Sunday Funnies

We can use humor to take the sting out of talking about hings that really, really, bug yoga teachers! Here is the series of yoga etiquette videos put together by Tejas Yoga.

Introspective

Greetings Yogis,

I am slowly creeping back into this blog, tossing around a few ideas for new entries and rebuilding my atrophied writing muscles. It’s going to take some time but in the meantime I’ve been really enjoying broadening my musical horizons and rediscovering old music I used to love (spoiler: look for a blog soon tentatively called How Sound Cloud Saved My Home Practice). So to compliment last week’s post about reexamining my teaching here is a play list I’ve been rocking this week. I call it my Introspective Flow Mix, enjoy!

1.       Rugla: amiina

2.       Madrugada 8: Twinkle Engine

3.       Someday Soon: KT Tunstall

4.       Gone Traveling: Ganga Girl

5.       Jahta Beat: DJ DREZ

6.       Anjali: Cheb I Sabbah

7.       Hard Times: Gob Iron

8.       Where Will I Be: Emmylou Harris

9.       One Heart To Prove

10.   Yah Devi: Krishna Das

11.    It’s A Fire: Portishead

12.   Reprise: Ani DiFranco

*NOTE* I am trying to find a way to upload this so y'all can listen to it. I'll post a link should I be successful!

Sunday Funnies

The Value of Yoga

Ask any yoga teacher why they teach yoga and I bet you the answer is not, “for the money.” However being a yoga teacher you are providing a service, you are proving knowledge in a safe and comfortable environment and therefore you are not wrong to ask for an exchange; whether it is money, trade, or even fresh veggies and farm eggs, of which I personally and gladly accept as payment!

But lately I’ve been struggling with this concept of “getting paid” for yoga. Just like I did when I began my training as a massage therapist. For me being a nurturer is simply a part of who I am, I really do want to help everyone feel better, safer and more comfortable in the world and in themselves. My massage instructor put it like this, “It is an exchange of energy. You are giving energy to a person and you have the right to receive energy in return. You can decide what and how to receive that energy.”  So what is enough? A hug? Ten dollars? Sixty? The piece of mind knowing you helped someone in need? And right now I have come to the uncomfortable conclusion that I no longer know. I can no longer feel what feels right about accepting energy for my teaching. I don’t want it to be money but I have bills to pay.

I am a “modern yogi.” I don’t live at an ashram or in a mountain cave, I live in the world. I have rent to pay, groceries to buy, heat and water bills. So when life in the real world gets hard I start to fret about things like dwindling class sizes and the value of time and no shows. When my mind goes there my yoga stops being about teaching and the exchange of energy and it becomes a job. And that is exactly what I do not want my yoga to be.

So now what? Can I, self proclaimed, queen of happy mediums find a comfortable compromise? Am I willing to fall back into the hustle of self promotion and studio advertising? That all seems very businesslike to me and exhausting. In fact last year I burned out completely doing all that and stopped teaching for a while. Maybe I started back too soon, maybe I started back the wrong way. Operating in a pattern already proved wrong.

So I’m reevaluating and shifting my perspective. When I opened my studio years ago it was a place dedicated to building Community and for a while it was amazing! A place where people of my tiny town came together, where we shared and celebrated each others gifts and talents and it truly was a beautiful exchange of energy. I think now is the time to get back to that. Actually, I know it is and that means making some changes. Some terrifying and some exciting but it is time. Community is my home.

Recently, while crying in a friends arm chair, he told me that he looks to me for inspiration. He said that he is learning as part of his own journey how important Community is and that I was his example of how that can be created. I was flattered but could not see through myself doubt enough to believe him. Now I can see it. Being a yoga teacher is not my job; my job is to build a Community with yoga as the center piece, the glue that holds people in need of a healthy energy exchange together.

And that, I can do.

Meditation: Option B

I set of for walking meditation this morning but the rain had other plans. So I left the trail and decided that a little porch time with my dog listening to the rain would be my meditation for the day. It was peaceful and beautiful. (not my porch, not raining, but that is my dog)

Learning how to be still, to be really still and let life happen- 

that stillness becomes radiance.

