Tag: yoga is life

a reader’s view

by L. Valdez Karl


I get emails from people who comment on my posts, and the one below is from a friend in the yoga-rich San Francisco area who gave me permission to quote her (the emphasis is added.)

it does this old gal’s heart good to know that people read my yoga musings and are inspired to respond with such depth, and that I am not the lone voice in this modern yoga wilderness. plus she loves YogaDawg…:)

food for thought, talk amongst yourselves…..

*******************

“I am with you totally. I tell myself its just the Kali Yuga, our current era, which is known for shit being passed out as the truth. Now of course, my own beloved Siddha Yoga is the truth for me, but clearly born out of traditional Indian style yoga. When you mentioned the teacher in Chennai telling you its all about the relationship between teacher and student: that is my understanding of yoga as well.

So here I am, a physically “plus” sized gal, practicing Siddha Yoga for 25+ years. Love it when the physical, young folks taking their first yoga classes tell me how buff and happy they are now since taking ashtanga yoga classes. I tell them I also do yoga, practiced for all those years, lived in an ashram in India….and just look at their crazed reaction. Then I add that yoga, as practiced in India, is not just about how your body looks, but HOW YOU LIVE YOUR LIFE: its all about love, baby. Not hearts and flowers love. The love you feel before you take actions. And that DOES NOT always mean to speak in a soft, spiritual voice, or to never feel anger, or to remove yourself from the world and live in a cave.

I liked your bit about the “price of yoga”. People will pay more to have their dog shit picked up than shuck out some do-re-me for individual instruction. Dakshina — it’s one of the practices of Siddha Yoga, I’m happy to say. Pay nothing, get nothing. Personal transformation? What’s that???

Once you get the taste of real homestyle cook’n, a MacDonald’s salad will never be the same. Its very difficult to articulate this concept to people coming to you to get their butts tight. How can I tell them about the personal yoga lessons was with my guru: one of the most transformative things that ever happened to me was when she hit me on the head with a marble. another time she hit me over the head with a wand of peacock feathers. What happened inside of me changed my headspace, my approach to life, everything, all in one small, silent and seemingly insignificant moment. Changed me for life. Saw life differently, and I must say, for the better, from then on.

IMHO, you’ve been turned onto homestyle cooking by your teachers in Chennai. once that door is open, you can’t go back. and you want your students to see it too: you are a teacher, you care for your students, you have integrity, and you don’t want them to settle for less. but they’re not asking for what you have to give. frustrating, isn’t it!

Got to say, I just love that Yogadawg’s perspective. here’s someone, online, who is putting it out there, confronting the US mass consumption style ideas about yoga. he’s a real “satsang” type. in Siddha Yoga, one of the practices, just like in Buddhist tradition, is to “keep the company (of others) who are seeking the truth”.

I do hope you’ll be able to do a 6 month stay in Chennai, being a student at the place you’ve been going to. now that “yoga” has become just a work-out for the trendy, with so many looking for their physical fix…to me, you have found a real gem in Chennai. Once you experience the true power of Homestyle Yoga, there is only one way to go: return and learn more.”

addthis_pub = ‘yogagal60510’;

response to "getting back to yoga"

by L. Valdez Karl

(Please read Getting Back to Yoga, Part 1 and Part 2 in their entirety before reading this post.)

This post is excerpts from an email I received from a regular reader who is also a yoga teacher. She gave me permission to use it, with edits. she asked me to disguise her words because she is worried that she might lose her job if someone recognized her.

is that what the state of yoga in this culture has come to? think about that. that might be the bigger issue here. are we as teachers so afraid to call a spade a spade, so afraid to speak our truth about teaching and the state of yoga as some of us experience it that we are afraid to lose our jobs? a job that we do because we love it and not because we can make any type of money to support ourselves.

call it a yoga rant if you want to but it’s food for thought and I believe these things need to be said because the mainstream yoga media doesn’t talk about it. the mainstream yoga media is more concerned with marketing to the perfect yoga demographic. as my yoga cyberpal YogaDawg says, no yoga BS here.

I thought her comments important enough for a post of their own instead of in the comments section where they might be ignored.

