Getting Your HEART Ready for the Holidays

I've been thinking a lot this week about the true meaning of the "holiday season" in our culture. We all know that the grinch's heart grew three sizes when he figured out that its not about greed, but about love. We all know that having our loved ones and/or family around us is the ROOT (alluding, alluding...) of what this time is supposed to be about. But the thing is, there's a few other elements tied in with these concepts of love: Expectation - a byproduct of the human experience; & Consumerism - a byproduct of capitalism.

Now, obviously can't get rid of either of these other factors - nor should we worry that its necessary. If yoga is about anything, its about finding balance, health, and happiness with the truth in front of you, whatever that may be. But often, the thing we forget in this season, is that can't nobody feel the love, if you
A) are doing it begrudgingly; and
B) have not been careful to take care of your own needs and heart.
Its easy as pie to get wrapped up in what you want, what your mother wants, what your partners' mother wants, what your boss wants, and then there's all the stuff.... gifts, decorations, baking, parties... we forget that a very important part of the pie is L O V E. So, for the next four weeks in my blogs and Sunday class, we'll be gearing up and getting you prepped to give and receive the love, unleash the power of BREATH, and get your body, mind, and heart ready with some tools to make it all happen.

Ok it's TERMS time.  If you don't care about the terms, skip down to the next fun colored section.

This is a timely little project, as I was just thinking its about time that I mention to my class the importance of both the bandhas, (or energy centers, often most easily thought of as a muscle group for starters) and the controlled breathing aspect of yoga, called pranayama. Which got me thinking how the heart center is activated by the breath. Which made me realize, well, if we're focusing on getting the heart ready for the holidays, I should talk about the heart chakra.  Except that the chakras (which are considered energy "wheels" or circles in constant motion which govern different parts of body functions and how they interact with the outside world) are "realized" from the bottom up, meaning its best to start with number one, get a concept of what the freakin thing is, start to feel it and think about it & understand its importance in life and health, and then move on up to the next chakra.

And wouldn't you know it -- the heart chakra is the 4th chakra, and there are four weeks till Christmas, and five weeks till New Years, and the fifth chakra is at the throat, which governs the intake and release of air. And when thinking of the throat region in terms of Vayus, which is another concept of how air and breath move through the body - the throat Vayu (called conveniently the Pranic Vayu) governs all the rest of the vayus, or air, throughout the body. Oh the circle of life. 

AND SO!  For the next four weeks - we'll spend a few minutes at the beginning of each class activating and getting familiar with the bandhas, practicing controlled pranayama, and thinking about how these help us to realize our chakras, one at a time, all the way up the heart (for loving yourself and others), and the throat, which is the access point for the breath, and source to facilitate allllll the other stuff.

So!  Tomorrow is the ROOT CHAKRA called MULADHARA. It means "foundation," influences the excretory and reproductive organs, and is ruled by the element of Earth.

Come to class over these next four weeks, and get ready to TREAT YOUR HEART WELL, so that you are goooood and ready for the holidays :)

I found this beautiful 

painting of Muladhara from 

California artist 

Jennifer Mazzucco!

Yoga with Calley at Yoga Garden Minneapolis:

Sundays @ 10:00am - Abbreviated Ashtanga (great for beginners!)

What, What, What are you DOING?

Process: its how you get from A to B. To bake a cake there is a process. To launch a product there is a process. If you have a job - of any kind - chances are you understand that the "final deliverable" of whatever you do, is 1% of your job.  The rest of it is the process getting there.

There is a common phrase you'll hear in the yoga world (or at least the Astanga world) that says yoga is 99% practice, and 1% theory. Which I personally remind myself every time I can't remember the damned sanscrit name for a pose. My brain is just not fast at remembering terms and random factoids.  But processes: there I'm golden. (Good thing I'm a musician and a yogi right? Can you imagine, "Hello I'm Doctor Bliss, and you have an infection in your.... oh dear, what's it called?")

