Another Year, Another Downward Facing Dog

So a new year. When I was a kid, time was endless.  A new year didn't make me think time was ticking away, it just made me think: 5 more months till summer, and 11 more long months until the next Christmas. Maybe it's a sign that I'm getting older that I appreciate how fast the years go by. Maybe it's my children that are growing at an astonishing rate that makes me more acutely aware of how fast time passes and how little time I have to figure out this whole parenting thing. My mom tells me that's what grandkids are for, and I'm starting to get it.

Whatever the case may be, I love a new year. Always have. It's probably why I don't mind moving, or first days of school; I love a fresh start. A blank slate. The year gets to be whatever you want it to be. In yoga we practice letting go and living in the moment. We don't hold our progress stagnant by dwelling on the past, or holding fast to our expectations of the future.

I hope if you have a current yoga practice you commit yourself to continued education in 2011. Make a goal to accept where you are right now and work with that. Society's mind set that we've all been raised on of  must-be-the-best, makes us assume that a good goal for the new year would be, "Perfect my yoga practice." or "Master such and such pose.."
I'd challenge you to make no such goals.
Instead reflect on what you've learned so far about yourself using yoga as a tool, and ask yourself, what more can I learn? Can I dedicate myself to a more consistent practice? A more compassionate one? One with less critical self talk. Less straining, more listening?

It's a hard practice to get our minds around, but the sooner we accept our non perfection, the sooner we can accept ourselves for who we are, and that's where the best work is done.

My teaching schedule for the new year is changing. I will be working the next few months on higher levels of yoga certification and will need to downsize my class time for a bit. I will be teaching Tuesday and Thursday nights at the Robero Kaelin Jiu-Jitsu studio. The time will still be 8:30PM, and I will be letting go of morning classes for the time being. Also, the studio owners have set the monthly rate to 40 dollars and the drop in rate is still 10. It breaks down to 5 dollars a class. Please text or shoot me an email if you plan on signing up or continuing on for the new year. New rates and times apply in January. I will keep you informed of other places I hope to teach in the coming months.
I have been overwhelmed these past 6 months with the support of my classes. I love teaching and you have been a huge part of why that is.
Whether with me or someone else, I hope you will continue on in your exploration of yoga. It is a gift to know one's self: Our strengths and our weakness, our courage and our fear, all within the safe bounds of our mat.

May 2011 bless you with the stillness of mind to take it all in.
Much love and Namaste.

~Melanie

"Knowing others is intellegence, knowing ourselves is wisdom."~Lao Tsu

Every morning during my stay in Tulum for yoga training we'd start the day off with a silent walk down the beach. At first I found it painfully awkward to walk next to people and not engage in conversation. It felt like I was purposefully swallowing perfectly good observations just for the sake of being silent. Probably the hardest to not acknowledge was this guy:

Every day he was down at the beach doing some sort of Tai-Chi/Yoga combo. He was so darling and so focused. Plus also so old and wrinkly cute you just wanted to put him in your pocket or something.

That probably sounded weird. (shrug) Oh well.

As the days passed I came to embrace the silence. I loved how the quiet would fill me and yet, I could feel the energy of all the people around me. I knew every time we passed by the little old man we were all thinking the same thing. Could feel everyone smiling when we'd see this cute blond naked baby playing in the ocean every morning with his Grandfather. Waving enthusiastically to our group; either oblivious or rather proud to the fact that he was totally naked.

It was amazing that we could be having our own internal experience and still feel supported and connected with those around us.

Much like a yoga session. :)

The last day of our silent walks, our teachers took us just a little further down the beach. As we made our way to turn back, there was this sign.

Class is going to feel different every time we come to our mats. Sometimes we are dealing with a lot of resistance, both physical and mental, even emotional. We can choose to let that resistance distract us and discourage us, or we can let it push and inspire us to investigate and explore what we're feeling. Nothing distracts more in yoga and consequently in life, as critical thoughts. We practice learning to enjoy the sweet silence we create with our breath. Slowing down, approaching each pose and focusing on not how it looks, but how we react to it. There is a contentment that comes from breaking down internal barriers, and a healing in final relaxation that I just so much want people to have as a tool in their lives.
If you come to yoga to do the postures perfectly, I'm afraid you are missing the point.

People will always tell me that they know yoga is a great workout, and it is. But it's just so much more if you let it.

Come on, aren't we ALL winners?

Drumroll please...according to random.org, the winners of the first ever Project Yoga contest drawing are: Melinda Bishop and Nikki Kitchen! (Email me your address at Facebook or mtaylor193@gmail.com)

Congrats guys, you are the reciepents of a relaxation package put together by yours truly. It contains some aromatherapy, a massager and of course, chocolate, among other things! So close your eyes, breath in goodness and go to your happy place. I've included one of mine, feel free to borrow it if needed.

