Friday is a day of firsts for London! It’s the long-awaited (by some) Acro-Yoga Jam Session and idea ruminating for 3 years is now happening on Friday at the lovely LIVE360 on Ridout and York. Introduce yourself to another level of yoga practice. Basing, flying, spotting are all part of this fun style of yoga based on acrobatics, yoga and Thai Yoga massage.
Live music to make it that much sweeter!
Come clean and on an empty tummy.
Cost is $5 per person and we start at 7pm and run to 8:30.
Some of you may not have ever heard someone yelling this to you from below.
“Mindy put your right foot on that hold by your right shoulder!!!”
Yogini on the Rocks!
If you’re a climber than you may have heard it and other amazing ideas for body contortion to get up a route. I’ve been climbing since I was 15 years old, now 35 and although I don’t get to climb as much as I used to, which was everyday back then I’m a much stronger climber now then I was then.
For a 5 years I was so scared of falling I would downclimb a 12a instead of going for the next move. Fear had paralyzed me. Fear isn’t a bad thing but in climbing it needs to be managed to reach your full potential. I would climb and be so calm and strong and then the moment a crux move came my heart rate would accelerate and I would be overcome with the fear of the fall so much that I would back off.
Like yoga practice, I had to practice falling. When I first started to practice yoga poses really scared me, like handstands and arm balances. Early in I fell on my face out of crow pose and that fall hurt more than my face. Fear took over and I didn’t try it again for almost 8 months! What’s even more interesting is now crow pose is one of my favorites.
You can really overcome a lot of obstacles on your yoga mat.
Once I started to practice falling on lead I quickly overcame the fear and started to push myself again and it really felt great. I noticed that fear can creep back in if I don’t take a few falls so it’s really important that as the fear starts to grip me, I have to let myself surrender and literally ‘let go.’
I remember when I started to get into yoga I was trying to show some of my climbing friends a few stretches that would help. It wasn’t long after that I decided to become a yoga teacher so I actually knew what I was doing (well, sort of). Yoga has helped my climbing in physical and psychological ways. My concentration has improved as much as my hamstring flexibility. Staying connected to my breath in yoga and climbing helps to keep my heart rate down and my nervous system more calm. Climbing is exciting so my heart rate will jump but I can bring it back down much faster now with some deep yogic breaths.
Whenever I’m at a climbing gym or the crag I can’t help but notice people posture’s. It what I do for a living now. What I have noticed is that climbers tend to have a concave chest and a rounded back with both their shoulders and their head in the forward plane of the body. Having a strong back is obviously a must for climbing hard but imbalances between the front and back body will limit they body.
People with poor posture have a shorter life span.
When the head and shoulders are forward it puts pressure on the spinal discs but it also puts more pressure on the heart and lungs. Just by bringing the head and shoulders back your lungs can more fully inflate, more breath, more oxygen, more oxygen, better muscle performance. Less oxygen the muscles can prematurely sezz up. Breathe better, climb harder, live longer!
Practicing poses on my fingertips at first was excruciating! My fingers burned in every pose. My tendons and pulleys were overused and tight, not strong, tight! Big difference between tight and strong. Tight muscles are also weak, they tear easily then the body must use energy to heal. Strong muscles are ones that are strong AND flexible. After about six months of steady practice on my fingertips, even handstands, my fingers felt better than ever and I was able to crimp and hold slopers with more strength and ease. 10 Points for yoga!!
On the opposite end, we can talk about climbers feet (okay I barfed a little in my mouth just typing that, nasty) Like many climbers I wanted my shoes to be super tight. I remember back in the early nineties having to order my gear over the phone the guy at MEC in Toronto telling me to downsize my regular shoe size by at least 2 sizes, “the tighter the better” he said. I started with a pair of Boreal Ballets, I couldn’t get them to be tight if I tried because my foot was so narrow and skinny.
After years of climbing and wearing tight shoes my toes were in very bad shape. I was told that I was going to need surgery on my bunions at 22 years old! The corns on the tops of my toes were painful and since yoga is done in bare feet, I started to study my feet a lot more and felt sad about the abuse I had put them through over the years of tight climbing shoes. I don’t have a pic of my toes back then but I have one of them now.
My bunions are so much better, my corns are pretty much gone!
