Leading your practice with your heart

Asana practice needs to be approached via the heart, both physically and spiritually.  

To approach your practice with an open heart spiritually can mean so many things.  One of them is to approach your practice as a means to stay present.  When one enters a room to practice, any judgements and emotions should be shed, thus opening your heart to an experience that will allow you to remain present and allow you to focus in the now.  This is why it is important not to look around the room to see what others are wearing, what the teacher looks like, etc this way you can stop the judgments and opinions.  When you enter a room to practice, immediately sit down and close your eyes on your mat.  Bring your focus on your breath and allow the emotions from the day to melt away.  This prepares you for a compassionate and personal experience, free of judgments and attachments.    

To approach the practice with an open heart anatomically means to lead the practice with your heart lifted and the chest and collarbones open, shoulders melting toward the center of your back.  On a daily basis, we slouch in front of our computers, on the train, as we eat, etc etc. This causes our pectoralis muscles to tighten and our upper back muscles to over stretch, resulting in bad posture and back pain.  A steady yoga practice can help release the chest so that the upper back can get properly aligned and get strong, thus making posture improve and back aches stop.  

Overall, we should think of having an open heart ALL the time. BE compassionate in and out of the mat. 

Love.

Patricia 

Elena Brower

I have been reading and studying Elena Brower lately.  I've never taken her class, but a video of her in her blog blew me away.  This lady is somewhere between a shrink and a yoga teacher.  My Teacher, Kelly Morris, loves her too.  You should check her out.

She recently resigned from Anusara (whatever that means) and she is now teaching her own thing.  Her own thing is amazing.  She speaks so clearly, so bluntly about emotional balance.  She talks about the fact that we always blame other people.

Anyway, she is so great.

Dharma Mama

Here is a beautiful Dharma talk from my teacher Kelly Morris.  Enjoy!  

Meditation Challenge FAIL

So my meditation challenge didn't work out.  I was busy with finals, having friends in town, friends leaving town, and in plain English, I just didn't do it.   In the meantime, I have friends going on 10 day retreats.  How are they doing this?

Failing to finish something I told myself I was going to, breaking my own promises, makes me feel a little crappy about myself.  This is not the first time I have done this and I have come to terms that sometimes I don't do things that I tell myself I am going to do.  I don't even come up with excuses, I just don't do them.  This is forcing some bad karma on me, I am sure.  Just the negative thought that I failed on something is a bad karmic seed.  Angry thoughts are followed by your prana.  I know all this.  Blah.

Rather than beat myself up about it (which I used to be able to do for hours), I now face how I am feeling.  This facing of emotions takes time, and it becomes a great excuse to meditate. So I sit down, break down the emotion and bring that emotion full circle.  First, I accept that the emotion is coming from me, it's my karmic seed. I also meditate on knowing that I chose to label the emotion as I did ("failing" makes me feel shitty)  I change the label of the emotion (boom! now my failure is a learning experience in which now I can take the opportunity to be good and reliable to others) and at last, accept that this feeling it's just an idea I created in your head.  It's empty.

 So here I am.  After enjoying a meditation, I am going through old emails, responding to invites, being honest about what event I can go to and which one I can't attend.  Being reliable to others.  Stopping the cycle.  

Damn you, alcohol and finals

You mess up everything.

I've meditated for 15 minutes today.  Nothing yesterday. My mind was all over the place.

Don't drink ( a lot) and meditate (the day after).  it blows.

Meditation and Yoga Challenge, starts today

Meditation changes everything, it really really does.  I just don't find the time and my meditation practice is not as consistent as I would like.  In between random waking-up schedules, my boyfriend staying over (it's very hard to get up just to meditate), the cold weather, etc. etc.  It doesn't help that I have started drinking coffee since I have early clients and classes, and meditating after drinking coffee makes it a bust.

So, my plan is to meditate in the late afternoon, every day for the month of December.  This way, my caffeine boost is over, it will break my day, and soothe my evenings.  I will write my meditations everyday and journal it here.

Happy Friday!

Patricia  

Kids yoga!

I am teaching at Lucky Lotus in Brooklyn, starting today.  I start teaching toddler yoga (1.5 to 4 years old). I am looking forward to it!