up against
the smooth curtain you pulled across
my window into fear.

You created in me the belief
of a steadfast truth--
a constant love.

Because I never felt your love waver--
from that first moment
I fit in the palm of one hand, at 4lbs, 6 ounces.

By now I have felt many a love falter.
So it is a reflection of your love I look for
in those around me.
It is a reflection of your love
I aim to be for others.

The Calm Beneath the Surface

"Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind"

My thoughts and my emotions: powerful waves crashing.  I have spent so many years being pulled and tossed about in these waves.  Fighting to get to shore.  Unable even to figure out the direction of the shore, flailing madly in so many delusions.
I can feel these delusions, these samskaras, rise up on me still.  Like a storm brewing at sea. Suddenly I feel so down on myself, so alone and unsure.
But I am learning not to try to fight my way to shore.  Dive deeper, beneath the waves.  Search for the calm beneath the surface.  It's always there.
I'm always there. Deep inside.

Rumi-nating

The revolving spheres have lulled you into a deep sleep.

Beware of this floating life. 

Beware of this weighty slumber.

-Rumi

Yoga Secrets for Back Pain Relief

I am very excited to have the opportunity to teach a six week series on "Yoga Secrets for Back Pain Relief"  with the owner of Lighten Up Yoga and my cherished mentor, Lillah Schwartz.

The series starts Wednesday, Nov. 9 and ends Dec. 14th, and will be taught at Lighten Up Studios (60 Biltmore Ave).  The cost for the six weeks is only $75 dollars, which is an especially great price considering you get two teachers with the deal!  Drop-ins are welcome but will pay a regular drop in fee of $15/class, and of course you get the most benefit by committing to the entire six week series.

Come learn how to relieve your back pain, move better, and feel good!  Learn how and why certain poses work better than others.  Handouts and recommended home sequences will be included.

Call 828.254.7756 to register.

It Made the Most of Us

When I woke up on October 2, the morning of the fall "Yoga on the Mountain" hike, I was thissss close to cancelling the event. It was 40 degrees and looked like it was about to rain in Asheville. Most of the people I thought were coming backed out, and I was sure no one would show up. But my friend's Mackenzie and Kate held strong and met me at West End Bakery at ten a.m. to carpool there. It was on-- we were determined to make the most of it.  Even if we didn't end up practicing yoga, the hike would still be beautiful!

It was slightly warmer when we arrived in Maggie Valley at Cataloochee Ranch, but we still started off on the hike bundled up in hats, sweatshirts, and gloves.  By the time we made it to Hemphill Bald, however, we had stripped down to tank tops and I was anxious to get my boots off and wriggle my toes in the now gentle, warm sunlight.

Four more yogis found us at the top of the Bald.  Suddenly it was a truly beautiful and inspiring experience. 










As everyone pressed into downward dog, I encouraged them to compare their form to the shape of the mountains in the distance.  I encouraged them all to embrace the unevenness of the ground, to be aware of how it created unevenness in their mind.   This practice of steadying your body, of steadying your mind...this is yoga.

I hoped that they each felt that being outside took them outside, also, of their usual expectations of what their yoga practice should look and feel like.  Once you can get beyond what things "should" be like, it is then that you can begin to truly see what things "are".

And in this instance, atop Hemphill Bald--everything was grandeur and beauty.

We hiked down with calmer spirits and easier smiles.  We set out that morning hoping to make the most of the experience, but we left feeling that it had made the most of us.

Yoga on the Mountain Hike

to Hemphill Bald, on Cataloochee Ranch in Maggie Valley

with Kimberly Drye from Lighten Up Yoga
and Michelle Pugliese, from the Southern Appalachian Highland Conservancy
Oct. 2 meet at Cataloochee 11 am
Please RSVP to Rich Pryer rich@appalachian.org or 828-253-0095 ext 205 by Sept 30th!
Cost is free to SAHC members and $10 for non-members


Michelle and I led one of these Yoga on the Mountain events in June to the Hghlands of Roan. The event was popular and there was great feedback, so we have decided to do it again. The trip in June was refreshing and inspiring. It is always a beautiful thing to be able to practice yoga outside, but especially when surrounded by butterflies and wildflowers in a green and sunny meadow.

I can only imagine how awe-inspiring this next trip will be right as the leaves have begun to change. Try to come if you can. Please contact me about carpooling from Asheville if a ride is a concern. The more the merrier, it is not a strenous hike and all experienced and inexperienced yogis are welcome!