I can remember being on a route in Kentucky and after about 40 feet my toes were burning to the point I would have to rest and take my shoes off. Silly my shoes were so tight the were hurting my climbing not helping. I always have two pairs of shoes one for easier climbs and a pair that are a bit tighter for harder routes.
Yoga creates balance in the body, mind and heart.
As the warmer weather comes my itch to get out and climb is increasing. We
haven’t had a climbing gym in our city for a few years now and news has hit that one
is finally slated to open in 7 to 9 months, I can’t wait to put my practice into practice at the gym.
The bottom line is yoga will help you climb harder, hands down its the number one cross-training activity that will make a huge difference in how you climb.
At this point I am maintaing my Anusara Inspired status but I can’t say for certain that it will remain that way in the future. For now I wanted to be very clear in my decisions about my next steps forward on this journey. Through all of the insanity of the last few weeks something has become very clear to me. I NEED a yoga teacher!
I acknowledge the true guru is within in, I really do get that but I also admit that I could use some guidance on this path. What I recognized is that I can only go so far on my own before a trained set of eyes can take me to the next level. I am not satisfied to stay where I am! Sure, I can do most of the poses in Syllabus 2 and many from 3 but my body seeks to expand its limits.
Most postures I actually taught myself!
Even though I was mainly self-taught in yoga, it didn’t come without some injuries, some more serious and really freakin scary. First time I thought I was ready for a drop back, boom, hit my face on the floor. I know now that it was because I was lifting my arms up too fast and I was losing the connection to my legs. Skilled teachers, like John Friend and many others have very clear, instructions for doing these more challenging poses. I’ve been so blessed to have studied with the Anusara community.
I will still try poses that seem out of my reach on my own, I think there’s value in logging time on the mat just doing what I can but I can’t wait for my next workshop to learn more or take my body to that place of radical expansion that just feels so damn good!
Om Namah Shivaya Gurave ~ “The true teacher is within and without”
I’m writing this now because I can’t bring myself to teach yoga at this time. This makes me incredibly sad because I want so much to serve my yoga community and many of them are hurting too. However, I have felt this darkness in my past and I know that I need to take really good care of myself. I’ve suggested checking into a mental institute for the next week but I would probably hate the food. I only say this in light because I have ended up there before in a dark time. This is a bit different.
The last few days (3 to be specific) have been the most heartbreaking for me as teacher after teacher resign from Anusara, the man, and the company. What took 14 years to build has been dismantled in almost 14 days! I am devastated! One of the many analogies I have come up with to try to express the raw emotions spewing from my heart and my guts is that I have been going to a “university” for 8 years and all of a sudden the university has disappeared and I can not finish my degree!.
I don’t know what will happen to the company but I do know that I am really going to miss John and his workshops. Not only for the incredible information I take in each time, but the community I care so deeply about. We may never have that again! Well something like it but it will never be the same and it shouldn’t.
When all this started one part of it hit a nerve for me. The one thing that happened that really got me was the “married woman” thing. I just sat with that for a while and felt good that I had something to be pissed at him about. A married women, geesh, couldn’t you have waited until she got a divorce or something and I sat back in my purity chair and threw stones at that behaviour.
After a bit I realized that I needed to understand why THAT part of all of this was really bothering me so much. Why wasn’t I pissed about the pot (how can you be, really?), what about the pensions (I don’t have a pension, I’m a yoga teacher in Canada), the wiccan coven (my word! If only my Catholic mother knew what I was involved in)?
Nope just the married woman thing! Then I had one of those unbelievable moments of truth, out of nowhere, a clear insight into it. Magical! As John stands in front of us, and I in front of my husband, my mom, my dad, my sister, my friends, my students I carry with me a long lineage of energy and beliefs, even if I don’t know they are even there or I hate them!
The person that you see in front of you is a miracle! An embodiment of energy that is both Divine and completely fucked up! My family had a Catholic bomb go off when there was “an affair”, “in the church” no less. The couple involved loved each other even though they hurt many other people around them and it was difficult. They didn’t get there because they were both so happy in their marriage, there lives! Their living arrangements changed and I watched my aunt go through a very difficult time begin alone after my uncle went off to work in another city for, well for far too long, I guess.
