Posts Tagged yoga
What does the music on your iPod say about you?
Posted by fratellic in Life Happenings, Uncategorized on April 17, 2012
I participated in an interesting indirect social experiment over these past two days.
Before I dive into details, I must provide some background…I love music. All types of music. I learned from my brother at a very young age to appreciate various genres of music. Some of my fondest memories are of my brother playing the piano and singing in our living room. My brother would play a wide variety from classical to rock pop, and I would love to listen to it all. He could play on and on for hours, and to this day he still rocks out pretty hard. I am grateful that my brother gave me an ear for music, as it is now an important part of my life. Each time I prepare for a yoga class, I open iTunes and check out my listings for the perfect playlist of songs that will evoke the ambiance for the class. I must admit I do appreciate music, but I am a bit tone deaf, so cuing up some tunes is probably the most difficult part of my preparations. Therefore, I am always very open to suggestions on musical selections that may fit well with asana. I often even encourage my students to share their favorites with me. Little did I know that one of my students would take this quite literally and lend me their iPod stocked with some of their favorite lyrics.
And this is where my experiment began…I listened to someone else’s iPod.
When I first began listening, I thought “wow I like this song,” or “I know this one; it’s great.” But then I began to listen to the song selection and the lyrics a bit more closely. Suddenly I was transported into another place. I felt as if I was receiving small glimpses into my student’s life. Yes I was drawing assumptions of course, but from these thoughts I began to wonder what someone would think about me if I lent them my iPod.
What is on my iPod? Open the playlist section and you would find the following: Asana playlists, which included bakasana, dhanurasana, vasisthasana, and other various yoga song lists; Dave Matthews; Relaxation (mainly Enya); Princess playlist (yep, this one is for my daughter); Kids Nap Music (yes, another one for the kids when I want to lull them to sleep, mostly when they are driving me MAD!); Top 100 of 2009/2010/2011. And these are just a few! And now I wonder what the music on my iPod says about me. Do the playlists and song selections in someway ultimately define part of my personality? I think yes. My iPod is mostly yoga music, and then a mix match of so many other genres, which fits my Gemini personality well. I often embrace change (some may say a bit too well), and desire freedom to explore. Finally, I like variety, to change things up, to try new things, and appreciate others.
I need to thank my student for allowing me to borrow their (fire hazard) iPod, and sharing their passion for music. Now I am wishing/wanting more of my students to drop their iPods off to me. I promise to return them unharmed, safe, and clean. Because not only do I get to hear some really great new music, but I also am offered a private glimpse into their world. Hmm, so I leave you with this thought…
What does the music on your iPod say about you?
Is life ever really blissful?
Posted by fratellic in Life Happenings, Meditation on March 29, 2012
Entering into the last three days of Navratri, I bow to Saraswati. She shows us that when we learn to focus our creative energies we can feel truly happy and inspired by this life, ultimately proving that life is and can be blissful.
However, after a cursory reflection on my past few days, they seem anything BUT blissful. After a harried day doing research, I usually head towards home, stop to pick up my two lovely (LOUD) children, and arrive home with time to spare for cooking dinner while I hear my husband (literally) pounding away at the basement before I run off to teach an evening yoga class.
Ah, this is when my bliss begins…
or so you think…
At this point it must be noted that sometimes the divine like to show themselves in completely ironic ways. For as I arrive to my (what should be blissful) yoga class, I am confronted with yet more pounding from the community center’s kitchen remodel. Yes, in the very same room where I am to be teaching my blissful class, I hear THUMP-THUMP-THUMP of the hammer, or the WHIRL-WHIRL-WHIRL of the screwdriver; the very same sounds that I tried to leave behind at my house. I think most people at this point would be so very frustrated by the inability to catch some solace in their day. Gratefully, I turn these crazy times into learning moments.
Is life ever really blissful? Hmm…
I mean does anyone ever look at you and happen to mention the fact that you are looking radiantly blissful today. Or does anyone happen to walk by you and capture your gaze for (what may seem to those bystanders) an exceedingly long bit of time just in hopes that you transmit your blissfulness onto them? And if this does happen to you, I stand corrected! (And please email me so that I can give you my schedule and we can cross paths, because I could use some of your ethereal bliss). Instead, most of us live our lives by some sort of organized chaos, which I must admit is quite fantastic.
