The enthusiastic yoga students above just completed their chair yoga session at the Hearth, an independent living facility where my mother-in-law lives. She is more likely to attend the class if I accompany her, so I have been able to enjoy and learn from instructor Karen Suppies’s yoga flow. She has tailored her class beautifully around her students’ interests and memories. To provide a focus each week she brings in a tangible item: a vase of yellow flowers or a bowl of red raspberries, for example. The class has a conversation about the item to center and then begin to breathe and move together. YInyasa flows include rowing their boats, leaning back in recliners, squeezing lemons between their shoulder blades, and marching to Yankee Doodle Dandy. There are lots of smiles and we really move, adding ties and light weights for additional stability and strength. Thank you Karen for sharing your ideas so freely with me! Some of her ideas have seeped into my classes…

After nine months of teaching chair yoga at the West Haven Veterans Center, I have finally created a default lesson plan as well. My students are eager to learn a consistent series of postures so they can practice more easily on their own. I know I will keep bringing in a variety of readings and music and tinker with the centering and breathing practices. As I continue to experiment with props and postures (and borrow ideas from Karen) the asanas will evolve. I’m always curious to see what arises in the moment, and I hope my students appreciate a few surprises.

We have be focusing on using our senses as tools  to bring our attention back to the present moment. In the lesson plan below I recommend two meditations. In the first, a visual meditation, we rub our hands together until we feel warmth and energy in our palms and fingers and then cover our eyes.  The objective is to soothe and  still the eyes, gazing through the darkness at an imaginary point in the far distance. Fixing our gaze often stills the wanderings of our minds as well. Do you unconsciously tense up when you focus? Relax all the muscles of your face, especially all the muscles around your eyes, cheeks, and jaw. After a few breaths we close our eyes and remove our hands, adjusting to the light behind our lids before blinking our eyes open.

Chanting A-O-U-M, the second meditation, focuses our senses of touch and hearing on the healing vibrations of the sacred Sanskrit syllable, OM. The vowel “a” vibrates in the back of our throat and the rear portions of our brain. “O” and “u” vibrate further forward across the upper palate of our mouths and up into  more regions of our brains. “M” buzzes our lips and into our cerebrum, the thinking portion of brains.  Chant in a relaxed manner, listening to the OM resonating in your head without straining either to make the sound or to listen to the sound. This isn’t singing. Let go of judgment! Can you feel the vibrations sweeping across your scull, relaxing your mind?

All chanting serves as a pranayama as well. With each long exhalation, we empty our lungs of stale air. The deep inhalation between repetitions replenishes our oxygen supply and energy. Long, smooth exhalations also soothe the nervous system, inviting our bodies to heal and function properly. Relaxation practices bring our hormonal, digestive,  circulatory, and immune systems back into balance.

Once in a while a gentle, relaxing posture flow is very restorative, even if you normally prefer a more vigorous practice.. Regularly teaching chair yoga has helped me recognize the benefits of short sensory meditations and simple, repetitive movements on my own nervous system. Print the following  Chair Yoga PDF and take it to work for a refreshing practice at your desk. Yoga really can be practiced almost anywhere!

Click here: Chair Yoga PDF

This lesson plan is two pages long, but I thought the attention to detail might be helpful. Volunteer to pose for my camera and I’d be delighted to illustrate the class!

Terry and I drove to Kent, CT for a day of chanting and exploring the town. We listened and chanted along with three groups, two new to us and Eddy Nataraj and his band. Eddy and his band keep exploring rich new harmonies and instrumental solos to enrich their repertoire and they were jamming yesterday! Each member is an accomplished musician in his own right and they listen and play off one another skillfully. The juicy sound of the cello, plucked, bowed, and lightly stroked to produce whistling sounds by Nathan (in the plaid shirt below) complement the sweet melodies of Eddy’s chants and his delicate guitar style.

(Sits’s Light and Harnam Singh)

The new group that tickled my fancy, Sita’s Light, included a flutist, Suan Armstrong who also teaches Qi Gong. Her Bodhi Musica Retreat Center in New Hartford sounds intriguing as I have injured my lower back while stacking chairs on two different occasions at the prison and found Qi Gong to be tremendously healing. I also play the flute as a form of pranayama and associate the instrument with Krishna, but it was the first time I had heard the flute in a Kirtan. Suan’s pure sounds weaving over the reverberations of the harmonium were a pleasure. Sita’s Light offered beautifully inviting chants that encouraged the festival participants to enter in and get lost in the melodies along with the performers. One of the women would sing the call and another would sing the response to help guide the audience. For beginners or those new to their chants, this is very helpful!

