New Beginnings…

As January comes into full swing, many of us also start to focus on this year’s promises to one’s self, our own feelings of renewal and awakening. As natural as it is to observe the seasonal changes outside, it is also as natural to feel these tides of motivation and change within as well. As

Week ?.?: Controlling Our Need to Control

In yoga class, we often hear the expression “to let go”. Besides all of the blissful images of yogic perfection that it may bring (floating down rivers, melting deeper into Hanumanasana), this is a concept that is really not as easy as yogis make it out to be. Then, to make it more confusing, you

Week 2.4: Surrendering to Silence

In keeping with our theme from last week, this week we further explore yoga’s ability to still our mind. Yet, this week we remember that silence is not to be forced or pushed. Stillness is our primordial nature, it is something into which yoga helps us expand, to which yoga helps us return. And why

Week 2.3: Back to the Beginning

What better way to understand our practice of yoga than to go back thousands of years and understand it from the very beginning? This is what part of deepening our practice is: studentship. We come to a point when we understand the basic structures of poses, we (somewhat) recognize the names of poses (something-asana?), and

Week 2.2: Progress, presence, and past… finding a balance

“Deepening one’s practice” seems to be a contradictory phrase when speaking about yoga. How could we possibly define “progress” in a “holistic” practice that tells us to abandon judgement and expectation? We could twist and turn this to mean anything. For example, it could mean: Attaining poses that are more challenging, require more strength/flexibility/both. Finding

Week 1.2: Starting Fresh…

“A man ceases to be a beginner in any given science and becomes a master in that science when he has learned that he is going to be a beginner all his life.” ~ Robin G. Collingwood (Philosopher) Here we go again! Another 10-week session to explore and deepen our practice together. And that is

Week 8.1: Asana Practice

Unfortunately, I let too much time slip by this time around before entering our practice for this consciousness-opening class (and, consequently, have forgotten the class!). However, there is one key pose that helps to stimulate one’s 7th chakra, Sahasrara chakra, and to tie up our journey through the chakras, described below. However, most of all,

Week 8.1: Expanding our Understanding

We have reached our final stop on this journey through the chakras: chakra 7, Sahasrara chakra. The image associated with this chakra is thousandfold lotus, with some petals reaching up towards the sky, and others reaching down, grounding into the lower chakras. This is symbolic in itself: the opening of this chakra depends on a

Week 7.1: Asana Practice

As we move up past our neck and further into our head chakras, the focus becomes less on grounding and more on liberation. The balance between both– our roots into the Self and the Earth and that which connects us to something greater, something above, and the universe– is the goal that we attempt to

Week 7.1: Perceiving the Patterns

Where the fifth chakra expressed symbols as sound, the sixth chakra takes this a step further and allows us to see patterns and symbols in our lives as visual images. As we’ve passed through the neck into the head, we travel even farther away from the realm of instincts and the unconscious mind, transcending personal