If it wasn't you this time, (especially if you are named Jamie Anderson, and threatend to never do yoga again if she didn't win:) do not fret, (or quit yoga), I will do many more contests on this here blog. I love that you guys are here and reading and will always reward you for that support.

In between prizes, I hope you'll enjoy following this blog. I am certainly enjoying writing it. New post coming soon.

Love and Namaste,

Melanie

Your Best Class Is Your Next Class

Yogis rock. Seriously.

I had an audition Saturday for a local gym. If you haven't had the opportunity of trying out for a fitness instructor position, let me tell you, it's an experience.
There were about 16 ladies there, all trying out for different things. About a dozen were there for classes ranging from Zumba to Cardio Kickboxing and of course, why I was there...Yoga. There's a not at all intimidating panel of 3 judges who give you 3-5 minutes to conduct "your class." The rest of the participants are the students in the class who you then teach for the judges.

The yogis in the room were not hard to spot as we were the only group of people trying to Kickbox in our barefeet. You'd think the whole experience would just be beyond bizarre, and in fairness, it is a bit. What surprised me most was the commradary. After everyone's section people clapped and were extremely encouraging. We were all going after limited job slots, so we technically should have been throwing intimdating stink eyes at each other, messing up on the routines like, "well gosh, if I can't follow her, probably no one can..."

It was an exhausting couple of hours but in between breaks the yogis came together like magnets with words of encouragement, support and jokes about our barefeet. But it was exciting to see in action that consistantly practicing contentment, gratitude and love on our mats, really can't seem to help but spill over into our daily lives. Imagine that??

I start my days with prayer and I usually always ask for things like patience, gratitude, strength, and love for those around me. While I know that I have been blessed at times with an extra measure of these things when I have really needed it, I know I can't just be given these gifts. They need to be cultivated and nurtured on a daily basis so that I posses these gifts at all times. I love that yoga is simply a tool in my spiritual toolbelt that helps me work on these things. Helps me get in touch with who I am; to see what motivates me, what paralyzes me. Where I am strong, and where there is room to work. And if an added benefit over time happens to be a toned yoga butt, well then, who's to complain? I know I wouldn't.

Yep. Yogis rock. They rock because they recognize if their best is always enough, well then, so must everyone else's.

"Yoga is the perfect opportunity to be curious about who you are." ~Jason Crandell

Okay, just...stay with me on this one. Watch first and then read.



A friend posted this on his facebook wall the other day, and it's played back in my head like a loop. Being a product of the 90's and hailing from the Chicago area, I was front and center for the decade that belonged to one, Micahel Jordan. I can remember getting together with friends just to watch a Bulls games. And we were teenagers. And girls.
Watching the Bulls play in the 90's, you knew you weren't just watching a game, but something special. That it perhaps might be a long time before you were apart of something like this again.

I love the message of this commercial spot. I've been trying for two days to put my finger on why I love it. What I think it comes down to is that it doesn't matter if you followed Michael Jordan's career or Lebron's for that matter. (Be married to a sports fanatic and have 3 boys though, and you just might follow it against your will.)

In this day and age especially, there is this sense of entitlement. An ever constant message that the accumilation of things, praise, and circumstance will bring you to who you are meant to be in this life. You see someone like Michael Jordan play and one could easily get lost in the glamour of it all. It's humbling to be reminded of where he came from. The hours upon hours on the court and in the gym that were not seen by the fans. Day upon day of training where there were no flashbulbs from the cameras, high fives by teammates or praise by reporters.
It's interesting to be reminded that our true, authentic and incredible self is already here. But we must practice it, cultivate it. If we have this notion that we will just one day become who we were meant to me, we may find we let a lifetime pass us by, not living to our full potential. But imagine what would happen if we worked with what we have, consistantly, every day, even when the only person who knows we are working at it is us?
We need to be present and be available at every moment of our life, and that takes effort. Just like the sculptor at his block of marble, we will discover, once we chip away at what isn't needful, the greatness that was already there. We just have to be willing to do the work.

Strike A Pose

A way to make an idea go from a thought to a concrete plan is very simple.

Talk to your mother.

As it turns out, my mom has quite a few ideas for this yoga blog of mine. I believe all I did was mention it and before the whole sentence was out of my mouth, she was laying out a complex and diversified marketing plan. I then brought up my idea for doing a "pose of the week" type segment and she waved her hand and was all, "oh, yes, of course..." Like, please, you're just now thinking of that?! My sister just emailed me and asked if I'd tape one of my classes and send her the DVD. Even offering to pay for shipping. Apparently my family has a whole yoga vision for me, and I just need to keep up.

My family rules.

So, long story short, this week's pose that I'd like to focus on for a quick moment is: Half Pigeon.