I'm re-using this fun little moving gif that I created for a post a few months back:

- partly cause it was a challenge to TAKE all the individual photos in the 3-second window from "click button" to "be in pose" so I wanna get some use out of this puppy.
- partly cause I'm too lazy and warm here in my bed on Saturday morning to get up and take a new picture for you all. Please forgive.
- partly cause these are great to look at process:

On first glance, here are the "end deliverables":
1 - reach hands up
2 - bend forward at the waist
3 - plank
4 - slow push-up for chaturanga dan
dasana

But lets talk about it from the perspective of process:
1 - reach hands up
     a. make sure feet are spread wide, even contact with the floor from all points of the foot
     b. feel your feet rooting down into the mat, but meanwhile lift energy up through the arches of the foot, and continue that muscular / energetic pull all the way up the legs to the hips
          i. toes are gently touching, heels are 1-2 inches apart, so as to open up the sacral muscles in your low back
          ii. legs are turning slightly in towards one another, activating this idea of a "hugging the middle line" up through the center of the body.
     c. feel the base of the spine strongly connected to the hips, and helping with the rooting sensation in the feet.
     d. feel the spine grow up gently out of the base, respecting your natural spinal curve.
     e. feel your shoulders resting on top of you elongated spine, as though they were placed on top of the spine, and are dangling around it, with a nice, relaxed, wide base across the clavicle and front of the shoulders.
     f. keeping this weighty, relaxed, "dangling" feeling in the shoulders, attempt to raise the arms to the sky, reaching out first, then swooping up, all the while, not allowing the shoulders to become part of the lift.
          i. take note that if you think of your arms as lifting up and out of the belly or even low back, it can help the feeling of keeping the shoulders down.

AND THAT'S JUST #1.  

So take that idea, and apply it to the harder poses. (This is also why its good to ask questions!) You will start to see that even in yoga, all the "end deliverables" (the shape, the pose, the form) is really just many many processes.

It's not about what you can or cannot do. 

IT'S ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE DOING.

Yoga with Calley at Yoga Garden Minneapolis:

Sundays @ 10:00am - Abbreviated Ashtanga (great for beginners!)

Ah yes, The horse.

This is a pre-emptive post for a lot of us - I will likely be linking back to it the first week of January, when we're all thinking about New Years' resolutions, and of course everyone's favorite one is something to do with health, wellness, or fitness. (Enter our magic friend yoga. Stick with her, she's slow to commit.)

But it's worth talking about while I'm revved up about it. Some days you just have to say, "Oh well, today I fell off. Tomorrow I'll get back on the horse."

Case in point - for the last 14 days or so I have be a BAD yogini... I was traveling for a tour with this lady, and you know, when you're traveling all day, playing shows at night, and then catching up with friends, or meeting new ones something has to give. So I did get on my mat a few times, and even got in a whole 45 minutes once on the trip. But mostly I did 10 minutes of salutations, and that has been it.

So what do I decide to do tonight?  Eat a bowl of crack-corn (as I call it) at midnight, when I'm teaching yoga in 10 hours, after not having taught for 2 weeks. I'm already off this damned horse, I figured I might as well get one last roll in the grass before I hop on back up.

I know, I know, there's all kinds of health professionals who would be telling me "never binge before you start (or return to) a routine."  You know what I say to them?  "It's one goddamned bowl of popcorn. It's not gonnna kill me, it makes me happy, and I'm still gettting on the freaking horse in the morning, leave me alone."

For real. This is why I chose yoga. Theres enough expectation out there to choke a bear. Yoga is a great place to just come to breathe, come to learn, come to turn off, and know that its always ok to just do what you can today. The yoga horse is chained to your ankle. He walks with you, and is always up for a trot around the block. You just have to show up :)

Yoga with Calley at Yoga Garden Minnneapolis:

Sundays @ 10:00am - Abbreviated Ashtanga (for beginners!)
Tuesdays @ 5:30 pm - Full Spectrum Yoga (new name, same class!)