Yoga Diary

Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, R.I.P.

2009-05-18T16:24:07Z

Leslie Kaminoff, who has been attending the conference, just posted the following to his e_sutra listserve about Guruji. We also offer loving thoughts to his family and students throughout the world:

"I just got word from India that Sri K. Pattabhi Jois passed away this morning in Mysore after a year of declining health. He was just shy of his 94th birthday.

I was just speaking about his condition with Doug Swenson, Gary Kraftsow and others at Yoga Journal NYC on Saturday night.

My thoughts and best wishes go out to all my friends who's lives have been so deeply transformed by their association with Guruji."

In Memory of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, Father of Ashtanga

2009-05-18T15:58:15Z

Upon waking for the last day of the conference, we learned that Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, 93, has passed. The official announcement is posted here, and you can find up-to-the-minute memorial posts and reactions from students worldwide here via twitter.

What are some of your best memories with him? Please share them below in the comments field.

more conference candids

2009-05-18T15:11:11Z

images courtesy of Marcus Simpson

ny conference candids

2009-05-18T07:12:19Z

images courtesy of Marcus Simpson

Ahimsa Made Easy in NY

2009-05-18T05:54:44Z

In his keynote speech Sunday night, Sri Dharma Mittra stressed the importance of ahimsa in the yogic lifestyle.

Most of us extend compassion to our friends, family, and pets, he said, but what about the animals we eat? Dharma warned that eating a diet that contains animal flesh will cause the mind to be unsettled, making meditation more difficult.

Lucky for all of the NY conference attendees, vegetarian and vegan eateries are plentiful in the city. Of course, we had to test out a few.

Our favorites on this trip include Candle 79 on the Upper East Side, Zen Palate in the Theater District, and Lula's Sweet Apothecary in the East Village.

Want to take Dharma's advice but need a little help taking the first steps toward going veg? Get a free vegetarian starter kit.

What are your favorite ahimsic eating establishments in NYC?

Getting Braver and Bolder with Patricia Walden

2009-05-18T04:10:13Z

You kind of know you're in the right class when Rodney Yee, Colleen Saidman Yee, Marco Rojas, and a Yoga Works honcha have slipped in the door. Patricia Walden is one of the most universally well-respected teachers, and after today I understand why. This class, about "building willpower that comes from the heart," was such a full journey, packed with tools to create a stronger confidence muscle. But also something else.

It's hard to explain what separates a great class from a good one--there's an alchemy, an end result that's larger than the sum of its poses. So I won't try to explain, just give you a sampling of her wisdom from class today, which was a rich layer cake I'm still digesting:

- On getting us to relax some things for an easeful strength: "Be determined in your arms and your legs and your lungs, but don't be determined in your eyes or your tongue."

- A collapsed chest "causes density and contraction," she said. "When your chest is open, you'll feel beautiful inside and out."

- Because the mind mirrors the body and the body mirrors the mind, we can start with the body--for example, pulling the spine toward the sternum and setting the shoulders back can teach us to feel more confident and happy. I took away a rather hopeful message that we can fake it till we make it--since at least for me it's easier to shift my body than my mind. And if that can create a confidence-boosting spiral, yay.

- She told a story of asking a student to give the postures names for how they made her feel. She called Virbadrasana 1 "The Champion." Now I want to re-name asanas and see what happens.

- Backbending builds courage.

- Inversions and arm balances help you conquer fear.

- Looking downward can create a feeling of darkness, looking up toward the sky allows the brain to feel more positive.

- "All your yoga practice should help you create more and more sattva in your being."

- Oh, and a funny moment. While Patricia was adjusting a woman's shoulders in a Wheel demonstration, Rodney stepped in to assist, pulling the student's pelvis at the same time. "Savor this," said Patricia, of being adjusted by the two maestro yogis simultaneously. "This is a moment you won't forget." We all laughed.

Lots More Yoga and Zero Balancing

2009-05-17T17:07:28Z

Six hours is a lot of yoga for one day. And when you're caught up in a conference flow it's also easy to forget to eat and drink enough. Oops. Thus was my state yesterday evening when I stumbled on the Zero Balancing booth in the Marketplace zone. I had no idea what it was, just that I could lie down and be touched (more touch!) before heading back to Brooklyn.

Turns out Zero Balancing (ZB), developed by osteopathic M.D. Fritz Frederick Smith in the early 1970s, is about releasing energy in the bones to allow chi to flow optimally. The idea is this can help heal myriad ailments. A guy named Ben Fleisher worked on me and by the time he got to my feet I was in a galaxy far, far away. In a subtle, nervous-system-chilling good way. It felt like a combo of massage, cranio-sacral, and energy work. Just a 15-minute taste, but I'd love to check out the method more some time.

After, though, I felt a bit woozy (six hours of yoga minus food) so my practitioner, his teacher Michael Oruch, and a woman whose name I don't know (sorry!), all gently acupressured me till I felt better. They even made sure I got headed home OK. So very sweet. (I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I have to re-enter "real" NYC again.)