Here are some pictures from the last event in June:

In the kitchen with kitchari

Ayurveda believes that all healing begins in the digestive tract, and kitchari is a special porridge made from rice and mungbeans that is used to purify the digestive tract and cleanse the body of toxins. Kitchari provides solid nourishment while allowing the body to devote energy to healing. So on my short four day quest for rejuvenation and revival, I am on a kitchari diet.

Tonight I am making a big batch, alone and quiet in my kitchen. I take pleasure in the smells of the spices, the beauty and color of the vegetables I can add. I am comforted by the warmth of the porridge, but also by the warm feeling I get by doing something for myself...it feels good to take care of myself. It feels good to be by myself.

I'm aiming for solitude during this period in hopes of allowing myself to steep in reflection.

My friend, Amber, quoted to me today, "Close both eyes so you can see through your third."It seems so necessary right now for me to remove myself from the world, to turn inward. In the same sense, I am removing the rest of the world from my diet.

I hope as the world clears itself around me, the clearest and rightest course of action will become clear in my mind. The quest for purity of mind begins alone and quiet in my kitchen.

Forbes on Yoga

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/09/07/where-is-yoga-headed-these-days-the-experts-discuss-its-evolution-and-future/

Check out this article about the future of yoga in Forbes magazine. I like this quote,

"There's this whole other dimension-- yoga offers a nonsectarian spirituality that can be powerfully useful in cross-cultural communication. This hasn't quite come to fruition. It's still waiting to happen. But it will."

and this one,

"Yoga gets you to release control and to get in touch with your vulnerabilities...It gets you out of head and into heart. That doen't mean that life is going to be all strawberries and unicorns and rainbows. Yoga makes you aware and opens you up to love in a way that you never knew was possible."

Brew Ha-Ha

There is something so medievel feeling about boiling your own herbs. Especially when they look like this. This stuff tastes terrible, it better be doing some kind of magic.

Avian

You were so appropriately named, Robin.
Your bones so delicate and frail.
Avian.

How you quivered
beneath the hands that tried to still you.

You were so afraid to fly.
We thought your wings were broken.

You spent your nights flailing against the bars of your cage,
a flimsy cage of a failing marriage,
of daughters who were never your own.

A cage you constructed yourself--
a mild attempt to keep yourself sane.

All along, the door of your cage was wide open.
You knew it--that is what made you most afraid.

I sat in your cage with you--
night after night.

Your hands I remember more than your face.
Watching the lit cigarette between those long graceful fingers--
one after the other,
each a tiny measure of time.

I wish I could have closed the cage door.

Beauty is a Gift

All that I understand of my beauty you gave to me.
It was you who saw it first.
It was you who showed it to me every day
until I could see it for myself.

You were sitting at the table,
a plastic tablecloth and cheap placemats
all matching and lined up evenly on the table.
You reached for me as I ran past you.
I was flushed, sweaty from playing kickball in the yard
with all my neighborhood friends.
I laughed and tried to wiggle away--
but you pulled me closer,
backwards over your lap.

"You are so beautiful--
your face, your features, your hair,
you are so beautiful."
I stopped laughing.
How serious you would get sometimes.
You would insist on these moments--
on stopping everything
to tell me something as clearly as you could,
as best you understood.

You were my biggest fan for so many years-
and I was yours.
You were crazy and we knew it,
but you were the only one, besides Jenn,
to listen to my fears without laughing.

I remember your naked body.
Your small breasts and large dark areolas.
Your long torso and narrow hips.
How I would look down at my own and compare.

Sometimes when I look at my naked self
in the mirror today
I still compare my shape to yours.
And I still hear your words,
"You are so beautiful."

We Are All Kids At Play

"Your mother believed in playing" my grandmother said on my visit home last weekend. It brought tears to my eyes-- the faint memory of my mother's smile, the time she made snow angels with my sister and me in the backyard, a couple months before her death. I wonder if she somehow sensed how short her life would be? She died at the age I am now, 28.

I want to be remembered this way also. I'm taking a few days off work to try to get a grip on what really matters. I'm trying to slow down. I know I can do more by doing less. Everything is meaningless without focus and intention behind it and lately so much of what I do feels meaningless. So the next few days of meditation and intention are dedicated to you, Mom. Teach me how to play again.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror

Inspiration from Rilke:

"God talks to each of us as he creates us,
Then walks with us silently out of night.
But the words, spoken to us before we start,
those cloudy words, are these:

Sent forth by your senses,
go to the very edge of your desire;
invest me.

