What's Happening at Yoga Yoga

Yoga off the Mat by Prema

Being part of the Hatha Yoga Teacher Training program as faculty is such a blessing in so many ways, and one of my favorites aspects of the program is our diving into discussion and contemplation of the Yamas and Niyamas. I find that as students continue their yoga practice over time, inevitably they are drawn to the deeper teachings that exist behind the asana we do in public class. Here is the ideal place to begin in discovering the rich history, philosophy and spiritual opportunity that yoga has to offer, for studying the Yamas and Niyamas means studying the Yoga Sutra.

The role the Yamas and Niyamas have played in my life and practice has first been an accessible way to take the heart of yoga off the mat and into my moment to moment existence. These principles and observances reach into the very soul of the practice and assist individuals in leading a life that embodies yoga fully, not just one hour a day or a few times a week in asana practice. You can take yoga to the supermarket, the hiking trail, the gridlock traffic on Mopac during rush hour! I look forward to sharing these principles with students and am most inspired by Nishala Joy Devi’s interpretation in The Secret Power of Yoga and Dr. Alberto Villoldo’s impression in Yoga, Power, and Spirit. I will share wisdom from these two works as well as get you involved in the discussion! After, we will practice together and spend some time in meditation.

Click here for more information or to register for this weekend's Yamas and Niyamas workshop.

Richard Miller's iRest Training Retreat - November 2009

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Exploring the Heart of Viniyoga with Mirka Kraftsow

We were fortunate to have Mirka Kraftsow offer a weekend of classes at Yoga Yoga in October.  We received the following feedback from one of our students, Janet Daum, that we wanted to share:

Recently, I had the pleasure of studying with Mirka Kraftsow.  I originally signed up for this weekend because I have a strong interest in Viniyoga and would like to study at their institute.  As a teacher training student I also wanted to deepen my knowledge of teaching and practicing yoga.  I came away from the weekend with that and so much more. 

Mirka has an amazing presence!  From the very beginning her inviting and warm manner drew us together as a group.  She is a font of wisdom and experience but more importantly her words and teachings come from the heart.  Her generosity comes from her love of sharing all aspects of yoga with her students.  She was open and curious about how the practices she gave us worked for each of us.

My favorite part of her teaching is how she weaves breath work and mantra into asana practices.  I felt that this allowed me to access a deeper level of self knowledge than keeping those as separate practices.  We worked very hard during this workshop but received a deep level of nourishment not only from Mirka but from the support of the group.

I left the weekend with not only new techniques and knowledge but with a strong curiosity and enthusiasm to continue on the path of yoga.

Thank you so much to Yoga Yoga for hosting Mirka.  Please bring her back soon! 

 
Note: Janet is the student to the left of Mirka (center)

Thanks, Janet, for sharing your experience and thanks to everybody who shared in the Heart of Viniyoga weekend with Mirka Kraftsow.  We will definitely bring Mirka back!

You can see more pictures from the weekend on our facebook page!

Relaxing and Renewing with Judith Lasater

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by Laura Forsyth

It was such a pleasure and honor to have Judith Lasater here this past weekend! I'm always amazed at how down to earth old school yoga teachers are. They’ve seen it; they’ve studied it; they’ve debated it; they live it. Judith was able to communicate with authority, simplicity, compassion AND a sense of humor. 

The 5 day training was about restorative yoga--a method that places the body in very specific, completely relaxed postures that induce a deeply relaxed state. We learned the profound difference between rest and sleep; we all realized that even yogis and yoginis are susceptible to the fast paced world we live in and are often under-rested!  I am personally interested now in learning more about the endocrine system (hormones, brain chemistry, etc), as these postures directly influence these systems and can actually treat/reverse certain conditions.  Ladies, she recommended a book called The Female Brain which is fascinating if you’re interested in all the joys of lady hormones! I am also now a big fan of Judith’s book Living Your Yoga.

Judith offered a second class where she talked about anxiety (who doesn’t have some of that??), led us through some active postures and some deeply restorative ones.  We had her for three hours, and she was able to give us all some great tips on simple alignment that showed her 35+ years experience as a yoga teacher and physical therapist. We were discussing how important this anatomy/kinesiology understanding is and she has agreed to come back in 2011 to offer a training on this topic.  Now THAT is juicy! I can’t wait! Mark your calendars--if you have one that far in advance.

