10 things

Taking suggestion from Amanda's blog and continually trying to push my attitude toward positivity I am listing the 10 things that I am super shakti charged about.

1. Group practice starts this Monday at Motion Center! Come practice with me and share in the movement of breath and the fellowship of lineage in the Ashtanga Yoga tradition.

2. Armory Farmers Market starts June 3rd and continues until Oct 28.

3. Beach Monday has started and this Monday I have a date with Jordan and Anne.

4. I am returning to a 6 day a week practice. My schedule has been a bit of a challenge but some little changes will make all the difference.

5. My workshop/travel teaching schedule is shaping up.

6. Teaching at Living Yoga in Concord, NH next weekend..observations, adjustments, traditionally counted led primary....it is going to be juicy.

7. Shabda Sunday June 27th!!!

8. I recognize that this has been the hardest year of my life and I survived the first year made some great friends, and learned a lot about myself.

9. Mike killed it his first year and now we can spend some summer time together.

10. Let the summer guest parade begin!!!

(11.) and possibly the most important KCDV in the PVD.

love|practice

Three Things

Register for Mysore classes that run from June until the end of July (I am out of town teaching workshops for the month of August, but will return with a full teaching schedule in September)...practice now!


Mornings here:
http://www.motioncenter.com/downloads/forms/MysoreRegistration.pdf

Wednesday evening here:
http://www.shri-studio.com/home.html

Open Mysore practice at Motion Center 6.45am-9am for June and July...starting this coming Monday!! I'll be on my mat and buzzing you in. If you have a practice of Ashtanga Yoga in the Mysore Style come and practice...just a $5 donation goes to the space.

I am putting together workshops for the fall so stay tuned and get practicing!!!

love.love.

What is Yoga?

I graduated from the Integral Yoga Institutes NYC ten years ago this June. I remember that day so well. I remember finding an entirely white outfit to wear to the ceremony and I remember how my classmates knew exactly who was there to support me. I was like 15 years younger than almost everyone in my class. My thoughts and feelings and experience have grown, changed, deepened, and in some way remained very steady over this period of time. I am still trying to figure out, "what is yoga" and have invited so many students to do the same. I will be reflecting over the next month on some definitions and experiences that have stayed with me.

For my 26th birthday a student who I still work with made me a t-shirt that said, "yoga is hard." This was a big turning point for me when I started to uncover that a practice of yoga is not all hearts and sunshine that yoga helps you feel how you are...really and sometimes it is tender, or in grief, so yes April yoga is still hard and nobody says why better than this author. I have been sitting with her definition of yoga for a good while now.


" is a complex method involving a radical change in the way we experience the world and conceive the process of knowing ourselves. It gives us techniques with which to analyze our own thought processes and finally to lay bare our true human identity."


Barbara Stoler Miller

Dynamo Devis

If yoga is an attitude my yoga of late has totally sucked...and I am over it! I hit my personal breaking point at a vinyasa yoga class last Thursday.

I broke down fully and now I am ready to rise and get to work.

I am starting an attitude shift by writing (and linking) to some of the local yogini's who help me not only feel less alone they help me be a better teacher and they share in my struggle for a community and my passion for practice.

Victoria Lockard
http://yoginivictoria.wordpress.com/

I met Victoria way back in the fall. She was also teaching at Motion Center and very interested having someone to practice with. We have been meeting once a week since then and sharing practice space, energy and great conversations over post practice coffee. Smart and sensitive she teaches at the BSC and at Shri.

Aja Blanc
http://www.ajablanc.com/

Aja works right upstairs from me at risd|works. I was leaving the museum a few weeks ago and someone said to me, "have you met Aja...you have to me Aja!" Aja just moved here in January while I was in India. She like me left a great yoga community and has been trying to find her place here in Providence. While she is a Kripalu trained yoga teacher she is not currently teaching (I hope that changes soon.) She wrote a blog about me trying to create a community here...I could really use her help.

Sara Davidson
http://www.fullradiance.com/

What to say about Sara? First of all she is starting to teach on Sunday mornings at Motion Center and I will be rolling my mat out at her feet this week! She is fun and fearless, soft spoken and super-shakti-fied. Getting to spend time with her is a gift and although she practices and teaches a "different" method of yoga we speak the same language. The language of yoga..ya know stretching and stuff.

I feel the power of possibility. I feel it coming....please come check out Shabda Sunday this week. I promise it can't disappoint.

Look at all these people....someday Providence?

This Sunday

Come and chant, sit, breathe, and laugh.

Shabda Sunday at Sri

"I found it to be fun, insightful, meditative and centering last time. It brought another dimension to my yoga practice, understanding of language, breathing and chanting. Used my new sanskrit vowels in Thailand :) Have a great time! I'll be there next time."

Practice First...(me)

.....all is coming (Guruji)

All those years in Philadelphia as I taught and I practiced and as I struggled I only shared that struggling portion with very few people. It seems that as students (me included) we tend to pretend that our yoga teacher was either born out of a lotus flower or maybe on its very nearby leaf.


Through this blog and this time in my life I have received some really amazing words of support from people I know and from total strangers, from students I've taught for years and some I taught for weeks or even just a day.

