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Una Puerta, Universal Practice

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Una Puerta, Universal Practice

A doorway into a familiar and yet also new world.

This is the door to Yoga con Gracia in Barcelona, where Paz Muñoz teaches a mysore program every morning between Monday to Friday and evenings Monday to Thursday.

It’s the same practice, Ashtanga, mysore-style. But it’s a different place, different culture, different bodies, different shapes.

It’s beautiful to see the universality of practice, how it translates to all places, how it adapts to different cultures, body types and mentalities.

Looking forward to returning to this special space in January to sub for Paz. But first, soon: Cairo…

“Enjoy Your Practice”

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Enjoy Your Practice

Another three little words that packs a powerful punch.

As a student myself, I have surely heard these words before from the mouths of other teachers who I’ve taken class with, at least one, I’m sure of. And for me, it’s a most natural follow up to the opening chant, along with “ohayou gozaimas” or good morning these last couple of months.

I left Osaka yesterday with a happy heart, knowing that this little reminder to find ease and joy in one’s practice is part of my contribution to this inspired and inspiring yoga community in Japan.

It’s so plain, it’s so simple, and yet sometimes really easily forgotten. We must be in joy-fullness as we practice. Without it, it’s an exercise in struggle. The attitude we bring into the practice dictates how our yoga practice takes shape.

Even when it’s hard, even when there’s struggle, the joy is always there, always waiting to be discovered, to be experienced, this blissful feeling, a jewel in the rough.

Photo taken with me and some of the students early Tuesday morning before my departure at the studio in Osaka. 

Last Look

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Last Look

This is the Spirit Yoga mysore space last Sunday evening. I had just finished my last offering at the studio.

How empty it looks. And YET how full it feels–to me, at least, after two months and one week of teaching.

It dawns on me that life is made up of empty rooms and that our job is to fill these spaces with our light, with our energy.

Next time you enter an empty space, ask yourself: how can I fill this space? What subtle gift can I fill/feel this space with? What special part of me can I leave here to grow and prosper?

Or before you leave such a space, ask: what have I left here? What will grow on without me?

Self Practice is ON! Spirit Yoga

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Self Practice is ON! Spirit Yoga

This week, Spirit Yoga Mysore is on self practice mode. Students are helping each other. Cheering each other on. Practicing as usual, with their whole hearts, bodies and minds. With or without a teacher.

By next Sunday, authorized Level II teacher Veronique Tan will lead the program on. Just one week after my departure.

Before I arrived in Osaka two months ago, I asked my friend Ursula Scott, who was the first mysore teacher in Spirit Yoga, for her advice. She told me this: share everything you know!

And so it ended last Sunday, later that planned, as I poured as much as I could of myself, of what I knew into a preparation workshop class for Self Practice, knowing that for a week, students would be directing their own energy, exploring the joys and difficulties of self practice without a teacher.

It was an odd end. I felt empty. But now, after a few days rest, I feel so full from that last class, and from the two months of sharing with such amazing, attentive, and loving students. I’m excited for them, for the opportunity to learn with Veronique.

But also for the chance for them to explore the depths of practice on their own–this is where so many jewels and treasures lie, in the solitary depths of self practice.

Breathing with Sound

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Breathing with Sound

Ashtanga, Guruji used to say, is a breathing practice.

Yesterday, the sound of the breath just drew me into the practice, the pulsation of the inhale and the exhale, the sacred moment of silence as the gap in between is naturally observed.

It was not even my own practice, but those of the students around me. It was not even my own breath, not in the beginning.

But it tugged at me until I, too, was breathing that barely audible sound of air slowly passing through the throat.

Together we were a chorus of sound made up of different paces, different qualities, different syncopations. Some were fast, while others were slow. Some had heavy billowing breaths, while others had soft or shallow breaths.

For me, as I kept my watch over mysore class, I felt the room. For others, they felt their bodies, the postures, or even more subtle internal energies.

Call it ujaii, breathing with sound, Darth Vader’s softer cousin… What it’s called doesn’t matter as much as what it does, this sound track of practice.

Light Changes

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Light Changes

The mornings are starting to get darker in Osaka and the natural light usually streaming into the room at this hour was most definitely dim.

The practice, however, has its own light. It draws from a different source of power. Like the sun, yes. But also, unlike it.

It is life giving. Subtle. Illuminating. Warming. Powerful. It can be overpowering too if we’re not careful. It helps us see. And, at times, it can blind us. It deserves our utmost attention and respect.

As we practice, we generate the light of our hearts. When we practice skillfully, we can direct this light. With practice, we are never in the dark.

Build Foundation, Find Flow

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Build Foundation, Find Flow

September 28, 2013. My first workshop in Osaka, Japan. May there be more in the future!

It was a quick two and a half hours lecturing on the tenets of yoga philosophy that make up the foundation of asana and experiencing tristhana (breath, posture/bandha, and drishti) in a variety of ways in an exploratory asana class.

Next Sunday, October 6, 3-5pm, we will be having a special workshop offering “Prepare for Self Practice,” which will go over principles of basic adjustments in the primary series as well as some framework for vinyasa and backbending.

There is a week gap between my departure from the mysore program here in Osaka and the arrival of Veronique Tan, the program’s new teacher.

The workshop is aimed at inspiring students to find the gifts and the joys of self practice, which is many many fold, during the interim.

The First Row

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The First Row

In the mysore room, practitioners trickle in at the start of class. When the first row fills before the class officially starts, it often becomes one of those full-power kind of practice days.

Somehow, these early students set the pace, they warm the room, they get it going: a flow in which all the later currents can just pour into. And the studio, most of the time, fills–I think, attracted by the power of practice already brewing in the building.

Sunday Suryanamaskar

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Sunday Suryanamaskar

It’s Sunday. We start mysore practice with Suryanamaskara A. Most of the time we forget the meaning of the things we do automatically. We confuse the series of postures as a warm-up–and it is, though somewhat different from what we think we are doing.

We do warm the body, we warm it as we bow to the light of the sun. We melt away the layers that need melting.

We wake from the winter morning, and rise to the springtime of our day. We grow. So that we may enjoy the warmth of summer and later harvest the fruits of our labor, before the sun goes down again, and the cycle starts all over.

Everyday, we move through the seasons. In our practice, in our lives.

The practice is the practice for our practice.