Mind and Life - Understanding Contemplative Practices: Yoga and Jain

Mind and Life is an organization with a mission to bring together Western Science with Eastern Contemplative Science. They have been integrating Buddhist practice and Neuroscience for many years. The latest conference was the first one bringing in the idea of Hinduism , Jainism, Yoga and Vedanta.

If you have the time it would be worth your while to watch all of these sessions that are posted for free. I found this one below particularly interesting talking specifically about yoga meditation practice , the parallels and differences to Buddhism and what scientists in India are learning about the physiological affects of yoga practice.

Enjoy !


http://www.mindandlife.org/dialogues/past-conferences/ml22/mind-and-life-xxii-session-4/

gingerbread

winter from the studio window

A Moment of Silence

Today at teacher training we were silent. The practice sounded like this:

Sweet Silence
Brave
Impermanence
Breath
Surrender
Forgiveness
Rhythmic Focus
Gratitude
Love
& Lightness.

Namaste. Shanti. Shanti. Shanti.

Fish

This Saturday, December 11, we will be silent.

Try to be quiet from the time you go to sleep Friday night.

If you have young children or animals that need your voice

try to be silent from the time you get in your car to come to the studio.

This means no talking, no singing, no radio, no tunes.

If all of that is too much,

then be quiet once you arrive.

On December 18th we will practice Ashtanga in the am.

Scott will be coming in for Thai Massage in the afternoon.

Practice will start at 10:15.  Thai Massage will start at 1:00.

You are welcome to bring your own partner for Thai massage,

as long as they are willing to give back to you.

Happy Snow Storms,

xoxo

kathy

Labyrinth (Nashua, NH)

If you live near Nashua, NH (or if you are ever in the area) check out this Labyrinth!

http://www.nashualabyrinth.org/

Smokey

We meet three times this month.

December  4    please bring a blindfold

December  11  day of silence

December  18  to be decided later




and thank you all for voting,
AHC won the seed money


xoxo
kath

and Delany loves horses as much as I do

Last few days to VOTE for Del's sake!

Yogis,
Only today, Monday, and Tuesday left to vote for AHC by texting and online- if possible please do both! Please get a few new folks (grab your partner's or coworker's cell phone, etc.) to vote and remind those who are already familiar. Historically the last few days can really shake things up in the ranks so we need to stay on top- we
have worked way too hard! The current #3 organization actually won the $250,000 in August and are back for more. But just look at the little lady to the right (with stuffing and mashed potatoes in her hair) and hopefully all your time, energy, and recruiting efforts are worth it! So many thanks and blessings, Katrina

All three sites below will take you to vote online:
https://sites.google.com/site/helpdelaney/
www.brothersroot.com
www.refresheverything.com/cureahc
> Text 104112 to phone number 73774

surya namaskar a

inhale rise, exhale fold, inhale look up, exhale chaturanga, inhale up dog, exhale down dog ((5 breaths)), inhale step or float, exhale fold, inhale rise, exhale Samasthithi ~repeat

Shiva Rea and Prana Flow Yoga

Hi friends, here's a little article from the Prana blog interviewing Shiva Rea and talking about the evolution of vinyasa flow yoga.  Check it out!

http://www.prana.com/blog/index.php/2010/11/08/shiva-rea-the-evolution-of-vinyasa-flow-practice/

Be apart of something bigger than yourself!

Please take time this weekend to vote for Alternating Hemiplegia of Childhood (AHC) in the Pepsi Refresh challenge 2 ways, online and by text:

www.refresheverything.com/cureahc
Texting 104112 to phone #73774

Delaney thanks you!

DH Lawrence essay, Education of the People, published in 1918

"How to begin to educate a child. First rule: leave him alone. Second rule: leave him alone. Third rule: leave him alone. That is the whole beginning."

Danny Morris teaching Mindful Leadership Workshop

For those of you inclined to business, and bringing yogic ideals into the workplace, our Danny Morris is teaching a workshop this weekend at the Vermont Center for Yoga and Therapy.

