Tuesday, September 29, 2009

...is the transformation







Why I practice?

1. Clarity
2. Precision
3. Simplicity
4. Lucidity

Monday, September 28, 2009

6 weeks until Philly

I am so excited about coming back to Philadelphia to teach and spend some time with my awesome yoga teacher practicing yoga. I must admit I have been a "bad lady" when it has come to this blog. I apologize. I have been pretty lackadaisical lately when it comes to sharing this experience. The ground in Providence has shifted and moved under my feet so many times in the last two months. I had all these grand ideas about making practice videos for this blog (I have discovered some BIG gems practicing in my little shala). I can't even seem to write or post a picture.

This is my commitment to write or post a picture everyday for the next six weeks. Here is just some of what I have been mulling over in the mountain ranges of my mind.


A method is a way of doing.

If you are a vinyasa yoga teacher what is your method? In an essay David Foster Wallace describes the difference between writing fiction and non-fiction. In this essay he states the big challenge of writing non fiction is that the writer has "total freedom of infinite choice about what to choose to attend to and represent and connect and how and why." Sound familiar? Maybe my TT brain just turns on this time of year. I think that statement says it all about what makes a meaningful vinyasa class. What do you think?

Saturday, September 05, 2009

Bija

A good teacher is known for planing seeds in their students and then being unattached to the growth of those seeds. Efforting to plant and then efforting to step back. Over the last four weeks I have been planting. If you live in Providence you have seen me on a flier. If you have had a job to offer you have seen my resume. If you are a manager of a restaurant on the West Side, yup! you have seen me there as well. Four weeks of planting and the seeds are starting to sprout.

I have faith in this process because I have seen the fruit on the mat. The seeds of breath, energy, and focus have colored my practices with lushness.

Practice is a seed of effort, the catch.
Vairagya is the effort of standing back, the release.

How do you drop back with grace? Marry the the two in your mind, breath, body, but most importantly in your heart. How do you move to a new city and make a life? You practice the drop back of living finding just the right balance of falling and just the right quality of catching.