-Morgan Freeman

Slow Spring

Last February, the longest short month of them all, I made a playlist jokingly called "there will be sun." Happy tunes to grove along with in the hopes that we could encourage spring to arrive a little faster. I like that mix so I was inspired about a month ago to make a new spring mix, I'd go into more detail about making the right yoga mix but really you can just rent "High Fidelity" and let John Cusack do that. Music in a yoga class can often be a touchy subject; some teachers swear by it, other admonish it, and normally I'm annoyed by it but that's because I have a small scope of music I enjoy which incorporates a wide swath of styles and genres and to be honest I'm moody. Not in the sense that my mood changes from moment to moment or I'm grumpy I mean more that I want my music to blend with my mood, or to set and enhance a mood. So when I begin making playlist for yoga it's serious business, I build a theme, I think about what asanas resonate with the essence of the music but like I said I won't go into my own process here, what I wanted to tell you about was this great mix I made almost by accident.

I sat down to shake up my dedicate yoga MP3 player with some new tunes. Here in Wisconsin we are having a very slow spring, it just won't get here! Seriously I had to turn the heat on last night and today I'm in full length tights and long sleeves...IT'S JUNE 6th! And I'm from Alabama y'all. So of course I thought about making a new snappy spring flow mix and I began the search through my music library and came up with a mix I was happy with. And then I forgot to upload it onto my MP3 player. So there my happy spring flow sat for a month while I kept forgetting to bring my MP3 player home and shake it up. Then last week I remembered, "I have one of the fancy pants smart phones!" my phone can play music, so on went the 3 new playlists I made. I was very excited to break out my new "happy spring" mix to liven up the rainy and cold evening class, but there wasn't a great turn out for that class and the mood was a little subdued and you know what? My mix was perfect! I had forgotten how chill it was, less of a bouncy blooming spring and more like the actual season we are having; a little slow almost sauntering, mellow and thick. So without further ado I present 'Amy's Slow Spring Flow'

Seoul- amiina
Dirt Gardener- Erin McKeown
Here Comes The Sun- Richie Havens
Janmani Janmani- Mohen Mistry
Life Is Water- Sim Redman Band
Sun Dance- John De Kadt
Sun Is Shining (Yes Kink Remix)- Bob Marley and the Wailers
La Illaha (feat Sudha)- Bahramji & Maneesh de Moor
Stay In The Shade- Jose Gonzalez
Gentle Moon- Sun Kil Moon
2nd Charkra: Orange Cresent Moon Over Water: Baird Hersey


*I do not post actual music because 1: I don't know how and 2: I encourage you to listen and purchase the music you enjoy!

Wild Yoga Love

The kettle whispers on the stove, I don’t put the whistle down because I like to keep the water hot for pouring over my stovetop espresso to make Americanos in the morning. It’s the easiest way to keep hot water around when one does not have a standard drip coffee maker. That whisper makes me think of yoga, the gentle seeping of yoga into my life, subtly reminding me to head to the mat before my days begins, Except that right now, I do not need gentle reminder, I need a sharp piercing whistle to send me running from the shower or closet to snatch the screaming kettle off the stove and hurl me onto my mat. I need a steamy, reckless love affair with yoga. I need to be swept off on a weeklong rendezvous with a sweaty pulsing vinyasa get away. 

I spent the last year in an amazing Teacher Train course at Tejas Yoga in Chicago’s bustling South Loop. It was an amazing year; steeped in the teachings of Hatha yoga under two of the most inspiring teachers I have meet, James Tennant and Jim Bennitt. Trust me, if you find yourself in Chicago take the time to go visit their studio! The thing I love most about my teachers is how subtly they integrate yoga into your life. You never once feel like you are being told how to do or feel about yoga; “My intention is not to make you feel the way I do about yoga. My intention is to be a support system for you to discover what yoga means to you” James Tennant says.  But his enthusiasms is infectious and even without meaning to simple things like making coffee and washing your face in the morning seem to take on a yogic style. So the past year has been just that for me, feeling, accepting, and noticing yoga in everything I do. Marveling at the subtleties and smiling as I engage mulabandha while push my lawn mower up an incline. It’s a gift you can’t really describe and I am grateful for the experience but now I need something different.

I need a Shiva Rea, a yogi who practically burst with joy and love when she teaches vinyasa flow. Like Shiva Rea I need to sway my hips over the mat, let my arms dance wide expanding my heart, I need to feel my heart beat along with beats dropped my MC Yogi and DJ Drez. I need to dance in my yoga out on the grass under the summer sun and sweat out all linger winter introspection. In my head I hear the words of poets like Rumi and Rilke who dove so deep into the love of God and Nature that words tumble out of them soaked in awe. I need to whirl like a dervish inside and let my limbs move through asanas like wind just before a summer storm. And the best part of this longing for wild love type yoga? It’s out there! Yoga is there to fit into any size need you have. It’s out here to envelope you in whatever kind of shape you are in. and it is out there to shimmy up beside you and dance like no one is watching!