more words?

And then there was yoga for the rest of us

Today I had the honor of hosting a yoga class for one of our yoga greats in North America, Sage Rountree. When I was asked to do this for Mountain Equipment co-op, not only did I feel surpised and excited, but I also felt the stress off being responsible for 30 bodies and their sense of peace. I didn't know if I could create the calm needed for a yoga class, especially in the midst of the chaos of a large store that even putting noise aside, the shear number of things too look at and distract you with! But I suppose it's in the midst of chaos that we need to find sanctuary the most.

What a great learning experience to have been able to host this event. To have been able to share my own love of yoga to the people in Vancouver through Sage. Who was able to bring such knowledge and experience for different athletes who want to practice yoga in a way that would be beneficial to their own training while respecting their bodies abilities.

This experience has taught me that you can create a sacred space no matter where you are. And even though I had things for the altar like flowers, a singing bowl and even a statue of Shiva. I even managed to clear enough space so that everyone was able to lay their mats comfortably. But it is, I realized, the action of everyone coming together and the subtle vibrations we all create together when we come together as a community.

Namaste

Inherent Intuition. or is it?

In our society we are told that certain things that we do as humans is simply chocked up to intuition.  "fight or flight", "mother knows", "listen to your instincts", "follow your heart". These are all sayings that saturate our lives and when you freeze or you don't know something you feel you should, you begin to doubt your intuition.

Yoga is amazing because it is a reflection of our lives, we often see things in our practice that we might not have noticed off the mat.  For instance judgement, judging ourselves, the way we might look or our ability to "perform" that day, especially when compared to that girl in the corner!  We can sit in our seat and take the time to notice this behaviour and work towards correcting it, filling it with love, compassion, forgiveness.  And again each day is different, there are good ones and bad ones.  But out in the "world" judging ourselves in the mirror, to the girl walking down the street walking down the street in her Jimmy Choos... That might just seem like any other day!

So what does this mean to our practice?  Well we aren't always reminding ourselves to listen to our bodies and listening to what it has to say that day.  We have these goals about our physical practice that says, I want to do camel pose like the pictures, camel pose is not just standing on my knees opening my heart, I'm not going anywhere.  I want to be looking behind me, I want to have my hands on my ankles, isn't the saying, "no pain, no gain"?

Expect pain, is not good, it is not a badge of honour.  It is a very strong signal telling you enough. It is your intuition saying your body is not ready for that deep of a back bend.

So why do we not listen to our intuition if it is natural if it is part of our human nature to have this ability?  Because, we as a culture, have desensitized ourselves away from intuition, developing doubt, developing a system that relies on "facts", on statistics, on an ideal of the way everyone should be.  So our ability to listen has been dampened, has been questioned from a young age, to the point that we don't even know what our intuition is telling us.

How do we place more value on our intuition, how do we know what our intuition even sounds or feels like?

Start here:

• Close your eyes (after you finish reading this of course!).  begin by clearing out your thoughts, your lists of nagging things to do, of people you need to call or check in with, of your own judgements of how you should feel.  Find the silence where it is simply just you and the sound of your breath.  
• Next, very clearly ask yourself overall on a scale of 1-5, how are you? Then do a check, starting with your feet, you can use your hands to start, but work to simply experiencing those moments in silence and stillness.  start at your feet, how do they feel?  your legs, your knees?  your hips? lower back? your abdomen and digestive system? your lower ribs? your chest, your shoulders, your hands, wrists, arms?  your neck, your jaw, tongue, even your teeth?  your eyes, your head? even your mind?  
• And again ask yourself, how do you feel?  Do you actually feel different once you became aware of your entire body? Do you have a better sense of your being?
• Now finally, ask yourself, if you were to practice yoga, or do a presentation, would you hold this same awareness, would you listen more closely to your needs?

It's not easy, and even still you might start your activity with conviction and awareness, but then you get lost in the task and habit and next thing you know and your somewhere you don't necessarily want to be. In a headstand. You don't need to be in that headstand. So come down, sit in lotus and just breath. Ground yourself.

We are all waiting there for you!

