My only resolution this year is to become a morning person.
My whole life has been lived as a night owl. That’s 28 years of waking up between 10 and 11:30am. I love staying up late, working on creative projects, and sleeping waaay past dawn.
But my life is different now. I’m a student, and I have early classes to attend. And, my love for Yoga has only grown over the years. The Ashtanga method traditionally calls for an early practice. This has always been a struggle for me.
But my love for the early morning routine is slowly beating out my night owl personality. It’s fitting that I should let that go. Waking up late is a part of my old party life - where I’d stay out late nights, ever night, drinking too much and sleeping with strangers. While I gave up those naughty habits over four years ago, waking up at a reasonable hour has been a habit that has continued to elude me.
So I figured, if I only had one resolution this year, instead of a list of ten or more, I would be more apt to follow through. Therefore, I’m committed to waking up before 8am and practicing Yoga six days a week.
My teacher told me today that if I practice backbends every day for 10 years, then I’ll be flexible to bring my feet closer together. 10 years! And that’s practicing six days a week (skipping moon days of course).
The world seems to have rewarded my newfound committment to my practice: my teacher gave me the rest of the primary series today. So I’m now practicing the entire series. It’s a beautiful feeling. The postures build on each other, one after the next, until by the end of the practice you feel that every latent unused muscle has been used, stretched, and strenghtened.
I feel beautiful, and all I did was let go for a few hours in the early morning. Funny how long it takes before I relinquish control and let the world come to me, instead of chasing down the world.
Yoga Tutorial - Downward Facing Dog
I’m once again trying to get some videos and blogs up with some regularity. We’ll see how it goes.
I think I’m afraid of posting a lot here, because it’s kind of out there forever after that. Sure, I can delete posts (if I go back and sort through them), but after awhile, if you post a lot, there’s so many to sort through that it’s sort of daunting.
But I guess that’s part of loving yourself. Knowing that you’re human, that you’re not perfect, but you’re no more or less human than anyone else.
I think that strength comes not from hiding your mistakes, but being honest about them, owning them, and having the courage to walk through life living a little bit differently with the knowledge you’ve acquired.
So here it goes, my attempt at being a yogini, in the real world, doing real-life things, just like you. Only at the end of my day I collapse on my mat, do a downward facing dog and say thank you to my creator, whatever s/he may be, ever was, or may become.
~Namaste y’all
It felt good to get on the mat and do the ENTIRE FUCKING ASHTANGA PRIMARY SERIES! When I was going into the studio regularly my teacher never gave me the final few poses, but I haven’t gone in there for awhile and I wanted to see what it was like to get through the whole series. It was fine, no fireworks. My body felt fine. I was actually really surprised that I was able to do all the twists completely with no modifications after not doing them in such a long time.
I have been going to led power yoga classes so I think that’s been warming up my body, allowing me to go deeper on my own.
I’m just glad I got through the whole series. My hips feel awesome. And I really really needed that wheel. Whew!
I really want to understand more about the individual poses and what they do. I’d like to do a podcast… I know I keep talking about it, but I’ve been so busy! I’m going to work on it in the morning, so I’ll go to bed now and see y’all later, hopefully next time with a podcast!
-namaste
Wouldn’t it be cool if there was Yoga in the streets during a protest or something?
I love Yoga.
I’m going to start making a Yoga podcast. The first one is going to air next week. This week I’m going to outline the weekly topics for the rest of the years so I’m all ready to bang them out and post them up. I’m going to talk about meditation, asanas, sanskrit, India, local Yoga studios and teachers, sequencing, yoga for healing, and ayervedic medical and dietary suggestions.
This is going to be a way for me to learn more about Yoga and at the same time share my passion for it. I’m doing it for no other reason then to share with the world one of my biggest passions, Yoga.
I think my personal postings are going to change a little bit… I’m going to update you less about my personal practice and revert back to sharing stories, thoughts and tidbits about my life that are more interesting both for me to share and for you to read. This blog is primarily a place for me to share my experiences and thoughts on Yoga, but I also want it to provide interesting insights and information.
Thanks for being with me along the way.
Until next time,
~Namaste
So I just moved to Berkeley.
My new Yoga spot is Yoga to the People, which is down the street from me. So I can walk there, and it’s donation based which is awesome because I’m a college student and I’m not making a ton of money right now, and, most importantly, I love Yoga.
The classes aren’t too hard, but they’re not easy either. They’re actually a pretty good pace. The only downside is that we don’t get into hardly any seated postures at all, just the standing warm up postures. So, I’ll be able to work back up to my usual strength here pretty soon but I’m either going to have to start my home practice again so I can get into some deeper stretches or I’ll have to find another study that will help me go deeper in my practice.
