Congratulations to Kay Ryan!

With everything that life has sailed my way the past few months (most notably new work in addition to teaching), it’s been hard to keep this blog current.

Still, the essays in the archives on YLS continue to have relevance. Rest assured I haven’t abandoned the site.

Earlier this week, while enjoying the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, I learned that one of my favorite “end of class” poets, Kay Ryan, has been named the next Poet Laureate of the United States. I call her an “end of class” poet because — as my students know — I like to read a poem at the beginning of savasana. Her short, tight poems, which one critic likened to mousetraps, are clever, thoughtful, and inspiring.

This is what she had to say to The San Francisco Chronicle (read the story here) in the wake of her appointment:

“Poetry should leave you feeling freer and not more burdened. I like to think of all good poetry as providing more oxygen in the atmosphere. Poems just make it easier to breathe.”

How perfect is that for yoga?

Here is an essay I wrote last year about opening the heart center. It was inspired by Ryan’s poem “Chinese Foot Chart”.

Namasté.

Playfulness In Yoga: My first yoga comic!

I know I’ve said in previous posts that I’m an advocate of trying new things.

At the beginning of the year, I suggested to my students that they choose a pose and work toward it throughout the year, breaking down the components and building their skills along the way. It’s important to have a sense of humor and lightheartedness in doing this. The yoga mat is no place for grim determination (we have our desks and highways for that!). I think that in the practice of yoga, it’s important to have curiosity and a sense of exploration that reaches beyond the things we do over and over again in yoga classes. One of my favorite yoga concepts is “lela”… the happy, creative life force. So in that spirit, I bring you my adventures with Visvamitrasana.

Namasté & Blessed Be.

In Brilliant Color: Yoga and Allergies

I grew up listening to the music of Kate Wolf, a North Coast singer/songwriter, who described the “golden rolling hills of California”.

It’s true: For most of the year, the hills of Northern California are shades of gold and tan, the colors of field mice, cougars, and deer. But for a brief period in the spring, after the winter rains, and before the sun begins to bake our hillsides, the landscape around my home glows with shades of green. (An artist friend once said he couldn’t paint Sonoma County without a healthy tube of chromium oxide green.) But before the hills green, there is a brief period when it seems we’re awash in yellow.

Time for Personal Incrementalism

I have to say, I’m not a fan of New Years’ resolutions because I feel they are usually based in self-deprecation.

It’s as though we’ve developed a national tradition of beginning each year by picking ourselves apart, finding a fault, and setting a goal that will focus our attention on that fault, all year long.

I ask you: What kind of a way is that to begin a new year?

More About Ass-Kicking…

I’ve been thinking about yesterday’s post, and I feel the need to add this:

Honestly, I think there is a western preoccupation with getting our ass kicked, and I don’t mean always in the physical sense.

After writing this post, it occurred to me, that many people – and dare I say, especially women – are taught that personal gain somehow comes through feeling inadequate.

No Ass-Kicking for the Holidays, Please.

This past summer, I found myself in a social situation with another yoga teacher. Someone at our table was asking her about her classes, and she was testifying to their toughness: “Come to my classes and I’ll kick your ass,” she said.

She seems like a nice person, and so I chalked her response up to youth, enthusiasm, and misguided marketing. (I even wondered if I should write this, because if she sees it, I don’t want her to feel chastised. We simply have different viewpoints.)

Blessed Be.

Recently, I heard someone say that living is the only condition with a guaranteed 100 percent mortality rate.

And, indeed, it would be a rare person who reaches adulthood, even early adulthood, without having experienced the death of someone important to them.

What’s In A Sound?

Sometimes I think yoga practitioners are firmly divided into two camps: Those that chant, and those that don’t.

Those that don’t often feel self-conscious about chanting, are reluctant to chant something they don’t understand, or feel that chanting will conflict with their belief system. (For more about this, see my previous posts about yoga and religion). And, I recognize that many people come to the mat with a desire for a no-frills, strictly physical experience.

