Category Archives: My Training

Classical Yoga Weekend with Kathryn Payne

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Attention yogsters in the Pacific Northwest, Kathryn Payne will be teaching at The Yoga Community in Kennewick, Eastern Washington the first weekend of November 2010, and if you can, you ought to come.

Because Kathryn is learned, funny, down to earth and an all around awesome teacher, that’s why. Plus, it’s usually a lot sunnier and nicer in that part of the state in November.

From the website:

Practice is at the heart of yoga because it is during practice that we find the teachings revealed in a personal and direct way. This workshop is a full weekend of practice – a “retreat” to deepen our understanding and commitment to yoga.

Classical yoga is an integration of sitting, pranayama, and asana, and includes a group discussion of classical yoga texts. This combination is inspiring and students find their abilities naturally enhanced in a meaningful application of breath, movement and “just sitting.” We will work with eight vital principles as a guidelines for the asana practice and the application of pranayama will extend our awareness and vitality throughout the weekend.

Friday, November 5: 6-8:00PM
We will begin the weekend by considering the state of mind in our practice. How can we use our yoga practice to bring about the quality of mind we seek from yoga? How can we cultivate the meditative state of mind in the practice of yoga posture? This evening introduction includes pranayama, yoga posture and sitting.

Saturday, November 6: 11-2:00PM
Continuing on our theme from Friday; we will use the breath to retain a focus that is not only vital to the practice of asana, but aligns our body in a way that is natural and “unimposing.” The asana focus will be standing poses within a “mala” (thread) of unhurried Sun Salutations.

Saturday, November 6: 4-6:00PM
Bring your tea, and we will sit together and contemplate an ancient yoga text! In traditional yoga study working with the texts is a basic component of a student’s practice and it brings profound insight. The afternoon practice includes appropriate forward bends or twists and inversions for all levels.

Sunday – 9 am – noon
A more extensive pranayama practice followed by a practice of asana and completion of our text study.

Here’s the printable flyer of  Kathryn Payne’s workshop at The Yoga Community [PDF].

See ya on the flip side, kids.

Tias Little Workshop The Middle Way Recap

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I took a workshop with Tias Little when he came to town at 8 Limbs Yoga a few weeks ago. I wanted to see him because he has a wealth of knowledge in Anatomy, he understands both the Chinese meridian system and the Indian nadi system, and he’s a scholar, having done his masters in Eastern Philosophy.

Compared to a workshop I took from him two years ago, this time around there was equal amount of time devoted to physical work in the asana and  amount of time for dharma talks and meditation. Even when we were moving, there were times when the movements were more subtle, in the sense that we were not pushing or exerting a great amount of effort. I could tell that the exercises that we were doing were influenced by his studies in cranial-sacral, rolfing, and somatics.

The theme of the workshop was The Middle Way, and Tias kept going back to that point. He talked at lengths about certain Buddhist concepts, such as Impermanence and Acknowledging the Current Moment. He admitted that he spent too much time training only in the physical aspect of yoga. “I used to believe that ‘Practice and all is coming. I don’t anymore.” (I have to say I differ with Tias slightly here, because “practice” can also mean the whole path, but I understood what he meant.)

Tias drove the point home that it’s not always rainbows and unicorns. That’s not how life goes. “You have to live in the world, this world,” he’d say, and knock on the hard-wood floor we were all sitting on. I really appreciated that he said that to a large audience. I get super uncomfortable around the “yoga speak”, you know the one, when yoga teachers start to sound like they’ve left planet Earth and talks about nothing but joy and more joy and ecstatic bliss.

Don’t get me wrong, that kind of flowery language has its place, but I think it does a disservice because it makes people think that if you do yoga, you can’t be angry, you can’t be sad, you can’t have any negative emotion, which of course, could not be further from the truth. But if I say that, I would probably not be taken as seriously as if Tias said it. He just has way more clout than I do.

