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OCTOBER 18, 2010.  The Universe has a great sense of humor!  The humor is often wacky, weird, unexpected.  And our human being job as the divine manages making things funny, is to laugh.  

I just spent weekend laughing with our most amazing new teacher trainees!  And we talked about the importance of elevating our attitude to unlock our happiness in yoga.  And even how laughing relaxes your diaphragm.  

Laughing for 3 days straight reminds me I find humor everywhere.  In college my favorite thing to teach was ab work during group fitness classes.  Working our abs makes me giggle! So we did some seriously unserious core cultivation and I got to play some awesome hip hop tunes, which makes me feel great that anything that wakes us up to who we are is yoga.  Yea for Michael Franti and Blue Scholars!

In this performance of life there are plenty of scripts (almost on a daily basis) that are humorous (sometimes a bit dark comedy) but still funny nonetheless.  And as we go out on stage we can shine out recognizing the choice we have in every moment to see the good, the funny, the beauty or to contract.  We can either light up or lessen the energy of our own aliveness.  This is something of the inside. Yoga teaches us that how we see the world is from the inside out.  We look for humor and it is there.  It is always there beneath the surface.  And as Jeff Brown writes, "below the surface we are all sacred dynamite."

When I laugh that's exactly how I feel.  Dynamite! Fantastic! Energized! Bright! Light! Strong.  It is from and to that inner strength of our own unlimited potential that this practice taps into. So pratipaksha bhavana dudes.  Cultivate that spiritual dynamite and show up to your life with a full blast effort!  We don't get to do today over again, so we might as well find it funny (funny weird, funny wacky, or just plain funny!)  Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

PS you know what's funny? Doing yoga in you swimsuit December 8-12 with me in Haramara Resort (well swimsuit part is optional...I mean you can wear your normal yoga clothes too!) Friend me Alchemy Tours www.silviamordini.com

SEPTEMBER 9, 2009:   We started class by making ourselves more awake to our breath for a few minutes.  Just this alone can in the words of the sutras help us “to feel our wholehearted dedication to the light within us.”  Breathing on purpose requires action.  Kriya Yoga is known as the YOGA OF ACTION.  By sprinkling life with dedicated action each and every moment we can transform the moments of full hearted joy into minutes, into hours, into days, into weeks, into months, into years, into a lifetime! Tapas is that inner strength and determination that helps us show up to take the action.  And doing the poses and breathing helps us to be ourselves. 

But sometimes the question arises how long do I need to practice to see a transformation, to feel different.  Well, this commitment or devotion to practice known as Abhyasa (Sutras 1.13 and 1.14 for reference) is a life long dedication.  There is no formula.  What we do know of spiritual practice is that it takes more than just a single repetition. There is a steadiness of kriya yoga, continuous action over a long period of time. Tapas is the enthusiasm to keep going especially if the changes you aspire to aren’t yet as obvious as you’d like. 

My favorite peace activist Michael Franti shared this story at a concert recently (thank you to my dear friend for bringing this to life for me).  Franti's story went something like this:

“There’s a story I like to tell about a butterfly sitting in a tree, and a bird flies up to the butterfly, who lives his whole life in 5 days, and the bird says – “Mr. Butterfly, you’ve been living up here your whole life, there’s one question I’d like to ask you, IS THIS TREE ALIVE??” And the butterfly looks at him and says “You know Bird, I’ve been sitting on this tree my whole life, all five days, and I have yet to see this tree move one time, and from that I scientifically conclude without a doubt that this tree is dead.” … 

But the bird flies back to the tree in five years and sees that the tree has taken in the water and the roots have dug in deep to the soil and the tree has bared beautiful fruit and the animals of the forest have shared that fruit, and the seeds of the fruit have planted new seedlings and those seedlings have grown roots that have grabbed onto the roots of a bigger tree creating a whole family in the forest. And in fact the tree was ALIVE.”

I think that this points to the fact that CHANGE is a long-term process and that social change requires intention and action. 

Well, Franti is talking about social change but as a big yoga practioner he is promoting the change within the singular self that transforms the world.  The real yoga we all practice is most often invisible.  But that doesn’t mean that we aren’t making forward progress towards our intentions (the tree is NOT dead).  So what I am asking for us to consider is to be political.

What does political mean really?  Sharon Gannon says “to be political means to care.” 