On another note--I can’t believe we have Judith Lasater and Richard Miller in Austin in the same year!  Richard is offering a training in November in what I consider one of the most important and profound yoga practices--Yoga Nidra, which which he calls iRest, Integrative Restoration. Learning to relax on such deep levels--whether in restorative yoga or in iRest--will change your life, literally. So get ready to relax. Click here to read more about Richard Miller's workshops coming up this fall!

Treat Yourself to Some Detox

by Caitlin Culp

Last week, I decided to treat myself to some detoxifying and deep relaxation at the spa at our 360 location: the Vedic Sea Wrap. Don't be fooled by the simplicity of its name--this luxurious 90 minute treatment starts with an all-over dry brush, followed by a purifying seaweed wrap, and finishes off with a full body massage using dosha-balancing oils.

The dry brush exfoliates dead skin cells and stimulates the circulation of blood and lymph; its great for reducing Kapha, which we could all use during this season when we're feeling sluggish. The seaweed is a body masque made from green and white seaweed, rich in minerals for detoxifying the skin and stimulating the metabolism in each of the cells; it's applied all over the body, and then you're rolled up between sheets and blankets to create a cocoon of warmth and comfort where the body and mind can come into stillness. During the wrap, the therapist further relaxes you with a scalp massage and marma point treatment (marma points are energy points, similar to those used in acupressure). I was so relaxed that I lost all sense of time and space, hovering in that beautiful place of semi-consciousness that you find in Yoga Nidra (our Deep Relaxation classes). When I came back to reality, I rinsed off in a refreshing shower and came back to the room for a full body massage using dosha-balancing oils (I opted for the warm, spicy scented Kapha oil to help knock out whatever was left of my cough). And then, finally, I was brought back again with our signature foot bowls--special tri-metal bowls that are rubbed on the feet in a circular motion to balance the doshas, further detox the body, and ground you back down to Earth before you leave the massage table.

I left in that blissful state of yoga-brain that you sometimes find after a great class. I didn't have much to say for the rest of the day, but chugged plenty of water to keep flushing toxins and found myself in a deep, deep sleep that night. I don't know if I've ever been in a state of such deep relaxation from a massage, but it was heavenly, to say the least, and I know that it's on those levels that the body can release enough to start to heal itself. I highly recommend it for anyone who's planning a detox this spring or for anyone who wants to find that space of pure relaxation. You deserve it!

To read about this treatment or see the rest of our spa menu, click here. And if you haven't heard, February is Share Yoga Share Bliss Month, and that means special deals on spa treatments for you and a friend! Click here to read more about the special.

If you want to be first to know what's going on at the spa, sign up for our spa newsletter here!

The Effects of a Yin Yoga Practice

Going to the Paul Grilley Yin Yoga weekend has been an incredibly empowering experience for me. By exploring the variances in skeletal shapes and structure, he demonstrated that not everyone will be able to hold the "ideal" pose. The important point is to understand where and what you are supposed to feel in each posture and then play around with it until it feels right to you, without too much emphasis on the aesthetic. I also learned about the fascia that permeates our bodies, and that traditional stretches only work the muscle and not the surrounding fascia. By holding poses for 3-5 or more minutes, the fascia surrounding the muscles and within the joints can become elongated, releasing tension. As someone who has experienced chronic low back pain for most of her adult life, I have never felt the relief from pain that I have felt since that weekend. I have made Yin Yoga a part of my daily home practice and am so excited with the results! Not only has it helped me on a physical level, it has helped to increase my body awareness and deepen my meditation practice.

If you're interested in Yin Yoga, try a class with our very own Sapphire--check out her schedule here!

Pictures from the Paul Grilley Yin Yoga Weekend

For those of us who didn't get to go, and for those of us who were there, here's a peek at what went on last weekend with Paul Grilley at Westgate!

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It's February: Do You Know Where Your New Year's Resolutions Are? Part 1

by Fanny Priest

January is a busy time in a yoga studio, as we welcome countless new students who come through our doors with armloads of fresh New Year's resolutions. And while there is nothing we love more than introducing the benefits of a yoga to people who are experiencing the practice for the first time, still we wonder: How many of those students will still be around when the going gets rough and that first burst of New Year zeal wanes?

