Winter blue. On why I need a kapha practice.

(Scroll to the bottom for quick info on kapha balancing poses, diet, schedule, etc). An odd winter, really.  Last week friends in Chicago told me that temperatures had reached 70 degrees, and I walked the dog in a tee shirt wondering what December meant any more.  Perhaps it means volatility, rushing change, sudden dark.  I have no doubt that freakish weather is part of our environmental legacy and 'super storms' will continue ravishing whole cities - but I don't know what to expect of ordinary every day weather.  Yesterday, suddenly, snow.

Not snow.  SNOW.  As though we'd been brought back to that allegorical childhood we all had, where it pillowed and drifted and blew round the corners of houses until houses disappeared, laced and dusted trees until tree became wonderful.  I listened to the radio Saturday - in itself, not a thing I do any longer but remember from childhood - and watched as the traffic slowed, announcements were made of closings, predictions of school cancellations rolled in.  My sister and I drove many miles across country to the extended family Christmas.  There was fog and heavy air, there was miles and miles of white, disappeared fences, undulating fields.  The car slid in the parking lot as we arrived and feet made that squeaking on new snow noise.  It was warm, though: on the sidewalk a black water puddle and I paused, as the door opened and the riot sound of family and warmth and dozens of children I don't know rolled out the opened doorway; I paused and watched the lazy snowflake hit the puddle like some kind of haiku.

When I woke, Sunday morning, the world had vanished.  It continued to vanish, all day long.  There was no traffic, although I live on what I think is one of the busiest intersections in town.  The neighbor boy, drippy nosed and snowsuit clad, knocked on the door and offered to shovel.  I let him.  It snowed on and on, and he kept shoveling.  Every few hours I'd open the door and let my dog go out to join him - two black figures cavorting in on an immense canvas.  A world blanched of all sound.  A freezing of time and reality.  He'd knock again, I'd say he really didn't have to shovel til it ended, he'd sniff and go back to his self-imposed responsibility, the shovel and snowsuit outsizing him.  The winter outsizing both of us.

I sat at the table in the very quiet house and drank tea.  Ate oranges.  Put on more socks.

I watched a mood walk closer to me like a wall of fog approaching over a body of water.

Depression comes that way, some times.

Winter used to be my metaphor for it, depression.  A wall of blank.  A kind of dying.  A place where everything is isolated, nothing makes a sound, and you might lose limbs if you aren't careful.  The heart might freeze inside you.

This is the thing, though: I don't slide down to those depths the way that I used to.  I don't much want to die any more.

But I do notice: the moods in me like weather, like season.  How real they are and how they change the timbre of my voice, the appetite on my tongue, my ability or inability to remember.  I watch, too: how the smallest, dumbest things are the things that help me.  Cinnamon.  Light.  Taking off shoes and socks and getting bare feet, bare hands, on to the mat and moving until I sweat.

Look: the ancients understood seasons - night to day, fall to winter - and they understood characters - gregarious and earth motherish, or bookworms, clowns, family centered or rogue.  They understood that happiness and enlightenment come from a full on acceptance of who and where we are and living appropriately.

The practice of yoga is learning who you are and where you are (winter, family, mid west plains) and understanding.  Understand that this affects your basic experience of life and learning to dance, move, adapt, thrive within it.

The boy kept knocking on the door.  I gave him an orange and hot chocolate.  The dog first loved the snow, then shivered.  We hunkered down, and then I wrote this:

Hands and eyes and mind grow dry and numb, the fire all draws in.

Which is my poet brain striking on the truth of ayurveda of this season.

Winter begins dominated by vata and moves toward kapha.  To survive, we need to balance kapha energies with food, with self care and body movements, with kapha balancing yoga practices.

Winter's short days affect us, whether we are fully Seasonally Affective Disordered or simply hungry for more light and longer days - a greater sense of awakeness and time to live.  Further: holiday season will bring with it a sense of being frenzied, broke, over wrought, under appreciated, lonely and misunderstood no matter how fantastic your social and familial relationships are or whether or not you observe a holiday.  Even the fact of NOT observing a holiday can stir up deep rooted emotional connections.  The end of one year and the anxieties about a coming one contribute foreboding, a sense of shortness, or overwhelm.

Know this, and accept.  Accept, and then find wild joy, anyway.

Yoga teaches us survival, and then more than survival into joy.  There are things, yoga teaches, you can do.  Do them.  Perhaps there is a reason we humans have a hodge podge of celebrations - and all celebrations of light - in the darkest days of winter.

Celebrate ridiculously, for this is how human beings get through.  Celebration, commemorate, make holy, pray, observe, and practice.  Same things.

My niece has learned Christmas songs in the last few weeks.  From her carseat in the back during that long drive, she kept refraining, every now and again.  Let it snow let it snow.  Let it.  Snow.

Let it.  Accept, and find deep joy in the deep snow, deep joy in the deep body.

KAPHA BALANCING PRACTICES - FOOD, SCHEDULE, SKIN, PEOPLE, ASANA

Mid to late winter tends to be dominated by kapha energies; the sky is low, often cloudy, gray and days are cold, damp and heavy.  Life - even in the busiest places, moves more slowly.  When in balance, kapha energy provides lubrication and structure.  This has to do with joints, mucus, the texture of our skin and our hair.  Kapha type people are often the strongest and have the most stamina.  Kapha has to do with strength, vigor, endurance, stability of both body and mind.  It is responsible for lubrication of joints, flowing of thought and emotion and ideas, moisturizing skin and fascia, maintaining immunity and lymphatic balance.  Out of balance, it leads to sluggishness, fatigue, ache, mucus related illness, excess weight, negative emotions such as attachment, envy, greed (and the loud relational negatives of loneliness, comparison, jealousy which can tip into over dependence or far too much isolation).  Too much kapha energy is earthiness, solidness, taken too far: a sense of being stuck in the mud, buried, dark, cold.

In general, we should follow a kapha - pacifying regimen in the winter. But dry, cold, windy weather can at times provoke vata, too, and can lead to arthritis, indigestion, etc.

FOOD - Appetite tends to become 'heaftier' during winter months - which can lead to weight gain if we answer with highly processed foods and corresponding lower excericse.  However, kapha in itself is the withdrawing of energy from the extremities to the organs, and many people may lose weight in winter if they don't add proteins and grains significantly.  We should not eat the same foods we ate in the summer seasons, and need bulk and warmth and spice.

Incorporate whole grains, buttermilks or cottage cheeses if you do dairy, steamed vegetables, warm soup, and spicy food into your meals. Because your appetite is heartier in the winter, eat more protein- beans, tofu, eggs- and if you’re not a strict vegetarian, chicken, turkey, and fish. Add warming spices such as cinnamon, cloves, and black pepper to promote digestion. Drinking sweet or dry wine with your meals will stoke your agni (digestive fire), improve your appetite, and increase circulation. Avoid cold drinks and opt for hot water, hot tea, hot cocoa or chai.

SCHEDULE - much like the cold wet autumnal season, a schudule can help get through the dark time of winter.  Think of softening the schedule, but keeping it moving.  If possible, allow yourself to wake up a little later.  Avoid naps (but know they can be healing, too; just don't fall into a rut as kapha tends to over sleep and the sleep makes us more tired).  Try to be active early in the day and include excercise; give yourself pleasurable activities for the late afternoon and evening - think joy and interest.  Schedule something to look forward to (big: a vacation or long awaited purchase or accomplishment, small: a movie you really want to see or book to read, a lunch date with a good friend, a self indulgant purchase that won't break you in anyway but feels good).  Try new things to keep your interest involved and yourself challenged.