“…this whole “Americanized” yoga thing is the same thing that is going on with our whole culture…skinny, tight, no wrinkles on a 65 year old woman, tummy tucks after babies, puffy collagen lips…I won’t even get started.

I had 30 in a class last night, way too many. After class a woman asked if I always do postures that you have to support your weight…she has a severe arm injury…no upper body strength at all. this is a public class, for the general population…this is not private instruction, which she needs.

I am working with a young man with rheumatoid arthritis. he was going to take a community class with a student teacher. When I heard that I told him absolutely not. I am working with him for free to keep him from injuring himself.

Yoga is advertised as a cure-all, body opener, strength builder, look beautiful like the pictures in Yoga Journal, your wrinkles will disappear as soon as you feel your breath….And everybody can do it, just modify a pose in a group class, no matter what the asana is.

A woman came when she was very pregnant and said, “I know you will modify every posture for me.” And what am I supposed to do with the 20 other people (half of which are new) in class while I am attending to her? And she was new to yoga. Not a good time to start when pregnant with your first child. I told her to start a prenatal program.

At one of the first classes I taught I was asked, “Oh wow, are you going to teach us those really hard arm balances and all that cool stuff?” I said, “no, that would not be me”, and the student hasn’t been back. they have no idea that you go to an advanced class or one-on-one to learn those asanas.

Wow, I really took off on this one…sorry, but I do feel better….”

hey, even yoga teachers need to let off steam, none of us are enlightened yet.

and I totally get what she is venting about. because for as much as yoga is portrayed in western culture, for as much as we hear or read about it in the media (it had its 15 minutes of fame on Oprah), for as much as we yoga teachers like to think that yoga is “mainstream”…it’s not. yet yoga IS advertised as a cure-all (“GET THAT YOGA BUTT IN 20 MINUTES PER DAY AND OPEN YOUR THROAT CHAKRA, TOO!”), and as much as I believe in the healing power of yoga, this is a huge disservice. people who could benefit from private yoga go to group classes because they don’t know any better and end up getting frustrated or worse, injured, sometimes seriously.

as I wrote in my last post, I was taught that personal transformation can begin in a group class, but is accomplished by working one on one with a trusted teacher and having faith in that teacher. there have been many times when I have suggested to certain students in a group class that their needs would be much better served by private yoga sessions. yet, for some reason, the idea of private yoga classes in this culture is met with skepticism. it boggles my mind that people will pay someone $75 or more to clean their house or to pick up their dog’s poop (not to mention the money one can spend at Starbucks in one month), but the thought of paying a highly trained yoga teacher $75 or less for a private yoga session is anathema to them. people pay more than $50 for a pizza party for their kids.

it’s all about priorities….

getting back to yoga

by L. Valdez Karl


(Dr. NC @ KYM, The Power of Yoga, March 2006)

I guess maybe it’s about time that I start writing about yoga again. but then again, maybe not, as I’m beginning to think that my yoga thoughts are too radical to be accepted calmly by some people. I told my students this morning that I’ve always felt like an outsider and now, returning a third time from my yoga life in India, I feel even more radical.

Every time I go to KYM to study, it always brings home to me how much I dislike about the state of yoga in the west. Maybe “dislike” is too strong a word — I will rephrase: how certain things about the state of yoga in the west bug me. Now before anyone jumps down my throat, I am not saying that one is better than the other, i.e., east v. west. I’m saying that to me there are marked differences between the two and I know which one resonates with me in a much more profound way.

KYM is known for yoga therapy or what was formerly called viniyoga. Desikachar no longer refers to his father’s style as viniyoga. We each met with a yoga therapist and received a consultation for whatever ailed us, physically, mentally, or emotionally, then an appropriate yoga therapy practice was prescribed for us. That practice became our private asana class with a therapist, and we took the daily classes in pranayama, meditation, and the Yoga Sutra-s together.

I came to India with a painful back problem that I’ve had for about three months. My ego was telling me I’m a loser because of course as a teacher I’m not supposed to have any physical problems because I do so much yoga…right? One day in October I woke with severe muscular pain on the right side of my lower spine and I had done nothing to my back like pick something up the wrong way or get up from a chair the wrong way, and it certainly did not happen doing yoga. I just woke up one day in severe pain. The pain would go away during the day as I moved around and I was still able to teach, but it served as a reminder of one of Buddha’s Four Foundations of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of the Body, and that no one escapes sickness, old age, and death.