Serve Others

Yogis,

I need your help and Kathy has graciously allowed me to request it on this blog (love you, Kath). More specifically my daughter needs your help. Delaney has a very rare neurological disorder called Alternating Hemiplegia of Childhood (AHC): only 650 cases WORLDWIDE. There is no government funding to research or treat AHC and that is why we desperately need your help. AHC is in the running to receive $250,000 from the Pepsi Refresh program. You can vote daily online AND by texting EVERYDAY in November:

www.refresheverything.com/cureahc
By texting 104112 to phone #73774

Also, anyone you can pass this info onto is awesomely appreciated. So much love and namaste, Katrina

Vata Season - Grounding Breath

Vata (along with Pitta and Kapha) is one of the three humors, or doshas, which make up our personal constitutions. These principles are also present in the world around us, and dictate natural rhythms of our days, seasons and even our lives.

Autumn is Vata season. Vata is characterized by cold, dry, light, rough, clear and hard. Seems to make sense for this cold weather, right?

Staying warm, hydrated and eating nourishing foods such as soups, stews and warm grains are great ways to stay healthy and grounded. Another thing to try is a warming grounding Pranayama and yoga practice. (Ashtanga every night at 5:40 anyone?! :) )

Dirga, or Three-Part-Breath and Ujjayi Pranayama:

Start seated or even lying down. You may use a blanket to cover your body or wrap around your shoulders.

Start by taking deep, slow nostril breaths down into your belly. This way, we expand the lower lobes of our lungs, in turn massaging our internal organs, and signaling to our body that we are safe and happy.

Bring one hand to your side rib cage to start, then you may lower it down as you get used to the breath. The next step is to begin filling the rest of your rib cage with air. Start by filling you belly, then middle rib cage, then right up under your collar bones. You may even feel the air come into your throat.

As you exhale, do so naturally until you come to the bottom – you may use your abdominal muscles to squeeze the last bit of exhale out.

Begin again, starting with your belly first.

Once you become comfortable with this breath – you may layer a nice, warming Ujjayi breath over this.

Feel your seat grounded into the earth, and at the same time, lift the crown of your head to lengthen the spine. Picture your breath beyond your body – inhales coming up through your tailbone and out the crown of your head. The exhales coming down from the top, along your spine, and back out through the floor below you.

Ujjayi is a loud, ocean sounding breath, made by slightly contracting your throat. It is used in Ashtanga practices, but along with your Bandhas.

Read more about Ujjayi pranayama here.

Namaste.

Ma Bhaskarananda

A 20 Minute Gentle Practice

Made this for my family :)

Part 1

Part 2


Love you.

More on Vata Dosha Balancing

It's that time of year again, when the weather changes so swiftly it leaves you standing on the street corner shivering in shorts and wondering what happened to those warm, balmy afternoons (it was 80 degrees here last week in DC!). The anxiety kicks in and your mind blows around faster than the leaves on the street.  How do you get grounded again?

Anxiety comes from an imbalance of the doshas, an aggravation of vata in the nervous system.  To balance vata dosha, try the following:

1. An oil massage to reduce stress.  Use sesame oil if you have a vata dosha, coconut oil if you have pitta dosha, or corn oil if you have kapha dosha.

2.  Drink calming herb teas made from 1 part valerian, 1 part musta.  Steep a teaspoon of these herbs in 1 cup of hot water.  Drink twice a day.

3.  Almond milk is very good for anxiety.  Soak 10 raw almonds in water over night, peel off the skins and put them in the bledern.  Warm the milk and add a pinch of ginger, nutmeg and saffron.

4.  Orange juice is good if your anxiety is accompanied by a fast heart rate, ayurvedic practitioners recommend drinking a cup of orange juice with a teaspoon of honey and a pinch of nutmeg.  

