Yoga

The Next Step –Yoga!

Today is the day that I finally get a chance to announce to the world that I’ve signed up for formal yoga training! Don’t let the words here fool you. I’m very excited to have committed to myself. You can talk about something everyday forever, but it’s a totally different story if you act upon it! I’ve signed up. I’ve started the official work. The energy feels right.

Speaking of energy, if feels like there is a surplus of it coming my way in support of this change. The Schedule was extremely tight on the day of the orientation, but I made it there with five minutes to spare. Normally, no one would think of that as a big deal, but I’d just spent four hours in the car driving. I kept my thoughts clear the entire time and, luck come my way for there weren’t any roadblocks put in my way (literally!).

The program is a 200 hour certification process and it’s put together by the owner(s) of 8 Limbs Yoga in Seattle. It looks to be ‘life’ friendly – that is, you can actually work it into your schedule. My concern (before meeting Anne Phyfe), was, would I fit in? I think of myself as a pretty grounded guy. And, of course, I’m not 25. Turns out that Anne Phyfe said all the right things to give me confidence that it will be better than … work. And, to take that a bit further, the energy came across as very much supportive with regards to my own quest in life.

This is really good news. I have the feeling that the schooling will help me enhance what I’m already doing and provide the opportunity for me to get to know the formal language associated with yoga.

The program officially starts next month, yet I’m already part way through some of the required reading material. I’m looking forward to critiquing and sharing, for The Path With Heart matches really well with lots of the other material that I’ve blogged about.

‘til next time, do onto others as you would like done onto you!

In My Room

Wow.  If only in my room. Lol.  This video came my way today and I’ve got to share!

I caption reads that this is Meghan Currie.  You can find more info about her here.

I love the way she uses the entire room. There’s no mat to ‘keep her in the box’. The time lapse makes this look like a dance routine. She makes this look really easy.

Enjoy!

It’s more than a bumper sticker people

There are lots of people that talk about doing it and then there are very few people that actually follow through. It’s like stating your dreams out loud, but never finding the time to live them. Are you someone that simply states your dreams? Or are you a doer? Are there items crossed off your list? Or has the list never actually been made?

I absolutely love coming across doers. Every time I recognize it, it leaves me feeling more inspired to continue to fill out my own experiences. Doing something is so much richer than simply talking about it.

When looking into how I might be able to attend a Wanderlust Festival, I came across a video by Kelly Morris that touch me and I wanted to share. It’s a bit long (35+ minutes) but the underlying philosophy many ring true with you as it did for me.

Hopefully, you can overlook her sharp, hard, abrasive almost abusive exterior for there is some strength that shines through that’s pretty powerful. In a way, I felt sad watching her present the lesion for she’s living it herself. We all live through stuff – get caught up in stuff – and never really know it until we get through it.

Here’s the video, but keep in mind that the critic in me will be waiting for you when this is over.

My favorite part starts 17:25 minutes into the video she’s talking about how you hear yoga instructors always saying your supposed to open you heart. It went something like this: “… Open your heart, Oh God … Talk about a hallmark sentiment. Right yeah. It’s more than a bumper sticker people. You have to actually do it. You have to actually do it.” Did it make you laugh like it did for me? Hey, if you skipped the video, just fast forward to this location. Stop around 17:00 and let it flow.

It’s all about actually doing.

A few months ago I attended a yoga practice with an instructor that I’d never been to before. I setup like normal for what I know will be a ‘practice’ and proceeded to take on the full student role. Ultimately, I’m there to practice and the role of the instructor is to guide the students along. Well, this instructor had studied yoga to the point where she intellectually knew what could hurt you and how to protect yourself. Well, every asana came with the full intellectual understanding of the pose. There was so much talk that after the hour passed I remember saying that I’d just been to an intellectual yoga class where the instructor talked all about yoga, but we never really did it. I haven’t been back.

I don’t think Kelly Morris would have tolerated the entire hour with this instructor.  

Back to the video.

Some things that she mentioned aren’t in sync with some of the stuff that I’ve mentioned in my blogging and are different then what I feel inside.

Her talk about anger seemed to come across a little abrasive to me. It’s at the point of about 9:40. She says something like “… It’s said that anger is the number of affliction (ah) besieging the western world, anger. And I asked you ‘are you angry?’ and how many of you raised your hands, like 2 courageous souls. Really? You don’t get angry? Come on… you all look so serious. You look angry right now.“

It might simply be that I’m troubled by a technicality, but she asked earlier if people where angry – not do you ever get angry. When I sense the feelings of the occupants of that room, I do not sense anyone as being angry. Sure, they might be serious, but not angry. Now, do these people ever get angry? That’s a different story.

