First Class Free

  By Laura Mills   

   This Sunday traditional Chinese families will celebrate Chinese New Year, a holiday of abundant symbolism that honors family unity, joy, and peace. One of the customs observed in preparation for the 15-day-long celebration is the thorough cleaning of the family home; sweeping, scrubbing, polishing and painting represent the departure of bad fortune and an invitation to good. In the physical sense the cleaning clears dirt and clutter. In the mental sense it bestows the promise of a new beginning and indicates the first step towards greater things to come.

   I adore this tie between literal house cleaning and metaphorical starting over. For one, I have always found activities like vacuuming and scrubbing—while not always enjoyable—extremely therapeutic for stress and sadness, so the idea of cleaning to obtain something more than sparkling countertops really resonates. But also, it’s a very yogic concept. As we practice yoga postures we bend, twist, stretch and invert the physical body; we also inhale and exhale, three-dimensionally expanding and contracting the torso as well as infusing fresh nutrients all throughout. Physically speaking, among other things, this practice strengthens, tones, detoxifies, and heals.

   But much, much more occurs with the physical act of putting body and breath through yoga. At the very least, we “just feel good” as we rise from our mats after practice. Yes, body and breath move more freely, but this feeling also includes a lightness of mind that wasn’t present before. Sincere and heart-felt yoga practice graces us with restoration of calm, heightening of confidence, and clearance of blockages that we may not have even known existed. Many of us rise from the mat with fresh perspective and newfound positivity; some of us even rise with a little more self-love.  

   One might say that yoga invites us towards a new beginning every time we practice. How fortunate we are, really, that peace and joy are only a breath away! 

  By Laura Mills

  With Halloween just past I’ve been thinking about disguises.  Like most kids I loved October 31. Over the course of my younger years I disguised myself as, among other things, Pebbles Flintstone, Raggedy Ann, a princess, a witch, a hippie (several times!), and a cat. But Halloween, of course, isn’t just for kids; for plenty of adults, dressing up as someone or something else is just...FUN.  

  Putting the festiveness of Halloween aside, I’m wondering why we love disguises so much. Not only on Halloween—after all, a disguise doesn’t require a mask, whiskers and a tail, or even unfamiliar clothes. However we go about it, we find comfort in fooling others about our identity, in others’ not knowing whom we really are. Think about it…as children, who among us didn’t at one time or another want to be invisible? Then, with time dawned the knowledge that we couldn’t make ourselves disappear, but we could do anything but. Now, short of donning fake fangs or a wig, we devise countless ways of hiding the person we are on the inside. Maybe it’s the tremendous relief from self-consciousness….

  Years ago, when I taught high school science, every October at least one student would ask me about my upcoming Halloween costume. I would always joke, “I’m going to be a chemistry teacher.” Today, I see the actual seriousness of that statement. The most difficult disguise to wear is no disguise at all. Appearing as the real you—heart, soul, and everything in between, within and without—is more frightening than dressing up in even the scariest Halloween costume. But I have no doubt it’s also the most worthwhile way to let the world see you. 

  By Laura Mills

  I was feeling great, better than ever, about yoga at the beginning of this year, for I had recently discovered deeper places in both my physical and mental practices. But over the next months a variety of ups and downs lured me away from my mat…and when I returned to a regular practice in July, the challenges I met overwhelmed me. Something I had thought as simple as a Basic Vinyasa, for example, actually HURT, and even Low Lunges wouldn’t happen without aches and wobbles. I nearly cried on my way home from my first class back, and as my “yoga mood” fell, so did my confidence.

  Only after a few weeks did I see that before me lay a chance to live one of my favorite yogic teachings. I often theme my classes around it, in fact: the importance of accepting ourselves as we are. It’s a choice we make, when things change or don’t turn out the way we want, at that dynamic point between utter despair and genuine “Ah, whatever.”

  I chose acceptance. Which didn’t mean I was any more thrilled to be sore after sequences that hadn’t challenged me a few months before, or that I laughed when I pulled out of Side Angle or toppled out of Tree. But it did mean that I no longer measured that day’s practice against that of any previous day. It also meant that with every breath I restored peace to my heart, and that when I rolled my mat at the end of practice I did so with self-love.

  I choose acceptance, as many times as I possibly can when I need to make that choice.

  Easy? No. But then most of life’s most worthwhile choices aren’t easy at all, are they?

  By Laura Mills

 

  Last week I attended a 75-minute class that left me with achy hips and legs 24 hours later. I loved the class—it was one of those fast-flowing, core-centered sweaty practices—but the challenge caught me a little off-guard and left me wincing with every step long after Savasana ended.

  Every yogi encounters moments like these on the mat. We struggle where we usually don’t and think, “Wait, I can usually do this without a problem. What’s wrong?” One of the most difficult things to do—on the mat as well as off—is to remain kind to and accepting of ourselves as we are. Until about ten years ago, I was used to surpassing most challenges with determination and hard work. But the challenges grew more difficult than I could handle, and I broke down…which is when yoga, thankfully, provided a safe place within which I could struggle but still ultimately find peace. I learned that all challenges, large and small, on the mat and off, eventually either pass or deepen into something that serves.

  I believe there’s no safer place for a little bit of struggle than a yoga mat. It’s okay; we never push to the point of pain, but we learn to gradually accept struggle as a teacher while we mindfully assess, align and adjust our way towards more positive tomorrows.

All-Over Adjustment

  By Laura Mills

   My adulthood so far has consisted of two phases: “Before Yoga” and “With Yoga.” In the first phase I worked a fine job and maintained my home life and body in the way I thought best for me. The plan worked, for a while, but by my late-twenties I had wedged myself into a meltdown between grief and confusion. In its midst, yoga seemed like something worth trying…and thus began the second phase. Since then, I’ve learned what changes to make and how to make them, as well as how to coexist with all aspects of my life (even those that didn’t turn out the way I originally wanted). I’ve also learned to honor myself ALWAYS as a unique and beautiful being. 
   Whether or not a yogi’s story involves major life alterations, at some level the practice changes all of us. Even if we only try yoga because it looks fun, or we want to someday balance on our hands, the practice leaves us in a place different from the one in which we began. I consider all the yogi stories I’ve heard since I started my own practice: among many others, stories involving stress reduction and recovery from tragedy or illness; stories of yoga as a hobby, as cross-training for other sports, as a component of an overall fitness program; stories about yoga feeling good, teaching people about themselves, and enabling them to meet their spirituality. I love yogi stories. To me they represent the tremendous spectrum of human experience and the fact that, no matter who we are or where we come from, we all revolve around the same amazing center. 

April 7, 2011.  Spiritual practice doesn't mean we don't ever face self doubt or worry.  We do.  The difference for me in my life is that when this happens I know better questions to ask myself.  Then it’s a matter of believing, trusting, having pure faith.  We are destined to rise to life’s highest ideal if we just keep the faith and trust in ourselves.  This is like a promise we make to ourselves, an example of the most important kind of active faith for it’s the promise of believing in our best happiness.  Now what I like most about Faith is best offered in the words of Sharon Salzberg who writes, “In Pali, faith is a verb, an ACTION, as it is also in Latin and Hebrew.  Faith is not a singular state that we either have or don’t have , but is something that we do.  We ‘faithe”.  It is the willingness to take the next step, to see the unknown as an adventure, to launch a journey.  Faith is what gets us out of bed, opens us to the possibility that our lives can be different.  Though we may repeatedly stumble, afraid to move forward in the dark, we have the strength to take that magnitude of risk because of faith.” 

Through FAITH we can see that although heartache or hurt exists in the world with Faith we will recover.  Helen Keller says it like this, “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”  How do we action our faith? First we must accept that Faith is active, it’s something we have to take responsibility in doing.  We can’t expect our healing to happen if we aren’t most interested in our own healings.  I believe Jon Kabat Zinn who defines trust as “spiritual and emotional maturity”.  It takes faith to have confidence in our potential for evolving in our maturity (physically, emotionally, emotionally). In yoga this is the most advanced pose, loving ourselves. 

As Rumi writes, We are the mirror as well as the face in it.  We are pain and what cures pain both.  He encourages us to be the catalyst for faith healing our own wounds. How do we do this? Rumi puts it most simply when he writes:

I love myself...I love you.

I love you...I love myself.

So join me and let's faithe everyday, without fail and watch ourselves and the world grow in love. Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

PS Here are the two Salutations we learned and practiced in backbending class this day.

 

4th Chakra Namaskar Hridaya Namaskar (Heart Salutation)

INHALE – Urdva Bhujangasana (Standing Backbend)

EXHALE— Uttanasana (Forward Fold-Hands Down Thighs)

INHALE – Eka Pada Prasarita Padottanasana (Standing Splits)

EXHALE - Ardha Anjaneyasana Right (Low Lunge) Prep

INHALE/EXHALE – Ardha Anjaneyasana Flow Side to Side

INHALE -- Ardha Anjaneyasana (Low Lunge)-Back Bend full expression!

EXHALE –Anahatasana (Quarter Dog)

INHALE – Bhujapidasana (Cobra)

EXHALE – (Lay on Belly)           

INHALE -- Urdhva Mukha Svanasana  (Up Dog)

EXHALE – Adho Mukha Svanasana (Down Dog)

INHALE - Eka Pada Adho Mukha Svanasana Left Leg (1 Leg Dog)

EXHALE - Ardha Anjaneyasana Right (Low Lunge) Prep

INHALE/EXHALE – Ardha Anjaneyasana Flow Side to Side

INHALE - Ardha Anjaneyasana (Low Lunge)-Back Bend full expression!

EXHALE - Eka Pada Prasarita Padottanasana (Standing Splits)

INHALE/EXHALE – Uttanasana (Forward Fold-Hands Down Thighs)

INHALE – Urdva Bhujangasana (Standing Backbend)

*Repeat again but stand on left leg this time, step back right

 

5th Chakra Namaskar

INHALE - Upward Plank

EXHALE - Lower Hips

INHALE - Boat

EXHALE - Plow

INHALE - Tip Toe Pose Urdva Hasta Arm Position

EXHALE - Forward Fold Arms Fly Back Chin to Chest           

INHALE - Tip Toe Pose to Camel

EXHALE - Camel backbend

INHALE - Place hands prepare

EXHALE - Plank to floor

INHALE – Cobra Low

EXHALE – Locust

INHALE – Bow no hands

EXHALE - Rest

INHALE – Cobra High

EXHALE - Downward Dog

INHALE - Jump to Sukhasana

April 2, 2011.  Count how many times you’ve set an expectation in the last 24 hours?  About the weather, your job, your partner, your children, your family? And then compare that to how many times the reality matched your expectation.

How did that make you feel?

When we have decided in advance how someone else is going to act or how a situation is going to be we open ourselves up to suffering when the reality doesn’t match our expectation.  In yogic philosophy this attachment to expectation is a root cause of human suffering.  

Focused inward another name for expectation is Self-Judgment. This critical prism of judging ourselves in advance of the outcome and again with the result only brings more disappointment.

We would do well to heed the advice of Eckhart Tolle in the Power of Now who writes, “When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power.  The realm of Being, which has been obscured by the mind, then opens up.  Suddenly, a great stillness arises within you, and an unfathomable sense of peace.  And within that peace, there is great joy.  And within that joy, there is love.”  This practice on and off the mat helps us to see clearly without making happiness dependent upon our expectations.  This acceptance for sure brings about inner peace, joy and love.

So that no matter what the world presents we know we can manage remaining quiet and centered at our center.  "Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment. It is part of the isness of the Now. You can't argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer." (Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth)

Who goes on to write “To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly.”  Try it for a week or even a day where you surrender your heavy expectations of yourself and others and live with less resistance to this isness of now and then decide if its worth going back to again living with the burden of expectation for even a day longer.  Love yourself, love your day, love your ilfe, Silvia

 

TODAY’S SWEET PLAYLIST

Gobinday Mukunday, Spirit Voyage Artists

In Another Time, Sade

Miss Teardrops, Felix Laband

Allah Hoo, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Yara Seeli Seeli, Lata Mangeshkar

Express Yourself, Mocean Worker, Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street

Mr Big Stuff, Jean Knight

In The Colors, Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals

Blind to You, Collie Buddz           

Jet Lag, Joss Stone

Butterflyz, Alicia Keys

In A Sentimental Mood, Nancy Wilson with Hank Jones

Shavasana/Deep Relaxation, Shiva Rea

 

April 1, 2011.  Do you talk to yourself?  I do. All the time.  And if you believe science we all talk to ourselves nonstop. The question beneath the question is more so about the "Quality of communication" you have in your self-talk.   

"We all have voices in our heads which ?talks to us on an almost constant basis. ?Our voices give us messages continually, ?and what they say to us affects us." - Juliene Berk

In yoga we actively observe our self-talk and we study ourselves to learn about ourselves.  This is known as Svadhaya. For most of us this is a huge paradigm shift.  We grow up spending close to 100% of our time studying what everyone else has attempted or accomplished.  We learn how to be more interested in what others think about who we are than what we think of our own opinion.  I look back at all the hours spent worrying and intensely studying how others talked to me than what I was saying to myself and now realize the emphasis was in the wrong place.  

John Lembo says "Every waking moment we talk to ourselves about the things we experience. Our self-talk, the thoughts we communicate to ourselves, in turn control the way we feel and act."  In yoga we not only observe our thoughts but we practice talking to ourselves on purpose, with purpose. "Self-suggestion makes you master of yourself." (W. Clement Stone)  We learn that what we say to ourselves and how we say it impacts how we feel. We learn that we are responsible for creating our world from the inside out.  

“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!”

The other key learning that becomes transportable from our yoga is the way we talk to ourselves is how we talk to other people (our partner, our children, our friends).  These are never two separate things. Our communication is practiced with ourselves from ourselves first.  Then the more life affirming our self-talk is the more positive we are in how we talk to everyone!  Love yourself, love your day, love your life, Silvia

 

April 1, 2011. As promised I wanted you to have a copy of this Chandra Namaskar (Moon Salutation) that I taught in class on Friday.  It has such an amazing inward feeling and paired perfectly with our theme of Self-Talk as Self-Study.  Enjoy at home when you need to feel more centered.  Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

Moon Salutation - Traditional

Moon Salutation (Chandra Namaskar) consists of 20 steps starting and ending with the prayer pose. 

Step 1: Prayer Pose 

Step 2: Half Moon Pose to the Right

Step 3: Half moon Pose to the Left

Step 4: Standing Backward-Bending Pose

Step 5: Transition Pose 1      Exhale as you return to vertical position. Inhale as you sidestep to the right, bringing straight arms down to shoulder level, parallel to the floor. 

Step 6: Standing Legs-Apart Hands-to-Feet Pose     Prasarita Paddatonasana

Step 7: Transition Pose 2     Inhale as you return to a vertical position, with straight arms over your head, palms pressed together, thumbs crossed, at the same time turning your torso & feet to the right (left foot slightly less). 

Step 8: Standing Head-to-Knee Pose to the Right     Pyramid

Step 9: Standing Head-to-Knee Pose to the Left 

Exhale as you bend forward and down, right knee locked, directing your forehead toward your left knee. At the same time, try to touch the floor with your fingertips as far ahead of your left foot as you can. Gradually straighten your left leg, keeping your arms and fingers extended. Feel the stretch in your legs, back, shoulders, and arms. 

Note: If this is too difficult, you might support yourself with your fingertips resting on the ground on either side of your foot.

Step 10: Standing Hands-to-Feet Pose        Forward Bend

Step 11: Crescent Moon Pose on Right Leg – Lunge Knee Down

Inhale as you place your fingertips or palms on the floor beside your feet. At the same time take a big step back with your right, raising your torso and head, briefly assuming the Lunge Pose. Still inhaling, if you wish bring your hands over head 

Step 12: Squatting Pose with Forward Bending    Inhale as you place your fingertips or palms on the floor and bring your right leg forward equal with your left. Your weight is supported by your toes and fingertips. Your thighs are parallel to the floor. Exhale as you bend forward, bringing your chest as close to your thighs as possible, fully stretching your back. 

Step 13: Crescent Moon Pose on Left Leg 

Step 14: Downward Dog Pose

Step 15: Downward Dog Pose with Right-Leg Raise      Inhale-exhale as you raise your right leg as high as you can, keeping your knee locked and pointing your foot. Inhale-exhale as you lower your leg & resume the Downward Dog Pose.

Step 16: Downward Dog Pose with Left-Leg Raise 

Step 17: Cobra Pose     Inhale as you roll forward, supporting yourself on your legs, belly and palms.

Step 18: Squatting Pose   Inhale as you roll back onto your toes with help from your arms. Exhale as you lift your knees from the ground, still supporting yourself with your fingertips. 

Step 19: Squatting Pose with Arms over the Head    

Inhale-exhale as you raise your arms over your head, palms together, thumbs crossed. Your back straight, and your thighs parallel to the floor. Feel the stretch in your torso, shoulders, and arms. 

Step 20: Prayer Pose    Inhale as you stand up, simultaneously bringing your hands to your chest resuming Prayer Pose. 

 

MARCH 19, 2011: This time of year as we transition from Winter to Spring our To Do Lists seem overstuffed. While we have more ways to make our lives easier through technology we insist on overwhelming ourselves on purpose by engineering these massive lists of stuff “we have to do” this Spring.  

So today I invite you to create a TO BE list. 

Say to yourself “how am I going TO BE no matter what gets done, or the outcome of this situation.” 

When we focus on a TO BE List it is giving ourselves permission to do the hardest pose of all which is TO BE YOURSELF. And I can promise you that being yourself is the most important decision anyone can make. There is a serious paradigm shift that must take place especially if you’ve been used to trying to be who everyone else wants you to be.  And as a result you will temporarily disappoint some people. Especially if you have been consumed on making your To Be Lists to prove your self-worth to other people. 

To me the motivation for moving away from To Do Lists towards To Be is that it returns us to place where we can make peace with ourselves.  That space of radical self-acceptance that demonstrates unconditional self-love.  We are all a work in progress but that awareness of letting ourselves be who we are is vital to positive mental, emotional and spiritual health. Eckhart Tolle in the book A New Earth says it like this on page 184:  "Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment. It is part of the isness of the Now. You can't argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer."

This is isness of now is where we allow ourselves to surrender into being: no fighting, no resisting, no arguments.  I can tell you during times of challenge the mat was the only place I felt like I could BE myself. And I mean my real self. And where I felt safe to laugh or cry or both at the same time.  And the more we accept ourselves in this state of beingness the more we know how to accept others being themselves.  It is a straightforward spiritual law.  You cannot offer to others what you don’t practice for yourself.  If you don’t have peace you can’t make peace, if you don’t love yourself you can’t really love someone else, if you don’t fully accept how amazing you are, you WILL NEVER accept others, if you don't know how To Be you won't allow others To Be either.  

So today practice making a To Be List. And the first thing on that to be list is BE YOU!  Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

PS If you need time off to help your To Be List then come on retreat with Alchemy Tours. Allow us to support you unconditionally. It will transform your life!  www.alchemytours.com

 

March 20, 2011.  I often ask myself what is the true test of my Spiritual Growth? Or more simply put I meditate on the question "Am I still growing?"  When I was little my Mom measured us (me and my brother) against the door in our house and marked the little lines proving I was actually growing physically.  You did that too, right? Well, I loved that.  I was sad the day she stopped doing it and I stopped growing.

Well that's speaking to physical growth.  I am as tall as I'm going to be (although to be honest by practicing yoga I've gotten a little taller, just a quarter inch but that's pretty cool).

However what I'm speaking about is emotional and spiritual growth.  My aspiration continues to be that I grow into the BEST version of myself.  And that's what I hope for you too. 

Or as True Nobility is defined: it is not about being better than anyone else, it is about being better than you used to be, much better.  This is the barometer of our ability to raise our spiritual energy. Are you better than you used to be?  Are you growing?

"The only difference between a flower that is alive and one that is dead is that the live flower is still growing."  - Dr Wayne Dyer

For me I received so much nourishment, like a flower, from my daily yoga practice that I wanted more. That's when I started taking yoga workshops: first they were the 2 hour kind, then the half day, then the full day, finally entire weekends both locally and eventually I started traveling all over the U.S to attend 2-3 day trainings and workshops until I went all the way by signing up for a one week yoga retreat in Italy with Sadie Nardini.  Well that did it for me. I could experience for myself that to keep growing I had to keep investing in myself and more time dedicated to evolving my consciousness was required to do that.  And traveling to new places and exploring new territories externally matched the growth I was making internally.  They went hand in hand.

And that's when I made the commitment to start leading yoga retreats combined with other ways to express one's yoga and vitality like cycling and hiking. I want to give everyone a chance to really invest in your own growth and raise your energy by visiting places that support your evolution.

You see, until the last breath, I don't buy into wellness as defined by the AMA as the "absence of illness". I believe in the potential for radiant health (shakti) as the World Health Organization defines wellness.  I am growing! And I am learning. And the higher my vibration the softer I get on the outside. I am kinder, more patient, nicer and easily more loving.  I think we all are when we're growing.  So make that commitment to yourself keep affirming your life! Love yourself, love your day, love your life, Silvia

 

In the words of Lao Tzu, 

"At birth all people are soft and yielding

At death they are hard and stiff

All green plants are tender and yielding

At death they are brittle and dry

When hard and rigid we consort with death

When soft and flexible we Affirm Greater Life."

March 16, 2011.  Yoga is a journey into our own uniqueness.  It is a story of rediscovery for most of us.  What with all the noise, busyness and stress of daily life we often lose track of what is most special about us.  Fundamentally, when we practice I try to share that there is a difference between fitting the pose to the person or the person to the pose.  I want you to feel like your best self, not trying to look like anyone else in the asana.  For this reason I teach in a way that always emphasizes the person in the pose, whereby we Feel rather than worry about what we look like.  Yes our bodies are our instrument to help us navigate more internally. However that journey into our essence (rasa) will look differently person by person on the outside.

We may share the same intentions related to turning on to the beauty and power within our hearts but how we get there is unique.

In fact everything about you is unique, not just your finger prints.  The way you breath is part of your specialness, your nuances, your quirks and your individual expression create an alchemy that make you an Individual.  You are different so why not celebrate that?  Like the song goes, God made us funky.  Be that. Be you. Be your best.

In this way yoga is non competitive (yeah we hear that yoga cliche a lot) but more importantly yoga is noncomparitive.

No one has your unique features, your exact background, your personality.  Your essence is your most valuable gift. And my greatest teaching intention is that you rediscover or discover this sweetness of you and bring it forth into the other 23 hours off the mat day in and day out.  It is in giving ourselves our own permission to be who we are that we by example give permission to everyone else to be themselves.  Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

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February 25, 2011:  The second agreement is not to take anything personally.  Don Miguel Ruiz explains this, "Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.  All people live in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in.  When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world. If someone gives you an opinion don't take it personally, because the truth is that this person is dealing with his or her own feelings, beliefs and opinions.  If you do not take it anything personally, you are immune to it."  

This is one level of understanding so on the mat we let everyone do their own yoga. We don't worry about whether someone next to us can do a deeper variation of a pose, it's not about us. They are practicing their own yoga and we should focus on our own yoga.  Now the other level of this experience is as Ruiz says so well, "even the opinions you have about yourself are not necessarily truth; therefore, you don't need to take whatever you hear in your own mind personally.  We have a CHOICE whether or not to believe the voices we hear within our minds. The mind can also talk and listen to itself." So be careful and choosy about what you listen to in your own mind.  Let go of the old stories that don't serve you that hurt you that keep you from being more of your potential.  

What we experience if we Don't Take Things Personally is, "you avoid many upsets in your life. Your anger, jealousy, and envy will disappear, and even your sadness will simply disappear if you don't take things personally. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering."  

And of course it always comes back to LOVE.  "If you keep this agreement, you can travel around the world with your HEART completely OPEN and no one can hurt you. You can say, "I love you." without fear of being ridiculed or rejected. You can ask for what you need. You can say yes without guilt or self-judgement. You can choose to follow your heart always!"  I love all of you and hope you can embrace this agreement to love yourself, love your day, love your life!  Silvia  

Like a bee seeking nectar, seek teachings everywhere.  Like a deer, seek a quiet place to digest all that you have gathered."  -Dzogchen Tantra

February 5th, 2011.  I am a student of life a dedicated love anthropologist.  I wear on my wrist Ancora Imparo words spoken by Michelangelo at the age of 75 years old.  Translated this means "I am still learning".  And anyone who knows me knows I take my love of learning seriously. I am dutifully always trying to live in a way that acknowledges the significance of each precious moment and what it teaches me.

The Yoga is always our best teacher.  It stretches our mind muscle and teaches us how to connect with ourselves and accept the sense things make or make sense of things as they are.  Its like working a puzzle which requires concentration and persistence in our bodies and in our hearts. It is not achieved without interest in our own learning. 

So today start with the answer YES to all questions by opening up to the teachings that flow in your path whether they be good, difficult, interesting, or funny.  Try to learn from all of them my friends! Keep close to heart some final inspiration from Michelangelo  "And I hope that I may always desire more than I can accomplish." With heartfelt hope for us all to be students of life in the world with the desire to keep learning! Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia  

 

PS Join me on retreat this year www.silviamordini.com Moab April 16-19, 2011 and Tuscany June 19-25, 2011 coming up!

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

February 11, 2011. 

Set your life on fire.

Seek those who fan your flames. - RUMI

I read somewhere that “no one is born with healthy self-esteem” we must learn this quality as we face our challenges.  In the energy system this is the work of the 3^rdchakra, the solar plexus, or Manipura.  The energies of this chakra have at their heart the intention to help us mature in our self-understanding like how we feel and take care of ourselves. This spiritual quality is about self-respect.  How we feel about ourselves, whether we have a strong sense of self-esteem determines our quality of life, our capacity to succeed in relationships, and our overall vitality.  

