(H)OM(e)made Yoga

With the nearest yoga studio 40 miles away, taking a class isn’t a realistic option for me most days. Aside from teaching, which is for the students, my yoga practice has been mostly solo and home-based for the past four years. Really for six years, since before that I was a grad student who couldn’t afford $10-$15/session.

As a student and instructor, I firmly believe that nothing can take the place of working in person with a qualified teacher in an appropriate level class, even if just for a half-dozen sessions. I recommend that to anyone. A good teacher can tailor the class to individual students’ abilities, work one-on-one within the class to help each student feel best in the asanas (poses), offer encouragement, answer questions, and more. There’s really no substitute, but unfortunately many of us (including myself) have full-time jobs, major commitments to training and/or family, live in inconvenient places, or are on tight budgets.

The next best option for beginning yogis, I believe, is some type of visual media: DVD, Web-based class, podcast, cable show, etc. More and more instructors and studios are providing classes online, some for purchase and others free of charge. I haven’t explored many offerings, but a good search engine result for “online yoga classes” should come up with plenty. If you have TiVo and a satellite dish service, you can record “Namaste Yoga” on FitTV or “Exhale,” broadcast on the Oxygen network.

To have the optimal experience, take the time out to simply watch the video before trying a new routine. It is frustrating and counterproductive to be hanging out in Downward-Facing Dog craning your neck to see what’s going on on the screen, and in some poses (Bridge, Shoulderstand) could compromise the cervical spine.

Above all else, listen to your body when practicing solo. If anything causes sudden, sharp pain, dizziness, lightheadedness, or shortness of breath, carefully come out and take a break.

These titles are just one yogini’s suggestion. There are hundreds on the market, and I’m sure another practitioner would have different recommendations. Yoga is a very individual and personal experience, and part of the yoga tradition is connecting with the teachers we feel drawn to. If you want to begin a yoga practice, trust that you will discover what you need as you go. A DVD or book that ignites one person’s enthusiasm for practicing will sit on someone else’s shelf collecting dust and taking up space. That’s why, if you have access, I suggest first sampling from the public library, renting from a video store or Netflix, or downloading free online classes.

All DVDs I mention should be available through Amazon.com or Yogajournal.com’s “Shop” section.

The title I recommend most to runners and other athletes is Yoga Conditioning for Athletes. I love this practice and in the past, have done it after every week’s long run during marathon training. The whole hour-long routine is a complete practice with stretching, strengthening, and relaxation. The DVD also includes short, sport-specific routines, and instructor Rodney Yee tailors his instruction to explain how the poses benefit sports performance. It is very easy to follow with three people demonstrating three different levels for each pose.

New and intermediate yogis will do well exploring the titles produced by Gaiam.com. The Web site offers previews and categorizes titles by level of difficulty. Every Gaiam DVD I own features an experienced instructor, is beautifully filmed, well-organized, easy to follow, and has quality content. Some of them do have more of a “workout video” feel than a yoga practice feel, but that’s just my experience.

New yogis who want more in-depth instruction can try the series Step by Step A Total Guide To Beginning Your Home Practice produced by Yoga Journal magazine. Each of the three DVDs has a practice routine, but the special features include in-depth instruction of every pose. This is the next best thing to taking a Level 1 class.

I gravitate to vinyasa (”flow”) yoga for its dance-like feel, creativity, and more moderate pace. This style is also called “Power Yoga” and emphasizes strengthening as well as stretching. I have nearly 20 DVDs of ths style, but my two favorite titles are Eoin Finn’s Power Yoga For Happiness and Shiva Rea’s Yoga Shakti. Both titles let practitioners choose short or long practices. Finn’s instruction is playful and fun, yet he has a way of helping students experience poses on a deeper level. “Yoga Shakti” has an especially cool Matrix feature where you can select and sequence your own routine.

And finally, to anyone who needs a good laugh while learning a pose or two: Yogabeans!

A Yogic Valentine

Happy Valentine’s Day! This year I find myself enthused about the Hallmark Holiday for a change. Sure it’s a bit contrived and more than a bit commercialized, but what is so bad about a day that encourages people to be more loving all around?

So many times, people turn their backs to you

‘Cause they don’t wanna see what’s inside of you

‘Cause lookin’ inside of you

They might realize there’s something inside of them

They might not wanna find

But it ain’t about who ya love, (who ya love)

See it’s all about do ya love, (do ya love)

– Michael Franti

Though Valentine’s Day has evolved from its saintly or possibly pagan origins into yet another retail sales benchmark, there are plenty of low-cost and no-cost ways to spread some love. Here’s one I found:

Thai Yoga Massage

Yoga Journal also features an 8-minute video of a few better-known modern yogis looking at relationships from their own perspectives.  I found it an insightful reminder of what I’ve read more than once, that a relationship is the ultimate day-to-day yoga practice.

