blog quizes are fun…and sometimes right-on.
You Are Grape |
 You are bold and a true individual. You are very different and very okay with that. People know you as a straight shooter. You’re very honest, even when the truth hurts. You are also very grounded and practical. No one is going to sneak anything by you. People enjoy your fresh approach to life. And it’s this honesty that makes you a very innovative person. |
I think my friends would agree with this…
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I’ll never know how I ended up being described as a yoga guru on a website about x-ray technician schools, but I’ll take it. somehow this blog ended up on the Top 100 Yoga and Meditation Blogs list, a list that compiled “the most popular and/or unique blogs. . .what we feel are the top 100 yoga and meditation blogs…” I’m in good company as the list contains many of the yoga blogs that I read regularly.
Thanks to Sarah Scrafford and the X-Ray Vision-aries Blog!
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SAMVEGA: Yoga Sutra-s 1.21
“a sense of urgency or immediacy to the will to awaken”
“Know who you really are or you are lost.”
–Bhagavad Gita
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considering the transformative experience I had in my training….interesting.
Ambition, fighting, war, courage. Destruction, danger, fall, ruin.
The Tower represents war, destruction, but also spiritual renewal. Plans are disrupted. Your views and ideas will change as a result.
The Tower is a card about war, a war between the structures of lies and the lightning flash of truth. The Tower stands for “false concepts and institutions that we take for real.” You have been shaken up; blinded by a shocking revelation. It sometimes takes that to see a truth that one refuses to see. Or to bring down beliefs that are so well constructed. What’s most important to remember is that the tearing down of this structure, however painful, makes room for something new to be built.
What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.
“be who you are and say what you feel, because those who matter don’t mind and those who mind don’t matter.”
–Dr. Seuss
(now who else do you know would quote Patanjali, the Gita, and Dr. Seuss all at the same time?)
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I have to give Judith Lasater a big AMEN about her comments about yoga in the latest Yoga Journal.
On the last page (and it seems that YJ always puts the “old” yogis on the last page…hmmmmmm….), when asked the question, “what do you think of yoga’s evolution in the United States?”, Judith said:
“It seems a mile wide and an inch deep. I mourn the fact that many people in the United States know about asana just as a way of working out. To me, that’s not what yoga is. It can lead to deeper personal transformation.”
Thanks, Judith. I’ve been saying that for the three years I’ve been writing this blog, just click on the tag “Americanized yoga.”
When she was asked, “what lessons can you share about what you’ve learned?”, Judith said, among other things:
“Follow your nature. The practice is really about uncovering your own pose; we have great respect for our teachers, but unless we can uncover our own pose in the moment, it’s not practice — it’s mimicry…”.
Kudos to you, Judith. when I used the word “mimic” in this post, a commenter wrote me to say how dare I say that yoga students merely mimic their teachers. uh, yeah you do, each time your mind is out there instead of in your body…each time you are disembodied and not embodied…and each time you are not “in the moment” as Judith said. I’ve told my students many times, don’t look up here, look within.
Maybe Judith Lasater and I aren’t so far apart after all….maybe Yoga Journal should interview moi. or maybe I should write for Yoga Journal….how ’bout it, editors? I need another job because the yoga studio where I teach is closing at the end of the year.
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“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
Albert Camus
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When one goes through a transformative experience, whatever it is, I believe that the shadows of our lives come forward like hungry children staring through a restaurant window, waiting to be acknowledged and given sustenance. I believe these hidden but never forgotten experiences are what cook us, and we can choose to allow them to either teach us or kill us. I will not say yet which yoga therapy training I did (maybe some of you can figure it out) because it is still cooking me, but in all my years of yoga, it was by far the most potent, profound, and transformative experience I’ve had, even compared to my India training, and this was only Level 1.
It confirmed and validated for me what I already knew, but maybe don’t listen to as much as I should: that I am not “just a yoga teacher”, but am a teacher of the dharma and holistic science. I feel like I’ve been energized, that my intuition and energy (my kundalini) has risen exponentially. all day yesterday it felt like there was a little energy engine inside me that was going full blast — I had a vision of a cartoon engine held together with spit and baling wire, pumping pumping pumping almost to the point of exploding, the pistons almost popping out of the top.
the training also confirmed what my personal life Path (other than yoga) should be.