Nina Rao, an assistant to Krishna Das, was just starting her set when we left and there was still more to come. Bret DuBack organized a wonderful event, bringing great talent. Next year we hope to see even more faces. Markus Sieber, of Mirabai Ceiba, whom we weren’t able to stay and watch, commented on Kirtan’s great popularity in Germany. He and his lovely Mexican/German wife have lots of CDs with English, Spanish, and Sanskrit Mantra tracks. The practice hasn’t quite caught on in the North East, but perhaps Kirtan’s time is coming? Terry and I also chatted with Terri Mason who was scheduled to perform on Sunday. She is a relatively new voice in CT, but is rapidly gaining recognition on the sacred music circuit. Her Om Gaia website is gorgeous and we look forward to crossing paths with Terri again soon.

Clapping or wiggling our toes, the audience was engaged…..

Please click on the links of any of these performers to learn more about their music and concert schedules.

How does our Yoga practice make us feel better when we are blue? At both the Veterans Center and the Women’s Prison I was forced to ask this question this week. In my last post I wrote about the veterans, while in this I will focus on bereavement  in the women’s prison in Niantic, CT. Both situations address universal spiritual/emotional issues, so I hope you will reflect on how they might apply to your life and share the practices that have helped you with this on-line community. I would be deeply grateful to read your comments and suggestions.

On Tuesday, my York CI day, I knew something was up when I saw tears in the eyes of one of my students as we were assembling to be clicked through the locked doorway between their unit and the community room where we have our class. Another student seemed to understand her grief and was tearing up as well. I have to admit, pride reared its ugly head, and I was impressed that one of my students was willing to come to yoga at all when there was a problem, rather than hiding out in her room. I have heard so many excuses for not coming to class! I should not congratulate myself in this instance, however, as this poised inmate has been using every program and opportunity the prison offers to grow and develop her own inner strength as well as to mentor those who reach out to her.

I’ll call her K. With difficulty, K confided that her most beloved brother was killed in a car accident the previous evening. What was I to do?

I babbled the appropriate platitudes as I considered how I needed to adapt my plan of grooving Sun Salutations and some of their variations. Perfect! What could be better for churning strong emotions through the body and digesting them? When my mind is agitated I’ve found that a vigorous practice demands all my attention and gives me an emotional break. Tapas, the fire or discipline of practice, does seem to burn away emotional confusion.

I couldn’t resist centering with a Loving Kindness meditation in which we began by holding her brother or someone we cared deeply for in our minds. (See the previous post, Anxiety Among Veterans for more details on Loving Kindness Meditations.) I asked K if Sun Salutations appealed to her and with her approval we began to churn through gentle Swan Dives and Squats followed by more vigorous Sun Salutations.  Some of my less athletic students had to take breaks during the vinyasa flows, but I sensed that they were content to watch K and to silently encourage her to keep moving through her sadness. I hope they felt that the class would accommodate them when or if the need arises.

After Sivasana, K stayed after class with another sympathetic friend to speak calmly about her brother and her extended family. Although unmarried and childless, K is a devoted sister and aunt. Her family lives out of state and the prison gauges the inmates with its long distance phone rates, $32.00 for 13 minutes, further isolating the women from family support. Her brother used to drive three hours to spend one hour with his sister and then to drive home almost every other week, sacrificing precious time with his spouse and two daughters. None the less, K spoke gratefully of the community she has forged at York, a circle of women within which she feels safe and nurtured.

I am honored to bare witness to the emotional needs and strengths of the women at York. Sometimes they feel invisible and I believe that by writing about the healthy manner in which some of them are nurturing themselves, building trust and community, I can enable their lights to shine outside the prison walls.

How does our Yoga practice make us feel better when we are blue? At both the Veterans Center and the Women’s Prison I was forced to ask this question this week. In this post I will write about the veterans and in the following I will continue with a different situation in the prison. Both address universal spiritual/emotional issues, so I hope you will reflect on how they might apply to your life and share the practices that have helped you by commenting on this post.

Last Friday in the Spirituality meeting at the Veterans Center the question posed by the visiting Rabi was whether hope or courage were more necessary in the recovery process. As the veterans grappled with the semantics of hope versus faith, the conversation turned to a darker question. Many of the men, more so than the women, felt they needed hope or faith that God would forgive them in order to summon the courage to continue their struggles. So many of these men worry that they are unforgivable and are discouraged. Although they show up for programs, many have to find a way to feel deserving of success. Otherwise they sabotage their own progress.

