cultivating consciousness

reading today's "daily insight" email from the definitive yoga magazine, Yoga Journal, i was reminded of how rewarding and powerful yoga is, and how taking yoga off the mat into everyday life can positively affect many.

from the daily insight:

Our yoga practice can have a positive impact on our lives because it constantly asks us to become more sensitive, more conscious, and more aware of our bodies, minds, feelings, and emotions. As our sensitivity increases, life becomes more rich and enjoyable because we can taste the unique flavor of each individual moment. More important, we also become more aware of what moves us toward our dharma, or life path, and what takes us away from it. This awareness makes us clearer and more peaceful, more able to elegantly handle life's endless dilemmas without feeling overwhelmed or fearful. As a result, we become more effective in all of our actions, and our presence begins to inspire and bring out the best in people around us.

The awareness that we develop on the yoga mat, though seemingly small, affects all that is. As we become more aware in our yoga practice and in our lives, as we move away from force and violence and toward sensitivity, feeling, and awareness, we change our individual consciousness and actions. In turn, these changes influence the consciousness and the actions of everyone we meet.

Slowly, we shift the direction the world is taking.

As we practice each asana, whether it be a challenging twist such as Ardha Matsyendrasana II (Half Lord of the Fishes II Pose) or a simple standing pose such as Tadasana (Mountain Pose), we have the opportunity to become the embodiment of peace and to make our practice a prayer for harmony in the world.

i keep reading this over and over. the peaceful revolution can start with you and your yoga. wow, huh?

warmheartedness

In October of 2007, Emory University in Atlanta welcomed the Dalai Lama as an Emory University presidential distinguished professor. My husband Doug and I went to see his wonderful lecture at Centennial Park. All day it threatened to rain, which was unfortunate because the program was outside in the park. Ultimately, the skies were ominously dark, but it didn't rain. His Holiness the Dalai Lama was truly charming. He spoke of "warmheartedness" as the way to cultivate inner peace and happiness, and then reflecting that spirit to the world to foster peace.

My awesome friend Barb gave me a page-a-day calendar of Insights from the Dalai Lama, with a new concept to consider every day. I'm saving so many of them and putting them in my journal. This one reminded me of his speech:

"It is quite simple: if you do not smile at people, but frown at them, they respond similarly, don't they? If you deal with other people in a very sincere, open way, they behave similarly. Everybody wants to have friends and does not want enemies. The proper way to create friends is to have a warm heart, not simply money or power."

can yoga make you taller?

one of my yoga students' favorite sequences involves laying on the back and deeply stretching one leg at a time with a yoga strap. The sensation immediately following the stretch is that the leg is lengthened. Lengthening and extending through the spine is also a common theme in classes. Certainly I've walked out of many classes, as a teacher and as a student, walking taller and feeling lighter in my body.

can yoga make you taller? In subtle ways, yes. What makes up a person's height is largely the length of bones. And yoga cannot lengthen the bones (although weight-bearing poses may prevent bone loss). But, certain yoga positions help stretch and elongate your spine. This in turn creates space in the spine and with continued practice, you develop muscle memory and lengthened alignment, and you will most likely appear taller.

Perhaps more importantly, yoga also creates body awareness, and you'll notice how to carry yourself, how you stand and sit naturally and this factor alone will increase your awareness of your own posture. With continued yoga practice and more body awareness, you feel how you can breathe more deeply, more easily with strong, tall, posture. The difference between slouching and caving in around the lungs and heart, contrasting to positively opening the chest and extending in the torso are great to a practicing yogi. It becomes natural to have good posture and walk taller.

tuneup your mind/body fitness with yoga

Physical Benefits of Yoga
Gain Flexibility: Stretching your tight body in new ways will help it to become more flexible, bringing greater range of motion to muscles and joints. Over time, you can expect to gain flexibility in your hamstrings, back, shoulders, and hips.

Build Strength: Many yoga poses require you to support the weight of your own body in new ways, including balancing on one leg (such as in Tree Pose or supporting yourself with your arms (such as in Downward Facind Dog). Some sequences require you to move slowly in and out of poses, or hold them for a while, which also increases strength.

Tone Muscle: As a by-product of getting stronger, you can expect to see increased muscle tone. Yoga helps shape long, lean muscles.

Lose Weight: If you are practicing a vigorous, flowing yoga style regularly, you can lose weight.

Pain Prevention: Increased flexibility and strength can help prevent the causes of some types of back pain. Many people who suffer from back pain spend a lot of time sitting at a computer or driving a car. That can cause tightness and spinal compression, which you can begin to release with yoga. Yoga also improves your body alignment, both in and out of class, which helps prevent many other types of pain.

Better Breathing: Most of us breathe very shallowly into the lungs and don’t give much thought to how we breathe. Yoga breathing exercises, called Pranayama, focus the attention on the breath and teach us how to better use our lungs, which benefits the entire body. Certain types of breathwork can also help clear the nasal passages and even calm the central nervous system, which has both physical and mental benefits.

