"Asteya": We are Among Giants

Recently, I looked through a few of my old photo albums. One was from last summer when I went to King Canyon's National Park. I saw the "largest known single stem tree" [the late General Sherman] in the world and some of the tallest and fattest trees I have ever seen in my life. I remember standing under one of them and feeling so incredibly young, so infantile, compared to the long life that that tree had lived. Along with the magnitude of the Sequoia's beauty, I took with me a great reminder of how massive our world is, how incredibly diverse it is, and of how relative my placement is to all of it.

The Sequoia's are ancient - literally, hundreds and hundreds of years old. These trees have lived through an incredible array of experience! Breaking through the surface of the earth, collecting nutrients, growing, enduring weather patterns, seasons, pests, animals, people, construction...

Tonight I am reminded of this magnitude. How often are we intimidated by the prospects of something that seems so much bigger than ourselves...so far beyond our talents, our perspective, our resources? How often do we feel shrunken by the light of someone else?

Yoga teaches us a lot about not comparing things in a way that devalues one or the other. It's called "asteya" and it means "non-stealing." I'm finding that when I use my energy comparing myself to others, it takes away energy that I could be using in a creative way. I read once an interesting take on Asteya - that even trying to separate people is a form of stealing because collaborative energy is lost, because we are all connected by a universal element that requires us to recognize our unique differentiation.

In a less magical light, this universal element is not as proverbial as it sounds. Everything in our perceivable world has it's source in the element Carbon. Everything that we can see and feel in the physical world is a result of a unique and diverse configuration of carbon-based elements. Layers of other elements configure to create our life - people, objects, animals...but striped to the bare minimum, we are all simple carbon molecules suspended in space.

So when it comes down to it, we are all the same, just as we are varied. In some way, I am the magnanimous General Sherman spreading my canopy of branches over smaller yet equally carbon-rich beings. In another way, I am the person whose qualities intimidate me most, I am the idea that appears groundbreaking, I emit the same brilliance as the other person who seemed to outshine me.

Nature, like truth, is a great equalizer.

Teaching at a new studio

I am very excited to share that I will be teaching regularly at a brand new studio in North Hollywood! There is no other studio like this in the city - aerial yoga! burlesque! pilates! The entire vibe of Aerial Artforms is playful and exploratory and I hope to see all of you there for a class! I've never done aerial yoga before, but am stoked to try it out...think: yoga + use of a strap or resistance band + suspended 10 feet in the air on a silk hammock...!!!

There will be a grand opening THIS Saturday, Novemeber 19th, with free classes, prizes, promotional deals, etc etc etc. and an after party with a DJ, door prizes...should be fun.


Starting next week, I will be teaching in the early mornings on the "earth," not in the "air," so check out the site [aerialartforms.com] for "Foundations Yoga" with me.


Peace!
niki

"is yoga hard to do?"

My teacher told me once: "have at least one difficult conversation a day."
Another of my teachers told me: "speaking from the heart is one of the hardest to do."

Today, each of these teachings comes to mind simultaneously.

There are so many times in our lives where we have to speak really candidly with ourselves, to be really straight and honest about what is happening in our lives, about how we feel towards someone, or how we feel about something. These kinds of conversations can be difficult to start, and scary. Sometimes, our highest mind knows what needs to happen, but another part of us comes on board - the part that we practice too often, the part that keeps us comfortable and unchallenged. This part is usually a habit or behavioral pattern that serves a kind of protective purpose.

It's a funny cycle...

On the mat, there are behavioral patterns, and even deeper than that, muscle memory, that brings the body into misalignment over and over again. For instance, turning your index fingers slightly toward each other while in downward facing dog (instead of parallel to each other). This will eventually lead to wrist pain and other discomfort, and it can take a great deal of present-moment focus to undo this habit,but it's necessary to ensure that your body is taken care of!

So why is it so hard to do?

I suppose it's a little subjective...some people can simply make up their mind and the entire behavioral profile can change - like quitting smoking. There was a time when I smoked cigarettes, and then there was a time when I decided I was done, and in a matter of weeks I was no longer a smoker. I was done with the habit. But that is not the case for many people who smoke. And this kind of swift change is not the case for many people regarding many issues. So what do we do?

... We continue to have difficult conversations with ourselves. We continue to return to a place of honesty. We have faith that the results we need will happen. We speak from the heart. We practice. We seek out examples of this courage in others. We keep practicing.

It is hard to speak from the heart. We have literally built layers of protective shields over it because it is so valuable. But if we are to ever grow beyond the boundaries of our old selves, we have to at least begin the difficult conversation.We have to say, "this is hard," and then keep going, non-violently, and persistently.

When I asked my teacher how to begin, he said, "Well, I always find it helpful to just say the obvious - 'This is awkward for me to talk about, but...'

aMUSEing: spoken word

"Life as A Dali Painting"

listen two this twice, with a smile ;)

The Breath - First and Foremost

I had a conversation recently with a fellow yoga teacher recently about the breath. I was explaining to her how insightful it is to work with someone one on one, and specifically, how interesting it is to see breath awareness evolve. (It's sometimes so much easier to understand this unfolding from the outside in, and to this end I am incredibly grateful to have the chance to work one on one with someone in this way.)