Back behind the things grow as fire,
so that their shadows, lengthened,
will always and completely cover me.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Only press on: no feeling is final.
Don;t let yourself be cut off from me.
Nearby is that country
known as Life.

You will recognize it
by its seriousness.

Give me your hand."

This Body is Fleeting

"So then, banish anxiety from your heart and cast off troubles of the body, for youth and vigor are meaningless" Ecclesiastes 11:10

I am focusing on teaching therapeutic yoga. Particularly, a group with multiple sclerosis. I have so much to learn. I need to learn not only how to rearrange the yoga poses and make them more accessible, but also how to relate to and empathize with my students. What a challenge for someone whose body has always been mostly healthy. A few weeks ago, I was surprised by my fear when I merely had a stomach virus, which carries none of the gravity of a diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. My fear wasn't so much based around my immortality, but in my identity as a healthy, young woman.

I have a friend with MS who is already teaching me more than she realizes. She comes to the therapeutic yoga class I have begun to assist at Lighten Up. She's my age. She is kind, beautiful, and courageous.

We had a discussion a couple weeks ago about whether it is appropriate to call someone with disabilities "courageous". Is it courageous to simply deal with the circumstances that you had no part in choosing? I think so because what she has chosen is how to approach her disabilities. She encourages me by the way that she embraces her life, including her diagnosis. It seems that it would be so easy to mentally run from her diagnosis, live in a level of denial.

Instead, I watch her embrace her diagnosis and reach out to others. My friend is a leader of the WNC chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society. At their last meeting, she showed me T-shirts they were having printed that say"I'm not drunk, I have Multiple Sclerosis". She is so quick to smile and laugh, so easy to embrace. Not to say that she is never visibly frustrated or discouraged, but rather that she posesses a self-awareness and acceptance that I imagine must set her far ahead on the ladder to enlightenment.

In our discussions of MS, my friend's explanation of those first few months before diagnosis reminded me of my recent experience with panic attacks. They started last summer...suddenly being pulled strongly into my body, of my body leading the way instead of my mind...the pulling tightness in my chest and in my palms. The body forcing me to pay attention, to listen to what it had to say: Sit down, slow down, stop this whirlwind of existence...

My panic attacks forced an awareness on me, a presence of mind. I imagine my friend's experiences are similar in that she is often more present and aware because her body forces her to pay attention.

One thing I have learned is that every person with MS has a different story to tell, and every person with MS's experience's can change dramatically from day to day. This is so difficult for them in so many ways. But one thing their experiences can bring to them is these qualities that my friend so embodies- self-awareness and a presence of mind.

The intention in my meditations and practice these past few days has been about seeing myself beyond my flesh. Just as a person is still a person seperate from their disabilities, I am still me if I am not healthy, or young. This body is fleeting.

Tipsy Turvy

http://blogs.yogajournal.com/yogabuzz/2011/08/the-buzz-on-yoga-and-alcohol.html

Above is a link to a blog on Yoga Journal's website discussing whether alcohol, and particularly wine, should be served at a yoga class or event. I gotta say...no way. Even in my early twenties, my heavy drinking years, I would have disagreed with this idea. For me, yoga has always been about balancing out the chaotic and sometimes unhealthy aspects of my life. While I look back on some aspects of those earlier years with an element of nostalgia, I think a lot of what I miss is simply feeling young and carefree.

It's easy to associate drinking with those feelings of being young and carefree. "Letting loose" is one expression that really defines the aspect of drinking that was most appealing for me.

However, yoga has taught me to loosen up and let go of stress without the help of a substance. Yoga is what helped me let go of a dependancy on alcohol.

Recently, a friend of mine was in a class where a local Asheville yoga teacher served wine. The most disturbing part is that so many people in our society forget to respect the fact that alcohol is a dangerous substance-- that many are powerless under their addiction to alcohol.

I'm not against drinking, and I still have an occasional glass of wine with my dinner, but yoga class should be an environment to uplift and empower people in their quest towards a healthier and happier life. Alcohol is not only unnecessary to have a successful yoga experience, it's often harmful.

Cheers.

