Dali Lama Soup Kitchen

For a few days now, because of all the different news feeds I have 'liked' on Facebook, I keep getting this same memo for several different sources about the Dali Lama serving the homeless food in a San Francisco soup kitchen. I continue to feel shocked each time I read it and see the photographic proof. I feel stunned and deeply moved that I myself feel compelled and honored to share it here with you as well. This simple act really highlights the concept of Yoga In Action. That its more than meditation on a cushion or stretches on a mat, but it acting out love and kindness to the world in every day life, no matter your stature. Now it doesn't mean everyone need go out and volunteer, but just doing simple things like smiling at someone speeding on the highway verses giving them the bird, and actually meaning it, and feeling peace for them verses getting yourself all hot and upset.
Here is to fighting the good fight, with out fighting but with sharing kindess, big and small. =)

posted from Bloggeroid

Knowing Thy Self

One of the things I love most about doing the Asanas, the physical poses and postures of yoga is the awareness I gain over my whole body. The more you go through these movement and feel different muscles going to work, stretching, and lengthening anf gaining strength, when you leave the mat these things follow you throughout your day. I love being able to notice my ribs and my lungs just while sitting at a desk breathing, noticing the air pass in cool threw the nostrils, feeling the air go down my esaphagas (sp) to the top of my lungs, expanding my ribs and my diaphram as the air enters my lower lungs, and then slowing back up and out warming my nostrils as the air re-enters the atmostphere. I love being a short woman of 5 foot 2 inches, and yet I have gained to much perspective on my complete length throw yoga, and my awareness has grown tall. I am constantly noticing my heigth all the way from my toes, the the soles of my feet, through my ankles, up my legs and my hips, through my torso and spine all the way to the crown of my head, i feel like I am 10 feet tall. Even when sitting down, when I am not noticing my breath, I feel the length in my spine, from my sits bones or my tail bone all the way to my crown, my posture has gone from and sloppy feeling slouch to a ballerina weightlessness almost, just from sitting, I feel so poised, and what girl never dreamed of being a ballerina when she was little? Well I did, and its a thrill for the little girl in me to feel like I have tapped into that sensation.
I didnt have any special messages in this post, jsut merely felt whimpsical, and thought it sweet to share. =)

Basic Instinct

Had an interesting dream last night, details of which are not all that important, however the point of the dream is. To illustrate that point I shall detail a snippet of the dream. In this dream I was not the main character, 2 young men where, and they found themselves in a horror of a situation, but that horror became illrelevant to them when they found they were unable to breathe and began to sufficate. (Now thank goodness this was a dream and not a nightmare and they got out of their suppresive spot and were able to begin to breath again.) During this entire dream I was never once a part of the dream, like an audience memeber at a film, I was only just the dreamer merely observing. I note this because it became interesting that as the observer I started to actually think about this blog whilst I was dreaming and was thinking about the significants of the boys sufficating and how that relates to yoga, as I shall embelish here:

When the suffication occured they where in the middle of some horrrors and life dramas, so for majority of the dream you thought all they wanted, all they NEEDED was to rid themselves of there current situation. However when their bodies where unable to fuction properly due to a lack of oxygen, it became clear that all our external needs and wants never really amount to anything, because our basic need and want is to breathe, to live and survive. As with yoga, all our external needs and wants do not matter, because our basic need and want is to return to the former Self, to be aware of our Consciousness, and to know our perfection, and the perfection of the world, without anything extra, but just as everything is, complete and whole and perfect.

