First Class Free

By Laura Mills

Why does it feel so good to step outside, even for a moment, on a summer morning? Many answers exist for me. I like the fresh air, the sense of renewal that drifts through my nostrils as well as the screen door and replaces the stale air-conditioned air of previous hours. I also like the sounds. I adore crickets, locusts and birds most of all, but the sounds of cars and planes and neighbors’ activities soothes me, too. And I love how I feel not-quite-so-contained, as if the simple act of opening the door and stepping onto the porch enlarges my space and physically connects me to everything else “out there.”

I know our relationship with nature has been talked and written about countless times. But it’s definitely worth discussing: at the very least, so many of us feel good when we see, hear, smell, or otherwise experience the outdoors. With our indoor worlds so full of stuff (noise-making-, light-blinking-, often-practical-but-sometimes-just-extra-stuff), whenever we reconnect with nature we plug back in to something powerful and real within ourselves. Nature speaks not in words but in feelings, and we don’t need to translate to be able to understand. It just feels good. It reminds us that we are included in a greater universe, and just like all living beings play a part in the big picture.

If we try, we can all be the “Best” at our own particular roles.

March 10, 2011.  Dedicated to all those finding their best courage in connecting to each other in a time of serious challenge.  And love to those digging out from the incredible Earthquake in Japan. Einstein said it like this, “A human being is a part of a whole, called by us 'universe', a part limited in time and space. But he experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us. Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.”

So today as we offer support around the world we also recognize internally how important it is for each of us to feel supported.  It is as Earon Davis says, “It takes community to maintain a human.”  Community, communion, compassion all of these and more that the practice teaches us through the vehicle of ourselves and trying to experience democracy and connection there first before taking it into relationship with others.  One of my personal meditations I use is where I ask myself as much as I reach out to others, “can I be reached?”  

So I ask you, “CAN YOU BE REACHED?”   How easily do you accept support from your breath, from the earth, from your friends, from those that are trying to make your life easier?  If its not so easy then come to the mat even more until you feel it possible within your body and heart and this will ignite the trust to connect with others. 

Quite frankly it's easy to disconnect from ourselves and what we are feeling. Yoga brings us back into a state of connection.On the mat we begin the pose with the mind first and then the breath and body follow.  This is why the sophistication in cuing is so remarkable as a way to "work out" our mind muscle and make it less flabby.  How can we even begin to see the connections between ourselves and the world if our mind muscle isn't strong enough to see the communion or connection within our own body?  And really what are we talking about here?  Why bother at all?  Because a strong mind muscle is what keeps us living lovingly and fully!  It is always about LOVE.  Jack Kornfield says it like this:

"Love creates a communion with life. Love expands us, connects us, sweetens us, ennobles us. Love springs up in tender concern, it blossoms into caring action.  It makes beauty out of all we touch.  In any moment we can step beyond our small self and embrace each other as beloved parts of the whole."

So today, know the more you connect to yourself the more you are able to connect to others. The more you share compassion with yourself, the more you have compassion for others.  And once you find this communion with life then everything becomes about love.  Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

PS Join me on a yoga retreat www.alchemytours.com and stay in touch www.silviamordini.com

May 26, 2010, What instrument would you play if you could play anything?  At the start of class we went around and shared what that would be in this idea that coming together as a yoga class we create a symphony of humanity at its best. I of course love that!

“These two teachings, the supremacy of the heart and the uniqueness of each human being are very important to me.  They give me the fullest understanding of my membership in the human family.”  Robert Muller

When we truly love we are in harmony not only with our beloved but with all living things.  Love is blind in that it makes no distinctions but extends to everyone and everything. This is the idea of Bhakti yoga.  You either love everyone and everything or nothing at all. The uniting of ourselves through relationship of breath in class to others reminds of the one tribe we all belong to. We are all members of the Human Family and in this family, there is no divorce.

BHAKTI MEANS LOVE

WE are all united in the highest sense “At the highest level of existence, we are all united. This supreme condition as the joyous union between Shiva (masculine cosmicness) and Shakti (the feminine cosmic principle). 

