Loved this blog post in Elephant Journal about some unusual benefits of yoga. The writer includes not just the usual — better posture, mood, flexibility.
She cites yoga for helping her lose 30 pounds, not through exercise or dietary changes, but through loving her body as it is.
Relationship clarity, better tools for difficult situations, less need for drama, pausing before situations…
Read Claudia Azula Altuchar’s list here.
Because of the especially beautiful spring Sundays, which no one wants to miss out on, and the longer days, I’m pushing the time of my restorative yoga class back.
Starting Sunday, April 3, the class begins at 7:30 pm and ends at 9:00 pm. Read Yoga Offerings on this blog for more information about this class, which I call Unwinding.
Get your Sunday chores done, eat a light dinner, and then come to the class for some deep, deep relaxation.
You’ll sleep better and feel better on Monday morning. Start your week out well.
As I’ve mentioned before, people need activity, sleep, and rest. There are many ways to rest, and it’s as much about allowing your mind to relax as your body. Theta waves are not just a stage you move through quickly as you fall asleep and as you wake up.
Include some restful activity in every day. Daydream. Meditate. Stare at a fire. Slow down and let your mind relax.
It’s surprising when a conservative, financial newspaper like the Wall Street Journal touts the benefits of yoga — much less for school children — but here’s a link to the article.
A few quotes:
A 2003 study by California State University, Los Angeles found that yoga improved students’ behavior, physical health and academic performance, as well as attitudes toward themselves. That same year, Leipzig University reported that yoga reduces feelings of helplessness and aggression, and in the long term helps emotional balance. The benefits of yoga are particularly strong among children with special needs, research shows….
In January, Paul Ecke Central Elementary School in Southern California added yoga to its curriculum for 650 students at $20,000 a year. Principal Adriana Chavarin says she has seen how calm and centered students are after practicing the techniques. At a recent assembly, students were getting restless as they sat on the floor. Then a few sixth graders spontaneously led the rest in yoga poses and breathing exercises.
“Every kid in the audience quieted down,” says David Miyashiro, the district superintendent. “It’s a different language they all speak now.”
Click the link to read more, including the obligatory “opposing view,” which is kind of hilarious.
And for the record, I don’t think OM is a religious word. It’s a word in an ancient language that means “everything that is,” or existence. How is that religious?
Teaching yoga is the best job in the world because you get to do it barefoot and wearing your pajamas. 🙂 Celebrate!
From Judith Hanson Lasater on Facebook.
She’s got a point! I said that when I retired from my serious job where I was an employee and worked for a salary, I’d wear yoga clothes all the time.
Well, I’m not retired yet from that type of job (but soon, I hope), and I manage to wear yoga clothes to work (with jewelry, shawls, and jackets) nearly every day.
My favorite yoga pants that I’ve found so far come from Lucy.com (they come in lengths). They are so comfortable and durable.
Like the Energizer bunny, I’ve just kept going and going, with work and training and teaching and transitioning toward a new home, and then things started to go not so well. Low back-ache, fatigue, muscle tension, losing things, not handling a situation well, emotional sensitivity, feeling close to overwhelm.
As in, “If one more difficult thing happens, I’m going to lose it, and it’s not going to be pretty.”
As much as I like to meet life from a place of strength and resilience, sometimes that isn’t what’s real.
So I declared this afternoon as me time. You know. Solitary unpressured time — several hours of it — to rest, ruminate, and recover.
I even cancelled my restorative yoga class, which I try not to do, because I know when you need it, you need it, and it’s disappointing if it’s not available.
Yogis and yoginis, namaste. It’s savasana time for me, and for you if you need it! And, I am changing our class time to 7:30-9 pm so we can all have more “day” to enjoy on Sundays, then eat lightly, do the class, drive home, and go to bed all relaxed.
How does that sit with you?
We all need time to be active, time for sleep, and time for rest. In this case, I have not been getting enough rest.
Rest is when I check in with myself and get back on track, reconnect with myself and recenter.
It’s actually one of the best parts about being human. That we can do this!!!
And now, I’m going within, to get in touch with my feelings, breathe, maybe cry a little, curl up with Mango, and get some rest. And plan how to intervene with myself a little bit sooner so this doesn’t happen again. I hate disappointing people! I believe it may be time to restart my regular sitting practice, which has become irregular.
Yep. This is what happens when I don’t meditate. Yep, I’m really remembering that now.
Last night I attended the monthly Austin NLP meetup. Katie Raver, who was raised by an NLP-trained mom and who is a co-founder of Austin NLP and who created Year of the Breath in 2009, presented on the topic Breathing Life into Rapport.
Note: Katie is my temporary roommate. And she loves my cat, Mango. I may be biased.
Katie drew on her experiences in Hawai’i (where ha means breath, thus Hawai’i, aloha, ha‘ole — without breath, ha prayer). When she returned, she noticed how shallow breathing negatively impacted a work-related meeting she was in, and she experimented with pacing and then leading the alpha person at the meeting (not the speaker, but the key decision maker) to breathe more deeply, thus changing the state of the meeting for all 17 people present. Only Katie — or as we call her, the instigator of love — was aware of how that shift occurred.
