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I got disconnected three times.
Three times.
In a row.
“Just hold one moment while we transfer you to confirm,” they’d say sweetly, just before I heard a strange sound. The sound of silence. The vacuum of a disconnected phone line. The sound of my impotent, mediocre frustration growing to a boiling point of irrational, helpless rage.
Nothing can be quite so delightful as customer service, eh?
Or how about when the woman in customer service would ask me for all my details, “I’ll just need that information before transferring you,” and the guy in cancellations would say, “I’ll just need all that information again, [read more...]
Last Thursday evening, I attended a talk by Reginald Ray, founder of Dharma Ocean and tantric buddhist practitioner.
He spoke about the intimacy and the power (and terror) of really Seeing another person.
What is Seeing? It’s when we strip away the filters through which we most often see the world and take the time and space to witness what is actually before us. Usually we half-ass our seeing. I look at my partner, but what I’m really seeing is what I expect to. I impose upon him everything that I think a partner is, or should be, or what my own [read more...]
So it’s New Years. So you made a resolution. What is it this year?
I’ll share my typical checklist:
-lose five pounds
-go to yoga EVERY DAY
-finish writing book
-resolve all unresolved psychological issues
-do something really important that will make everyone love me
Hmmmmm. Lofty, anyone?
Resolutions are excellent. They invite us to visualize, set intentions, make goals. Like many of us, I love the idea of a clean slate. From this brilliantly cleared slate, my life is an open book with nowhere to move but forward into greater and loftier etheric realms of [read more...]
The chakras can seem a little…well, out there. Whirling wheels of energy? Rainbow light? Huh?
But if we think about the body and its functions, the chakras do seem to match up pretty well to how we work.
The root chakra – muladhara – is at our pelvic floor and deals with earth, downward energy, and groundedness. If we think of our hips and legs as what connects us to the earth and literally roots us, well, it makes sense. If people are “ungrounded,” they tend to be light, frenetic, “in their heads,” and not connected to their lower body.
The second chakra [read more...]
My session at the Vancouver Yoga Conference had taken a pause. An hour-break, then we’d all come back for four more hours of chakra realization. So far, I’d been banging my hips and sacrum on the ground, trying to tune into my pelvis and the first three chakras. Now I was fantasizing about tuna sandwiches.
Such musings were interrupted by a voice to my neighbor to the left. It was one of those rich and resonant voices that reminds you of James Earl Jones. The kind of voice that Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellan spent years in drama school [read more...]
So for that past few years I’ve been practicing ashtanga. Flow, flow, breath, breath. There is a cycle and rhythm to the practice. You move. You keep going. You jump around. You breath some more.
But here I am visiting my old Yoga Works crew. And they study Iyengar.
See, in the yoga world, there are three main lineages: Ashtanga, Iyengar, and the yoga of Desikachar. Most our our Western yoga springs from the same teacher (the granddaddy of yoga as we know it, Krishnmacharya). But where ashtanga focuses on movement and breath, the Iyengar [read more...]
New York City has chilled out.
People on the street are less hurried, the traffic flows sedately, the line at Zabar’s is leisurely. There is time to nod and smile at fellow customers without feeling that everyone is clawing for the front of the line. Even on the subway, a civilized distance is observed between the pressing bodies. New York has become freakin’ mellow.
Or maybe not.
The last time I lived in the city, I had a mission, an agenda, a dream. Higher than high ambitions that were not to be thwarted. The city was to be [read more...]
A couple weeks ago, I put my car into storage and started riding my bike. Now, I am not what you’d call a good bike rider. My ass hurts, my thighs ache, and grease somehow gets smeared all over my calves. Small children on tricycles pass me on the street.
While my body may be used to yoga, riding a bike challenges me in a completely different way. Muscles get tightened rather than lengthened; cardio work is a main component rather than a by-product. And although riding a bike is undoubtedly good for me, it is very humbling and hard.
As I was [read more...]
Last week, I took a roadtrip with my boyfriend. He struggles with anxiety and is working towards flying on planes. In the meantime, we drive. He hasn’t been to Los Angeles for several years, so this was a pretty significant adventure. The prospect of leaving terra firma and adventuring into the wilds of the United States held the potential for serious discomfort.
We had our moments, of course. All evolution requires some growing pains. There were times with then anxiety would come on, and he would have a choice: open to possibility (that he would live through [read more...]
A recent workshop with John Scott (www.stillpointyoga.com) has revolutionized my ashtanga practice. Ashtanga is a vinyasa system, but I must admit that I have spent more time “polishing my asanas” than I have exploring how the breath supports the poses. During the workshop, I was reminded keenly of Mark Whitwell’s viniyoga (breath-based) style (though Mark would undoubtedly decry such labels). Inhalation is surrender; exhalation is strength. As both teachers state, it’s a “strength-receiving practice.” Suddenly, the two very different practices of viniyoga and ashtanga merged. Ultimately, all practices unify.
Because the external configurations (bend your knee in Warrior II!) are sometimes [read more...]
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