Relationship is what coming to class is all about: relationship between your heart and body (a love story); relationship between your arms and legs; relationship between you and the poses relationship with you and the other students, relationship with you and the teacher.

The funny weird PARADOX of relationship is that it calls on us to be ourselves and express who we are without hesitation and let go of getting too hardened into a single position.  We have this play constantly between Shiva and Shakti. On the mat we experience this in a simple but profound way when lying on our back and we do a spinal twist with our arms at a “T” position.  We want to extend our arms as us and yet there are other students to navigate around and so we co-create together making space for everyone. This is the harmony of bhakti yoga, and hence the beautiful music the asanas help us create through the instrument of our bodies.

“As a student progresses on the path, he arrives at a highly sensitized condition when dealing with the world, and this becomes painful at times.  The problems which thus arise cannot be eliminated, for increasing sensitivity is a natural result of finer mental and emotional development. However, the reaction to difficulties caused by this can be controlled.”  Paul Brunton

This is very much true in spiritual practice. As you become more integrated and sensitive to the relationship you have between your mind and body then you become more sensitive to all human relationship outside yourself.  The yoga makes us all experts in humanity.  And we can use that for good: Love everyone, serve everyone or promote disconnection that serves no one and destroys us all.  But I promise if you practice regularly and practice with love the choice will be easy.  Love yourself, love your day, love your life!  Silvia

JANUARY 24, 2010:  The healthy link between yoga and weight loss is not so much only about normalizing weight as much as it is about sustaining weight loss.  But first yes, one of the most effective and ancient ways of promoting health and effecting transformation is to practice yoga, especially poses, breathing and meditation. Increasing research in the fields of health and well being indicate that the stress-reducing effects of yoga practice are significant and powerful in normalizing WEIGHT. And as Judith Lasater writes, “We no longer have a choice about including practices in our daily lives that create health and spiritual growth. If we want a world worth living in today, as well as one worth leaving to future generations, we must take responsibility to create health in our lives, as well as to support others as they choose healthier lives for themselves. It is up to each of each of us to lovingly transform the world simply by first transforming ourselves.”

Through the practice of yoga, we can begin to feel connected to ourselves, to our body’s rhythm, our breath, and our emotions.  We can tune into how we feel about ourselves and to what degree our eating is emotionally based.  According to studies the number 1 &2 reasons for weight gain is emotional stress and habit.  And then once we’ve gained the extra weight we get dissatisified which may develop elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which in turn ENCOURAGES stress-related eating (known by scientists as FOOD-SEEKING BEHAVIOR). Which results in more weight gain which may fuel more stress and stress–related eating.  Gosh that’s the pattern?  Yup. 

I hope this class helped to make sense of some things. And that you will join me again week after week to maintain this awareness and learn to be the best YOU possible!  With love in all ways, Silvia

So how does the Yoga work?  Here’s a quick summary we talked about in class:

• Yoga burns calories by doing poses and breathing techniques which make metabolism more efficient (food + Oxygen = fuel)
• Yoga is proven to fight stress (and lower cortisol levels). Cortisol makes conversion of calories into fat (especially fat in the abdomen) more efficient.
• Yoga helps us see clearly. Before you can change something you have to acknowledge it for what it is which can be a problem (Study 1992 New England Journal of Medicine study looked at obsese people who considered themselves resistent to diets they told doc’s they exercised and limited calories but when asked to keep a food journal the patients had on average underestimated their food intake by 47% and overestimated their exercise 51%  (They were tricked by their own minds)
• Patterns (samskaras) – the behavior grooves we dig through repeated actions.  Many people who overeat are on autopilot.  Yoga helps us be mindful of the moment, which helps us notice and savor our food instead of gulping it down. 
• Also the mindfulness helps us realize when we are not hungry but simply eating out of habit or emotional neediness.
• Consider this (relapse rate on most diets is 100%).  If you lose one ounce/day that’s almost half a pound/week which = 23 pounds in a year.  To lose an ounce/day you’ve only got to burn about 250 calories more than you take in. (Breath how it works)
• Many people view food as the enemy. Yoga view of food is that it is a manifestation of the divine, a gift from God.  In the Upanishads, food is equated with the divine force in the universe, Yoga would say food is one of life’s great pleasures.