Let Love Rule, y’all.

On a related note I’ll be traveling for the next several days, but plan to be back with some good training updates. Keep an eye on this place for me, will ya?

A Yoga Journey

The tagline of this blog mentions a yoga journey. It’s time to take off the running shoes for a post and instead solidly place my bare feet on the mat. 

Exactly 10 years ago, I took a yoga class for the first time. My then-roommate Carla found a class offered at the local rec center in our suburban Seattle neighborhood. I can’t remember the instructor’s name, but I will never forget her. She was an older woman and a new widow. Sometimes during class she told stories about her recently deceased husband, remembering her mate with joy, humor, and warmth rather than inconsolable grief. That impressed me, as well as the physical strength and ease she demonstrated in asanas (yoga postures) that my four decades younger body struggled to emulate.

I will always be grateful to those two remarkable women for being part of the initiation to something precious and vast that has gone on to immeasurably enrich my life.

Carla and I continued practicing when we both relocated to Fargo. We even took partner classes where we were the only platonic, same-sex pair. I was a step aerobics instructor at the Y, and slowly branched into teaching beginning yoga there. This time my mentor teacher, Maia, was almost 10 years younger. I’ll never forget her, either. Her youthful body could do the most acrobatic postures, but outside of classes this 22-year old was much more interested in talking about meditation and philosophical aspects of yoga than in drinking or clubbing.

Ten years after that first class, I am a Yoga Alliance Registered Yoga Teacher. That means I have completed nationally set standards of training. Mine was in idyllic Asheville, N.C., with a wonderful, loving, if not slightly maverick lead instructor, Stephanie Keach. The credential may sound official, but doesn’t qualify me as a yoga master. After reading dozens of books and attending many workshops, I still don’t know any of those.

Rather than any kind of expert, I usually feel like either an impostor or a missionary in my current teaching practice.  In Western culture worldwide yoga is burgeoning. In this small Southern town yoga is unpopular at best, making the couple of instructors unintentional missionaries. Fundamentalist Christianity, the religion commonly practiced, interprets its scriptures in a way that yoga conflicts with worshipping that belief system’s god. I have had students openly object to or laugh at class activities and protest when I use music with “foreign words that might be a negative influence.” The few local classes available, including mine, are painfully small. The bright silver lining is that those who do come are truly appreciative of the chance to practice in a structured environment.

The impostor feeling comes in because my own practice has been greatly downgraded to the role of Running Antidote for tight hamstrings and hips. With the closest advanced classes more than an hour away, my physical practice has regressed rather than improved. On the other hand, being a solo yogini (female yoga practitioner) has allowed me to discover the riches of a daily meditation practice.  In the last year I’ve learned that simply sitting still has the power to reshape and transform far more than the bendiest yoga party trick ever could.

I dearly love yoga, but without a community frequently struggle with feelings of stagnation and low motivation for practicing and teaching. It is easy to feel jealous of city-dwelling friends who regale me with tales of a great instructor or amazing new studio opening up down the street. And it can be easy to allow the ego to muscle in and wish for advanced students crowding into the studio for 90 minutes of challenging flow practice, rather than students who are limited by their physical conditions to the most gentle, basic asana practice.

Somehow, when I’m feeling my lowest yoga mojo is when I have the best classes.  Maybe my students will share a story about how yoga helps them, like the Wal-Mart employee who regularly practices child’s pose in the middle of the aisle when work gets too hectic.

Other times, I hear words coming out from a place I am not consciously in touch with and cannot take credit for:

• “Find a way for your body to experience comfort and ease in this pose, even if it means doing  a completely different pose.”
• “Let your breath drown out the space between your ears and bring you back to your true self.”
• “Search for something in you that feels better from your yoga practice. Maybe it’s physical, or energetic, or emotional. With each inhalation, fan that flame with your breath and expand what feels good. As you exhale, send it somewhere in need of that feeling. Maybe within you, or to someone else, or someplace else in the world.”

and realize I am talking to my students, but I am talking to myself too.

Or the practice will end like tonight’s class. I felt the four students’ relaxed states permeating the space with heavy stillness. I encouraged them to come out of savasana to sukhasana in their own time, and observed peace and bliss on their closed-eye faces as they held on to the last few moments of tranquility. 

It is so humbling to, on a very small and amateur scale, catalyze yoga’s power and share it with others. In doing so, I replenish my own drained energy and renew the desire to  journey farther and deeper in the direction of the source.