The spiritual truth here is that if we don’t like ourselves our energy sags.  And the lower our energy the less able we are to attract healthy relationships and job situations. To know if your 3^rd Chakra is in balance take a moment and honestly ask yourself: are you choosing situations, people, & things that drain your energy or grow your energy? 

For meditation ask yourself these questions:

·         Where were you last February 2010?

·         Where are you now?

·         Do you have more energy today?

·         Where do you see yourself February 2012?

From this practice of yoga I want us all to keep stoking the fire! I want for you to feel energized and excited about your life. And if you aren't feeling that way then the time is now to set an expectation for yourself – to your own growth and evolution – and surround yourself with those that seek to fan your flames. You are all amazing and as we continue paying attention to the health of our 3^rdchakra please know you have all come a very long way already and let's take it to that next level.  SET YOUR LIFE ON FIRE!  Love yourself, love your day, love your life!  Silvia

*Join me with Alchemy Tours www.alchemytours.com to set the fire ablaze full blast!

January 11, 2011.  I cry at movies and commercials and youtube videos and people hugging at the airport and puppies playing and...well you get the picture. Even though I am not part of the action or in the movie to the brain it doesn't matter. The mind will fool us because our brains don't really work with the concept of reality.  That's why we can upset ourselves just by demoralizing thoughts or catastrophizing what can go wrong.  

So as Dr Dyer says, "as you think, so shall you be." You become what you think, in yogic terms you create your own reality from the inside.  In other words, the world is not created "out there" and then experienced internally.You can tell yourself what you want to believe and this in and of itself fools your mind into wanting it and believing it to be real.  And your mind will find a way to make it happen (because it thinks it has).  As Einstein says, the predecessor to every action is a thought.  

Affirmations work!  Pick one of these each day for the rest of the month and just say it to yourself all day long, write it down, email it to yourself, post it up.  Surround yourself with it for one day, each at a time.  And see for yourself that Affirmations are what yoga talks about in harnessing the power of minds, or our intentions and directing them in the direction of our best selves.  Love your day, love yourself, love your life! Silvia

 JANUARY AFFIRMATIONS

* I am a radiant being filled with light and love.

* I love and accept myself exactly as I am.

* I now express love to all those I meet.

* I am radiating love.

* I bathe in unconditional love

* Love radiates from me at all times.

* I love myself completely.

* Love comes to me easily and effortlessly.

* I give and receive love easily and joyfully.

* Others love me easily and joyfully.

* I now feel loved and appreciated by my parents, my friends.

* I express love freely

* As I give love, I am instantly supplied with more.

* I radiate love to all persons and places and things.

* People are just waiting to love me, and I allow them.

* I breathe in universal love.

* I attract loving, beautiful people into my life.

* I always deserve love.

* I am attracting loving relationships into my life.

* I project love to everyone I meet.

* I love and approve of myself.

www.silviamordini.com  and www.alchemytours.com to join me and work on the power of intention while on retreat with me in 2011!

JANUARY 10, 2011.  "We must not allow other people's limited perceptions to define us.” -Virginia Satir

Newsweek last December 9th did a story that spoke to how research shows Blaming Others is Contagious.  Yes, I think we've all seen that for ourselves as some point whether it was on the playground or around a conference room table with fellow managers.  This learned human behavior is one of the first things I remember when I started the practice of Yoga.  I'd get on the mat and if class was hard for me I'd blame the teacher (clearly they made it too hard, it wasn't me).  If I couldn't balance I'd blame the students around me for falling out of the pose and distracting me, it wasn't me.  If I had difficulty holding downward dog or plank pose I'd blame the teacher for keeping us there too long, it wasn't about my upper body strength or tendency to give up too soon.  And if I got confused by the instructions of a teacher it for sure wasn't about me not listening, the teacher was unclear.

We live in a victimized society.  

And as many of you know my story I have on three very distinct occasions been victimized whether it was being run over by a car as a pedestrian or losing my Father when he was a young 59 years old due to negligence at the hospital.  I have struggled with what it means to be a victim and what is meant by victim rights and for while there I got really good at blaming others for the quality of my life.  

Then I realized the more I blamed others the more judgmental I became of everyone and everything.  I stopped thinking about the intention and effort others were putting in.  Or as Jen Gray Blackburn writes,  ‎"You will find life a whole lot easier if you can keep in mind that most people are just trying to do the best they can..." And now every time I step on my yoga mat I remember to take responsibility for myself and my breath and my poses.  No one else is to blame.

Yoga is the anti-victim mentality.

And as a teacher of yoga and for those aspiring teachers you have to know that most if not all students will go through this same evolution and not to take it personally.  You will be the person in front of them causing the friction (or at least that's what they'll think) until they take over responsibility for themselves and transform their lives.  Jackie Robinson puts it like this, “I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me... All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.”

Really what spiritual practice is teaching is nicely summarized by Stacey Charter, “Don't rely on someone else for your happiness and self worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can't love and respect yourself - no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are - completely; the good and the bad.”  Through the time we make for ourselves on the mat we begin to realize this whether slowly or quickly but at some point a shift happens and you stop blaming others and instead take full responsibility saying to yourself as a constant inner mantra I am loving myself, I am loving my day and I am loving my life! Now I'd love for you to imagine a world where the contagion of blame has disappeared forever! When blame disappears only love will remain. Big love in all ways, Silvia

*Dedicated to all those yoga teachers out there teaching their hearts out and serving as the catalyst for change in the world!

Do Over By Laura Mills 

   Whether writing a yoga class or an essay, I never erase. Not that I don’t make mistakes, but when I do I scratch them out, content with the messier route in my urgency to shape what I feel is better work. People who glimpse my notes and journals don’t believe I make sense of them, littered as they are with scribbles and swirls. But somehow I do, moving forward after difficult moments to produce something that satisfies me.  

   I wish moving forward were that easy for me off-paper.

   In eight months of teaching yoga, I’ve frequently finished a class feeling less-than-100%. Maybe the sequence didn’t flow as smoothly as I intended, maybe I left too little time for Savasana, maybe the music didn’t compliment the flow, maybe I philosophized too much. And immediately after such a class, I‘ve struggled not to say to my students, “No, wait! Come back! I can do better!” I want to try again, to produce a better version, and I want to do it right away—but of course, I can only hope the same students attend my next class and see me in what I vow will be better form.

   I don’t believe this feeling is unique to new yoga teachers, but I do hope it occurs less frequently with time. I wonder how long I will teach before I rarely second-guess myself. I wonder how long I will teach before the chance is excellent that at the end of my next class I’ll be satisfied. For now, while I grapple with my confidence, I remind myself that when challenged on the mat we slow down, breathe and re-center. It's a familiar, easier-said-than-done practice, one that my own yoga teachers have taught me over and over and one that I now teach my students. Instead of pushing ahead in a hurry, we pause and tune back in, return to our natural rhythm, and then move forward refreshed. This lesson impacted me hugely when I first started practicing, a few years ago at a time when I was urgently—and unsuccessfully—attempting to push my way through the effects of a personal tragedy. Like so many yogis before me, the patience and self-care I met on the mat flowed into the rest of my life, and with time and practice, eventually I was able to gently start again and progress towards the future with a newly-centered spirit.  

   Now, in my role as yoga teacher, after any less-than-100% class I experience that same initial urgency. I want so badly to serve my students in the best way possible, to live up to the credentials I now possess. When I feel a class falls short, I want to go back and improve it immediately…but instead, like I do on the mat, I know I must remember to slow down and re-center, tapping into that patience and self-care that has served me so well in yoga practice and elsewhere.  

   I know I have everything I need to teach yoga well; I also know I judge myself more critically than anyone else ever could. As 2011 begins, I will work on tending my confidence and encouraging it to thrive. I will also remind myself with love that every yoga teacher, new or otherwise, experiences difficult moments now and then. Unlike in writing, we can’t erase those moments even if we want to—but if we slow down and re-center we can, at least in a way, scratch them out and make them not matter so much. Then we can move forward, refreshed, into our next class, onto a fresh page.

Greetings Friends! 

January 1, 2011  Yesterday I posted my last blog of 2010. I have included it at the bottom of this final newsletter of the year in hopes it inspires your own dreams. And really that is my invitation to you: "dream a dream with me." Time on the mat helps us stay connected to what inspires us.  So here are some of my favorite quotes from a book given to me by my sweet friend Anne titled Dream by Susan Bosak.  May they connect you to spirit so you can awaken your greatest dreams ever in 2011!

 Love yourself, love your day, love your life, Silvia    

 "Whoever would one day learn to fly must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying." - Nietzsche

 "The Possible's slow fuse is lit by the Imagination." - Emily Dickinson

"A hundred million miracles are happening every day." - Oscar Hammerstein

"The difficulty in life is the choice." - George Moore

"Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly." -Langston Hughes

"You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for our own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity." - Marie Curie

 

New Years Day Schedule:

5am-7am Sadhana Kundalini (FREE)

10am Level 1 with Wendy

11:30am Level 1-2 with Wendy

1:30pm Restorative Yoga with Samantha

 

PS - Join me January 14-15 Living Your Yoga Workshops

 

**********************************

December 31, 2010 Blog by Silvia Mordini: Adventure, Remembrance, Victory!

As I reflect on this past year, which was one of intense personal change one of the things I am most proud of is making a pilgrimage to Moab, Utah twice.  Both times to help nourish my spirit and connect to the quiet sense of adventure that exists for all that visit Moab.  For a while I forgot what it was like to make adventure.  This was the year I remembered again.

And that is really at the heart of yoga.  This practice helps us remember to remember.  We all sometimes experience spiritual amnesia.  Getting on the mat is that reminder of celebrating life and enjoying this time in this body on this earth right now. 

Edward Abbey writes in one of my favorite books about Moab titled Desert Solitaire "Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still here. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards." 

I will never again put my heart in a safe deposit box, I'd rather take chances in love, in life, in traveling and even in my poses so I can be a more active participant in driving my best life forward rather than sitting in the backseat waiting for it to happen.  I will until my last breath run and cycle and yoga and explore and discover the small victories that exist in taking pleasure in life! And I hope if you have learned anything from your yoga that you will find this true for yourself as well.  Love yourself, love your day, love your life!  Happy New Year, Silvia

PS Join me on an adventure with Alchemy Tours www.alchemytours.com or visit my website to keep up with upcoming retreats www.silviamordini.com

December 31, 2010.  As I reflect on this past year, which was one of intense personal change one of the things I am most proud of is making a pilgrimage to Moab, Utah twice.  Both times to help nourish my spirit and connect to the quiet sense of adventure that exists for all that visit Moab.  For a while I forgot what it was like to make adventure.  This was the year I remembered again.

And that is really at the heart of yoga.  This practice helps us remember to remember.  We all sometimes experience spiritual amnesia.  Getting on the mat is that reminder of celebrating life and enjoying this time in this body on this earth right now. 

Edward Abbey writes in one of my favorite books about Moab titled Desert Solitaire "Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards." 

I will never again put my heart in a safe deposit box, I'd rather take chances in love, in life, in traveling and even in my poses so I can be a more active participant in driving my best life forward rather than sitting in the backseat waiting for it to happen.  I will until my last breath run and cycle and yoga and explore and discover the small victories that exist in taking pleasure in life! And I hope if you have learned anything from your yoga that you will find this true for yourself as well.  Love yourself, love your day, love your life!  Happy New Year, Silvia

PS Join me on an adventure with Alchemy Tours www.alchemytours.com or visit my website to keep up with upcoming retreats www.silviamordini.com

December 10, 2010.  As you breath and enjoy this holiday season make time to set an expectation for your life this next year.  Are you on the right path so far?  And whatever you decide just know we are all evolving in the direction of happiness. It is our right.  Freedom and the pursuit of happiness is your destiny!  It is like what’s written in the Alchemist,“Making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.”  And when you need time to reflect on where you’ve been and where you want to go get on the mat where you’ll always discover you have the power, the heart and the energy to achieve anything you want! 

This is what we mean by hugging in.  This practice of yoga helps us practice strengthening our connection to what we want and who we really are as authentic human beings.  And just like a hug between two people takes trust, so does meeting yourself and making the healthy decisions that will propel your life forward.  Love yourself, love the day, love your life! Silvia

Visit my website to learn more about my retreats classes and workshops www.silviamordini.com www.alchemytours.com

DECEMBER 4, 2010.  We have lots of new friends in yoga class which I'm totally stoked about! And one of the greatest things about new students is how they teach us to really think about Why we practice yoga?  Taking a step back lets just explain how cool it is that yoga is something we "practice".   We are not trying to conquer it or complete it or perfect the crap out of it, we just show up and practice. That's all.  And what is yoga really? Donna Farhi, Master yoga teacher and author says, “In its broadest sense yoga is a return to wholeness. There is an uncompromising belief in yoga philosophy that wholeness is our implicit birthright.  But most of us forget our wholeness, or in yogic terms we forget our true nature, and we live in a kind of illusion that we are alone."   

As a result we end up suffering from a kind of SPIRITUAL AMNESIA that makes us feel separate from our authentic selves, separate from others, separate from feeling better. Yoga is any practice that restores this original wholeness and sense of connection with the world.” And really the reason you practice or I practice is both the same and different. On the one hand we all practice yoga to feel better.  

And how we go about it is unique and special to each of us.  It could be we practice today for physical reasons (to lose 10 pounds), to relieve physical pain, to alleviate mental stress, to process our emotions or even to practice being more spiritual.  All reasons are welcomed and all are good.  Yoga is exactly what you need it to be for you.  It's like taking a field trip to the ocean and we will all focus on one aspect more than another (the sun, the heat, the sand, the sound, the smell, the water).

My all time favorite definition of yoga that I take on as my own as well is by David Frawley, Yoga and Ayurveda:

“Yoga is one of the most extraordinary spiritual sciences that mankind has discovered.  It is like a gem of great proportions, containing many facets whose light can illume the whole of our lives with great meaning. Yogic methods cover the entire field of our existence – from the physical, sensory, emotional, mental, and spiritual to the highest Self-realization.  It includes all methods of higher evolution in humanity – physical postures, ethical postures, breath control, sensory methods, affirmations and visualizations, prayer and mantra, and complex meditative disciplines.  Yoga understands the nature and interrelationships of the physical, subtle and formless universes into the boundless infinite beyond time and space, and shows us how these also exist within each human individual.” 

So why you show up to practice is yours to cherish and my hope is that by the end of class everyone feels better.  That the yoga works to helps us all feel more comfortable being ourselves.  Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

 

Join me on a spiritual adventure www.alchemytours.com or www.silviamordini.com

November 25, 2010.  

Beautiful Namaste Friends, 

I learned early on in my yoga practice that you have to decide whether you want to go about faking your life or whether you really want to live Your life FULL BLAST. A Yoga teacher friend said to me "REMEMBER TO HOLD THIS TRUTH: YOU CAN NOT FAKE PRANA, FAUX PRANA IS VANITY WHICH LEADS TO INSANITY."

Either you are breathing for real with total consciousness, or you are trying to fake it, doing your life (even your breath) based on what it looks like to other people.  So look for all the ways you are faking your life: do you dress differently from how you want to; do you fake your talk; do you fake the music you tell people you like; do you fake your political opinions; do you fake your love, in yoga class do you fake savasana (final relaxation)?  I can tell you from personal experience that it's not worth it. Pretending to live life will lead to insanity because it is not natural. Remember you can only ever be the 2nd best at trying to be someone else; you are always #1 being YOU.

Either you are kind, loving, real or you're not.  You can't fake it.  So today stop faking it with your friends, family, colleagues.  And you'll find your truth.  Folks ask me "how can you do that pose" like the one pictured above and I tell them the answer is I'm just being me full hearted, open and real and then all of the poses are yours to experience as you.  The poses are like truth serum, the body never fakes it.  The heart always knows!

Love yourself, love your day, love your life, Silvia  

 

**For active life coaching join me and Alchemy Tours on retreat.  Make the change to be YOU in 2011, no more waiting, no more faking it.  Visit www.alchemytours.com or my personal website www.silviamordini.com

INTERMEDIATE VINYASA - PEAK POSE VISMAMISTRASANA - NOVEMBER 14, 2010

One wave taught and practiced from my video. Philosophical theme is not judging, letting go of self-consciousness

http://totalbodyyoga.smugmug.com/Other/Yoga-Video/14626334_ctxSf#1088205682_EJPLo-A-LB

 

WAVE 1

Childs pose

Wrist Stretches: Finger tip table floss shoulders, turn one hand around face knee, switch, turn back of hand around to face knee, switch

Half Thread the Needle

Thread the Needle:  Hold then dynamic keeping shoulder quiet-  all core action obliques

Half Thread the Needle dynamic

Thread the Needle side 2: hold then dynamic

Downward Dog

 

WAVE 2

Half Spinal balance to child's pose dynamic alternating each side

Full Spinal balance hold, 

Kneeling Side Plank

Gate Pose

Half Warrior B

Half Triangle then unsupported niralamba

Kneeling Side Plank

Flow 3 x's

Hold Kneeling Side Plank to Full Side Plank

Plank - basic vinyasa

Side 2

 

WAVE 3

Reverse Half Vinyasa: Upward facing plank to Dog pose repeat and flow (add optional chatarunga, plank)

Walk the dog to Uttanasana (forward fold)

Lift right leg - standing splits, lower

Stand up - lift left knee to crane

Warrior 3

Crane to Standing Pigeon Chair arms open, twist arms wide

Step forward Pyramid

Side 2: stand on left leg crane, warrior 3, crane to Standing Pigeon chair, twist, step back Pyramid

Standing splits left leg is up

 

WAVE 4 - Sun Salutation C with variation

Step back Half Lunge knee down circle arms up, lower

Step forward half way Pyramid inhale/exhale

Lift chest prepare jump or step back basic vinyasa

Step Left foot forward Half Lunge, pyramid, basic vinyasa

Flow and repeat 5-7 times

 

WAVE 5

Last time from Pyramid hold

Revolved Triangle

Revolved Half Moon B

Standing Splits

Warrior A with yoga mudra

Humble Warrior

Side Angle 

Warrior B

Dynamic Reverse Warrior to Side Angle Pose - a few times

Basic vinyasa

Side 2 repeat above

 

WAVE 6

Step to Low Lunge - Quad stretch

Half Warrior 2 prep

Half Splits

Half Vismamitrasana

Koundinyasana 

Basic Vinyasa

Side 2

 

WAVE 7 - LIKE MY VIDEO

Malasana front of mat

Cobbler (optional Supine Vismamitrasana)

Seated Forward Fold

Marychasana C twist

Janu Sirsasana twist

Kneeling Side Plank

Parsva Vasistasana 1 (variation of side plank legs split)

Sit to Upavista Konasana twist away then towards other leg

Wear leg on shoulder Seated Sundial pose (Seated Vismamistrasana)

Elephant arm balance - thread leg under

Half Vismamistrasana or Full Vismamistrasana

Koundinyasana 

Basic Vinyasa

Side 2

 

 

CLOSING WAVE

Malasana

Cobbler

Supine Cobbler

Finishing poses

The Heart is the Sun of the Soul - Shine out!

 November 14, 2010 

 The definition of self-conscious is "to be Conscious of one's self as an object of the observation of others."  There are good things and interesting things about this in that every day the way we live our lives we either serve as a positive example or a warning to other people.  We are under some scrutiny whether we like it or not. As Sally Field says,  "It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else's eyes." It is only when we allow the good opinion of other people to be more important than our own, that this self-consciousness becomes deeply detrimental to our happiness.  

 As a result of coming to the yoga mat I have grown both more aware of others judgments and less self-conscious all at the same time.  We step into the poses and we are alert to the presence of others but instead choose to focus on ourselves. We do the practice to be more conscious of our innate happiness and go beyond self-limiting belief.  We move and breath with the freedom that only comes from the light within: our hearts dancing with joy, long-held inhibitions vanishing until all self-doubt is erased!

To be honest this process may take more than just one class.

"We live in the most self-conscious society in the history of mankind.  There are good things in that, but there are also terrible things.  The worst of it is, that we find it hard to give ourselves to the process." - Larry Harvey says.  I agree.  The day I knew this enemy of love, self consciousness was no longer driving my life was when I felt the FLOW of the yoga poses and let the breath move me.  I gave myself to the process.  And everything changed.  I started to drop self-criticism along with being critical of others.  The judgment I feared from others no longer had power over me.  And in this video you can see how this translates into movement. 

http://totalbodyyoga.smugmug.com/Other/Yoga-Video/14626334_ctxSf#1088205682_EJPLo-A-LB

The choices I make I now honor as my own. And with every day I get more expert at doing the hardest yoga pose of all....Being Myself.  This is the pose I want you to learn more than any other too.  Love yourself, love your day, love your life, Silvia       

I unrolled my mat and made sure the music I wanted was ready to go. Greatly anticipated, it was to be a quiet hour of yoga with a friend at my home, and thus I took great care in creating the perfect atmosphere and space. As I waited for my friend to arrive, I sat down with a jotted sequence of poses; reading over it, somewhere between Tadasana and Uttanasana the words "I love yoga" floated through my mind. I paused, struck by the words' abrupt appearance, their simplicity, and the fact that my thinking them didn't surprise me at all.

  Indeed, as my practice has deepened, but most especially in the last six months as I've embraced the role of yoga teacher, such incidents have occurred more and more often--not always in the form of an unbidden thought, but definitely in a way that integrates seamlessly with the flow of the moment. One evening, for example, while mentally reviewing a class I was to teach the next day, I found myself suddenly up on my feet, moving from Virabhadrasana I to Humble Warrior to Virabhadrasana I to Plank...with joy, I had sprung out of my chair and into the sequence. With nothing in my mind except the love of the practice, my body had just started flowing.

  And this tendency, for lack of a better description, hasn't restricted itself to acute incidents, either, but sometimes occurs in the form of a new pattern. One of them I notice during my early-morning home practices.... Without fail, every practice, my body and mind fight the 5:30 am clock chime, the first glow of candlelight and hint of incense, the extra effort coupled with the creaks and cracks of those initial stretches. But by the end of the first wave, my body and mind pulse with peace, content with the flow and happy in the practice. And by the end of the 60 or 75 minutes, I don't want to stop.

  Another new pattern occurs each evening, when I attempt to fall asleep. Whereas I used to try to take deep breaths while I replayed the day's events and convinced myself not to let anything bother me, now I settle myself by releasing one long, deep exhale and opening myself to a rush of gratitude. No matter what occurred during the day, I truly believe I am blessed with the privilege of just breathing, of having had another day to live...no mater what. The day's events, whatever they were, don't matter nearly as much.

  I definitely didn't feel this way before.

  When I first started practicing yoga, it was something I set out to do on a regular schedule--go to class, then go home, then pick up the day where I left off. And though I enjoyed yoga from the beginning, knowing I did something so, so good for me in so, so many ways, with time I began to actually feel yoga: the unbidden thoughts, the joy in the practice, the peace in knowing I am, as yoga teaches, only a small part of something much greater. Feeling yoga like this is what, for me, especially since I began teaching, has distinguished between yoga as a hobby and yoga as a defining quality of who I am. And significantly, because of the yoga I love so much, little by little I've learned to love myself so much better. I hope that now, in the role of yoga teacher, I might inspire others to learn the same for themselves.

  May you feel your yoga, too...  Laura 

October 23, 2010.  Today painting a picture with the words:

Deliberate 

Self-study 

Practice 

Intention

We all had other places we could be today but we chose to be on the mat. This was a deliberate choice. Just like what we say or eat or do or think is deliberate.  In yoga we make a deliberate choice to show up and take responsibility for our actions where we place our hands, our self-talk and we study ourselves Svadhaya to learn about ourselves.  This may be a huge paradigm shift as most of us go about life studying what everyone is doing to learn about ourselves.  Or we are more interested in what everyone else has to think about us than we are of our own opinion.

The practice of yoga is defined in the yoga sutras is something that is practiced over a long time, repeated without break (consistent) and practiced in earnestness.  A sort of serous studentship.  And behind that practice is the power of intention.  Intention is on purpose.  It is in other words deliberate.  

So you see how this creates a healthy feedback loop and helps to give us the means to end our suffering and come into our true nature which is joy and ever expanding happiness! You have the ingredients in deliberate self-study practiced with intention.  Now all it takes is you.  Love yourself, love your day, love your life, Silvia

OCTOBER 20, 2010.   Our hearts are like a safe in the energy bank of our bodies.  We each have our own personal energy field that protects us and determines how we feel, think and function and oversees this safe of our hearts.  And since there is energy everywhere we have to be aware of how to keep making deposits into our bank and not just withdrawals.  Everything is energy!

And there is both good energy and bad energy.

The first time I was introduced to the work of Dr. Judith Orloff something just clicked!  I had never heard the term "Energy Vampire" prior to working with an energy healer.  But throughout my life I remember how sometimes just talking to a particular person would drain me so severely I'd need to rest and recover while interacting with most other people had an energizing effect.  Why would one person deplete me and 25 other people in the same day would fire me up and inspire me?  The volume of interaction wasn't making intellectual sense.  Then I began to study and learn about the Alchemy of Yoga: the energy we have as people exists on physical, emotional and spiritual levels.  