For four days we partnered up and worked on each other, learning certain postures, where to place our hands, etc. and the last session on the last day was the icing on the cake for me. my partner sat back and said “you have a true gift.” he told me how when I placed my hands on his heartspace, front and back, my energy felt like an “electric wire” going through him. he said “you’ve probably heard this all before.” I must say that when I’ve heard talk like that before it always made me deny myself, that maybe I did not deserve to hear things like that.
I will never again deny my truth.
I told him yes, that I’ve heard it all before, but that usually with most people it translates to my just being “weird”, not “healing”. for most of my life many people actually can not handle being in close proximity to me (and it’s not because I don’t take a shower! :)) I’ve been told that my energy enters a room first and it takes a secure, strong person not to be intimidated. after she did my natal chart, my own astrologer told me that 10 years ago she would not have been able to have me as a client, my energy would have overwhelmed her, but her own spiritual path has cooked her to her essence. this is why I stopped doing thai yoga massage. the images that the energy in my hands brought to my mind’s eye were too frightening for me, and I had enough of my own demons — but not any more.
This training again confirmed for me that asana is such a small part of yoga, yet here in this culture yoga has become purely asana based. as yoga teachers we come to our classes with a “fixer” mentality, some teachers enjoying how many adjustments they can give their students instead of allowing them to just “be” and to go inward and feel what is going on (I’m referring to the style of yoga I teach, vinyasa.) in this training, we had to let go of the fixer mentality in order to allow the student/client to heal themselves.
The training also reinforced what I already knew: that a meditation practice is an essential component of an asana practice. speaking only for myself, yoga is not yoga without a meditation practice. the teachings in this training were firmly grounded in Buddha’s Four Foundations of Mindfulness. if we can not master our own minds, how can we master anything?
we don’t do yoga — yoga does us.
I truly feel called to continue with this training, but timing is everything. I don’t think I can do Level 2 in early 2009 so I am planning for June….and Shiva/Buddha/Kali willing I will live for two months in an ashram in South India one year from now studying yoga therapy with a swami. I think that also will be icing on the energy cake for me and will add to my yoga therapy toolbox. half of this training class said they were jumping right in to finish their training as soon as possible, but I will wait to let it all digest, because in March-April 2010 I will return to India for the Kumbh Mela, the largest spiritual gathering in the Universe. there is much to be said for the power of place and Ma India is my healer.
It is said that the only difference between us and the ancient sages and yogi rishis is that we have forgotten we are divine, they did not.
I will never again disavow myself.
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UPDATE:
The Keys to Your Life |
 Anything good in your life comes from boldly confronting the darkness. Illusions are dangerous, and you benefit from seeing the world as it truly is. Anything bad in your life comes from not being true to yourself. |
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Sent to me by a faithful reader….
“The reason we do this practice is to develop a heart that is ready for anything.”
– Sayadaw U. Pandia
“You are not your fault”
– Wes Nisker
and a yoga poem….
Breath of Life
I breathe in All That Is—
Awareness expanding
to take everything in,
as if my heart beats
the world into being.
From the unnamed
vastness beneath the
mind, I breathe my
way to wholeness
and healing.
Inhalation. Exhalation.
Each breath a “yes,”
and a letting go,
a journey, and a
coming home.
(Poet: Danna Faulds)
more later on the most potent, profound, and transformational yoga training I’ve done in all my years of yoga…
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I’ve just finished The Yoga Teacher by Alexandra Gray and loved it.
Plot synopsis: Grace is dissatisfied with her job as a pharmaceutical rep and struggles with the decline of her long-term relationship. while pitching her company’s latest antidepressant to Dr. James, she is inspired by his plan to study acupuncture in Vietnam and decides to quit her job to become a yoga teacher.
Grace decides to study at the Bodhi Tree in California, which is the very loosely disguised White Lotus Foundation where Alexandra Gray studied. Grace returns to London but nothing prepared her for the students she amasses — from the octogenarian industrialist desperate for distraction, the supermodel who indulges yogic aspirations when she tires of kabbalah, the American movie star, and the students with all types of maladies referred to her by a doctor. Grace soon finds herself relying on her correspondence and text messages with Dr. James for solace and inspiration.