JANUARY 20TH, 2009:  Happy day to all of us!  I am inspired today by the world’s events and wanted to share with you what my friend David Romanelli says he learned from Obama Phenomena.  Don’t forget David’s new book “Livin the Moment” is released soon and he’ll be with us in March for weekend workshops. 

Lesson Learned from Obama Phenomena:  Enjoy Life (By David Romanelli)
In the past, we looked for a leader who could fight wars, debate politics, and boost the economy. And all those thing are of absolute and vital importance. But on par with those strengths is a new requirement for a leader based on the information overload inherent to the modern day: the ability to emanate joy, relaxation, and spiritual wealth.

Alice Walker, the author of The Color Purple, recently published “A Letter to Barack Obama.” Following is an excerpt:

• “A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.

JANUARY 13, 2009:  The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience.  Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around.... Throughout history, "tender loving care" has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing.  ~Larry Dossey 

It's easy to disconnect from what we are feeling. Yoga brings us back into a state of connection.  Life surprises us sometimes with interesting challenges and this is when we need a strong MIND MUSCLE the most!  And just like working out a bicep you have to do it more than once to see results.  How is the mind muscle related to a Healthy Heart?  We begin with what we are thinking and then our breath and our body follow.  Our disposition and how we manage our mental muscle in dealing with life impacts our health and it is nowhere more evident than with our heart. 

From personal experience in losing my Dad at the early age of 59 I know firsthand that heart disease is the number one killer in the modern world (and its not just men that are affected).  It is the  leading cause of death in both sexes. According to the book Yoga as Medicine it says, “In predicting heart attacks, science has uncovered strong evidence for possible contributing factors such as type A behaviors, a sense of urgency about time, job dissatisfaction, loneliness and an unhappy marriage. There appears to be an unhealthy synergy involving risk factors for heart disease. They don’t add up – they multiply.”

How does yoga fit in?  “Because the stress response affects the heart in a number of harmful ways, yoga’s proven ability to fight stress is a big part of the explanation for how yoga benefits people with heart ailments.” 

On the mat we begin the pose with the mind first and then the breath and body follow.  This is why the sophistication in cuing is so remarkable as a way to "work out" our mind muscle and make it less flabby.  How can we even begin to see the connections between ourselves and the world if our mind muscle isn't strong enough to see the communion or connection within our own body?  And really what are we talking about here?  Why bother at all?  Because a strong mind muscle is what keeps us living lovingly and fully!  It is always about LOVE.  Jack Kornfield says it like this:

"Love creates a communion with life. Love expands us, connects us, sweetens us, ennobles us. Love springs up in tender concern, it blossoms into caring action.  It makes beauty out of all we touch.  In any moment we can step beyond our small self and embrace each other as beloved parts of the whole."

In the end, when we look at our life, the questions will be simple:  Did I live fully?  Did I love well?

I can say that I believe my Father, Enrico Mordini, could respond YES to both these questions.  And maybe its not the length of time we have on this earth and in this body that makes the difference but what we have done with this time that counts.  Please, strengthen your mind and open your heart.  Love, Silvia

JANUARY 9TH, 2009:    Vinyasa yoga is a great way to flush out some of the tension in our lives so we can transform our minds and improve the loving flow from our hearts. In class we are invited to move smoothly, letting go of the hard edges as we invoke the Water Spirit by moving like water.  When you think about it what is tension but resistance to change.  The water element which is the element of the 2^nd chakra governs all watery things about us: circulation, tears, peeing, congestion, orgasm.  Makes sense, water flows, moves and changes and a healthy second chakra allows us to go with the flow and navigate the changes in life with grace and ease.   

So today I dedicate this practice to a dear friend who is just now really allowing themselves to open up to taste the sweetness of life! You know who you are.  And I want to thank my teacher Shiva Rea for sharing with me the Jala Namaskar that inspired the physical practice.