For now though, I’m really glad to have regularity back in my practice so I’m so so grateful for this studio right now.
~Namaste
Ethics of a Yoga Teacher
To help guide Yoga teachers ethically, here is a list of ethics I wish all Yoga teachers to uphold:
1. Yoga teachers will devote ourselves to practicing Yoga as a way of life.
2. Yoga teachers will devote ourselves to remain “students of Yoga” throughout our lives by continuing to study the art, science and philosophy of
Yoga to become better Yoga teachers.
3. Yoga teachers will treat all beings with respect, including our students.
4. Yoga teachers will respect and honor the long line of venerable teachers who came before us, dedicating ourselves to maintaining exceptional stan -
dards of professional competence and integrity.
5. Yoga teachers will endeavor to accurately represent our education, training and experience relevant to teaching our style of Yoga.
6. Yoga teachers will strive not to be critical of any other style of Yoga or Yoga Teacher, but use fairness in evaluating the circumstances.
7. Yoga teachers will express truthfulness in all relationships with students, family and community.
8. Yoga teachers will welcome all students regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, financial status or national origin.
9. Yoga teachers will refer students to other qualified Yoga teachers when we do not possess the skills to teach them safely and properly (i.e: specif -
ic injuries or physical disabilities).
10. Yoga teachers will acknowledge the power differential between student and teacher and avoid exploiting the trust and potential dependency of
such students. Teachers can instead encourage the student to find his/her own inner strength and wisdom and possibly refer the student to anoth -
er qualified Yoga teacher.
11. Yoga teachers will earnestly cultivate a high level of integrity and purity in matters of personal habits and decorum inside and outside the class -
room.
12. Yoga teachers will avoid any form of sexual harassment with students and are honest in our own sexual relationships. If a consenting sexual
relationship is desired between teacher and student or former student, the teacher will seek immediate counsel with our peers before taking any fur -
ther actions, as students are usually consenting. We will also refer to the yamas and niyamas as guidelines for appropriate physical action. It is
recommended to wait 1-3 years after the student-teacher relationship has ended before forming a solid relationship.
Anger is keeping me off my mat, and from being as kind and loving as I can possibly be.
I don’t walk around with an angry face on, nor do I yell or kick or scream at people. It’s a silent anger that eats me on the inside.
I got on the mat this morning and got through Surya A and got so angry I couldn’t finish the rest.
I get angry because I can’t see the point to what I’m doing. There’s no end in sight, there’s no immediate benefit so I can’t seem to motivate myself to follow through and actually do my daily practice.
What’s so weird, though, is that I still want to do it.
And, I’m not being completely honest, because while I say that I there’s no benefit the truth is that there is. Because when I’m not doing ANY yoga my body gets extremely sore and tight, and I will eventually do my practice to sooth the pain. What happens though, after, is that after the pain is gone (after a few days of practice) there’s no reason to continue but to keep the pain from coming back. There’s no tangible benefit, no immediate result, no pat on the back. And I struggle a lot with following through when there’s no immediate feedback or accolade for my achievements.
I want to get through this. And I’m hoping this blog will help me get there and get through this hurdle that I’ve been struggling with for over a year now.
I want to practice daily, even if it’s just a little bit. But I really want to do my whole practice, the whole hour and a half of it. I know it’s good for me, and I want to cultivate the discipline to do it. I just need to do it, to follow through.
xo
I’ve been getting lazy with my writing lately. Mainly because I don’t want my obsession with how I sound to be the purpose of this blog. But the lack of creativity, originality and interesting material on here does kind of bother me.
But, at least I’m writing in it regularly. And the purpose it’s currently serving is getting me onto the mat on a daily basis, and it’s doing a pretty good job at that.
I like rewards, we all do I think. And writing in my blog is a reward for me. It allows me to process and emote the various circumstances that I ran into throughout the day. It gives me a break, let’s me process, well, who I am. I can process me.
My practice this morning was short. I got up early to go running with a friend, so I had to get up even earlier to do some Yoga. It was so short, mainly because I procrastinated the shit out of the morning… leaving myself a measly 15 minutes to practice. But hey, I managed to do two sets of five sun salutations (Surya A & B) and the group of meditative lotus poses at the end and have a relaxing savasana.
I feel good. I participated in my spirituality today. I did it, not for me, but because I know it’s my responsibility to become and maintain aware, and this is the only way I know how to do it.