If you want to check out ZB, Ben has a practice in NYC: benfleischer.com. (And Michael, who teaches ZB around the world, is also a fine artist with amazing paintings--some based on the I Ching--on his site, here.)

Rodney Yee's 'Sacrum Secrets'

2009-05-17T01:59:19Z

How could I NOT sign up for "Sacrum Secrets" with Rodney Yee? I'd never taken a class with him before; he's obviously mad-lovely; and, oh yeah, a master world-class yoga teacher who's insanely popular for a reason. And my very stiff sacrum needs all the help it can get.

So, what are Rodney Yee's Sacrum Secrets? Here's what I took away from the class:

1) We mostly don't think about the sacrum. But it's the "heart" of the skeletal system. The base from which all our structures sprout. Sacred.

2) You can start to feel the sacrum in downdog by pedaling your feet and paying attention to which way the triangular bone shifts.

3) The moment when 30 people simultaneously went "Ohhh" was when we finally "got" what he meant about going from updog into downdog by first engaging the legs, then the tailbone, then the sacrum. And pulling in the head and neck last. I think we all had no idea how good it would feel to go into it that way--it puts no stress on your neck and shoulders. If you had asked me though, I never would have known that I usually get into Adho Mukha with my head first. And apparently I'm not alone. Total "ah-ha" moment. Try it. Legs first, then tailbone, then sacrum, then the relaxed, dangling neck and head.

4) In poses like pigeon we tend to thrust our hips back with the leg that's stretched behind us. This throws the sacrum into a misaligned position. So instead, if you use the thrust to actually pull your sacrum forward, it makes each side level, with the bone square instead of one side pulled forward and the other back. This is really neat to play with.

5) You need to synchronize and correlate the movement of the shoulder blades and the sacrum, always.

6) When you move your sacrum, relax your jaw.

7) "Your legs should do the asanas," not your back, he told us. Then, "the sacrum is the conduit that brings the energy to your heart."

Yoga Shop-a-rama Marketplace

2009-05-17T01:15:36Z

Ok, I confess. The superficial layer of yogi in me looks forward to these kinds of conferences partly for the shopping (the Omega Institute gift shop is the death of my wallet). It's like concentrated mall of cool things targeted squarely at my shop-o-graphic.

And the little marketplace thing here is one loaded with spiritually themed goodies. Gorgeous lotus jewelry from Clo and Liz; tie-dyed yoga pants from Shining Shakti that I might have to buy; hand-printed clothes in a riot of colors fro Victoria Keen. Plus my fave Dude Girl yoga clothes, Gaiam, Young Living Oils, tons of yoga books, and lots of Ganesha silk-screened others.

A bit ironic, as always, this spiritual shopping, but fun, and mostly from small business owners looking to make a life out of selling things they love, that mean something.

[Image by Marcus Simpson]

Pictures Worth a Thousand Words

2009-05-17T00:47:18Z

All images by Marcus Simpson

Teachers, Teachers Everywhere!

2009-05-16T23:43:20Z

When Cyndi Lee asked how many people in the large hotel conference room are yoga teachers nearly everyone in the room raised their hands. I guess you could expect an audience of yoga teachers in a class called "How to Teach Any Pose to Any Body."

The class was meant to be a mini-teacher training, Lee said. She had envisioned a one or two-day intensive, but due to time constraints would be able to give us just a "window" into teaching in a two-hour seminar. Sometimes a window exactly what you need--and skilled teachers like Cyndi recognizes how to give her students just the right amount of instructions. Personally, this workshop was exactly what I needed to remind me how to build sequences for students, no matter what their limitations.

The key to making the asanas available to everyone is to look at the actions inherent in each pose and present them in a way that is available to your students. For example, teach how to open the hip to as an introduction to Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose).

"Look at your students, and come up with something based on that," Lee said.

When we split up into groups to come up with an easy beginning sequence that would teach the actions of a more difficult pose, Lee's message really hit home. My group included three lovely ladies each with a different injury or medical condition. We spent most of our time together trying to come up with an asana sequence that everyone in the group could practice safely. It couldn't have been a better example of the class topic if it had been planned. We did eventually come up with a sequence. And most importantly, we learned that with a little creativity and patience you can, indeed, teach any pose (or at least the actions of any pose) to any body.

Forward Bending with Patricia Walden

2009-05-16T21:32:16Z

Patricia Walden took us through seated, supine, and standing forward bends during her two hour class on the subject. Throughout, she emphasized both the ascent of the torso and thoracic spine, and the descent and grounding of the pelvic floor.

As the class made their way through some challenging poses (like Krunchasana), she shared these words of wisdom: "A beautiful pose doesn't mean your head is resting on your leg. It means your intelligence is radiating through your pose."

