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!)

Get your insides ready for the "H word."

HOLIDAYS.  They'e coming. 

No - don't look at the displays in stores (that are already there on October 4th).  It cannot be healthy. You know what is? Getting your digestion ready. As in, help all that yummy food make its way through you, like its supposed to.  Read on. (there's a story.... as there always is with me.)

I have a tendency to be the kind of practitioner - in ALL my practices: music, yoga, cooking, teaching - who likes to get bare bones instruction and then physically figure it out on my own, trial and error. Yet, last weekend during master yogi Christina Sell's visit from Austin, we referenced B.K.S. Iyengar's Light On Yoga several times for alignment. (For those of you saying BK-WHA?? Iyengar is considered one of the modern-day grandfathers of yoga who helped bring its teachings to the western world).

So every once and a while I get on this kick of "oh yeah, lets read that book, written by that master." for a few weeks. Today marks day 2-in-a-row of me practicing with my trustee "yoga bible" Lino Miele's Astanga Yoga. 

So I'm sitting there on the floor in perhaps my favorite pose of them all: Paschimattanasana. (a.k.a. seated stretch.) And when I say favorite, I mean sometimes I will hang out here for fifteen minutes or more and simply RELISH in all that internal shifting. So I thought - what is it about this thing? Why does it feel SO good to me?  Well, according to Mr. Miele (and Astanga master Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, and a doctor, and a few other contributors), this pose is pretty key to all the abdominal organs, which all aid in digestion and blood purification. Which I found interesting (and telling) that I love this pose so much, and I happen to be someone with all kinds of interesting digestive issues (gluten, dairy, probably all kinds of other things I've never seemed to pinpoint). So it shouldn't be too surprising to see that this pose is like YOGA GOLD for digestion.

<-- This was literally me, sitting in one of the other poses (which happens to be super fun to say - all together now!: Triang Mukhaepada Paschimattanasana) reading about regular old Paschimattanasana and all the inner goodness it provides us.

Hoo ray for digestion!  There's more, come to class :)

Yoga with Calley (normal schedule!):

Sundays @ 10:00am - Abbreviated Ashtanga (for beginners!)
Tuesdays @ 6:30 pm - Full Circle Yoga

Back Off To Move Forward

Its easy to get blinders when we’re aiming for something. But sometimes we try too hard, reach too far, and overextend, preventing us from attaining the desired prize. It might be the wrong timing, we might need a new resource, we might need to fortify a tool or a skill…

Sometimes taking a step back is actually what will get us to our goal.

So even though we’re all supposed to be good little yogis, enjoying the path, and not attempting to “get to” anything, its human nature to focus on the end product. Its a feat in and of itself to look at what you’re reaching for, take a step back, and do some honest observation of your efforts: this “taming of the ego” is not often encouraged in our culture of “achievement,” but it might be just the thing you need to take a step forward.

OK, so this is easy to say. How do you DO it on your yoga mat? I can help you with that:

EX. 1 - You’re binding, and desperately trying to get your belly button twisted far to the left - take an extra breath, and work on making your spine longer. Notice how much better it feels than trying to bind – this is your edge – this is where you are working to strengthen the minor muscles around your spine so that you CAN bind.

EX 2 – You’re standing on one foot, arms spread, reaching for the floor in Half Moon arda chandrasana – instead of reaching for the floor, plug into your shoulder blade, and try to make your arms as wide as you possibly can, and your spine as long as you possibly can. Ignore the floor. When your arms and spine are long and strong enough, they will bring you to the floor.

These are the kinds of things that bring strength to our bodies over time. Not over two months.

Step back.
Have patience.
Practice.


Yoga with Calley:
Sundays @ 10:00am - Abbreviated Ashtanga (for beginners!)
Tuesdays @ 6:30 pm - Full Circle Yoga