I think Sarawati would be doing us an injustice if she just turned us over to paradise; instead I find more joy in the unexpected moments of rapture throughout my day. As I reflect deeper into my day, I find heaven in seeing my children smile and laugh; in watching my husband building out our basement with his own two hands; and in meeting someone new and talking to them about yoga (in some of the most unexpected places). In all of these moments during my day, the cool breeze of blissfulness moves through my being. No matter how ironic life can be, I do thank Saraswati for her insightful way of channeling our energies, aligning our focus, and helping us to see what truly matters in our lives.
Can you find your moments of shear ecstasy throughout your day?
Please note…they may be hidden in the most unexpected places 
Navratri: A Celebration of the Feminine Goddess
Posted by fratellic in Asana, Meditation, Philosophy on March 23, 2012
Nav means “nine” and ratri means “night,” so put it together and Navratri means “nine nights.” Nine nights of festivals and pooja (or worship).
The beginning of spring and the beginning of autumn are two very important junctions of climatic and solar influence. In India, these two periods are taken as sacred opportunities for the worship of the Divine Mother (Shakti), the feminine goddess and her various forms. Therefore Navaratri is celebrated twice a year in India. The first Navaratri falls in the month of Chaitra, which is March- April according to the Gregorian calendar, and the second festival is celebrated in the month of Ashwani, which correlates with the months of September – October according to the Gregorian calendar. More specifically, the first Navratri is called Chaitra Navratri and the second Navratri festival is celebrated as Durga Pooja. (Wikipedia, 2012)
The dates for Navratri this year are March 23rd through March 31st, 2012. The first three days of Navratri (March 23rd – 25th) are dedicated to the Goddess Durga (Warrior Goddess). She can be found dressed in red and mounted on a lion. To embody Durga means to have a fearless sense of compassion and an impeccable source of patience. Durga is the protector and destroyer of all that does not serve to benefit us in this world.
The next three days (March 26th – 28th) are dedicated to Goddess Lakshmi (Goddess of Wealth and Prosperity). Dressed in gold, seated on a lotus and often accompanied by elephants, Laxmi shows and offers all the abundances life has to greet us with. To embody Laxmi is to feel undeniably beautiful, grateful, and overflowing with blessings.
Finally, last three days (March 29th – March 31st) are dedicated to Goddess Saraswati (Goddess Of Knowledge). Saraswati arrives dressed in milky white and mounted on a pure white swan. She shows us that when we learn to focus our creative energies we can feel truly happy and inspired by this life.
It is during Navratri that I find a profound direct relationship between asana and our natural divine connection to our feminine side. Yes, men, you too have divine qualities that could always use cultivating. I really feel that mindful practice during these auspicious days has the ability to transform our mind and body, better aligning ourselves to our true nature. Therefore, in celebration of Navratri, I will be offering classes focused around each goddess and their divine qualities.
Come celebrate with me!
My life as living yoga
Posted by fratellic in Life Happenings on March 14, 2012
“What do you blog about? and “Why do you blog?”
These are questions I often hear, as the purpose of my blog is not actually all that clear.
From a quick gander at my blog, you will notice that I do blog about my own life happenings. I do not blog because I am so ego-centric that I need to share my life happenings with the world. Actually if you were to approach me on the street, I would be the person who can barely make eye contact and the one that seems to be rushing somewhere quickly. Or if you encounter me at a party, I tend to mingle apprehensively until I get to know more about you.
Here’s the truth…in those rushing moments on the street or those tentative talks at a party, I am most likely going nowhere fast and have a multitude of things to say, but I am ultimately too sheepish to strike up a conversation. (Okay this is where all of my close friends call my bluff. You are all laughing now…I can see it through the computer. No really…think back to when we first met…perhaps so long ago, and you will find that I was exactly the way I just described.)
So if I am so (self-prescribed) initially reserved, you may ask, why do I often choose to share some of the most intimate stories about my life? I reveal these life vignettes and connect them to yoga because I am hoping that you begin to see that your life’s stories can also connect in some way to yoga. Yoga is certainly not all about the poses (and that will be explained in another post). Yoga literally means to yoke, to unite, to link…the mind to the body. My hope is that through my blog that people can better learn to find the mundane more fascinating and more intriguing. There is so much more to life that I believe we often miss, because we are rushing here or there. I feel as though our world is so stuck in productivity that we forget creativity.