5.  A warm bath of ginger and baking soda pacifies anxiety.  Add 1/3 cup ginger and 1/3 cup baking soda to a tubful of water, soak for 10-15 minutes. 

6.  And of course...yoga! 

*Here's a great list of foods that balance vata dosha:

http://www.holisticonline.com/ayurveda/ayv-vata-food-plan.htm

Managing Vata Dosha in Winter

Stop, Drop, and Roll: A Three Point Plan for Managing Vata Dosha

Tis the season to be vata – la-la-la-la-la, la, la, la…wait? What were we singing? Yes indeed friends, tis the season to feel our Vata Dosha begin to take the reigns. But fear not, out good friend and Ayurvedic practitioner Daniel Shankin (Sitaram Das) is here with a three part plan for managing our Vata Dosha this season – Stop, Drop, and Roll!

When the weather starts to change, and the harsh winds begin to blow cold, deranged expressions of Vata Dosha are sure to be close behind.  This vata energy can go out of balance at any time, and troubles many of us year round, but it’s particularly prevalent in the winter.  Vata is considered to be an accumlation of the elemental energies of air and space, and is associated with several qualites that we see manifested throughout the natural world.  These qualities include: cold, dry, light, mobile, rough, and subtle.  A large part of ayurvedic medicine is based on the premise that ‘like increases like’ and ‘opposites decrease’.  For example, drinking iced tea (cold) while driving very fast (mobile) on a windy day (rough, mobile) in February (cold)  is a good way to increase vata dosha, and the nervousness, insomnia, joint pain, energy loss, and depression that come with it.  Here is a simple, easy to remember, three point plan to make sure that your winter is as warm, juicy, sensual, and luxurious as any in recorded history.

Stop: For the Love of God, turn off the computer and go to bed already.  Close the 10,000 browser windows, quick checking your texts and keep your eyes on the road.  Put nineteen of the twenty books you are reading back on the shelf, and finish one.  And no, you aren’t going out tonight, to all five parties which all happen to be on opposite ends of town.  Just stop.  Renounce activity.  Eschew multitasking.  Don’t do something, just sit there.  Practice living calmly and simply.  Do bathtub yoga.  Let yourself off the hook when you feel like you ‘should‘ do something.  If you catch yourself feeling an anxious and obssesive need to fix, fiddle, improve, or adjust, drop your ass into meditation immediately.  Take some time to breathe deep, dropping into the body, and let your awareness explore the roots of your neurosis.  Once you’ve found your grounded center, rise up, and move from that place.  Ahhh, Exhale.

Drop: If we’re going to get this under control, we need to go straight to the bowels of Ayurveda.  Vata Dosha accumulates in the large intestine and colon.  When Vata runs wild it creates constipation, indigestion, and flatulence.  To keep this dosha at bay, we want to make sure that we move our bowels regularly.  Chances are, if you are reading this, you probably have a pretty healthy diet to begin with, and probably only need to make some minor changes to make sure that what goes in, comes out in a timely fashion.  Rather than fixate on lists of foods that are ‘do’s and don’ts’, just start paying attention to the way your meals affect your elimination.  Make sure that you are eating foods that are easily digestable as well as nutritious.  WInter is also a perfect experiement with spices.  Warm sweet spices like the kind you find in chai tea (cinnamon, cardamom, clove, etc) are perfect for winter, perfect for vata, and might just be perfect for you.

Roll: We all love our hot fast sweaty vinyasa flow classes.  Our favorite classes involve loud, funky music.  Nothing wrong with these classes, nothing at all.  Only thing is, they can aggravate Vata.  One of the characteristics of vata is that it is mobile, and is increased by excessive mobility.  Physical Mobility like fast flow yoga, and sensual mobility like loud fast music.  These two things increase vata in the nervous system and mind, and cause disturbances such as anxiety, insomnia, and lack of focus.    Vata is also dry, which means that if you are leaving a huge pile of sweat on the floor, you are dessicating yourself, and potentially making your life harder with symptoms such as dry skin and the aforementioned constipation.  I’m not saying to never do flow class, but it certainly wouldn’t kill you to mix it up and spend a little time with some of the more mature members of our yoga family, rolling around on the floor, rolling our joints open, lightly stretching and breathing into our chakras.  Rolling around on the floor is very pacifying for Vata Dosha.