More about Yoga and Religion

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by Pat Robertson’s view of yoga.

However, I thought that – in follow up to my earlier post, Yoga and Losing Your Religion – I’d share it with you. (Needless to say, Pat and I don’t see eye-to-eye on this, but I’m not surprised by that either.)

Yoga and Losing Your Religion

Several years ago, one of my students brought a woman friend to class. She thought her friend, a Protestant minister, could benefit from yoga.

The woman was very polite during class, but gave my friend a stern little talk in the car on the way home. She couldn’t come to classes, she said, because it would be in conflict with her religion.

Poetry in Motion

I think that one of the hardest concepts for new yoga students to get their head around is that asana, or yoga poses, aren’t static.

They aren’t poses to be struck and held; they are a framework for movement, opening, and exploration – no matter how subtle these actions may be.

More About Expansion and Contraction… Jelly Fish!

On the dual subjects of expansion and contraction, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I’m posting this short video of the jelly fish at the aquarium.

Created by Stacy Alexander, the images are set to Ben Harper’s cover of Strawberry Fields.

Expansion and Contraction

Recently, on a fall trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I found myself mesmerized by the movement of the sardines in the large kelp forest tank.

Watching the school expand and contract, I was struck by how this seemed to occur without communication or effort.

About Yoga and Weight

I don’t think anyone is going to argue with what I’m about to say: Americans are obsessed with transformation.

This may be rooted in the Protestant beginnings of the nation, or it may be deeper in the human psyche. But it seems that now, more than at any other point in time, we are culturally fascinated with media images of people who have undergone physical transformation, and the airwaves and print media abound with content focusing on weight loss, plastic surgery, miracle dentistry, and cosmetic overhauls.

Opening the heart center (and a foot chart)

One of my friends recently took a beginning yoga workshop. She has practiced a little yoga at home and decided she would try it with experienced instruction.

I know she has a physical history of childhood heart surgeries and had recently been spending quite a bit of her personal energy healing some emotional childhood hurts. So I encouraged her to go, but suggested she tell the teacher about her medical history.

Not long after the end of the workshop, I met her for tea. She looked happy and relaxed.

“How was it?” I asked.

A final, colorful, comment on Falwell

A friend of mine – one who obviously knows me well – emailed me this cartoon yesterday…

I found it so funny, I thought I’d share it with you. It’s an “Opus” panel by Berkeley Breathed, and it seems like the perfect follow up to my post about the death of Jerry Falwell. I sincerely hope Mr. Breathed won’t mind the use of his image here.

Namasté.

Another thought about yoga and gender…

It’s funny how once I start thinking about something, the theme seems to reappear throughout my daily experiences.

Not long after I started working on my last post about the western feminine gender polarity of yoga, I was in a class with Tony Briggs at Turtle Island Yoga in Marin County.

Yoga and Gender

Historically, yoga has belonged in the domain of men. It was developed by and for male bodies, and often draws on the language of male experience.

Consider, for example, the Virabhadrasana, or Warrior, series of poses, which depict bodies in battle poses. (Click here to see Warrior I, II, and III.)

Yet in the United States yoga studios are overrun with female practitioners. As teachers we are taught to expect less than 20 percent of our students to be men in a general, public class. It would seem that part of the westernization of yoga has been the feminization of it, as well.

But what about intimate relationships?

After my last post about metta, or maitri, a friend posed this question to me:

“Many meditation exercises to develop metta forbid you to focus on someone with whom you’re romantically invoved or sexually interested. Why is this? And, how, then, does metta become extended into intimate relationships?”

I’m certainly no expert in Buddhist or yogic philosophy, but I thought I would share my interpretation, as I shared it with her.

Making Love

In a previous post, I’ve mentioned maitri – the yogic concept of lovingkindness that is known as metta in the Buddhist traditions – the practice of unconditional love.

Loving the whole world is a good idea, right?

But what about the guy who honked at me in traffic yesterday? Do I have to love him?