posted from Bloggeroid

Breathe

Durning the beginning of my classes I have my students sit down, close their eyes and start to focus solely on their breathing. Just inhaling and exhaling nice slow steady breaths to clear their minds, start to feel calm and relaxed, and to get them to focus on the proper way to breathe before we move into the postures to make sure the muscles gain the right amount of oxygen. Durning this time I sometimes invite my students to start to cycle their breathing and to conect their inhale to their exhale and their exhale to their inhale and breathe one long continuous breath.
This style of breathing is something I came up with one day to try and get my students to shift their prespective from duality to non duality, to start to realize how everything is interconnected and that nothing is seperate.
(Putting aside religious ideologies right now, not looking at beliefs of afterlife but just focusing on this current one for the sake of this blog):
In many yogic texts authors often write about how the path of yoga is a form of rebirth. Take reicarnation and karma for example. (Again letting go of what we traditionally know about it relating to what happens when you die.) In this life, especially in yoga these two events will take place. As you start to take on peace and learn about the Self and your Consciousness and let go of the Ego, you are infact going through a metamorphosis like reincarnation. You let go of your old self, sometimes its small like letting go of judgement or blame or learning to forgive, to some bigger examples perhaps you change jobs or social networks or give up items of monitary value- ie you rebirth yourself. Looking at Karma, the more you give the more you gain. In yoga the more love you share the more kindness that is passed along, the bigger your heart will grow and the more positive you will feel.
Like with the breathing, your rebirth in yoga is ever on going, the more you do, the more you change, and the more you come back to your purest self. Everything is connected, everything is on going, everything is as it should be, for if what was happening now wasn't what was supposed to be happening, then something else would have happened.

Just a few words from me to you =)
Namaste everyone
~Stephanie

posted from Bloggeroid

26 Bikram Yoga Poses- aka Hot Yoga

http://www.bikramyoga.com/BikramYoga/TwentySixPostures.php

(Apologies- blogger is not allowing me to upload the poses, so please check out the link above to see the only moves used in hot yoga studios. I felt it was interesting to post these, because every class is repetitive practice, the same moves, in the same order in a room that is 105 degrees, sure to get you in shape physically and work on your attention and gradification mentally *^_^*)

If Everyone Cared

http://youtu.be/-IUSZyjiYuY

"If Everyone Cared"

From underneath the trees, we watch the sky
Confusing stars for satellites
I never dreamed that you'd be mine
But here we are, we're here tonight

Singing Amen, I, I'm alive
Singing Amen, I, I'm alive

[Chorus:]
If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
Then we'd see the day when nobody died

And I'm singing

Amen I, Amen I, I'm alive
Amen I, Amen I, Amen I, I'm alive

And in the air the fireflies
Our only light in paradise
We'll show the world they were wrong
And teach them all to sing along

Singing Amen, I, I'm alive
Singing Amen, I, I'm alive
(I'm alive)

[Chorus x2]

And as we lie beneath the stars
We realize how small we are
If they could love like you and me
Imagine what the world could be

If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
Then we'd see the day when nobody died
When nobody died...

[Chorus]

We'd see the day, we'd see the day
When nobody died
We'd see the day, we'd see the day
When nobody died
We'd see the day when nobody died

Quotes

'The word Yoga signifies the means to realization of one's true nature.' - Sri K. Pattabhi Jois

'The Yoga Sutras are a road map to the Self. Within the Yoga Sutras we discover both the problem and the solution. The four aims of life are the arenas in which we enact our return to the self. The eight limbs of yoga are the day-to-day choices and actions that we take, within those arenas, to connect to the self.' - Rolf Gates

'I realized the truth when my practice was no longer about results. As long as i was practicing to get somewhere, I was able to understand where I was. For me, the breakthrough came while I was teaching, and watching my students struggle with this on their mats. As I taught others to become still, my teachings began to seep into my own awareness.' - Rolf Gates

'Whatever you were doing with your body before you came to the mat is in the past. You are in the right place at the right time, and the sky is the limit.' - Rolf Gates

'We enjoy our practice because, as we flow through the postures each day, we are learning, we are growing. Showing up for something different, being willing to be a beginner again, is one of the ways we keep our practice alive. We are here to learn.' - Rolf Gates

'In class I often say that we can never enter the same rive twice, experience the same posture twice, or take the same breath twice.' - Rolf Gates

'Often times we need yoga the most, when we want it the least.' - Rolf Gates