I can’t say that many of the men left the meeting well enough reassured, but a few followed me to yoga. How could I use this precious time to rekindle their hearts? As humans we continuously forget the divinity within ourselves and The practice of Loving Kindness can serve as a reminder. How can I be unforgivable if divinity lives within me? In Genesis, Man is created in God’s image. In the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit enters the apostles and metaphorically all the children of God. Hindus believe that every being contains a spark or facet of divine nature. I decided to begin class with a version of the Buddhist Loving Kindness meditation that I learned in my yoga teacher training based on Jack Kornfield’s spiritual guide, A Path with Heart.

The practice involves visualizing oneself and others while reciting to oneself the following mantra: “May I be filled with Loving Kindness, May I be well, May I be peaceful and at ease, May I be Happy”. Traditionally the meditation begins by focusing on a personal deity, mentor, teacher, family member or friend whom we already hold in high esteem and holding their image or memory in our mind and heart. As we recite the loving kindness mantra it is helpful to notice how our bodies respond to the well wishing. Does our breath change? We then each focus the meditation towards ourself. Does this feel different from wishing another well? Does our breath feel different? We continue this practice of reciting the mantra, multiple times if we choose, and feeling it resonate in our physical bodies as we focus on a neutral person, a troublesome person, and then all beings. A neutral being is someone we see regularly. He or she could be our mail carrier, a checkout person at Big Y, or a fellow classmate. We know little about this person and feel neither great attraction nor discomfort in their presence. The troublesome being should be someone we know (not a politician or abstract media personage). As we wish them well it may help to remember the divinity that lives in them that they may have forgotten.

Today the Rabi led Spirituality again. He seemed to have reflected on the practice of loving oneself in the process of following the directives of the prophet Mica who taught that all men should live with justice and mercy and walk humbly with God. We must be just and merciful towards ourselves as well as towards others. In the last phrase the Rabi suggested that we put the emphasis on the with and to consider God our constant companion. In yoga, every interpersonal interaction is an opportunity to practice communing with divinity. This is why the greeting Namaste (I recognize and honor the divinity within you) is such a powerful salutation, both as Hello and as Goodbye. Curiously, I have heard that Good Bye comes from the phrase, God be with you.

In my class I discussed some of these parallels between the Judeo-Christian tradition and Hindu-Buddhist philosophy. We practiced Loving Kindness again in the same form as last week, as I’m still interested in building default practices. There are many other beautiful phrases that can be used to wish ourselves and others well, including some that take the form of affirmations, and I will lead them after the basic practice becomes more established. I may have my students write down the phrases that they most wish they could hear from their God and encourage them to use this language in their personal meditations.

My latest airplane read was Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thalerr & Prof. Cass R. Sunstein. They point out that our choices are greatly influenced by their context or what they call choice architecture. (I promise this will come around to yoga.) When we choose a flavor of ice cream on a hot summer night we are pretty good at selecting a flavor we like without assistance. When we can sample an unusual one, our taste buds give us instant feedback to make our choice even easier. Choosing a new car, a health plan, or a retirement strategy is more difficult. We may not be as well informed and the feedback is slower. How about deciding to diet or practice yoga? There are so many choices to be made and inertia is incredibly strong. It is very difficult to change our habits when the results accrue slowly. Can choices be designed so we are more likely to behave in ways that benefit us?

Nudge introduced me to the concept of default settings as an aid in decision making. When I lose electricity at home, my digital clocks (on the microwave, the stove, my alarm clock) all blink 12:00 when the power resumes. The manufacturers set 12:00 as the default setting, but they could have picked anything. Some cars have a default setting that causes the car to beep if you turn off the key and leave the lights on, or they buzz if you don’t latch your seatbelt. These are examples of conscious choice architecture. I am grateful that my computer is full of default settings, yet I have the freedom to change them as I become more technologically savvy.