SKIN

Think circulation.  Massage, get a loofah, scrub and exfoliate.  Find an oil appropriate for your skin and stimulating (bergamot, rosemary, juniper, vertiver, melissa) and indulge in it.

ASANA PRACTICE

Hard enough to sweat (ayurveda says on brow, armpits, joints and a feeling of dryness in the mouth is the point you need to get to) and challenging enough to break you out of 'stuckness' and stagnation.  Aim to counter Kapha's natural tendency to feel cold and sluggish.  Move through flow and sun saluations with as much a sense of speed and warmth as you can without losing connection and integrity.  This will lighten and warm you.

Most standing asana are invigorating, especially if you hold them for a longer time.  Try holding for 20 breath (that is much longer than you may have ever, ever done so).  Backbends are also heating, and getting extesion of arms and legs (up, over head) promotes the heart to push and the circulation to flow.  Open your chest and the front lines of the body as much as you can.

Kapha is said to be dominant 6- 10 am, so do some sort of asana or excercise then if at all possible.  Just a few minutes.  One salutation.  One stretch. Just do something.  Incorporate firey pranyama into the practice, especially at the beginning and close.  It cleanses that heaviness, mucus, and chest gunk, as well as energizing the digestive system and balancing energy levels throughout the day.

PEOPLE:

Kapha doshas are trustworthy, stabilizing, grounded people.  But they can tend to be too sentimental and nostalgic for how things were and unable to move forward.  As winter and it's Kaphic tendencies set in, make sure to watch your own proclivities toward others.  Keep yourself challenged and excited and avoid getting stuck in the past.  Realize not all relationships need to be ideal to be rewarding. Allow yourself to be given gifts and appreciated. Practice open hearted gestures of compassion, play, service.  Don't try to be oversimplistic about your feelings (guilt, depression, fear), but see them for what they are without letting them become everything.  It is possible to know you feel guilty but also know you ARE not a fundamentally guilty person.  Go for lightness and laughter.  Watch comedies.

No feeling is final

“Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” — Rainer Maria Rilke

Praying with our hands. Dancing with God.

prayingwithourhands-FLYER <---

A workshop

  Sunday, January 27

9 a.m. - Noon, $40

register here

"Let my prayer arise in Thy sight as incense, And the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice." Psalm 141:2

"The Incarnation establishes without a doubt, once and for all, the given-ness of union with God.  We do not have to attain divine union.  We do not have to climb out of our messy flesh into the pure Spirit of God.  God has become man.  Our flesh is his flesh.  Our body is his body." -Carmelite monk William McNamara

"Our whole notion of reality has actually been topsy-turvy.  Instead of God being a vast imaginary projection, he turns out to be the only thing that is real, and the whole universe, despite its immensity and solidity, is a projection of God's nature." -Deepak Chopra

There is confusion: some people say yoga is a religion.  Some people say it is exercise.  It is neither, but sometimes there is confusion.  So: what is yoga?  And why is it spiritual?  Or is it not?

We tend to think of prayer, spirituality, and ourselves in intellectual ways.  We are taught that 'spirituality' is a thing we find in special places, handed on by qualified others.  We disregard the physical as a handicap, an embarrassment, or a weakness.

We lose out when we do this.  Spirituality is not a thing to be found in churches once a week or at turning points in a life story.  It is not to be found in retreats or cloisters.  It is here, and it is now, or it is nowhere.  Nor is it a thing taught by others, if we are honest: religion is the song of the heart.  Our relationship to our body says a lot about what we think of God's creation.  The most profound connection to the divine is always experienced inwardly, as something between ourselves and God.

There is a strong tendency to deny or disparage the human body, to suggest its the source of sin and weakness.  Yet in the Christian tradition itself, God chose to incarnate his son.  Maybe this wasn't only about suffering, but also about love.

Who are we and what are we supposed to do with this life?  This body?  How do we, personally, incarnate the idea of gratitude, anger, joy, salvation, devotion, or love?  What is peace, and what is praise?

We go through life's stages.  We know youthful play, thrills, and heartbreak.  We know relationships, parenthood, and work.  We know illness, trial, and loneliness.  Ultimately, I think we are called to dance, and to pray.  These are things that are done with bodies.

A workshop dedicated to exploring 'religion' and 'spirituality' in terms of yoga.  To finding 'self', and mapping the relationship between this 'self' and God.

Wear: comfortable clothing you can move freely in, as well as a warmer shirt to cover up with/socks as we will NOT be engaged in a strong practice or move the whole time.  Have something comfortable for the discussion part.

Bring: a notebook and pen, your mat if you've got one, possibly a towel or small blanket to sit on and shift around on as we discuss.  (pillows, props, all welcome.)  Something to sip.

Any questions?  Let me know.  I'm excited!

Give the gift of yoga

Why not give yoga?  To your mom, to your boss, to your best friend? Easy.  It's elegant, it's personal, it's meaningful.  (Yes, yes, I still remember the one who first got me in a studio.)

Buy a (new student) $30 for 30 days package, a workshop (every last Sunday of the month, $40).

Or, hey, ask your loved ones to buy you a month.  You want that more than socks, don't you?

I have a stack of holiday cards I can fill out with the gift information for you to give to your loved one.

If you are not a student, but would like to purchase a gift, you can click on the paypal 'donate' button to make your purchase.  I will add your gift to the student's account or create an account for a new student.

The point (practice)

The point, I think, is not to live some other life but to fully live the life that we have. It is not easy for me to swallow this.  More often than not, I want things to be different.  I am not entirely satisfied with the face that I have, nor that I am a middling age woman, nor with my bank account.  I live smack dab in the middle of conservative suburbs in the Middling West, which is the antithesis of what I expected and worked for.

I overheard a woman in a restaraunt the other day, with a crestfallen look and her hands limp on either side of her plate: this isn't what I wanted, she said.

Which is what most of us get.

I used to teach a woman who was driven and focused as a tiger.  She was beautiful and, I think, relatively 'successful' by anybody's standards.  We practiced headstands one day and I saw frustration cloud her face to a cool marble tone.  I'm not strong enough, she said; I'll never be able to do the variations.

I answered that it would come.  But I think I answered, wrong.  I think I should have said it doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter whether or not she will ever find lotus and hanumanasana and pincha while standing on her hands.  It is a truth that she maybe never will.  We can't predict things and she may never practice again, let alone for the years more the pose might take.  She might lose her limbs or her health.  She may lose interest.  She may never get the poses she wants.

But the practice still has a radical and precious worth.  I watched her move away from the wall and knew she was more comfortable doing those poses in which she looked like a rockstar.  It's enough, she said, speaking of the sweat and the work out and the core work.

But there is something, something to practicing those poses we are not very good at.  Something to inhabiting the land of This Is Hard For Me.

When I was a little girl, I believed, I knew, that I was going to be a monk.  I wrote silly poems that were half prayer, half song, and half magic spell and this seemed to me the most important thing I could do with my life.  I felt the truth of human love and suffering and likened that somehow to god.  And, it seemed to me, that if god or love exists, the only rational way to spend my life was in dedication to it.  As I grew up, though, I lost my sense of god.  Churches seemed ridiculous places for me to be.  I lost all feeling of 'faith' without losing that first tug and pull to be what I wanted to be: a monk, serving love, writing poems, standing for healing in a broken world.