Sorry for the history but I do have a point to make and it’s coming just not yet. The person who suffered the most in this situation was my mom! She is loyal, Catholic and has been married to my dad for a bagillion years. I witnessed first hand how this hurt her and I warned her year after year that she needed to let it go, to heal, that she was only hurting herself. She has finally let go,well a little bit and I’m so proud of her, but it’s taken almost 10 years!
So perhaps that is where my “married woman” button came from, without me really knowing at first where it came from. John’s behaviour has held up a mirror for all of us. And what we have a problem with is something we see in ourselves that we do not like but we know it is there! This of course does not forgive him but when I think of him, I see not just the man, the company, but a long history of lineages that are woven through the tapestry of his body and mind. I wonder if each of you affected by this picked out one thing that really truly bothered you about all this and recognized that it isn’t the first time it’s shown up in your life, or you families history!
Then we can have compassion! Every person is a complex being of layers of energy and thousands of years of history. I think John is a person capable of working this out in this life time. I hope I am. Look deeper and then deeper still. I love and respect my teacher within but also without. I love and respect John and the other teachers that I have studied with because they have given my some guidance, some help, some direction. I do not follow them blindly but so far they haven’t personally led me any where but back to my own heart.
This has been the most powerful mirror ever held to my soul, I want and hope my response is in alignment with the highest. I feel like this mirror has shattered into a million pieces, each one representing a yoga student that has healed or thrived in the teachings of Anusara yoga and I hope we catch a glimpse of our true nature and that we get to see each other shine again.
Yoga is more than poses! Yoga is a lifestyle that impart helps the student to align in a way that brings more joy and freedom into their lives. The true teacher of this path is YOU! The yoga teacher is there for guidance and support but ultimately YOU are in charge of your life, your attitude and your actions. Since we are humans we can/do and will make mistakes! It is through mistakes that we learn how to align again and again.
The contrast of what feels good and what feels bad is really a source of direction from our inner teacher. Many of you have heard of the recent allegation of John Friend and Anusara and I want to let my students know that I am not shifting my course here! I am going to stay steadfast in the teachings of Anusara because they have been the most beneficial to me and I also believe to my students that I share the teachings with. In so many ways my heart was shattered into a million pieces, not because of what these accusations imply about John but how the “yoga” community responded to what wasn’t even proven!
So many people were so quick to chirp up and cast judgement on John and Anusara. I still have such a bad taste in my mouth because I realized that so many people practice yoga (poses) but so few of them are really practicing yogis and yoginis and that is saddening because our planet needs conscious, caring, loving people who are holding a high integral standard for themselves and our planet. And YES we screw up, so what, that is part of the deal but how fast we can come back to the path is what I believe to be an accumulation of one’s time spent on the mat and by studying yoga.
So many of John’s teachings that have directly come from his mouth to my ears, have helped me to live my life more fully, to create healthy boundaries, to pulse with expansion and contraction, to HEAL my body, heart and mind, to be in relationships with myself and others, to empower me and most importantly that the true teacher is within in!
Om shanti, and please please please for the love of this planet and all the humans who share it, be mindful of your actions, forgive yourself if/when you screw up and speak and live from the highest place that you can as much as you can.
Yep, depression blows!!! I suffered from this shitty ass condition for many years. Those little happy pills helped but they also made me insane, but I’m happy I had them because I know I won’t be here right now if I didn’t. With people busier than every, every second of the day accounted for by work, kids, sports, laundry, driving etc, etc… no wonder depression is on the rise. Here’s my opinion, if you want to hear it, if not your are 100% free to not read it 🙂
We are depressed because we are not fulfilling the deepest wishes of our hearts!
I’m no stranger to unbalanced brain chemicals friends but seriously some of us are working ourselves to the brink of exhaustion with no play time. This is a recipe for sadness! Our hearts long to connect to community, have friends, socialize, dress up, dance, eat food together, have “sexy time”, and when we don’t make time for that we suffer heartache and feel poopy!
My depression almost killed me!
Confessing to you that I attempted suicide many years ago isn’t a ploy for sympathy but rather a gentle reminder of how sacred life actually is! If you suffer from this shitty ass condition, get some help! What I mean by that is DO SOME SERIOUS YOGA and DO IT EVERYDAY!