(I like to start in downward facing dog. Bring your right knee to the outside of your right wrist and place leg on the floor, right heel in line with left hip. Slide your left leg all the way back. Inhale, draw length out of your spine and on an exhale bring your chest and head to the floor, walking your hands out in front of you. Try to center your hips, not leaning too far to either side. Hold for at least a couple of minutes, repeat on left side.)

To be truthful, this pose, which is a hip opening stretch, well, I used to hate it.

Loathe it really.

We'd get into it, and there was no "staying present." I just wanted out. I'd literally count the seconds knowing that final relaxation pose was coming soon and to just focus on that, instead of the discomfort in my hips. Now mind you, it wasn't ever painful, just a muscular discomfort that I didn't enjoy. (What do you think, politics in my future??)

It wasn't until my teacher training in Mexico this summer that I truly came to understand this pose, and have come to love it. I dare say it's now one of my favorites. My trainers would say, "Often the poses that challenge us the most, are the ones we need the most." Don't you just hate it when the teacher is right??

Our entire bodies are the ultimate super computer. They store data. Everything that happens to it, both physically and emotionally. The stress and tension we experience from exercise to a challenging day at work or with the family has to go somewhere. It makes the body a natural human lie detector. If you are storing stress, anxiety, or any kind of emotional buildup, your body will tell you so. And the hips are huge storage depots for stress and tension. Hip opening stretches in yoga are not only beneficial from a physical standpoint as hip replacement surgery is among the top surgeries performed, but the emotional benefit is huge. We give the body a chance to work through emotions and stress the body has stored for us for later. We can either work through it, or continue to store it and let it make us sick.

Breathing deep and really staying present through this discomfort is challenging because, let's be honest, when is dealing with our "stuff" every really pleasant? Who wants to just sit in the middle of all their emotional baggage and really look at it? But I tell you, once you get over the initial scare of it...it's actually kind of fantastic. Freeing actually. To take charge of our emotional well being; To not be afraid of the things we think will scare us or challenge us more than we can handle?

Our yoga mats are a safe environment to face our fears. Teachers would say that, and I never fully understood until I applied it to Half Pigeon. It's helped me to apply this same understanding to other poses that challenge me, and it's been emotionally transforming.

I've cried in Pigeon, I've laughed, I've felt content, I've felt anxious. I now work to let it all come up. Welcome it even. It means that I'm getting better at being emotionally honest and letting go of the things that scare me, make me sad or even prideful.

Sometimes we have to sit in the dark to fully appreciate the light.

Thanksgiving Week Class Schedule

Come practice gratitude this week on your mats! This week's schedule is as follows:

Nov. 23 Tuesday-8:30 PM

Nov. 24 Wednesday-8:30 AM

Nov. 25 Thursday- NO CLASS, enjoy your turkey!

Nov. 26 Friday-8:30 AM *Special 75 minute holiday burn workout.* Come undo the damage!

I understand some of you are black Friday shoppers. But I scare easily and if you do too, come join me Friday morning!

Thought for the week:

I mentioned earlier that I've been reading Amazing Yoga, a book written by my yoga trainers. Something that has really hit home for me is this idea that we often seek happiness through the external. If I just had this job, I'd be happy. If I just had this much money, I'd be happy. If I was a certain weight, surely then, I'd be happy.

We're so focused on the destination of happiness, that we fail to focus on the journey and what we have right now. Dying of thirst, we overlook a fresh water stream, with eyes searching for a lake. And often, once we reach what we thought would bring us happiness, we find that we are no more happy than we were before, already setting our sights on the next external thing that will finally bring us joy.

But perhaps if we were to really be present with our life, we just might find we are in possession of the very happiness we seek. Maybe we're not at our dream job, but it's a job that pays the bills and takes care of our family, maybe we're not at our ideal weight, but our bodies are strong and able to let us do whatever we want of them.

Maybe our relationships are not exactly where they could be, but you know people love you and you love them. Abe Lincoln had it right when he said that "most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be."

Being grateful for things here, now is a choice. Life will bring what it brings. Sometimes things that seem good, and other times things that seem bad. But who's to say?

Do you think the person stuck in traffic and late for an important meeting at the World Trade Center, on September 11, 2001, thinks that was bad luck now?

We must not begrudge life's trials and inconveniences. They are as much about what makes us happy as anything else.

Happy Thanksgiving!

"If not now, when? If not you, who?"-Karen and Sean Conley

I dare say you would be hard pressed to find anyone who couldn't tell you at least one teacher that they will always remember. I for one, could probably name several. My fourth grade teacher Mrs. Snyder who first got me passionate about writing. My insightful and hilarious High School English teacher, Mrs. Miller. Not to be confused with my third grade teacher aptly nicknamed Miller-the-Killer. Not gonna lie, 1987 was a rough year to be 9 at Reedurban Elementary.