Even today I have two primary energy vampires: one a person who by email, voice, person or even just thinking about them causes my breath to shorten my chest to get heavy and an immediate anxiety come over me and the other main energy  vampire in my life is technology.  It sucks me in and if I'm not careful can push me to the other side of energizing to draining.  I have to be careful with both and this practice has helped find ways to restore my own energy and set stronger, healthier boundaries.  My heart is too valuable to allow to be influenced by even a single moment of negative energy.  I love myself too much to let this happen.  And I hope you see your heart as this precious jewel in a beautiful safe in the bank of your body and you too learn from yoga how to set energy boundaries, recharge and make at least as many deposits as withdrawals for a happier more balanced life!  Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia  (See below some excerpts from various articles you can find on the internet searching Energy Vampires, especially the works, writings, books by Dr Orloff are highly recommended)

 

"The real harm in a psychic attack is that is not a fair exchange of energy in that the vampire (predator) gets energized and the victim (host) gets depleted of their energy....

..Another way vampires operate is to always play the victim and voice complaints. You will play right into their hands when you give an optimistic response time and time again. The vampire uses this positive energy you are giving them as an energy source. The person giving the sound resourceful advice may think they are just being a good friend but if this person makes it a habit to complain they are using you as their victim and getting the energy boost leaving you not only emotionally drained but physically as well.

..Many people are not consciously aware of what they are doing but it does not render the attack any less harmless to the victim. You are actually creating an energetic opening and have made yourself vulnerable to the vampire attack once they get you to release some sort of energy by means of rage or sympathy. 

..There are some key things that most vampires have in common. The vampire is unbalanced (1) emotionally, (2) physically and (3) spiritually. They have to use others to derive strength and energy from. Their system is highly deficient in all three areas. If you do not limit or discontinue contact with these energy reducers you could become imbalanced as well.  You could find yourself drained of physical and emotional energy you need to thrive.

 

POSITIVE ENERGY BOOSTS- Dr Judith Orloff (she's the best!)

Clear your energy. Positive energy is the most powerful antidote to negativity. 

"When dealing with energy vampires, your positivity, certainty, and vision have to be greater than their doubt," says Gordon. 

Create a mantra that tunes out negativity, and repeat it to yourself during an attack. 

Or take a cue from The Sound of Music: Remember your favorite things, particularly times of triumph or joy. 

"Thinking about a great moment in your life builds a force field around you and blocks out negative energy," adds Gordon. Picturing your energy can offer protection, too. "Visualize your energy as a beautiful, golden light, and send that light through your body," suggests Reiki master Carolyn Agosta. "Tell yourself, 'My energy is only valuable to me,' and disconnect your energy from the other person's."

OCTOBER 16, 2010.  I along with my partner named our company Alchemy Tours because of the combined influence of the book The Alchemist and the practice of Yoga.  Really Yoga is about taking the personal growth we experience on the mat as a result of this unique alchemy of yoga into making the changes we want in our lives, in our bodies, in our minds, in our hearts.  Anytime you want to transform and move beyond your limitations to me this is the Alchemy of Yoga.  And this what I call the life coaching work I do through yoga.  

Chapter 2 verse 1 of the Yoga Sutras sets forth how the Alchemy of Yoga actually works.  "Tapas svadhyaya ishvara pranidhana kriya yoga."  Translated to mean that yoga helps us transforms ourselves on three levels:

1. Physical Alchemy - Tapas 

2. Mental Alchemy - Svadhaya

3. Spiritual Alchemy - ishvara pranidahana

 

PHYSICAL ALCHEMY

Tapas helps us ignite the changes we want to make in our lives.  It is about the getting fired up, literally heating the body through moving and breathing in the vinyasa

 

MENTAL ALCHEMY

While we are following the discipline of tapas and engaging in physical practice to help move our stuck energy we are watching ourselves.  In yoga we study the self to learn about the self.  (Different than studying what other people to do to try to learn about you, which many of us have tried in other modalities).  Here the mental alchemy is through self-observation.  We witness what is going on in our thoughts, what are we thinking, why are we thinking that (but without over analysis) more like an older brother would look after a little sister.  In this way we are the actor on the stage starring in our life story as well as sitting front row center as the audience.  

 

SPIRITUAL ALCHEMY

As we are doing and watching we let go of the ego of judgment.  We move beyond wanting life to be different and begin to feel the surrender that allows what is being offered to mix together and marinate.  We practice ishvara pranidhana as we trust the universal intelligence that hugs us from all directions to know what it's doing.  And once we find this trust we begin to believe that beauty and goodness are within us flowing nonstop and there is no reason to stop this flow for its natural current is to align with the current of grace that is everywhere outisde us.  Beauty becomes our way of life.  Happiness becomes our natural alchemy.

You see when we come to the mat we are like the Alchemist in his laboratory mixing ingredients.  For us as yogis our laboratory is our mat and the ingredients are our bodies, our poses, our breath, our thoughts and the mixing it all together creates a result every time.  We are always different from the beginning of class to the end.  Whether we want to be or not, we are changed, we are free.  In that freedom is love. Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

 

PS This is why and what lies at the heart of leading Yoga Retreats around the world. I want to help facilitate the Alchemy of Yoga, the changes that YOU want in your life.  And I am convinced we can make amazing transformations in a long weekend, a week with the right facilitation and life coaching.  Join me! Facebook Alchemy Tours.  Set intention for 2011 this December 8-12 Haramara Retreat Mexico.

OCTOBER 15TH, 2010  In simple words, Yoga is the science of happiness.  We walk in stressed out, upset, negative and we leave the practice lighter, refreshed, more positive, in a nutshell, happier!  I can't say that even after all these years, over 7,500 hours of teaching, and gosh who knows how many hours of practice that I fully understand the alchemy.  It's like magic.  

What I do get on some level both intellectual and emotional is that walking in we are like the decorator crab: collecting all these issues, stories, dramas and if we don't let something go we will literally suffocate under the weight of it all.  Maybe we'll still be walking around but we certainly won't be happily human which is our birthright.  The decorator crab does that: it collects all the stuff it finds and keeps putting it on its back until it can no longer swim to the surface and dies under the weight.  The work we do on the mat is about personal growth.  It is making space so we can  is let go of what is negative.

 Every day we have a chance to either have our lives serve as a WARNING or an EXAMPLE to others.  The decorator crab is our warning.  Let's learn something from it.  The opinions or judgments we have of external stuff are just that - they do not impede our ability to remain happy. Happiness is an inside job.  And the person responsible for being happy is YOU.  Yoga teaches self-responsibilty, non-judgment and seriously radical self-acceptance by accepting the full spectrum of who we are (anger, worry, fear).   The mat is a truth serum that helps us realize the truth and allows us to clear the space for living a more joyful life.  And that life is moving forward, with us or without us.  

 "Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing" — W. B. Yeats

Yoga gets us UNSTUCK and then we can't help but grow and evolve. We not longer hold ourselves back from those things that crash our internal hard drive.  And we leave the mat remembering how happy we really are.  We start to celebrate the best parts of ourselves.  And that, is why yoga is the science of happiness.  Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

OCTOBER 13, 2010.  So today I begin my last Teacher Training at TBY.  What an amazing 9 groups of trainees I've had the pleasure of teaching all these years!  I've learned more from them than they could possibly have learned from me.  
And I have slowly turned over the program little by little to other great local teachers to carry on this legacy.  Rachel Dewan is co teaching this Fall program with me and Mary Scudella and Mara Campbell are taking over the Winter program that starts in January runs until July.  

In the words of the Grateful Dead, "What a long strange trip its been."

And me? Well I will still be teaching teachers. It is my passion, my life's mission and I will do so remotely, virtually and in person in various locations that open their hearts up to me.  I trust my voice will still be heard in helping nurture other teachers to find their own voices.  It was never about fitting a teacher trainee into a set mold, it was always about the organic nature of evolution and individual transformation.  And it still is.

So stay tuned, if you live local sign up for Mary and Mara or Rachel next Fall. And if you want to enjoy a destination Teacher Training then join me in 2011 for some fantastic spiritual adventuring!  Love yourself, love your day, love your life, Silvia

PS What have I learned in 9 teacher trainings? Be Yourself. The best teachers remain students.  God made you funky. (obviously the 200 hours together went into more detail....)

OCTOBER 5, 2010.  On October 13th we start our 9th teacher training study group! I know I can't believe it either.  Wow! I've seen so many amazing breakthroughs and incredible growth as a result of facilitating these trainings.  There is not a day that goes by that I don't think of previous trainees and send them love and gratitude for they have served as my teachers as much as I have been their teacher. And I have been deeply honored to see them all grow in discovering their Dharma, their purpose.  

It's such a simple question: Why are you here? Or let me put it like this, What do you want to be when you grow up? 

If you want to study yourself, then our program is for you. Enjoy this perspective from one of our 2009-2010 Graduates.  Love in all ways, Silvia  

How Teacher Training Helped me Find my Purpose By Guest Blogger Janeen Heinman

Last fall I took the 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training at Total Body Yoga.  I had only been a student of yoga for 2 ½ years when I signed up for the program, so I was a virtual beginner.  But for me, yoga had opened up so much.  My health was better, my attitude and anxiety improved, and I was more relaxed.  I felt like I had found something totally real.  I spent time reading books about yoga, taking workshops and classes, but there was still so much I didn’t know.  I enrolled in Silvia’s program to expand my knowledge, but I didn’t have a solid idea of what I wanted to do when I finished.

We learned a lot right away in the training, including asanas and how to teach them, yoga history and philosophy and some basics of Ayurveda.  I learned a lot for myself, but even more so, I wanted to share what I was learning.  After all, who couldn’t benefit from practices like a full three-part breath, or viparita karani?  I tend to get anxious when speaking in front of groups, but the training program was a really safe place to practice.  I worked on finding my voice, which in turn led me to discover my purpose.

Through the Yoga Teacher Training, I was able to look honestly at some dissatisfaction I had with my career in psychiatry.  I realized I was not offering my patients enough, in my mind, to truly become well.  Yoga was the next step.  My goal now is to incorporate yoga into my career by offering people tools to help themselves .  The training helped me open to possibility and realize I don’t have to follow the beaten path, but I can chart a new course!

I am only in the early stages of developing my new job description, but I believe the teacher training started me on this path.  The practice itself keeps me open to grace, and I have enjoyed unbelievable support from my colleagues and peers so far.  I was stagnant, knowing I was not fulfilling my true purpose professionally, but fear held me back for a long time.  The teacher training program forced me to look inward, and that practice of self-study has led me to something totally new.  I don’t believe I would have come to this turning point without the support and guidance of my teacher, Silvia, and my fellow trainees.

Namaste!

SEPTEMBER 21, 2010. If you plan your social life around your yoga, have a mat in your car, talk about yoga to friends and strangers then it is a really good bet that Yoga is important to you. And you're thinking "how can I bring more yoga into my life?" Super Duper Namaste, If this sounds familiar then spending time in our In-Depth Studies Program known as Yoga Teacher Training starting either Fall October 13, 2010 with Rachel and Silvia or Winter January 28, 2011 with Mara and Silvia is a fantastic idea!  The program is not about how physically ready you are for the poses but how emotionally and mentally ready are you to gain deeper insight into who you are.   Do you want to know why Yoga makes you feel better not for just one hour but all day long, why when you practice yoga do you grow more patient with the annoyances of your life, why do you feel happier from doing yoga? This program helps give you the answers to those questions.  It gives you time to become more aware of why you treat others better and why you want to treat yourself better:  learning how to love who you are and refining what it is you are supposed to be doing in this life.  This program is about doing yoga from the inside out and really studying how much heart you are putting into designing your BEST life ever. To be honest, in my perfect world every Yoga Student would attend a Teacher Training Program.  Why? Because we are all models for living our yoga and making the world a more peaceful place. We'd love to help you celebrate you! Love yourself, love your day, love your life, Silvia       (Yes, payment plans always available)

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010. If you want to get to the root cause of what is stressful in your life, what is holding you back, what is it that you really want for your life then our certified training program (that by the way qualifies you to teach yoga) is for you!  I encourage you to fill out the application, and then read it to yourself and see if this reveals to you whether you should apply or not.  This is not about teaching Yoga to other people. THIS IS ABOUT LEARNING ABOUT YOU.
http://silviamordini.com/teacher-training-certification.asp

CYT – Certified Yoga Teacher Application (YA 200 hour)

APPLICATION

Send completed application and materials via email to:

trainings@silviamordini.com

BACKGROUND

Please include: name, emergency contact, address, city/state, zip, day/night phone, cell phone, and e- mail address.

STEP 1: PLEASE TELL US MORE ABOUT YOUR YOGA PRACTICE

-How long have you been taking yoga classes and/or practicing? -Who have been your most influential teachers and why? -List any trainings, intensives or retreats attended and why? -What style(s) of yoga do you practice?

-How often and how long do you practice?

STEP 2: WHY DO YOU WANT TO TAKE THIS PROGRAM?

-Why do you want to be a certified yoga teacher? -What are your expectations for the training? What do you hope to gain, learn, or improve? -Do you teach yoga now? If so, please describe in detail. -If you plan on teaching after completing the program, why do you want to teach yoga?

STEP 3: WHAT DOES YOGA MEAN TO YOU?

-Describe how your life has been impacted by practicing yoga. -Tell us about your hobbies, interests, community service, etc. -Describe your physical health (major illnesses, surgeries, physical conditions). -Tell us about your emotional and mental health. -Do you have a support network of friends or therapist? -Does your family support this journey you've decided to take? -This program requires a significant time commitment. Do you have any other major commitments (grad school, 2 jobs, etc) that would prevent you from participating fully?

SEPTEMBER 5, 2010.  Newsweek last December 9th did a story that spoke to how research shows Blaming Others is Contagious.  Yes, I think we've all seen that for ourselves as some point whether it was on the playground or around a conference room table with fellow managers.  This learned human behaviour is one of the first things I remember when I started the practice of Yoga.  I'd get on the mat and if class was hard for me I'd blame the teacher (clearly they made it too hard, it wasn't me).  If I couldn't balance I'd blame the students around me for falling out of the pose and distracting me, it wasn't me.  If I had difficulty holding downward dog or plank pose I'd blame the teacher for keeping us there too long, it wasn't about my upper body strength or tendency to give up too soon.  And if I got confused by the instructions of a teacher it for sure wasn't about me not listening, the teacher was unclear.

We live in a victimized society.  

And as many of you know my story I have on three very distinct occasions been victimized whether it was being run over by a car as a pedestrian or losing my Father when he was a young 59 years old due to negligence at the hospital.  I have struggled with what it means to be a victim and what it meant by victim rights and for while there I got really good at blaming others for the quality of my life.  

Then I realized the more I blamed others the more judgmental I became of everyone and everything.  I stopped thinking about the intention and effort others were putting in.  Or as Jen Gray Blackburn writes,  ‎"You will find life a whole lot easier if you can keep in mind that most people are just trying to do the best they can..." And now every time I step on my yoga mat I remember to take responsibility for myself and my breath and my poses.  No one else is to blame.

Yoga is the anti-victim mentality.

And as a teacher of yoga and for those aspiring teachers you have to know that most if not all students will go through this same evolution and not to take it personally.  You will be the person in front of them causing the friction (or at least that's what they'll think) until they take over responsibility for themselves and transform their lives.  Jackie Robinson puts it like this, “I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me... All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.”

Really what spiritual practice is teaching is nicely summarized by Stacey Charter, “Don't rely on someone else for your happiness and self worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can't love and respect yourself - no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are - completely; the good and the bad - and make changes as YOU see fit - not because you think someone else wants you to be different.”  Through the time we make for ourselves on the mat we begin to realize this slowly, quickly but at some point a shift happens and you stop blaming others and instead take full responsibility saying to yourself as a constant inner mantra I am loving myself, I am loving my day and I am loving my life!  Imagine a world where the contagion of blame has disappeared forever!  Peace to the world, Silvia

SEPTEMBER 3, 2010.  Can you imagine a world where everyone does their own yoga?  It is something I say in class all, all the time.  Just let everyone be themselves.  Or as Leo Buscaglia says, “The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don't let them put you in that position.”

In a warrior pose for instance this means shorten or widen your stance, bend your knee a lot or a little, hold your arms up in any position or relax your harms by your sides look up, look straight or close your eyes.  And the list goes on and on and that's just one pose.  Seriously, what if we allowed others to be who they are instead of wanting them to be something different? How would their life be different? What would your quality of life be like? Let me put in perspective like this with a story told to a teacher, repeated by a teacher, told to me and I share with you... imagine the vastness of the ocean and there in the distance you see a single life preserver, just one for the whole ocean. Then imagine under the sea there is a dolphin swimming about trying to come up for air in the exact same spot as there exists the single life preserver.  The chances of the dolphin arising out of the water at the one place the life preserver awaits is said to be the chance we have at being born Human.  

When you think of how dramatic our winning the lotto of life is by being a human being it is remarkable that we would waste a moment forcing others to be what they are not or gossiping about what they are or doing anything besides just BEING OURSELVES.  From a buddhist perspective what distinguishes humans from other beings is that we can realize our own suffering and address it. We can in effect by being ourselves, save ourselves from remaining in a state of suffering and instead enjoying constant ordinary happiness.  To me this is the Peace in the world that most of us are aspiring to for our children, and for our children's children.  

“Among individuals as among nations, the respect to other people's rights is peace”  Benito Juarez

The single hardest yoga pose to practice is "being oneself."  So next time you start talking about what someone in your life (your boss, your colleague, your partner, your kids, your parents) are doing life wrong step back and allow them to be who they are.  We can only be second best at trying to be someone else.  We can only be best at practicing living life as unique and wonderful as we are.  Imperfectly perfect.  Love yourself, love your day, love your life, Silvia

For more about me visit www.silviamordini.com or my spiritual travel company www.alchemytours.com

"I am so happy, I cannot be contained in the world; If the foot of the trees were not tied to earth, they would be pursuing me;But like a spirit, I am hidden from the eyes of the world.  For I have blossomed so much, I am the envy of the gardens." RUMI as translated by Keshavarz

SEPTEMBER 1, 2010.  More than ever I aspire to this feeling of spirit day in and day out. I've tried looking outside myself for this experience, and through my yoga practice I've made time to look within.   As you know, this last month I took it to a new level.  I've had regular yoga teachers that took a month out for their own development every year whether it meant traveling to Thailand to be with their teacher or going on month long silent retreat or just taking a time out from teaching to more deeply commit themselves to the Yoga of Relationship.  So I did all of that this last 31 days.  And I am so happy I did!  I attended an awesome yoga teacher training and practiced many styles of yoga with many, many teachers, I spent time in quiet contemplation/meditation in nature and most importantly I consistently practiced unconditional love for my best friend. I learned how to expand my capacity to be more fearless in loving someone and allowing myself to be loved in return.  This is the trinurti (3-fold) nature of yogic practice like a tripod that needs all three legs to remain standing: study, practice, teach.

I have blossomed so much.

I went into this personal sabbatical with many questions and in some way as a spiritual seeker I was looking for answers.  I return with more questions than I did when I took time off.   What I do know is "I am so happy"!  Making ourselves important and setting aside time to design our intentions is not easy.  It is hard work to still the mind in order to get to that point of asking the questions, it is what Elizabeth Gilbert writes about in her book Eat, Pray, Love, "You cannot see your reflection in running water, only still water."  I can see better who I am, what I want in my life and I am asking better harder questions of myself. 

Why would I put myself through this? Because I want to keep evolving my happiness. A little happiness is not enough for me, I want a lot of happiness and I deserve that today be the best day of my life and I take this to a new edge tomorrow, just like we do in bending our knee in a warrior pose.  And I realized my happiness would remain stunted if I kept repeating old patterns or ignoring what those patterns in my mind or actions are.  As Miss Gilbert writes, "Take care of the problems now, or else you'll just have to suffer again later when you scew everything up the next time.  And that repetition of suffering - that's hell.  Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understand - there's where you'll find heaven."  Fundamentally this is where Yoga holds our hands and encourages us to be happier than we ever thought we could be by quieting our minds, helping us see the old problems and moving beyond them to our best lives ever.  So thank you dear students, friends, teachers for understanding my desire for personal growth and evolution and as you support me, please know with great passion and simple love I support you in your journey's as well.  Love yourself, love your day, love your life!  Silvia

If you need a break consider joining me on Yoga Retreat in Tuscany October 24-30 or Moab November 4-7, or in December either Pagosa Springs or Hawaii

AUGUST 26, 2010. This time of year I am asked over and over should I do the Teacher Training program?  And really the answer is that if you are asking well the answer is an unequivocal YES! 

The first chapter, verse verse of the Yoga Sutras presents this opportunity "AND NOW BEGINS THE STUDY OF YOGA."  This implies that only once you are ready to be a dedicated student of life only then will you actually begin your studies.  So what is the subject of your study?  What do we actually learn about in a Yoga Teacher Training Program?  (I know it seems quite mysterious what goes on behind closed doors for 180 hours)

In Yoga we use the SELF to study the self.  And as we become experts in our own humanity we learn to brighten the way for all others.  We learn about our imperfectly perfect nature and accept our humanness thereby releasing all judgements of others and their imperfect nature as well.  “If you light a lamp for someone else it will also brighten your path.” ~Buddha

The most challenging part of any Teacher Training, as you become your own best teacher, is formally agreeing and announcing to the world at the top of your lungs, "MY SELF-CARE IS VITALLY IMPORTANT!"  If you are asking should I do a teacher training program you have already started down the path of beginning the most important dialogue of your life.  On some level something inside you has switched gears and instead of only worrying about what everyone else is doing or thinks about what you are doing, you have decided to care about you.

I hope you join my program October to March, co-taught with Rachel Dewan or that you consider any Teacher Training.  Make this commitment to studying life by studying yourself today!  Love your day, love your life, love yourself!  Silvia  

AUGUST 15, 2010.  One of my favorite workshops to teach is the Chakra Salutation Workshop each year.  One of the key take aways from this self-time is understanding the Chakras related to the "Self".  I hope that connecting the dots so to speak of how each chakra can be either deficient or excessive through this lens of "self" helps you to more easily identify where you need to focus.  The ultimate intention is we achieve as state where all of this "self" intention is balanced and tuned in.  Enjoy!  Love yourself, love your day, love your life, Silvia

Here is the high level summary:

CHAKRA	SELF WORK
MULADHARA – ROOT	Self-Preservation Right to be here
SVADHISTANA – SACRAL	Self-Gratification Right to feel
MANIPURA – SOLAR PLEXUS	Self-Definition Right to act
ANAHATA – HEART	Self-Love Right to love and be loved
VISHUDDHA – THROAT	Self-Expression Right to speak and hear the truth
AJNA – BROW	Self-Reflection Right to see
SAHASRARA -  CROWN	Self-Knowledge Right to know

AUGUST 14, 2010: I love the "SELF" words! Self-Love, Self-Confidence, Self-Awareness, Self-Esteem and on and on. I know I love these and intend for myself all of these because of the experience I've had with that other self word. Self-Sabotage. New York Times #1 best selling author Debbie Ford writes, "Overcoming self-sabotage and finding the wisdom inside the wounds you've endured is one of the most important conversations you'll ever have with yourself. Honor it and know that it will change your life." The time on the mat where we see our true selves allows us the choice to be with what is holding us back. Only once you acknowledge the old pattern can we change that paradigm and create something more life affirming for ourselves. That's part one. Believe it or not Part 2 is harder. That's where you know what you want for your life and you have to stand up for what your intentions are. Allowing yourself to be sabotaged by others is a repeatable pattern that one can get stuck in forever. So today embrace the positive self words in your life. Say to yourself for five minutes of breathing or for the duration of an entire yoga class the self word you need the most of in your life right now. By repeating the mantra you make its energy stronger and that conversation with yourself gets louder until you are living your best life ever, no holding back. Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

AUGUST 10, 2010.  Have you ever wanted to experience Italy like a true local?  Have you wanted to live in the land of Elizabeth Gilberts Eat, Pray, Love?  Well here is your chance, join Silvia Mordini and Jacob Young to learn why Tuscany is a life-changing place for many. This Chianti region of beautiful vine-filled countryside is nestled between Florence and Siena and is the setting for this Yoga, Cycling and Cultural Adventure of a lifetime!

We will be guests at an 800 year old classic Tuscan farmhouse converted into a stylish yoga retreat. Looking out one of the many windows of the different accommodations in Ebbio, you will be captivated by the undulating hills swept with thriving vineyards, olive trees and enchanting evergreen forests. The amazing part of Ebbio is that it is still a working organic Tuscan Farm with its own Chianti wine production to create the exquisite fine foods we'll be served. Located in the breathtaking countryside of Tuscany, it is close to Florence, Siena, Castellina in Chianti and Monteriggioni, a little medieval castle. Activities include yoga, cycling, hiking, and of course visiting art cities like San Gimignano, Volterra, Montalcino, and Siena along with a trip to the natural hot springs of Petriolo and a day at the beach (the Mediterranean!), private wine tastings and Tuscan cooking class.Investing in yourself is the best investment!!

