Join us from 12-1:15pm Monday, 12.21.09 at CHI Studio for a special Winter Solstice Yoga class.

We’ll begin with low lights and more restorative (yin) asana including supine postures and forward bends. We’ll move gradually toward opening the front body, releasing the light of the heart center through chest openers, back bends and slow-moving Sun Salutations (yang). After savasana we’ll end our practice with a seated meditation honoring both the seasonal and personal transformation and balance of the Solstice, surrounded by glowing candlelight.

This class is suitable for all levels of yoga practitioner. Beginners are warmly welcomed. Come join us for the perfect, no-stress opportunity to honor the spirit of the season.

It’s autumn and soon enough the holidays are upon us again. What’s the first sign for you? Changes in the weather? The first leaves turning on the trees? Scary jack o’ lanterns and bonfires? Changing seasons cause us to pay attention to what our senses are registering in us, perhaps more at this time of the year than any other. Why is it that so many people love the seasons of spring and fall so much? The senses are fully, actively engaged; almost overwhelmed.

One of the surest signs for me (and my husband) is in what we want to cook and eat at home. Big bowls or plates of warm, comforting stewed things; or an impulse to bake rises up. I begin tagging recipes in the holiday issues of my food magazines.

One thing that’s different for me this year though is a deepening awareness of how my body reacts to food. I was born thin and have been blessed with a very high-functioning metabolism for most of life. My body literally burned with digestive energy at night and my weight hasn’t fluctuated more than 3-4 pounds over the past 20 years. I’ve always been very conscious about what I eat and have for years leaned much more toward a whole foods diet, but have been able to eat pretty much what I want without worrying about calorie-counting. Classic pitta constitution.

Manipura Chakra

Then I turned 40 and almost immediately I noticed changes. Many of them were normal, natural, but some have noticeably altered the way I feel and move. My digestive system is becoming more sensitively attuned to what I’m feeding it and in some instances has strongly resisted my desires to keep giving it the strong, spicy, acidic diet I’ve always loved. It’s as if the fires of digestion have smoldered to the point where they create only acrid smoke that has nowhere to go but back up the digestive tract! When I pull out my Ayurvedic cookbook and start actively reducing the pitta elements in my diet, I feel so much better, and not just in my belly!

Let’s look, too  for a moment, at the belly in psychological terms. In Kundalini yoga (the most psychically [i.e., psyche]-oriented of all of the schools of yoga), the belly is the location of the manipura chakra, the center of transformative fires. At least symbolically, engaging a strong manipura energy (through the practice of Kundalini Yoga) is a positive force and necessary for continued growth and transformation. In Carl Jung’s interpretation, manipura is where we burn through our passions and desires in order to begin to realize our individual nature. In the wisdom of the chakras, manipura is where we put forth ambition, where we exercise power and is sometimes associated with the years when we are forging (to use another heat-related metaphor) our careers and defining who we want to be.

Around the time of my most recent bout with these uncomfortable changes to my system, I dreamt intensely for two or three nights in a row, twice a recurring dream where I was trying to teach yoga in my studio but was constantly thwarted, interrupted or otherwise distracted by people and things and activity. I’ve decided to work with the imagery in these dreams in terms of who I am in the scheme of my own life at this moment. What is it that I think I want and what’s still in the way that I have ignored or repressed? In other words, it’s perhaps not enough that I changed my life to pursue a path I felt would bring me a deeper sense of satisfaction along with the opportunity to really give something of value to people (and that desire came relatively late in my life). That alone will not bring me to a fuller realization of myself. There are still boxes full, rooms full of stuff and relationships to unpack that in my dreams, are literally, in my way.

Following the course of kundalini, I might consider that becoming a yoga teacher is still (unconsciously) bound up with the ego’s desires and “burning through” that want could create the space to more deeply connect with what my yoga practice means to me, and how I can take that deepening awareness – that more genuine relationship of my self to myself – to my students. Through yoga we become more real to ourselves. It follows necessarily that we become more real to those around us.

Which is all to say I’m very focused on the mid-region, in my own practice, but in my teaching too; especially at a time when we’ll feel compelled to overindulge a bit here and there. I always assumed my yoga practice alone would keep me fit physically and mentally but as I get older I want to bring more practices into my life that benefit the whole person: Ayurveda, restorative yoga, pranayama and meditation. These practices enhance the equanimity, the sense of balance and calm I get from yoga and give me the energy, the joy to pursue all the things in my life that keep me sane and present and help me to grow and stay creative: my teaching, music, art, food, home, family and friends.

