Monthly Archives: March 2010

State of The Union in Nikki Yoga News, March 2010

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Here in Seattle, there’s an indie alternative newspaper called The Stranger, wherein there’s a column called Last Days, which accounts for notable news of the last days in the last week, and it’s the inspiration for this blog’s format in Nikki Yoga News (NYN).

My Heart Will Go On

  • The 2nd installment of Intro to Yoga at Taj Yoga is off and running, starting Wednesday March 3, 2010, from 6:00 – 7:15pm. As always with Intros, for the next 7 weeks I will take the students through a rousing round of the different types of yoga postures, breath work, and dabble into the philosophy of what makes yoga, well, yoga. I’m glad to see new faces as well as familiar old ones from the previous Intro session. It’s always a ton of fun to get to work with students for an extended amount of time.
  • The 10th, yes, 10th! session of my 500-hour Yoga Teacher Training at Pacific Yoga came and went this past weekend of March 5-7, 2010. That means there are only 2 sessions left and I’ll be a 500-Certified Yoga Teacher (CYT). Big excitement! Big responsibilities! What does this 500 CYT business mean? It means I’ve gone through a certain amount of training that meets the Yoga Alliance standards at the 500-hour level [PDF].
  • Cora Wen, a long-time yoga teacher who has been tagging the world with headstands, or sirsasana, came to Seattle on Thursday March 4, 2010, and we got to hang out and had big fun talking about The State of the Yoga (Union). Har, har. I’ve gotta go for those cheap jokes when I can, ya know. Cora and I met up with Karen Lindenberg, owner and teacher of Phyzz Yoga, and we did some Down Dogs against the Seattle skyline at Volunteer Park.
  • Then, a little virus caught up with me on Friday. All those days of having fun in the sun and “we go deep and we don’t get no sleep ’cause we be up all night until the early light” caught up with me. Throw in some questionable milk at a coffee shop, and I was done for. Being sick has always given me perspectives on appreciating exactly what is, and that my health is my wealth.

Somewhere Out There

  • I’m starting the next Yoga for Newbies series at Village Green Yoga this Thursday, March 11, 2010, from 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm. Hooray! I’ll be looking forward to new and familiar faces there.
  • This weekend, March 13 and 14, 2010 I’ll be back assisting the fabulous trio of Theresa, Kathryn, and Paul at the Pacific Yoga 200-hour Teacher Training.
  • I’m starting a new class called Yoga Happy Hour at Taj Yoga, where the emphasis will be more on working with the breath and doing restorative yoga poses. It’s on Friday afternoons from 5:30-6:45pm. As you know, starting anything new is a little bit of a risky adventure, and I’m trying to see if this time slot will work. I’m asking for your help to please let all your friends who live and work in the Crown Hill/Ballard/North Seattle area know!

Always On My Mind

  • Many, many projects are swirling around in my head right now. I’m feeling awfully creative. My right brain is seriously working over time right now. I’m interviewing local yoga teachers in a Support Local Yoga Teachers project. If you are a yoga teacher, please let me know if you would like to be interviewed!
  • I’ve been designing greeting cards and shirts in the theme of tongue-and-cheek quirky sayings.
  • The 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training has started at Pacific Yoga, and what a privilege it is for me to get to assist teachers Theresa Elliott in Asanas, Kathryn Payne in Pranayama, and Paul Bubak in Anatomy. It’s also great fun for me to get to know the next class of yoga teachers.

All I Have To Do Is Dream

  • Spring is around the corner, and I’ll be teaching a workshop for a Smoother Sun Saluation at Village Green Yoga on Saturday, March 27, 2010. 9:30 – 11:30 am.
  • I’m officially enrolled in the Traditional Yoga Studies 800-hour Distance Learning Course on the History, Literature, and Philosophy of Yoga, written and designed by Georg Feuerstein. I’ll be starting this after my graduation from the 500-hour Training in May.
  • I’m really enjoying teaching Yoga for Climbers at Stone Gardens climbing gym, and looking for ways to create videos for my climbing homies from far-away. Mini-vids are in the work, oh yeah.
  • I am actively working on another series of interviews and biographies on the senior and pioneer yoga teachers in the Pacific Northwest. If you have any information on any teachers who started teaching in the 60s and 70s, or even earlier, please, please let me know.
Drive, Reverse, Neutral, Park, Drive, Reverse, Neutral, Overdrive, Neutral...

Drive, Reverse, Neutral, Park, Drive, Reverse, Neutral, Overdrive, Neutral...

Four by Four, Sit by Sit

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Alright, it’s March! That means the First Nikki Challenge 28-Day Sit-off Meditation Competition is ovar! How’d it go for you? As you recall the rules were minimal. All I asked was for you to sit. That’s it! 60 seconds, 60 minutes, it didn’t matter. The goal was to create a habit, and as all of us know, if the goal is too lofty, we won’t even get started at all.

Kudos to you if you took it the challenge. And a HUGE THANK YOU to our Sit-off sponsors: The awesome people who gave us a little incentive to do our work. Okay, now what, you’re off the hook, right? Actually, no one was ever really “on the hook” with anyone in the first place, really, except with ourself. And that’s the hardest person to hold accountable with, eh?