Learning to Budget like a Yogi

For about a year I have been working really hard at saving.  I had the goal of saving around $2000 for my summer trip to Wanderlust California. This covered all of the travel costs including the rather expensive ticket to attend, and left me some moula for a second weeklong road trip to visit some family!  I more than impressed myself, not only did I make it happen, I managed to live comfortably without making many sacrifices to my day-to-day spending - I just found new ways to make a bit of extra cash.

Now that I'm on the other side of this personal project ,it's high time for me to address my ability to save and my very unfortunate habit to spend what I save.

It's taken me years to figure out the best way to keep me from spending spare cash, and that's by not allowing day to day access to these savings.  A normal person might use a savings account, unfortunately I find it too easy to transfer that money into a spending account, or simply attach it to my bank card.  I've had it all!

The best method for me is with an old school piggy bank. Any time I have cash or I earn a little extra outside of my regular wage, that money goes in. And I have very strict rules on how I can spend it.  Generally speaking, that rule surrounds yoga and training, but if I was going to take a holiday or needed it for an emergency, medical or home, then that's where that cash will go.

But I've also realized I need to try to cut back on some of my spending. Between my husband and I, we spent over a $1200 last months on food and drink in and outside of the home. That was OVER a THOUSAND DOLLARS! what???

I would never have seen that statistic if I hadn't started using a free online program, mint.com.  I had often considered purchasing one of those finance programs that are on the market, but always hesitated to put money into something I most likely would not use, or use properly. Something I do more often then I like to, and naturally that would become more wasted money! The irony of the expense was too much for me to dive into.

Not only is mint.com free, it's really simple to use, guaranteed SAFE!, and best of all it's aesthetically pleasing.  You don't do any of your banking from the program (so that means money will never be transferred, which adds to its safety).  It's simply a tool that you use to keep track of your expenses, create budgets, and a place to witness your spending trends(the good and the bad!).  Amongst the different email notifications like warnings of irregular spending or getting close to or going over a budgeted expense, my favourite is the summary that you can receive weekly or monthly.  A great snapshot or your habits so that you can hopefully catch any red alarms before they happen!

It's only been a month so far, but I'm hoping that by being able to see where my money goes on a weekly basis I'll be able to rein in more of my spending habits and start paying some of my bills a little bit faster.  I would really like to start saving more money so that some of my bigger life plans can happen.

Go check it out, so far i'm REALLY impressed!

Learning and Teaching at once!

It's been interesting teaching again, more then regularly too!  Also, its been great having an ever changing number of people attend my classes, some of them repeats some of them new faces to me or to the studio.  And it's REALLY interesting the different thoughts and feelings that run through me week to week.

There are some of the questions that I expected to face: Do they like me? Did they come back for another class because they liked my class? Am I a good teacher?

The one's I had never thought of before were: Are they giving feedback to my peers or supervisors? Will I get this feedback? (I actually want feedback, the good and the ugly!) How do I connect with my students? - Are they "my" students?

Both lists are endless, fortunately I haven't gotten lost in these questions and wonderings, but I do visit a couple of them each week.  But my biggest questions surround figuring out my relationship with the studio.  In my other life I also work with the public, in fact retail.  The culture is: give amazing service whether they have a membership or are buying something, they will always come back for more of the lovin'!  So it is naturally in my dialogue to not only sell our product and our culture but for that person who wants to see everything outside first I am more then happy to help and tell them about the different great places in the city.  They will go there, check it out, develop a relationship and hopefully decide to come back, because hopefully we will always be more awesome, better people, better prices, and better product overall.  And I honestly think 9 out of 10 times, it works.  But can I do that to the studio, or is that frowned upon? I completely believe that no matter what, if you show someone a good time, and they groove with you, they will come back, especially if you remind them of that!

But most of this is superficial, and I only need to remind myself, if there is a problem or if they appreciate me, I will find out. Just like I did last weekend when I got called to sub a class last minute.  At the end I had several of the students approach me and thank me for a great class. What I really appreciated was being thanked for not only being a good teacher, but for the poses or design of the class, being able to create a multi-level class.  Because Asana class IS fun and there is a lot to learn when you push yourself even a little.

So my piece of advice?  Talk to your teacher, we are all learning together! Tell them what you liked, what you didn't like. And teachers, just like when your practicing on the mat, keep an open heart, don't ask to many questions, be mindful of what your doing, who is in front of you and don't forget to have fun!