These suburbs rankle me, and newspapers bother me, and my schedule sometimes leaves me feeling very little of 'purpose' and much more of 'fatigue'.  I spent the afternoon, yesterday, writing poems and daydreaming under a tree next to a monstrous bed of peonies.  The poems were intoxicating and wild and breezy, the heat was dizzying, the afternoon passed slow.  But I hit a wall of doubt: the notebook is so messy.  The poems are not finished, not edited, not publishable let alone memorable.  I looked from the black ink on the limpid paper and then to the ants, colonizing the blooming peonies.  What's the point...I found myself thinking.  I can't describe these flowers.  No one will ever read my poems.  I will never be a monk.

I stood and brushed the humid dirt from my knees and my seat, gathered my papers and headed back into the house.  But as I did so I remembered some of my students, the conversations we have had, the way their movements sometimes strike me dumb and make me teary.  I recalled to myself the days I am most tired, most frustrated, think myself most stupid and a bad teacher and stuck in middling america; the moment I show up, my mood no longer matters.  Something happens.  I let my 'self' be pushed aside and let the yoga talk, instead, I try to be present not to my wheeling thoughts but to the bodies and lives that show up in the room with me.

I wanted to be a poet monk, to stand for love, to touch beauty and heart and soul every day.  It occurred to me, standing in the hot sun with my arms full of half written poems, that that is exactly what I am.

The point is not to change our lives, but to change our selves so that we can live our lives, fully.  To find the precious worth of what we can do, are doing.  To appreciate that we are getting the myriad benefits - postural, hormonal, strength and tissue and joint wise, now and today.  That this is more real, and more beneficial, and a bigger point than the imaginary pose we might or might not someday hit.  This is real, while we spend most of our lives blind and desirous of the imaginary.

To be present while moss covers our face, or the drone of suburban lawn mowers drills into the fantasy, to watch ants and peonies and be okay with whatever poems we can write.

Yoga is courage

Yoga is courage.  It is the bravery to look at reality full in the face, and be touched by how deeply you love.  Yoga invokes the courage to remove our absurdities and crutches and blank stares. The startling revelation of love. All the saints of history have known this. All of our great artists. This is the message of all the angels and messengers.  And a few, stellar people-of-our-own-lives whom we are blessed to rub elbows with now and again. Grief, hard knocks, and fear reveal our attachments, true.  But they also show the glorious aspect of that attachment: we are woven into the fabric of the world, we are linked to everything that is.

Pain is a badge, or maybe a threadbare, greasy flag, that indicates our humanity.  It waves it's gritty fibers in a soiled, but archly noble, patriotism for our homeland.  This is our humanity.

And humanity is a beautiful, gorgeous, precious thing.

The Strong Body, Quiet Mind Project

The Strong Body, Quiet Mind Project provides high quality yoga classes to veterans, first responders, at risk youth, and survivors of trauma.  All veterans and first responders are invited to participate - service and health providers are invited to collaborate with Return Yoga.  Participants are asked to pay $30 per month for unlimited yoga classes.  A veteran's i.d. card or first responder i.d. is all you need to sign up. Sign up must happen in-studio for Strong Body, Quiet Mind.  Every class on Return's schedule is open to project participants.

Participants are invited to all yoga classes rather than 'special' classes: there is no need for labels, anonymity is respected here, and all to often 'help' comes with stigma.  The truth is, we all need healing. Further, 'special' programs or classes are all to limited in time and scope, leaving participants after a few weeks rather than encouraging an on-going, life process of growth.

The Need:

Our society is rife with anxiety, stress, and trauma.

Studies have shown that PTSD and 'shock' in this generation of military will overshadow anything known to previous generations, costing billions. Veterans returning from service are finding a depressed economy, a dirth of future and career opportunities, and a shortage of services that answer their physical and psychological needs.

Research is showing that domestic violence and sexual assault survivors are just as likely to suffer trauma symptoms, with an even fewer sources of support and intervention.

Similarly, first responders are on the front lines of crisis situations day in and day out.  On going exposure to traumatic situations takes its toll on responders, who are under appreciated, under respected, and under protected.  Trauma, stress, and shock are status quo.  The private costs are often invisible, but no less deep.

These populations suffer in their own lives, and the effects of trauma are passed onto the next generation. These demographics are over-represented in the unemployed, the homeless, the incarcerated, those seeking emergency services, addiction services, and medical assistance. Their children struggle in education, health, and social connections. These kids are more likely to be involved in crime, high risk behaviors, and have inadequate medical and educational support.

HOPE

Trauma has proven to be one of the most difficult issues to 'treat'. However, current research has shown that the skills of mindfulness, meditation, and yoga promote autonomy, well being, and genuine healing in away medicine and traditional 'talk therapy' can't. 8 weeks of a yoga practice has proven to calm the sympathetic nervous system and increase activity in the areas of the brain associated with the parasympathetic nervous system, sense of safety and autonomy, and cognitive functioning. Further, yoga can be taught at very little cost, with no negative side effects, and is accessible to any level of ability/mobility.

The effects of trauma (or stress, for those who have been labeled too much already) are pernicious, at times devastating, at other times manifesting as a numbing sense of being 'damaged' or 'broken'. Many who have lived through trauma (from a car accident to the death of a loved one, a sexual assault to active duty)often describe it as a chronic state of hopelessness.

Yoga is a rediscovery of hope, and the lived experience of grace.

It was so for me.

There is a profound difference between trying to 'get over it', and feeling oneself okay from the soles of the feet to the deepest parts of the brain.

Yoga allows us to experience ourselves not as 'wounded' or getting over it, but as powerfully alive and worthy human beings.

How the Program Works:

Return subsidizes costs directly, in such a way that every class dollar spent by students goes to funding the Strong Body, Quiet Mind Project.  Return is incorporated as a non-profit.

Additional funding may come from community or private donations or grants.

If your program is interested in accessing yoga classes for your demographic, please contact Karin Burke at karinlburke@gmail.com.  All support, whether by participating in class or donating directly, is greatly appreciated and provides a demonstrable good.

Fertility yoga

Now and again people ask if I teach or would teach a prenatal yoga class. The short answer is no.  The long answer is yes; always, of course.

I do not host a specifically prenatal class; such classes are hard to maintain fiscally, hard to hold class numbers high enough, and it is impossible to randomly pick one time during the week when all the interested pregnant women could make class.  It doesn’t help much if I do offer a class Wednesday mornings, if four out of five people can’t make that time slot.  In my experience, holding a prenatal class is too small for too big a need.

I do, however, teach pre, post, and fertility yoga.  I also know that fertility and health often times include loss of a child, aging, and sexuality issues that a ‘prenatal class’ doesn’t touch.  While pregnancy certainly does have specific practices in the yoga tradition, I also believe that fertility touches men’s health as well as women’s, that bio, psycho, and social aspects of gender, identity, self esteem, health and wellness span relationships and life cycles, and yoga has specific tools and suggestions for ALL of these things.  The question is not what prenatal yoga is, but what your process is and where you are.