Read more.....

http://yoganonymous.org/stop-drop-and-roll-a-three-point-plan-for-managing-vata-dosha/

Photos by Kathy, age 46

Photos by Sabian York, 8 years old

Recipes from Saturday October 23

Peanut Butter Cookies

(gluten and dairy-free)

Ingredients

1 ½ cups peanut butter

½ cup packed brown sugar

1 large egg white

 

Directions

Preheat oven to 350º and line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Combine all three ingredients. Roll dough into 1-inch balls and place on sheets, spacing them about 1 inch apart. Using a fork, make a criss-cross pattern on each cookie.

Bake 12-15 minutes until pale golden and set around the edges. Cool completely on wire racks.

Yields about 2 dozen cookies.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

Cookies

2 ¼ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

1 ½ tsp. cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground ginger

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin

2 large eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

grated zest of 1 orange, optional

2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 cup chopped walnuts, optional

 

Glaze

1 ½ cups confectioner’s sugar

2 ½ Tbsp. Milk

½ tsp. vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375º F. Spray baking sheets with cooking spray or line with parchment paper, set aside.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and ginger in medium bowl. Set aside.

Cream together the butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar. Scrape the sides of the bowl.

Add the pumpkin, eggs, vanilla and orange zest, beating well to blend.

Slowly add the dry ingredients, blend well. Stir in the chocolate chips and walnuts.

Using a tablespoon scoop, drop the dough on the baking sheets. Bake on the middle oven rack for 13-18 minutes, until edges are lightly browned. Let cool on the baking sheets 5 minutes before transferring to racks to cool.

 For the glaze: Stir together the sugar, milk and vanilla until smooth. Dip the tops of the cookies in the glaze and put back on the racks to set, or drizzle in a pattern.

Mount Major

Radiant Child Yoga

From the presentation that Kristin and I gave a few weeks ago.

I am happy, I am good

I am happy, I am good

Satnam, satnam, satnam ji

Wahe guru, wahe guru, wahe guru ji.

Satnam, satnam, satnam ji

Wahe guru, wahe guru, wahe guru ji.

Satnam = true name, true self

Wahe guru = wonderful teacher, supreme being, god...

We also played 2 games:

- The Intuition Game - The group sits in a circle, and one person leaves the room. While that person is gone, someone in the group hides an object under their seat (a coin, a feather, whatever you have). When the person comes back, he/she stands in the center of the circle, and the people on the outside send them "you can do it" vibes. The person on the inside of the circle uses his/her intuition to guess who is sitting on the object.

- Yoga Counting - The group works together to count to 10. There is no set order to tell you who counts when - you just use your intuition! If two people talk at once, you start again at 1.

These games are fun with adults and kids...have fun playing!

Moon Days

Traditionally in Ashtanga you don't practice on "moon days" which are the full moon and new moon.

I always just accepted this as a fact and didn't really care why.
However the "why" is kind of interesting. Here is a link if you would like to learn more~ http://www.ashtangayogacenter.com/moon.html

upcoming moon days are as follows:
Oct 23, 2010 ~ Saturday ~ Full Moon
Nov 6, 2010 ~ Saturday ~ New Moon
Nov 22, 2010 ~ Monday ~ Full Moon
Dec 6, 2010 ~ Monday ~ New Moon
Dec 21, 2010 ~ Tuesday ~ Full Moon ~ Total Lunar Eclipse and Winter Solstice


Namaste!