Struggle-Free Struggles with Ana Forrest

2009-05-16T21:02:07Z

"As you become more struggle-free, you'll be able to take in the beauty of your surroundings. I don't mean fashion magazine beauty. I mean the beauty that's all around us that we forget to take in." -- Ana Forrest, a few hours ago

I'd never seen a photo of Ana Forrest, and the only thing I knew about her yoga was that it was very neck-conscious. But somehow I didn't expect a fiery power-house in brown and orange tie-dye with a horse-tail-long braid and black fingerless gloves that she and her five (well-trained) assistants were wearing.

This class, "Struggle-Free" yoga was about hanging out with intensity without "thrashing around," as she says, either internally or externally. It's not the intensity that kills us, it's the thrashing in response to it that gets us into trouble. It's not news in yoga to breathe and be with intensity, but something about the way she teaches--as someone who has clearly done her share of thrashing (as she was happy to admit)--really gets that through.

Just past the middle of class she had us think of the hardest thing we're dealing with in our life--work, spouse, addiction, etc. And then to take a block (an assistant fashioned one for me out of my water bottle and scarf), and go into Locust and squeeze the hell out of the block with our ankles.

It's been ages since anything out of the ordinary has happened to me in yoga class, but my legs immediately started shaking. She told us to squeeze harder. My legs shook harder and harder until I thought I might be getting ready for lift-off. I was mouthing "holy #$%!" and heard assistants whispering. One came over and said "Stay with it, stay with it." Which I didn't seem to have a choice about. It was like my legs were set to vibrate. Crazy. Scary. Cool. After a minute or so, it subsided. I felt like something ragged and large had left me.

Ana said this method is a great way to get rid of extra energy that we're holding around something (whatever your hot issue is) that is in fact sapping a huge amount of our energy. She said it was OK to have some tears, to expect that this might bring up feelings.

That's what's so nifty about conferences (and I don't mean to sound like an ad here)--a buffet of experiences come to you. A slightly different way of doing a pose that can actually dramatically shift your life. This class certainly left me feeling shifted for the moment and with a new tool to keep on with it. Thanks, Ana.

Have you done this kind of pose before, with the squeezing and squeezing while thinking of your hardest thing? What happened?

And to see Ana in action at a different YJ conference:

Heart Opening with Gurmukh

2009-05-16T17:54:20Z

We sit with our hands raised high, whirling from our waists like Dervishes. We bow up and down. We hold our hearts and tell ourselves, "We love you." All the while a man in a blue turban plays a spiritual kind of easy listening music.

Welcome to Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa's class, "Imprinting Self-Love". As we open up our chakras, dance a jig (literally) and sway our bodies, Gurmukh regales us with such insights as "It's time to wake up, to become who you need to become. The Universe will support you. Your intuition will lead you."

After I wiped the sweat off my body and got ready to leave, I wasn't all that surprised to note that my heart was opened just a little bit more.

Touched by Krishna Das (and Everyone Else)

2009-05-16T03:35:17Z

About five minutes before he's due onstage, Krishna Das casually rolls in the door of a gigantic room at the Hilton full of crystal chandeliers in the same red plaid flannel shirt he's worn to each of the 10 or so concerts I've seen him play. (I imagine he has a closet full of those hanging in a row next to 20 maroon t-shirts). A very excited woman greets him with "I missed Bruce for you!"

But in this room, KD is The Boss. It's the same canned jokes and spiritual asides (I enjoy watching his tabla player Arjuna's face every time KD tells that story about the cell phone. Since this must be the 1,099th time he's heard it, does it drive him crazy? Or is it just white noise? Or is there something Zen-ly comforting about it?). But it's also the same lovely, lovely chanting. He opens a door, that one, with his hare hare's and om namo's, and we all walk through to a place that's so sweet.

"You know how this works, right?" he asks. "I sing something and then you sing something that sounds sorta close." Ha. Exactly right--even with this sold-out crowd of yogis, the easy chants are loud and clear from us; the more complicated ones sound like we're singing auditory oatmeal. But it so doesn't matter. The sacred name is the sacred name, even if you have to fake it a little bit.

It was a lovely show tonight. They had up, good energy. KD told a new story about a guy in India. And for the New Yorkers like me, it's just so strange to walk off the street into a place where people actually touch you. Like, on purpose. A woman squeezing past me laid her hands on my back so long I felt like I was getting a massage. I filled a guy's cup (yes, that was me dancing like a banshee by the water cooler) and he thanked me with a lingering arm-touch. Another woman walked by with a gentle, conscious shoulder-brush. Weeeird. And nice. We don't touch each other much here. Nice to get that warm touch on the outside and some good KD, sacred-name-chanting-touch and clearing on the inside.

"The fact that we come together like this," Krishna Das told us, "It helps us, it helps everyone around us." Amen, my flanneled brother.

And this is before I even go to Rodney Yee's "Sacrum Secrets" class tomorrow. Yow! I mean "ommmm." Stay tuned for more Adventures in Yoga Conferenceland. (Please post in the comments if there's anything you particularly want reported on.)