I took away some practical tools from Tias to bring some symmetry to the body, too, which I have already incorporated in my own practice. If you’re thinking about doing a workshop or training with him, I’d say go for it.

This path is not just about the mat, that’s not much of a path. – Tias Little

Seattle Yoga News: George Purvis at Taj Yoga this weekend

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I first met George Purvis last year, and immediately understood why he is my teacher Theresa Elliott’s mentor. Let’s see: there’s the dry and more dry sense of humor, there’s the wild hair, there’s the Texas twang, and the impeccable attention to anatomical details in asana techniques. Did I mention he’s funny? Honestly, I got one of the best abs workout with George the first 30 minutes after meeting him from laughing so hard at his jokes and demeanors.

George will be back at Taj Yoga this weekend, and if you’re in town, you are in for a treat if you come to any, or all the workshops.

From the website:

Iyengar Workshop with George Purvis

September 24-26, 2010 (3 days)
Friday: 6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Saturday: 10:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 – 5:00 p.m.
Sunday: 9:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. (10 hours)
Cost: $185

George has been teaching since 1980, drawing on his exceptional personal practice and years of study with B.K.S. Iyengar. Students will learn impeccable asana technique and gain unconventional insight from this much-loved teacher and devoted practitioner of yoga.

Taj Yoga
9250 14th Ave NW, #2
Seattle, WA 98117

George Purvis in kilt

George Purvis in kilt

Revisiting the Definition of Yoga, Part II

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Last week at a workshop with Tias Little, I ran into Janell Hartman, a fellow yoga instructor friend, and one who gave me my very first yoga teaching gig: she asked me to sub for a Punk Rock Yoga class when my 200-hr certificate still smelled of fresh ink.

We were catching up and talking about life when she told me a story of when she worked in Social Service. She was conducting an ice-breaker type of group exercise, where everyone would stand in a line, she would make a statement, like, “I like the ocean”, or “I like dogs”. People would take a step forward if the statement is true for them, and one step back if not.

Everything was going along smoothly, until she said, “I have a regular self care routine.” The stepping forward/stepping back halted. Two people out of a group of 40 stepped forward, and a good number paused, not knowing where to go. After a couple minutes, some stepped forward, and some stepped back. Some remained in their place.

This story was so revealing to me. What it says to me is

  1. Not a lot of us have a regular self-care routine
  2. Not a lot of us know what self-care really means in the first place

And hey, honestly, just because someone is “in the industry”, just because someone might be a yoga teacher or a wellness educator, doesn’t mean that they have a regular self-care routine. Knowing something and doing it are two very different things.

When I took my Restorative Yoga Teacher Training with Judith Hanson Lasater, on the very first day, her homework for us was:

  • Unless you go to bed at 10pm, whatever time that you regularly go to bed, go to bed 30 minutes earlier (this I failed miserably)
  • Whatever activity that you do for the next 5 days (the duration of the training), ask yourself, “What component of this activity includes taking care of myself?”

That one single question alone was a rude awakening for me. It made “turn the light back on itself”, as the Zen saying goes.

Judith went on to make a very strong case for self-care: If you are tired, if you are exhausted, you cannot be compassionate. And being compassionate is the seat, the foundation of teaching Restorative Yoga.

As a dedicated student of Yoga thought and philosophy, very often I find myself digging in old texts and sayings, ruminating about how Yoga is defined in this book and that book and by this person and that other translation. Sometimes the definition stares at me in the face, and I don’t have to go hunting for it. Yoga, I would say, in whatever form and definition, must involve self-care.

Revisiting the Definition of Yoga, Part I

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C’est le Devoir

I’m doing an 800-hr correspondence course with Georg and Brenda Feuerstein’s Traditional Yoga Studies. Among the reading materials (like a study binder the size of a small child) is the book The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice.

I’m reading a part where Georg is talking about the etymology and connotations of yoga. Among the ever-popular definitions of “to yoke” and “union”, yoga also means “conjunction of stars,” “grammatical rule,” “endeavor”, “occupation,” “team,” “means,” “aggregate,”, etc.