Supta Kurmasana

Prajanaparamita (The Heart Sutra)

In today's class Kathy offered us a new chant to learn: Prajanaparamita translated as "Heart of the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom." Although the full sutra is much longer, the last line is the most important one, and the chant we learned today. Invoking this chant is for the eradication of attachments, or opening the heart.

gate gate para gate
para samgate
bodhisvaha

There seems to be many translations of the chant, but from what I gather, it is basically emphasizing that "beyond all that I know, beyond and all that exists, I accept to be fully awakened."

Check out Wikipedia for more details. Listen to the full sutra on YouTube...and try to keep up with the cadence!

(jaycie)

The Mahabharata by R. K. Narayana

please read.

Fly

Absurdity

Okay, I'll admit it ...
the practice of yoga seems ridiculous.

I get onto a yoga mat and twist myself into a sweaty pretzel and somehow this makes me a better, more spiritual person.
Sitting to breathe in a particular way somehow makes the world seem brighter.
Chanting in a language I don't understand somehow calms my mind.

On the surface it appears absurd.
I've been wondering a lot recently about how and why yoga works.
Then I came to a realization ...
the how and why don't matter.

I have no clue how my car works, or my computer
or most of the other things in my life.

Then why do I need to know how yoga works?
I don't.

For me it's enough to know that it does work
and every time I roll out my mat,
or sit to meditate,
or chant,
absurd or not,
it works.
That's enough for me.

Hello again from the coast of Maine!! I have yet to make it to Yoga Vermont this summer and am always thinking of it, yet life seems to keep me away.

A new Ashtanga Yoga studio opened this summer in Portland, Maine (just up the road from me) and they are searching for highly qualified (experienced) Ashtanga yoga instructors, so I said I would do my best to help and get the word out. If my schedule allows I'll make it up there once a week this fall. If anyone is interested in teaching in this area (1 hr led Ashtanga, and Mysore style classes) check the studio out online, and drop them some info or ask a few questions!! Or...just come for a workshop or holiday!!

Be well...Fall is in the air, Celina McMichael

Sublime States

Treat those who are happy with friendliness
Treat those who are unhappy with compassion
Treat those who are virtuous with supreme joy
Treat those who are wicked with indifference

About a year ago, I was in class and Kathy mentioned these Buddhist "sublime attitudes". I wrote some of it down, then went home to Google it (completely missing the fact that they were in my Yoga Sutras!). I found nothing, punching in terms that were delivering other results. I decided to come back to it again later.

And, as life does, it came back to me at a time I needed it most. Dealing with frustration, trying hard to control and detach from emotion...it was hard to breathe! And there they were. Like a key to finding peace of mind. I read them over and over thinking, how can I remember these in the future? So, I thought I would share them with you all.

In Buddhism, this is the Brahmaviharas: the Four Immeasureables. It is discussed in Yoga Sutra 1.33: "In relationships, the mind becomes purified by cultivating feelings of friendliness towards those who are happy, compassion for those who are suffering, goodwill towards those who are virtuous, and indifference or neutrality towards those we perceive as wicked or evil."(maitri karuna mudita upekshanam sukha duhka punya apunya vishayanam bhavanatah chitta prasadanam)

To break the sanskrit down, I found this direct translation:

• maitri = friendliness, pleasantness, lovingness
• karuna = compassion, mercy
• mudita = gladness, goodwill
• upekshanam = acceptance, equanimity, indifference, disregard, neutrality
• sukha = happy, comfortable, joyous
• duhka = pain, misery, suffering, sorrow
• punya = virtuous, meritorious, benevolent
• apunya = non-virtuous, vice, bad, wicked, evil, bad, demerit, non-meritorious,
• vishayanam = regarding those subjects, in relation to those objects
• bhavanatah = by cultivating habits, by constant reflection, developing attitude, cultivating, impressing on oneself
• chitta = mind field, consciousness
• prasadanam = purified, clear, serene, pleasant, pacified, undisturbed, peaceful, calm

Enjoy.

(jaycie)

http://www.liberatevt.com/

Aug. 20 -21

Happy Summer

Happy 4th of July

Partner Yoga with Penny and Angela