First Class Free

  By Laura Mills

  Since I started practicing yoga I’ve developed a keen appreciation for parts of me that I never thought much about before: the muscles between my ribs, for example, and the joint between my palm and first finger. Recently, I discovered the importance of the fourth toe on my right foot.  

   It happened when I opened a heavy door into my foot. Since I was barefoot, and with the way I was standing at the time, the door scraped the top of that particular toe. It wasn’t a huge injury; a few extra minutes and paper towels later, I thought the ordeal over. But I attended a yoga class the next day, and I winced the first time I breathed forward from Downward Dog into Plank. Other than not clenching my toes, I’ve never thought much about them during a yoga practice…but that day I started. In fact, I thought about my fourth toe every Plank, every Upward Dog-into-Downward Dog, pretty much throughout every Vinyasa. And I thought about it every time I stepped my right foot back to a lunge. And of course, I thought about it as it throbbed all during Savasana, too.

  We talk a lot in yoga about honoring ourselves and awakening the divine within. Sometimes I have a hard time seeing anything about myself as divine, but on this occasion, my toe reminded me not to forget it.    

February 14, 2011.  Day 5 of Love Blogging 21 days in 2011.  Each chakra relates to specific spiritual, emotional, psychological and physical aspects of ourselves. These can become blocked and as a result a chakra can become either deficient or excessive and therefore imbalanced.  Practicing poses that correspond to each chakra can release these blocks and clear the path to more balanced living.  Today our focus is on balance and we practiced balance poses like tree, warrior 3, crane and even nurtured the balanced point in a Warrior 2 pose so neither foot is bearing more or less weight that the other.  

From this we discovered that Balance is not hard to find. But it is certainly challenging to maintain.  “We can be sure that the greatest hope for maintaining equilibrium in the face of any situation rests within ourselves.”  Francis J. Braceland.  The work of balance is that of the 4th chakra (in the middle of the 7 chakras).  This is our heart chakra that when healthy and in balance helps us to maintain balance between our role as the lover and the beloved.  For in yogic practice we are the one doing the loving and the one receiving the loving.  If one doesn't know how to love oneself then it is impossible to love another person.  We have to know the giving/receiving within our own hearts before experiencing it in relationship with the world.  The key thing to know about balance is that it is NOT perfection.  Love is messy, and falling out of a balance pose is just like losing our balance in life.  We have the choice to get back up and try again and again.  So on this Valentine's Day please do yourself a favor stop asking perfection of yourself or another person.  Instead wake up to how great life is right now and how wonderful you are! 

"Why wait for your awakening?

The moment your eyes are open,

sieze the day.  Would you hold

back when the Beloved beckons?

"No, I can't step across the 

threshold."  you say, eyes

downcast.  "I'm not worthy.

I'm afraid. I'm not perfect,

and surely I haven't practiced

nearly enough.  My meditation

isn't deep. I still chew 

my fingernails and the refrigerator

isn't clean."  Do you value your

reasons for staying small more

than the light shining through

the open door?  Forgive yourself.

Now is the only time you have

to be whole.  Now is the sole

moment that exists to live in

the light of the true Self.

Perfection is not a prerequisite

for anything but pain.  Please, 

oh please, don't continue to 

believe in your disbelief.  This is

the day of your awakening."

--Danna Faulds, Go In and In

The most advanced yoga pose is loving yourselves.  In this lies our ultimate resource for making the sensitive adjustments necessary to maintain balance in life.  Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

PS Join me on retreat www.alchemytours.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2010.  My favorite class to teach is where we start by meditating on our open hand.  That in this simple gesture we have the paradox of yoga: to open and to surrender, at the same time.  If we close our fist we are not able to let go of the mental agitations that heavy us.  If we close our fist we are clearly not opening to a greater force beyond ourselves.  

“Grace wakes us up when we are asleep, brings light to where there is darkness and removes obstacles from our path”. -Krishna Das

To Open to Grace, is the first principle in Anusara Yoga, but it applies to all spiritual practice.  To open requires the courage to not remain closed or tight hearted or asleep to our lives.  It is an awakening!  To open to the light of grace and love that exists everywhere as universal support.  I especially like this expression of "Opening to Grace" from Marianne Williamson's book, A Return to Love. "To open to Grace is to ask that only loving, helpful thoughts remain in our minds, and all the rest be let go".   