My recommendation is this: take a private session to discuss your own needs, goals, and circumstances.  You will learn in a private or two the poses that will help and the way to avoid or modify poses that are contraindicated for pregnancy.  Once you have done this, you can attend ANY yoga class, anywhere, safely and effectively.  Of course, you can continue taking a private sessions as you need and want the individual feedback and support.  I believe that individual feedback and support is crucial; pregnancy, sexuality, and fertility issues are profound embodied and psychological experiences, felt individually and existentially.  You deserve such support.

Once you have that foundation, I strongly recommend attending the healing classes.  Unlike a once a week, hard to get to prenatal class, healing classes are held five nights a week.  Classes are small and tailored specifically to who shows up for class.  Each class explores specific healing postures and meditative traditions for our own unique needs.

Those who have a long yoga practice behind them can absolutely attend strong classes the full term of pregnancy, provided they are willing to make appropriate modifications.

Body, Mind, Feeling, and World. A yoga and mindfulness workshop.

Sunday, December 30th 9am - 12 pm.  $40.

Register here.

What: a workshop part movement, part dialogue, part silence.

Mindfulness, yoga, and 'stress reduction' are buzzing words these days, related to everything from dieting to worship to treatment of mood disorders.  But students repeatedly ask me what exactly meditation is, how body movements can possibly heal old hurts or daily grind stress, and what 'enlightenment' and poses named after saints and myth might have to do with our 21st century selves. Learn what science and ancient tradition say about 'mindfulness'.  Learn, too, what 'healing' and 'stress reduction' might mean in your own body and life.

Wear: comfortable clothing you can move freely in, as well as a warmer shirt to cover up with/socks as we will NOT be engaged in a strong practice or move the whole time.  Have something comfortable for the discussion part.

Bring: a notebook and pen, your mat if you've got one, possibly a towel or small blanket to sit on and shift around on as we discuss.  (pillows, props, all welcome.)  Something to sip.

Any questions?  Let me know.  I'm excited!

Holiday Schedules, and a workshop

In asking students whether they would be a) in town and b) interested in yoga during the holidays, the only clear answer I got was yes.  Yes. So, as I'm not leaving town myself, I plan on having class both Thanksgiving day and Friday morning at 6:30 am.

I'll close Christmas eve and day, but will have regularly scheduled classes the rest of the holiday season.  Including new year's eve and day.  (It is good to start the year this way.  It is good.)

Also, since a number of students have requested longer workshops, I've gone ahead and scheduled one.  On Sunday, December 30, from 9 am to noon I will host something part movement, part dialogue, part meditation.  I'm calling it 'body, mind, feeling and world: yoga and mindfulness'.  More to follow.

Come, practice.  The door is open.

Bicycles and pick up trucks and classes

Dear everyone, Most of you have already figured out - in the most inconvenient of ways - that classes are cancelled this week.  I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience and am trying to keep you all up to date, now.

I intend to be back in the studio Monday morning - have a further dr appointment Monday afternoon, and will go from there with updates.  I assume we will be 'back to normal'; if not, I will post here immediately and change the online schedule as needed.

Just over a week ago my bike and I had an unfortunately close encounter with the grill of a pickup truck.  It was scary but uneventful, and in my flustered state I walked away fine.  Fine, I thought, was everything.

Monday evening, though, I started to throw up.  Odd, I thought, since I didn't feel sick in the least and couldn't figure anything funny in my diet.  But I kept throwing up and shortly thereafter started feeling very, very dizzy and confused.  Confused enough that I became scared (when minds get bleary, we start to fear losing reality pretty quick).  And so tired I could hardly manage walking from one room to another.  So, I went to the ER.

I was diagnosed with concussion following the bike accident and told to sit still for a week.  Told that concussions are very common and usually not a big deal - that most people don't even realize they've had them.  But, being a bruise on the brain, they can also be a very big deal indeed.  The issue seems to be that we can't really know, but have to just wait.  Sit still a week, let bruises heal, and then see.

I could tell you the whole range of awful emotions I've gone through and how I've been crying my way through the last few days.  How dare I be so irresponsible to students, I thought.  What kind of shoddy buisness am I running that has to close all sudden like just a month into being open?  What a horrible teacher I am, after all.  Let alone all the financial fears and the fact of being uninsured, the fear of what a week closed will do to a business just trying to start, what students will think...let alone the scary, mostly unspoken, but vaguely there idea that my mind and body might have to make permanent adjustments to what I've been calling 'yoga'.

But the larger point, and truth of the matter, is this: yoga is bigger than my little accidents and the studio itself is more important than what happens there over the course of one week.  The studio will be just fine, in the long run.  The students will be just fine.  And even if I do have to make adjustments to my own practice, to acknowledge embodiment and injury and limit, I can still be an amazing teacher.  I simply have to accept that I'm not so in control as I thought or wanted.  That the glossy skimming on and feeling in control is more dangerous, really, than is dealing with things as they come and doing what I can.

All is well.  Yoga is big.  I just have to practice sitting still and not knowing for a little while.

Thank you all for your kind thoughts; they have helped and continue to help.  I will see you all soon.

Namaste,

K

Thursdays - yoga for athletes. All. Day. Long.

We know - science and brute experience both have proven - that yoga works synergistically to improve athlete's performance, recovery time, prevent injuries, and hone all of the 'mind' stuff that brings athletes to their very best.  We know that any and all yoga classes hit on the same skill sets and muscle and joint groups that athletes are prone to injure or over stress.  That in mind, however, and knowing there is a huge athletic community who are doing much of their community stuff on Wednesdays, I think I'm going to focus Thursday classes (all four of them) on yoga for athletes.  There's a restorative class and there are strong classes.  Both complement a runner's (or cyclists, or gymnast's, or ball player's) lifestyle. Same classes, and you do not need to be a runner to benefit.  But the focus - and my language and teaching directives, might tend more to the specific concerns of sports medicine, integration, recovery.

Sound good?

Transitioning into fall, ideas and recipes and asana

Autumn is ruled by the vata dosha (that which blows) and the meridians of lung and large intestine.  In brief, the vata dosha provides that wind and momentum from which ideas, creativity, spontaneity come from.  Vata 'rules' the nervous system (whereas Pitta is digestive fire and Kapha is the physical, solid body).  In a vattic time, then, things tend to be unpredictable, dry, ungrounded, very active, and cold.  To maintain our internal environment and our emotional, physiological environment, then, we apply opposites: we need to create warmth, stability, routine, and rest. To see how the lung association might apply, simply realize how your breathing constricts in cold.  Shallow breathing contributes to restlessness, anxiety, a sense of business or urgency if not the whole sympathetic nervous system's fight or flight.  Freeze or flee.  Breath, lungs, and prana are all intimately related to circulation, which has everything to do with warm and immunity body wide.

The colon or large intestine is implicated, here, like the lungs, as a thing we need to keep in balance, a thing prone to suffer the winds of change and cold.  Foods we've eaten before (ie raw or fresh vegetables, astringent and cooling foods of summer, let alone highly processed foods) will contribute to dis-ease in our bodies.  Instead, focus on slowly cooked, warm foods.  Whole grains.  Roasted things and mildly spicy things.  The ability to digest is literally the ability to digest our life, experiences, ourselves.  Ayurveda sees food as medicine and medicine as food.

