the best yogi alive!

think of who you perceive as the best yogi/ni alive. and then let me guess.

is it that guy who can stand on his head without any hands? or that girl who can press up to handstand…even in her underwear? ooh! ooh! i know! it’s that guy who can stand on one hand, with one leg behind his head, his free hand grabbing the other leg and pulling it to his head. right?

man, have we lost sight of the what makes a yogi great.

standing on your hands does not make you a great yogi. standing on your own two feet, regardless of adversity or circumstance, does.

having strong abs does not make you a great yogi. having strong morals does.

being flexible enough to contort your body does not make you a great yogi. being flexible enough to deal with life as it’s handed to you–for better or for worse–is.

quiz: how many times is asana mentioned in patanjali’s “yoga sutra”?

answer: two. and the second is only to clarify the first.

asana was never intended to be the be all and end all of yoga. and i doubt patanjali ever cared that your knee bend to 90-degrees, tracking over the second toe in external rotation.

there are the things that make people great at asana and there are the things that make people great at yoga. you aspire to be one of the great yogi/nis of all time? start practicing ahimsa (non-violence). stop coveting others’ gifts (aparigraha). start speaking from autheticity (satya). stop giving into your primal instincts (brahmacharya). start believing in something…whatever it is, have faith and devotion and keep it unwavering (isvara pranidhana). and that’s just a start.

when you achieve santosa (contentment) without complacency, you’re getting there…

truth is, with enough discipline, you can be the greatest yogi alive. even if you never once stand on your hands in the middle of a room.

wait a minute!

time is relative. i know it seems concrete. a minute is sixty seconds, is 60,000 milliseconds, 1/60 of an hour. pretty definitive, right?

and when someone (say, me) asks you to hold a yoga pose–let’s say a handstand–for a minute you think, “no! that’s forever! i can’t hold that long! you’re just being cruel!”

but if i were to say to you, “think of the one person you love the most in the entire world. you now have one minute left to see them and then you can never see them again,” you would change your tune on the eternal implications of a minute. “A minute!” you’d scream, “a minute is nothing! you cannot do this to me! you’re just being cruel!”

in yoga, part of the practice is getting past maya, illusion. learning to replace subjectivity with reality. a minute is sixty seconds, yes. but there is no judgement, just ticks on a clock, when you remove the maya.

so, let’s get back to that one minute handstand. and imagine the time i gave you in handstand were instead the time i gave you with your loved one. flip your illusion. it’s just a minute. what can’t you do for just a minute?

here’s the thing: you are only as strong as you think you are.

scratch that…you are stronger than you think you are…if you can just learn to think of yourself as stronger. because you are only as strong as you think you are, and that strength can be multiplied (or divided) by a simple change of mind.

http://www.yogathletica.com

hold the applause…

i can do some funky stuff. i love arm balances and inversions and i work really hard on them. so, when my teachers need a demonstrator, i’m often the one who’s asked to demo. and i’m totally cool with that. in fact, i enjoy it.

but somewhere in the past five years or so, it’s suddenly become the norm to clap for people who demonstrate a pose. outside of perhaps anusara, it didn’t used to be that way.

of course, i know that the intention is politeness and appreciation, but really this applause is just another extension of the increasing exhibitionism of the yoga practice. yoga is no longer about self-practice and discipline, but about accomplishment and aesthetics. a weird mutual admiration society whose primary currency is “likes”.

honestly, it sort of embarrasses me when people clap for a demo…as if i was somehow expecting (or even wanting) applause and adulation. quite the opposite, all i really want is to (a) facilitate the teacher’s teaching and (b) facilitate other students’ learning. i would rather people go “ahhhh….right. i get it”, return to their mats and try the pose.

it’s sad to me how much yoga has devolved into an exhibitionist sport. the powers that be (read: bikram) are even fighting hard to get yoga into the olympics as–you got it–an exhibition sport.

we have so deeply lost sight of what yoga is meant to be about. it’s not about looking good or even looking good in asana. it’s about focus, dedication, and humility. *clap, clap*

 

yoga…the most dangerous activity on earth!!!

in the last 24 hours, i’ve been inundated with clients, friends, family, and strangers emailing me this link:

How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/how-yoga-can-wreck-your-body.html?emc=eta1>
By WILLIAM J. BROAD

and if you teach yoga in the western hemisphere, i assume it’s come across your email a time or thousand as well…

but on the off-chance you missed it, the article argues, in a nutshell, that yoga can basically disable, paralyze, or otherwise lead you to a slow and painful death. cited are a few very random, very extreme examples of people who lost certain capacities or encountered strokes, apparently as a result of their yoga practice.

and the statistics he uses to demonstrate his point are staggering! in 2002, there were a frightening 46 emergency room admissions due to yoga…up from just 13 in the year 2000! 46! out of tens of millions of practitioners, many practicing 2-3 or even more times per week…46 emergency room admissions in an entire year. really?

i would assume there are more home crafting emergency room visits than that…you know how dangerous those scissors can be! oh, and i suggest you get out of that kitchen. do you know how many people burn themselves trying to cook even the simplest dishes?

this is yellow journalism at its finest. taking a very popular activity–yoga–and trying to discredit it, cause a controversy, and, yes, draw more eyeballs to the new york times at a time when newspapers are floundering for readership and readers devour anything and everything having to do with yoga. (i almost hate to feed into it by posting this)

listen, if you’re coming to yoga to heal an injury, i agree that arm balances, inversions, and other extreme poses aren’t the route for repair. but these more intricate poses provide a venue for healthy people to align their bodies and their minds to face up to challenges in a calm and controlled manner. a different kind of healing. life healing.

yes, be smart about the classes that you choose and find the one that serves your particular needs, but i wouldn’t worry about how yoga can wreck your body. be smart and you’ll be okay.

