Category Archives: Yoga

Cultivating Santosa – A State of Contentment in the State of New Jersey

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One of the niyamas (observances) of yoga philosophy is santosa, or contentment.  It’s a niyama that I have been working on since I started my practice, but it’s one for which I have much work remaining.  Santosa is complex because of all of the ways that it is related to our understandings and beliefs about life.  We can cultivate contentment in our relationships, our jobs, our financial states, our physical beings, our surroundings, and so on.  When things seem “good,” it is easy to be content.  But when life isn’t working out the way you hope or think it should be, it is harder to be content.

In my own experience, I’ve had success over the last while in developing more contentment in my relationships.  I’m certainly not always content with them, but I don’t get as upset as I once did.  I rarely get really angry or depressed about a relationship (or the lack of one), and I have found that this has made my life and interactions with others seem much better, even when the patterns of behavior in the relationship don’t change much.

An area that I have mixed success with is in contentment with my physical self.  Sometimes it’s all good.  Even having a chronic auto-immune disease, and associated pain, doesn’t seem so bad at such times, as I can embrace the fact that it has taken me to places that I would not be otherwise.  Losing my hair in clumps at a young age created an opportunity for me to dissociate from the necessity of time and energy spent on hairstyles, and I love the idea of all the time I have not spent on that.  Other times, it’s harder.  I’ve been experiencing some extra bother recently from the RA pain, and there are days when I have to work hard not to feel angry about it.  And, as my friends and spouse can tell you, I’ve been a bit whiny about the weight I’ve gained recently (regardless of whether it’s maybe related to an increasing physical activity level).

I suppose I’m not on my own in this mixed success.  After all, would anyone have ever needed to write this down as an observance if it wasn’t sort of difficult to manage?  Notice that there isn’t an observance that reminds us to eat sweets or take naps.

Well, I feel a little bit like this post should be longer, but I’m going to just be content with what it is and say,

namaste,

L

Roll with it Baby! Body Rolling and Self-Learning

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Yesterday in yoga teacher training, we had a day on anatomy and physiology. I find these topics fascinating, so it was a good deal for me. As part of the lesson, we did some “body rolling.” Body rolling is a therapeutic technique utilizing small rubber balls (6-10 inches in diameter) to locate areas of tension, elongate muscle, and stimulate other connective tissues. You literally roll your body over the ball and use gravity to help you locate different parts of the body. The balls we used were from Yamuna, and you can learn more about the whole deal at their site, http://www.yamunabodyrolling.com. Anyway, we weren’t using it as much to create the element of massage as to help us locate different muscles and connective tissues (and bones) on the body that we might need to know about when teaching and doing adjustments.

This was extremely interesting, as far as I was concerned. Descriptions of the various muscles and elements of the hamstrings make sense to me, but when I “sat” on the ball and rolled it slowly across the hamstrings, managing to very clearly identify which area of the hamstring is a problem for me, it was quite revealing (for the inquiring minds, it’s the biceps femoris, for sure. I was also able to see, even more clearly, through the interaction between the instructor – Heather Marie Miller – and the class, that areas which are commonly very sensitive or intense are not comparatively that intense for me, when I evaluate them against the areas on my body that may not bother a lot of people. On my body, it’s almost all the muscles that cross/connect major joints that are very tender. Surprise? Not really, but sort of. I’ve always thought it was odd that I have such tight hamstrings, because I’m not a runner. But, through this work, I was able to see that it’s not my entire hamstrings that are tight. It’s the muscle that is involved in both hip extension and knee flexion. I have rheumatoid arthritis. Oh. There were other insights for me, but I won’t bore you with all of them here. 🙂

Anyway, very cool stuff and I think I would recommend a body rolling workshop if there is one going on in your area. It might not only loosen up a few things, but also give you some insight into what is going on in there and how it’s all connected (literally and systemically).

Namaste,

L

Don’t Dream It – Be It

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Yes, these are the wise wise words of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  And, while I do love the show, that’s not why I present them  here.  In fact, I guess I might even put a little spin on them and say – “don’t think it – be it.”  I’m having a very hard time right now transitioning what I know, and what I can do with my body (and have done probably a thousand times), like Surya Namaskara A, into teaching frame.  I can teach; it’s what I do.  I can do yoga.  But, putting the two together is giving me some fits.

The question, I suppose, is why.  And I think the answer is implied in these lyrics – I’m not “being” the teacher.  I’m thinking it, a lot, over thinking it even, and not being it.  As I try to lead the group into a pose, instead of just saying what it is (being it – feeling it), I start analyzing it (“Am I moving in or expanding out? Is this an exhale or an inhale? Exactly how is that pronounced?”)  And that just makes it worse.

The irony of this is that I know what to do about it.  I teach (well, not currently, but I developed the course and taught for several years) public speaking for reticent students.  I know what I would tell them – “Learn the information.  Talk about it with your friends and your family – just casually – until it becomes yours.  Then just tell us what you want to say – make your point, converse with us.”  So, yeah, I guess that’s what I need to do.

I’m a little freaked out that it’s this hard for me, but at the same time, over the weekend I watched colleagues who I think are brilliant get very nervous about presenting ideas that I know they have amazing insight into.  Once they stopped thinking about it and just did it, they were fine.

Teaching what I teach, knowing what I know, and being who I am can, I believe, bring something interesting and unique to the yoga classroom.  But, if I’m going to get there, I have to get over (around, under) this hurdle.  It’s good to plan and to think and to prepare and to dream, but at some point, we have to do, right?  After all, to mangle another quote, we aren’t “human dreamings,” we are “human beings.”

Namaste,

L