Sleep Like a Yogi

A little stress is necessary. Stress is the body’s way of preparing us to tackle challenges. But stress is only healthy if it lasts a relatively short amount of time, say from the time it takes to prepare a presentation until the presentation is over, or from the moments leading up to a difficult conversation with with a loved one until the two of you are hugging it out in your favorite dress-up clothes.

If stress goes on too long, we call it chronic. Our bodies and minds get stuck in a state of arousal, which is unsurprisingly exhausting and can have a number of deleterious effects on our health and well being.

For many of us, this was a problem before the pandemic. Trying to live up to the bizarre cultural injunction to remain continuously productive and in active management of our lives from the moment we open our eyes until we go to sleep can do that to a person, and things have clearly become trickier.

Even if you can’t feel it directly, you might notice it as an increase in irritability or anxiety. Maybe you can’t fall asleep, or when you wake up in the middle of the night, you find yourself on the couch, dispatching a tub of ice cream as you binge watch adult cartoons.

I’ve been through all of this stuff, and while I’m not trying to claim I’ve got everything figured out, one of the most helpful tools on all these fronts has been the development of a daily practice of yoga nidra.

Yoga nidra (yogic sleep) and its Westernized twin, iRest meditation, are relaxation practices where you sit or lie down for anywhere from a few minutes to over an hour and allow yourself to be guided through a series of very simple awareness exercises.

The practice works by drawing your attention away from the repetitive, obsessive, and useless thinking that keeps you wound up to the felt experience of your body, breath, and awareness, which generates a profound state of ease, well being, and can become a gateway to self inquiry and meditative insight. Although the word sleep is in the name, the idea is not to actually lose consciousness but to learn how to remain attentive as you enter a state between wakefulness and sleep where your mind starts to open up.

Yoga nidra doesn’t require any special skills and can be done whenever it fits into your schedule. I do my practice when I put my two-year old down for a nap, which helps me reset and recharge for the afternoon of parenting, cooking, and anything else I need to handle before bedtime, but I’ve also used yoga nidra at night to help me fall asleep (or go back to sleep if I wake up) or at other times when I feel overwhelmed.

One of the coolest things about this practice is that if done regularly over an extended period of time, you’ll learn how access this defocused state of presence without needing a recording, so that you can spontaneously work with your attention to defuse escalating arousal states and find pockets of rest when you need them.

So without further adieu, here are a few practices I like:

The first is a 20-minute practice led by the founder of iRest, Richard Miller. He studied yoga nidra in a traditional context and then developed iRest to serve a Western audience. I like the iRest practices, and they might be particularly good for those of you who feel that the yogic trappings are too woo woo or conflict with your worldview or religious beliefs.

This next practice from Amrit Yoga is just under 40 minutes and is more traditional. I don’t know Amrit Yoga, but this practice is freaking lovely.

I’ve even recorded a couple myself.

If none of these are to your liking, keep looking. Sometimes it takes awhile to find the right length, format, teacher, etc. Fortunately there are lots of options available on platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud at a zero-dollar cost, so you can easily shop around.

If you want to learn more about yoga nidra, there are two Audible books I can recommend.

The first is iRest Meditation: Restorative Practices for Health, Resiliency, and Well-Being, by Richard Miller, which breaks down the elements of yoga nidra and offers short practices to help you focus on the parts that might be most beneficial to you.

The second audiobook is iRest: Integrative Restoration Yoga Nidra for Deep Relaxation, by Molly Birkholm. This book has a number of longer practices and dives deep into the philosophical roots of yoga nidra as well as some of the science behind it. Like Richard Miller’s book, it also breaks down the practice into its fundamental parts, but it goes further in exploring some of the therapeutic uses, including working with insomnia, stress, chronic pain, PTSD, etc. I use the practices in this audiobook frequently and like the way they are organized.

I’d like to add the disclaimer here that I have no current or former affiliation with any of these people or organizations except as a consumer. My intention is that these practices might be of service to you, and if they aren’t, I hope you found some insight, encouragement, or enjoyment from your time here today. I appreciate you spending it with me. 🙏 🕉

Photo Credit, Eileen Molony

I teach a live virtual vinyasa flow class on Thursdays at 8 am central. You can sign up here 👉 Ahimsa Yoga Studios. I also have a growing library of recorded practices on my YouTube channel.