To give you more of an idea of what I'm talking about, a client of mine is learning a very common breathing technique that helps to relax the nervous system and slow down the heart rate as a way to ease the body into a more relaxed state. It's a breath I learned a few years ago and have been practicing regularly ever since, it's a breath I don't think about anymore during my posture practice, it just happens as I need it to. Sometimes when I am working with her, she is reporting to me that she feels very relaxed, very calm and happy during practice; and her breathing patterns and the way her face is held and the way her belly moves while she is in the postures, tells me something very different. I can literally see where she is holding her stress in the body, and I can also see that the breath-work is not yet integrated.

...as a student learning these techniques, I don't think that I was aware of how my body was held as I was learning them. I know that I wasn't aware of my holding spots or what my diaphragm was doing. The learning curve is such a cool unfolding!

Anyway, it came up during our conversation something that I had read in a yoga sutra translatiion - that is, that you cannot teach another person how to breathe. I told her that when I read that, I thought to myself, "that isn't true! you can teach people how to breathe. that's what pranayama is...breathing exercises...' Then she said to me, "You can't teach people how to breathe. All we can do is teach breath awareness."

And now I get it. Now that I have seen the beginning of this learning in another person's body, now I get it. I cannot teach another person how to breathe, but I can teach another person how to become more aware of their breath. The tools and techniques that yoga offers is and always has been a personal practice, one that must be integrated into each individual's livelihood as much as it is their body. Meaning that, even if the intellectual mind understands what the tool is and how it is used, the body-mind must take-up the technique in it's own way.

Awesome!

Learning on the Job

I interviewed at a fitness studio recently. Part of the interview included an audition so that my potential employer could see my teaching style. The audition took roughly one hour. I taught to 3 very fit women who are all personal fitness trainers. In preparing for the class, I anticipated their general physical needs and created a sequence of poses that I hypothesized would suit their physical abilities and still synch with an "extreme fitness" environment.

To my surprise, I realized that although each of these women were very strong and very fit, they were beginner yogis! I had planned to teach a moderately difficult flow class with poses that used their obvious upper body strength and cardiovascular endurance...but in moving them through the warm-up sequence, I saw that they support their bodies in a very different way then those used in yoga. I was thrilled! Here I was, intimidated to teach to a group of people whose work and lives revolve around being in the body, knowing body mechanics, fitness, health, etc... and yet I had information to offer them that was of real value. Even before class started, I was able to realign hand and wrist support in her push-up position...a position she and her clients take many many times during a regular work out. She told me right away, 'that feels so much better. I don't feel [the pain] in my elbow." Wow...

I remember my teacher, Sigrid Matthews, telling us during teacher training, "Yoga is a balance between strength and flexibility." This couldn't be more true... I see it a lot when I teach now: flexible people do not use their muscles as much because they can get their bodies into positions with less energy than those who are less mobile. Therefore, they don't hug their muscles to the bones, which can cause stress on the ligaments... Flexibility is not necessarily a sign of strength, just as a toned body isn't a sign of flexibility. My students that day had beautiful, toned bodies, and they were strong in many ways. But it was unwise of me to assume that because they were toned, that they were also flexible or that a move advanced practice would suit them.

A few key points I've been reminded of via this experience:
1. what I think is a plan is actually just a blueprint - I can come ready with a lesson, but I might just have to throw it out.
2.I cannot guesstimate what a class should look like based on educated guesses. I ultimately have to go off of the student's physical status and demonstrated abilities.
3. Even physically fit people can benefit greatly from learning the foundations of hatha yoga and physical alignment.
4. Being aligned in the body-mind dissolves the perception of 'pain'
5. I am a student first and a teacher second


Here's to continuously being humbled and remaining loyal to my studentship!

Principles of Alignment

"Come what may"

Practicing yoga offers us opportunities to open beyond our habits of normalcy.
Working within the breath-body we connect to our mental, physical and emotional bodies and this offers us opportunities to expand our perceived limitations, which ultimately offers us to experience a truer quality of our life.
In order to do this, agreements must be settled internally.

First, a commitment to the cause [surrender/Ishvara Pranidhana]. Then, a willingness, a real willingness to move in this direction [fire/tapas]. Lastly, but hardly the very least, an agreement to be honest with yourself [honesty/santosha] about the process, the expectations, the grievances, the desires, the complaints, the reasons, the excuses, the habits and the fear.

Whether you practice yoga postures or you don't, moving beyond discomfort in any area of your life is first and foremost a private decision that must embody these 3 elements.

Today, as I move toward limits of normalcy in pursuit of what is natural, I am reminded of this mantra:
Come what may.


may we all move with such grace and softness.


enjoy the rain Los Angeles.

With love,
niki