If you’ve enjoyed sitting, and enjoyed the “sitoff” spirit, fret not, here comes the iEvolve 90 day Meditation Challenge. Yes, that’s a whole whopping *ninety* days, not 28 puny days. Also, this challenge asks that you sit for an hour a day. From their website:

THE CHALLENGE:

Meditate 1 hour everyday for 90 days in a row. You can sit for 60-minutes straight, two 30- minute periods, or 4 15-minute periods. Whatever works for you. Either way, that’s 90 hours of meditation under your belt! Start Spring 2010 off right and re-energize your practice and your life with our 90 day meditation challenge.

As you know, I’m a huge believer of doing things in an easy, steady, sustainable way. So, I’ve decided to tweak the rules a little bit (“they’re more like guidelines anyway”). I’ve decided to use the divide and conquer strategy. I’ve also included Pranayama as part of the sit. Let’s call it MPx4, Meditation and Pranayama by Four sittings a day. An hour seems like a lot, but 15 minutes? We all have 15 minutes here and there to spare.

Every Day Is A Winding Road

The Challenge calls for 90 hours of sitting, that’s 5400 minutes. My take is you ought to account for mishaps in life, and you ought to be able to make up for them.

If you miss a day, add another day to the challenge. For example, it’s March 1, 2010 as I’m writing this, but you’re reading about this on March 2, or 3. Who says you have to finish May 28, 2010? Why not May 29, or 30? This can go too far, however. You might say to yourself, “I’m putting it off until January 1, 2011, yeah, that’ll be my New Year Resolution!”

So, why not set a deadline of the last day of Spring, which is June 20, 2010? It’s like those punch cards where you get a limited time to use. That adds a whole whopping 23 days to the 90-day sit, that’s like 25% more for the same price!

If you miss 15 minutes, add another 15 minutes. If you’ve only done 15 minutes today, add 45 minutes to your “Credit” column, and save it for a make-up day. DO NOT binge and purge. Well, do it if you want to, but I strongly advise against the dieter’s mentality of having “cheat days” where you go berserk with everything in sight. Don’t think, oh, I’m not gonna sit today, but I’ll sit for five hours this weekend. It doesn’t work in the long run. It’s unsustainable.

The exception, of course, is if you’ve signed up for a sit where you really will sit for five hours, then I think it’s cool. What doesn’t work is the old college habit of cramming. It’s 10pm and that 50-page paper is due at 8am tomorrow morning? No problems, I have a whole *twelve* hours to write. Yeah, that rarely ends well.

Okay, here’s a recap:

  • The challenge is to complete 5400 minutes of sitting, a combination of Pranayama and Meditation.
  • You must do each session for at least 15 minutes.
  • You’re strongly encouraged to sit for an hour a day.
  • You have from March 1, 2010 to June 20, 2010 to complete.

Bonus:

Are you a math/stat geek? Keep tabs and quantify on your effort. For example, you can record when you sit, and do a tally on whether you do more Pranayama or Meditation in the morning, or at night.

Any time's a good time for a spreadsheet!

Any time's a good time for a spreadsheet!

What do you think? Are you in?

When we take the meditation posture, we’re developing a posture and attitude of attentive openness to whatever arises, and this is actually a very brave thing to do. I think maybe we wouldn’t actually even begin on this journey if we knew how brave that is, to just sit, and open our minds, open our whole being, with attentive openness to whatever might arise.

Because in so doing, we’re actually opening ourselves beyond our usual habitual view of ourself and of reality. We actually don’t know what we’re going to see, and one of the first things that one gradually begins to perceive is that perhaps we aren’t quite who we thought we were.

…

We sit, and we just look, with an openness, as much openness as we can, and in so doing, we’re opening ourselves to letting go, or seeing through, or at least seeing exactly who we are and what we do. We’re setting ourselves up, you could say, for some of the ways, and eventually all of the ways in which we conventionally and habitually view reality, to let those fall apart, so it’s very brave. And this path, is considered the Path of the Brave Ones, which doesn’t mean we *are* brave, but it means we begin to cultivate our fearlessness.

- Pema Chodron, From Fear to Fearlessness, Session 1, Beginning the Path of the Brave Ones.

Those rules, they're more like guidelines anyway

Those rules, they're more like guidelines anyway

Santosha, and Resistance and Acceptance

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Talk about weird cosmic timing. I made a short video about Santosha a couple days ago, and today in my inbox, I received the latest blog post from Arnold Ilgner, the author of The Rock Warrior’s Way: Mental Training for Climbers about Resistance and Acceptance.

I absolutely enjoyed reading what Arnold had to say. He said what I wanted to convey in the idea of Santosha, but much more concise. I want to share it with you guys here. I also took the liberty to bold some texts.

We all tend to resist stress. To begin overcoming this tendency, admit that stress is a normal and desirable part of climbing. Accept this not just philosophically but in practice. When you encounter a stressful situation, accept the stress and explore its details. Accepting stress will help you see a situation as it is and avoid the distracting tricks your mind plays to satisfy its desire for comfort.

Acceptance does not equal resignation. It means simply that you avoid wishful thinking and illusions, and focus on gathering useful information about the challenge before you. Saying, “I wish these holds were bigger,” is an expression of resistance. It will not make the holds grow or help you use them. Saying, “I hope there’s a hold up there,” will not create a hold or help you respond if there isn’t one. Saying, “If only I wasn’t so pumped,” will not re-energize your forearms or help you find the least strenuous path through the crux.

Juliet is not a good spotter at all.

Juliet is not a good spotter at all.