I've tried to gather some recipes, some practices, and some ideas that are known to be balancing to vata dosha.  The beauty of such practices are you can take those things that work for you and dismiss what doesn't.  If you watch, you'll notice change and shifts and you can choose what to add or what to take away.  There is no need to empty your refrigerator or start some esoteric practice of yogic cleansing.  But there are literally thousands of things you can do to heal, sooth, and ground yourself.

You can ease times of barrenness and transition - whether it be seasonal, or you personally have vata dosha, or you are going through a period of transition and cold in your life.  You ease it by establishing ritual and routine to catch and hold you.  Slowing and quieting down. Keeping warm and hydrated from skin to bone. Establishing self-care boundaries and a supportive routine.

ASANA - POSTURES - A PHYSICAL PRACTICE Poses that work on the colon (the bodily seat of vata), intestines, pelvis, lumbar spine, and sacroiliac  bring energy back down into the base of the torso and keep us out of our heads, or give our heads some reality.

Spinal twists and inversions of all kinds soothe this dosha. Sitting and standing forward bends are soothing to the sympathetic nervous system, particularly for insomnia; boat, plank, staff, and plow are also powerful vata-reducers as they all engage the yogic core, cull up our strength, and tap us into stability. To support grounding, work with standing poses such as mountain, triangle, warrior, and tree.  Do sun salutations S-L-O-W-L-Y, seeking out the strength, foundation, and deep inherent rhythm of the sequencing. Let child’s pose lead you back to your innate innocence and trust, again tapping the parasympathetic nervous system, lowering the head to the earth, and finding connection. End your practice with a long savasana (20–30 minutes); it is really okay to do NOTHING for a while.

Focus on breath that is full.  Breath has everything to do with our nervous system and our circulatory system; keep yourself warm, calmed, and grounded with the breath rather than creating over stimulation.  Use the breath to come back to being a being who has lungs, a belly, a back, and toes.  Focus on being a being who breathes.

IDEAS for transitioning into fall

Keep warm, keep hydrated, eat nourishing foods, find ritual and meaning.  There are thousands of personal ways you can do this.  Buy yourself the most comfortable and comforting scarf you can find and make of it a symbol (or hat, or socks, or whatever).

Nourish your body with hydration from the skin, in.  Go with sesame oil, coconut oil, or shea based lotions over the cooler, biting months.  Recognize how 'products' can dry you out and go for natural or organic when you can afford it.

Old yogic texts say ritual can be anywhere; so does mystical Christianity, Islam, Judiasm.  Rise and go to bed at the same time every day, or practice making your bed on waking as a ritual of order and self care.  Meditate, somehow.  Use a kitchen timer to watch your breath for five minutes, take a walk and count your steps, or write a gratitude list every night before you sleep.  Return to practices that have soothed you in the past; candles or worship services or lunch dates with friends.  Return to an old, beloved book.

And spend some time being purposeful.  Give meaning to the things you do.  Do one thing at a time and know why you do so.  Stay connected to the absolute so you don't get lost in the drivel and spin.

Embrace the rituals that fall can offer - from football to apple picking to Thanksgiving and bounty.  Rituals matter and inform us when we feel formless.  First the gesture, then the grace.

If there are projects you can close, do so.

And find deep rest.  In your asana practice, in your schedule.  It is a time of retreat, poignancy, and deep center.  Sleep.

RECIPES

ok, I have a juice, a link to smoothies, a chili, and a sweet potato thing but I am very tired and writing the recipe for the sweet potato thing might have to wait.  All stick to the concepts: earthy, comforting, patient, non astringent.  Think of it like this; in late summer and early fall we ate lots of produce, apples and pears being at their peak.  Now, we eat the same foods, but we bake them and drizzle them with cinnamon and nutmeg and molasses.  They are astringent and drying, raw.  Good to cool you off and energize you - but at this point we are cold and scattered and need to pull in to mellowness and ripeness.

Karin's Addicted To fall juice:

I am a juicer.  Not all people are.  You need to have an expensive piece of culinary equipment to pull it off.  But it's an amazing way to get all the nutritional benefit of fruits and vegetables before they are cooked out or lose their alkalinity (ask me what that means, if you want to know), and you can get the punch of many veggies in a single serving.

For weeks, I have been addicted to this: juice of 3-4 small beets, 3-4 small carrots, a nub of ginger (yay, warming), an apple or pear, perhaps an orange, perhaps a sprig of basil or cilantro or parsley.  Juicing is impulsive and you use what you have, but this combo has me very energized, very awake, and very clean and grounded feeling all day long.

Smoothie

I'm also a smoothie -er.  Check out this summerized list, which I found a few days ago: 10 best Healthy Fall Smoothie Recipes

And finally, a hearty, spicy, sweet CHILI that I kind of made up over the last week.

Butternut Squash Chipotle Chili

• 1 medium red onion, chopped
• 2 red bell peppers, chopped (or equivalent jarred roasted red peppers)
• 1 small butternut squash (less than 1 1/2 pounds), peeled and chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• ground sea salt
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2+ tablespoon chopped chipotle in adobo (start with 1/2 tablespoon and add more to taste, I thought mine was just right with 1 tablespoon)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 14-ounces canned diced tomatoes, including the liquid
• 4 cups cooked black beans or 2 cans, rinsed and drained
• 2 cups OR one 14 oz. can vegetable broth
• 2 Avocados, diced
• cilantro (optional, for garnish)
• 3 corn tortillas for crispy tortilla strips if you want to be fancy

Instructions

1. sautée the chopped vegetables (onion, bell pepper, butternut squash, garlic) in olive oil on medium-high heat. You’ll need to stir the ingredients every few minutes so they can cook evenly.
2. Once the onions start turning translucent, turn the heat down to medium-low. Add all of the spices and canned ingredients, and stir. Cover for about one hour, stirring occasionally. Taste test for spice level and add more chipotle if desired.
3. By the time your chili is done, the butternut squash should be nice and tender and the liquid should have reduced a bit, producing the hearty chili consistency that we all know and love.
4. Make the crispy tortilla strips: stack the corn tortillas and slice them into thin little strips, about 2 inches long. Heat a small pan over medium heat, add a drizzle of olive oil and toss in the tortilla slices. Sprinkle with salt and stir. Cook until the strips are crispy and turning golden, stirring occasionally, about 4 to 7 minutes. Remove tortilla strips from skillet and drain on a plate covered with a piece of paper towel.
5. Serve the chili in individual bowls, topped with crispy tortilla strips and plenty of diced avocado. I added a little sprinkle of red pepper flakes (optional). You might want to serve this along with some chipotle hot sauce (Tobasco makes one) for the spice addicts like myself.

Transitioning into Fall, #classnotes

I walk my dog along the river, most mornings.  It is good for me.  Yesterday, though, I groaned and creaked; the sky was gunmetal gray, the river black, the wind staggering and pulling leaves and milkweed silk away into what could only be darkness.  Darkness, and cold.  The sound of those brittle leaves, skittering down the pavement when there was no other human noise, pulled at something in my belly. How is it the quickness and fullness - the stark raving beauty of the autumnal feasting and festing and chittery birdsong - so quickly became this dankness and sharp?  I slouched deeper into my coat and my hands would not stay warm.  The dog I think has better transitioning skills than I do; he wanted to stay.

I wanted to go.  We cowered and shuffled our way home through a neighborhood that seemed all railroad track and chainlink fences, beer cans like leaves rolling down the street.  Last week I didn't notice, these.  I noticed the trees on fire.  I noticed the warmth in the sun.