SPECIAL TUSCAN CULTURAL PROGRAMS DURING OUR 7 DAYS:
Day 1, Oct. 24, 2010: Arrivals, Deplane Yoga, Farm Hike, Welcome Dinner
Day 2, Oct. 25, 2010: Monteriggioni castle morning, Siena afternoon 
Day 3, Oct. 26, 2010: Cycling Morning, Radda in Chianti Wine Tasting and private walking tour afternoon
Day 4, Oct. 27, 2010: Morning drive to the Meditteranean relax on the beach, afternoon lunch and visit to Petriolo Natural Hot Springs, Tuscan Cooking evening 
Day 5, Oct. 28, 2010: Morning free time or bike trip, San Gimignano and Volterra afternoon and evening 
Day 6, Oct. 29, 2010: Morning free time or bike trip, Montalcino afternoon Wine Tastings and tour, evening closing dinner party 
Day 7, Oct. 30, 2010: Final Yoga, Breakfast and Departures

RESERVATIONS:

$500 deposit to hold your spot.
Early birds by September 1st, $1,900. 
Regular price $2,050

BOOK NOW: Visit www.alchemytours.com

INCLUDED IN THE TRIP PRICE: 
-7 days and 6 nights accommodations 
-Breakfast, lunch and dinner
-Airport transfers
-All day trips and walking tours 
-Private wine tours and tastings 
-Traditional Tuscan cooking class 
-Soaking in the healing crystal waters of the Rapolano hot springs
-Visits to the art cities of Italy
-Two Daily Yoga Classes and Evening Group Activities
-Spa Treatments are available upon request
-A quality bicycle and an experienced cycling guide with knowledge of the greatest rides in the region
-Entrance fees to all group events and activities
-All transportation during the trip 
-Comprehensive trip literature
-All gratuities for special events, lodging and restaurants

NOT INCLUDED IN TRIP PRICE: 
Airfare to and from the trip and gratuities for your guides.

Download Tuscany Yoga Retreat Brochure Here

Click for all details on the Tuscany Yoga Retreat

"Whilst on a lonely beach in Tasmania, three days hike away from any form of civilization, alone,Brent Morton had an epiphany: “No matter where I travel, however far away I get from civilization, how high of mountains I climb, one thing always remains the same: Me.” This began a 180 degree shift from exploring the physical world to a deep systematic journey into the inner world, which has continued intensively to the present day." - Brent Morton

AUGUST 8TH, 2010.  These are the words of a lovely teacher I have just met.  It speaks to so much of what I hope this practice brings to light for you sooner rather than later.  However, the difficult part of exploring the inner world and taking this inward journey of self-exploration is making time.  And when we are in our day to day world of grocery shopping, laundry, working, oil changes it's hard to make that time.  Yes, it is hard.  So for me the catalyst for inner change has often come as a result of traveling somewhere (maybe not as far as Tasmania!) but someplace where I could feel time as BIG.  And in that space, the changes in my outer world would almost force me, encourage me to go inside.  So here I am writing this from far away as each day I have my ecology of mind refreshed and look at ME.  No excuses, nothing more to do but see who I am and why I am.  

The longer my days, the more I find myself wanting to help others to do this too.  To facilitate inner healing and self knowledge by traveling away from the old paradigms even if for just 4 days or a week.  Join me in Tuscany October 24-30 or Moab November 4-7 or Pagosa Springs or Hawaii in December.  Love yourself, Know thyself.  

Peace out, Silvia  (Facebook Alchemy Tours or visit www.silviamordini.com)

May 24, 2010.  I started class by showing this youtube clip of advanced Yogini Jessica starting out her morning with her own affirmation ritual.  She explempifies the power of intention!  She clearly is setting a high expectation for her day, herself, and her life.  You can’t help but be inspired by her.  The Yoga practice teaches us that YOU ARE ASKING FOR WHAT YOU WANT THROUGH YOUR DOING.  This life we are living right now is NOT as mere participants.  This is not a passive endeavor where life is being done to us. Instead it requires active living where life is being done FOR US.  If you start the day and intend for it to be amazing, you offer gratitude for everyone in your life and say to yourself I CAN DO ANYTHING GOOD, well that is you telling the universe what you want and because your message is so clear the universe will deliver.  Here is what Jessica had to say:

I CAN DO ANYTHING!

I LIKE MY HOUSE!

I LIKE MY MOM!

I LIKE MY DAD!

I LIKE MY COUSINS!

I LIKE MY SISTERS!

I LIKE MY HAIR!

I LIKE MY HAIRCUTS!

I LIKE MY PAJAMAS!

I LIKE MY ROOM!

I LIKE MY HOUSE!

MY WHOLE HOUSE IS GREAT!

I CAN DO ANYTHING GOOD, YEAH YEAH YEAH

I CAN DO ANYTHING GOOD!!!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR3rK0kZFkg&feature=player_embedded 

Dr Wane Dyer says, “Change your expectations for yourself: Expect the best, expect your fortunes to change, expect a miracle. Reacquaint yourself with that vision."  So today how did your thoughts and actions and THIS YOGA CLASS INSPIRE YOU TO BE MOVING TOWARDS MEETING YOUR EXPECTATIONS?

This is behind the idea in yoga of Tapas.  Tapas helps us to take action to fully participate and be awake to our lives.  To be active means we must articulate our intentions and practice with a solid determination to hold true to our dreams and visions for ourselves.  Through yoga which is a system for mental, physical, and spiritual health we have full, democratic participation.  On the mat we don’t even have to push ourselves to excel, all we have to do is show up and do the practice as best we can with full hearted effort.  Just take part in your life make it active, keep it active and forget about over perfecting it.  Remember YOU CAN DO ANYTHING GOOD!  Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

May 22, 2010, The pressure life brings us gets a bum rap.  It’s not all bad. Actually, that’s the way diamonds are formed.  They become refined through really intense pressure and heat.  The end result is magnificent!  In yoga the same thing takes place with our physical selves and energetic selves as well. This process of cleansing through the letting go old pain brings us back to our most beautiful.  We engage some pressure to create the heat to transform the old heaviness into radiant strength. 

We move from being a diamond in the rough where we are cut up in limited self-belief to a state of being diamond like where we believe in our highest potentiality, we believe in the impossibility of things! This achieved lovingly and safely through the asana and pranayama.  It is known as ORVAJRA DEHA, or “diamond body.”

Every pose, every breath connects us to who we really are. We feel more, understand better and think more clearly. It helps us to be our real selves, our best selves.  The light is shed from the inside out to see that we were limiting our perceptions of who we are by doing things like feeling ashamed, embarrassed, jealous, angry, stressed.  And as each pose progresses to take us deeper we create heat and the old stories drop away and we find ourselves shining out.  Some of the best ways to polish the diamond in the rough that we are is to practice forgiveness and compassion towards ourselves, remembering that at the heart of yoga the highest practice leads to ultimate self-acceptance.

And the more you radiate the brighter you are then the more light you bring into the world to those around you.  Your luminescent quality inspires all others to shine out and discover their best diamond selves too!  Can you imagine a world where we all get to be ourselves and radiate love and happiness?  Well, yoga teaches that day is now, that world is here inside each and every one of us!  May you come to see all your challenges as means to reveal your true beauty.  Love to you, Silvia

May 19, 2010, Tonight we focused on hugging in to our center. To cultivate that awareness of our own best strength.  And what is inner strength really? Well it is love, that’s all.  "We are kept from the experience of Spirit because our inner world is cluttered with past traumas....As we begin to clear away this clutter, the energy of divine light and love begins to flow through our beings."   -Thomas Keating

We experienced this return to ourselves through a series of poses and mantras flowing through the elements such as:

Earth: I am grounded

Fire: I am rising        

Air: I am free

When our minds and hearts are scattered in their energy we lose track of self-love and it always starts there in laying the foundation for a healthy life.  So we come to the mat to rebuild.  Beginning with the earth element and drawing nutrients and support from the earth to help us return to stillness. The healing then expands and as we return to our center by engaging principals of alignment such as hugging to the midline and muscular energy we return to our most powerful selves. We feel the confidence and enthusiasm of the third chakra. There is an aliveness and energy that expands out and up!  And from there we connect to the air element of the fourth chakra feeling the lightness and freedom that are our true nature.  We are once more in the home of our hearts, we are in love with ourselves and with our lives.  You see inner strength is love…that’s all.  With metta, Silvia

May 18, 2010, I have this conversation with someone or many folks quite frankly every week without fail.  Is Yoga Spiritual?  And the first thing I do when I receive this question is ask (as I am doing here with you), What does it mean to you to be Spiritual?

What yoga is and what it isn’t is often hotly debated.  My best friend just sent me a link to a movie called Yoga, Inc which also includes this topic.  Our 6^th chakra Ajna sensibility is really about perception. The encyclopedia of events in your life influence how you define the circumstances and attitudes of your life.  To me the key point is that you get to decide what your thoughts are and you are responsible for managing your view of your life.  It’s that old saying:

“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!”

 

My all time favorite definition of yoga that I take on as my own as well is by David Frawley, Yoga and Ayurveda:

“Yoga is one of the most extraordinary spiritual sciences that mankind has discovered.  It is like a gem of great proportions, containing many facets whose light can illume the whole of our lives with great meaning. Yogic methods cover the entire field of our existence – from the physical, sensory, emotional, mental, and spiritual to the highest Self-realization.  It includes all methods of higher evolution in humanity – physical postures, ethical postures, breath control, sensory methods, affirmations and visualizations, prayer and mantra, and complex meditative disciplines.  Yoga understands the nature and interrelationships of the physical, subtle and formless universes into the boundless infinite beyond time and space, and shows us how these also exist within each human individual.” 

So I guess there you have it. You now know for sure I believe this is a spiritual practice, or at least it is for me, and can be for you if you want to make it such.  And if you don’t believe yoga is spiritual you gain all these amazing benefits anyway.  So I say, let everyone do their own yoga. And if it makes us all nicer and kinder than regardless of anything more, we have succeeded in making the world a better place right now.  Love to you all, Silvia

May 16, 2010 Finally after 3-4 years of procrastinating I set out to finish up a project yesterday and I did! It took all of an hour. Yup. That’s right. I spent years worrying about, putting it off, debating it, starting and stopping it but when all was said and done it took one hour. Spiritual practice has taught me that procrastinating is a perfectionist tendancy. And as one psychologist I read years ago put it, “perfectionism is the worst form of self-abuse.” So I am back on track and went back to basics asking myself “what are my goals: personal, professional and health related”? What are your’s? In class we wrote them out for ourselves. I would love for you to do this now in 5 minutes. 

Then consider what is it that prevents you from going for your goals more fully and making them and keeping them important enough to check in on week to week? I would hazard to guess that the traitors of self-doubt and fear influence us to procrastinate.  The antidote is to stay actively involved in your life yet slowing down enough to remember to wake up to what improves the quality of your life.  What if everything you ever wanted came true? Yogic practice stands up to say of course that is not only possible it is your birthright to co-create with the universe the life of your deepest dreams, to tap into your greatest potential. So why not start today? 

To help us take a moment to write in your Accomplishment Journal about all the things you’ve accomplished this week. Use this in tandem with your goals and intentions to see how far you’ve already come and to provide yourself the validation you need to know you can do this! Don’t put anything off a moment longer that holds meaning to you.  Heed the words of Danna Falds and FALL AWAKE to your life!  Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

 

Soul Prayer by Danna Falds

“Lord, grant that I may fall awake, and not miss a moment of the mystery.

Dancing with the dawn, may I draw this day to my breast like a lover.

 

Rocked with laughter, let me lay waste the fields of doubt and fear,

finding there nor more substance than dandelion seeds flying weightless on the breeze.”

 

April 28, 2010 Today is a full moon! The moon as you know is a reflection of the sun. The moon's trajectory is very complicated. It follows the Sun's trajectory, only 6 months later; the full moon in winter comes as high as the Sun in the summer. And it takes the Moon 18.6 YEARS TO FULFILL ONE COMPLETE ORBIT!  

Gosh if we were only so patient with ourselves.   

We all have stuff hidden inside us.  Who are we to think we are going to reveal this all in one yoga class or two or 10 or even 100. Heck the moon takes 18.6 years!  But yet often we come to the mat as the quick fix. It's not going to work like that. Heed the words of Tantric scholar Christopher Tompkins, "Don't try to fix shit during yoga, just try to be with how you are now."  

There is plenty of stuff to uncover by the time we start yoga.  There is stuff of the past we need to heal and let go of, there are the future plans or goals we are afraid to actually speak out loud, there is actually being yourself as you are today.  There is so much that I strongly encourage you to take your time.  Allow what is embedded or hidden to be reflected as you feel comfortable doing. And believe me if you stay with this practice it will come out...it just takes time my friends.  Quite frankly, let's all agree right now to give it 18.6 years at least.  

Love and light, Silvia  

APRIL 9, 2010:  The fourth agreement is ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST.  Don Miguel Ruiz says, "Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less. But keep in mind that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next.  Everything is alive and changing all the time, so your best will sometimes be high quality and other times it will not be as good.  When you wake up refreshed and energized in the morning , your best will be better than when you are tired.  Regardless of the quality keep doing your best."   

That's the part I love the most that our best requires a constant sensitive adjustment.  That it is different moment to moment.  This also correlates to yoga sutra of:  

Sthira Sukum Asanam.  (Effortless effort)  

This fundamental Yoga Sutra of Pantanjali has many interpretations one of which is that the asana/poses should be steady and comfortable. That we find an effortless in life whereby the pose we take (walking, talking, sitting, driving) be so elegant that the body is made more easy and attractive to the flow of prana/breath.  This practice of graceful effort means that some days it might be more difficult and some days it's easy, just like life is filled with joyousness and setbacks.  But the point is to keep going.  Ruiz puts it like this, "If you try too hard to do more than your best, you will spend more energy than is needed and in the end your best will not be enough.  When you overdo, you deplete your body and go against yourself and it will take longer to accomplish your goal. But if you do less than your best, you subject yourself to frustrations, self-judgement, guilt and regret."  

Remember the Story of guy that goes to a Master asks about how long must he meditate to "transcend" or become happier, more enlightened. The most important lesson from this was when Ruiz writes, "You are not here to sacrifice your joy or your life. You are here to live, to be happy and to love. If you can do your best in two hours of meditation, but you spend 8 instead you will grow tired miss the point and won't enjoy your life."  

You see how yogic this is, that we manage our energies all to cultivate our own best happiness right now, right here in the present moment. And as part of this we go easy on ourselves never to a point of exhaustion whereby we might "miss the point" of life.  Some say the highest practice of yoga is this form of radical self-acceptance, "When you do your best you learn to accept yourself. Learning from your mistakes means you practice, look honestly at the results and keep practicing."  

"The best way to say thank you God is be letting go of the past and living in the present moment, right here and now. When you let go of the past you allow yourself to be fully alive in the present moment.  Letting go of the past means you can enjoy the dream that is happening right now." Embrace your life. Let yoga help you learn how to surrender to the happiest life ever!   

"You were born with the right to be happy. You were born with the right to love, to enjoy and to share your love. You are alive, so take your life and enjoy it. We don't need to know or prove anything. Just to be, to take a risk and enjoy your life, is all that matters."   Love to you all. Courage to you all to JUST BE, Silvia  

February 28: Here is a wonderful contribution from Ingrid about New Year's Resolutions. As we finish the 2nd month of the year it is time to revisit these things. How are you keeping up?  Love the day! Silvia

From Ingrid Sjorslev Prate 

HANDBOOK 2010 - HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Health: 
1. Drink plenty of water. 
2. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar. 
3. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.. 
4. Live with the 3 E's -- Energy, Enthusiasm and Empathy 
5. Make time to pray. 
6. Play more games 
7. Read more books than you did in 2009 . 
8. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day 
9. Sleep for 7 hours. 
10. Take a 10-30 minutes walk daily. And while you walk, smile.

Personality: 
11. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about. 
12. Don't have negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment. 
13. Don't over do. Keep your limits. 
14. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does. 
15. Don't waste your precious energy on gossip. 
16. Dream more while you are awake 
17. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need... 
18. Forget issues of the past. Don't remind your partner with His/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your present happiness. 
19. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don't hate others. 
20. Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present. 
21. No one is in charge of your happiness except you. 
22. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime. 
23. Smile and laugh more. 
24. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree... 

Society: 
25. Call your family often. 
26. Each day give something good to others. 
27. Forgive everyone for everything. 
28. Spend time w/ people over the age of 70 & under the age of 6. 
29. Try to make at least three people smile each day. 
30. What other people think of you is none of your business. 
31. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch. 

Life: 
32. Do the right thing! 
33. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful. 
34. GOD heals everything. 
35. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.. 
36. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up. 
37. The best is yet to come.. 
38. When you awake alive in the morning, thank GOD for it.. 
39. Your Inner most is always happy. So, be happy. 

FEBRUARY 22, 2010:  We focused tonight on the breathing practice of Anapanasati.  This is usually the very first breathing technique we learn in yoga. This ability to watch our breath and practice mindful self observation.  As we watch ourselves we gain insight into whether we are breathing in a way that shows us fearful or peaceful.  We then can link this to how we are living our lives. Are we judging ourselves each moment? Or is it possible simply to be with your life, feel your breath, without needing to change it.  Can you use the practice of mindfulness breathing to create a self-acceptance for yourself and let go of the fears you might have?  Can you ultimately choose to view your thoughts, your breath, your actions through a prism of love without so many labels of good enough or not good enough but just be.  I know you can, this practice if you let it will help you achieve the hardest pose of all, self-love.  Love and courage to you, Silvia       

ANAPANA-SATI

Watch for the judgmental mind that discounts small movements as insignificant or unimportant
or the ambitious mind that jumps in to tell you to make your breath bigger or deeper,
or labels your perceptions as good or bad in order to arrive at a conclusion.
- Donna Farhi

 

DEFINITION: Anapana means breathing.  The full name of this technique is anapanasati or mindfulness breathing.

PURPOSE: The primary purpose of this breathing concept is to gather more specific information about one's breathing patterns, rhythm, and intelligence. Simply observing the natural breath, do not breathe in a certain way or make your breath imposing. It is helpful to enter this inquiry with curiosity and inquisitiveness rather than a desire to get it right. This technique will calm your mind and keep you in the present preventing thoughts from stimulating stress. Be watchful. Thoughts will sneak up on you. When you catch yourself drifting toward thoughts, you must bring yourself back to natural breathing.

TECHNIQUE: Lay on your back or sit in any comfortable position, place one hand on the belly and the other on the chest or place both hands on the belly with the fingertips below the navel. After observing the location of the breath, you may move the arms to the side with the palms facing up.

Location of the Breath: Where is the movement of the breath most noticeable? In the lower part of my body or in the upper part?

Origin of the Breath: Where does the movement of the breath begin? Just as an earthquake has an epicenter that scientists can locate, your breath has an epicenter.

Frequency of the Breath: Is your breath fast or slow or somewhere in between? Count the number of breaths per minute or if possible have a friend count them for you. Twelve to fourteen breaths per minute is considered a normal rate.

Phrasing of the Breath: Is there a noticeable difference between the length of your inhalation and exhalation? Are they equal?

Texture of the Breath: Is the texture of your breath smooth and even or is it jerky and uneven?

Depth of the Breath: Does the breath feel deep or shallow?

Quality of the Breath: If you could describe the quality of your breath what word or words would you use? Is it pneumatic, labored, billowing?...Let descriptive worlds or images arise without layering them in any way. Do you have any images that you associate with your breathing?

Reference: Donna Farhi, The Breathing Book

 

FEBRUARY 22, 2010 "True giving radiant giving comes from the same inner place as deep happiness.  It's having the self-esteem to feel that what we have to offer is valuable - our advice, wisdom, expertise, skills, physical labor.  The manner in which we give these gifts is a reflection of who we are."   

Philosopher Maimonides pictured giving on 8 spiritual levels. The top two are these here that Yoga really gets to the heart of right away.  

1.  "The motivation for real giving finds its source in the internal self, not in the expectations of others."  

2.  "Anonymous giving - happy people don't expect a return. They give because it comes from the heart and they believe that joy and happiness are abundant. They aren't going to run out."   

In yogic philosophy the opposite of taking or stealing is giving and sharing (Asteya).  And we are either living from a viewpoint of abundance or one of mental scarcity where you are hoarding or rationing for fear you are going to run out. You see these concepts are mutually exclusive.  You either are practicing living life from one or the other.  This idea that giving comes from a place of deep self-love and happiness has been one of the greatest lessons I take into my everday from this practice.  The yoga has strengthened my confidence and instead of contracting when times are challenging I am able to maintain a self-generating self-esteem that reminds me to give with all my heart be it wisdom, love, affection or friendship.  Everyday I practice yoga makes me want to open my heart up bigger to do more good in the world, to be a better friend, a more generous partner, a kinder sister, a more loving daughter.   

My sincere wish is that you stay with this practice long enough to experience this for yourself.  Love yourself, love your day, love your life! XXOO Silvia

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

 Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

 

FEBRUARY 14, 2010 This above is my favorite poem so I share it with you this Valentines Day.  It honors the breath!  The theme today was about being our own valentine and that yoga helps us see every day as valentine’s day not just once per year as we come to the mat to Fall in love with ourselves.  When we are spiritual babies we tend to look outward for love but eventually as we mature into spiritual adulthood we look inwards for love. We are born as physical beings but at some point through this or any spiritual practice we are born as spiritual beings.  We wait until that point when we wake up to love, for when our soul which may be asleep awakens. At that point as Gabrielle Roth writes in a favorite book of mine, Sweat Your Prayers, “When your soul is in charge, your life becomes a LOVE STORY. A love story between you and yourself.”

May this practice help you make the beautiful discovery of how great you really are, not because someone else tells you so but because you think so. You see yourself as unique and wonderful and through self-care you nurture all the qualities that you admire most about you.  And in loving yourself, you are acknowledging that you are special.  This process on the mat and in our life Sadhana takes time.  It is a personal process (just like learning handstand that we practiced today). Take your time, be kind and loving to yourself and all will blossom from the inside out!  Thank you to all who shared part of your day with me you made my valentines one I’ll never forget! Love in all ways,  Silvia

FEBRUARY 10, 2010:  I again today was inspired by Us Weekly and People magazines. If you look at the cover each week there is always someone angry at someone else and then there’s a story about love gone wrong – and tantalizing unkind things related to that.  So here’s the thing if you practice being mean you get really good at being mean, if you work hard to be angry you’re getting skilled at being angry, if you are always sarcastic your sarcasm skills will bloom, if you speak to yourself internally with negativity you’re going to get really skilled at putting yourself down.

Love is a skill too.  If you practice love, move like love, think loving thoughts, behave in a loving way then you’ll get really good at this too.

Yoga presents us with the opportunity on the mat to hone this Love Skill on ourselves first. Yoga is first and foremost a practice of self-love.  And the time we set aside for us to work on Self-Love.

“Love is a skill, a precious skill that can be learned. There are many other skills that are useful, even necessary, but in the end, nothing less than learning to love will satisfy us. The saints and mystics tell us that life has only one overriding purpose: to discover the source of infinite love and then to express this love in daily living. Without love, life is empty; without love, life is meaningless. The only purpose which can satisfy us completely, fulfill all our desires, and then make our life a gift to the whole world, is the gradual realization of the Self (LOVE) within, which throws open the gates of love. We cannot dream what depth and breadth of love we are capable of until we make the discovery that this divine spark lives in every creature.”  —Eknath Easwaren

With Valentines day approaching think of this practice as being your OWN valentine.  And then thank yourself for practicing yoga, each moment of yoga is the best expression of RADICAL SELF-LOVE.  Rock on with that.  Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

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

 

JANUARY 12, 2010:  I was recently thinking of the game TRUTH OR DARE that we all played as kids.  Wondering if you were someone who chose dare or truth more often?  Me? Well I consistently chose Dare. I was more than a little afraid of the truth – I’d have to tell the 11^th grade boy Ben I was in love with him or maybe admit I really wanted the lead role in the next musical or that it hurt my feelings when I only got 2^nd chair in Symphony orchestra last week.  You know the important stuff.  The dare was a whole lot easier….I would rather take my chances and eat a bug than let everyone else know my truth, and reveal my heart. 

Well what you choose now as an adult? Truth or Dare. And more importantly why. 

Yoga helps to reveal the self to the self and we wake up to our own truth.  As John Donohue writes, “Awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.”  So really Yoga is asking us to DARE TO TELL THE TRUTH.  First to ourselves then to be that real person out in the world.

Tapping into your own creative potential and full-filling the purpose for why you are here is what Yogis call “Sva-Dharma. This means self-duty. 

I can’t think of a more DARING thing to do!

"Your own duty done imperfectly
is better than another man's done well."  

-Bhagavad Gita 3:35

Yoga is Truth and Dare.  And when we each are following our true paths we are at peace with ourselves (no more pretending, no more 10^th grade self afraid to show others how you feel).  And from daring to fulfill our duty we give permission to everyone else to be themselves and the world finds peace.  This is not easy. So on the mat we try out new poses, we hold poses or we sustain a flowing sequence to experiment with daring ourselves to learn more about who we are. And the way we practice our yoga becomes the way we live our lives.

This year accept the Dare and stay connected to your intentions for meeting the destiny for which you’ve been called to in this life.  Follow your svadharma and go beyond your fear and what you thought possible. Don’t hide behind work (that’s the adult equivalent of eating a bug because you don’t want to be honest) and get on with it!  Be the peaceful warrior you are. Act as if your life depended on it….for it does.  Let the lovefire burn bright! Silvia

"Look to your own duty;
do not tremble before it;
nothing is better for a warrior
than a battle of sacred duty." -Bhagavad Gita 2:31

 

Namaste Beautiful Friends,

To be happy is DEEP WORK, it is not surface stuff.  And the reality of  yoga is that it helps us explore ourselves to find out as Anthony DeMello writes, "there is not a single moment in our life when we do not have everything we need to be happy."  As we study ourselves the yoga helps us explore through movement a freedom in our bodies and a kind of flowing meditation where we can find peace and tranquility in our minds. This in turn allows our hearts to open to our own best adventure. 

"Exploration really is the essence of the human spirit!"

There is this great story in the book "How We Choose to Be Happy" and the individual being studied for why they are happier than everyone else says this, "I tried my hand at a lot of things. Some of these I liked, some I didn't.  And I have no regrets. The point is, I kept moving. Any one of these choices was far less important than the fact that I just kept choosing. 