I’ll forgive for its good entertainment and the underlying story is so much more powerful.

In the question and answer section, she brings up a good point at 24:30 minutes in. It ends something like “… and that’s all you can do is try – that’s why it’s called a practice. If it was easy we’d all be there already.” That seems logical. But I have to wonder about this a bit.

First off, she mentions ‘trying’ a lot in the video. Try to stand up. Can you? No. Trying gets you nowhere. Now, stand up. Does that work? Yes. Trying to do something leaves you in a state of never getting started and never completing. It’s the ‘talking about it phase’ of making your dream. You either do, or you don’t. Trying if failure.

The contradiction that I’m faced with in Kelly’s words is that yoga is a practice. It is the act of doing. You don’t try to do it. You just do it. When you think about the physical asana’s, you simply do them. You don’t talk about doing them. There is nothing open for debate, they are just done.

The same idea holds for opening your heart. You don’t try. You do. You don’t talk about it. You practice.

The last part that also gets me a bit is that idea that it’s hard (or easy). What’s hard to one person may be rather simple to another. When I think about what I’ve experienced regarding my asana practice is that the moves aren’t really all that hard. Sure you’re body may provide resistance, but that resistance comes from within. If you resist, the asana appears harder.

If you think about what it really means to resist, you’ll realize that to resist something is an emotional thing rather than simply a physical thing. The whole easy and hard argument is simply a matter of you making it what you want. It doesn’t have to be hard!

At the very end, the most interesting thing that she says is something that I completely – one hundred percent – agree with. It starts about 34:25 minutes in “The Buddha said the next Buddha was going to be not a one single human Being, but the songa – He said the songa or community of like minded people was going to be the next bubba. We’re going to do it together. We’re going to hold hands and do it together. Collaboratively. Are you in?”

This is something that I’ve recently come to realize. As we evolve, we will do so on the feeling planes of existence. This is rooted in the power of the heart rather than the power of the mind. This process of being a realized Being (as she says) is not something that will occur for people who simply talk about it. It will come to those who actually practice. You have to do it. You don’t try.

The really exciting part for me is that I get to see people learning how to open their hearts via the net! YouTube is an amazing evolutionary source. As people actually practice – and record it – that act of doing can be witnessed by another so as to learn how they did it. Little by little, we will learn from practicing – opening our hearts – together. It will be a collective awakening. We will all lead each other.

Maybe that’s way I spend so much time scouting YouTube for helpful little videos. It’s like doing physical yoga in a community – you’re with someone while you practice. The energy is stronger. The energy creates a feedback loop that makes it easier to … feel.

I’m pretty excited about it. I’m glad to have found this little video from Kelly.

Oh, one more thing. I get the feeling that Kelly is really holding back in the Wanderlust video for I found another little video of her.

You notice that growl! Or, better yet, did you feel that growl? It looks like Kelly has spent time learning about energy flow and it just jumps out at you in a split second! Can you tell where she gets her drive? Lol.

So, it’s not just a bumper sticker people – you’re supposed to actually do it.

Awakening to the Challenge of the Heart

At a very young age, I learned that what exists in the spiritual world manifests in our physical world for the two are intimately tied together. I was taught basic cause and effect principles and actually put them into practice. To (almost) grossly over simply the situation, Thoughts are Things. But, as you already know, that is a bit of a play on words for if you look up the classic definition of a thing you’ll find something like (thanks to reference.com):

a material object without life or consciousness; an inanimate object.

This definition pretty much limits a thing into the physical realm. But thoughts are innately not things, but rather an action. When you look up ‘thought’ via Wikipedia we find:

“Thought” generally refers to any mental or intellectual activity involving an individual’s subjective consciousness. It can refer either to the act of thinking or the resulting ideas or arrangements of ideas. Similar concepts include cognition, sentience, consciousness, and imagination.[1]

As you’ve seen in my previous posts, thoughts are energetic representations of things that we’ve experienced (or created). When thinking, Your Being moves energy that vibrates with the resonance of something that we’ve experienced. When you think of an apple, Your Being understands that energy. It can toy with that energy in many different ways. Put simply, you can re-experience the taste, smell or texture as physical sensations. Or, you can visualize what an apple looks like based on what you’ve seen and it can appear as if you’re looking at it. That energy appears real – because it is real.