For those of you not able to join us, when you feel stuck or overally demanding of your body, your life, your relationships (like you want them to be different than what they are) invoke the water element.  Engage fluid vinyasa movement, curving flow, backbends, and mandalas (rotations) of all the major joints to mimic the way water circles and spirals.  I wish for you for me for all of us that this chakra helps us to feel what we’re feeling, that it helps us open to life even when its scary, to lessen our resistance to being happier than ever before and that you feel more sensual in the way you breath, eat, drink, move and touch the world!  A big warm embrace for all of you, Silvia

DECEMBER 22ND, 2008:  Swami Satchidananda says Illness begins with "I".  Wellness begins with "We",  do we practice together and begin by connecting to the medicine of our breath, using our breath to send a gently flowing stream of loving energy from our hearts to any physical or emotionally injured area. 

The experience of yoga, the "we" was achieved by partnering with someone and sitting back to back to make the evidence of our own breath stronger.  By staying in the "we" we stay in wellness.  And what is wellness if not healing.

So healing could be defined as a process of rejoining, a rejoining of body to heart, spirit to consciousness.  To me it means letting go of hurt or angry feelings, the absence of conflict, relief from pain, a belief in the miracle that things WILL GET BETTER.

We dedicated 3 sets of vinyasa flows to the past, present and future, keeping our energy on healing thoughts the best we could the whole time.  Why do I work so hard to promote healing? Well, I don't wish anyone to stay in a state of suffering. I've been there. I don't want to suffer, I don't want you to suffer, I don't want your families to suffer.  So this practice of studying ourselves (svadhyaya) through this we realize stuff about ourselves.  We figure out what is REAL.  Eventually you figure out that life is really happening right now, that it is not a dress rehearsal and there is no need to wait to be happy, to make real your intentions for love and freedom.  So here's wishing you your best dreams!  Courage to you, 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.”

OCTOBER 16, 2008:  It's easy to disconnect. Yoga brings us back into a state of connection.  These are challenging times and this is when we need a strong MIND MUSCLE the most!  Working out our mind muscle is just like working out a bicep, we have to do it more than once to see results. 

On the mat we begin the pose with the mind first and then the breath and body follow.  This is why the sophistication in cuing is so remarkable as a way to "work out" our mind muscle.  How can we even begin to see the connections between ourselves and the world if our mind muscle isn't strong enough to see the communion or connection within our own body?  And really what are we talking about here?  With a strong MIND muscle can we fit into a size smaller pair of jeans? Why bother at all?  Because a strong mind muscle is what keeps us living lovingly and fully!  It is always about LOVE.  Jack Kornfield says it like this:

"Love creates a communion with life. Love expands us, connects us, sweetens us, ennobles us. Love springs up in tender concern, it blossoms into caring action.  It makes beauty out of all we touch.  In any moment we can step beyond our small self and embrace each other as beloved parts of the whole."

·         Yoga brings us from disconnection and fear to connection and love

·         Through our practice the intelligence of our minds connects with and joins the wisdom of our bodies

·         This connection, being part of the circle, the universal team is the force the power we find on the mat

·         Practicing yoga can help us to feel part of a larger community. It reminds us we’re all on the same team, wearing the same jersey.

·         As we step onto our mat we can be assured that other men and women are doing the same thing all over the world

·         When we breath together we remember that we are all breathing the same air as one another, our ancestors and those that come after we’re gone

When we practice we are simply exploring ALL humanity in the form of ourselves.  We can become the world’s GREATEST EXPERTS on anger, impatience, frustration, as well as joyfulness, patience, clarity.  We become extremely wise and sensitive to all humanity simply by knowing ourselves.  This develops within us gratitude and understanding for OTHER people.  In the poses there is no need to defend ourselves against others because we’re all playing a different but vitally important position on our team just like on any team there is diversity in positions available.  Today let’s really value our contributions and try to identify with others rather than comparing or fighting them so we can experience the grace of our interconnectedness and make the world a place of harmony and peace!   Love, Silvia 

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever does.  -Margaret Mead