Tag Archives: Yoga

Watching the Detectives

  By | ,
5 Comments

Well, actually it’s not like watching detectives at all, but I really like that song and it’s in my head now, so there you have it.   What I really want to talk about is watching my yoga students.  First, let me stop myself long enough to giggle about the phrase “my yoga students.”   *giggle*  Now that I have that out of the way…  There is something really cool about being able to watch students as they move through their practice.  In fact, I would say that there are multiple things that are cool about it, and I’m really grooving on them, as I’m used to being in my own practice and not seeing much that goes on around me, so this is like a new world.

Watching students in class is informative.  I find out so much about how people feel about and respond to different poses that I didn’t know before.  As an example, in yin class, I like dragon pose.  I remember finding it tiring early on, but since then, unless something is whacked out in my body on a certain night, I feel ok in dragon.  I can feel that dull, achy stretch that is yin, but nothing that brings me out of the pose or forces a lot of wiggling.  However, since I’ve started to teach yin, I’ve noticed that many people are not happy campers in dragon.  They fidget, wiggle, and look generally quite miserable.  This, of course, can happen in any yin pose, but it’s been interesting to notice how prevalent it is in this pose that I hadn’t considered particularly challenging.  Similarly, in a vinyasa class, watching students is such a good way to judge the pace of the class and whether it is suiting their needs.  I’m still working on this and I’m far far from being good at it, but I am starting to get the clues.  Are they sweating a little (like they are warmed up and working) or cool as cucumbers?  Do they look bored or like they are having to pay some attention to what they are doing, or like they are working so hard to comprehend the directions that they are completely out of their bodies?  And the breathing.  Watching the breathing is also a wealth of information.  I’ve seen students breathing fast, students breathing in sync, students breathing in total contradiction to the movements of the body, and students who are seemingly not breathing at all.  I feel like I probably remind students a little more often to check in on the breath than I need to right now, but it’s partly a factor of what I see.

Watching students is also so inspiring.  It doesn’t matter whether the students are new to yoga or have been practicing for a long time.  Seeing the effort and energy that they lay down in the practice awes me.  Back in my “go to the gym” days, I would see people who were there, but not really there.  They would walk around the weight room with a towel, chat, give other people advice on what to do, maybe check out their guns in the mirror, but they weren’t really there.  I rarely see that in a yoga class.  From the outsider perspective, it appears as if some people are a little more focused on the workout, some on the meditative aspect, some on the flexibility, etc. but everyone seems to want to be where they are.

Watching students is also, bottom line, beautiful.  It doesn’t matter what they look like or whether they are struggling more or less in the poses.  It doesn’t matter (really) if they are wearing cute yoga clothes.  It doesn’t matter the ages or the sexes.  It doesn’t matter that people make some serious concentration faces sometimes during yoga (this makes me wonder what my face looks like when I practice).  Regardless of all of that specific difference, there is just something so beautiful about watching a room full of people do yoga.

And, I’m just getting started in this teaching thing, so I feel very lucky to be having the opportunity to watch students and help them, in whatever little way I can, through their practice.

Thank you, students.  Namaste,

L

It’s Okay to Be Angry: Now What Will You DO With It?

  By | ,
14 Comments

I’ve been a little angry the last few days.  Actually, that’s not fully true.  I’ve been a lot of angry at some points.  As I’ve talked about before, there are people who push my buttons, and there are happenings that create what, I think, is very justified feelings of anger.  But, I’m not particularly good at feeling ok about anger.  I didn’t really learn how to handle anger constructively in my youth.  I don’t come from a family culture where there was calm and easy expression of anger, and the midwest isn’t exactly known for being a great place to be really open about your feelings.  So, when I’m angry, I feel really bad and guilty on top of the anger.  That’s useful, huh?

12 Angry Men are Angry!

Anyhoo, last night and today, I’ve been trying to remind myself that feeling anger isn’t bad in and of itself.  It is a natural emotional response, as normal as fear, happiness, sadness, or excitement.   The important thing is what we do with the anger.  Do we experience it, attempt to understand it, deal with whatever has created it, and move on?  Do we hold on to it and let it simmer and roil around inside?  Do we lash out at others, spreading negativity?

It seems to me that we don’t always have a choice about the experience of an angry emotional feeling, but we do have a choice about how we respond to that feeling.  Responding with calm and compassion and an intent to let go of the anger is far more likely to be productive for everyone involved.  The Buddha once said “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”  I believe this to be true, in both psychological and physical ways.  Anger not only creates mental stress, but studies have shown that it is bad for our physical bodies.

Letting go of an angry emotion isn’t always easy.  The Dalai Lama suggests the following process:

If you are able to recognize the moment when anger arises, you will be able to distinguish the part of your mind that is feeling anger. This will divide your mind in two parts-one part will be feeling anger while the other will be trying to observe. Therefore anger cannot dominate the entire mind. You are able to recognize that anger is harmful and maybe develop an antidote to it. View your anger objectively. Try to see the positive side of the anger-causing person or event.

