Tips for Heading Off a Cold

Here's a great short article on how to head off a cold during this chilly season.   How to Stop a Cold in it's Tracks.    It also includes some Ayurvedic herb recommendations.

Losing Your New Year Resolve?

Do you feel like you are losing your new year resolve?  Are you wondering about your "overriding purpose for being here?"

This article - Inspired Intention -  by Kelly McGonigal is the best I have ever read that shows how yoga philosophy and ideas can inform our choices and our resolve.   She teaches yoga, meditation and psychology at Stanford University and I've long appreciated her for her book Yoga for Pain Relief.   She is making constructive contributions to the field of yoga and pain and the body/mind connection, and I very much hope one day to meet her.

She starts the article with a definition (a mind after my own heart!) ----

A sankalpa is a statement that does this for us. Stryker explains that kalpa means vow, or “the rule to be followed above all other rules.” San, he says, refers to a connection with the highest truth. Sankalpa, then, is a vow and commitment we make to support our highest truth. “By definition, a sankalpa should honor the deeper meaning of our life. A sankalpa speaks to the larger arc of our lives, our dharma—our overriding purpose for being here.” The sankalpa becomes a statement you can call upon to remind you of your true nature and guide your choices.

She goes on to explain how sankalpa or resolve can take two forms - a goal/intention or a heartfelt desire.  (that adjective is important).  Then she describes how you uncover your heartfelt desire and goals, how best to state them, how to plant and nourish the seed and finally concludes with quoting Rod Stryker -

According to Rod Stryker, this apparent contradiction is the essence of both sankalpa practice and nondual teachings. “It all goes back to this idea that each of us is both being and becoming. There’s the part of us, para atman, that is transcendent, inherently one, and doesn’t need anything. We also have a jiva atman, that part of us that comes into life with a purpose and a destiny and is always becoming.” Stryker explains that to fulfill your dharma, you must find a way to integrate these two seemingly opposite aspects of being. “It’s vital for happiness that you walk both paths simultaneously. Direct your energy with intention, but be mindful that your nature is unchanged whether you achieve your goals or not. Live as contentedly as possible in between the goal and realizing the goal.”

The essay is long and full of content, but trust me, it's worth the click over.   Or you can listen to or download an hour long public radio interview with her here on the subject.  

CNN Addresses If Yoga Can Hurt Your Body

More response to William Broad's book.   This report is balanced. 





CNN asks Who Should Be Allowed to Teach Yoga.   It's more balanced than most, though like much else had a pretty obvious mistakes.  An earlier version of this article referred to Leslie Kaminoff as a she.  It's been corrected.  I met him in May.  He is definitely a man.  


One teacher Joe Palese, from Atlanta is quoted:  

"Anyone can tell you what to do, it's explaining how to do it," he said. And that is what separates effective teachers from the rest, according to Palese.  

I agree with that.

Meditation and Dogs

From Oprah's OWN -----

OWN Original Shorts: Dogs/Meditation

Award-winning photographer Robin Layton brings her eye for beauty and serenity to OWN with a short meant to inspire peace and calm.

Wah! Discusses Her Creative Process

This is awesome. Wah! discusses her creative process, how she took on the dark energy she felt during a concert and respected it by incorporating a blues scale, respecting how tough life can be.

And she then turned that into an offering of Ganesh, the remover of obstacles - and brought it up into a happier place. Singing the life force, prana into the body in order to honor and draw in Pranava, the holder of the life force (another word for Om, or God)

Her new album is out on February 7th.  Enjoy this informative 5 minute video:

Brilliant Parody of the Equinox Video

This is brilliant and just too hilarious.  Enjoy!  (see original here)

Interview with Equinox Yogini

Elephant Journal presents a long interview with Briohny Smith, the woman in the Equinox yoga video.  

Somewhere in the midst of the uproar and upset, I read a reminder that there is a real person in this video. This interview humanizes her.  She admits that some of the comments within the controversy were painful for her to read.

Read Jeannie Page's full interview here.  It's also available in Spanish.

Leslie Kaminoff Addresses NY Times Piece

I love this guy - Leslie Kaminoff.  Very knowledgable and funny.  I met him in May at the Yoga Journal conference in New York City.   I hope to study more with him.   He runs The Breathing Project and also written a great book on Yoga Anatomy and teaching anatomy to yoga students through his Yoga Anatomy web site.