It’s normal to feel sad sometime, lost, alone, to cry, to isolate ourselves but these are some of the symptoms that are worth looking at. Here are the 9 main symptoms that doc’s use to help diagnose clinical depression.
1. Loss of pleasure, in activities that used to make you happy.
2. A noticeable increase or decrease in appetite, weight, or both.
3. Constantly feeling guilty or worthlessness (yuk)
4. Insomnia, disturbed sleep, oversleeping, long naps every day.
5. You feel depressed almost everyday and for most of the hours you are awake.
6. Inability to focus or concentrate, most of the time.
7. Intense feeling of lethargy or agitation.
8. No energy or daily fatigue.
9. reoccurring suicidal thoughts (boo)
How does depression happen? The brain is a complex organism but what is understood about it can help to explain a part of depression and how your brain works. Sometimes there are abnormal levels of neurotransmitters such as, serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine in the brain. This imbalance can improve by taking anti-depressants or SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, this include:
Sertraline (Zoloft) ( I took this one for 7 years)
Vilazodone (Viibryd)
What about side effects? Here’s a little list of them: drowsiness, dry mouth, nervousness, anxiety, insomnia, decreased appetite, long-term weight gain and decreased ability to function sexually (big boo) may occur. Some of these side-effects may decrease as a person adjusts to the drug, but other side-effects may be persistent.
If these drugs help you gather enough energy to get out to yoga that’s fantastic because yoga can and does help depression, but here’s the kicker you have to do it, daily!! Some days I felt more depressed than others and had to literally drag my ass to class but every time I did, I always, always, always felt better afterward, even just a teeny, tiny, little bit.
According to Dr. Timothy McCall, one of the reasons yoga helps is that it helps to relieve stress and tension which often has a big impact on the sympathetic nervous system. Yoga has been shown to decrease cortisol levels that stay elevated from the flight or fight response, which is tied to lifting one’s mood.
Here it is! Feeling Down? Turn Your Shit Upside Down! TANTRA STYLE!
Yoga time is anytime 😉
The benefits of doing inversions are well documented at this point! Patricia Walden lists that headstand can help clear the brain, stabilize emotions and build confidence. I couldn’t agree more.
Headstand kept me from ending my life!
Big bold statement yes! Headstand with good alignment (critical since I also suffered a serious whiplash injury from a car accident) also helps to improve the pulsation of the endocrine system. Think of this system as a series of on/off switches. When some of them are off instead of on, it impacts our hormones and stress can cause them to get out of whack. Inversions can help balance them out.
In addition to inversions effect on the endocrine system, you get a brand spanking new perspective on your life when your upside down! Sure it might just be 30 seconds when your learning but if you build up to ten minutes you are refreshing your eye! Seeing your shit from upside down can help you have a shift in attitude when your right side up!.
In light of the recent article in the NY Times about how yoga can wreck your bod, I suggest with confidence an Anusara teacher. They can teach you how to create a powerful foundation that keeps your neck safe and in fact can strengthen your neck muscles.
Practice, practice, practice and hopefully it helps you catch a glimpse of your divinity and what a gift it is to have this body and even this condition.
Confession here, I was petrified of arm balances for a long time. Now these are some of my favorite poses to practice, how did I go from extreme fear to love, I PRACTICED, over and over again. Let me take you back in time with me, to my bedroom, 2003….. specifically to my mat during one of my many home yoga practices.
This time in my life was truly magical, every pose was new and hard and the awakenings I would have were intense and awesome. I would set up my mat and a make-shift alter with a rock, a plant and a candle. I would often turn off the lights but keep enough light so I could follow my yoga books’ instructions about how to do the poses.
One of my favorite books at this time was 40 Days to Personal Revolution, by Baron Baptist, it had a cool section full of different sequences that I often followed. One of the poses was crow pose – Bakasana. To be honest I used to feel the hair of the back of my neck come up when I saw the picture so I often skipped it and said “bfffffpt…. yeah right,…. no way!”
I did not attend many public classes in 2003 but the ones I went to I had never seen the teacher instruct this or any other arm balance postures. The day came when I thought, screw it, I’m going to try it any way! I went for it, 100% effort. I can remember exactly how I put my hands, they were about 6 inches apart, palms turned in, index knuckles lifted off my mat and from there I took a deep breath, held it in as I “leaned forward” just like the book instructed.