Teachers affect us in a very fundamental way. Who are we really but a collection of teachers? People that shape and challenge the very basis of what we believe, understand and hold dear. A theory that I have is that some of the greatest teachers are simply people who believe what they teach. Truth recognizes truth. The information then gets stored in a genuine place and is forever tied to that teacher. Forever linking this feeling that you are always their student, no matter how many years go by.

My current yoga teacher, Joseph Stingley is one of those people. He teaches from a place of love and strength, and you can't help but feel it.

I will forever be indebted to my yoga trainers and teachers, Karen and Sean Conley. If I had to describe them using one word I've decided it would be: real. Every thing about them exudes a contentment in their own skin. A genuine desire to teach others to be mindful, grateful and then sharing what you know with others. These amazing people have written a book, and I would be remiss to not share it.
I'm sure they are just so excited to have a rave review written to a whopping 4 followers so far, but hey, PR is PR right??

I've been trying to read carefully and slowly and take it all in, resisting the urge to devour the book in one sitting. But like any teachers we adore, we can't get enough. We want their guidance faster than we can take it all in. Like shoving in Thanksgiving dinner till the fat pants come on, and still being happy as a clam.

If you want a book that will uplift and strengthen your yoga practice, I think it goes without saying at this point, but I'd highly recommend theirs. Amazing Yoga: A Practical Guide to Strength Wellness & Spirit.

I hope in reading this post you were reminded of teachers who will always mean something to you. Maybe write them a note of thanks and the effect they had on your life. It might surprise you in doing it, who it means more to. Them, or you.

"When asked what gift he wanted for his birthday, the yogi replied: "I wish no gifts, only presence." ~Author Unknown

There are many elements to the practice of yoga. Some that people know, some they don't, some they misunderstand. I swear if the good intentioned Walgreen's cashier, who always asks how my classes are going, calls it my "stretching class" one more time I may accidentally knock off his counter display with my purse.

That being said, I think one of the hardest and yet most rewarding aspects of yoga, is practicing the art of being present. All day long we spend the day reacting to things not yet happened, or approaching situations based on past experiences or feelings.

"Well I'm not going to say that. Last time I..."

"I'm here, but I really should be there. I wonder if.."

"I just want this day to be over.."

"I wish I could redo that. Said something different. If only...."

I tell my students that by focusing on the breath; the inhale...the exhale, they have no choice but to bring their awareness to this very moment. They will then not be 10 steps ahead of themselves, or 10 steps behind. They are not wasting energy with critical self talk. They are simply right where they are. Listening and breathing and coming into that space that is more connected and quiet. Controlling how we feel, staying aware, no matter what the moment brings.

I'll be the first to say that it isn't as easy as it sounds. Hence, we call it our yoga practice. Because that is what we do every time we come to our mats. We practice. Hoping that eventually we strengthen our awareness enough that it can't help but spill over into our day to day life.

And if we are aware each moment of every day, what kind of connection could we experience then? If fear and critical self talk couldn't hold us back anymore, then what could?

"We all let people into our lives, but you will find the really good friends, let you into your own."

As a kid, I vividly remember spending a good amount of time wanting little else in life than a canopy bed. And not just any canopy bed. I envisioned it looking like something out of the 14th century, with long heavy drapes that I could close off and read my books or just be alone with important adolescent thoughts. Whatever those were. I figured I would find a way to live in the outside world as much as I needed to and then hurry back to my canopy refuge. Oh how I wanted it...but, alas, it was not to be. Another woe in the life of being the oldest of a large family. (Insert hand to forehead, eyes fluttering, dramatic sigh) Instead I shared a double bed with my sister where we dutifully drew a line down the middle each night, threatening bodily harm if even a pinkie made its way to the wrong side. The latter teenage years I shared it with my dog, who while hairy and with incurable dog breath, did love me, and I her.

But life is all about creating space. We do it all day every day, both consciously and unconsciously. We build homes and parking lots. We have lockers and desks and cars. Children build tree houses, tents and forts. Spaces within spaces.

Yes,that's me. Aren't I adorable?

We leave open seats in between strangers at movie theaters, we frantically find the dividers on the grocery belt to define our space in line.

We crave a defining element that belongs to us and us alone. A place that sometimes simply says: this is mine. Or perhaps deeper levels of wanting to create a space that we feel will inspire us. I believe this simple desire is one of the reasons myself and others are drawn to the practice of yoga. Yoga, through our breath, is a science that unifies our body and mind, and it's in this newly created space that we start to learn, create, grow, and be inspired.

Laying in final relaxation pose on my mat, in my space, I feel safe, strong and renewed.

(Before class,Maya Tulum, teacher training)

With this blog, I suppose it is another attempt to carve out space. A yoga-rific space if you will, where people can come to share, connect, inspire and learn how to practice yoga on and off the mat.

"Yoga is not just a workout, it's about working on yourself."~Mary Glover