Conserve and burn. Alternate, switch it up and repeat, sit in your seat and change your mind.

One of my favorite ideas from yoga is practice and tapas. Our practice should be consistent, with patience and attended to for a long time. We keep ourselves on this consistent basis with tapas. Its effort that is not just automatic but proactive. We participate. This is when our friends ask us to go out to dinner after work instead of yoga or (insert other disciplined practice here) and we want to bail on our yoga..but we say no. Because we know what we set out to do. Its the passion that motivates us. Its the moment when we feel like maybe giving up or slacking but we decide not to. Pushing through the urge to slack is when we start to see the alchemy part, the part where we shift our perspectives and we fly, become lighter. Its what makes me understand that we can really change things for ourselves if only we participate. It also requires us to be accountable. Sometimes we can get stuck in a rut and feel like nothing changes for us, but nothing will change really if we don't put forth the tapas.

On the other end of burning the tapas, there is this idea of conserving. Eastern practices always emphasize the conservation of energy, prana, qi. Finding the balance of when to burn it, and when to hold it in and go home early to avoid being sick. To jump up into a handstand in vinyasa or when to skip it entirely and take child's pose. The truth is, our modern lives just burn away all of our fire/yang energy. Yoga is a practice that is meant to help us conserve and control that energy and be a little more yin. So as always we're trying to find comfort in sitting in our own seat in life. When to pull back and when to speed ahead. 

Photo bomb on our splits!

Hanumanasana requires dedication, regular practice and tapas. Tapas is the fire we put into our work, the passion we use to drive us forward. Discipline, balance, strength and sense of self.

I will be teaching a special yoga and meditation class at 3rd (eye)sol on 1501 Broadway Bushwick Brooklyn, J train to Halsey. A great space with positive energy. $10 for the class. Om~

Peacock Pose

Doing so much lately but also focused on making more time for yoga!

Mayurasana happens for me only on a good day like this one.

Back bend madness...

When Negative Thoughts Come in...

Switching up your perspective is sometimes all it takes to make things happen your way. I think its easy to walk around NYC with a bad attitude. We get up early, get on a packed subway train that is running late, someone's elbow is in your back and an armpit a little too close to your face. And then there is a woman on the subway car who is obviously pissed off the the train is not running as fast as she wants it to. Then, you still have to start your day!

I like the yoga sutra that tells us, "when negative thoughts come in, ponder the opposite".  I like this because it requires us to be proactive and responsible for our moods. Sometimes its easy to think we have no control and it makes it easier to complain, but we do in fact have control over our emotions. We don't have to feel so negative or crappy, we can just ponder the opposite and it won't be as bad. We cannot expect results without trying. And we should be accountable for walking around with bad attitudes because we are all capable of lessening it, even if its just a little. Every little bit will always count for something!

Samadhi is our responsibility

We need to experience samadhi, so that we can interweave it into our every day lives. It's not meant for guru's, holy people or monks that live in caves. Our ability to experience and bring it back into life is important for evolution.

There's a bigger picture.

It all just sounds like noise.

MLK

Talking about limitless...can you imagine the world we would have lived in during the time of Dr. King? That what he is now so famous for saying, was once absurd to the general public? Evolution and change is at our finger tips.

Liberate!

Another way to think about New Year's resolutions is...not necessarily how we want to limit ourselves or to change something we feel guilty about -but how about...how we can do more of something and how we can stop limiting and start liberating.

When negative thoughts come in, ponder the opposite -one of my favorite sutras from the Yoga Sutras.

When we allow negative thoughts to take over we tie ourselves down. Freeing ourselves from what stops us becomes so important. Unreal fears often stop us in our tracks and in our modern lives we learn to feel fear for no reason. We stay in an unnatural fight or flight mode and we don't get to feel the unbound potential that is...limitlessness.

Shifting part 2: Be Limitless

People always associate yoga with being flexible physically but really what it teaches us is to be more flexible in our thinking. In shifting our perspectives on situations and when making decisions. When we find that kind of flexibility we can take hold of limitlessness. To see that whatever is at our feet or just ahead of us is limitless is the shift we need. Our daily lives sometimes make us think we need to hold back, we get bogged down by responsibility. We get conditioned to the idea that we have to hold back. Being more flexible mentally, spiritually and in our consciousness, we can see the openness that life has to offer. the limitless possibilities that are just sitting there waiting for us.

I think the importance of our alignment cue's, doing our poses in transition, step by step and practicing the present moment it...helps us to be more consciously aware and therefore we can accomplish poses that we might otherwise consider to be impossible. When we stop thinking about what it is or what its supposed to be, and before you know it you've taken the bind while balancing on one leg, come into a full back bend, jumped back from crow or come into your first head stand. Whatever those poses are that we think we'd never do, if we throw away though the "can't do it" part and be in the moment of each breath we will achieve and we ride the limitlessness.

Shifting...

Making resolutions is all about finding a better way to be you. But sometimes we can look at it like...we don't need to better ourselves or drive towards goals but we are doing good where we are. Its about shifting perspective. We teach in yoga to look at things differently.  Consider the possibility. Yoga is meant to be holistic in that its not just about stretching our bodies to be flexible but also our minds. ..our lives. Yoga doesn't make life easier but it does make us go through life with more ease. That need to control outcomes and how things should be and what we want its all about allowing for that shift in perspective.