There’s a possibility I held my breath for too long or I was just so scared at what was happening, it’s a bit of a blur but next thing I know, I went all the way over, off my mat, hit my face on the carpeted floor, banged my teeth, skinned my nose and chin! Clearly that experience left a pretty big mark in my consciousness. “NEVER AGAIN!” I promised myself, NEVER AGAIN!
About 6 months later, after skipping over crow pose in this sequence I started to feel like I was ready to try it again. I fell again but I did not smash my face this time and I didn’t commit to never trying it again, instead I recognized that it went better than last time.
I continued to dabble with crow pose here and there, and started to get a bit better at it. Then I realized something else, it really hurt my wrists A LOT!!!! I wasn’t able to breathe because whenever I did I felt the pain in my wrists even more. Enter…. Anusara Yoga!!!
Clear, succinct, easy to follow instructions backed up by sound biomechanics and voila, I’m an arm balancing queen! I noticed that my hands were way to close together, my palms were turned in (that was taking my scapula off my back) and placing my weight in my outer wrists, my upper back was rounded instead of having a soft upper back and melted heart, I plugged my index knuckles down and clawed my finger pads just as I was clearly instructed to do and I lifted my feet up off the ground with grace!!
This was a moment in my yoga history that I have never forgotten and never will. I was ready to face my fear, of literally falling on my face and when I did a part of me that I didn’t know existed stepped forward and smiled at me! I AM ENOUGH, I AM STRONG, I CAN DO WHAT I PUT MY MIND AND HEART INTO!
Now almost 10 years later, I get a tiny little excitement whenever I do an arm balance because I might just fall on my face. I’m okay with that because I have learned how to actually fall on my face with some control over my landing in fact I can fall forward out of crow onto my head, lift up into headstand, put my legs in lotus come back down into a different arm balance and then go back up to headstand and release back into crow, tadhaaa!!!!
It amazing to me what great lengths people will go to, in order to run away from their fears (myself included). Yoga is a practice that can empower us, over time, with consistency, to face what we need to so we can move forward and heal and also how to fall on our face with more grace and experiene the true freedom that we are meant too!
If your inspired, I hope you can make it to my class!!!
Just got back from a wonderful week in Costa Rica. If you have ever been to Nosara you will understand when I say that there is something so magical about this place. We had an amazing retreat and one of the reasons it was so amazing is because several of the people that came last year Re-treated again this year!!! And, we had some incredble other people join this year. After 3 plane rides and a 2 hour car ride to get home my brain is pulsating with all of the new experiences that we had there and how I can bring that back here to where I live.
The food will be tough to match here. Fresh bananas and other juicy fruits, no proccessed foods at all, the magical juice bar at Harmony, yep it’s gonna be a tough day at the grocery store today. Doing yoga everyday with the same people is an experience firmly recommend. Community in yoga will allow you to deepen your practice on and off your mat. Sure it’s a lot easier to handle power differientials and stuff when your in paradise but you are certainly going to learn about yourself and how you hold relationships with other people.
Last year was a year chock full of transitions for me and many others. I closed my yoga studio and I’m embracing my new direction in life. I had my heart opened wide and broken apart sometime in the same day. When I look back on last year it has been an incredible time of spanda, pulsing with contraction and wild expansion. So for this year I can already see where my practice needs some beefing up!!! I have no problem admitting I’m a highly sensitive person that has to work hard not to take things personally and after being Nosara what I need to work on for 2012 was easily channeled. This year I am going to focus on “staying strong and moving on!”
It’s not news to me that I have some people or events in my past that well frankly SUCK, but it’s not my dharma to spend energy on what happened or what others think of me. So whenever I feel the drama taking over I am going to use my new mantra “STAY STRONG AND MOVE ON!” Letting go is the most healing and freeing thing that I can do for myself.
This past year I had the opportunity to study with John Friend, founder of Anusara Yoga and more specifically was attended his 5 day workshop on the Dharma of Relationships. Something huge was planted in me in New Jersey and I am going to culitvate what I took from the workshop and put it into action in my life. John stated very clearly that there are some people that “hate him” and that he doesn’t spend any energy on them, he wishes them blessings and moves on! How inspiring!