THAT guy…

you know when THAT guy comes to your class…?

he’s handsome in a just-the-way-i-like-it kind of way…

he’s got on the harvard business school sweatshirt…and you confirm that he’s a grad…

you ask what he does…yes, successful…

he at least looks like he could be jewish…but his pants are on…

every time you say something funny you glance at him and he’s smiling…and the light catches his teeth in just the right way…bling!…

it’s hard to continue teaching through all that giddy…

and he has a ring on his finger?

me too.

 

$#!+ some very famous yoga teachers have told me…

my classes have always been small…one or two handfuls of dedicated and very hard-working students. yogathletica classes are unique, unlike most any class out there (definitely way unlike the popular classes), and egotistically ungratifying. my classes are for people who want to work on some seriously tough challenges, regardless of the outcome. i’ve never been a teacher for the masses.

here are some of the things that some of l.a.’s most famous and popular teachers have told me:

“you think you’re a good teacher? look around, shana, numbers don’t lie.”

“people only come to your classes once or twice to learn what they need to know so that they can do better in the classes they really want to go to.”

“i would kill myself if i had the kind of numbers you have.”

“everyone knows that people go out of their way to avoid taking your class.”

“why don’t you just copy _____ like everyone else. do exactly what he does and people will come.”

and then there was this:

“do you want to be popular or good?”

guess which one i hold onto every day i go in to teach another tiny class….

 

confessions of a yoga douche

so there’s this picture going around the internet of a guy doing a modified pincha mayurasana (forearm balance) in the middle of a bikram studio with a bunch of indignant girls sitting around, utterly unamused. on it is the caption “don’t be a yoga douche”. it’s gotten hundreds of “likes” on facebook, followed by hundreds of comments. and i have a confession to make. i’m a yoga douche.

i like to jump into handstand in the middle of the sun salutations…twice. i like to take funky transitions out of arm balances. i like to push myself to my edges. but please don’t think i’m doing this for you. i don’t want an audience. i just want to practice. and that’s my practice.

i guess there are some people out there who do this stuff looking for attention. i promise that’s not me. i’m working on some stuff that challenges me. and, yes, one day i’d like to be that super-douche who can press up effortlessly into a handstand in her sleep. that may or may not ever happen for me, but i’m sure enjoying the process.

when i practice, i’m not looking around the room to see what anyone else is doing. i don’t care what anyone else is doing. that’s their business. their personal practice. so why are people so concerned with what the yoga douches are doing?

ultimately, it comes back to ego. you don’t hate me. your ego does. because maybe i can do something that you can’t do and that makes you feel frustrated or jealous or inferior or…i don’t know. what comes up for you? hell, i’ve watched certain yogi/nis practice and felt jealous. i’ll admit it. but part of the practice is letting go of my ego, and releasing my judgement of them, and of me. we are both just doing the best we can.

building core strength for handstand

in my last video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPEuNlDQ2eM&feature=share), i showed you how to do a freestanding handstand in the middle of the room. consider this the prequel, showing you how to build and utilize your core strength specifically for coming into these slow, controlled handstands. we will work with the wall as a tool for learning how to create real balance.

the only person who wants to hear me sing…

i have this one client. she’s 44 years old and has severe down syndrome. i’d say she has the mentality of about a one-and-a-half to two-year-old and she is purely incredible. we’ve been working together for two-and-a-half years now.

she can hold half-moon longer than just about any of my students and–even better–she tells me about 20 times a class that she likes me (literally “i like you.”). compare that to my other clients who tell me about 20 times a class that they hate me.

the first time i worked with her, i was playing “you’ve got a friend” during savasana and she walked out of our lesson singing “friend…friend…friend.” it was awesome.

well, we stopped using the ipod and so, when she would lie down in savasana, she would say “song. song.” and so started the tradition of my singing “you’ve got a friend” to her during savasana. when we first met, it took an incredible amount of finagling to get her to unclench her fists and close her eyes in final rest. now she knows, when it’s time for the song (and shoulder, neck, and scalp rub), it’s time to relax.

she lies down, relaxes everything, closes her eyes and i sing. and at the very end when i get to the final “you’ve got a friend” chorus, she opens her eyes, smiles at me, and every time i say “friend”, she says it with me and points at me with both hands like a lounge singer.

she is the only person on earth who actually likes to hear me sing and we both get so much out of our very special friendship.

paying the yoga bills

i know a yogini who had $30,000 in debt with target. yes, target. please don’t ask me how…i can only imagine.

anyway, seven years passed and the debt still wasn’t paid. target was still knocking down her door for payment and she was indignant. according to her, if seven years have passed, the debt should be wiped clear and they should let it go. why? because she wins for lasting so long without paying a bill? that is $30,000 worth of merchandise that she took from a store and never paid for. had it been under her shirt instead of under her credit card, that would be considered grand larceny.

another yogi friend got all up in arms about the percentage he was being charged on his debt…the percentage that he agreed to when he accepted the credit in the first place. credit is a privilege, not a right. and, unfortunately, you have to pay for it. and you have to uphold your agreements.

we live in a credit society where people can generally get by without paying for the things they take…er, buy. as yogi/nis, i believe we have a responsibility to break that pattern and to pay for things as they are afforded to us. asteya, non-stealing, is one of the yamas of ashtanga yoga. and just because your credit card company says it’s okay not to pay for your stuff, doesn’t mean it’s really okay.

whether you are talking about a trinket from a local artisan or a $1000 pair of shoes from a huge international designer label, if someone is providing you a good or service, cough up the dough. they deserve it and you will be upholding your yogic ideals.