Here's a video - his "2 Cents About HowYoga Can Wreck Your Body."

The Now Infamous Yoga Video

I hadn't seen this before, and it's getting a lot of attention.  Apparently it's all the talk at the Yoga Journal San Francisco conference.

Guess as viral marketing, it is working.   Marketing for Equinox (which, rumor has it, is coming to DC, around the corner from me.  They've already opened a 40,000 square foot facility in Bethesda).

But the video markets yoga too.  In a way that makes me uneasy.

Julie Peters makes some interesting points in her Elephant Journal essay Why the Sexy Equinox Yoga Video Really Pissed Me Off.  She relates it to advertising and marketing to exploit young women's insecurities about their body.  Please read the whole piece, but here's a good point ---

I teach yoga because it helped (and continues to help) me overcome my anxiety and depression and empowers me in more ways than I can name, and that‘s what I want to share with people. I tell my students over and over again to close their eyes. Stop looking around–it doesn’t matter what you look like, and it doesn’t matter what the person beside you looks like. It matters how you feel.
And for all we tell our students to turn inwards and not worry about what other people think, we yoga teachers sure do worry about it. We try not to, but in this incredibly competitive community, we feel like we should be the ones with the strongest core, the most amazing practice, the most advanced postures. We feel like we should know everything and be able to do everything so we can pass it onto our students. We need to constantly be reminded that we are still students–on a path of learning, and the only one putting pressure on us to do crazy poses or have a perfect butt is us.
Well, us and this Equinox yoga video.
I think if I wasn’t a yogi or a woman or some combination of things that make me who I am, I’d see just the beauty of the video and move along. But the woman in the video is not only sexy, she is sexualized. This video exemplifies the male gaze: the sense that a woman is being watched, looked on as an object.

Here is the Equinox Yoga Video ----



 Here Equinox defends the video and claims ----

The video was not intended to be an ad campaign for Equinox, but an editorial video showcasing Smyth’s amazing arm balances for Equinox’s Q Blog, which provides editorial content to inspire members and potential members, explained Equinox’s Editorial Manager Liz Miersch. In fact, the initial idea was for a how-to video giving tips on arm balances. But as they shot the video, what Miersch saw was so inspiring and beautiful, she made the decision to change directions and just show Smyth’s practice. Of course, Smyth would have been as inspiring and beautiful if she’d worn yoga clothes in a different setting. The intention was to emphasize Smyth’s physique, but it was also to inspire others to practice yoga. “Equinox is not afraid to be sexy, as you can see in our ad campaigns,” said Miersch. “We like to be provocative, but provocative with a purpose–she’s not just walking around in her underwear in the video, but she’s showing her amazing, strong, yoga body.”

I'm not sure I believe that.  The inspiration message is that not only will you have this body if you practice yoga but a mysterious man awaiting you for a tumble in the bed when you're done.  If it were just her doing this practice on a beach, I don't feel it would bother me as much.  But that man, the unmade bed, the lingering on her skin, the close ups - all seem to sell sex - not yoga.

But I do think it's an interesting debate.  A dear respected friend simply thought it was beautiful.

"In Our Brokenness, We Are Unlimited."

I loved Julie Peter's piece on the Equinox video, and I love this essay  - Why lying broken on the Bedroom Floor Is A Good Idea- even more. 


Her main point is that at that moment - you really are in the present moment.  

In pieces, in a pile on the floor, with no idea how to go forward, your expectations of the future are meaningless. Your stories about the past do not apply. You are in flux, you are changing, you are flowing in a new way, and this is an incredibly powerful opportunity to become new again: to choose how you want to put yourself back together. 

Now that's spin a good lawyer could be proud of, but that characterization doesn't make it  any less true.  Mental gymnastics (or yoga twists) that help pry you off the floor and get you to get up and get up and get up again and keep you going - well, that better than still lying there, no?   


This is a favorite Japanese proverb - "Fall seven times, stand up eight."   At times, that is my mantra.  To me, failure is only when we choose not to stand up or get up.   Zen Habits is another favorite web site of mine and here's one on how to Flip Your Karma: 8 Trick to Turn the Bad into Awesome.   Leo Babauta, the author of Zen Habits, quotes that proverb.   