I have a philosophy: Any choice can be reversed, but not choosing at all is irreversible."  So this Winter please keep choosing to make time to explore yourself more deeply.  And if you can take a break join me for the Spiritual Adventure of a Lifetime in Moab April 15th (here I am at Arches National Park) or in Tuscany June 20th!! It would be so awesome to take this road trip together.  But no matter what keep finding your own best adventure! Big love in all ways, Silvia

"It's better to have traveled and gotten lost than to never have traveled at all."  -George Santayana

 

FIRST THINGS FIRST. Think of some myth about yourself you’ve bought into?  Like “I’m not strong enough, I don’t have enough time, I’m not old enough, I’m not young enough, I don’t have enough money, I’m not flexible enough,  I’m not ____________________________.  This practice helps us to unfold our own myth (Rumi).  It has us bump up against the myths or self-limiting beliefs we have about ourselves.  But as Yogananda writes, “What you are is much greater than anything or anyone else you have ever yearned for.  Spirit is manifest in you in a way that Spirit is not manifest in any other human being.  Your face is unlike anyone elses’s, your soul is unlike anyone else’s, you are sufficient unto yourself; for within your soul likes the greatest treasure of all – Spirit.” 

You see “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.” (Judith Lasater)

But we have to see the myths that hold us back for what they really are.  “We are responsible for what we are and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves.” (Swami Vivekananda)  Practicing even 5-7 minutes of yoga helps us to not remain victims of old habits, we begin to do the work of washing away the myths. What is required is that we work harder than our pain or made-up limitations. 

“Mines of power lie unexplored within you. You use this power unconsciously in all things you do, and you achieve certain results; but, if you learn how to consciously control and use the power within you, you can accomplish much more.” (Yogananda)  When it comes to picking out what poses to do you have to begin by asking yourself what you need: self-reflection creates self-awareness and reinforces self-love.  Tonight’s class will teach you a (1) Hip Opening Flow, (2) Backbend Flow, (3) Sun Salutation C, (4) Forward Fold/Twist Flow so you have 4 sequences to work on at home when you need them most.  Love and light! Silvia

FORWARD FOLDS.  These are calming, quieting in their impact.  They are restful poses to calm you down when you feel agitated or hyper and restful when you are fatigued. 

SUN SALUTATIONS. Energizing for your emotional body and can help lift you out of lethargy, depression, mental fatigue.

STANDING POSES.  These are very grounding as well as energizing.  They immediately engage your body-mind connection and bring you into the present moment.  They are good to do when worried, distracted or agitated.

BACKBENDS.  These are energizing, uplifting poses.  They create more energy when you are tired.  If you are already nervous they can make you over stimulated if they are difficult so you can also practice passive backbends.  These poses also open you up emotionally which may cause strong emotions to arise.

TWISTS.  Cleansing and balancing.  They help release stress from your body-mind. 

HIP OPENERS.  These are very grounding and balancing.  They help release tension and bring you into the present moment. 

INVERSIONS.  These are soothing, balancing and centering.  

JANUARY 21, 2010:  This is the year and decade we stop analyzing everyone else around us trying to figure out who WE are by what other people do or don't do.  The first chapter, first verse of the Yoga Sutras: “With humility and an open heart and mind we begin the study of Yoga. This study is using the Self to study ourselves first.” 

"The proper study of mankind is man." (Alexander Pope) from my new book News of the Universe (Poems of Twofold Consciousness chosen and introduced by Robert Bly). That's what we do in yoga.  We are when we come to the practice essentially making a commitment to get a PhD in our own Humanness.  Nischala Joy Devi says "As students of life we often need to look at where we have come freom to see where we are going. Our present position has been determined by the past - all those crossroads where we made decisions, each path we've taken that brought us to our life as it is."

Blaming other people for the choices we've made or how we came to be what we are won't help us evolve towards greater happiness. We have to accept accountability and just look inside.  Rumi writes:

"If you're lugging a heavy bag,

don't fail to look inside it

to see whether what is inside is

bitter or sweet.

If it's really worth bringing along,

bring it;

otherwise, empty your sack

and redeem yourself from

fruitless effort.

Only put into your sack

that which is worth bringing."

When you think about it what do you keep lugging around that is weighing your life down?  Unless you start looking inward and stop blaming others for the quality of your life, it won’t change for the better. Maybe in the past you thought “I'm not something enough” to do this important work of self-exploration and self-discovery. BUT NO MORE. Be honest with yourself: you are young enough, old enough, smart enough, rich enough and you have enough time.  If it is really important to you to set positive intentions for yourself you have to slow down enough to look inside.  Take to heart the words of Rumi:  "There is a life-force within your soul, seek that life. There is a gem in the mountain of your body, seek that mine. O traveler, if you are in search of That don't look outside, look inside yourself and seek That.”  Yes, SEEK THAT.  In the new year, a time of setting intentions just remember this – it is near impossible to set an intention for your life until you study yourself and where you’ve come from first.  Otherwise it’s like trying to get a PhD when you haven’t finished First Grade yet.  And in this PhD program, there are no grades, it is simply pass/fail.  And this subject (YOU) is not one you want to fail at.  Life is too short to fail at being you.  So starting today get real, look at your life, study yourself as you really are and ignite the beauty of who you are yet meant to be! Love in all ways, Silvia

 

JANUARY 20TH, 2010:  We have a CHOICE.  What we tell ourselves is reflected back to us by the world.  How we see ourselves in term of the quality of our thoughts and healthy choices determines how others see us. Our view of self sewn together thought by thought creates the sacred garment we are always wearing around. This garment then is what other people see. So ask yourself what does your garment look like today?  Have you arrived into this day wearing something that is torn and beat up because that is the way you are talking to yourself through your inner dialogue?  Or have you chosen thoughts and actions with meticulous care like you would choose the best quality fabrics, rich textures to sew together a beautiful costume?  

Now I have to tell you when I first started practicing yoga some years ago I would wear to class my loosest crappiest stuff.  I figured if I looked like I didn't care then the expectation would be lower from the teacher and other students since I didn't know what I was doing. I certainly didn't want to look like I cared or that I was trying my hardest and really wanted to get it. I know I had a choice but my choices were conflicted.  I wanted to make my life a work of art (Thich Nhat Hahn) but I didn't want to admit that out loud. But deep inside was this quiet voice that insisted on trying to be my potential.  The more I practiced yoga the louder that inner voice got and the wierdest thing happened...I changed what I was wearing to class. I know it seems trivial but it was indicative of a bigger choice and change going on within me.  My self-confidence grew with my self-expression.

Today, I dress up for yoga class. I bling it out. I make the choice in my thoughts, in my actions, in my words to aspire to greatness. I am not afaid to reveal my choices and the world treats me differently because I treat myself better.  Sadie Nardini wrote in her book Road Trip Guide to the Soul "Our biggest mistake as humans is to look at our destructive, habitual patterns adn think we cannot choose again, because we have fallen prey to the illusion that what we have chosen repeatedly is how we are stuck with being.  You ALWAYS have the POWER - and the RIGHT - to CHOOSE again."  

On the mat each pose is simply part of the creation (shakti) of the garment we are choosing to wear and represent ourselves with in the world. In Vinaysa Flow yoga the breath serves as the thread that sews each pose seamlessly to the next, stitch by stitch.  The way we practice our yoga truly becomes the way we live our lives and how the universe is reflected back to us.  And the more we take ownership of our choices the more beautiful this energetic garment we wear becomes and we get excited to wear it around. We have purpose.  This practice in a real sense helps us get all dressed up AND have someplace to go!  Loads of love, Silvia

JANUARY 19, 2010:  This is dedicated to Todd Bauschke, who suddenly passed away at the age of 56 years old on January 18th, 2010.  Todd was a dedicated student at TBY and because he applied himself to the practice he got really good.  In recent times he had to step off of the mat and do his yoga without the benefit of group classes because this last two years his health was suffering and he couldn't even breath.  "He finally got his diagnosis in early November 2009. It’s a rare disease called Amyloidosis. It can attack different organs. It attacked Todds heart.  The irony is that he was scheduled to have his stem cells harvested and transplanted next week. It was to be a three week hospital stay."

Yoga helps us all remember that our time here is brief even in the best of scenarios....and all to short for Yogi brother Todd.  Please stop any all excuses for why you aren't living your best life. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?  Get to the mat, and free your heart so you can embrace the life you are meant to be living, right now.

"Your body is free but your heart is in prison. To release your heart, you simply reverse the process which locked it up. First you begin to listen for messages from your heart—messages you may have been ignoring since childhood. Next you must take the daring, risky step of expressing your heart in the outside world. . . . As you learn to live by heart, every choice you make will become another way of telling your story. . . . It is the way you were meant to exist. If you stop to listen, you’ll realize that your heart has been telling you so all along.  (Martha Beck, "Finding Your Own North Star")

What do you plan to do with your one precious life?

If you can't hear your heart talking to you then consider your time on the mat a mini-retreat. A time to refresh your spirit, rekindle your passions, and cultivate balance in what you think, what you say and what you do with your life. This practice peels back the layers to help us move from self-doubt and uncertainty to a feeling of empowerment and a willingness to at least try at our lives.  Like Todd, if we stay with it and practice moving in and out of these poses or shapes we create with our bodies you will achieve things you thought were impossible. This encourages us to see past our self-limiting beliefs and discover the power within us to realize that nothing is impossible! 

But no one can do this for you, you have to take time for yourself.  And if a yoga class isn't enough then do what I do go on a Spiritual Retreat.  Take a time out for 4-7 days where you don't feel so rushed and you can step off the tread mill of your life to really feel and open up to the changes you want to make in your life. If you don't even know how to start then plan to join me in Moab in April or Tuscany in June or find enough space where you can tap into how to express your feelings and reconnect to your own inner wisdom. The insights are there and self-expression evolves to self-understanding.  But really, DON'T WAIT.  This is the year we have all run out of excuses. All you need to live the life of your dreams is a willingness to grow an open heart and a playful curiosity wouldn't hurt either.  What do YOU plan to do with your precious life?  Love in all ways, Silvia

JANUARY 9, 2010:  Today we talked about the body as a container.  There is a boundary of who we physically are and the truth of who we are spiritually.  Recently when I saw Jersey Boys for the first time I saw that they allow beverages into the actual theater during the performance, as long as you put a lid on it. So you see folks walking around with cups of wine and lids, beer and lids, soda and lids....like adult sippy cups.  I get it. The lid is helping to keep a healthy boundary so the beverage doesn't spill on you or anyone else.  It informs us of what is really inside.   On the mat we use this practice to turn inwards to restore emotional equilibrium. We examine our breath for its beginning, middle, end noticing that even the breath has a boundary of when it starts and when it ends and that every ending is making way for a new beginning.  There lies the premise behind why bother setting healthy boundaries to begin with.  The body serves as a container to hold our spirit, and energies of thought and emotions.  If we can learn on the mat that even our emotions can be contained with beginning, middle and ending we rediscover our balance.

This is accomplished by remember the self, Vairagya chapter 1 verse 15.  Enjoy this excerpt from my favorite book by Nischala Joy Devi, Secret Power of Yoga.  "As our focus turns toward remember the true self we naturaly identify less and less with external desires or wants.  This perspective reveals that we are merely the temporary caretakes of whatever we possess.  With this attitude, nothing binds us.  As life bestows gifts upon us, we are delighted. With their revocation, we may feel momentarily upset, but with the grace of remembering our self, our emotional equilibrium is quickly restored.   Through remembering the self we become lucid and virbrant like a diamond. Millions of years of pressure on a simple lump of solid coal transforms it into a pure, transparetn diamond that reflects and refracts light.  This prismatic effect showers rainbows of colors on everything without discrimination. The diamond also appears to take the color of any object nearby. But once removed, it is perfectly colorless again.  Likewise, when our minds and hearts clearly reflect our true nature, we may acquire many things, but nothing permanently taints our clarity.   With this lucidity, we enthusiastically adopt that which enhances the light, and redirect that which dims it.  As we bcome free, we become more and more comfortable with the naturel flow of material things. Much of what we yearn for comes to us. We enjoy the treasures of the world while they are with us, knowing full well we will not bind to them, nor they to us.  This concept has its greatest challenge when we are separated from our friends or loved ones, especially without our permission or when it seems permanent. Our heart feels a vast emptiness where it was once filled with love.  At these times ti takes great strength to restore and sustain our equalibrium. By securing a place within our hearts to hold their love and by continuing our practice our balance is more easily restablished."  

JANUARY 3, 2010: So today we started in Vajrasana where after some initial acknowledge of where we are in this moment, like looking at a chalkboard in front of us we rubbed our hands together like two sticks of wood to create friction/heat and then cupped our eyes. We used this as an opportunity to open our eyes and imagine our hands as a mirror. Asking ourselves in our OUTWARD reflection what did we see? Who is the person staring back at us? Then we closed our eyes in the warmth of our hands and turned our gaze INWARDS to view the inner reflection and ask what is our purpose, our Dharma? WHO AM I?

And this means it is something more than the role we play at work, the labels we wear like son, daughter, partner, parent. When we get onto the mat it is a special time to rediscover ourselves. Or for many of us, to discover ourselves for the first time. Through these poses and conscious breathing we learn to gain control of our emotions and harness the power of our mind to direct our 60,000 daily thoughts towards our great purpose. But first we have to know WHO WE ARE before we are able to give direction. It’s like using the GPS on the car, you have to know the destination. This practice breaths life back into us or as Rumi writes, “I was dead, then alive, weeping then laughing. The power of love came into me!” With every physical sensation we feel our humanity. As Stephen Covey puts it, “We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.” So as a human being what is your Life’s Purpose or Dharma?

So right now say to yourself, “I AM THE CREATOR OF MY LIFE. I will listen with total attention to my experience, I will relish each sensation, I will love every minute of being with myself today.” You see the poses are the QUESTIONS. They are not the answers. They help us to be aware of our attitudinal alignment. For instance they ask us the fundamental question of whether or not we are focusing on our limitations or on our DREAMS, are we expecting the worst from life or the best from life? To co-create with the universe means we are taking responsibility to know who we are and are actively sharing our unique contribution with the world. Woodrow Wilson, the 28th 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.” So how do we do this? We get to work on the mat, anchored in our body to try to peal back the layers to look inside where all the answers already exist. As the Buddha says, “Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.”

It is not always easy. But we have to work harder than our fear, we have to work harder than our pain to make the truest discovery of WHO AM I. And the answer only comes from within, no one else can tell us who we are and why we are here. I know it’s sometimes scary (like doing a handstand against the wall) but through the poses we break down the self-doubt and grow more determined to live as who we really are. Eventually by the end of the practice we meet ourselves or as Derek Walcott puts it, “The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the others welcome, and say, sit here. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life.”

So this year face your fears, do not let them stand in the way of discovering the answer to WHO AM I. Best put by Earl Nightingale who says, “Don’t let fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might as well put that passing time to the best possible use.” Love to all, Peace to All, Courage to all! Silvia

DECEMBER 29, 2009: This week has been a time of self-reflection, looking back on what’s formed us. So much so that I have to say I have been a little sentimental about the obstacles I’ve encountered during this last year. With some space and time I have befriended them and feel it time to make peace with all of them. Spiritual practice informs us that if we are unable to let go of hurt or angry feelings the we will get stuck in that pain forever or as Author Alice Walker writes, we become “consumed with our suffering.” But we don’t have to be.

Yoga gives us the opportunity to realize healing for ourselves. On the mat we find the connection between the obstacle that has challenged us and the expansion possible for our hearts. We go through the healing which is defined as “a process of rejoining: a rejoining body to heart, a rejoining of spirit to consciousness.” You see the mind and the heart are sweethearts but obstacles sometimes form a chasm between them. It is only by opening our hearts that we heal. The mind otherwise will keep us bogged down in heaviness.

So this is the time to make peace and allow the rejoining. Breathing in a way so that:
THE DOOR TO MY HEART IS WIDE OPEN
THE WINDOW OF MY SOUL INVITES THE BREEZE
MAY THIS PRACTICE CLEAR THE OBSTACLES TO MY TRUE SELF
MAY I HAVE THE COURAGE TO FOLLOW MY HEART WHEREVER IT MAY LEAD


And no matter what obstacles of past have taken place we move forward living from the truest most gentle place. Inspired by the way Dr Wayne Dyer puts it "The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow. Do good anyway. Stop looking for the approval of others as your reason to do good. Even if no one ever says thank you, do for others as your heart dictates from spirit, which is rooted in the energy of love, kindness and connectedness to all. Remind yourself to give love and do good because that is who you are, and for no other reasons."

Live from your heart, embrace your obstacles in a sentimental way and let them serve you to open up to your own humanity even further! Love your life, love yourself! Silvia

Now is the time to clear out the past and get ready for the year to come. During this practice we will start by nurturing self-reflection: learning the lessons of the past and then letting it go. The the second half of the practice will plant seeds for the future. Join me on the mat for this special time dedicated to focusing on setting positive intentions for the New Year.

DECEMBER 8TH, 2009: When we get on the mat it is that special time to rediscover ourselves. Or for many of us, myself included, when we first start practicing it is a FIRST time discovery of who we really are. What a great surprise to find that no matter what age you are currently you can still give birth to your spirit. Through yoga you learn to tell what your soul needs.

All of this is accomplished through mindfulness and conscious breathing. When you use your breath on purpose and breath as you, you gain control of your emotions, your harness the power of your mind and direct your 60,000 daily thoughts towards what you need from the inside to live happier and more peacefully. Each pose then is an opportunity to listen to our body. We can ask ourselves in any pose “How can I use this pose to be more accepting of myself, How can I use this pose to practice being less reactive in difficult situations, How can I use this pose to celebrate my life, How can I use this pose to love myself more?”

When we live life trying to be what everyone else wants us to be we lose who we really are. Then the grumbling mind tends to get bogged down in its own weariness of trying to keep up. But if we discover ourselves our personal story shines out and through our acceptance and expansion of ourselves we give permission to everyone around us to be themselves. May this practice bring the inner yoga alive in you! As Rumi writes, “I was dead, then alive, weeping then laughing. The power of love came into me!” May you love yourself more, love your day more, love your life more! Silvia

NOVEMBER 26TH, 2009: This time of year there seems to be a bit of a craze in creating even more over stuffed To Do Lists. As we eat more, exercise less, stress more, relax less we overwhelm ourselves on purpose by engineering these massive lists of stuff “we have to do” before the end of the year. Now I know a lot of that stuff is super sincere and I have no doubt putting these lists together takes great courage. However, the fact is we really have very little control over what gets done. We like to think we have more control than we do.

What we can control is showing up to our lives. The outcome however is still beyond our jurisdiction. So let’s focus on what we can control and that is HOW WE ARE BEING. How we are being is the only that we can do something about.

So today I invite you to create a TO BE list.

Say to yourself “how am I going TO BE no matter what gets done, or the outcome of this situation.”

When we focus on a TO BE List it is giving ourselves permission to do the hardest pose of all which is TO BE YOURSELF. And I can promise you that being yourself is the coolest decision anyone can make. However if you’ve been used to trying to be who everyone else wants you to be there is a paradigm shift there and sometimes being ourselves means we will temporarily disappoint those people. Especially if they are used to us focusing all our time and energy on To Be Lists as a way to prove our self-worth.

You are wonderful the way you are. And when in a state of being present, where we are being ourselves we slow down and get quiet enough To Be more human. This place of quiet helps us be with the opportunities and love surrounding us or as the poet writes, “When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, its sound is often no louder than the beating of your heart and it is very easy to miss it.”

So today practice making a To Be List. And don’t forget on it to include a moment of gratitude for Mother Earth herself, who always serves as our best example of being still and present. Love yourself, love your day! Silvia


“Let us bless the imagination of the Earth. That knew early the patience to harness the mind of time, waited for the seas to warm, ready to welcome the emergence of things dreaming of voyaging among the stillness of land. And how light knew to nurse the growth until the face of the earth brightened beneath a vision of color. Let us thank the earth that offers ground for home and holds our feet firm to walk in space open to infinite galaxies. Let us salute the silence and certainty of mountains their sublime stillness their dream-filled hearts. The humility of earth that transfigures all that has fallen of outlived growth. The kindness of earth, opening to receive our forms into the final stillness.”

Joan Baez says, “You don’t get to choose how you are going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you’re going to live. Now.”

NOVEMBER 20, 2009: I know this much, Life is a celebration and it is our responsibility to enjoy it to its fullest! But I also know to enjoy life you must renounce your fear and anxiety. I spent a good portion of time being terribly afraid (afraid of not being perfect, afraid of what others might think, afraid of failing, afraid someone I loved would leave me if I didn’t do my life right according to them, afraid perhaps of really being fully happy, afraid of being myself). I don’t want that for you. I really don’t. Life is happening right now so stop waiting, stop wasting time, stop being afraid of living it on your terms because life is already here.

Next month I am learning how to surf. I have been doing my homework, reading up, talking to everyone I know that has surfed, watching DVD’s. It both energizes me and sometimes I get a little nervous. However because I feel free in my choices I am not frightened. In February I went skiing for the first time in ages and here at the end of the year I am again in water…why not? These are my soft spots. (Stay tuned next I go rock climbing!)

Rinpoche talked about how we all have a soft spot and that fear and fear like responses such as worry or resentment occur because we are trying to cover up that soft spot. We tend to hurry past pain but this hurrying causes more tension instead of healing. If we spend more time with what we fear we can look into that pain and release some of the tension. We practice vinyasa flow and enjoy the repetition to feel relationship between poses, we feel power of flow, becoming more confident, growing more fearless. Use this to heal and release fear.

When folks ask me how did I get past a way of fearful living I tell them I practiced a ton of yoga. I came to the mat, going upside down, trying holding a pose into sensation like bending my knee deeper in Warriors or balancing on one leg and by facing me fear on the mat I then was able to recognize that fear off the mat and do something about it. The Buddha says, if a person is struck by an arrow and is in a lot of pain there is that but what if a 2nd arrow hit the person in the same spot the pain would be 100 times more intense because he/she was already wounded. If you recognize pain and fear or worry then you can help STOP another arrow of fear or worry hitting you in that same spot.

The time on the mat helps me to prevent the 2nd arrow. I have slowly grown more confident and now I “practice with elegance and openness so as to open the body in a resplendent expression of my hearts inner luminosity.” You see you guys when we cultivate fearlessness we experience our hearts as more open. I also repeat this mantra to myself

I AM FREE
I AM NOT FRIGHTENED
I AM NOT HUMILITATED BY GUILT OR WORRY
I AM IN LOVE WITH THE MY LIFE!


So may we use today to notice our lives right now, facing them as they are, learning how to stop avoiding ourselves but instead BEING OURSELVES. This may be the most courageous challenge we can possible accept. Free yourself, be your own knight in shining armor. You need not be afraid of anything. Love and light, Silvia

NOVEMBER 15, 2009: “After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it?” – Richard Dawkins

So here's the theme: how Yoga is the practice of revealing yourself to yourself. The whole thing is about self-exploration. Hope you can rock with me with great music and fun flow to feel for yourself how “Exploration really is the essence of the human spirit.” Here are some favorite quotes that inspired this practice. I also emailed out the actual class plan that I hope you have enjoyed! Love in all ways, Silvia


Whenever there is a reaching down into innermost experience, into the nucleus of personality, most people are overcome by fear and many run away. . . The risk of inner experience, the adventure of the spirit, is in any case alien to most human beings. The possibility that such experience might have psychic reality is anathema to them. – Carl Jung

Creative people who can't help but explore other mental territories are at greater risk, just as someone who climbs a mountain is more at risk than someone who just walks along a village lane. – RD Laing

Every decision you make - every decision - is not a decision about what to do. It's a decision about Who You Are. When you see this, when you understand it, everything changes. You begin to see life in a new way. All events, occurrences, and situations turn into opportunities to do what you came here to do. - Neale Donald Walsch

If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative. - Woody Allen

NOVEMBER 4, 2009:  The practice of savasana is an interesting one especially today where we are all so good at promoting constant activity. Generally we are very good at getting new projects started and working ourselves ragged but how good are you at surrendering?  Can you take a few breaths right now to empty the residue of your day and surrender to what it is happening right now.  The quality of surrender is what we learn amongst other things in Savasana.  So today we practiced Savasana, final relaxation, a number of times during class. 

 

Savasana helps us in key ways:

1.  To be ok with the non-doing which we talk about in yoga as BEING PRESENT

2.  To embrace endings with as much gusto as we embrace beginnings.  Art of CLOSURE (Pratikryasana)

3. To learn how to relax and self-comfort (this is the antidote to fight/flight response)

4.  To recognize and admit to ourselves everything has an EXPIRATION DATE

 

So then what? How does savasana apply in every moment, every pose?  It helps us notice that life is right now.  There is no need to keep waiting to be happy, to keep looking for more or better but instead start enjoying the sweetness of our life right now.  Ok so here's the thing I love lying down and being still.  So maybe I was born to practice savasana but I think we all are, we just have to practice.  I hope you can through savasana learn to be more present, put closure to open elements of your life so you can stay with the flow, learn practical ways to relax and make the most of this moment! 