I was immediately drawn to the meaning “endeavor”. I like that definition a lot, which dictionary.com defines as “to exert oneself to do or effect something; make an effort; strive.” It’s from the Middle English endeveren, from the phrase putten in devoir to make an effort, assume responsibility; and Ancient French se mettre en deveir.

If you’ve ever studied French, you may have dreaded the word devoir, but there’s no other way to learn something like 52 ways to conjugate all those verbs.

I like the concept of doing your homework and striving for something. I mean, I don’t always *like* putting in the effort and doing the homework, or doing the work. But, since I’m on this path, where there’s bound to be traffic jam, uncourteous drivers, detours, potholes, and bad road signage, it’s a good reminder for myself that I am not here to only pick flowers on a red cushy carpet.

I also like that the dictionary defines endeavor as an attempt, an effort to strive for something. It does not say the End, the Destination. In his workshop this past weekend, Tias Little stressed many times over that there is no “there”. You do not simply “achieve” a pose. You might be *in* it, and by in, I mean, the observing, the noticing, the development of sensory skills.

The prefix en means “to cause to be in”. My interpretation is that there is a deliberate intention here. There’s awareness. That’s the se mettre part, the putting of oneself in it. There’s willingness.

C’est l’ Exploration

Last week, I started another Yoga for Newbies series, and in the very first class, a student asked straight up, “What is Yoga?” I was taken aback for 2 seconds, because that is a big question, but I’m glad she brought it up, because it’s that sense of inquiry that makes a yoga class … well, yoga. (Inquiry is really what yoga is about, but that’s another topic).

I gave the classical definition from everyone’s “starter yoga definition”: Patanjali’s, that yoga = citta vrtti nirodha. We were moments from savasana, and I said that one thing yoga helps us is how to deal with the chatter in our mind, the kind that, even if you don’t invite it, shows up anyway.

When I learned this definition for the first time, I thought this was it, that I had cracked the code, that I had discovered what yoga is. But no, time would eventually teach me about other mentions and interpretations of yoga in the Upanishad, and the Mahabharata, and people like Vyasa and Shankara. And I know it doesn’t end there. The exploration has just begun.

And of course, it is not really about who said what. It’s useful, for sure, to know intellectually, to be informed and educated, but the real deal doesn’t happen until I actually check it out for myself, in the “real” world, where traffic jams happen every day. As Tias Little said today: “It’s one thing to fill up notebooks with notes, it’s another to actualize the teaching.” The emphasis here is the verb *act*.

So, guys and girls, there’s another contribution to the question “What is Yoga.” Tune in next week for part II. In the mean time, what the heck is “grammatical rules?” I mean, really?

Seattle Yoga News – Unwinding into the Middle Way with Tias Little at 8 Limbs Yoga September 2010

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This weekend I’ll be spending 3 days with Tias Little, a yoga teacher I met two years ago at this time of year. I had just started my 200-hour yoga teacher training then, and like the song goes, “oh how the years go by”. Though two years may seem like a really short time to you guys, I’ve come a very long way from where I’d been in my growth and understanding of this thing we call yoga.

What impressed me about Tias was his vast knowledge of the Chinese meridian and Indian nadi system. I also appreciated his sound teaching of the human anatomy. Beyond listening to his lectures on muscles and bones and alignment during the workshop, I listened to Tias’ dharma talk In the Flow of Presence every day for a couple months in my car, and, as I was going through a particularly rough time at work, the CD and Tias’ voice was good to have around.

Here are the details of the workshop, copied and pasted here from the 8 Limbs Yoga website for my record, since they do not archive their workshops, and there’s no direct permanent link. See you there if you’re going as well.