But if you're flipping out on your bedroom floor, think of Akhilandeshavari, suggests Julie Peter's.  She is the "never not broken goddess" and she rides a crocodile (which represents fear).   Akhilandeshavari doesn't reject fear and doesn't let fear control her - she rides on it and dips into the waves.   I love that.  It's takes courage to let the fear in never mind face it.  
Akhilandeshavari has no limitations.  She is described as being like a fractured diamond and thereby she embodies a more diverse beauty.


We are made more beautiful by our brokenness that lets the cracks of light in.  


I found her story (both Julie's and Akhilandeshavari's) both insightful and resonating.  And next time I am on the floor of my bedroom broken I will think of her, riding a crocodile like a warrior princess.  Thanks Julie, awesome piece.   

Another Response to NYT's Wreckage

Here's another one - Yoga Need Not Wreck Your Body written by Irin Carmom over at Salon.com.  The subtitle made me laugh out loud - "An incendiary New York Times magazine excerpt doesn't tell the whole story"   Incendiary indeed!

Here a taste, and she makes a very good point about teachers:  

The biggest elisions were implied but never emphasized: the importance of good teaching and the wild divergence of practices under the umbrella of American yoga. Based on having practiced with (at least) dozens of different yoga teachers over the years around New York and occasionally globally, I’d argue those are the most important factors of all.

The worst teachers preen in the front of the room and pretend they’re alone. Slightly below them in my estimation are the ones who expect all bodies to be created the same. The ones who shouted at me to simply shove down my heels during downward dog in defiance of tight calves and hamstrings never got the chance to do so again. It took me longer to realize that the teachers who enthusiastically encouraged me to move deeper into existing flexibility – say, a deep lower-back arch theoretically ideal for upward facing dog, a hip turnout that made baddha kanasa effortless – were hurtling me toward injury. The ones who urged modifications to not exacerbate imbalances, or to change emphasis to strength over flexibility, were offering a more sensible path.

In other words, all bodies aren’t shaped the same way, nor do we use them uniformly, so why would we expect the same remedies and actions to work on all of them?

That’s one reason I’m deeply skeptical of practices like Bikram, which are the same sequence over and over again. 

Lululemon Founder Resigns

To me this is big news: Chip Wilson, the founder of Lululemon, has resigned.

I had decided to boycott Lululemon after the John Galt fiasco (luckily I didn't learn about his admiration for Ayn Rand until after I bought my tutu).

No reason was given for the decision, but the announcement comes after widespread backlash following a controversial decision to put the Ayn Rand slogan  “I am John Galt” on Lululemon shopping bags last November.

He is still chairman of the board and owns 10% of the stock.  So I am still going to do my best to stay away.

UPDATE: 2/13/12 - After a compliment from my friend, cheerleader and trainer Jessica Miga on my Lululemon sweatshirt today, I shared with her the news of the founder.  At the end of my rendition, she asked, "Are you really not going to buy there any more?"  I laughed and replied, I sure was going to try!

Great Response "How the NYT Can Wreck Yoga" !

This is the best response to the William Broad article Yoga Can Wreck Your Body I've read - How the NYT Can Wreck Yoga by Rick Bartz.

Broad is a ‘senior science writer at The Times’, and though his article is heavy on anecdote and slim on science, I agree that the increasing occurrences of injuries in yoga should not be discounted or taken lightly. Still, the temptation to argue Broad’s article paragraph by paragraph is hard to resist: for example, yoga teacher Glenn Black’s repeated, incorrect use of the word ‘ego‘, or the need to go back to the 1970′s to find examples of strokes caused by yoga. The case of the college student who kneeled on his toes for hours ‘praying for world peace’, causing nerve damage, begs the questions: what was he more influenced by; yoga, or Christian penitence?  And does one need to inflict suffering on oneself in order to bring about peace?  The teachings of Yoga would claim just the opposite.
There are a couple of obvious reasons why there are so many injuries in yoga (which we must acknowledge do on occasion occur, as they do in every physical activity). The nature of the injuries and the way that one responds to an injury also varies greatly. However, Broad did not address this issue, he addressed the most sensationalistic aspects of injury, and this is what I wish to respond to.

Read the whole response.   Later he states his concern about "the lack of balance in a report of genuine importance—risk of injury while practicing yoga."

Me too.  Maybe context and more balance will come from others over the next few weeks.  

Loving What Is

I've appreciate Byron Katie's work for a decade, and found her approach and ideas to be very helpful and healing.

She will be at Omega Institute in April. She is awesome.

 
Byron Katie "Change" from Omega Institute on Vimeo.