If we care about our lives: our own transformation and that of the world; then we will take the healthy actions required to change the world through the experience of our own humanness.   And all I ask of each of you is don’t give up. Don’t give up on yourself, don’t give up on your loved ones, don’t give up on making the world a better place.  Please, please stay political…please keep taking the actions (kriya yoga) that show you care.  With heartfelt courage, Silvia

Folks often ask me how the practice has changed me over this last 15 years of practice and over 7,000 hours of Teaching Yoga and I think it has helped me be more patient with changes in life.  I realized that getting upset at those changes I cannot control only hurt me and was a waste of energy.  Instead of I have focused on opening my heart to the fullness of life and I have grown more calm and content as a result.  My mind became more flexible to new things, people and situations.

A lovely California teacher, Max Strom at my favorite San Fran studio called YogaTree says it like this "Yoga inspires change. It's a tool to help you drop negative habits and adopt helpful ones, to embrace whatever the present and future hold, I believe you must assess what you're hiding from and be willing to change. To me Vinyasa yoga has been a great way to release some of the tension in my life so I could transform my body, and learn to be present.  While doing so I transformed my mind to be more flexible too.  And have learned healthy ways of meeting life's changes, especially not letting tension consume me.  For what is tension if not resistance to change." 

I hope you will join me on the mat to use this practice as your personal laboratory to safely test out for yourself changes in the way you respond to stuff.  Like responding to poses with kindness, non-reactiveness, compassion, non-judgement, and ultimately acceptance.  This then translates into how you live, interact and relate to your external world.  Know that without a doubt your time on the mat is bringing about the peace we all aspire to - you are changing the world!  Or as Michael Franti (Power to the Peaceful, Spearhead) says "One thing that yoga has taught me is that the rate at which the world changes is exactly the rate at which I change"

I realize embracing change is difficult. So I will include a gentle practice to help you from this day forward when you need to find your center and be more graceful with the changes taking place in your life. Wishing you all the courage you need to respond even to the smallest change with patience, love and courage.  Love and light, Silvia

CLASS PLAN LEVEL 1-2:  AUGUST 10^TH, 2009

OPENING WAVE:

Seated easy pose, pranayama of alternate nostril breathing

Supine Cobbler over blanket roll

Cobbler mini core cultivation

Supine upward facing twist

Supine downward facing twist on blanket roll

WAVE 1:

Bharavajrasana seated twist and gentle flow of arms

Ardha Matsyendrasana seated twist

Seated baby cradle of leg

Seated Cobbler, twist

(Side two as above)

WAVE 2:

Malasana

Prasarita (standing wide legged forward fold)

Warrior 2, Triangle, Side Angle Pose, Triangle, Reverse Warrior 2 (right side)

Prasarita

Warrior 2, Triangle, Side Angle Pose, Triangle, Reverse Warrior 2 (left side)

FF

WAVE 3:
Sun Salutation A slow

WAVE 4:

Lizard

Half Splits

Half Warrior 2, Half Triangle, Half Side Angle, Half Triangle, Half Reverse Warrior 2 (right side)

Kneeling Side Plank

Parsva Vasistasana 2

Fallen Warrior (downward facing resting)

Pigeon (with shoulder opener more resting)

Ardha Matysendrasana

Bharavajrasana

Malasana, twist

Dog and rest before side 2

CLOSING WAVES: Done in class, if you want a copy just email me silvia@totalbodyyoga.com

AUGUST 4th, 2009:  Don't forget Michael Franti plays Ravinia August 27th 7:30pm, join TBY Friends in lawn for yoga on grass, drinks, food, fun before and after show.  Franti inspired me with his song, STAY HUMAN for tonight's class.

AUGUST 4th, 2009:  Don't forget Michael Franti plays Ravinia August 27th 7:30pm, join TBY Friends in lawn for yoga on grass, drinks, food, fun before and after show.  Franti inspired me with his song, STAY HUMAN for tonight's class.

“It is not easy to keep your heart open in the face of the trials of being human.  Life can so often be difficult, disappointing; our dreams are so easily broken.  How precious, then, those shafts of sunlight that sometimes break through our daily preoccupations, our anxieties, and reveal the beauty that was there all along. 

Neither beauty nor love – for the eyes that see beauty are the eyes of love – need the absence of pain or suffering to exist.  Sometimes we know the grace of sheer joy…when the phone call comes that seems to break our world apart, does it mean that the love we once knew has gone away? 

No, say the poets, this is not what it means.  Even in the midst of our suffering, love can bloom.  Our weeping as well as our laughing, can open our heart to a deeper stream. 

When we finally stop struggling with life, stop wanting it to be anything but what it is now – not giving up but giving it over – then our heart will indeed fall open, and we shall know beyond all doubt that, however dark the night, all is already well.