 

But remember we are only able to find surrender when we cultivate peace within ourselves. Shannon Gannon, Jivamukti founder says, “The practices of yoga create peace in ourselves, and that peace will be reflected in the world around us. If we truly want world peace we must begin by embodying that peace ourselves. The practice of yoga will end war, even wars of which we often are not even aware. Speak out for peace, live peacefully, think well of others, do what you can to uplift the lives of others. Find a way to live so that your own life enhances the lives of others. Give up the love of power for the power of love. Peace will come when we have given up hateful thoughts, cruel words, and violent actions in our own daily lives. Cultivate hopeful thoughts, sweet speech and kind actions. Don't wait for a better world. Start now to create a universe of harmony and peace. It is up to you.

 

Wishing you peaceful surrender, Silvia

 

OCTOBER 28, 2009:   Halloween is just around the corner. A chance for putting on costumes and becoming someone else for a little while. This idea of wanting to change who we are I believe represents as Donna Farhi says, "the enormous challenge of self-acceptance" we all face on a daily basis. 

OCTOBER 26, 2009: 

Namaste Monday Friends,

Alright I'm no expert and I haven't quite confirmed the stats but I do believe this is 28th rainy Monday this year.  And every Monday I have a little talk with myself in the morning about staying in bed or going out in the rain to take Mary's 9:15am Yoga class. Good news is when the weather is less than stellar why not be inside doing YOGA?  

So if you're having that same Monday afternoon work day closing down talk about "should you go to yoga tonight or not" well why not?  It's actually a perfect time to do yoga! I can tell you that I have never once regretted dragging myself to class, especially when its dark, cold or rainy outside.  We have to keep livin' life to its fullest!

I want to say a special thank you to ALL the amazing Yogis I share mat time with on Monday's. Because I know you'll be there - I feel like I need to show up too.  And somehow that makes it easier no matter the rain, the cold (or eventually even the snow).   

We are all in this together working towards radiant health, love and world peace one down dog at a time!!

I'll save you spot tonight and every Monday night 6:15pm Level 1 or 7:30pm Basics.  Our being at Total Body Yoga together, even if you have to drag yourself there sometimes, is what makes the group yoga practice so wonderful!  Come in from the rain, get warm, and breath! Love and light, Silvia 

 

PS - Hey Mary thank you for another FANTASTIC yoga class this morning!! Smiles.

 

OCTOBER 23, 2009: It is a Spiritual Truth that TRUE HAPPINESS REQUIRES HONEST SELF-REFLECTION. THE MORE HONEST YOU ARE WITH YOURSELF, THE GREATER HAPPINESS YOU WILL EXPERIENCE. So let’s start by simply blessing ourselves for being present enough to give thanks for the opportunity to be ourselves. Enjoy these words of John O’Donohue.

I give thanks for arriving
Safely to a new dawn,
For the gift of eyes
To see the world
The gift of mind
To feel at home
In my life

I often say in class the hardest pose we do is being ourselves. The body does not lie so in a pose on the mat its just us, we have no one to point fingers at we can’t make excuses there is nowhere to run. We have to come home to our lives in that moment. And whether its hard or easy is irrelevant. The greater purpose is through the breathing and postures are you learning how to be honest with what you are feeling instead of denying it. The sooner we are courageous enough to be our TRUE SELVES then this inherently is being our BEST SELVES. And the more we are ourselves the greater happiness we will experience. Start today, love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

A great exercise I offer you from Robert Holden who wrote Be Happy is this:

1. Self-Awareness. You will always feel like something is missing, you will always feel inadequate until you learn to know yourself better. Life isn’t about getting more it is about being more of who you really are. Authenticity is the perfect antidote to split desires and to negative comparison. And the more real you are with yourself, the more you will realize what you really want. This is important because as Eric Hoofer put it “You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.”
2. Self-Acceptance. For as long as you do not accept yourself, you will always want more than you have. If you will not accept that happiness is your true nature, you will search for happiness for the rest of your days. And if by chance you discover some happiness, you will not let yourself enjoy it unless you have learned to accept yourself. The fact is, more of anything or everything will not be enough until you choose to be happy.
3. Self-Accountability. If you think something is missing from your life, it is probably you. The idea that something is missing in your life, in your relationships, in your work is a projection. This projection is based on the fact that you are not fully present. True happiness requires you to participate fully in your life now. Do a self-inventory based on three questions: 1.) What am I not being? 2.) What am I not giving? 3.) What am I not receiving?

OCTOBER 9, 2009:  Do you want to be in love with your life?  What kind of life do you deserve?  The answer of how much love we think deserve comes from us and us only.  Yogic teachings tell us that to think another person is the source of all your joy is the greatest delusion.  To find love you must follow it backwards to you. It’s like the little card that sits on my desk that I see everyday says “Most of all love yourself!”  So we use the practice time on the mat to go inside to seek that inside us, following sensations like bread crumbs as in the story of Hansel and Gretel. 

 

There is a force within that gives you life---

            Seek That.

In your body there lies a priceless jewel---

            Seek That.

If you want to find the greatest treasure,

           Don't look outside,

Look within,

and seek That.

 — Rumi

What I found most interesting is that we attract to us the kind of relationships that reflect the one we are having with ourselves.  If we can’t go inside ourselves and experience self-love then no one else can do that for us.  We must follow love backwards and from there once we KNOW love then we become the love that we think we deserve to receive from others.  So today, move of all LOVE YOURSELF! All love all ways, Silvia

 

Coming Home to Yourself

May all that is unforgiven in you

Be released

May your fears yield

Their deepest tranquilities.

May all that is unlived in you

Blossom into a future

Graced with love.

 

SEPTEMBER 16, 2009: 

Aren't you tired of being perfect? 

 

I read somewhere once that we are far too rational in our relationships, far too ordered, far too organized and far too predictable in the way we live life.  We get stuck in the mundane instead we should "move into spontaneity and serendipity, a level that includes a greater sense of freedom and risk – an active environment full of surprises which encourages a sense of wonder.”

 

I get tired of being perfect. It is a whole lot more fun being a little messy and entirely more open hearted.  Hey I've lived the abuse of perfectionism and learned that the harder we are on ourselves the tougher we are in terms of our expectations of others.  Through the last 15 years of spiritual practice I've grown kinder, towards myself and everyone else.  Fundamentally we attract the people to us who reflect the relationships we're having with ourselves. 

 

Every day we are asking through our doing.  So what are you asking for?

 

Lately it seems like folks have had a harder time than usual getting back into the swing of this “back to school, back to yoga, back to healthy lifestyle” time of year.  It’s been a tough time getting folks to the mat. The reason may be because our summer was less solar so we are a bit less in our energy. Ok, then we have to live with what life is offering us.  It is not perfect, the summer was clearly a bit deranged and we had irrational weather.  That’s just the way of things, not bad, not good just what was there for us.  So it’s up to us to resolve to find the fun and spontaneity in the scope of the energy we feel.

 

Nature is always our best teacher. A friend shared this story with me today that I share with you here.  It goes like this:

“Today, on my run, I heard some squirrel action.  Do you know the action I am talking about?  It sounded like some pretty intense lovemaking, so I slowed down to see if I could get a view.  They were in a tree about 15 feet above my head, and from the sounds of it, things were quite intense!  Well, sure enough, they were.  The two squirrels were so tightly wound together that it was confusing to see who was who and just precisely what was going on.  The inner voyeur was coming alive in me.  Just as I was thinking I'd best be getting back to things at hand, something slipped--or a small branch broke, or goodness knows what, but the two squirrels came flying through the air at me and landed in a roiling, squeaking, noise of a mess of squirrel ball that immediately separated into two grey streaks and climbed back up the tree to go at it some more!!!  

 

It was pretty intense.”

 

You guys, the squirrels clearly did not over organize their location or over analyze their relationship and instead allowed events to simply unfold, then when things didn’t work out the way they expected they were able to regulate or even co-regulate with one another and get right back to what was important to them. In healthy human relationship our partners/friends help us to co-regulate and resolve to adjust to what life is offering instead of getting stuck in the fact it didn’t work the one way we expected. I’ve been in relationship where the other person could not re-regulate and if something didn’t happen according to the “The Plan” the whole day/week/event was ruined.  The yogic teachings tell us that narrowly defining the outcome of anything in just 1 way is the root cause of our suffering and disappointment.  There is always more than one outcome because life as Emerson writes is life is fluid and volatile. The artist India Arie puts it like this in her lyrics:

 

“Oh God, grant me the serenity to accept the things

that I can not change,

The courage to change the things I can,

The wisdom to know the difference.

And God, give me the courage to love with an open heart,

an open heart, an open heart.

I want to love with an open heart.”  

 

We have the opportunity not to get dragged down in the details of our lives but live in the broad brush strokes. If we fall out of a tree we get back up the tree to keep enjoying our life!  Spontaneity means as my friend Sadie Nardini writes, “If you want love then be love and it will find you exactly as you are experiencing it inside yourself.  You can't treat yourself like crap and get sweet love back, you give crappy love to yourself and you'll get crappy love in return.  Don’t you deserve better than crappy love?” 

 

If you are harsh, overly regimented, and self-critical in how you treat yourself that’s exactly what you’ll get back in relationship and you DESERVE BETTER!  The way you broadcast your life to the world through emotion (lightheartedness, ease, wonder, humor) is then transmitted back to you.  Your heart is the mirror.  Maybe if we all lived like those squirrels our lives would be more filled with spontaneity, sweet surprises, and pure pleasure!  Love yourself, love your day, love your life, Silvia

 

 

SEPTEMBER 5, 2009:    Om is the Name of Narayana, the flame of truth.”

 

OM NAMO NARAYANAYA

 

This mantra is said to take the sayer to sublime spiritual realms where spiritual questions are answered and great TRUTHS are revealed.  The word for truth in Sanskrit is Satya.  In India the even hold a universal truth ceremony called Satya Narayana Puja.” (Healing Mantras by Thomas Ashely-Farrand)

 

We started class in seated meditation and I sang this mantra so we could all feel the vibration and set the tone for using the practice to delve deeper into revealing our unique truths. I know this concept is not “new” to you.  I too grew up with the idea of honesty. But the way I learned it was fear based this presentation of Don’t Lie or you will get into terrible trouble, no one will like you and you will be sent to a horrible place. As a kid this gave me nightmares and I can tell you I was a very good kid but I didn’t really need to be scared into embracing honesty.

 

So as an adult in my more mature spiritual practice I often dedicate my meditation to the basic TRUTH of my life.  I sit and attempt to “get real” with myself.  It started years ago with just the question “what is real” as I tried to figure out where in my life I might downplay things or where I might overexaggerate stuff.  Through this observation I found the middle path, the truth.  And each day along this path I say to myself “I AM STILL LEARNING” these are the words Michelengelo spoke at the age of 87 and my friend Liz gave me to wear as a bracelet on my left wrist, the receiving side of the body.    

 

This idea of still learning has helped me hold myself more gently.  It has allowed me to be more honest about who I am, what I need, what I feel. It helps me to look at old mistakes, times of self-neglect and even old hurts so I can move forward more honestly but always with love and more love.  Fearful intentions don’t work for me.

 

Spiritual Truth:  TRUE HAPPINESS REQUIRES HONEST SELF-REFLECTION. THE MORE HONEST YOU ARE WITH YOURSELF, THE GREATER HAPPINESS YOU WILL EXPERIENCE.

 

A great exercise I offer you from Robert Holden who wrote Be Happy is this:

 

1. Self-Awareness. You will always feel like something is missing, you will always feel inadequate until you learn to know yourself better.  Life isn’t about getting more it is about being more of who you really are.  Authenticity is the perfect antidote to split desires and to negative comparison. And the more real you are with yourself, the more you will realize what you really want.  This is important because as Eric Hoffer put it “You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.”
2. Self-Acceptance.  For as long as you do not accept yourself, you will always want more than you have.  If you will not accept that happiness is your true nature, you will search for happiness for the rest of your days.  And if by chance you discover some happiness, you will not let yourself enjoy it unless you have learned to accept yourself.  The fact is, more of anything or everything will not be enough until you choose to be happy. 
3. Self-Accountability.  If you think something is missing from your life, it is probably you.  The idea that something is missing in your life, in your relationships, in your work is a projection. This projection is based on the fact that you are not fully present.  True happiness requires you to participate fully in your life now.  Do a self-inventory based on three questions:

1.)     What am I not being?

2.)     What am I not giving?

3.)     What am I not receiving?

 

 So today my dear friends please take time to reflect on your own truth and through this may you find the greatest happiness within your heart! Let’s imagine a world where everyone is living as themselves and that world is bright with no more war or conflict just pure truth and love.  Sat Nam (in truth and light), Silvia

 

SEPTEMBER 4, 2009:  Namaskaram Yogi Friends,

What a great practice today!  For bringing your best self I thank you.  As you know we focused on Om Namah Shivaya.  I shared the story of how last week I brought a friend to their first Kirtan. Om Namah Shivaya was their favorite song.  So this inspired me to share more with you today, starting by singing out 108 rounds of this mantra. 

Om Namah Shivaya mantra uses the universal elements that govern each chakra: earth, water, fire, air, and ether. 

 

That’s all the chakras are: just the elements that you know exist rolled up into various energies of our bodies.  The syllables of Na, Ma, Shi, Va, Ya help the chakras to better utilize the fundamental elements that predominate in the chakra.  When we sing, hear or think this mantra we bring into balance all the chakras, all our energies.

 

This mantra also reminds us of our innate Perfection.  That we are born perfect (siddha) and whole.  And our only job in this lifetime is to remember how AMAZING WE ARE!  The thing is, you have always been perfect and what you are experiencing through your journey is the removal of all the external layers you’ve carried for a long time known as kleshas.

 

This brings us back to our true nature, which is JOY.  Even Abraham Lincoln says “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.”  If this knowing comes from a man known for his dark depression then I am sure we can all find a way to understand this about ourselves.  Carl Jung once said, “your vision will become clear only when you can look into your heart.”  So Om Namah Shivaya brings us back to our selves, we actually remember better how happy we are on the inside in spite of the challenges that might surround us.  Put another way by great Indian Philosopher Pantanjali, “When you are inspired, all 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. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person than you ever dreamed yourself to be.” 

 

All I am asking each of you to do is believe in your own GREATNESS and capacity for ever increasing happiness.  Leo Buscaglia writes in his book Loving Each Other “Joy and happiness are simply states of mind, it is strange that some of the happiest people I have ever known were those who seemed to have no particular cause to rejoice.  They were simply happy.  They seemed to have in common a singular courage, a willingness to risk, to fail and to let go, a believe in themselves, a wonderful resourcefulness, and a trust in their creative uniqueness.” 

 

Be your best self today, OM NAMAH SHIVAYA!!  Big love, Silvia

 

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009:  Grounding into 1st Chakra

I dedicate this class to all those friends, students and unknown hearts that are feeling uprooted or ungrounded in life right now.  To you I say, “I know” I’ve been there.  And by learning more about the power of the Root Chakra, which is our foundation for life, we can regain our sense of security, internal power and stability.  You can believe in your choices with greater conviction once more.  Most of all to me the root chakra reminds us to accept the TRUTH of who we are.  This truth of our own specialness and uniqueness keeps us connected to the present moment.  Otherwise when we lose our center it is so often because we are trying to be what someone else wants us to be and as a result we feel unstable. 

 

We used a series of poses to till the soil of our bodies warming them up so we could be in our own skin. Inside ourselves we find an inner security and stillness. A quiet peace that is unrelated to circumstance or others opinions. I mentioned how I love photography and collect cameras.  That the 1^st chakra when balanced brings us clarity no different than holding a camera, setting up the angle, moving yourself or the subject around and then refining the focus of the picture by growing still.  This crystal clear clarity on our decisions is based in strongly rooted self-worth.  If you know who you truly are then taking action on your personal pilgrimage towards what’s important to you is a whole lot easier. 

 

I guess all that I want any of us to do is be present to the loveliness of our lives and claim our place in the world.  Through yoga you can regain your stable center and assert yourself with lovingkindess: strong get gentle.  Join me on the mat to experience more of the root chakra.  Wishing you your best courage! Silvia

 

AUGUST 15th, 2009: 

“Happiness Prayer”  (From the book Be Happy by Robert Holden)

Dear God,

So far today I’ve done all right.

I haven’t gossiped.  I haven’t lost my temper.

I haven’t been greedy, moody, nasty, selfish or narcissistic.

And I’m really glad about that.

But in a few minutes, God, I’m going to get out of bed,

And from then on I’m going to need a lot more help.

Thank you.

Amen

We have another 24 brand new hours before us says Thich Nhat Hanh!  And again a choice to choose happiness.  The more you choose happiness the more you see the potential for happiness that is all around you.  You find happiness because you choose happiness.  Emerson said words to the effect that everyday when we make our bed we have a choice to make up our minds about the kind of day we’re going to have. 

 

Yes, in every moment there is a choice, sometimes our choice is to choose happiness other times our choices block happiness. The good news is that the more you choose happiness the easier it gets.  But how?

 

BE PRESENT

 

Could it be that easy?  Yesssss!  Begin now by asking yourself:  How can I enjoy this moment?

The more you are wiling to enjoy the moment the more beautiful each moment of your life will be.  Essentially you are choosing life. And Jon Kabat Zinn says that the more you say yes to life, the more life will say yes to you!  And if you think about it life only happens one little moment at a time. So put yourself into the smallest things you do.

 

The bigger goal is simply to SHOW UP and BE PRESENT.  Be authentic.  Be you! (Or as Russell Simmons puts it in the title of his yoga inspired book “DO YOU”)

 

So starting in this moment remember to enjoy the miracle of existence today, appreciate your breath and in that breath choose happiness.  Love you all, Silvia

 

AUGUST 12TH, 2009: 

How do you know if you are happy?  And if happy what makes you happy?  When’s the last time you had a conversation with a friend or family member about happiness? Hmmm, I know interesting huh?

In Yoga the practice of self-study is known as Svadhyaya it is one of the Niyamas or fundamental philosophical tenants of the practice.  How this applies as we breath and move is through the relationship we have with each pose.  Just like we can observe how we relate to people in our lives (past and present) because every relationship has a purpose. All of this to help us better feel our TRUTH so that when chaos surrounds us we are able to remain grounded 

 

HAPPINESS IS THE WILLINGNESS TO CHOOSE THE TRUTH

 

I have a lot of books on happiness, my newest one I love is “Be Happy” by Robert Holden.  So during the course of the practice today I offered for your contemplation questions related to Happiness and our Mothering/Fathering Influences.  The right side is the solar or masculine side, the left side of us is the feminine or lunar.  So we played this out between right, left all in a practice to arrive better to the TRUTH of our center and learn more about ourselves.

 

So think about this:

 

·         Your relationship to happiness is influenced greatly by your family’s story about happiness

·         Your family story is about how your family expresses its joy

·         What is your mother’s definition of happiness?  What is your fathers definition of happiness

·         How does your mother’s definition of happiness influence your life?  How does your fathering influence impact your life?

·         When is your father happiest? 

·         When is your mother happiest? 

·         Growing up what did your mom (or mothering influence) teach you about happiness? 

·         What did your father teach you about happiness?

·         Who is the happiest member of your family?

·         Who is the unhappiest member of your family?

 

I hold dear this from Robert Holden, “The joy of relationship is found in deep acceptance, in unconditional love, in really seeing each other, in valuing each other, in offering mutual support, in showing appreciation, and in giving trust. Happiness is found in loving the truth in people.”  Observe your TRUTH and you change your life.  Love the day, the night, your life, yourself!  Silvia

 

AUGUST 9TH, 2009: 

“The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on the brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing”  (By Galway Kinnell)

 

I always keep close to my heart the words of Thich Nhat Hanh who says “each minute of our life is a work of art.”  Through yoga and daily time spent on the mat this is exactly how I came to see my life as this beautiful canvas, each pose and each life experience: good, difficult, interesting, all adding colors to the artwork of my story.  If you say to yourself the first two lines of this poem you get that same feeling or as Roger Housden puts it “you may find, as I have, that they give you the feeling of wanting to live large again on the canvas of your life.  For we, too, are buds, you and I, full of life unfolding into flower.”  

 

We all have this amazing opportunity in each minute to step onto our own spiritual path moved by an inner sense to find greatness of heart to choose our own path, or as Robert Frost says “take the road less traveled”.  I also really love how this poem speaks to everyone no matter what, “even those that don’t flower externally can do so from within.”  We all want to endeavor to fill the canvas of our lives with bold colors, the way is to look at our own hearts and see that everything we need to make a new beginning to give birth to some new venture lies within us already.  Housden says ‘the flower of our life is already in bud even now.”  Yes it is.  Join me on the mat tomorrow at 7:45am Level 1-2 or 9:15am Level 1 or 4:30pm Level 1-2 to as Swami Vivekananda says to experience that “we are responsible for what we are and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves!” 

 

See you in the flow!  Love in all ways, Silvia

 

 

AUGUST 7TH, 2009:  One of my favorite authors (peace activists) Thich Nhat Hanh says it like this:  “We have an appointment with life, and that appointment takes place in the present moment.  If we miss the present moment, we miss our appointment with life, which is serious.”

 

As you navigate the inevitable life changes that take place for all of us all the time like waves. (*You should know I’m a water sign so the metaphor of waves is a constant presence in my life.) The challenge of keeping yourself focused on the present is supported by having a serious on-going conversation between your loving heart and mind about what Life Appointments are the most meaningful to you.  If for a minute you think you can control or fully understand why other people do the things they do or why certain situations present themselves you’re setting yourself up for misery.

 

Instead we focus on the fact that each of us has a steady choice of what appointments we want to keep for our lives that are the most life affirming.  We must think about meeting our own needs through the use of YES to the appointments, events or occasions that are the most important.  What happens outside of this is what it is.  If seems selfish to meet your own needs then get over it. From 15 years of corporate travel I learned quickly the emergency procedures on the airplane said put the oxygen mask on YOU FIRST, then take care of seniors and children.  They don’t apologize for this in an emergency and we shouldn’t in living our daily lives!

 

Life is no brief candle for me. It is a sort of splendid

Torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want

To make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it

On to the future.  George Bernard Shaw

 

I love the quote above because it serves as a reminder this is not a rehearsal. We do not get to do today over again. If we wait for someone else to make us happy, peaceful or feel loved we have wasted precious time.  We must look after our own needs, practicing being true to ourselves and choosing wisely the appointments that grow our lives.  Love the day, Silvia

 

 

AUGUST 5TH, 2009:  A friend gave to me not too long ago a sweet little book that is powerful beyond measure. I have since purchased many copies to give as gifts to friends.  The book is "The Way to Love" and contains the Anthony de Mello's final thoughts as he grapples with the ulimate question of love.  In 31 meditations he implores his readers to break through illusion, the great obstacle to love.  "love springs from awareness, " de Mello insists, saying that it is only when we see others as they are that we can begin to really love.  This task, however, is not easy.  "The most painful act," he continues "is the act of seeing. But is in that act of seeing that love is born."

Today I meditated on the HARDEST YOGA POSE, being ourselves.

de Mello speaks to this as he offers us these words "Compare the serene and simple splendor of a rose in bloom with the tensions and restlessness of your life. The rose has a gift that you lack: It is perfectly content to be itself.  It has not been programmed from birth, as you have been, to be dissatisfied with itself, so it has not the slightest urge to be anything other than it is.  That is why it posseses grace and absense of inner conflict.  You are always dissatisfied with yourself, always wanting to change yourself. So you are full of violence and self-intolerance which only grows...any change you achieve is always accompanied by inner conflict.  And you suffer when you see others achieve what you have not and become what you are not."

So from a yogic view we have the power to make ourselves.  Our suffering comes when we try to bring about changes based on what other people want us to be or society says we should be or we compare and compete with our neighbors getting jealous or envious.  The INTENTIONS our aspirations we have for ourselves can manifest without our coercing, forcing or doing battle to be someone else, to be something we are not.  For if we try to find happiness being what someone else wants us to be we will only ever be second best. We can only be OUR BEST SELF. 

De Mello compares says this is "an exhausting self-defeating process like driving with your brakes on." Which by the way in my jeep I actually have tried...doesn't work that well.

To me what we are speaking to here is the difference between being selfish (which is good) and self-intolerant.  If we really like ourselves and have confidence in our life choices based on what is good for us then we ignite our greatest potential from within.  We "run our own race" as I'm fond of saying.  We no longer get upset, restless or dissatisfied with who we are. 

We are all just flowers in the garden of life. The universe respects our diversity and wants us to bloom as our unique selves.  I have often referred to myself as a delicate flower, and you are too, so let us selfishly love ourselves as we are while on the path to achieving our highest aspirations.

Love to you all, Silvia

 

JULY 20TH, 2009:  Why do I come to the mat each and every day?  I return because I want to make and keep peace with who I am.  I practice in the safety of class radical self-acceptance.  Through that practice I stay present to life and what it is offering me breath to breath, email by email, thought to action to observation. We are all a work in progress but that awareness of letting ourselves be who we are is vital to positive mental, emotional and spiritual health.

 

Think about it you can come to class at any time without having to meet any single prerequisite.  You just come as you are and the power and beauty of yoga embraces you.  I can tell you during times of challenge the mat was the only place I felt like I could be myself. And I mean my real self (not the pretending we do for our neighbors, colleagues, even sometime our family members).  Eckhart Tolle in the book A New Earth says it like this on page 184:

 

"Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment. It is part of the isness of the Now. You can't argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer."

 

Finding peace inside through compassionate self-acceptance is not that easy, but the thing is only when we find peace within can we become the kind of people who can live at peace with others.  It is a straightforward spiritual law.  You cannot offer to others what you don’t practice for yourself.  If you don’t have peace you can’t make peace, if you don’t love yourself you can’t really love someone else, if you don’t fully accept how amazing you are, you WILL NEVER accept others.  This is why when I’ve encountered the most critical or judgmental person I feel compassion for them because I know they are only treating me like that because they are first criticizing and belittling themselves.  I don’t want that to be the way of energy exchange for any of us. This is why I want the world to practice yoga.