It is good for me, these walkings and meditations: I wondered how it is one transitions into fall.  Or, more generally, how we weather the cold and barren times of change.  What happens to us when we are blown upon?

This, in itself, has been the revelation: it is not a question of how 'one' bears transition or seasons, yoga doesn't ask that.  Yoga asks how you, yourself transition.  If you do.  And how that happens to be working for you.  And if it might change - you might change - to not only cope better but to find the joy in it, the harmony.

In the ayurvedic system, autumn is governed by the vata dosha.  In Chinese medicine, the season affects the lungs and the large intestinal meridian.

Vata: that which blows.  The lungs constrict in a blast of cold air - and stay in shallow breathing patterns if either the external or internal cold lingers on.  This fuels anxiety, hyperexcitability, irritability, a sense of being ungrounded.  The vata dosha itself rules the nervous system, our 'moods' and 'thinking' and 'cognitive ability'.  Imbalance of the vata dosha results in skittery, blowsy, richocheted movements that seem to have no center or gravity.  There is endless activity, but nothing much that matters.  There is crisis, after crisis, after crisis and a hyperfluidity of people and circumstances and things without any of it connecting together.  Imbalance can manifest as lack of enthusiasm, loneliness, fear.  Diminished creativity, unstable memory, scattered thoughts.

The leaves, I think.  The wind.

The large intestine, the colon, is essential to the apana vayu or grounding movement of energy.  It is digestive, yes, but it is also related to our ability to be grounded, nourished, not wispy and famished or bloated and lethargic.  The intestinal meridian needs, in this season of cold and withdrawing, warm and slowly cooked foods.  Earthy, comforting foods. We need not scattered activity but meaningful rituals and deep, profoundly deep, retreat and rest.  The body needs movements that are slow, purposive, contemplative. It is good to do

The preparation and culmination of all that feast, I think.  Rest.  Truly rest.  Create and establish rituals that will hold you in the lean time, the meaningless activity.  Find connection to the unchanging aspect of it - life, I mean life - that exists within and underlies everything.

The surface is blown clear, frozen, withered away.  The way through is to find the deeper core.

Fall is, or can be, a potent time to begin to withdraw and to rest.  To complete things we have started, even as the season completes her own work.

How do you transition? I wondered about myself and realized I wasn't sure I'd ever asked such questions before.  Do I transition?  Or do I react and feel victimized?  Do I, vata style, keep going and going and going in an attempt to override reality with endless activity and surgical attachment to the cellphone?  Attempt to keep busy rather than deal with mental, emotional, or physical issues?  Vata also has a tendency to cling tenaciously to false ideas and hopes even when faced with evidence to the contrary in unconscious efforts to escape dealing with a deeper reality.

The days are neurotic here in Minnesota - it was 80 degrees and colored like jewel box or a laquered chinese painting last week and now here I am scrounging for warmer socks and something to cover my head.  Vata is a dosha, which is usually understood as a personality type.  I am not Vata - I am kapha and pitta pressed so hard it's become stone - but doshas are NOT personality types but characteristics and patterns.  Characteristics are things that all people have, and seasons and earth and rhythms, too.  Vata changes without me directly influence my internal environment.

And what does this mean?  I am so glutted on yogic information it becomes hard to know what to teach or why.  And the accumulated wisdom of thousands of sages, the ruthless edicts about diets and cleanses and practices, the strange stories of yogic transformation that involve at times stopping ones heart or sleeping in the snow or somehow bilocating oneself to be in different parts of the world at once; what does any of that have to do with who we are?  How can yoga mean anything to those of us who do have jobs and families and televisions and high fructose corn syrup?  The stories are lovely as fairy tale and the promise of souls waking up speaks directly to what we most quietly long for.  But what do the stories have to teach us?  Where our our stories?

Again, revelation is backward turning and face slapping.  Biting like the wind, I suppose.

All of this yogic knowledge, the practices, are only relevant if we can apply them to our own selves.  It would be unrealistic and unhealthy to swallow any prescription wholesale, or to believe yoga will turn you into a wandering saint humming chants.  Or to take what any yoga teacher tells you, any class teaches, as the answer.  The answer is in the question.  The answer is in beginning to question.

From there, possibilities unfurl and something deep in the earth is set in motion. 

The point lies in knowing how change affects you, and diet and movement and circumstances, and in learning how powerfully we can respond and grow.  The point lies in realizing we are not powerless, but poignant. Thriving in that power, within and without.  Becoming, through the practices, better selves.

Next post will highlight key concepts, asana, dietic stuff for transitioning into fall.

Strong Medicine

More and more I find myself referring to yoga as medicine.  As science.

Of course, I say in class, yoga has elements of a spiritual path.  It has elements of fitness and diet.  But it is not a religion and it is not a fitness program.

Yoga is a science.  Yoga is strong, strong medicine.

In a world of many illnesses, a country of unprecedented stress, anxiety, mental illness, obesity and cardio vascular diseases, you would think this would be embraced.

It is not.  Western Medicine itself will only refer to yoga as a useful tool for 'stress reduction', in spite of a growing body of evidence that it can reverse heart disease, treat 'treatment resistant depression', and ease carpal tunnel syndrome, to pick out of a grab bag.  Even within the world of 'alternative medicine', mention of yoga is dismissive and scant - perhaps because nothing is ingested or inserted or removed from our bodies and we can't fathom medicine, otherwise.

And even in the world of yoga, it's teachers, authors, and serious practitioners, yoga is called a 'discipline', a 'practice', or a personal path.  I don't mean to suggest it isn't those things.  But I believe it is more.  I believe it is science and ought to be treated as such.

We know it builds strength and confidence, if not character.  We know it improves flexibility and stability, that it fosters serenity and poise.  Beyond its attributes as preventative medicine, we know that it heals - not cures, necessarily, but heals in quantifiable ways - low back strain, chronic pain, MS.

One of the difficulties is financial: studies cost.  More deeply, it is that cultural assumption that healing involves ingesting something, inserting something, or removing something from the body.  The cultural assumption focuses on disease rather than health and has no real way to discuss, let alone understand, yogic well being.

This raises a question.  Call it philosophical if you like.  Wonder about your own, or your best friend's, particular body if you want to be more poignant.

When you have an intervention which appears safe and effective, when it has no negative side effects, when it in fact has positive side effects, should one wait for proof before trying it?

I say no.  I say yoga will help in ways you wouldn't think possible.  I say it will change your ideas about health and wellness.  I say it will heal you, though the healing may not be what you expected.

I am not a doctor.  I will never encourage someone to go against a doctor's advice.  I will and frequently do insist a student talk with a doctor before beginning, changing, or returning to a yoga practice.  But I do believe a yoga practice can compliment traditional medicine, and make us more well.

And I believe yoga's potency, what makes it strong medicine, is largely it's ability to return you to control and autonomy: it will immediately teach you things you can do to relieve symptoms and influence your health, whereas so many of us feel we have no choice, no influence, no way to navigate the body mind other than to 'suffer' it or 'deal with it'.  How powerful it is for the fibromylagia patient, who has been told there are no cures and that she must learn to live with her pain, to realize there are, actually, things she can do for herself.

This is fierce medicine, indeed.