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Open the Chest and Extend the Spine

Hey everybody. 👋 I made a new video. This one is a 75-minute, vinyasa-style class at the wall with a focus on backbending. It also includes a fun and rather tricky transition from ustrasana (camel pose) to urdhva dhanurasana (upward bow).

The prep work for this transition includes a number of backbending variations that will help to open the chest, strengthen the legs, and work with your overhead shoulder mobility. The real benefit lies in this work (and the pranayama at the end of class 😉), so don’t worry if the transition feels out of reach for now, and if it’s easy for you, that’s great, too. 🙌 Either way, go slowly and stay with what feels right for your body moment by moment.

If you’re looking for a live led class, you can join me on Thursday mornings at 8 am central. Click here 👉 Ahimsa Yoga Studios to sign up.

Thanks for checking out the site today and the video if you’re so inclined. You can stay up with new yoga classes by subscribing to my YouTube channel or by signing up to get the blog posts by email. 👇

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There’s over two feet of snow on our roof, and it’s starting to melt. Giant cornices are forming over the gutters, and icicles are growing like prison bars over the windows.

They are starting to leak, the windows, and drips are falling ominously from the door frames, making the house feel a little like the Titanic. So while Nana (our two-year old) was taking her nap this afternoon, I shoved the monitor in my pocket and went up on the roof to try and break up the ice flow.

For the first 20 minutes or so, I pretended I was Superman, slowly destroying the Fortress of Solitude, but as I continued to work, I came face to face with the unavoidable truth that I was much more like Clark Griswold putting up his Christmas lights.

Around that time, I realized that this was obviously a blog post, so I snapped a selfie.

That’s exertion on my face, folks.

I felt self-conscious and a little ridiculous to be curating my experience, but then I encountered something unexpected. Just thinking about the blog triggered the practice of mindfulness.

So there I was, breaking up the ice and saying to myself, “breaking up the ice,” and then watching the next thought come. “Worried Nana will wake up from the noise.” Then the next thought, “Don’t fall, moron.”

After a bit, I’d fall into forgetting and start identifying with the thoughts again, but then I’d think about the blog and sure enough, the mindfulness would restart, and I’d be labeling: “Judging. Enjoying. Calculating. Seeking approval. Having fun.”

My tools

When I first created this website, I didn’t really think of it as part of my practice. I just thought it would be an entertaining way to extend my teaching and talk about the places where my life and my yoga practice intersect. I quickly came to realize however that it would involve a lot of svadhyaya (self study) and vichara (inquiry). Now today I discovered that thinking about the blog can trigger states of pratyahara (turning inward) and dharnana (concentration).

My assistant, who brought me the tools, taking the long way to the garage and crawling, for some reason.

In my last post, I pulled from Tantric texts and intellectually labored to describe a few of the formal practices that one can weave into a yoga practice to help make your life your practice and your practice your life, but it occurs to me that my experience today is a perfect example of the way Tantra works.

My other assistant, in a bush.

You do the practices and then they start to influence the way you write or do your job or parent, and those activities then become portals through which you re engage the practice so that one carries into the other until there is no difference between the two.

I’m feeling a lot of gratitude right now. Grateful for the moments of insight, grateful that you took the time to read this, and grateful even for the leaks in my house. 🙏

Yup, it’s coming in right there.

Live virtual vinyasa flow tomorrow @ 8 am central. Sign up through AhimsaYogaStudios.com

photo credit Eileen Molony

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Tantric Tools for Autoregulation

It happens fast. One moment, the tiny plastic skydiver is parachuting peacefully down from the second floor balcony, the next it’s getting shoved up someone’s nose. A retaliatory eye gouge that would horrify a Muay Thai pit fighter ensues, and suddenly, sobbing children are running out the front door in their underwear in five-degree-below-zero weather. And you? You’re standing on the porch, apoplectically threatening to cancel Christmas, which is still ten months away.