 

“Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there`s all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will-to-action; acceptance frees it.” Says Anne Covey

 

And perhaps the greatest misunderstanding of acceptance is that it is apathetic. This is not the case.  Yoga is at its core learning how to accept ourselves in this moment not staying stuck in apologizing who were in the past or hyperventilating about who we might be in the future. As Fulton Oursler puts it, ‘Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear of the future.”  When we are allowing ourselves to accept our innate goodness we can learn how to ask ourselves better questions and to listen to the answers (i.e., What do I want? What do I feel? What do I need? How can I give myself what I need right now?) In other words we aren’t trying to fix ourselves as if we were broken we nourish ourselves with self-love.  This leads to a sense of feeling light, freer and healthier.  So today make the choice not to keep yourself in a prison of your own making through self-criticism and harsh self-judgement but instead as Rumi says, “only from the heart can you touch the sky!”  Accept yourself, lover your day, love your life! Silvia

 

 

"You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge. But it can only emerge if something fundamental changes in your state of consciousness." - Page 13 Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

 

JULY 10, 2009:  Get a life in which you are not alone.  Find people you love, and who love you.  And remember that love is not leisure, it is work

 

Yoga teaches us that we can only share love to the degree we feel it for ourselves.  So the question to ask ourselves first is “do we think we deserve to be loved?”  It is a simple question and requires the utmost heroism to respond honestly.  And if you say yes then we begin by practicing self-love.  This is the most advanced practice of yoga.  And I’ll tell you, it’s not easy at first. But the good news is the more you practice the less you’ll even remember the old ways.  It will be like breathing.  Oh yeah, we learn in yoga breathing takes work.  (Thank goodness the body keeps us breathing even when we don’t pay attention) But the best quality of life means we are loving our breath, we appreciate it we PAY IT ATTENTION. 

 

So on the mat we practice loving ourselves so we can love our live’s better.  It takes effort, effort means taking some action.  So we are reminded that love is not leisure.  Managing our breath is one activity of self-love and another is being in charge of our own thoughts.  As science tells us we know we have 60,000 thoughts per day and whenever we think a thought the brain sends chemicals through our body that produces a feeling based on that thought.  If we think the same critical thoughts over and over, these repetitive thoughts and their repetitive chemical reactions will create a negative view of life. They will drain the life from our life.  So ask yourself WHY DO YOU THINK THE THINGS YOU DO? 

 

The thoughts you have today will go through a gestation period (short or long) and will eventually give birth to the quality of your life. 

 

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE BORN FROM YOUR LIFE?

 

Even making love to another requires some effort, some action (you don’t just lie there inactive, unresponsive) this is the same for what we want to be born in our lives for growth only takes place through love and kindness.  And by actively generating love we organically open the doorway for the entry of people and experiences that are like the love we feel for ourselves.  So engage your life more, actively love yourself in thoughts, words, and actions each day and let your heart shine out!  Love in all ways, Silvia

 

Light, my light, the world-filling light, the eye-kissing light, heart-sweetening light! 

Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the center of my life;

the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love;

the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth.   -Tagore

JULY 7TH, 2009: 

“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.”

                                                  

It is great to spend time in self-reflection looking back at our lives but equally as important is looking forward. And it is through the Power of Intention we realize our dreams!  It all starts with a thought.  Here are four key elements in forming strong intention for yourself.  To begin just bring your hands together in SANKALPA MUDRA (a Mudra of commitment with everything that goes into it as the intention).  So just begin to breath here and as you breath in setting this intention know in some sense you are setting an expectation for yourself  - an expectation to your own growth and evolution.  As you deepen your breath really deepen your connection to the promise you are making to yourself.

 

FIRST – DEFINE YOUR INTENTION.  Use the time in Yoga to go inside yourself and explore the hidden chambers of your heart to find your TRUE self. This is really the 1^st step in yoga. From there the next step is bringing forth from within our highest potential our best self that we discovered within and sharing it with the world. So right now through your attention and breathing do the following no matter where you are:

·         Give your heart attention

·         Give your heart nourishment

·         Give your heart energy

           

SECOND – EXPECT BEAUTY. Show reverence for all life by expecting kindness and love along with beauty in your life. This is different than habitually looking for ways to be hurt, angry or offended.  You can’t access your intention if you’re thinking about the impossibility of what you want to manifest. 

  

THIRD – MEDITATE ON APPRECIATION. Cherish your body, your breath. Really acknowledge that you were chosen to breath today and having another day to be alive means another chance to focus on our intentions.  Take a moment to appreciate your life and use this practice to deepen your commitment to promise to grow.

 

FOURTH – BANISH DOUBT.  Doubt diminishes our creativity and potential.  Shakespeare said, “our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” 

 

 

JUNE 29, 2009:  I once read somewhere; I can’t remember where, that “no one is born with healthy self-esteem” we must learn this quality as we face our challenges.  In the energy system this is the work of the 3^rd chakra, the solar plexus, or Manipura.  The energies of this chakra have at their heart the intention to help us mature in our self-understanding like how we feel and take care of ourselves. This spiritual quality is about self-respect.  How we feel about ourselves, whether we have a strong sense of self-esteem determines our quality of life and our capacity to succeed in relationships (both personal and professional).  For instance, do you believe that you deserve to be loved well by others?  This is demonstrated by the self-love you are able to generate for your own heart.

 

The spiritual truth here is that if we don’t like ourselves we won’t make healthy decisions about our lives.  People with low self-esteem attract relationships and job situations that mirror and reinforce this.  So if you don’t like YOU others will walk all over you, taking advantage and bullying.  Your physical and emotional strength to set healthy boundaries are from this chakra, your personal power center.  To know if your 3^rd Chakra is in balance take a moment and honestly ask yourself: are you choosing situations, people, & things that drain you or empower you? 

 

During class we used poses to build physical strength and core awareness to help all of us strengthen our Third Chakra.

The other aspect that we spoke about in class was how a balanced third chakra aids our ability to feel more centered. When our 3^rd chakra is out of balance our thoughts are all over the place.  And if our thoughts are unfocused then it is more difficult to handle the crisis that life might put in our path.  We used the centering breath to return our minds to that place of peaceful balance, sama breathing, no matter what pose or discomfort we faced in a hip opening sequence.  We also learned the solar plexus Mudra called Rudra Mudra with the tips of our thumb and index finger and ring fingers together while extending the other fingers out in a relaxed way.  Our mantra was “I rest at my center and draw joy from my center, I love myself.”

 

For meditation we asked ourselves these questions as part of our practice:

·         Where were you last June 2008?

·         Where are you now?

·         Are you able to see how much you’ve grown and give yourself credit?

·         Are you on the right path?

·         Where do you see yourself June 2010?

 

I promise I will check in with everyone June 29, 2010 and hold everyone accountable for deepening their commitment to give birth to the life they really want. That this practice reminded us to set an expectation for ourselves – to our own growth and evolution – and remain centered enough to meet our ambitions.  You are all amazing and as we continue paying attention to the health of our 3^rd chakra please know you have all come a very long way already and with a courageous sense of self-respect and self-esteem little by little we will travel very far by this time next year! May your thoughts, feelings and actions find alignment.

 

Love yourself, love your life!  Silvia

 

JUNE 17, 2009:  I consider myself a LOVE ANTHROPOLOGIST.  I have been studying love all my life.  While I was in Tuscany last week through mere observation I gained even further insight into LOVE.  I was surrounded by it!  The way people casually touch each other in conversation, the way folks eat and make love to their food, the way folks talk about their romance with wine and even how folks are in relationship to the earth herself.  You feel that there is less self-criticism I never got that vibe from any woman “I shouldn’t eat that, this will make my but look big” Essentially I observed no declaration of self-abuse or withholding.

 

Instead it was all open armed embracing. You can sense folks love themselves.  So right now bring your right hand to your belly and your left hand to your higher heart.  We all have within us two hearts, the beating heart and the intuitive heart.  So feel right now the energy of these two hearts with your hands.  Through that connection and self embrace feel the flow of love first for yourself and all the beautiful things you love about yourself, then expand that love for others until everyone is hugged in. 

 

Swami Satchidananda says, “Real love is possible only when you see everything as yourself.”

 

This is supported in the yoga sutras Chapter 1 verse 23, “Boundless love and devotion unite us with consciousness.”  Yoga unifies, it brings us into embrace with all the world.  Love begets more love.  Or as Neem Karoli Baba says, “love everyone, serve everyone.”  This has been my mission.  But in Tuscany I could see that it was everyone’s mission!  Even some scientists are now labeling the heart as an organ of perception EQUAL to the brain.  Spiritual leaders have always known this and shared it.  You see the universe intended for us to have a joyous loving experience on earth.  This is the state from which we are created – It is our natural state of being.  There is nothing natural about living a life filled with stress and anxiety, having feelings of aloneness or despair. 

Two key learnings I gained from Tuscany were that sharing this awareness of universal love, just like our breath is universal, doesn’t mean that life is without some ups and downs or the unexpected.  A spiritually mature consciousness addresses these waves with compassion.  Nischala Joy Devi writes, “The word compassion is such a beautiful word, soft and gentle.  It is comprised of two parts: “com” meaning with and “passion” meaning any intense emotion either pleasurable or painful.  Compassion is a form of infinite love, in that nothing can affect it or limit it.” 

 

So as we ride the waves or windstorms of life if we face it from the heart of compassion we will see others as ourselves or as the Dalai Lama suggests, “Through compassion you find that all human beings are just like you” When I had my heart broken once I remember my friend David saying to me, just know that there are people all over the world same as you having this exact experience of heart break.  They too are in what he calls “the pain chamber”.  Just being reminded that I was not alone in my human experience made my time in the pain chamber less hard to bear.    

 

Join me in living with more compassion to face the windstorms:

“To love means never to be afraid of the windstorms of life;

Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would

Never see the beauty of the carvings.”  Elisabeth Kubler Ross

 

Please above all else wake up to the love that surrounds you everywhere!  Listen with your heart to Rumi’s suggested self-observation: 

What happens when your soul

Begins to awaken
Your eyes
And your heart
And the cells of your body
To the great Journey of Love?

 

What happens indeed?  I love myself, I love you all, I serve with my whole heart.  Silvia

 

 

JUNE 1ST, 2009

MAY 16, 2009:  Everyday we are working on our PhD on how to be a better human being. We are all doing the best we can.  So right now for 5 minutes can you let go of what you thought was supposed to happen, just breath and let things be.  Can you appreciate your life just as it is offered to you in this moment? 

 

There is that tendency we have to want things to be different than what they are but spiritual maturity impresses upon us to learn how to find a way to be content with what is in the present for it is a gift.  To help with this growth simply listen to your heart as you watch your thoughts.  This study of oneself will open up channels of stuckness in both the physical body and channels to deep reservoirs of clarity and wisdom within our minds.  This cultivates appreciation.  And there is an inherent gentleness when we practice appreciation for who we are.  Please make your observations not from a place of judgement but of understanding, compassion and self-love.  Know that you dissolve negativity through appreciation for this is the real enemy of love.  Practice appreciation and love triumphs!

 

So today take time to appreciate your breath, to appreciate your feelings (whatever they may be – joy, sadness, peace, frustration, love), appreciate being in your own skin.  I know this is not easy.  Just like the poses we practice on the mat are not easy.  They are often very uncomfortable. 

 

So I’m asking you to be uncomfortable. To actually stay with the discomfort of your reactivity until you can turn it into a loving response.  With time you’ll find the action of appreciation gets easier and this is the answer to dissolving the negative from all areas of your life.  And as luck has it life is going to keep giving us opportunities to evolve this practice.  From one perspective what we are talking about here is Santosha, to be with what is and find the good, experiencing contentment within the situation, with the person instead of getting angry or having to change the thing, situation, weather or person.  Now that’s the advancing of our spiritual selves.  Let the door of appreciation open the way.  Love you, love serving you! Silvia

 

 

May 4, 2009:  It’s easy to buy a sandwich and start to complain it’s not what we want exactly (that they could have put more mayo or less lettuce), and that if they did so then it could have been more nourishing.  But the thing is we are the one’s that by blessing our food (and making it what we need the sandwich to be) make it nourishing.  We are responsible for putting intention into things making life what we need it to be for us.  We could go to yoga class and say that it was too easy, too hard, not something enough but again here we have the opportunity to get from the practice what we need.  The class itself is offering a whole meal with different courses and we can choose based on the nourishment we need on a given day what is going to nurture our spirits and bodies the most.  This is how the practice is made unique to each and every person.  This is how life is offering itself to you at your feet…waiting for you to stop blaming or judging the offering and instead turning it into a nourishing experience each and every moment.

 

Donald Walters says, “There are realities we all share, regardless of our nationality, language, or individual tastes. As we need food, so do we need emotional nourishment: love, kindness, appreciation. We need to understand our environment and our relationship to it. We need to fulfill certain inner hungers: the need for happiness, for peace of mind for wisdom.”

 

We all need to be nurtured. If you look up Nurture in Webster’s dictionary it defines it as a “form of nourishment” and to “educate”.  These are both spot on with the philosophies of yoga.  In class teacher to student we are educating you on techniques you might use how to self-comfort yourself.  The flow of this self comforting is love.  Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself- if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself- it is very difficult to take care of another person. “In the Buddhist teaching, it's clear that to love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truly a practice.” [Shambhala Sun March 2006]

 

We all deserve to love and be loved. 

Love is a form of nourishment. It requires action in thought in words and movement. 

So we meditated together on how we might nourish our spirits through our inner dialogue, how to speak words of kindness to nurture others, how to take actions in honoring our bodies as sacred, nourishing their health.  For a healthy heart lives in a healthy body.  We spoke of the junk food of life things like gossip or complaining and that these do not nourish us but leave us empty and drained.

 

I so want you to appreciate the forms of nourishment: Breath, Thoughts, Words, Actions, Sleep all of which make for a sweeter life!  Please let your time on the mat be that opportunity where you learn how to nourish yourself with bigger breaths, poses and self-observation. All of this leading to greater and greater self-growth!  Happy National Sleep Better Month!  Love you all, Silvia

 

APRIL 29TH, 2009:  I called today’s class DRUNK ON LIFE.  What I mean is “How do we stop trying so hard to control all outcomes and instead appreciate what life is offering.”  To be honest I have not been intoxicated on any sort of external substance for fifteen years.  When I started my spiritual practice I didn’t want it or need other stuff.  Don’t get me wrong, do I enjoy a chilly corona or nice glass of wine? Absolutely! But it means on occasion with awareness.

I don’t need anything more than being high on self-love to feel drunk on life.  Love is my drug.  

Is it easy to continuously self-generate love in what is an often chaotic sometimes mean world?  No it’s not really. But we must.  We have a choice: we can choose hate or we can choose love; we can choose anxiety or we can choose peace; we can deny happiness or we can choose to be happy; we can choose 4 beers or we can choose 1.  We can choose to be drunk on life or give up on seeing ourselves deserving of love.  We can choose to say "ok" is enough or we can choose to say YES! to life.

How do we do this?  Yup that’s always the question right.  Well as Rumi writes, “Sit be still and listen because your drunk.”  We come to the mat to remember to remember we are responsible for loving ourselves first and foremost.  The practice reminds us that we are already DRUNK, we have this amazing potential to be happy every single moment.  We can be in love with life drunk on our human experience WITHOUT external stimulants.  And when we send this message of love to the universe -- it answers back.  It's so simple:  Love life and Life will love you back!  So please join me tonight at 6:15pm.  Let’s get drunk together J  Love your day, Silvia

 

April 14^th, 2009:  My totem recently changed, so I’ve been thinking a lot about the space of surrender. In the practice it is the space of OM.  It is not the ending or the beginning but the space between. This is said to be a sacred space, right before the unknown.  When we come to class, class itself is the space of om. It is in between work and home or doing and being.  Om itself means unlimited, untapped, universal human potential.  We get the opportunity to live in that space between our breaths.

 

Space itself equates to time.  Of which we have ample amounts.  I used to say Time is Big, still like that, but also like the feeling of saying that we have ample time.  So today take your time (on the mat or not) to be inspired.  Ask yourself: “What are my passions” “When am I happiest” :What would make me happier” “What do I really want”

 

In the practice today we breathed in, we breathed out and then we held the breath out in every pose. This helped us to slow down and appreciate what it is we really need to be in order to be in love with our live’s.  As we know from the law of attraction as my friend Sadie Nardini says, “we attract the people to us who reflect the relationships we’re having with ourselves.”  If you say what relationship??? That’s it exactly, you have to make space in order to have the relationship to yourself.  The whole practice is designed to help us promote self-love.  This means loving ourselves unconditionally. Once you figure this out you realize the universe wants to love you back, spirit loves you, nature loves you and then you are free of all mental tortures.  Ultimate freedom and surrender is yours!

 

Well it makes sense. Now the question is how do you surrender enough to slow down and meet yourself.  If you’re in a funk what do you do to get back to loving yourself?  One way is to chant 50 Om’s which is said to remove distraction and makes the mind serene, light and focused.  All you have to do is relax your mental space, regardless of the tone of your voice and repeat the Om with feeling. This brings us into that place of absolute consciousness where we realize we are infinite and love is ours each moment! Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

 

 

MARCH 28TH, 2009: 

For yesterday I hold no apologies,

For tomorrow I hold no answers,

Today is a gift and I will honor it by fully living in it."

 

My Healer at Holessence says “If you don’t take time for wellness now, you’ll have to make time for illness later.”

 

We always have opportunities to be kind to ourselves.  When we refuse to take the time to treat our bodies, emotions, and minds with reverence and love, they will often remind us – not so kindly – by failing to respond when we need them.  Our ability to think clearly recedes when we aren’t looking after ourselves.  It’s weird how we can be super tired and have a really busy mind all at the same time. To bring the frequency of our bodies and the frequency of our thoughts in sync we are obligated to take time for ourselves without apology.  In yogic philosophy we call this Ahimsa.  The idea of loving ourselves is a way to demonstrate love for all people.  But we must start with ourselves.  (SUTRA 2.35 EMBRACING REVERENCE AND LOVE FOR ALL (AHIMSA) WE EXPERIENCE ONENESS)

 

The Buddha put it like this, “The object of your practice should first of all be yourself.  Your ability to love another person, depends on your ability to love yourself.” 

 

WHAT DON’T WE MAKE TIME FOR OURSELVES?  I’ve come to think that the main reason is that we are worried about what other people think.  We actually make  the opinions of others even MORE IMPORTANT than our own opinion of ourselves.  And when you think about it there will never be a shortage of opinions about us form other people.  Yoga teaches us that we are sovereign over ourselves, we can’t be responsible for how others see us all we can do is have the authority of leading our own peaceful life. Why because life itself is a gift!  MARK TWAIN says “ A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval”

 

WE ARE PRETTY AMAZING!

Think about this formula proposed by John Maxwell in his book Talent is Never Enough. Maxwell says that “every person is capable of doing something better than the next 10,000 people.” That something is called your STRENGTH ZONE.  From the yogic view we are capable of far greater things than what we often deem possible.  We realize our potential only when we see that we are worthy of making time for ourselves and that each breath is another opportunity to dream even bigger dreams. 

 

MARCH 20TH, 2009:  On this beautiful first day of Spring I wish you love!  I am deeply inspired by my favorite poet Rumi.  "For Rumi, to be alive is to be a lover" and all great spiritual teachers say this same thing.  (Quoted from Washington Post 2008).  Yeah, that's right.  For me yoga opened the door to living life more fully.

This is that idea that  if you love life, life will love you back!  Rumi puts it like this, "Come to my side I will open the gate to your love."  Living life prior to fifteen years ago I dreamed of peaceful love but it was like I couldn't find the door or window to unlock to really experience it.  My yoga practice showed me that doors, windows, gates are open everywhere welcoming me to love more.  I was feelng like what Rumi writes, "I yearn for happiness, I ask for help."  Yoga helped me as I hope it helps you feel more, LOVE more.

But over the last fifteen years there have still been days where I have to be reminded not to contract but like the buds of Spring expand and grow.  Rumi's words hold great meaning when he writes, "Today, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading.  Take down a musical instrument. Let the BEAUTY WE LOVE be what we do."  It is easy to face hardship and stop making music, stop making love with life but "we cannot go back to sleep, you must ask for what you really want." (Rumi)

I just wish someone would have told me that being a lover of life takes raw guts and quiet courage.  I know that now and I hope in every single class together I can inspire you to cultivate your greatest inner strength and courage to shine out.  I will tell it how it is, living happy, peaceful and loving will ask you to step in with both feet and make a full blast effort.  The great news is that this is the perfect time right now to fall madly in love with life!  So join me on the path and let's flow together!  BIG LOVE, Silvia

 "Wake up lovers, it is time to start the Journey!
Let us kiss the ground and flow like a river towards the Ocean.
It is best to travel with Companions on this Jouney.
Only love can lead the way."

 

MARCH 18TH, 2009:  We sat in Vajrasana, rubbed our hands together like to two sticks of wood to create friction/heat and then cupped our eyes. We used this as an opporturnity to open our eyes and look at our hands which acted as a mirror.  Asking ourselves in our outward reflection what did we see? Who is the person staring back at us?  Then we closed our eyes in the warmth of our hands and turned our gaze inwards to view the inner reflection and ask what is our purpose?  Who are we?

And this means it is something more than the role we play at work, the labels we wear like son, daughter, partner, parent.  As a human creatures who are you?  As Stephen Covey writes, “We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.” So as a human being what is your Lifes Purpose or Dharma?

 

For its more than what job title we have on our business card or the label people know us by.  Woodrow Wilson, the 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.”  So how do we do this?  We get to work on the mat, anchored in our body to try to peal back the layers to look inside where all the answers already exist.  As the Buddha says, “Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.” 

For that’s the practice knowing our Dharma and contributing in a positive way to the world.  So we partnered in handstand tonight to help us experience this directly.  We also used a variety of flowing poses to help us face our fears such as balance poses and hip openers.  Because that is the harder practice to keep coming back to our purpose and living our Dharma not just for one day, or one week or even one year but forever, in spite of the fear we sometimes face.

Best said is motivational speaker Earl Nightingale who says, “Don’t let fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might as well put that passing time to the best possible use.”  So go inside, see your dreams, believe me when I tell you that you already have all the time, money and energy you need to make these dreams a reality and shine out your Dharma to the world!  Love to all, Peace to All, Courage to all! Silvia

 

  

MARCH 4TH, 2009:  “Your teacher can open the door, but you must enter by yourself.”  -- Chinese Proverb 

Svadhyaya is the yogic term that means 'self-study'. It is one of yoga's five Niyamas and fundamental yogic philosophies.   Svadhyaya, as much of yoga is intended, is an effort to allow the sadhaka (practitioner) methods for greater insight into their own true nature.  While on the mat we realize things about ourselves.  If you break down the word 'realize' to 'real-ize', we see that it means to 'make real'. Svadhyaya is the practice of realizing that our life is really real; it is a practice, but not a dress rehearsal.

 

The process feels something like this:  1) time in quiet contemplation allows you to reflect on all that you’ve learned up to this point in your life.  Every event of your life has offered its lessons.  We see what has shaped us so that we stop being prisoners of our pasts and instead become architects of our futures! 2) Anchoring in our bodies helps us to be present to ourselves, to ask the right questions, to listen to the answers:  what do I want for my life? What do I need?  And this is what forms our intentions for making real what our dreams are.  "Everyone, when they are young, knows what their destiny is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives."

A wonderful Rumi writing to continue to inspire you to see yourself as you really are and not settle for less, not a moment more!   Love, Silvia

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
And I intend to end up there.
This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place I'll be completely sober.
Meanwhile, I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
But who is it now in my ear, who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?
Who looks out with my eyes?
What is soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home!"

 

MARCH 2ND, 2009:  Nourishment Nurturing

 

Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself- if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself- it is very difficult to take care of another person. In the Buddhist teaching, it's clear that to love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truly a practice. [Shambhala Sun March 2006 ]

 

We all deserve to love and be loved.  Love is a form of nourishment. It requires action in thought or word or movement.  If you look up Nurture in Webster’s it defines it as a “form of nourishment” and to “educate”.  These are both spot on with the philosophies of yoga.  In class teacher to student we are educating how to self-comfort. We hope to create such a safe and nurturing environment that as students in the kula it is easier for us to nourish ourselves with breath, poses and observation. All of this leading to greater and greater self-growth!  The sweetness of life is YOU!  Love, Silvia

FEBRUARY 25TH, 2009:  Tonight we talked about how yoga reveals our true nature, which is that of JOY!  We all have the right to be happy, to be loved, to be peaceful.  There are no conditions to meet or pre-requisites.  Do you believe you deserve to be happy?  Most of us come into the practice not really buying this completely, or at least that's been my experience this last 15 years of practice and teaching. 

So how do we move from a state of disbelief to believing the best is possible, joy is here for us?  The role of the teacher mentor is that of someone who wants to facilitate helping you rediscover your fullest potential.  I see in you your greatest capacity for love and peace. I will believe in you until the day you believe it for yourself.  Then we will celebrate this together!