Vitality...Prana...The moving dance

I have been reading Martha Graham, a visionary and classically trained dancer who profoundly changed the medium and has left echos all over dance.  I think she was a yogini, although she never identified as such.  In a letter, she wrote:"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time,

this expression is unique.

If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly of the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive...."

Private yoga sessions with Karin

Traditionally, yoga was ‘whispered wisdom’, a lineage handed down from one teacher to one student.  As yoga burst into the American mainstream, group classes became the norm.  This is wonderful, as it allows anybody anywhere to experience yoga.  It can be a cost effective way to have a consistent practice.  It means we can try out different styles, different teachers, and different locations.  It means you can find a yoga class wherever in the world you happen to go. However, classes can be intimidating, alienating, or too generalized for what you most need and want.  Private sessions return yoga to its heart: the goal of personal transformation.

Let's face it; 'yoga classes' simply don't feel right for many of us.  That in no way means yoga is not an option.

In my own practice and as a teacher, I have seen that a few private yoga classes can teach more than years of group classes.  This is especially true at the beginning of a practice, at a point of ‘taking it to the next level’, or when students have specific physical, emotional, or private concerns.  Private sessions are entirely adaptive, supportive, and personal: any body, with any degree of mobility, can find here the profound healing, restoration, and preventative benefits of a yoga practice.

The basics: $125 per session.  Each session lasts about an hour and a half.  I strongly recommend that you commit to taking these in a sequence- taking a single class will give you a lot of information but no follow through.  To make this more accessible, you can purchase 4 privates and get a fifth for free.

Students New To Yoga

Starting a yoga practice with a few private sessions can rapidly introduce both a sense of familiarity and ‘easing in’.  It can break down some of the barriers of intimidation and alienation we feel in walking into a group of people we perceive to be ‘better’ at yoga than us, more flexible, more strong, or more confidant.  Working with a teacher who will directly answer any question you might have and who can explain yogic concepts and postures as they apply to you and your body, your lifestyle, your experience is an invaluable gift.  It is also entirely possible to set up an ongoing private session as your practice evolves; this can help you assess where you are, how to advance, and keep your practice rather than a synchronized yoga team as the goal.

Taking it to the Next Level

“I am currently in a teacher training program, and stumbled on Karin’s webpage.  After a single class with her, I knew I had found my teacher.  I learned more from her classes, her insights, and her conversations than I have in any trainings or workshops I’ve attended.  She has clearly made yoga a calling and not a career.  She watches to make yoga work, really work, for each and every one of her students.  You don’t find that in most teachers or studios.  You just don’t.” – Cari S

“I am a yoga teacher. I consider Karin to be a ‘teacher’s teacher’.  She teaches yoga of the heart, yoga of life, yoga as the whole experience of being alive.” David S

“Knowing Karin has taught me how to make yoga real – not a brand name or a thing I do once a week, but real.” anonymous

“I’ve practiced yoga for more than 30 years and I have never understood or felt alignment the way I do when Karin teaches.  Not all teachers are teachers.  Karin is.” Maria K

Sometimes we plateau in a yoga practice.  Sometimes we just wonder how the heck what we do on our mats is supposed to translate to ‘the path’.  And sometimes we need to know more; we become interested in arm balances, say, or we are worried our practice has to change as we age, or we want to use yoga as part of training for a marathon.  I’ve worked with a number of people who are in or are considering yoga teacher training and are hungry for dialogue.  Whatever the prompting, private sessions are a powerful way to take your group classes, your home practice, your path a little deeper.  It doesn’t take much – a private or two every once in a while radically transforms a practice.

Yoga Therapy, Yoga for Mobility, Weight loss, Personal Training, or Emotional Healing

We know – science has proven – that yoga works with things from anxiety to cardio vascular disease to Parkinson’s disease and fibromyagia in ways pills and talk therapy can’t do.  But we may also struggle to feel a group class is right for us, or how we can possibly participate.  Private sessions allow you to learn the appropriate modifications, experience the full benefits of postures, express any and all concerns and have them addressed.  All Return Yoga classes are open to and appreciate the participation of beginners and those who adapt their poses: but stepping into a class means the teacher cannot focus on you constantly.  Taking a private session or two can give you the confidance and information you need to adapt group classes appropirately and safely.  Yoga CAN be practiced safely, promote self healing, and turn limitations into strong points. Yoga IS for you, it’s just a matter of answering to your specific needs.

Life coaching, spiritual direction, philosophy, distance coaching

“Yoga”, real yoga, does not mean yoga class or physical postures.  Long story short, yoga is an eight limbed path, and the physical practice of asana is only one of those eight branches.  Many of us are interested in all those other branches.  This is incredibly important and something I want to encourage.  Further, many of us need time to process and dialogue our yoga experience, ask questions, or get some insight into that vast and often times confusing world that is ‘yoga’.  Many of us suspect ‘yoga’ might help but aren’t interested in the group style format.  Private sessions allow for all of this.  It’s your time.  Sessions can be all asana (physical practices), all conversation, or a blend of both.  Karin has training as a counselor, crisis intervention specialist, and advocate.

Quick FAQs

Who are private yoga sessions for? 

Any of the above (new to yoga, looking to start a home practice, wanting to take it to the next level, or have a specific concern).  Privates are also frequently recommended as a starting point or addition to group classes for fertility issues, obesity, disability, anxiety, depression, PTSD, pre and post natal, stress, chronic pain, cancer recovery, sleep trouble, illness….

Q: Why are Private Sessions Recommended for Herniated or Ruptured Spinal Disks? Many doctors are suggesting yoga to people with disk issues. Yoga can be very therapeutic and provide back pain relief. However, certain postures offered in a group class setting could also aggravate disk conditions. Safety and ahimsa (non-harming) is our first priority. With a little private coaching, someone with a disk issue can learn how to practice yoga safely alone or in a group class. In just one private session, a student can gain a basic understanding of which postures are most useful to their condition, which ones to avoid, and which ones to approach in a modified form.

Q: Why are Private Yoga Sessions Recommended for Pregnancy? Pregnancy is such an individual experience that it deserves individual attention and support. This personal guidance empowers the mother to be to practice safely. She can then attend ANY regular group yoga class at her leisure with the understanding of how to take care of herself by modifying postures to avoid strain or injury to the baby.

Q: What do I Bring to a Private Yoga Session? – What do I Wear? – How do I Prepare? There is nothing you need to do to prepare for your private session. If you have a spinal condition like scoliosis and you may want to bring a your X-rays or MRI report for the instructor to review. Wear clothing that is comfortable and will stretch and move with your body. You are encouraged to bring a notebook and pen. If you can, you may want to write down your questions or concerns in the days before your private to bring with you.

The word, yoga.

English is an indo-european language - our word yoke is a direct descendant of the sanskrit word yoga.  It means - yoga - to bind or link, to connect, to unify.  To be bound to. The question is, bound to what?  At its most basic, most pared down, bare as dust definition, yoga is the linking of mind, body, and movement.  Our soul to our skin.

Binding the pieces of ourselves back together again. Perhaps knowing where they severed; maybe not.

This is the important point: the belief that body and mind are separate is part of our cultural, philosophic, and medical heritage.  We believe when we have a mood or an anxiety we should be able to just 'snap out of it'; that diseases are strange things visited on our animal bodies, having nothing to do with our 'self'.  We believe our bodies are just vehicles, handy mechanisms for wheeling the brain around from one part of the world to the other, but mostly disgusting, inconvenient, bestial.  Mostly a thing to be contained, controlled, covered up and cleaned up. Managed. Hidden. Used.