My consultant at KYM was Dr. NC (we call him Dr. NC because he has a last name with about 26 letters) who taught the yoga therapy classes in the intensives I took in 2005 and 2006. I explained my problem and my pain and he had me do some asanas and examined my spine. He asked me to squat and asked if I noticed anything. At first I said no, then he told me to repeat the squats and to pay attention. I noticed that my left side felt like it weighed a ton and my right side was very light. I told him this and he said yes, that I favor my left side to the detriment of my right. He said my spine had curved to the right and that the right side of my pelvis is higher than my left.

I was horrified. How could this happen, I asked, I’M A YOGA TEACHER! (as if we are supposed to be invincible.) Dr. NC said that walking a certain way, sitting a certain way, standing a certain way with a hip hiked up and out, constantly carrying a bag on my left shoulder, all of this contributed to a spine curvature after 50 years. It just happens, he said, it’s just the way it is.

So after he said that it’s wonderful I am so flexible and in such great shape for an old broad — OK, he did not say “old broad” but he was amazed at my uttanasana — he wrote a yoga therapy program for my back that is simply amazing and wondrous. He said if I did the practice every day for 3 months my spine should be back into alignment.

I did the practice for 5 days with Usha, one of the KYM yoga therapists. She was also wonderful, adding a little something every day to the asana mix, so I came home with five different yoga therapy sessions. I did the practice every day in India until I got food poisoning and I have not done it for two weeks now, but I started again from square one yesterday and I will build it up again.

It is an amazing practice because I can literally feel the change in my spine and pelvis when I sit in sukhasana. At the beginning of the practice my right sit bone is off the floor. At the end of the practice both sit bones are firmly grounded and I have no pain for the rest of the day. Before I started doing this practice, I would wake up at night in excrutiating pain when I turned from my right side to my left side and now that no longer happens.

So what does this have to do with yoga east v. west?

TO BE CONTINUED…

"yoga is life"

by L. Valdez Karl

Being inspired by the yoga social network WoYoPracMo (World Yoga Practice Month) that Yogamum created, I created a yoga social network called “Yoga is Life.” I whipped up the website on the spur of the moment.

The Krishnamacharya quote “breath is central to Yoga because it is central to life. . .and Yoga is about Life.” has always resonated with me. As one of my yoga pals recently wrote in an email “yoga is not just yoga, it’s life. It’s not a class you attend, it’s inside of you all the time.” Isn’t that beautiful? So true.

So I decided to try to start a little global community of yogins who feel the same way. Read below for what the site is all about:

http://static.ning.com/yogaislife/widgets/index/swf/badge.swf?v=2.2%3A2447
Visit Yoga is Life

“Let this site be for anyone who believes that yoga is much more than what we do on the mat. It’s for those who are weary of yoga snobbery and brand name yoga. It’s for yoga lovers who are serious about yoga but who don’t take themselves too seriously. It’s for those who believe that an open mind rather than an open body is what will further their practice and lead to their personal transformation. It’s for yoga teachers and yoga students and all those in between who try to live their yoga to the best of their ability — and if any of us stumble along the way, all of us are here to pick each other up.

Feel free to start a discussion, start a blog, or start a rant. Feel free to laugh or cry. Add a song, add a video, or add your favorite yoga or spiritual quote.

Above all, live mindfully and be here now.

peace
shanti
salaam aleikum
so shall it be”

I sent invitations to people in my address book to start off with. The ever riotous Yoga Dawg is a member calling Yoga is Life the “Hip New Yoga Network” (thanks, Y Dawg!) Some of my own students are members. It’s a group of yoga teachers and yoga students, both seasoned and newbie.

One thing I have learned this past year in the blogosphere is that people you don’t know and probably will never meet embrace you without any agenda, and that the global yoga community is sometimes much more supportive than the one in your own backyard. I found that out with the drama I went through with my former studio.

So if Yoga is Life sounds like something you want to be a part of, please become a member. I’ll be in India during January, so y’all will have to keep the global party going.