Tag Archives: San Francisco

Mysore Sunday, Final Session

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So much of my most precious interactions happen on a rubber mat with students while teaching in a Mysore space. Where else do you get to meet someone in this way, slowly over time, whilst they quietly cook in the juices of their own humanity, turning over with each deliberate breath and movement the fluctuations of the mind and heart.

It’s like getting to know someone without any context other than what plays out in the half-hour, hour, hour and forty-five minutes that one practices. Story-telling is minimized, so is the drama. The body is so intelligent. The practice is so precise. I love meeting in this way. It is so raw and real… and honest.

As a mysore teacher, the challenge is to meet as honestly as well. To cut out the superfluous, the desire to people please, the need to teach, so that the practice can do it’s thing. I often have to remind myself that the best thing that I can do is to get out of the way. The opposite is also true, when it arrises; it’s important to recognize when it’s a good time to get involved, when support is necessary.

Meeting in this way, in mysore-style classes, it is looking into a mirror and seeing who you are at that one moment. Sometimes, what I see is glorious. Other times, I see that I am one hot mess. All of it is ok and also, none of it matters. By meeting, we submit to an alchemical process, a world of change.

It has been incredibly special to lead the Mysore Sunday classes here in Mysore SF twice a month. Please come to class, I love to meet with you. I will also continue to assist Magnolia Zuniga in Mysore SF until December 10, 2015 before heading back to Asia to prepare to study with my own teacher in Mysore, India.

Trust Your Struggle

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“Trust Your Struggle.” Street Art. Temascal, Oakland.

I love the Mysore room. It’s one of my favorite places to be, whether it’s practicing or teaching, I can’t help but feel alive in such a space. I love the victories after some long-fought challenge, but I also have a great respect and appreciation for the power of practice when I see a student near tears. It’s very real, this hot house of human action, people moving within a small portion of rubber mat. It’s steamy and there is a palpable thickness in the air. There’s a lot of love here–but it’s not the love of fluffy bunnies or candy-colored unicorns–it is often a love forged from gritty, sweaty, face-all-twisted struggle.

Struggle? That seems like a paradox, right! Ashtanga is a yoga practice, after all, so shouldn’t it promote a deep sense of peace and calm, physical ease and mental equilibrium?

Ashtanga is a very honest practice, reflecting back at its practitioners their life in concentrated form. When life is hard, practice takes on that hardness. When life is easy, sometimes (when we’re lucky) it’s easy, but often practice will dig a little deeper to find a soft spot. It’s a tradition designed to make you strong and also flexible–and a component of that is to whittle away at what’s unnecessary: shame, fear, pride, all forms of ego–these are not easy things to be grappling with, thus, the struggle. The struggles are there for a reason: for us to understand ourselves better.

I think it’s important to note that I’m not speaking of binding in maricasana D, suptakurmasana, learning to drop back or getting the leg behind the head but rather the human struggle that comes with the challenges that are presented by certain postures, sometimes by practice as a whole. The struggle isn’t actually getting past the pose but getting past the challenge/turmoil that the pose creates. It’s not about moving forward in any particular series, it’s about moving beyond it.

As practitioners, we are responsible for the struggles that present themselves on the mat. We must meet them, rather than run from them. And with practice, meeting them means getting up close and personal with them through our bodies pretty much everyday with as much equanimity as we can muster until they loose their power. We might relax into them, melting into some mythical grace, or we might fight them tooth and nail in some epic shit fight, there’s no blue print for how exactly we are meant to face these moments. But I think we must trust that the struggle is there for a reason, that it serves some greater purpose other than to annoy or frustrate us, it isn’t getting in the way of our ease and happiness–rather, it is the way.


Continuing to grow here in Mysore SF. It is such a pleasure to be working in such a space where the practice and the teaching is so very alive, so very real–real in the struggle as much as the joy of practice. There’s an alchemical force in the room. The potential for transformation is there. Very grateful to be taking part in it. Mysore is Mon-Thur, 6-9am. Led Class is Fridays 6am and 7:30am. Sunday Mysore is 2nd and 4th Sundays (no class September 27, it is moon day). 

The Offering

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Honoring Guruji, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, on his 100th birthday. Of course, Hanuman too.

Today a student brought flowers for Hanuman and Guruji–a beautiful offering. The real offering, however, is the simple and, yet, at times, difficult task of coming to class. The sacred act of showing up, no matter what that looks like, no matter what it feels like, no matter whether we are completing first, second, third, part of standing, turning up on our mats each morning is the offering we make to our teacher, to ourselves, to our deepest purpose. To practice is to bow respectfully as you lay freshly picked flowers before your teacher. It is a kind of work/prayer that is continuous, that doesn’t ask for anything other than to be allowed to be in existence, in gratitude and in love.

PHOTO: Hanuman and Guruji, honored with flowers in Mysore SF. It has been a beautiful and challenging opportunity teaching on my own here these few weeks. I am grateful to all the students who did the simple and yet sometimes so difficult task of showing up. (Guruji would have been 100 years-old this week).