The concept of Surrender in yoga is really in two parts.  

1.  When we surrender to Grace we surrender to something bigger than ourselves.  Ok that seems to make sense for just about anybody. But the next part is harder for the cynical mind...

2.   When we surrender we do so to a universe that knows what it is doing. 

To trust that what I AM OPENING INTO will love me without conditions and has my best interests at heart is a larger leap of faith.  But it is exactly when we stop trying to over control events when they fall into a natural order, an order that works. At that moment where we allow a power much greater than our own to take over we begin to trust that the power that holds galaxies together can certainly handle the circumstances of our relatively little lives".

So the practice today is to peel back the layers, let the light in, OPEN UP to the truth of who you are and how you want to be living your life.  This requires that you surrender and let go of the past, of the hurt and create space for what comes next.  Even though none of us really knows exactly what comes next.  We must just believe as we co-create our lives with the universal intelligence of love that spirit has our best interests at heart.  We are loved, we are love.  So today take comfort in loving yourself, loving your day, loving your life! Silvia, Anusara Inspired Yoga Teacher, ERYT

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way."  - GOETHE

MARCH 22, 2009:  I read this article this morning and it is by a great dear friend and teacher Todd Norian, who I dearly respect.  He visits us once/year and will be end of June 2009. Save the date.  Basically he takes a verse from the sutras and interprets it from a Tantric perspective.  Chapter 1 verse 2 yogas citta vritti nirodah (from April Fit Yoga). 

The summary of the article is this:  When you say NO to something by doing so you are automatically saying YES to something else. 

In class today I contexualized  this during the course of the asana practice and brought in my own analogies and examples.  Here I offer you the straightforward article and leave it for your own meditation.  Just know this, I am always saying YES and will support you if you want to live this way too! Love you all, Silvia

ARTICLE:  “We assume you can say “no” to something. But in doing that you are automatically saying “yes” to something else.  In tantric philosophy we want to start with “YES”, to open, soften, and receive what the moment is offering. Then, after taking a moment to reflect, we can say “no” as a boundary to what is NOT life enhancing.

Yoga is learning to align with nature rather than resist or control it. Instead of viewing our challenges as separate from you and a problem to be solved, the Tantra sees them as a gift of embodiment, the pulse, the very essence of the flow that arises from desire.  Instead of being part of the problem, desire becomes the source of the solution. 

The tantrikas believe the universe is made up of desire. The universe desires to be known by becoming you.  Everything in this universe is awake, which includes the ripples of the mind, like waves on the surface of a lake.  The key is to see beneath the ripples to the bottom of the lake, the deepest essence of self. However the self also appears in the surface waves. Instead of going against the waves we learn how to surf.

This is very helpful in navigating the ups and downs of life – learning how to flow with them, embrace them, and know exactly what you’re saying “YES” and “NO” to, rather than pushing them away in the name of freedom.”

FEBRUARY 10TH, 2009:  It is interesting that we just had the full moon yesterday and on December 31st of this year it will also be a full moon.  Is this the year that you no longer sleep walk through life and just make it ok?  Do we commit to waking up and being present, taking back our thoughts and owning our life?

YES!  Even Winston Churchill speaks to this when he said, "The price of greatness is responsibility over each of our thoughts."  Everyday yoga tells us that we move our mind state from one of "nidra" sleep to "Buddhana" awakening.  The practice encourages us to be MORE than aware, but really awake.  So you have from today until December 31st, same full moon to do something more than just using 20% of your mind as a rest station of awareness but instead really engaging 60-80% of your mind to wake up to the blessings of life.  Remember:  Your I CAN is more important than your IQ.

So what is your intention, what makes you wake up and roar?  Go inside and figure it out. Take time right now for five minutes.  Follow the advice of Carl Jung, "your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.  Who looks outside: dreams; Who looks inside: awakens."

Or as Pantanjali says in the Yoga Sutras, "When you are inspired by some great purpose all of your thoughts break their bonds; your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world!"  Be the cause of your own future my firends. Wake up and start living!  Love, Silvia

NOVEMBER 25, 2008:  My favorite Rumi poem begins: "Come for today is a day of festival, Henceforward joy and pleasure are on the increase. Clap hands, say, 'Today is all happiness, from the beginning it was a manifestly fine day.”