Mental Benefits of Yoga
Mental Calmness: Yoga practice encourages listening to your body and feeling sensations of stretching, extending, bending, lifting, and dynamically moving. Focusing on what your body is doing has the effect of bringing a calmness to the mind. Yoga also incorporates meditation techniques, such as watching how you breathe and disengagement from your thoughts, which help calm the mind.

Stress Reduction: Physical activity is good for relieving stress, and this is particularly true of yoga. Because of the concentration required, your daily troubles, both large and small, seem to melt away during the time you are doing yoga. This provides a much-needed break from your stressors, as well as helping put things into perspective. The emphasis yoga places on being in the moment can also help relieve stress, as you learn not to dwell on past events or anticipate the future. You will leave a yoga class feeling less stressed than when you started.

Body Awareness: Doing yoga will give you an increased awareness of your own body. You are often called upon to make small, subtle movements to improve your alignment. Over time, this will increase your level of comfort in your own body. This can lead to improved posture and greater self-confidence. Your outer, and inner strength is more apparent.

Ready to dive deeper? visit totallyoga.com or call (404) 312-4872 and sign up for a demo yoga session or package - we design perfect yoga sessions for your needs, and travel to your location in the Atlanta metro area, at your convenience.

atlanta tornado

i live in downtown Atlanta in a 100+year old former rug factory my husband (with a bit of help from me) developed into our home and work space, a process that took a tremendous amount of blood, sweat, tears, ingenuity, and stamina - and we're still not done yet...

i was shutting my computer down Friday night when I heard some lightning in the area and the power went out. Our dogs are terrified of storms and all three needed to be in the bed or right next to it. Gorgeous but stinky brindle dog Spooky was shivering through the night and kept licking me with her fuzzy-yucky tongue. Once in the night I heard some short bursts of hail.

Woke up in the morning - still no power. My husband hooked up the generator to the fridge and then television and learned a tornado had struck downtown just as we lost power in the evening. The Georgia Dome and CNN, less than a mile from our house, had sustained a large amount of damage, as well as Centennial Park, many downtown buildings and hotels, and residences in nearby Cabbagetown and East Atlanta were affected. We climbed up on our roof and saw the eerie sight of broken windows in many of the downtown skyscrapers, emergency lights flashing, and drapes billowing from broken Westin windows on the highest floors. Later in the afternoon, another tornado watch and some serious hail, and we gathered up the dogs and went down to our basement grotto with candles and waited out a brief storm. It was a long, quiet day. Our power was restored at 10:30 pm.

My mom gave me some prayer flags for my birthday this past summer, a string of colored flags that say peace in several languages. We hung them on the front of our building. They were always getting tangled in the wind and twisted up, when I wish they would hang nicely. But Tibetan lore says when prayer flags flap in the wind, prayers are released out into the world. We were beyond lucky to be just outside the path of the storm, that the elements somehow spared our home and work. I thought maybe the prayer flags had a small part in our good fortune. Now our prayer flags are flying for the rebuilding and revitalization of downtown Atlanta.

corporate yoga

a fabulous trend that has taken hold in Atlanta. Many large businesses having a gym onsite with yoga and exercise classes scheduled in the mornings, at lunchtime, and directly after work hours. I have the privilege of teaching some yoga classes at several of the best corporate gyms in Atlanta. It's so important to schedule some time to sweat, stretch, and dynamically move every day, especially when it's a crazybusy workday. If you can do it in the morning, it gives you a new perspective on the day. If you can get away for a yoga class at lunch, the afternoon runs so much more smoothly! And after work, a yoga class lets you put work concerns behind you and it's a nice transition between work and home life. Write yoga/exercise time into your work week schedule. The gym is just a quick elevator ride down a few floors, and the benefits of recharging positively affect your whole life.

drink.more.water.

one of my 2008 mantras.  in my 20s, i used to be thirsty all the time. i had a nalgene water bottle i was constantly filling up and taking with me everywhere. somehow that trailed off, and now i have to keep reminding myself to hydrate more. some days i am just having a few gulps all day long, and that's troubling.

Water is a curative element for headaches, stomachaches, low-energy levels, and general malaise. It's key to a healthy immune system and for efficient body function. Most of us are walking around dehydrated all the time because of all the sugar and caffeine we consume. Often, when we think we're hungry, we're actually dehydrated!

now i have one of those stainless steel SIGG bottles that i recommend - i like the way water tastes coming from it, very fresh. i guess now there are studies that plastic bottles may leach a bit into the water, which sounds like a bad idea, and stainless is supposed to safer. SIGG has all kinds of groovy silkscreened bottles, and though it's rather expensive for a water vessel, if you are mindful and don't leave it behind at the gym or yoga studio, it will last a long time. According to their website "Using a premium reusable bottle like SIGG greatly helps reduce unnecessary environmental waste caused by plastic PET water bottles. Sadly, Americans add over 30 million plastic water bottles to our nation's landfills – everyday!" On the website you can choose the design you like best with the top that works best for you.