It’s no secret that kids are, shall we say, emotionally labile, and they are masters at infecting us with their insanity in ways that impair our ability to manifest our best selves. And in these pandemic conditions, with parents working from home (or not working from home) and kids doing school from home (or not doing school from home), we are not only trying to navigate the challenges of our occupations without the communities, equipment, peer groups, release valves, and support mechanisms on which we formerly depended, we’ve been thrust into a bizarro universe where we have to do things like try to convince a Farm and Fleet manager in Chippewa Falls that she should order an extra five-hundred units of dog chow while picking lightbulb shards out of a hyperventilating toddler’s foot.

By the time you get to your last Zoom meeting of the day, you may be in a state where you think you can cajole the head of the rail workers union into exempting you from a COVID surcharge that will force the closure of your Whitehall distribution center by playing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and asking him where his belly button is. Yes, he may be a “big boy.” But do not ask him, “who’s a big boy?” You also must not remind him that “sharing is caring,” try to send him to time out, or withhold dessert if he does not comply.

A traditional method of studying the Hatha Yoga Pradipika

Even if you don’t have kids at home, you’ve surely gotten mixed up in similar fashion. The way we are cooped up and on top of each other (or isolated) all the time, it should be no surprise if you’ve inexplicably gone off on your partner or roomate or pet or fern or whatever. We’re still pretty stressed out, even if we’re sort used it by now.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already had some first hand experience with the ways that yoga can help you cope with stress, so I’m not going to travel down the rabbit hole of discussing the autonomic nervous system, increasing vagal tone, or speculate about the length of your telomeres.

What I am going to do is offer up a few tools from the Tantric tradition (the branch of yoga that teaches us to see the sacred in the mundane) that may help you train up your ability to shift gears quickly when the situation demands and take on challenges with your higher cognitive faculties intact. My intention is that you’ll be able to add these techniques into your existing asana practice, yoga teaching, or other regimes of training.

Here goes.

  1. Kaya Sthairyam – kaya (body) + sthairyam (steadiness) Literally holding the body still. This is frequently taught as a seated practice, but the principles can be incorporated into even a vigorous movement practice. After a challenging posture, sequence, or set, put yourself into a hub pose and try to remain perfectly still. A hub pose is any symmetrical pose where you don’t have to use much concentration to maintain the asana. In studio classes, we are often encouraged to take child’s pose when the breath becomes ragged or we need a break, but the emphasis here is not merely on recovery. Instead, we are cultivating the ability to notice what is happening with the breath, the heartbeat, the energetic quality of the body, and the thoughts in the mind while in a state of arousal. If we can start to notice when these markers appear and practice not reacting to them (even at the level of fidgeting) we have a better chance when we are off the mat of stopping ourselves before we tip over into hyperarousal–and lose our minds or collapse into catatonic dissociation 😵. This practice can also help to cultivate pratyahara (turning the attention inward). As Swami Satyananda Saraswati points out in A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya, “After practising kaya sthairyam intensely for even a few minutes, you will find that the awareness spontaneously directs itself inwards.”1 Child’s pose is one example of a hub pose. Some others are tadasana (mountain pose), savasana (corpse pose), the passive variation of nakrasana (crocodile pose), and for practitioners who are very comfortable in it, adho mukha svanasana (downward-facing dog).
  2. Kumbhaka – Breath Retention. According to the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, “When prana moves, chitta (the mental force) moves. When prana is without movement, chitta is without movement. By this (steadiness of prana) the yogi attains steadiness and should thus restrain the vayu (air).”2 Stopping the breath creates gaps in the mind, which can halt the inertia that carries thoughts and actions through their habitual patterns. By weaving these retentions into a physical practice, we can learn how to suspend our momentum and then restart it again on a clearer footing. Breath retentions can be of two types, antar kumbhaka (internal breath retentions) and bahir kumbhaka (external breath retentions). They are often practiced with the use of bandhas (energetic locks) and should only be performed once the breath is calm.
  3. Pranayama – prana (inner breath) + ayama (to lengthen). Pranayama is one of the most effective and direct ways to explore and work with the energies of the body. It is well supported by yogic experience and a growing body of scientific literature3 that pranayama practices, when performed correctly, have salutary effects on the body and lead to more balanced, calm, and energized states of mind. Pranayama is most commonly thought of as a seated practice to be used after asana, before meditation, or on its own, but if we are willing to think of pranayama more liberally as extending the breath, we can also bring it into our asana practice. During breath-connected movements, see if you can make the inhalation or exhalation last longer than each movement. This can help you avoid the tendency to unconsciously accelerate in sequences like sun salutations or other repeated flows where you have to exert some effort. This practice of extending the breath can further be supported by thinking of each movement or static pose as a support for your breathing practice (rather than the other way around) and by noticing the brief pauses between inhalation and exhalation. If we can become adept at attending to the breath in this way during practice, it can trigger us to start using the breath to focus the mind and keep our energies within manageable bounds when stress arises in other contexts.