Therefore, I blog so that you, my fabulous readers, can in some (perhaps even tiny) way be inspired to find yourself more in your body and be able to better discover your creative mind. Ultimately, I offer you examples from my life as a living yoga, however seemingly perfect or IMPERFECT those examples may be, so that you can better find yours.
Life is too short to eat yogurt with a fork!
Posted by fratellic in Life Happenings on March 1, 2012
Completely famished, I took my lunch out of my sack yesterday at work when I suddenly realized that I forgot to pack a spoon for my yogurt. Luckily, I did bring a fork for my salad, so I figured that the fork would, or should, do just fine when I go to eat my yogurt. As I sit there delightfully enjoying my lunch, I took the first taste of my yogurt using the fork. Suddenly, it seemed the yogurt did not taste right, or very good at all. I check the expiration date, nope, just fine. I look at the ingredients list to see if the manufacturer maybe changed one of the ingredients since I last purchased the yogurt, but no, that was fine too. So I went about eating the yogurt with the fork, trying to push out the awkward taste in my mouth when the idea of why my yogurt tasted so bad finally came to my head. By eating yogurt with the fork, I was inevitably letting some parts of the yogurt slip through the tines. I was never really getting the full flavor of each spoonful, and therefore it tasted awkward. Oddly enough, and because I seem to find endless parallels in my life with yoga…don’t many of us live our lives this way too?
Think about it…
We often times go through life, maybe living to survive paycheck to paycheck allowing ourselves to become calloused to the idea of being able to fully enjoy the life we are given. Or maybe you have more than enough, money/success/love/_______ (filling in the blank) etc, and become numb to your life’s abundance, shoving your gratitude for life under your doormat when you get home. Regardless, of what group you tend to see yourself in, ultimately you are living the same (awkward tasting) life. Just as the yogurt slips through the fork, you are letting the best parts of your life slip through its tines. Now what if you were to stop, press PAUSE, just for a moment and list 10 things you are grateful for, and they must be 10 things you can see right in front of you. If this practice is easy for you, then expand your gratitude list to 10 more things that perhaps are not directly in front of you. Does this change the way you feel about your life? Or maybe you feel different in an indescribable way, but do you notice that your frame of mind has shifted?
By practicing this idea of gracious living we can then begin to crawl out of our daily ruts, and begin to live more fuller lives. I have been realizing lately through this very same gratitude exercise that life is too short. We must allow ourselves every opportunity to be happy today. Even though we assume that tomorrow will be here before we know it, life is way too short to be eating yogurt with a fork, so I encourage you to pick up your life spoons and indulge completely in every bite.
“If yoga was easy, it would be called stretching”
Posted by fratellic in Asana, Life Happenings on February 22, 2012
One of my friends asked me the other day, “Do you ever worry about people coming to your yoga class, thinking it was too difficult, and then never coming back?” My first reaction was “no of course not, because I just assume that if they like my class then they will be back, and if they did not enjoy it then they would seek out another easier class.” But then I began thinking (oh yes, now all barriers disappear with great thoughts; can you smell my brain burning?)…Someone leaving my class with a feeling of difficulty goes far beyond someone not liking my class.
I am a teacher. I am a teacher of yoga. Most students do not come to my class to get a workout (or at least in my mind they don’t). I believe students come to my class because they are called consciously (or subconsciously) to face their lives and their yoga practice with deeper meaning; they seek me out to help guide them along their journey. Okay this may sound a bit egocentric but what I am meaning to get across is that not every teacher is for every student, so I encourage you to find that teacher that speaks to your heart. For example, the teacher that offers the gentlest form of yoga practice just may be your most difficult class, but the teacher that offers the easiest class may not be teaching you anything but a bunch of stretches. As my teacher, Gina Caputo, once said, “If yoga was easy, it would be called stretching.”
So NO, I do not ask my students to stretch in the yoga practices that I offer. I ask my students to reach; reach beyond all their wildest expectations. I ask them to call upon themselves to find their evolutionary edge, and then dive deeper then they had before. Are my classes easy? I hope that most of my students would say “no.”