I’ve noticed that many popular yoga styles emphasize a particular routine. The flow acts as a default setting. Once a student rolls out his or her mat, he or she doesn’t have to make more choices. The student just plows through the routine as time permits. In my role as a teacher I want to broaden my students experience of yoga. I don’t believe in a magic sequence that is ideal for all bodies at all times. None the less, in my own practice I find I recycle familiar sequences and then flow into variations and explorations. Many yogis use the Sun Salutation as both a physical and mental preparation for their practice. As I center, it is easier to overcome my early morning lethargy if I only have to make one decision, “Table Warm-up” for example, and can then continue through an entire familiar flow without having to make another choice. Once I am moving, my body leads me into further warm-ups, postures, pranayama and meditation as time permits. Even though I just got out of bed, I end with a few slow breaths lying in Sivasana to integrate the benefits of my practice. In hotels in Italy, I could always fit in a standing series and a quick Sivasana before breakfast. Lubricating my joints before biking in Puglia, walking the streets of Milan, or flying home felt essential.
For the month of June I have chosen to work on teaching the same warm-ups each week to my different classes. The women on the minimum security side are learning the 8 Brocades, while my longer term students are creating flows from the Sun Salutation. Meanwhile, the veterans are learning a fixed seated posture routine, some seated on mats on the floor and others in wheelchairs or arm chairs. My goal is for my students to learn a default routine to nudge them to practice without my guidance, eventually grooving the behavior until yoga becomes an integral part of their lifestyles.

The readings I have selected for this theme both relate to practice. When your practice slips, begin again without judgment. You are always welcome. And know that the benefits of yoga are not a matter of faith, they are a matter of practice!

Practice PDF

Let me know what routines work for you. If you are having trouble getting started, let me  suggest something just for you. Please comment by clicking the header of this post and I’ll e-mail you a response.

Did I tell you I went on a bicycling trip in Puglia? I lied. It was a gastronomic tour! The first full day of biking was fueled by cherries that our group picked along the narrow roads and huge panini served by the smiling couple above.

Puglian chefs pride themselves on their fresh fish and vegetables which they intersperse with fresh mozzarella and pasta dishes to create feasts for the eyes and the tongue.

Even I tried my hands at pasta kneading on a rainy day when we cooked rather than biked….

It wasn’t all about food. We biked past ancient olive groves where farmers still plant their vegetables and carpets of poppies, up the hills to gain scenic views of the Adriatic,  and through the historic town of Alberobello, filled with stone Trulli houses.

But most of all, our visit to Puglia reminded us of the Dolce Vita. Living in and enjoying the present moment is actually practiced in the heel of Italy!

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on the brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;…

Excerpt from Saint Francis and the Sow, by Galway Kinnell

As the shrubs bloom outside, it is the perfect time of year to recall that we all blossom. We all need water and sunlight, or encouragement and recognition. Taking the time to attend to ourselves and others actually helps us grow emotionally and physically. Recent brain science demonstrates that we can build new neural connections through yoga asana and meditation as these activities demand focus, attention, and compassion. According to studies published in the June 2010 Yoga Journal, areas of our brain exhibit more involvement in skills we practice, so try practicing a little self blessing:

Self Blessing Lesson Plan – Click to read or download the complete lesson.

I caught a spring cold and found the energy shower and face massage very soothing and draining for my sinuses. It was a challenge to motivate myself to practice, but reviewing restorative postures and meditations allowed me to be creative and self-nurturing. I begin each practice by reminding myself that I always feel better after I’ve reconnected with my breath, and my physical and emotional bodies. – And it’s true! I almost didn’t teach today, but I’m so glad I showed up.

Next week I’ll be biking in Italy, volcanoes willing. Look for photos and commentary in about ten days….

Instead of a physical practice as I allowed my bruises to subside and my arm to re-knit, the study of  The Radiance Sutras and Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf guided my musings. Lorin Roche’s new translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra seems to sum up many of my own meditation experiences – and probably yours too. I am intrigued by the play of experience and study. One of my students at the veterans center asked why I hadn’t taught about this concept sooner as it made him more interested in our meditations. But how can one comprehend witness consciousness if one hasn’t noticed one’s Self watching one’s self? In my own practice the experience was recognizable before I was given a label for it, but then the concept enriched my observation. So often in yoga I am not teaching, I am reminding people of what they already know and am offering confirmation for a practice that already feels natural.

We all have moments when we are absorbed completely: appreciating the scent of a lilac,  in awe of the stars, or mesmerized by sea gulls and the splash of waves. Who is noticing our absorption? Our Self? When I want to overwhelm my senses with beauty I stroll through Old Westbury Gardens on Long Island, NY, where I took the picture above. The ancient radiance sutras, framed as a conversation of the god and goddess within us, begin by turning our attention to this very breath we are breathing right now and then add teachings referring to the energy moving up our spines and throughout all our senses, expanding and awakening us to luminous reality.  The tantra meditation practices are direct and practical. Just as Patanjali wrote that our postures should be steady and held with ease, so I sense in these tantric lessons that our meditation should be focused yet relaxed and pleasurable. It is not the duration of meditation that is critical, in fact Roche recommends no more than twenty minutes twice daily as a formal practice, but the recognition of the possibility of awakening in any moment.