ABOUT THE WORKSHOPS

Freeing the Foundation: Feet, Ankles and Knees
Friday, 2: 00 – 5:00pm
A yoga practice begins with the feet, for the feet are the foundation to the temple of the body. This class guides students to activate their feet, initially by lying on the back and then in standing poses. We explore the architecture of the foot and review common strain patterns that reside in the feet and ankles. An invaluable class for yoga teachers to learn to help students activate their arches and stabilize their knees.

The Middle Way
Friday, 6:00 – 8:00pm
The Middle Way is a place free from extremes, extremes that polarize and isolate and cause imbalance. The Middle Way path is accessible mystically and physiologically as our central axis through the body. One of the names for the mid line is the Madhya Nadi or middle channel. This class works deep with the spine—the vertebrae, the discs and surrounding musculature– to harmonize and illuminate the central channel.

The Sacred Sacrum
Saturday, 9:00am – 12:00pm
The sacral bone is the key bone of the pelvis and it is the key bone of the spine. Postural balance and centering occurs at the sacral level (svadhisthana, the second chakra) and the sacrum initiates the strong centering movement of the tailbone (mulabandha). This class looks at the powerful ligaments and muscles that hold the sacrum in place and we practice postures that balance the sacrum.

Unwinding the Low Back
Saturday, 1:30 – 4:30pm
Lower back compression is so common in our culture– 85% of our society suffers from low back pain at some point in their lives. Typically this pain is due to asymmetrical strain patterns, i.e excess tightness one side of the body. The class aims to release constriction in the lumbar and sacral area through gliding and rocking and stretching movements. In particular, our aim is to unglue the tightness in the muscles, tendons and ligaments by irrigating blood into the lower spine and sacrum.

Unwinding the Spine
Sunday, 9:00am – 12:00pm
The ideal of a yoga practice is to align the spine so that there is a free flow of nerve impulse through the spinal cord. All too often, however, the vertebrae are twisted, rotated, stuck forward or stuck backward due to compression and tightness. This class will focus on releasing the musculature around the spine and unwinding compression in the small ligaments and tendons that hold the vertebrae together. Our practice will aim to bring fluidity and greater buoyancy and support to the inter-vertebral discs. It is very common for yoga students to force their spine into poses without addressing the underlying holding patterns in the soft tissues. This can create further hardness and strain. In this intensive, we will use gliding and rocking and stretching movements in order to gently re-align the spine.

Unwinding the Neck
Sunday, 1:30 – 4:30pm
I always joke with my students that chiropractors make their living adjusting imbalances in the neck given that neck pain is so common! This class is aimed to release foreshortening in the neck muscles and compression around the nerves and discs of the neck region. Neck pain frequently results in headaches, insomnia, jaw strain and fatigue. Given that the neck is so tied into the shoulders, this class will address the ways that neck tension is coupled with shoulder restriction. We will use non-force techniques to unwind tension in the neck, particularly with spiral movements for the neck and shoulders.

ABOUT TIAS LITTLE
Tias Little’s teaching is steeped in the classical yoga tradition, while his clear and insightful approach offer a contemporary perspective. He combines the precision of Iyengar Yoga with the grace of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga. Tias’ teaching is a rich weave of poetry, anatomical detail, precision in the asana forms and wisdom that stems from the Dzogchen, Vipassana and Zen traditions. Tias has a Masters degree in Eastern Philosophy from St. John’s College. Since 2006 Tias has been studying trauma and recovery through Somatic Experiencing. Find out more at www.prajnayoga.net.

Sexy Yoga and Meditation

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Okay, I admit it, the word “sexy” didn’t need to be in the title of this post. I literally spent at least five minutes trying to figure out how to work the words “sexy” or “hot” in with the words “meditation”, to no avail.

I suppose that’s why meditation, or Patanjali’s Dhyāna, gets nowhere near the attention that Asana gets. It just doesn’t go with hot or sexy. I mean, when was the last time you saw a magazine headline with tips to “Last Longer Tonight”, and they’re talking about sitting on your cushion, closing your eyes, and concentrating on your breath? Yup, I thought so.