Over the next few weeks I will be blogging about all the juicy sexy things that happen in my Providence yoga life. I have new practice partners, events that I am excited about (Shabda Sunday THIS SUNDAY!!), and I am heading to the beach. It is the Ocean State after all. Maybe all along I have been trying to swallow the whole of the ocean. I am returning to sipping cup by cup.

Practice first.

...all is coming

and for me...learning to love the in between!

With Elation Comes Deflation

I can just see Manorama in my mind talking about Brahmananda's stick that he carried around. Why does it seem like I am always on one end of the stick? The highs and lows are finally starting to get to me...maybe this is the time start a sitting practice. After the Annie Pace experience of feeling so aligned with the tradition of yoga, experiencing the energy exchange that happens between student and teacher the stick swung and smacked me square in the solar plexus...I have been stumbling ever since.

My new yoga friend and cohort Aja wrote a blog entry about me you can read it here:

http://www.ajablanc.com/yoga/

She writes, "not only searching for her yogic community, but actively creating it."

Let me tell you this is hard work.

Over the past few months I have been to the yoga classes of the leaders in this community. I have attended a class where the teacher proudly announced to "forget the Yoga Sutra's, forget the Gita!" I have never felt so alone. So I drive and drive. I have driven to the ends of the state to meet and practice the other teachers and students, and just today I drove an hour to practice with a small group in Milton, Mass....for the first time on a Sunday leaving the Hope State.

I have so much hope for a community! Please come and practice the yoga of sound with me at Shri (the seed of light) in Pawtucket. Start to dive into the Sanskrit alphabet as it relates to yoga..a state where nothing is missing...a state of wholeness and hope.

Hope
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson

Summer and Fall Workshops

I am in the middle of trying to organize some kind of travel teaching schedule. Here is what is happening so far if you are interested in attending contact the yoga studio for registration information!

Shabda Sunday
May 23rd
Shri Yoga
Pawtucket, RI
5-6:30
No Registration Needed!!! cOMe and practice
http://shri-studio.com/

Observations and Adjustments
June 5th and 6th
Living Yoga
Concord, NH
http://www.livingyoganh.com/


Early Morning Intensive
August 9th-13th
Wake Up Yoga
Philadelphia, PA
http://www.wakeupyoga.com

stayed tuned for fall workshops in DC, Providence, and Philadelphia. If you would like to host me at your yoga space contact me at yoga@jillmanning.com

Shabda Sunday May 23 5-6:30 @ Shri

Guy in Seven Stars Bakery on Thursday, "yah know...it is all in the cycles."

OM Cycle...come fly with me!

When you don’t have anything nice to blog...don’t blog at all.

I try to keep this principle alive and find that there is no use in complaining or judging or over thinking the yoga situation I find myself in these days. It feels like I am in this great tug of war with the agony and ecstasy of it all. The aloness of practice for nearly the last year has brought me to the brink of tears but also to the edge of so many of my own personal struggles with the physical practice. The other week after I posted some of the newer practice pictures even my teacher needed to comment (which is super rare) on how much has changed.

It is not just the physical that has been blooming. My connection to sound has sharpened. Annie Pace played my harmonium last week and some chants that I heard for the first time lodged in my heart and from heart to ear to harmonium I chant and continue to chant.

For the first Sunday since I have been back from India I couldn’t bring myself to yet another yoga class. I don’t want to be a tourist any longer I want to feel at home.

I am trying to make a home for curious yoga students and teachers with my offer of Shabda Sunday. Our next meeting is on the 23rd of May 5-6:30pm at Sri in Pawtucket. The topic will be OM Cycle and while I was playing with Victoria the other day this is a BIG experience and I look forward to diving into how OM is the process of sound and feeling how all other sounds are contained in it.

Three Things

I am super excited about

Next Shabda Sunday is May 23rd at Shri Yoga from 5-6:30pm

Topic:

OM Cycle

My friend Victoria wrote a fun little blog about hanging out with me last week

http://yoginivictoria.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/bicycles-popsicles-om-cycles/


I have found another yoga friend and I am very excited about our blossoming fellowship.

http://www.fullradiance.com/

and lastly all I can say is I live in the Ocean State let the summer begin (plus the produce man around the corner sells fresh coconuts in the summer...I know that is 4 but..still!)

Maha Shakti

Shortly after I returned from Mysore this February I began searching for a community. I googled "Ashtanga Yoga New England" and found that certified Ashtanga Yoga teacher Annie Pace was coming to an area just outside Boston for a weekend in the Spring. Although I was a little fund challenged at the time I sent in my check for many reasons. Annie is a long time student and teacher who has unlike some other certified "old school" teachers has stayed connected to Mysore and has always made the pilgrimage to Mysore each year. I thought is would be a great way to meet some other New England Ashtangi's connect to a larger community. Maybe my biggest reason is simple. Annie is a girl. My Ashtanga Yoga teachers have always been men...Guruji, Sharath, and David.

It is Monday morning after spending the weekend with Shakti live wire known as Annie Pace. What an experience. All of her words aligned perfectly with all that I have been taught and experienced, but she had so much zazz.

She was silly and very serious.
She was joyful and respectful.
She was directly connected with all of us in the now and bringing us in the now to the source to the importance of tradition.

She is the embodiment of love and practice! and I want to continue to align with that!