The classic novel, Mrs. Dalloway, seems to be written as a stream of consciousness (although it is brilliantly crafted). From the opening pages I feel swept away by the flood of sights, sounds, emotions, and memories that inhabit Clarissa Dalloway’s mind during the course of a single day. It is as though I am the non-judgmental witness, observing her meditation, which of course she never labels as such. I can identify with the whole jumble – from flowers to first loves to mental associations with airplanes. I don’t know what Woolf knew about meditation, but she didn’t need to have formally studied the practice to have experienced many facets of the mind. These two classic works, one from the Indian oral tradition and one from twentieth century England, invite me to play with descriptions of experiential practices and a flow of experience as I read a bit of one and then some of the other. Both enriched my own interactions with my surroundings and my thoughts throughout the week.

What are you reading now? Can you relate some aspect of it to your yoga practice? Please click on the heading of this post (if you are on the Home Page) to open to a page where you can comment and suggest future readings to me. When you read multiple books at the same time to you notice interesting ways in which they overlap?

The irony is not lost on me that after I spent a week encouraging myself and my students to slow down and pay attention, I let my attention and front wheel wander as I was bicycling. The mulch on the side of the road grabbed the tire and bike and I fell and spun on the blacktop. What a beautiful example of the shadow side’s presence! When we focus on courage we notice our insecurities, when we try to loosen our hamstrings we become even more aware of their tightness, and so on. When I’m trying to pay attention, I notice how often my thoughts wander! Needless to say all my lesson plans are first and foremost directed at myself. Three hours in the ER, of course I fell on on a Saturday, and at least three stitches later I limped my bruised body into my husband’s car and home. Fortunately I have no broken bones and I’ll be up and riding in time for a Backroads trip in Puglia, Italy  in May with  Terry and friends. Ice is wonderful!

A stranger saw my dramatic tumble and invited me into her house to clean me up. Her husband had recently had surgery and had lots of gauze and tape already in the kitchen so they wrapped me up neatly before racing off to a lacrosse game. What a lovely, spontaneous gesture of kindness! I sat in their driveway on a bench in the brilliant sunshine, listening to the birds and icing myself until Terry returned with the car. He was a charming caregiver all day, the one that determined that stitches were probably in order, and kept me lubed with ointment and protected with fresh gauze. We happened to have a sailing team from the College of Charleston staying at our house for the weekend while they raced in New London at the Coast Guard Academy, so Terry fairly single-handedly provided dinner last night and breakfast this morning for all of us. What a star!

I planned to take some photos of the Forward Bend Vinyasa to illustrate this week’s lesson plan, but my hip is too sore to pose. Are my written instructions helpful? In the plan I also introduce mulabandha, the root lock, a gentle lifting of the perineum that extends up through the diaphragm and the soft palate to stabilize the body and bring energy up the spine. Lying in Supine Child is a comfortable way to locate the lifting sensation while still breathing. As mulabandha becomes more familiar, the technique makes side bends, back bends, and twists from any position more stable and comfortable. Please let me know if you have questions or a better way to explain the root lock. Click on the title of the post above to open to a page where you can comment.

Slow Down PDF – Click away for a PDF with poetry and flow instructions that you can print out and try out on your own.

This is my son’s birthday and all the best to Angus! It is also Earth Day and an opportunity to be grateful for the beautiful place where I live. Before we can save the earth, we must be grateful for it, and to feel gratitude we must take the time to observe nature and become awed by its rhythms, diversity (surprises), and sheer beauty. Angus is going on a fishing trip with his dad in June, so last night my husband and I discussed the life cycle of bugs that are copied as flies to catch trout as we walked to the town docks. School children are always entertained by caterpillars , which seal themselves into cocoons or chrysalises, and emerge as butterflies or moths. But how about nymphs that wriggle in the water and then become flighted insects to mate and fall back, dead into the streams or lakes from which they flew?

Learn something new about the earth and it’s creatures today. Take a stroll on the beach,  in a park, or the woods. Visit a zoo or aquarium. They aren’t just for kids! Allow yourself to be amazed!