Gray’s descriptions of Grace’s teacher training (and the people in it) and her students are right-on. she hits all the marks when she describes students’ personalities and conditions and what they are looking to get from yoga. there is just enough “yoga talk” to keep the practitioner and teacher interested, but not so much that someone who has never done yoga wouldn’t get what’s going on. as a yoga teacher, Gray has an eye for the sometime absurdity of teaching and the delicate balance of the dharma and the dough, i.e., making money in a profession that pays very poorly.
I thought The Yoga Teacher was one of the more realistic fictional portrayals of the yoga teaching world and I found myself both laughing and nodding in full agreement at Gray’s words.
Get the book, you won’t be disappointed. and no, Alexandra Gray is not paying me for this good review, although she should!
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As I’ve mentioned time and again on this blog, ever since I returned from my first trip to India in 2005 there has never been a day that I do not think of India. it can be a child’s face that flashes through my mind, or something I learned in my yoga classes there, or a smell that makes me remember where I was when I first smelled that smell. a soap or a spice will bring me back. even the clothes that I bought in India still smell “like India.” I brought back a supply of my favorite shampoo and sometimes I sit on my bathroom floor, open up a bottle and sniff…sometimes I cry on my bathroom floor.
I came across the blog of a professional photographer — the photographs of India and Indians are beautiful, so I’ve posted this video he took in Chennai in 2006. I’ve been to Chennai three times and I’ve never visited Marina Beach. I’ve been on the beach in Pondicherry and Rameswaram but never Chennai….next time.
I want to, need to, return to India so badly. now that I am going through some rough emotional times I think even more about being in India, maybe for 6 months out of the year. India is the only place that heals my soul. an Indian friend told me that my heart is calling me to India because I am missing something here that I need very badly.
a regular reader of this blog and his wife will study yoga at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram for one month later this year and then travel to my favorite temple towns. email discussions of their itinerary make my heart ache — I was in Tamil Nadu in January and I can still feel the temple ground beneath my bare feet, the sun on my bare arms, the smell of jasmine in my hair, and the touch of shakti all around me as I sat in temples. even though I returned from India this year sicker than a mangy Indian street dog, I was home less than a week when I started dreaming those Tamil Nadu dreams.
I want to go home. jai Kali ma, take me home.
I find that the longer I practice, the longer I teach, and the more I meditate, the more I am drawn to bhakti yoga. maybe I should say that because of all of the above, my own bhakti has grown exponentially. I call myself Kali’s girl and when I was at a Krishna Das kirtan, he chanted the word “Kali” in a Durga mantra and at that moment it literally felt like I was hit right between my eyebrows and the tears started to flow. that’s bhakti. mantra chanting and kirtan are forms of bhakti yoga. I know a devout American Murugan bhakta who has never done one asana in his life, but he is a bhakti yogi.
I believe that bhakti, for the most part, is missing in Americanized yoga, at least in most of the classes I attend. I know that even chanting the single sound of OM can scare some people away from yoga — I’ve seen students leave classes if the teacher chants. I always open and close my classes with meditation and at the end recite the Four Immeasurables and chant OM MANI PEDME HUM. I would not be true to my heart if I did not teach this way.
So I give you the website Bhakti Collective. The Bhakti Collective is “composed of persons of various backgrounds with a common interest in bhakti, India’s tradition of devotional yoga. It is a non-profit organization based in New York, which serves as a medium for the exploration and sharing of the culture, philosophy and practice of bhakti.”
The Bhakti Collective has many interesting articles including this one, a critique on a Yoga Journal article about bhakti. in it, Kaustubha Das quotes Dr. Robert Svoboda’s feelings about bhakti in western yoga:
“Some Western yogis dabble in bhakti yoga through an occasional prayer or kirtan. But if you’re a serious practitioner looking to find union with the Divine, a more rigorous practice is in order.” Svoboda says the path of devotion involves total dedication and surrender.
Svoboda agrees that it’s good to sing bhajana (Sanskirt hymns) to get into a new space. But he cautions against thinking you can really engage in bhakti yoga by occasionally joining in a kirtan. “That in itself won’t be sufficient to have a transformative effect that will penetrate into the deepest and darkest parts of your being”, he says.
“I don’t think most people in the yoga community have a concept of the degree of emotional depth and intensity and texture that is necessary for bhakti yoga really to flower”.
Get out of your yoga body and get into some bhakti.
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Linda's Yoga Journey 
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