Be extra aware of and nice to your “belly” this season – both with what you put in it that will help keep your agni, your digestive fires, balanced and active, but also, give some thought to the psychic force of the manipura chakra. What’s vivid, burning, and intensely alive for you right now and what does it mean for your own, unique sense of personhood? What’s the fire in your belly?

I continued my class with my private school teachers over the summer as well, which brought a level of continuity and deepening of their commitment to their practice. We continue on through the new school term with a weekly class that meets in the school’s new dance studio. The school is offering yoga classes for students this year too and the demand is high!

If you’d like more information about forming a group class of your own (either one-off or ongoing) send me an email! I especially love working with new students and those looking to transition from Beginner to Intermediate and Advanced work. A one-off class for a special occasion can be fast-paced or slow and restorative. There are as many options for classes as there are interested students!

Pranam~

Shannon

I will be teaching my regularly scheduled Restorative Yoga class at CHI Studio from 12-1:15pm. We have 2 other free classes at CHI on Monday as well, from 10:15-11:45am, a Vinyasa Flow-style class with my dear friend Mary Armstrong, and from 7-8:30pm, an invigorating Vinyasa-Flow class with my Teacher Training Instructor, Ro Chapa.

First-time CHI clients can attend any class the rest of next week for $5 (regular $10 Drop-in).

This class is my favorite in winter, when we start just as the sun is starting to dip, and end the class almost in darkness.

Private Yoga Classes are an excellent (and fun!) way to begin a yoga practice in a more intimate environment, surrounded by a few like-minded friends, colleagues or family members.

They’re also a smart way to get private yoga lesson attention from your instructor, as a single private lesson fee can be split among 4, 5 or 6 students.

Private classes can be held at the location of your choice, for convenience and comfort.

My 2009 is about keeping my 200-hour certification which means I need to attend workshops and earn CEUs (Continuing Education Units).

As a yoga teacher I earn very little money, and $75 just for the Sunday Master Class hit my AMEX pretty hard after the holidays. But that $75 was money well-spent. As a Yoga Therapist Judith Lasater knows anatomy and physiology. (With a PhD in East-West Psychology she obviously knows a lot more.) She explained not only the gender differences but also the cultural differences in the anatomy of the hip joint, differences which turn out to be East-West. In cultures where most of us sit in chairs all day, our hip joints assume a movement and stasis that becomes fairly patterned and is different from that of cultures where many folks squat or sit on the floor (or just walk a lot more). Judith explained how when she was a girl, her family sat on the floor all the time, so sitting in padmasana or lotus pose has always been quite easy for her. Many Western yoga students will never sit comfortably in lotus pose because our hips are habituated (read “tight and underdeveloped”) to sit in chairs.

She pulled out a handy 3-D scale model of the human spine and pelvis (gets her in trouble in airports), together with a model of the top end of the human thigh bone or femur. Are you a visual learner? Me too. Getting to see how the femur sits in the hip socket (or acetabulum to be anatomically correct) made the results of our asana or posture work much more immediate and valuable. Knowing the relative angle (and it differs between men and women) at which that thigh bone inserts into the hip, and then being able to visualize that insertion as we moved in and out of seated and standing poses, brought my understanding as a teacher to a new level. You know when you grasp the essence of a piece of knowledge almost immediately, understand its value and can then repeat and share that essence with full confidence? That’s what I got.

How many times do I tell my students to “broaden your hips”? This, I learned (or was reminded?) is anatomically impossible. Or how about “tuck your pelvis under”? Judith explained why she thinks the latter instruction is unhelpful, particularly if you are also instructing your students to flatten their lower backs at the same time. True, we don’t want to over-arch the lumbar spine, but we also don’t want to “under arch” it. There is a neutral position for the spine that keeps the natural curve in the lower back intact and we do a disservice by instructing our students to flatten that arch. When we point the tailbone down, tucking the pelvis, we restrict movement in the thigh/hip joint when what we want is more movement, more freedom there.

Which doesn’t mean I can’t continue to give these instructions if they are helpful visualizations for some students. But the additional lesson seemed to be to become more aware of each student’s unique anatomy. Only a handful will have the tendency to overarch the lumbar spine, just as only a few will hyper-extend the limbs. Give those instructions only to those who will benefit and at the same time, encourage the neutral, natural curve of the spine.