During every practice, I ask my students to go beyond their physical beings into their energetic selves; this is not an easy task. Sometimes during this journey inward, we discover and uncover things that we never knew lived beneath our skin. some of it may be great, and we gladly ride the pranic wave of excitement, and at other times we fight the fires of transformation, shutting down and closing ourselves up. The students who close down and shut themselves up are most often those students who leave thinking they are not going to return to my class. But I have confidence that when they are ready, these students will return, and they often return with a gusto in their hearts. They are stronger than they know, and when they find their edge; I think for them the taste of embodiment becomes so much sweeter.
So I would recommend not finding the easiest yoga class in which to practice, but find the yoga class that pushes your evolutionary edge and takes you to those places and spaces that you never knew resided inside.
~ Blessings on your journey ~
Un-defining Myself
Posted by fratellic in Meditation, Philosophy on February 1, 2012
Last week, I asked my students to ponder the question: “Who am I?” I asked them to dive beyond the obvious, beyond their names or the names of the cities where they reside or the states they originally came from, into the layers beneath the surface of their identities. Of course I didn’t want them to answer me verbally, but I wanted to give them the opportunity to reflect on themselves.
What happened for me was much more unexpected…
I never give my students information or a reflection that I would not also take seriously, so I too have been reflecting on the question: “Who am I?” What I found myself doing was listing paths to an end, such as scientist, school teacher, yoga teacher, mother, and wife. First, I got frustrated with my inability to dive deeper when I asked myself: “Who am I?” But then I realized that I needed to figure out why I could not release my mind from these “positions” of myself. What I decided was that I have been defining myself by what society dictates as acceptable social practice. For example, when you meet someone new at a party of many unfamiliar people what is usually the first question you engage someone with? Hmm…could it be “what do you do for a living?” (I can see you all nodding in agreement right now, maybe even picturing yourself in this situation.) Knowing this, I finally figured out why I kept answering my own question of who I was with career positions, like scientist, teacher, etc; it was because in social settings everyone defines themselves by what they do, not who they actually are!
Okay, let’s put the ego aside for a moment, and dive beneath the layers. Who are you…as a person, deep inside your soul? Can you be more than what society dictates (or judges) you should be? This contemplation is NOT about what society says you should be, but actually who you are?
I sat for periods of time thinking to myself who am I underneath all these layers of skin and bones, I searched my soul to define myself. I am not a scientist, but I am a living breathing soul that is curious about the world in which I live. I like to ask questions like “why” and “how.” I am not a school teacher; rather I am empathetic to those people needing help. I am not a yoga teacher; instead I find myself part of a collective of minds who likes to search deeper into our beings where not even philosophy can satisfy its own desires. I am not a wife or a mother; rather I am someone who can fall ever so deeply in love with the creation of life.
Instead of defining myself by asking “Who am I?,”
I unraveled the mysteries of what is means to BE – my un-defining self.
Take Flight!
This year is off to a running start, but many of you who know me also know that running is not my forte. So instead of running, I chose to take flight. Just as the wind may be whipping through your hair as you jog the Boulder Creek path, I sense the wind as I rise up into Bakasana, or Crow Pose. As if I am growing wings, I find the grace and strength to rise and fly.
For some novice yoga students, Bakasana may be the first arm balance they learn. But for those of you not willing to venture (just yet) into a yoga class, how can you practice Bakasana safely? The following steps guide you through Bakasana, but before you begin to fly remember to check with your doctor before beginning any physical exercise!
How to Fly…
1.) Place your feet a few inches apart, and lean the torso forward, between your inner thighs. Place your hands on the floor. Separate your knees wider than your hips.
2.) Bend your elbows slightly and begin to snuggle your shins into your armpits. Lift up onto the balls of your feet and lean forward even more, taking the weight of your torso onto the backs of the upper arms. (HINT: in Bakasana you consciously engage the core muscles. In yoga, we call this Udyana Banda; lifting the navel in and up toward the spine).
3.) As you exhale, lean forward even more onto the backs of your upper arms, to the point where the balls of your feet leave the floor. Now your torso and legs are balanced on the backs of your upper arms. As a beginner at this pose, you might want to stop here, perched securely on the bent arms. (HINT: remember to keep the head slightly lifted with the gaze 3-4 inches toward the front of your mat). For more intermediate and advanced students, begin to lengthen through the arms.
4.) Challenge: Can you remain in this pose for 3-5 yogic breaths?
5.) How the heck do I get down without crashing? To release, exhale and slowly shift your weight back in order to lower your feet to the floor. Remember gracefully exiting the pose is just as important as mindfully entering the pose!