That’s HUGE, and that is how I want to align myself for this year. Out with the old mental samskaras that I am not a nice person or that people have a legitamate reason to “hate” or dislike me. Although I’m not always perfect I’m doing the very best that I can and over the years the level of integrety I expect from who I live my life around has certainly risen but I see that as a postive.
I’ve been hustling and bustling to get all my holiday shopping done and get packed for a trip up north which includes snowpants, mitts and all things warm and fuzzy AND packing another bag for the Jungle, bikini, flip-flops, sunscreen! So yep, I’ve been busy. We are having a holiday party tonight and I am in charge of making vegan cupcakes but haven’t started yet!!!
What I just noticed yesterday that all this bustling has taken me off of my mat and whenever that happens I start to get a bit fried! My temper is shorter, less patience and acceptance of others. I even honked at someone in the mall parking lot for scamming my spot that I waited 10 minutes for!!!
The bottom line is sometimes I just get a bit off-balance and you know what that is totally okay AND in fact helpful because it is exactly what I need to bring myself back to balance. I know that the next week will be even busier with appointments and last-minute shopping but after that I can relax (sort of) when I get back to my hometown.
I can handle extra stress in my life only because I have learned to use my yoga practice in ways that teach me to hold my center when the proverbial snow squall hits me! The real yoga is can I stay in my heart when my nerves are stressed to the max, when I have a million things to do, yep, I believe I can as long as I take time even 5 minutes to step on my mat and work things out.
So get your butt to yoga over the holidays as much as you can, even it is before or after shopping and I believe it will help with holiday/family/travel/weather stress.
Accepting yourself is the starting point when cultivating a healthy self-image. Self-esteem and self-confidence have always been something that I have struggled with. One of the reasons I belive this to be is because I have been impressed upon since I was a little girl with images of what my body should look like, which when I was a kid was mainly Barbie! Yikes, image walking on your tippie toes all day, ouch and personally big boobs would not benefit me instead they would get in the way of my yoga practice and rock climbing.
It was pretty much after my first yoga class that this unfamiliar event occurred in my head, it was quiet all of a sudden! It was a profound moment to me because up until that point it was loud, disapproving and there was a constant conversation going on about how I sucked and what I needed to change to be accepted as an attractive and likeable person in the world. At that point it really didn’t matter that I was obsessed with hitting the gym for 2 hours everyday, while throwing up everything I ate, drinking almost every night and going to the bars in expensive outfits to try to impress other people. The war raging inside my body came to a standstill for a moment or two in my first yoga class and to my surprise I was actually listening and I noticed it!
It wasn’t like I did a downward dog and everything was suddenly better, it was more like a light switched on in my mind and it illuminated the truth of who I was. I was a divine being, wtf? Really?? Me??? No!!!!! NO WAY!!!! and then back to the “oh shit is that cellulite on my thighs, I better buckle down and do more cardio, that’s what I get for being lazy!”
This inner violence I had going on inside was only getting worse with my obsessive gym sessions even though I believed it would help. It did a little bit but not in the way that yoga has helped me. Yoga was helping me to heal my body, connect to my spirit and to understand who the heck I really am and what in the hell I’m doing here! I had those same moments of peace and quiet every time I practiced and after time they started to last longer, linger and created a huge shift in my thinking patterns, which ultimately shifted my behaviour.
I thought that it was only me believing that I wasn’t good enough, smart enough, attractive enough but as it turns out everyone struggles with one or all of these to some degree. By learning how to just accept myself as I was, has helped me to accept others as they are. I agree I don’t always get this right, but I have made massive amounts of progress so I honour myself for how far I have come and acknowledge that I can always improve her through my spiritual work and meditation.
The planet and the people who live on her need healing! This healing will always start right now, in this very moment by taking a deep breath, softening and accepting yourself as you are! If you are truly doing the best you can then focus on that, if you can do better than get your ass to yoga and work it out on your mat!
My friends and family started to notice a shift in me when I started to shift they way I saw and thought of myself, not when I was about to chest press 60 pounds or run for 1 hour on the treadmill or decrease my body fat. For me the real work is to look at myself everyday and accept what is!
On the side this blog was inspired because I noticed my very first grey hair! Yep, I panicked a tiny bit for about 24 hours then I moved toward accepting it and even loving it. As a contrast, the me 10 years ago would have lost it over a grey hair so yep I’m doing okay.