To learn to work safely and effectively with any of these practices, it’s best to find a teacher who can show you the way. Once you’ve had some competent instruction, you’ll have to experiment to find out exactly how they affect you and how to best employ them to receive your desired results.

I’d also like to add a caveat here: while I have experienced the described benefits of these subtle-body practices, I think it is easy to get lost in the weeds of trying manipulate your energies to fine tune your experience. Indeed, if you look through the classical texts like those mentioned above, you’ll discover that many of the practices can get pretty complicated and may start to feel esoteric or overreaching in their claims. Moreover, many of the recommendations for the application of some of these practices may not fit into your life in a way that will allow you to fulfill your worldly responsibilities.

For me, the greatest benefit of incorporating these techniques and their underlying principles into my practice has been the way they turn my attention inward, improve my tolerance for wide array of internal experiences, and help me work skillfully with different self states both on and off the mat. What’s more, engaging my interior landscape as a play of energies rather than as a narrative about what I think should be happening gives me a way to handle stressful situations that’s free of the baggage of my beliefs and theories, which gives me a better chance to avoid throwing fuel on the fire and reinforcing patterns of reactivity in me and my kids. Having trained in this way, I have at least a better chance of responding to changing circumstances in creative and intentional ways.

photo credit Eileen Molony

I hope you find some of these strategies useful. If you want to explore some of them with me, please join me for a class. I’m currently teaching a live virtual vinyasa class on Thursdays at 8 am central through Ahimsa Yoga Studios. You can always find an updated class schedule on my classes page, along with links to a few of my recorded classes on YouTube. From there you should be able to find more of my videos.

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1. Swami Satyananda Saraswati, A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya; p. 206; Yoga Publications Trust; Munger, Bihar, India; 2013
2. Swami Muktibodhanandanda; Hatha Yoga Pradipika; p. 150; Yoga Publications Trust; Munger, Bihar, India; 2014
3. PubMed.gov https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32669763/

Desk Jockey Vinyasa

Presenting 60 minutes of vinyasa yoga designed to give you relief from the aches and pains of desk work and help you build a toolkit of practices so you can work skillfully on your own with any body habits that may have developed from the years spent at your workstation. Practitioners who do a lot of sitting (in cars or on couches) or other forward-reaching task work (cooking, cleaning, toddler dominating 🤪, etc.) may also find this 👇 particularly helpful.

This is a level 1-2 class with no inversion. The pranayama following savasana uses the breath to help you learn to move between focused intentionality and relaxed awareness.

Please enjoy, and remember to practice within your limits. As with any physical activity, there is always some risk of injury. If you have any questions about whether any of these practices are right for you, please consult with your doctor first.

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Lower your Head, Flare your Nostrils, and Stroke your Hooves on the Ground 🦌

There’s a lot of fear out there right now.

Maybe you’ve noticed.

The thing about fear though, is that we feel it in all sorts of situations, not just when we perceive a threat to our health or safety. We might feel it in anticipation of a confrontation with an angry boss. Or when we feel compelled to share an opinion in public. Or at the prospect of throwing a kid’s birthday party that won’t suck in the middle of winter in the middle of a pandemic. 🎉 ❄️ 😷 🤷‍♂️

For some of us, these sorts of fear-inducing situations generate a lot of behavior that might not serve our best interests. Just thinking about whatever is stressing us out can drive us to pound a bag of potato chips. Or disappear into the TV. Or hit the bong. Or maybe it’s more like we hit the bong then disappear into the TV while we pound a bag of potato chips.