What’s funny is *both* Dhyāna and Asana are branches of the 8 Limbs of Yoga. What’s funny is we now have to say Yoga *and* Meditation. Oh well, that’s the all verbiage, I guess. And really, it’s better to just do it. Talking about swimming does not get you wet. (Like sexy… or… unlike sexy… or… oh, never mind.)

If I haven’t lost you yet, this post is intended for two things: 1) As a response to yet another exciting development in the world of Yoga and Polititics, and 2) To point out a couple of meditation trainings and resources if that strike your fancy.

Can Yoga be, uh… Sexy? What is Yogic, Really?

If you’re keeping track with the exciting world of Yoga and Business, Business and Yoga, recently, Judith Hanson Lasater wrote a letter to Yoga Journal expressing her confusion and sadness with the gratuitous nudity in the magazine’s ads. She said: “These pictures do not teach the viewer about yoga practice or themselves. They aren’t even about the celebration of the beauty of the human body or the beauty of the poses, which I support. These ads are just about selling a product. This approach is something I though belonged (unfortunately) to the larger culture, but not in Yoga Journal.”

Judith Hanson Lasater is not just any ol’ disgruntled YJ reader. She is one of the magazine’s original founders. And then Roseanne Harvey, who runs It’s All Yoga, Baby wrote about The Letter, and followed it up with an interview with Judith. Even Yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein came out of his semi retirement to write several blog posts about this.

Yeah, it’s gotten pretty, uh, exciting?

Amidst the noise, if you are new, or newish, or even oldish to yoga, you might be challenged with questions such as “What is yoga”? Or, “Is nudity yoga?” Or, “Can Capitalism and Yoga co-exist peacefully?”

I’m sorry to say that I don’t have the answer to any of these questions. (And I’m not sure that anyone really does.) Besides, defining what Yoga is is like defining what Love is, or Compassion is. As Judith said recently in a workshop: “Have you noticed how we can’t really define the things that are most important in life?”

So, like I said, you’re on your own with those inquiries. What I *can* tell you, however, that if you like yoga, you might also like meditation. Yoga is about learning about your Self. Self-inquiry requires meditation. Meditation is hard, it’s frustrating, it’s juicy, every once in a while you get it right. Yes, I’m describing meditation. And hey, if people can call web sites or iPhone apps sexy, I’m gonna call meditation sexy. And you, too, can do it.

Some Meditation Trainings and Resources

Recently my student Marco (hi Marco!) asked if I teach meditation. The short answer is no. The convoluted answer is yes and no. I teach primarily hatha yoga: the techniques of asana and pranayama. I sprinkle in stories, info, lores from historical texts, the other branches of Classical Yoga. In the poses I talk about things like observing where your body is in space, listening to the body’s feedback, focusing in something, stability, ease, etc. Those are things that Patanjali described as the ingredients leading to Samadhi, let’s call it Happy Place (that doesn’t involve roller coasters) for now. In my class, I prepare people for meditation.

However, I do not currently teach meditation. In my mind, one must meditate for a very long time to teach it, like, 10 years, 20 years, 40 years.

So, here are some great trainings that I personally do:

Shinzen Young’s Basic Mindfulness Home Retreat

This is a monthly home retreat usually lead by meditation teacher Shinzen Young on the second weekend of every month. I recommend you follow the Prerequisites, or that you have listened to his lectures The Science of Enlightenment first. Shinzen’s teaching is methodical. His techniques and vocabulary are highly developed, and quite frankly not for the faint of heart. If you are determined to learn meditation, however, I can’t recommend him more. Check out his CD: The Beginner’s Guide to Meditation.