Feet on Ground

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The great art of grounding. It seems like the most simple and natural thing in the world, right? After all, don’t we all stand on two feet? Yet, how many of us find it challenging to be truly steady?

I must admit, having lived the last few years on the road, this is not strong point. But as I ground here in San Francisco, I am rediscovering my land legs and reassessing what it means to be grounded. My relationship with the ground is changing because it is no longer constantly shifting underneath me. For years I sought strength from my center in order to be spry and flexible and to find steadiness in a world of movement. Presently, without all that whirling, I am surprised to find that my relationship with the ground is not what it should be. In this relative stillness, I am finding my feet, the whole feet, the weight, how it engages the legs and feeds into the center–all of which existed before, but now, with solid ground beneath me, I feel both the support and, well, the challenge of it. The ground does not give. Push on it and it pushes back–and that’s even more supporting.

As a result I’ve been on the watch for it, not only in my own practice but in the practices of those who are in my care at present–which I suspect makes me kind of a pain sometimes. I know what it’s like to be standing on two feet and not really interacting with the ground and I’m starting to understand what it’s like when that relationship is strong and active and how it makes a huge impact in the integrity of every pose, of every vinyasa, of walking, of standing.

These days, each time I get on the mat, I ask myself, am I fully grounded, am I fully interacting with the ground beneath me, or am I just going through the motions, my feet and the floor beneath me, just barely touching.

PHOTO: Finding my feet in San Francisco. Mural Room, De Young Museum.

Light Crossroad

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The light crossroad where intentions and the magic of practice meet. Above our heads: fairy lights and prayer flags taking wind.

To think! A million or so possibilities. Probably more. All things, meetings, happenstance, accidents, hard work, chances and blessings that assemble us under such bright stars.

PHOTO: Above: lights and prayer flags. Below: a potluck celebrating the 4 years anniv of Mysore SF; the certification of Magnolia Zuniga, making this strong lady the only certified Ashtanga teacher in San Francisco; and the new teacher…me. Thrilled to be joining both the teacher and the community.

Another World: Mysore SF

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There are no signs here. No glitzy window dressings or clear glass where one might peek through and see yoga bodies. There is no merchandising. There is a door with a push-button code. Ok, the building, a dance annex, isn’t exactly non-descript, but the eye-catching yet abstract design that swirls and flows on the edifice mysteriously pulls one in—just like the practice that is going on upstairs in the early hours of the morning. This is Mysore SF.

Many Mysore spaces that I’ve visited has that in common. It’s low key. Usually not affiliated with a mainstream yoga corporation. It doesn’t dress up the practice. oys got its own energy, attitude. There is usually a great deal of condensation on the windows. The feeling of shanti or peace is not accomplished by burning incense or the sweet tones of new aged devotional chanting; it happens through consistent daily practice, a lot of patience, hard work, and on occasion a healthy dose of struggle just to remind you that you are alive and still well up for fighting the good fight. It is a room where people breathe and move. And if you stick with it, it’s a place where a kind of alchemy starts to happen.

I am always impressed and in awe of how practice evolves and translates in different countries, in different cities and spaces, and in the hands of different teachers–who, especially when they are teaching authentically, are all pretty unique. How distinct it feels and yet how it remains constant and true to the essence of Ashtanga yoga. So it is here, the same as everywhere, and yet also different. 

Like the fog here in San Francisco, students surely but quietly roll in, unfurling their mats like wings, breathing and moving, fogging up the windows, then rolling up their mats, returning the next morning to repeat the process. There is a steadiness to it, it’s substantial but also light. Like the morning fog rolling into the city, you can count on it. For me, coming into work these days is like watching the day break, seeing the world waking.


For more information, visit: http://www.mysoresf.com.

Turning Wheels

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Things go round and round. It is a constant, this wheel of life, constantly, surprisingly changing. And yet, there is a cycle to it all. Some motif that repeats, a reminder or a landmark, which often gives us a certain context: this is where we were, this is where we are, this is where we are going.

In many ways, practice is like a wheel in movement. It is the constant in a changing self-scape. It is also the vehicle physically moving us from one shape to another, but also moving us from one state to another.

There seems to be innumerable “wheels” and such out there, tools for transport, for self-exploration, for greater understanding. San Francisco, where I have landed–or, rather, where I am still landing at–feels like that kind of place for me. I arrived here at the age of 10 as a young immigrant with my family. I returned as a university student at Berkeley. Some years ago, I arrived quite lost, an accidental tourist with the sole intention of securing a ten-year visa to India to study yoga, which at that time was all I could think of. And now, here I am again. This time, to do what I love, which is sharing from the rich yoga tradition that has both changed me in so many countless ways and has made me more tuned into who I really am.

It is a sight. When we see these wheels turning. That is a great part of the joy of teaching for me: to see glimpses of other people’s wheels in action through their practice. But to see it one’s life, to observe it, to feel driven by it, and to eventually also take the wheel…

A great part of this new turning is me coming to teach with Magnolia Zuniga at Mysore SF. For more information: http://www.mysoresf.com