It seems fitting, then, when one of my main teachers, Angela D, closes the month of January with a week of classes built around the following theme: Just Start Over. For the first weeks of the year, Angela had been giving us advice and instruction on how to build an effective home practice. We covered the basics of centering at the start of class, resting at the end of class, and sequencing what comes in between. The recurring theme of these weeks has been the yogic concept of samskara. Angela explained samskaras as paths or grooves of behavior that we wear deeper and deeper over the years. The more we indulge in a particular habit or behavior, the deeper that groove is worn in, and the more likely we are to travel down that same path again. And so it follows that, the deeper a groove has been worn, the more difficult it is to branch out and forge a brand new path, which is what so many of us decide to do on New Year's Day.

When facing something hard, the best response is for us to soften. And so the message that Angela passes on to us is that the measure with which we will perceive our new endeavour to be successful is the measure with which we are able to have compassion for ourselves when we trip over those deep old ruts.  The thing to do is to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, laugh about it, and Just Start Over. Give ourselves the gift of a fresh beginning--every day if we have to, with each new breath if we have to. The new habits we'd decided to form might not take; the old habits we had wanted to be rid of might not go away; but if we practice softness, humor and compassion for ourselves as we just start over, this kinder, softer attitude towards ourselves might just be a better benefit than that which we set out to acheive in the first place!

Follow the Spanda: Yoga Trance Dance

by Caitlin Culp

Last Friday evening I spent two hours with about 30 other yogis and yoginis exploring the area where asana and dance come together in this wild ride called Yoga Trance Dance. Here at Yoga Yoga, our very own Sanieh leads Trance Dance, which is the creation of her teacher, Shiva Rea. I love Sanieh's flow classes, and was immediately excited and then anxious about signing up for Trance Dance with her--I wasn't sure what exactly I was getting myself into.

While it's probably true that there's no great way to explain what Trance Dance is really like, here's a little flavor. You start the evening in a big circle, offering up an intention for your experience that night, and then make your way down onto the floor, moving in and out of shapes that resemble the yoga poses you do in your Hatha class every week. The poses evolve until you're up on your feet, starting to feel the flow of energy inside and around you, and then at some point,  you realize you're dancing. I kept my eyes closed for a large chunk of the time, mostly to keep from worrying about just how silly I probably looked, but eventually I was moving around the room with the wildest dancers. We kept moving like this--without thoughts of alignment or worries about not being able to hold a pose--for the next hour or so. And then, finally, after much sweat and much movement, Sanieh brought us slowly back to the floor and into a much needed period of rest.

She used the word Spanda, which many of you may have heard in your classes: it's that subtle pulse or vibration throughout the universe that we find in our asana and hopefully in all aspects of our lives. I certainly felt the Spanda on Friday--both the pulse of life in me and in all of the dancing yogis around me.

If you want to find out more about Yoga Trance Dance with Sanieh, click here! We'll be sweating and dancing again next on March 27 at Yoga Yoga 360!

Aligning with the Divine, or, How the Anusara Immersion Gently Kicked My Butt

by Caitlin Culp

This weekend was the second to last weekend session of the second Anusara Immersion with Christina Sell here at Yoga Yoga. It was our 8th weekend together since the very end of August, and it feels both like we just started and also like we've been practicing together forever. 

Last Saturday we spent hours working our way into various backbends, and as I was grabbing my toe in Eka Pada Rajakapotasana (One-Legged King Pigeon Pose)--or really, after I had let go of my toe and was collapsed in small puddle on the floor--I realized that I had just done one of those poses that I never really knew if I would. I'm the kind of student who used to hope that one day I'd be doing all kinds of fancy poses but was never 100% sure that was in the cards. In our last session, I actually started working my feet down the wall towards Vrschikasana (Scorpion), and I spent the rest of the day in a haze--deliriously happy about the pose itself and the elated feeling such a deep backbend gave me.

And that's not to say that the Immersion is all roses and cupcakes--I spend most of the day confronting the poses I hate most and usually come home sore and exhausted. But on the whole, it leaves me and my fellow Immersees in a state of glowy contentment, open in places I thought I never would be and happily pondering the energetic loops and spirals in my body that got me there.

It's been an absurdly short 6 months with Christina, but it's comforting to remember that she's not just someone who swooped in  and will swoop out again--she's here every Tuesday at Westgate to remind me just how straight my arms can get and prove to me that I can make every single pose a hard one!

If you are pondering studying with Christina or studying Anusara more in depth, I encourage to do so! You will learn things about yourself that you simply can't when you're practicing a few hours here and there throughout the week. 

Stay tuned for more information about other upcoming Anusara events and other events with Christina!