The next dates for the home retreat are:

  • August 13-15, 2010
  • September 10-12, 2010
  • October 8-10, 2010
  • November 12-14, 2010
  • December 10-12, 2010

Beyond Sequencing: The Art of Meditation with Chase Bossart

Yoga teacher Chase Bossart will be doing a workshop at Shala Yoga of Portland in 2 weeks on August 20-22, 2010. From the website:

Meditation is one of the most important and potent tools in yoga. In many ways, it is the crown jewel of all yoga practices. Yet many people experience it as one of yoga’s most difficult and confusing tools. These difficulties, however, can be greatly reduced through proper sequencing of the meditation practice.

When properly constructed, a meditation practice gradually develops the attention and mental stability required to stay with the focus. This happens naturally as the practitioner moves through the different steps of the meditation. Learn the principles of proper sequencing of meditation practices and develop these skills through numerous practical examples. This practical ‘how to’ workshop will be useful for practitioners and teachers of all levels.

There you are. Go sit down and shut up. (Though, if your mind is anything like mine, it will be anything but quiet.)

Do you know of any meditation trainings or events? Do you have any personal favorite resources? Please let me know.

David Tolmie gave me this CD as a gift. This rivals any nude + yoga photography I've ever seen.

David Tolmie gave me this CD as a gift. This rivals any nude + yoga photography I've ever seen.

Gary Kraftsow Workshop at Yoga Shala of Portland Recap

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As you guys know last week I went down to Portland to see Gary Kraftsow. I didn’t really know what to expect, having had only learned about him through my teacher Kathryn Payne.

I carpooled down with Olivia Esuabana, a friend from the 500-hour teacher training, and a totally cool chick. It’s hard to describe Olivia. She’s got a cool Russian-spy accent. She studies Ayurveda in India. She’s in her 50s (I think), going on… like, 25. We met up at 6:30 a.m. in the morning and took the trip down I-5 South, wind in our hair, figuratively.

Gary’s workshop blew us away, literally, figuratively, and any other way you can think of.

I lack the words to describe to you how much I’ve learned, and how the material affected me. Just think of me sitting in the center in front of Gary (Olivia and I got to the studio way early, and the early birds get the front seat), and despite having slept only 4 hours the night before, my eyes were wide open, ears hanging on to every word from Gary.

I didn’t grasp everything he said. I couldn’t. The concepts he presented are profound and would take lifetimes to fully absorb. Nevertheless, they gave me a glimpse of what is possible. And that was the theme of the workshop: the possibilities for us as human beings to optimize our conditions, not other people’s conditions, but ours. Gary gave the example of an Olympic athlete and a paraplegic person, the end goal for them might be different, but they both have the potential to optimize their current conditions.

Our current condition is that of birth and death, health and illness, joy and sorrow, motivation and discouragement. Our current condition consists of cognition/ideation, mood/feelings, behavior, will & determination. In Sanskrit/Pali, we’re talking about bhava and buddhi, premasakti, annasakti, sankalpa sakti, vyutthana, prakriti, and purusha. If I’ve lost you with these esoteric words, you now know how I felt. There were words/concepts that I had already learned, and there brand new ones that left me in the dust.

Lest you think that we were only discussing esoteric things, we (and by we I mean Gary) also talked about the exoteric concept of Digestion, Respiration, the Immune and Endocrine system, balancing the Nervous system and Parasymathetic nervous system. Gary approached the inner most worlds from the outside in, starting with what we can tangibly feel, our outermost layer: the physical body, or annamaya kosha.

Gary talked about tools to work with what we call goals and motivation, and I’ll write about that another day.

Overall, it was a fantastic workshop, and I recommend seeing Gary Kraftsow if you have the chance. He is a learned teacher with clear command of his domain, and he’s funny and humble at the same time.

Heading home, but the journey continues.

Heading home, but the journey continues.