Let us end with Rumi, and with these lines from his poem Zero Circle:

Be helpless, dumbfounded, unable to say yes or not.

Then a stretcher will come from grace and gather us up.

That will be the moment when we let go and feel the motions of tenderness that have been around us all along.”   (ten poems to open your heart by Roger Housden)

"Attend the birthing of the radiant light within you"  - Vijnana Bhairava Tantra

So for your contemplation I asked the following two questions:

Q:  If you had all the time, money, and energy you wanted, what would you do?

Q:  If you were dying, what would you wish you had done that you are not doing now? Why aren't you doing it?

A lovely California teacher, Max Strom says it like this "Yoga inspires change. It's a tool to help you drop negative habits and adopt helpful ones, to embrace whatever the present and future hold, I believe you must assess what you're hiding from and be willing to change. To me Vinyasa yoga has been a great way to release some of the tension in my life so I could transform my body, and learn to be present.  While doing so I transformed my mind to be more flexible too.  And have learned healthy ways of meeting lifes changes, especially not letting tension consume me.  For what is tension if not resistance to change.  

We have an opportunity here to make a difference in the world as Ghandi says “to be the change we wish to see”.  Or Woodrow Wilson, 28^th President of the United States said it like this, “You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand."

Get to the mat, use it as your personal laboratory to safely test out for yourself changes in the way you respond to stuff.  Like responding to challenging poses with kindness, non reactiveness, laughter, compassion, non-judgement, and ultimately acceptance.  This then translates into how you live, interact and relate to your external world.  Know that without a doubt your time on the mat is bringing about the peace we all aspire to – you are changing the world!  Or as Michael Franti (Power to the Peaceful, Spearhead) says “One thing that yoga has taught me is that the rate at which the world changes is exactly the rate at which I change”

RIGHT ON!  ROCK ON!  BE ON!  Silvia

SEPTEMBER 10TH, 2008:  I know some folks reading this will say, Oh no not peace, again!?!"  That's cool.  I thought that a long time ago too.  But somewhere between "it's not my job" and "I can't really make a difference" I changed my mind.  So I will keep talking about peace until that day that all people everywhere live in peace.  With all my heart, I hope that day is soon...

We’re not going to be perfect in this quest.  In the words of the band Teitur, All my mistakes have become masterpieces.”  Let’s just keep trying, ok? “If peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace. If peace mattered to you more than anything else you would remain nonreactive when confronted with challenging people or situations. From A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle  "It would be powerful and effective and would make no person or situation into an enemy."

Now I really do believe that most folks agree that a more peaceful world would be ideal. However, its been my experience that a lot of us seem stumped as to how to contribute peace and make the world better.

From a yogic view it is really kind of simple in theory and is known as AHIMSA: 

“If we are to have true peace in this world, each one of us must find it in ourselves first. If we don’t like ourselves, for example, we probably won’t like those around us. If we are in a constant state of inner conflict, then we will probably bring conflict into the world. If we have fighting within our families, there can be no peace.”

When it comes to peace:  Our job is to say yes!, not when, how or maybe.  We must choose peace!   Join me and others all over the world in being a Peaceful Warrior.  As Michael Franti sings, “POWER TO THE PEACEFUL!”  (Visit www.powertothepeaceful.com to learn more). 

And take to heart these inspiring words:  of the Dalai Lama who said, “Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. Peace starts within each one of us.”

AUGUST 20TH, 2008:  I was reading about how bullying and adversity made Michael Phelps, eight time gold medal winner, stronger. People made fun of him, the fact he swam instead of played football, the size of his ears, his height, all of it.  I love that he persevered!  He didn’t give in!  He found a way to meditate - to do yoga, his yoga happened to be swimming.  Instead of getting bogged down or paralyzed by worry about what others thought about him he kept living his life to the fullest.  As a result he is realizing his DREAMS!

Take this practice to liberate yourself, how?  Let go of your worries. Patanjali says in the Yoga Sutras, “What you’ve already done, you’ve done – LET IT GO, MOVE ON.”

Now in your next breath just do your best, be kind to others, include more and more folks in “others” and be kind to them too.

And remember the ultimate key to liberation – “Love will set you free” As Michael Franti sings.

ANOTHER EASY WAY TO THINK OF THIS IS:

1. Stop giving energy to the things you don’t want.
2. Everything begins with a thought.  Even Einstein says, “The ancestor to every action is a thought.”
3. Once you understand fully that what you think about is what EXPANDS you start to get very careful about what you think about.

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”