The touch of spirit on the body

There is some kiss we want
with our whole lives,
the touch of Spirit on the body.


Seawater begs the pearl
to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately
it need some wild darling!

At night I open the window
and ask the moon to come
and press its face into mine.
Breathe into me.

Close the language-door,
and open the love-window.

The moon won't use the door,
only the window.

-Rumi

What My Wrist is Telling Me

Today was the second time I made it to Joe Taft's Level 3 Led Practice at Asheville Community Yoga Center. But after today, you will be seeing me there every week. This is mostly because Joe's classes all seem to have a common element: ARM BALANCES (drum roll please). I have been practicing yoga now for years...steadily...and since that very first bakasana (crow pose) I have dreaded, despised, and avoided arm balances. My first time in crow pose, I immediately fell flat on my face and sprained my wrist . Since then I have sprained my wrist over and over and over and over and over and over and over (get the point?). And the problem wasn't just with bakasana, but also in adho mukha svanasana (downward facing dog), plank, adho mukha vrksasana (handstand), and lately in urdhva mukha svanasana (upward facing dog).

Cognitively, I know why I keep spraining my wrist. I was told how to avoid spraining my wrist in my second yoga class. "Press down through the finger tips, push into my fingerpads, push my forearms forward." Blah blah blah. Yeah, I totally get all of that somewhere up here in my head. I really truly get it. I can look at anyone else and tell them the appropriate actions to avoid spraining their wrists. In fact, I have touted all about correct action in the hands in almost every single class I've ever taught.

So what is the real reason I keep spraining my wrist? It's simple ...my total lack of awareness. I'm not paying enough attention. I'm being swept away by every other thought in my head...the circles of self loathing, the whistling train of reassurance, the neatly stacked piles of "to do" lists...

I'm managing to connect some of my thoughts to my body, but I seem to have this list of what is most important in a pose. Keeping my tail tucked in plank pose, lifting my hips in down dog. And then more wayward thoughts: Does my butt look saggy when I am in handstand?? I've been practicing long enough to become arrogant. Because of this I sometimes sail through my practice on auto-pilot. And in some ways I love that feeling. My practice becomes the background for my thoughts. It's like a blackboard I can scribble my mind on the whole time I practice. And in this way I become more aware of whats happening in my mind.

But then I injury my wrist. Again. The wrist injury reminds me, again, that this isn't enough.

I had a beautiful practice today. Thank you, Joe. Not because I successfully pulled off eka pada galavasana (flying crow pose), but because I worked hard to stay focused, present, and mindful. I worked hard to keep my breath smooth and even...and my wrist safe.

That's what my teacher meant when she said that every injury is a reason to be thankful, a lesson to be learned. This is what my wrist is telling me: there always exist the opportunity to become more present.

Selfish compassion

A text from a friend today, "Who knew being "selfish" was one of the most compassionate things you could do for people?"

This was in response to my asking him if he would make it to my class today. My friend is a healer. A talented "I've been doing this for many lifetimes" healer and he is in high demand. But we all have our lessons to learn on this journey, and it seems that one of his lessons is this idea-- that in order to help others we have to take time for ourselves.

Every relationship is like this. It's easy to get so caught up in the other person that you forget to take time to be alone, to swallow emptiness. We all need this alone- ness from time to time. Your yoga practice is just one of the ways to find it. Where it is all about you...this space, this time. Sometimes I am away for so long that when i return I gulp and I gasp and I pull as much emptiness as I can into myself. Sometimes it is violent. Sometimes I come to my mat screaming in my head, "LEAVE ME ALONE!"

And the reason that it is so hard to take this space, so hard to say no and walk away from others when you need it--is that you forget that the space you take is really for them.

If you don't create a space for yourself in your life, you will begin to burn out. You will lose your temper. You will begin to fill with negative thoughts. You will push people away subconsciously and have regrets later. You will hurt them more in the long run. You will no longer want to heal people. You will no longer want to teach people.

Take time for yourself. Be compassionately selfish. Keep the desire to help others alive in yourself by first helping yourself.

Sit Up Tall and Open Your Mind

"Sit up tall and open your mind" It is that simple and that complex all at once. Sometimes when i teach it feels like I am using as many words, riddles, demos, jokes, and touches as I can to get these two ideas across. Am I making it easier for them? Or am I making it seem more complex than it really is? Try it.

Sit up tall, open your mind.