Or maybe we engage in perfectionism, endlessly attending to the minutiae of some project, moving commas again and again, trying to control for every eventuality in the hopes that we’ll get some assurance about the outcome of our endeavors.

Or maybe we turn against ourselves. Tell ourselves we are piles of shit, that we are wasting our lives, that we don’t get anything right. Or maybe we lash out at our loved ones, our friends, our kids.

What did I do?

That energy, afterall, has to go somewhere.

But what if there was another way? What if we could develop the ability to stop avoiding and move directly into the confrontation.

“Whoa,” you say. “That doesn’t sound very yogic. What about Ahimsa, non harming? What about Santosha, the practice of contentment? What you’re saying sounds downright aggressive.”

Aggression, however, isn’t necessarily opposed to any of these values. As the philosopher Ken Wilber reminds us, “The etymology of aggression is ‘to move toward.’ Aggression itself is not bad or unhealthy. Aggression is not the same as hostility.”1

He uses a great example from nature to illustrate: “…if a stag is on its way to a salt lick, and there is a bramble-bush blocking its way, it will lower its head, flare its nostrils, stroke its hooves on the ground, and aggressively charge the bush, knocking it out of the way. The stag isn’t mad at the bush, it doesn’t hate the bush; it is simply mobilizing energy to remove a blockage.”1

Now I know that got you fired up. Me, too, but let’s take a moment here to remember that I’m not suggesting you headbutt your boss in the face, or that you loudly ridicule your friend’s husband at the church picnic for his unconscious bigotry, or decide that you are going to throw your kid a forty-person birthday bash in your living room where you spend your life savings to hire Katy Perry for fifteen minutes. No masks required!

Don’t do that. Don’t do any of that.

But if we are going to escape the limiting gravity of the small-self system and level-up our habits, priorities, and worldview–in other words, undergo the kind of transformation that a practice like yoga promises–we are going to need to summon great energy and find skillful ways to face up to our fears and aversions.

Forturnately for us, we are hardwired to do just that.

According to Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, when we move forward in the the face of adversity, it stimulates the release of the neuromodulator dopamine, which “suppresses the activity of the fear centers in the brain”2 and rewards us with a good feeling–a shot of energy, excitement, and the sense that we are on the right path. Furthermore, engaging the neural circuitry in this way “changes the structure of those circuits so that we’re more likely to engage in that behavior again. In part because it’s desirable, but in part because the circuit itself gets wired up in a way that it’s more likely to get triggered in the future.”

Huberman calls it, “the courage circuit.”

And the great thing is, you don’t have to start with the biggest, most frightening challenge you’d like to take on. You can start small and train up these circuits. If you can set your sights on limited, immediate goals that you know you can accomplish–it could be something trivial like waking up fifteen minutes earlier or making a cup of coffee or just taking five breaths in downward-facing dog at the beginning of your day–your brain will begin “coupling the neural circuits for focus with goal-directed behavior with the neural circuits for energy and agitation.”

In other words, engaging in regular, predictable, tractable practices (ideally first thing in the day when you want the dopamine system to be on the rise or at other times when you start to feel stressed) and then taking a moment to register that you’ve accomplished what you set out to do, can help you build energy towards taking on other more stressful challenges.

And if you don’t learn do this? According to Huberman, your brain will go searching for dopamine in other places, urging you to scroll through Instagram gathering “likes” or buzz around your house accomplishing tasks willy nilly, and you won’t create this coupling effect, which will leave you feeling discombobulated or maybe even strangely overworked before lunch. As Huberman points out, “we are always moving forward, but the question is, are we moving towards a focused, meaningful goal?”

But you don’t have to take Huberman’s word (or mine, for that matter). You can give it a try for yourself. Tonight before you go to bed, pick one or two small things that you are going to do in the morning, a few easy “wins.” It could be that you are going to go outside for a short walk. Or finish an email you’ve been putting off. Or maybe even do a short yoga practice before breakfast (some form of exercise amplifies the effects described above).