So, when we experience Thoughts are Things, we see that at the root of the act of thinking, there is energy that Your Being uses to recreate the experience which is, pretty much, a thing but it’s manipulated on a conscious way. In other words –

Your consciousness manipulates energy that affects physical matter

Looking at this slightly differently, one example that I like to use that demonstrates this concept that thoughts affect matter – cause and effect – can be seen when thinking about the thoughts of sex. If your current state of mind is one of simply reading this blog post, sex is probably the farthest thing from your mind. Yet, if you where to take a few seconds to think of/visualize erotic sexual images, sounds and actions, you’ll probably notice that your body responds within seconds of the thoughts! The energy of the root chakra is quick to respond to your thoughts. Standing up, moving, and other physical activities fall into a similar category, but they are almost unconscious actions so people don’t pay much attention. The thing to note is that thoughts directly react on the body.

Now, why is this important to me today?

Well, for some time now, I’ve known that a spinal condition that I have where a disc is slightly out of alignment directly between my shoulder blades is related to my experiences of love. When I was younger, I went to a chiropractor for quite a while getting adjustments but it never seemed to really make a difference. A couple years ago, I thought about going to a chiropractor again, but I have reservations and I started yoga instead. The Yoga has been wonderful and I added massage therapy (which I really love). I can say that the area between my shoulder blades is stronger and more flexible. But it’s still not healed. To me, love is still mostly an intellectual thing – it doesn’t flow freely.

So, what triggered this writing today was the thought (intuitive knowing) that I received while investigating a relatively famous internet yoga instructor. I somehow ended up reading through the schedule of yoga workshops for the Whistler Yoga Conference and found the following posted by Dashama.

In this magical exploration of life’s greatest gift: LOVE. The “back” of the heart is where we store many of our earlier emotional tension from childhood, relationships and unmet expectations from life. Explore how working with asanas, breath, visualization, and mantras we learn to release that which is not serving you to become more free to love and be loved, to share compassion, forgiveness, empathy and joy.

When reading this, it was like a light bulb lit up bringing lots of different memories together all at the same time.

I immediately brought the thought home thinking about my out-of-alignment spine. But this time, the point of view for viewing it was not between my shoulder blades but rather behind my heart! This is the first time that I’ve ever thought about this physical condition from this point of view. I believe it opened my eyes to new healing energies.

The follow up thoughts flowed through like a flood of rushing memories. I remembered a number of comments that I’ve heard people tell me like – “you’re the most discipline man I’ve ever met”, or “you need to relax and go with the flow” or “you’re so hard on yourself” or “you’re so hard on yourself (emotionally).

But more importantly, my own thoughts about how I view myself over time. When I was younger, for some reason, I never gained the ability to love myself. With the help of TV, I learned to idolize an emotionless character (Mr. Spock from Star Trek) which I did my best to imitate. These actions helped to take me further away from the joy of emotions and more particularly – away from the actions that go along with the emotions of love. When I would greet someone, it would be a hand shake rather than a hug. Rather than feeling how the other people felt, I would logically analyze the situation exploring the cause and effect and offer guidance, but I would keep my distance regarding feeling the other person.

Memories of relationships came up. Knowing the principle of what you give out you get back I look at relationships that I’ve developed over the years and they have been mostly based on intellectual qualities like – trust, honesty, respect and loyalty. The characteristic that’s missing is love.

Then the classic why doesn’t anyone love me statement ran through my thoughts not in a pity me type of way, but rather as a – you get back what you give out – type way. This fed into the realization that my friendships are strong, but built upon characteristics that are less venerable than love – because I don’t project that emotion as I believe I should be.

This then linked into the unmet expectations from life written in that same yoga class statement above where I feel that I’ve undermined myself. I’ve always known that I’m here on Earth to learn love, but I have a very strong fear of failure.

Armed with this ‘new light’ and a few extra minutes to surf the web, I Googled up information about the Heart Chakra and found the following from HowToOpenChakras.com:

The 4th Chakra

The Heart Chakra is the 4th Chakra, located near a person’s heart in the center of their body. It rules the heart, circulatory and respiratory systems, plus a person’s arms, shoulders, hands, diaphragm, ribs/breasts and thymus gland.

It’s where the emotion of love comes from and is also related to some of the other positive emotions such as joy, happiness, integrity, respect, compassion, understanding and generosity. Through the Heart Chakra a person is able to connect with other humans and show love or affection. It is also the symbol of spiritual security and healing.

Symptoms of Blocked Heart Chakra

There are many bad occurrences if someone’s heart chakra is blocked. … It is also where emotions such as guilt, rejection, and not being able to love oneself occur. You will also feel symptoms of guilt, hatred, self-pity and paranoia and your emotions will rule your every move. You will be a cold and unfeeling individual unable to love anyone, not even yourself.