Yoga, when I found it, was a life saving bridge.  I didn't know it then. It wasn't what I was looking for, exactly.  I didn't give much credence to the idea that what I felt and believed and thought everyday could be altered, let alone healed.  I didn't believe life, or myself, could be any different.  I certainly didn't suspect and would not have believed that my body would be the thing to do it.  I scoffed at faith healing, energy talk, wispy and weak kneed ideas about karma and souls and manifestation.  They simply didn't hold up to logic and experience.

I still scoff.  But yoga's heart and very definition have very little to do with wispy and weak logic.  There is nothing about auras or faith healing there.  It is simply and forcefully the stated fact that our mind and our body do interface.  That our body hears and remembers everything our mind happens to say.

And our mind feels, remembers, everything the body has lived through.

**

Yoga has been a bridge.  It has, in ways that no political science, biology, doctor or religion or common sense self help book ever has, given me actual tools and ways and means to sort through things.  Tools that work.

For as much as the mind body separation is taken as fact in our culture, we are confused about it.  We say one thing but mean another.  We say 'self' or 'soul' or 'personality' as if it were distinct from the bag of bones, but we suffer.  And we say that ideas are more important than bodies, but we act as if bodies were something, after all.  Politics is very much about bodies, what they are worth, who gets what, who gets to be where and who is excluded.  We have bought and sold bodies, buy and sell them still.  We pretend to be intellectual, democratic, evolved homo sapiens but when it gets right down to our hours and our relationships and our days it involves hunger, fatigue, sex, boundaries, love, anger, disgust, and longing.

Approaching my days, now, from yoga, from the starting point that mind and body are both aspects of self, I suddenly have a better way to live.  Hour after hour, how I deal with hunger and sleep and posture and schedules; but also in how I understand what to do in terms of global politics, familial relationships, art and philosophy.

**

It is important to wonder how personal growth, character, phsyical sturcture, and health/dis-ease relate to one another.  It is important to realize the way our body has been acted upon, cared for, regarded both by ourselves and by others are stored into our bodies on a deepset, cellular level.  It is important to realize that our craving for 'something more' and sense that something missing, or ambition and hope, or hints of god and joy or simply the wishing we could know joy, are part of our human body and as real as blood is.  As actual as the kneecap.

It is wonderful to realize the questions, simple stress, out and out boredom or dull abiding inner fears can be touched.  Not by talking about them or popping a pill.  Not by removing something wrong with you or getting over it.  But by listening to your breath, lowering your forehead to the ground, spreading the fingers of the hand.

**

Many of our medical, educational, religious and philosophical institutions base themselves on the assumption that such an interfacing system and, indeed, such direct relationships do not exist.

Yet wellbeing (either purely from a physical point of view, 'success', or an intellectual/emotional standpoint) cannot be infused intravenously or ladled out by prescription.  Nor can they be willed or manifested by positive thinking or die-hard pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.  Health and disease do not just happen to us.  They are part of a matrix, laid out on the lines of the body mind.

**

When I begin to teach, when the student is new, I repeat and repeat myself: yoga means connection, unity, binding.  The mind to the body, the intention to the action, the breath to the movement, the brain to reality.

All our dis-ease, from headache to chronic illness to broken bones, to longing and depression and overwork, are disturbances of that connection.  Yoga is reconnecting.  Yoga is return.

**

Our bodies and our imaginations are walking autobiographies.  We hardly know who we are.  Yoga is reading, and writing, our own stories, our own lives.

By listening to the breath, lowering our foreheads to the ground, and spreading the fingers of the hand.

Landing, and getting up

Arrival and change feel blustery, vulnerable, and rootless.  They say moving is one of the most stressful events in life.  After the last week, I would agree. I caught myself, all week, being confused: this is a good thing; I am starting a yoga studio in a place that really needs it, bringing what skills I have to a people who don't have other teachers around; I am, in many ways, claiming 'my own' teaching and space and time.

So why does the good feel blustery, vulnerable, and rootless?

Because even good change is hard.  It calls us out of who we have been and challenges us to be something more, to bring our best, to risk and grow.

Of course it's good, and of course it's scary, both.  As the first week of classes ends this morning I'm sitting at a desk that is still unorganized and unpacked and confused, with the window open to the first day that smells like autumn, exhausted.  And happy.  I pushed students this morning, challenging them into an arm balance.  Some are very new to yoga and had never seen it before, others have done yoga but haven't gotten themselves up into that bakasana yet, or been able to hold it very long.  Therefore, there was a lot of falling.  Wobbling, wavering, and trying over.

Every one of them got up.  Felt both the risk (you expect me to stand on my hands?!) and the lift.  If just for a second.  And then we moved on.

We're all doing yoga, always.

CLASSES IN ST CLOUD START TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4

Return is ready to open the doors at 6:30 am this Tuesday.  I am eager, and I am afraid, but I have figured out that the two usually go together.  That if it is really happiness, if you are really growing, there will be an element of poignant, gut grabbing panic.  It doesn't mean stop.  It means you're on to something important. There have been a few questions sent along.  About what kind of yoga I teach, what classes will be like, whether yoga is right for all the various 'me's out there.

The short answer is this:  our medicine, our psychology, and our culture have accepted yoga as mainstream.  We know that it improves health and deters decline associated with aging.  We know that it works to combat cardio-vascular disease (America's big number one); mitigate stress, depression, and anxiety (the numbers two and three); improve concentration and sense of wellbeing; heighten performance and reduce rates of injury and illness.  It is not a religion, although it has aspects of spirituality.  It is not a workout nor a diet and fitness plan, although there are elements of those things as well.  Yoga is, at it's heart, a proven set of practices designed to make human beings find and follow their own highest potential and step into their authenticity.

Return practices that, over the currently popular 'power yoga' classes that will, sooner or later, lose it's fad appeal.

Because I teach that, my classes start from the belief that any body can practice yoga.  You do not need to be in shape nor have a super healthy body.  You do not need to have any experience.  You don't need balance or flexibility and you do not need to know a thing.  The 'healing' classes, in particular, are intended to be open to bodies of all shapes, sizes, and abilities.

Also because I teach a yoga of authenticity, I teach 'strong' classes that are challenging and demanding.  More demanding, probably, than the power yoga class taught at the gym.  You will not do crunches and we will not talk about your abs.  But I will provide a framework for you to chisel out your own relationship with your body, figure out what you are capable of, and be more healthy five years from now than you are today.  Keep practicing, and you will be more healthy 25 years from now than you are today.  I will teach you inversions and arm balances and deep backbends.  I will push and you will sweat.  If you're an athlete, you'll learn how to detoxify your body post work-out and bring more proprioceptive facility to your time off the mat.

The practices are deeply healing and a private experience of accountability, growth, and self revolution.  They go deep.  But they also can be taken small, tiny small pieces at a time.  You take what you want.  You practice when you can.  If what you want is an hour to yourself, it is that.  If you want to sweat and stretch and literally change the edges of what you are capable of, it will be that.  It will help heal what is wounded and bring your body to its most alive expression, most productive state.  It will be both inspiring and soothing.  A yoga practice is both solace and new challenge.

That is the yoga I teach.  And I am excited to teach it in St. Cloud.