Whatever you set out to do, see if you can pick something that moves you, even if it’s only incrementally, in the direction of your longer-term aims. After you’ve accomplished it, even if it doesn’t go perfectly, allow yourself a moment to register that you did it. I bet if you can do this for a week, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results (and intrigued by the possibilities).

And a special note for the parents out there, especially those with small kids at home: you might have to figure out creative ways to chunk your efforts. For example, I built up, little by little, the habit of getting up early to do my asana, pranayama, and meditation practice before the kids get out of bed, but that doesn’t leave much time for writing, so I started working in pockets when my two-year-old was taking baths, naps, or in those rare moments where she was safely and contentedly occupied, like now.

Actually, I better go check on her.

Thanks for stopping by. As a reminder, I’m currently teaching a live virtual vinyasa class on Thursdays at 8 am central through Ahimsa Yoga Studios (you can always find my current schedule on my class page as well as links to recorded classes on YouTube.)

Another way to stay current with my class offerings and other yoga content is to subscribe to get the blog posts by email. 👇

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  1. Wilber, Ken; The Religion of Tomorrow; p. 259; Boulder, Co.; Shambhala Publications, Inc.; 2017
  2. I pulled these Huberman quotes from various YouTube videos. I was careful to transcribe what he said correctly, but not careful about keeping track of which quote came from which video, and it’s not worth tracking them all down according my duration-path-outcome analysis. Let me know if I misquoted (or misrepresented) anything you find here. If you’re interested in hearing more about how to use neuroscientific principles to optimize your sleep and other life practices, check out the Huberman Lab Podcast.

Shoulder-and-Hip Mobility Flow

60-minute, moderate vinyasa plus pranayama.👇

Well…

Whaddya waitin’ for? Go get your mat. ✊ ❤️ 🧘‍♂️ 🕉 🙏

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Props to the Parents of the Pandemic

Last night while I was backing out of my driveway to take my two older kids to an outdoor playdate in a snowstorm, I clipped the front corner of our minivan on the stanchion for the basketball hoop.

Then this morning, I woke the kids up late for school, somehow simultaneously burnt AND undercooked the oatmeal, and generally acted like a stressed-out spaz in a five-alarm attempt to get the kids to school before the 8:30 bell. I felt a little like this guy.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst, Ray Cruz, Paperback | Barnes & Noble®

We made it to school on time. The Lord God in Heaven on High will attest to the fact that we made it with one minute to spare.

Not really sure what I was trying to protect or what the cost would’ve been if they’d been a few minutes late, but the whole thing made me think about all of you out there, and so I wanted to send a shout out to all the parents who are slinging it in this pandemic.

This goes out to all of you trying to get your kids to school for hybrid models of blended in-person learning with a foot of snow on the ground while carting two-year old siblings whose floppy little ears keep folding under the tension from the face-mask straps.

This goes out to everyone trying to peel f*cking cucumbers while resetting wireless routers and hunting for tiny Ziploc bags of paint that came home in the supply sacs that you picked up from the closed school so your kid can do prerecorded craft projects on Seesaw.

This goes out to all of you living in mortal fear that your kid is going to bust in on you in the bathroom (again) with an iPad in hand and a math Zoom session going.

This goes out to all of you trying to do your job (or who lost the job you need) to pay the bills and fulfill your calling from home or offices or hospitals or grocery stores or the driver’s seat of an effing public bus where some jackwad gets aboard with his facemask pulled down under his nose and sneezes right in your face only to come home to find your spouse too wiped out to cook or to find out that the babysitter just tested positive for COVID-19 or to learn that someone you know and love just died.

This goes out to everyone waking up in the middle of the night full of rage that they can’t account for, to everyone who has recently flipped over a coffee table (did I do that?) or started weeping uncontrollably for no apparent reason without being able to recall how much stress we are all under because it’s been there for so… long… now…

I just want to say. I see you, I love you, and most importantly, you got this.

In fact, you are crushing it. Even on those days when you drive into basketball hoops or somehow manage to get out of the house wearing only one sock or threaten your child that if she does that thing one more time you will never let her eat again.