That last part seems key.  It’s so easy to focus on what is hard or bad about something that causes us anger.  Finding the positive is difficult, but it’s there.  So, today, I’ll be pondering the wonderful things about the people that have been connected with the feelings of anger I’m having.  I’ll be considering how the pain of arthritis has lead me to yoga and that’s wonderful.  I will be accepting my experience of angry feelings, not chastising myself for having them, and then trying to move on in a positive way.

How about you?

L


Review and Giveaway – First There is a Mountain

  By | ,
4 Comments

As part of a book club for my “home” yoga studio, I recently read First There is a Mountain: A Yoga Romance by Elizabeth Kadetsky. In the post below, I expand upon the response to the book that I presented as part of the book club discussion, and ponder the reasons for some of my own reactions.

The book, theoretically a memoir of the author’s yoga experience discusses the life events that brought her to yoga, and then primarily focuses upon the time she spent learning with legendary yoga guru B.K.S. Iyengar.  The novel reads like a combination of personal journal and historical account of yoga lineage.  The “romance” mentioned in the title is not a romance in the boy-meets-girl sense, but (I suppose) her romance with yoga.

As I read this book, I found myself frequently conflicted about it.  On one hand, I basically enjoyed the read and at times I thought the writing was compelling. At other times, I found it confusing or felt like the organization made it difficult to follow. The time-line in the book jumped forward and back in a non-linear fashion, which is not particularly problematic for me in most cases, but here I found it a challenge due to the writing.  Time was also handled inconsistently, with long periods skipped so completely that I didn’t have a good sense of how old the author was in each segment, or what she had experienced in between the events discussed.   Because so much of the book is about her evolution as a yoga practitioner, being able to understand how long she had practiced, and in what way, at various points of the book was rather crucial to understanding the work.  I had similarly mixed feelings about the issues discussed.

Much of the book was about B.K.S. Iyengar, and his relationship with his students – including the author.  His role as guru is addressed in some detail, with descriptions of students prostrating themselves at his feet, following his commands (and those of his family who taught in the institute) without question, and continuing their studies with him for years.  In U.S. culture, I don’t think we are as likely to accept a guru in the way discussed here. We are too individualistic.  I think that probably informs my reading of the book.  I felt uncomfortable with some of the characterizations of relationships between Iyengar (and his family) and the students. I can’t really imagine finding that sort of treatment acceptable in a student/teacher relationship, but then again we live in a culture that tends to prioritize the power and rights of the student over those of the teacher in many ways.  Because so much else about the author’s psyche here, I wondered that she didn’t do more to explore and unpack her own acceptance of the relationships.

The same contradictory response was there for me in regard to her discussion of eating disorder (or anorexia), which appeared briefly in her discussion of college experience, and was referred back to infrequently through the remainder of the book. While I appreciated her willingness to engage the topic, I feel like the presentation of it (because so much time was compressed between her college years and her trip to India), made it read as if that experience was a short blip on the radar that was easily overcome as soon as she realized what she was doing to herself. That, to me, does a disservice to the women who struggle for years, or their whole lifetime, with eating disorder – even knowing that the behavior isn’t healthy or isn’t what they want to be.  There was also a little bit of glorification of the state of starvation in her discussion of how it made her feel.  I certainly get what she means there, but there wasn’t enough working through it to re-problemetize those feelings.  Overall, I wasn’t sure what  the discussion of her eating disordered period was adding to our understanding of here experience, and that – in combination with the brevity of the discussion of recovery – made it seem a little gratuitous to me.

A final issue that I wish had been worked through a little bit more related to the male/female relationships in the text.  The relationships in India overall, and at the institute specifically, were definitely presented as male-dominated and female dismissive.  The misogyny issue was another thing that the author sort of did a hit and run on. With as much personal reflection as she did, there was virtually no reflection on the connection between the position of women (in either culture) and the relationships she saw and experienced, her eating issues and the eating issues of others, the breakdown experienced by her peer student, her own responses to the relationships she saw, etc.

Basically, I am left unsure how I feel about the book and whether I got anything out of it (or even whether she did) beyond an interesting tale of Iyengar training.  It’s not that I think a book has to be about everything, but it seemed like she wasn’t sure what it was about, so it would touch on something and then scamper away from it without really developing her point.  When the book was over, I found that I could not succinctly say what it was “about” or the main point that it made, and to me that is problematic writing.

So, overall, it’s not a book I would recommend you go out and buy for a lot of money (particularly since it’s out of print and a little hard to find).  But, if you can pick up a used copy cheap (amazon has them) or someone gives you one, it’s worth a read.  In fact, I have a copy you can have!  If you would like my copy of the book – please note, I bought it used, so there are markings in the margins and some underlining – let me know in your comment below and I’ll select a “winner” next Sunday and ship it out!

Namaste,

L