In extreme cases a blocked Heart Chakra can lead to diseases such as heart problems, asthma, lung and breast cancers, pneumonia, and upper back and shoulder issues.

Symptoms of a Balanced Heart Chakra

If your Heart Chakra is balanced you will be a compassionate and generous human being. You will honor feelings such as respect, honesty and happiness and will be considerate to the needs of others. You will also be able to feel love for the people around you. You will be able to have good relationships and will have self respect for yourself and others.

In the last section, the How To Open Chakras site states that if the heart chakra is balanced, you have a bunch of positive traits. Well, when I think about my way of life, I mostly honor these characteristics. Which makes me believe that I’m generally balanced, but not up to my full potential.

The bold italics above in the second paragraph really caught my eye. I think that I can connect to other humans, but the memories that passed through my head when I read the Yoga Class description led me to believe that I really might not be connecting to others with love and affection – but rather with the other listed characteristics!

Putting this all together, it appears to me that my fear of failure has manifested itself physically – behind my heart, in my body. The thoughts that I have created manifested as a miss-aligned disc in my spine. The defenses that I’ve built around myself intellectually has ‘hardened’ the center of my chest.

Ultimately, the reason why I have this condition is because I created it! Through my thoughts and actions, I created the energy patterns that manifested themselves as this physical condition. The reason why I’ve never seen any progress towards resolving this particular issue is because I continue to maintain the same thought patterns and resulting actions.

That’s now going to change!

A long time ago I blogged that I realized that “I’d been doing it all wrong”. Because I understand the truth of cause and effect, the fact that I was physically and emotionally exhausted, I understood that my actions had led me into that state of being. Well, this epiphany is similar to that previous one.  The difference is that with the previous situation there were so many physical and emotional issues that a general overall change was needed. In this case, it’s a specific physical manifestation. There is a specific thought pattern (or action) that needs to be replaced.

I am excited for this change in my life! I’m still unsure how it’s going to unfold, but I have a feeling that it will involve breaking down resistive barriers and allowing myself to be venerable. I know that I have the strength to accomplish this personal challenge. I know I have the understanding. I can picture myself behaving different than today – which is a huge change!

It’s now time to act.

Next time you give someone a hug, think of the words that I’ve written here. Allow yourself to be venerable and know that you’ll be safe.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll perform another back bend – my least favorite and most venerable yoga move…. Now I believe I understand the reason why.

A little Flowmotion?

How does she do this? Well, ok, so she might have made this routine up, but how is anyone else going to be able to do this? I challenge you to watch the video a couple times and see if you can describe the leg movements at the start and transition point!

I get – up and out (like the splits form three legged dog) – down and under (for a two limb balance) – up and over (three legged dog with hip opener) – with leg bent circle the leg down and circle around (and up) to end up back in the three legged dog with hip opener – knee down to chest only to swing up almost to splits – circle down nearly to the flow only to swing up to three legged dog – and then swing down to a lunge with the foot outside the hands. … I still don’t think I’ve got this motion down!  I’ve watched the first 20 seconds about 10 times!  Dang. 

Now, your turn!  Here is Sarah Tomson Beyer instructing her flowmotion in San Diego last month.

I love this little flow routine!

I love the way she flips her dog! It’s both artsy and athletic at the same time. Taking that to swing into side plank is a nice transition. She makes it look so easy. And then at the end she hops back to Chaturanga Dandasana. That’s a nice touch to the artistic routine.

I’m going to have to learn this. I wonder if there is a place (near home) where people practice yoga like this? Maybe she’ll come out with a DVD. That will bring it home!

Hey, I did a little searching on the web and I can’t help but wonder if this next video has the second part of the routine that seemed to end in the first video. You think?

I can’t imagine the class actually being able to get this routine in one take like this. … Unless those students are REALY good! I’d have to do it over and over before it would start to sink in. It’s too bad that the video is cut off just after Sarah’s performance (instruction) for it would be nice to see how well the students picked it up.

Just had a thought. J  If you teach longer flow moves like this chances are the students are going to come back for class after class in order to learn the routine. I wouldn’t expect anyone to get it in the first class. Maybe that’s job security for her. Lol.

Ok. One more. This one is more like a commercial, but check out the setting! Wow! I would love to go to a yoga studio that looked like that!

Yoga in the Gallery! I love all the art on the walls and the big open setting! I could do without the white floors (prefer wood), but I love the modern look of the place. I love the energy of this place – and look at all the students!  I wonder if that’s what yoga is like in the big city?

Ok. Tomorrow I’m going to give the little routine in the top video a try. Hopefully, I’ll be able to remember the leg movements.

If you give it a try let me know!