We had fun doing exercises like matching someone’s breathing while talking to them and matching their breathing while they’re talking to you. Sorry you missed it.
I must say, it’s a lovely experience to have a room full of people breathing in unison. It’s on a par with hearing a room full of people all chanting OM. Deep. Alive. Powerful.
Today an email led me to this NPR article dated Dec. 6, 2010, Just Breathe: Body Has a Built-In Stress Reliever.
As it turns out, deep breathing is not only relaxing, it’s been scientifically proven to affect the heart, the brain, digestion, the immune system — and maybe even the expression of genes.
Yogis and meditators know this. Breath is powerful.
But more importantly, [breathing exercises] can be used as a method to train the body’s reaction to stressful situations and dampen the production of harmful stress hormones.
Click the link to read up on the latest scientific findings about using breath to influence health and well-being.
You can also make meetings more satisfying. At least you won’t be bored.
I just realized a day or two ago that so many of my recent efforts — meditation, reiki, the trauma releasing exercises, learning and teaching restorative yoga — are not only healing, they also relax you.
Hmm. Methinks there’s probably a strong relationship between healing and relaxing.
Judith Lasater in her recent restorative yoga workshop in Austin said that human beings need activity, rest, and sleep.
Rest is the one we usually let go of first in the pressure to “keep up” and “have it all”. Then sleep.
It’s hard to set limits on activities. Let me practice that right now.
No thanks, I have just the right amount on my plate.
Really, do you know anyone who takes resting seriously? Who turns off their computer and phone regularly to do something relaxing? Something playful and not too competitive?
Remember when everything was closed on Sunday and it was truly a day off? Stores and offices and factories closed so employees could have time off with their families. It was the norm.
Now so much is available most or all the time. You can shop online at 3 am! Factories run 24/7. Banks are open on Saturdays. Some stores are open all night.
Pondering all this “need for speed,” I thought up a workshop title: Relaxation Bootcamp. Really. That’s what it might take for some people, the bootcamp approach.
I’d start with the trauma releasing exercises. All that quivering, trembling, and shaking is tension leaving your body!
Then some pranayama to balance the left and right hemispheres.
Then a long restorative yoga session followed by a reiki session followed by meditation.
I have to ask myself,
Do I know who I am as a relaxed person?
What will it take to find out?
Am I addicted to stress?
When do I feel relaxed yet aware?
As I ponder these questions, I am in the middle of a 3-month contract job. I usually eat at my desk and don’t take a lunch break. Being productive is my m.o.
Yet sometimes when I feel the tension building from sitting at a computer all day, I do a little desk yoga with Rodney Yee.
4 Minute Neck and Shoulder Stretch
4 Minute Upper and Lower Back Stretch
Puts a little spaciousness and flexibility back into my day.
I have a hunch this is a lifetime issue for me, something I need to learn for myself and master.
How about you? What would you include in your Relaxation Bootcamp?
The marvelous yogini-cum-graphic-artist Alison Hinks, who created the yoga lineages flow chart I linked to earlier, has done it again.
This beautiful graphic shows the eight limbs of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.
What’s extra nice is that she’s identified the actions you do and the experiences that happen to you because you have practiced the actions effectively.
Thank you, Alison Hinks, for adding beauty and inspiration to the world.
I discovered some YouTube videos this week taken of Krishnamacharya and some of his students doing yoga in 1938. These are black and white, originally silent, now with a soundtrack of his son Kausthub chanting the Yoga Sutras.
By the way, Krishnamacharya was 50 when these were filmed. : )
In light of the recent controversy of Indian yogis dissing Shiva Rea’s yoga trance dance as not being yoga (and calling for yoga to be regulated by the government), it’s good to remember that Krishnamacharya borrowed from Indian gymnastics to add to the yoga lexicon.
Part 1, 8:24
Part 2, 9:35
Part 3, 9:44
Part 4, 2:40
Part 5, 9:30
Part 6, 5:48
Enjoy!
Came across something else I wanted to repost tonight, this article from Elephant Journal on why yogis don’t meditate by Philip Goldberg.
Yep, asana is only one of the eight limbs of yoga, which is about quieting and calming the mind, or as some would say distancing from the mind. Patanjali had much to say about the mind, and little about asana.
After all, yoga is a philosophy with beliefs. It’s not just physical fitness.
My formerly daily meditation practice is in a slump right now. I miss it. Having the flu and then moving disrupted my life, although witness awareness has been keen through the many transitions.
I discovered Sunday that my meditation timer, which I was using to time long restorative yoga poses, seems to be broken.
However, I downloaded a timer app for my new iPhone that should serve well.
Now all I need to do is move the yoga blankets off my zafu and zabuton, and I’ll be meditating again.
The Well: bodymindheartspirit 