Seattle Yoga News: Anusara Yoga for Pregnancy with Jessica Jennings at Seattle Yoga Arts

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Today and Sunday I’ll be seeing Jessica Jennings, hailing from Los Angeles, at Seattle Yoga Arts as she applies the principles of Anusara to yoga for pregnancy. I’m not an Anusara teacher, but I understand enough of the vernacular to flail along with the kula. :)

Jessica is a certified Anusara teacher and a doula. She has a Masters in Kinesiology, for which thesis she worked with the Chief of Staff of OB/Gyn at Kaiser to create a program for pregnant women.

Me, I’ve never been pregnant, and I don’t exactly think of children on a regular basis. I have a lot of friends who have decided to get preggo, however, and they’ve often asked me about prenatal yoga. I’ve studied prenatal yoga in my teacher training, but I haven’t done a specialized workshop focusing on just prenatal, so I’m hoping this workshop will help me become more comfortable with working with pre and post pregnancy, as well as meet prenatal teachers in the area that I can refer my friends to.

From the Seattle Yoga Arts website:

Pregnancy can be a doorway for women to enter a whole new place of connection with themselves and their bodies. And yet there is so much unnecessary fear and anxiety surrounding pregnancy in our culture.

As yoga teachers, we can offer a sense of trust and groundedness through our words and our guidance, while keeping our pregnant students and their babies safe. This workshop will give you the information you need to begin to tap in to your own inner wisdom to help our pregnant students enjoy a transformative, joy-filled journey.

As yoga students, we can deepen our understanding of what it means to step into the flow of nature by exploring Tantric philosophy and the Universal Principles of Alignment within this inspiring context.

- Come get your questions answered about how to accommodate pregnancy with simple adjustments to traditional poses

- Learn about optimal prenatal alignment and sequencing, therapeutics, and inspiring themes

- Explore your own feelings/fears around birth in this love-fest of a weekend (men are welcome and encouraged to attend)

Relax and Renew ™ Restorative Yoga Training with Judith Hanson Lasater Roundup

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Greetings from San Francisco! This week I’m in a 5-day Restorative Yoga Teacher Training with Judith Hanson Lasater at Yoga Tree SF in the Castro. Today is the last day of the training, which has gone by too fast, which is always the case for me when I see Judith. (For those of you who’s seen me take notes on my iPhone and wonder how I do it, this is how I perfect that skill.)

There is so much good stuff from the workshop, and therefore so much for me to write, so much so that I don’t really know where to begin. In fact that’s what’s been holding me back, keeping me in my writing fear and procrastination. Whenever I’m overwhelmed with the sheer amount of things to do, and the time that I don’t think I have to accomplish it all, I sabotage my own attempt by sitting around, being worried, getting anxious, getting stressed out. Every time I think of the email I need to write and the email I need to respond to, they get more annoying, scarier, bigger, and bigger, and bigger, until they become some sort of insurmountable mountain in my mind.

As Judith would say, “Who knows what I’m talking about?”

For those of you that said, “What? Are you a moron? I never get stressed out over what I have to do,” to you I say, please write a book, I will buy it. For the rest of us who’s trying everything to live life a little more sanely, a little more joyfully, short of running off to a cave in the forest, I’m convinced that learning how to take care of ourselves is the ticket.

I first learned about Restorative Yoga in my first yoga teacher training, where I was astonished at two things: 1) how friggin’ amazing it feels, and 2) how, during the 10 years of doing yoga prior, I had never learned about it.

There’s a reason for that. I had been doing Bikram and variations of Vinyasa Flow Power yoga, where the emphasis, to me, was more about exciting the sympathetic nervous system than the parasympathetic nervous system. A practical reason is that Restorative Yoga includes the usage of props like blankets and bolsters, which would not survive in a hot yoga studio.

Naturally, as is often the case with encountering something good, I wanted more, and I had been wanting to take Judith’s training ever since.

So, I’m hooked, and I’ll be writing a lot more about this as I learn more and practice it more, and if you take classes with me, don’t be surprised if I talk about it in class :)

Here's me in a side lying savasana pose. It feels as good as it looks.

Here's me in a side lying savasana pose. It feels as good as it looks.