Bathe your body with the universe. Or just breath deep and feel good.

"By learning to appreciate breath, we learn to appreciate life itself. The gift of breath is the gift of life. When we receive a gift, we feel gratitude. Through pranayama we learn gratitude for life and gratitude toward the unknown divine source of life." -Iyengar Light on Life

Prana is energy/life force. Pranayama is all about cultivating that energy in you. We often connect that to the breath. Our breath is what makes us alive. It circulates everything within our body. Our energy, blood, body fluids and oxygen. It moves everything around to keep us alive and it gives us the simple rhythm of life within us. It is unconscious and intelligent. But we can make breathing a conscious act. Like when we just simply breath deeply and elongate our exhales. Or when we do our Ujaii breath. This is how we begin to practice pranayama.

Think about your yoga practice and how you move through each pose with your Ujayii breath. When you inhale your right foot forward between the hands, how the breath helps you move. Every movement becomes conscious and deliberate. It becomes meditative. Think about what your breath is like when faced with frustration or anxiety. Its tense and short.

Now take a deep breath in drawing it down your back and deep into the kidneys. And take a long, slow exhale returning the breathe back to the universe. Inhale again, fill yourself up with the energy around us. Hold it here at the top of your head and allow it to bathe your insides for a moment. Count to 5.Exhale give it back and empty out. Hold here again for 5 and feel the neutrality and stillness in your body. And inhale deep again receiving the gift of life...exhale let it go.

Now think about how only a few cycles of deep breathing can make you feel. Slowing everything down. Calming your spirit, slowing the heart..feeling all the cells in your body oxygenated and activated. Everything is calm yet aware. Think about what this could do for your body if every breath was deep and long verses what those anxious tense short breaths do. This is just one of the many tools our Yoga practice gives us to use in life. When faced with frustration...we can simply breath. It may not solve the problem...but it will make things easier to sit with. And that is the purpose of "practice".

Breath and feel good!

How do we practice Pranayama?

Breath work is such an essential part of our Yoga practice. Although pranayama itself isn't as simple as breathing or doing deep breathing exercises, these are both a great start to having a pranayama practice. The practice of pranayama to me is the practice of using the breathe to heal your insides. People often use deep breathing to calm themselves. It heals your emotional insides...breathe is what makes us alive and in breathing...we are keeping our physical body alive and working. Breathing helps us to flow through movements in our asana practice.

And we'll shed of our skin like trees do with leaves

Take this great opportunity to be NEW.

Paper cranes in vain

I love making paper cranes. It's therapeutic and meditative. I've always wondered what to do with all the paper cranes I make...check out what someone did...I loves it!

Vinyasa with me in Bushwick!

Come visit me in Bushwick!
Jai Yoga Arts
Thursdays 9:30 am
Saturday January 7th 4:30

Rest and Recharge!

At Ananda Ashram.

Happy Boxing Day!

Happy Holidays!

Make your body your temple!

The physicality of Yoga is often related to Asana, or the postures. Many people come to yoga looking for the physical. Its what opens us to the other aspects of Yoga. Whether it be for exercise, weight loss, relieving stress, or meditation...its all physical. This physicality also has a great deal to do with "being present". The cool part about this is that we've accomplished that as long as we've made it to class and made it onto the mat. On some days this part of asana is more challenging then others but that first step is always key.

Let's further look at this idea of "being present". The whole idea can sound kind of ambiguous especially after you've already made it to class and your Yoga teacher keeps using this catch phrase "being present" no? Sometimes its as simple as letting everything else go. Getting comfortable with your mat and letting go of anything and everything that exists outside of it. Just let it be you, your breathe, your mat, your practice. Its important to let go of the citta vritti -mind stuff so your practice is truly yours. This allows your practice to transform from just physical exercise into a moving meditation.

Life is humbling

We make mistakes all the time. Some are small and insignificant...others are big and really hurt people. How do we reconcile these mistakes? How do we make it ok within ourselves to know that we hurt someone? How do we make it ok in ourselves to admit we did something wrong? How do we move forward when the damage is already done?

One of my teachers once said "It's not about the mistakes we make in life, its about what we do to repair them."

The ultimate surrender is to do what we can to make things right in the world...the rest is up to the PTB.

Ways to say sorry.