Yeah, you said it. Your other kids heard you.

Despite all of that, I swear that not only have you got this, you have not yet begun to tap into your innate reservoir of resilience, and at the most fundamental level, you are always whole, healthy, pristine, and safe.

For me to hold it together, it’s paramount to get a taste of that fundamental experience on a daily basis through my meditation practice, yoga nidra, and my physical practice of yoga asana. But whatever it is for you that grounds you, I hope you’re keeping up with it, and if you’re looking for further resources or just more encouragement, leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you, or maybe ask your teacher, or try out something new that might serve you. Hey, maybe it’s my live virtual Thursday morning vinyasa yoga class through Ahimsa Yoga Studio. Wait, that’s tomorrow! 8 am central. 🧘‍♂️

In the meantime, let’s take care of each other, forgive ourselves where we can, and dare to be bold in the face of adversity as we jump through these hoops (or crash into the poles holding them up).

✊ ❤️ 💪 🕉 🙌

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Bear Yoga

Check out this hour-long vinyasa-style yoga class with a focus on the movement known as the bear. 🧸

The bear is a form of quadrupedal locomotion, or walking on hands and feet, where we keep our bodies in a down-dog shape as we move about.

In addition to being super fun, the bear is a great way to increase shoulder strength, improve thoracic mobility, stretch the back of the legs, and develop power in the deep core, all of which can lead to greater stability on and off the mat. We’re going to go through four variations of the bear with a little time to play and explore the variations on your own.

Most of this class will feel like a regular yoga class with familiar postures and an emphasis on breathing and moment-to-moment attention to your ongoing experience. We will wrap up at the end with a few rounds of kapalabhati for pranayama followed by an open awareness exercise for meditation. 🧘‍♂️

You won’t need any props, but if you like blocks or a strap to use in your practice, feel free to grab those now and meet me on the mat, and as always, go at your own pace, take breaks when needed, and please remember to favor the quality of your movement and breath over trying keep up or forcing yourself into anything. 🐻 💪 ❤️ 🕉 🙏

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End Screens, Teaser Texts, and Self-Promotion. Oh my.

I’ve created three new videos. I had the idea to make some classes that can be used in a modular fashion, so instead of one long video that contains asana followed by pranayama and then meditation, I’ve broken it up into three videos with end cards that link them so you can go from one to the other.

This way if you want to do a guided meditation or pranayama after asana you can click on the next video or you can do the practices in standalone fashion. I hope in the future to be able to add some more similar offerings so practitioners can mix and match.

It’s nothing revolutionary, and the transitions aren’t seamless, but I know not everyone always wants to do a yoga class that involves the subtler practices and sometimes people ONLY want to do the subtler practices. I also know that when a video looks too long, it can be a turnoff. For my part, I often feel like I have time for a 45-minute video but not a 75-minute video, even though I, more often than not, end up spending at least a half hour after a 45-minute asana practice doing breathwork and seated meditation.

It’s funny to compare what we think we have time for with what we actually do.

I’m still working out the bugs. I’ve resolved some of the lighting and sound issues, but because I recorded these with my computer camera rather than my phone, they’re all in standard definition which means you won’t be able to fully appreciate my manly chin. 🙄

It’s pretty amazing how many tools there are to create and share videos, and learning to skillfully apply those tools is an art. I find it challenging to make something that others will be able to find, enjoy, and benefit from without getting sucked into compulsively trying to gather likes, views, subscribers, friends, fans, students, whatever. It’s a strange dance to teach yoga within the structure of the marketplace. I do my best to share what I’m learning without curating my personality in order to convince you that I’m this or that or even a someone, but at a certain level it’s unavoidable, and I suppose we all have to make peace with our mixed motivations if we’re going to interact with others at all.

So having said that, here’s a way to subscribe to the blog. There’s no spam, your email will only be used to send out these posts, and every emailed post has an unsubscribe link at the bottom so you can opt out at anytime.

I hope you enjoy the videos, and if you’re looking to for a live guided practice, you can find me Thursdays at 8 am Central through ahimsayogastudios.com online portal. Thanks for stopping by.

🤙 🧡 🕉 🙏

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