The best explanation of the teacher's role is from Donna Farhi who puts it like this, "the teacher mentor assists the birthing of the student's dreams, visions, and hopes, and most important, what the student has not yet dared to imagine.  A mentor moves the student from disbelief to belief and in the process continually affirms the student's self-worth."  I want to make your learning easier by sharing with you all that I know. Now I can only make part of the journey with you. The deepest places you must discover within yourself are places only you can travel.  In the meantime, I will do my best to make the journey FUN, PLAYFUL, INSPIRING and SAFE.  That is my promise.  I love you all my dear students.  Peace, Silvia

*Reference Yoga Sutra 1.40

 

FEBRUARY 24TH, 2009: "Love calls on parts of you that cannot speak."  To me the highest practice of yoga is self-love.  Time and again this is the purpose of practice.  And just like loving another person we have to work at it. We must make an active effort to fall in love with ourselves on a day to day basis (or at the very least week to week). 

The act of falling in love gets you centered to go to the next step in your spiritual journey!

This is Puja for your body.  In India Pura is a ritual where they take idols that represent spirit and give their love to them, feed them, sing to them.  Yoga poses (yoga asana) is like praying with our bodies in that the idea is that our bodies are temple.  When you practice giving love to every part of your body through the nourishment of breath and movement you plant seeds of love and when they grow you will love, honor and respect your body even more.  Life can be super easy when you LOVE yourself, when you LOVE your way of life, when you see everything through eyes of LOVE!

In the book Four Agreements a key section speaks to this, "in the search for self-love you will discover that its just a matter of time before you find what you are looking for.  It's not about daydreaming or sitting hours in meditation.  You have to stand up and be a HUMAN.  You have to honor the man or woman that you are. 

• Respect Your Body
• Enjoye Your Body
• Love Your Body
• Feed, clean, Heal Your Body
• Do what makes your body feel good

Today please repeat this Toltec prayer before bed and when you wake in the morning to promote this act of falling in love with yourself again and again:  Today help me to keep the love and peace in my heart And to make that love a new way of life, that I may live in love the rest of my life."  Be love, Silvia

 

 

FEBRUARY 2ND, 2009:   Ahimsa is a fundamental principle of yoga often known as non-harming, kindness and safety. All living beings thrive on kindness!

Every day we are fighting for our lives but how do we do so without hurting others.  How do we create a safe situation for ourselves where we aren't driven by fear but by the desire to be kind?  In learning how to ski again I got a guide, a ski instructor, Patrick Vaughn.  He helped me stay safe, control my speed so that I wouldn’t run other people down nor would I hurt myself.  This was an expression of kindness all the way around.  But the key thing here is to know it wasn’t about fear.  That’s something different to live in a way that restricts us because we are afraid all the time.  I have been there – I spent a great deal of time in my past afraid and basing my actions or inactions on fear.  That’s no way to live.  It drains you, it creates a constant feeling of being unsafe.  The potential for danger constant. 

One of the most interesting things about fear is that it exists in relationship to the future. So making sensitive adjustments going down a slope means you have to do so by staying present to all those that exist around us (life as we know it is not a game of solitaire) as soon as you get afraid in the what ifs then you move out of the present, you tune out, you drop out and you literally WIPE out. 

Ahimsa is directing our actions from a kind place of gentle thought.  The toughest practice of Ahimsa is paying attention to negative, violent thoughts.  And if we are really honest we all have to admit we don’t always think kind thoughts towards ourselves (or others for that matter).  But our existence as a global tribe requires we figure out how to manage kind thoughts because they lay the foundation of kind actions.  It is the intention behind the actions not the actions themselves. Otherwise we fall into the trap of being afraid to hurt others and then act in ways that can often hurt ourselves. 

We are all critically important to the universe. I saw this on the mountain it literally took a village to run the place.  So we all can work together in a kind, loving way and suffering will be reduced in the world (not eliminated). Pay attention to your breath and it will give you a sense of your depth of kindness internally, are you cutting yourself off from breathing? Is this a form of violence towards self, isn’t it life diminishing?

So today let’s invite kindness, peace into our practice.  On the plane I would say to myself ‘I am peaceful, I am feeling peace, I am peace” Take this as my gift.  The best practice of Ahimsa is making time for ourselves (like my mini holiday, or you being here tonight in class).  We are obliged to take time for ourselves the sutras teach us.  And it is much more pleasant and fun to do willingly before any disease invites itself into your life. 
LOVE FOR ONESELF IS LOVE FOR ALL.

JANUARY 22, 2009:  A trip to the nightime Yogi Lounge...to practice Self-Loving man...

Atma Puja is self-care, self-love, love of life! Yoga is at its core learning how to love yourself first. Then you're much more able to love others. Yoga is learning how to be present to yourself, to ask the right questions, to listen to the answers, i.e., What do I want? What do I feel? What do I need? How can I give myself what I need right now?  

Daily practice of self-love is the medicine we require to give us energy and desire to build healthy relationships with others.  It is the most vital form of nourishment available to live a life that is lighter, freer, and healthier.  This leads to a sense of a sweeter happiness. So today and everyday make time to do as Muktananda says, "Meditate on yourself. Honor yourself. Respect yourself. Love yourself."  Sunshine and happiness to you! Silvia 

JANUARY 17, 2009:  Time and again I think about how the yoga is impacting  my life. How it is making even the most ordinary day extraordinary and magical.  The number one way yoga has changed my life is that is has helped me to be more consistently LOVING in all situations. 

How this has taken place is that the practice reminds us how to demonstrate love towards ourselves first and foremost. That the love story begins with us.  Hafiz says "For when the heart tastes its glorious destiny you awake to your constant need for your love."  The cool thing is that we always have opportunities to LOVE ourselves.  It doesn't even require we do anything heroic.  And if there is a "goal" of yoga besides the process itself then I would have to say that it is SELF-LOVE.

How often do we find ourselves not being loving to ourselves in our work, in our relationships, in our work time, playtime?  But when you want to shift to a more loving way of life then embrace Yoga as a life practice and you too will find your own best strength to be more loving. 

And then life gets a lot better and a whole lot easier. 

Take Ruth Casey's words to heart, "it only takes one person to change your life - YOU."  And when we love ourselves you want to love others more or as Neem Karoli Baba puts it "Love everyone, serve everyone."  Love in all ways my friends, Silvia

JANUARY 15TH, 2009:  From self reflection we shine out.  Self-reflection just naturally leads to self-expression.  As your teacher I want to help open the door so you can step into yourself

I want to inspire you to find YOU and in the safe space of the studio express it outwardly.  You do this by looking inside your own heart.  When we practice self reflection we tune into something greater, whenever our hearts dance with breath, whenever we smile from the inside out, this is a reflection of our inner heart – it is within us waiting to shine out!  Be you, Silvia

 

“Your teacher can open the door, but you must enter by yourself.”  -- Chinese Proverb

JANUARY 7^TH, 2009:  The hardest pose we do is being ourselves.  So we started practice with partner shoulder openers but swapped out 3-4 times so we could get the feeling of as Jon Kabat Zinn says, “Wherever you go, there you are.”  We had to be nothing but ourselves with each different partner.  So right now as you read this, close your eyes and turn inside. Breath in a way that feels like you today.  Begin to see how during this week you have been true to yourself, reflect on how many times you have chosen to act in a way that serves you fully.  

 

In the Bhagavad Ghita, Chapter 3 it talks about being AUTHENTIC: “It is better to fail at yourself than it is to succeed at being someone else.”  It is essential to our health and well-being not to live our lives according to the outline demanded by other people (even those that love us) but to make our OWN opinion the most important.  I know this. I lived for a long time worried more about what other people thought, what looked good, how to appear successful than actually living my own life.  Now I lost time but I don’t want you to.  When you come to the mat, whatever you are feeling as Benjamin Disraeli says, “Never apologize for showing feeling.  When you do so, you apologize for the truth. “

 

Own your truth, embrace your funkiness, fly your freak flag this year! We have been given the gift of life the only real tragedy would be not to life in a way that enhances our spirit or stays true to our dreams.  Take to heart the words of William Shakespeare who wrote: “Learning to trust ourselves is a worthy practice, the practice of authenticity. This is the work of aligning the standards we have for ourselves with our deepest passions and dreams. It’s the work of making promises to ourselves and keeping them. It’s the work of knowing who we are without judgment.”

 

Ultimately, the more each of us practices being ourselves the more we give permission to everyone else to just be themselves too.  So I make that promise to you, I will be me more than ever before and I hope that let’s each of you know that it’s more than ok for you to show up and just BE YOU!  With hands up in the air, JAI! Love, Silvia

JANUARY 6^TH, 2009:  We all get tired right?  But why?  Interesting enough when we are tired we are stagnant, it is not that we have expended too much energy but we have not been actively moving our bodies enough.  The yoga of moving and breathing moves our energy and flushes the body to remove the stuckness.  A key way to look at Yoga for being less tired is to focus on the 3^rd Chakra.  This chakra often called the solar plexus, is our personal power center.  The magnetic core of our personality which wants to bubble up and radiate out.

 

When the 3^rd charka is in balance we have strong Self-esteem, self respect, and self discipline.  When out of balance we get stagnant and run down as a result of fear of rejection, criticism, whether we’ll look foolish and worried about whether other people think we are meeting our responsibilities.  This drains us of energy.

 

How we feel about ourselves, whether we respect ourselves, determines the quality of our life, our capacity to succeed in business, and relationships. Self understanding and acceptance, the bond we form with ourselves, is in many ways the most critical spiritual challenge we face. This is really then the entry from spiritual babyhood or adolescence into spiritual adulthood.  Managing our energies is a big part of this.  From a spiritual perspective, in fact, the entire physical world is nothing more than our classroom, but the challenge to each of us in this classroom is: Given your particular body, environment, job, family, and beliefs, will you make choices that enhance your spirit or those that drain your spirit?  Will you be able to maintain your energy boundaries and sense of identity as part of your tribe but not based only upon it. 

 

A favorite meditation I have from my friend Constance Hart is this:   DRAW YOUR ENERGY BACK TO YOU - imagine that you are gathering your straying thoughts and energies back into yourself. Or visualize yourself casting a net and pulling all the disparate parts of yourself back to the center of your being, creating a sense of balanced energy. From this place of centeredness, we can begin again, directing ourselves outward in a more intentional way.

 

Life life on purpose, with purpose, maintaining the energy necessary to propel yourself towards your dreams!  Think big! Silvia

 

 "Time in life is short. Robert Bucco, Professor Colorado University says, "don’t spend it tired, spend it energized to live more fully, joy is healthy, happiness is yours to behold.  YOU DESERVE IT!"

JANUARY 2^ND, 2009:  Yoga is after all not an escape from life but a way of really feeling the pulse.  This pulse is found at the beating of your heart.  My Father and my whole Mordini family have heart disease and my brother is a Cardiologist so I have been tuned into heart health my entire life.  Maybe it some ways it has made me more sensitive to it and a little bit more vulnerable.

 

But that’s the point of yoga it will lead you eventually to your own vulnerability whether you want it to or not.  For some this means they walk away from the practice as soon as it gets hard (I’m not talking physically but emotionally raw).  It took me a long time and a ton of resistance (some anger too) to realize that being vulnerable opens up greater pathways to love and healing.  Vulnerability, being soft on the inside is linked to our capacity for intimacy and love.  Especially the kind of unconditional love that doesn’t sit in judgment of others.  Being your soft self takes guts and a ton of courage. Being vulnerable and open hearted is not for wimps.  It is the most advanced practice of yoga.

 

The fourth chakra is that of the heart center.  And in a favorite book of mine, Wheels of Light, the author writes “LOVE IS A UNIFYING FORCE: it draws things together and keeps them in relationship.  And there is no greater way to invite love than to offer it first.”

 

I personally have experimented with this.  Putting yourself out there and offering love first and I can tell you it is scary. It’s a whole lot harder than driving a speed boat super fast, skiing down black diamond slopes, going to a nude beach, giving a presentation to hundreds of people.  But here’s the thing.  If you do offer it first you know you are living in the moment and by making yourself vulnerable you will live without regret. 

 

So if you ever need that extra support to put yourself out there call me, email me, stop by.  I’ve done it, I’ve lived to write about it and I have found a joyous sense of acceptance that I never even knew existed.  I am here for you! Love Big In All Ways, Silvia

 

 

DECEMBER 20TH, 2008: The winter solstice is Nature's New Year!

 

DECEMBER 15TH 2008:  This time of year maybe more than ever we’re all reminded that the whole practice are balance poses, life itself is a delicate balance.  So there is no need to upset ourselves with what we have in front of us.  As ancient Poet Rumi Says, "Take sips of this pure wine being poured. Don't mind that you've been given a dirty cup."

So let’s take this time to use Leo Tolstoy’s short story to help us realize our degree of balance right now.  Or at the very least take 2 minutes to stand on one leg, hug to your center and rediscover all you ever needed was inside!  Courage to you, Silvia

 

Once upon a time there was a young emperor seeking the meaning of life.  He wanted to know the answers to these questions. He asked all of his teachers but none of them could give the young emperor good answers.
His three questions were:
1. When is the most important time?
2. Who is the most important person?
3. What is the most important thing to do?

Therefore the emperor seeks the answer by himself, wandering and experiencing life.

The most important time is now.
The reason is, you only have it once. 

The most important person is the one we are with.
Give whoever is in front of you your total attention. They want to feel that they are being listened to, appreciated, and more over recognized as human being. And the person we spend the MOST time without throughout our lives is YOU!  Therefore ultimately the most important person is always you.

The most important thing to do is to care.

 

DECEMBER 5TH, 2008: If you’ve ever visited a topless beach there is a period of time where you get really self-conscious like folks are looking at you. Eventually you realize no one is looking at you and then you chill out.  Doing yoga with other people is a little like that. At first you are totally self-conscious thinking it’s all about you and that everybody is checking you out: your hair, your body, your pose.  Reality is, not really.  What I want you to realize about yoga is that the hardest part is it asks us to BE OURSELVES, without reservation, without conditions.    

This means it really is helping us be at home in our bodies and honest in our emotions.  And until we get in contact with our true feelings – fear, upsetness, grief, joy, silliness we won’t be able to build healthy relationships.  I’ve tried it the other way, it doesn’t work.  So today I hope to inspire you to be true to yourself by really getting totally fascinated with your body, your sexiness, your playfulness, your heart and see what happens next in your relationships. I know they will blossom!  Love in all ways, Silvia

 

DECEMBER 4TH, 2008:  This is an interesting time of year.  It is considered by many people to be the most sacred, quiet, peaceful time of year.  Yet here we are in the midst of extreme business...so busy it keeps us away from practicing yoga!

In a pose and inside our breath we often ask ourselves as part of self-study what is more dominant, what is not engaged, another way said...what is leading our energy and where are we following.  This awareness is important because we cannot truly know peace until we understand the many tendencies we have that threat our ability to find it, let alone keep it. 

Ask yourself have you during this most quiet time of year been TOO BUSY, following the energy of your neighbors, colleagues to buy more, do more?  If yes then make time for the mat, get into your body which will make you honest and help you take back the lead.  As the Dalai Lama says, "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 of us."

Right on!  May I be peaceful, May you be peaceful, May WE be peaceful! Love, Silvia

NOVEMBER 22^ND, 2008:  I was thinking about Thanksgiving coming up and how we either made or received an invitation about Thanksgiving, right? Well, Yoga is an invitation. The practice is an invitation to affirm your choice to live fully each day.  Coming to the mat and opening your heart is a way to accept the invitation. 

What else do we do on Thanksgiving?  We nourish ourselves in community.  Well yoga is about loving ourselves. What does this really mean?  NOURISHMENT.  It is no different than Thanksgiving where we’ll nourish ourselves with food.  But there are other forms of Nourishment as well.

 

BREATH AS NOURISHMENT

·         Breathing is a method of nourishing the body with air. We breath oxygen into our lungs where it is carried in the bloodstream to nourish all our cells.

·         Without oxygen we feel tired.

·         With oxygen nourishing us we perform at our PEAK level, full of energy, vitality and confidence!

 

NOURISHING THE SPIRIT

·         Yoga is learning how to love yourself first.

·         Yoga is soul food. It provides us with all of the essential spiritual vitamins, minerals, and nutrition we need.

·         We require spiritual nourishment because otherwise stress can make us sick.

·         If we nourish in our thoughts and actions things like Kindness, love, and compassion these will expand and return to us (if we grow hatred, anger, isolation these will expand and poison us)

 

Now is the perfect time to open your heart, be sweet to yourself just as you are.  Please join me on the mat and allow this practice to revitalize, rejuvenate you and nourish you!  The cool thing is when you feel nourished on the inside you’ll more easily nourish those around you.  Love in abundance! Silvia 

 

 

NOVEMBER 21, 2008:  Yoga is learning how to love yourself first. Then you're much more able to love others. WOW!  That’s what I said when I first read, learned this concept.  IT WAS RADICAL!  It was different than what I’d known as a way of life which was take care of everyone else, be concerned with what everyone else thinks of me then if time remains look after me.  This was especially true during the HoliDAZE (from now until end of the year) where my dedication to myself would suffer the most and I'd arrive to the finish line of December 31st exhausted and a little cranky.  That all changed as a result of practicing yoga. 

It was through Yoga practice that I learned to really understand how and why loving myself first was important.  Essentially, yoga is learning how to be present to yourself, to ask the right questions, to listen to the answers, i.e., What do I want? What do I feel? What do I need? How can I give myself what I need right now? We talk about this as muscular energy or drawing in before we expand out with organic extension.  It’s true.  The more that is asked of us in life the more we have to practice radical self-love, radical self-care.  As a result we'll have more energy to give to others. Because to give love we must first know it for ourselves from ourselves as the lover and the beloved. So today come to the mat and practice radical self-love as Muktananda says, "Meditate on yourself. Honor yourself. Respect yourself. Love yourself."  Peace be with each of you, Silvia

 

NOVEMBER 20TH, 2008:  One of my favorite parts of this practice is that of Self Study in Sanskrit known as Svadhyaya.  This is one of the Niyamas and fundamental principles presented in the Yoga Sutras.  I fell in love with observing myself because it didn’t demand I change anything. I liked that. It spoke to what Dr Wayne Dyer says, “You can’t go around being what everyone wants you to be, living your life through other people’s rules, and expect to be happy and have inner peace.”

There is an inherent gentleness when we practice appreciation for who we are and make our observations not from a place of judgement but of understanding, respect, compassion and self-love.  So today as you read this take time to appreciate your breath, to appreciate your feelings (whatever they may be – joy, sadness, peace, frustration, love), appreciate being in your own skin. Now just breath and let go of what you thought was supposed to happen, just breath and let things be.  Simply listen to your heart as you watch your thoughts.  This study of oneself will open up channels of stuckness in both the physical body and channels to deep reservoirs of clarity and wisdom within our minds.

 

Watch today as you allow yourself time to breath or really inhabit a pose if you can recognize more of who you are.     

 

Before bed tonight take time to appreciate all who made your week better.  And take time to appreciate yourself for all the ways you made someone else’s life a little easier this week as well.  In the words of Mother Theresa, “There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread”.  And tomorrow morning start the day by saying to yourself, “I appreciate….” Then quietly observe your thoughts and feelings to reveal even more about who you are and what you need.  May your life be a reflection of your heart!  Love, Silvia

NOVEMBER 14^TH, 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.” It reminds me of when we were kids and we’d clap our hands together to celebrate ourselves spontaneously. How great was that!  To clap and celebrate ones own life is yoga!  The Dalai Lama puts it like this when he says “the roots of all goodness lie in the soul of appreciation for goodness.”  When we symbolically clap hands by saying nice things to ourselves through our thoughts we are appreciating our goodness.  Healthy self-esteem comes from seeing our own gifts, unabashedly celebrating them thus making today a day of happiness, a really fine day.

If we seek our happiness outside ourselves it sets us up for disappointment.  Or as Dr Wayne Dyer says "Every moment that you spend upset, in despair, in anguish, angry or hurt because of the behaviour of anybody else in your life is a moment in which you have given up control of your life."  So join me in clapping hands every day (even at the end of a yoga class!)  My hope is that if we can let go of our pretenses we will be able to more easily share the amazing beauty and humor of our real selves. Just try it, spontaneiously express your joy and appreciation for your life by clapping hands, I’m sure it will make you smile!  Love Big In All Ways, Silvia  

 

NOVEMBER 12TH, 2008:What is interesting to me is how much our foundation and core strength have to do with Self Reliance. Now we often focus a lot on our feet as foundation but today through various wrists therapeutics we really gave equal focus to our hands as our foundation too. For me learning how to hold myself up on my own two hands was life changing. Making myself stronger was all about self reliance and this led to my taking back my life, my fate, my world. Come to the mat so you too can discover for yourself that you can face anything! And for further inspiration the words of Rumi:

This being human is a guesthouse.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight …

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

NOVEMBER 9TH, 2008:  Today we declared BE GOOD TO YOURSELF DAY!  It was great!  According to statistics 40% of working women say their stress level is High, 56% of men and women say stress I hurting their relationships, as Americans we take less vacation than anyone else in the world, we work longer hours, 22% of us say we’re too busy for a lunch break and the list goes on.  You can easily see why it is vitally important to declare today a special holiday, Be Good To Yourself Day.

We did this by asking ourselves throughout our practice what is it that I need for myself here?  What is the kindest approach, the most compassionate way of being in my body, my heart?  The inspiration today was a 50^th wedding anniversary I attended the night before with the key advice from the couple when asked “how to stay together 50 years” was BE KIND.  Yup, that was it in a nutshell.  Well ok, then let’s practice being kind to ourselves.  May you be happy, healthy, kind and peaceful. With Metta (lovingkindness), Silvia

SEPTEMBER 26TH:  I love the title of this book by Jessica Weiner, self-esteem expert and author of LIFE DOESN'T BEGIN 5 POUNDS FROM NOW.  That’s yoga!   As our intentions today let’s agree we best keep learning by admitting we don't know everything yet and that we can only grow if we accept that we are not perfect.  Have the courage to change, and let’s stop being afraid of making mistakes. Of course life will have trail and error.  By falling over and getting up many times, children learn that walking is possible.  In yoga, falling many times teaches you to fall without pain; we cannot always avoid falling, but we can often learn to avoid the pain!  So join me in boldly saying the mantra to ourselves I will not let the fear of making mistakes control my life!  Right?  YES!  Let it all be messy and imperfect.  Enjoy your humanness and put others at ease because of this self acceptance.  Rock on my friends! Silvia 

Perhaps this meditation can be a powerful motivation as well as dedication for your practice:

"May I become at all times, both now and forever
A protector for those without protection
A guide for those who have lost their way
A ship for those with oceans to cross
A bridge for those with rivers to cross
A sanctuary for those in danger
A lamp for those without light
A place of refuge for those who lack shelter
And a servant to all in need."
--His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama  

SEPTEMBER 12TH, 2008:  Why do you practice yoga?  Really everything we do brings us back to our own true nature which the yoga sutras says is joy!  This is chapter 1 verse 3, United in the heart, consciousness is steadied, then we abide in our own true nature, joy.

In practical terms it means that we do the practice to help ourselves heal and come back into our own strength.  This feeling of SELF RELIANCE.  Anything is possible.  It all really relates to self-empowerment.  Four sweet quotes that are favorites of mine along this theme I share here for you to enjoy:

• Empowering is achieved by encouraging self-reliance and providing education, discipline, and learning opportunities for the child. You are empowered to try, therefore to make mistakes and still be fully accepted. Your interests are met with enthusiasm; the importance and joy of hard work are recognized and encouraged. Failure is treated lightly, while curiosity and integrity are held in high regard.
• Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one's own person is its ultimate reward”
• God loves to help him who strives to help himself.
• If it is to be, it is up to me.

AUGUST 3RD, 2008:  When I first started practicing yoga I dressed like an Eskimo.  I was all covered up, dressed head to toe in black.  In the corporate world I had similar “armor” I wore with the black power suit, serious glasses, hair, briefcase (for those of you who remember briefcases).  Then as I practiced I started to let go of my own defenses and relax a little bit being “me”.  It was not easy taking off my external layers to experience the freedom of not hiding behind any barrier whether it be job title, clothing, or lifestyle.  But it changed my life. 

As we practice yoga it is important to remember that we are not practicing to be perfect. We are simply practicing as we are in an effort to reveal our most real selves.  In each time on the mat I wish you enough so that you not expand too far to fast.  Take your time, don't rush it. Love, Silvia

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright no matter how gray the day may appear.
I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun even more.
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and everlasting.
I wish you enough pain so that even the smallest of joys in life may appear bigger.
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough.

JULY 23RD, 2008:  So on Tuesday night I was watching a show called "Shear Genius" on Bravo.  The deal is that hairstylists compete for a grand prize survivor style.  The main challenge on this night was teaching regular women how to style their own hair.  The woman who self-styled her own hair the worst lost - her stylist then was out of the competition. Bummer that we have so little confidence in ourselves that we don't even believe we can style our own hair, you know?  We don't know how to be as we are.

Dr. Wayne Dyer writes, "the greatest mistake we make, which causes a loss of self-respect, is making the opinions of others MORE IMPORTANT than our own opinion of ourselves."  Even the word self-respect pretty much says it all, it originates from the self. Yogis have always recognized all we need is within us.  These days it takes a great deal of courage to DO YOU (as Russell Simmons writes in the book of the same name which encourages "staying true to who you are.")

I hope your yoga helps you learn to make sensitive adjustments in your thoughts, in your actions and that this helps you take responsibility for doing YOU.  Ultimately I wish that you no longer doubt yourself and stop withholding self-love.  I leave you the words of Mark Twain, "A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."  Give it to yourself now, as you are.  LOVE YOU! Silvia

“Your teacher can open the door, but you must enter by yourself.”  --Chinese proverb

 

JULY 6, 2008:  Fourth of July weekend brings with it lots of noise and for my Vata and Pitta friends these loud sounds of fire crackers, ramped up music, and extra time with the TV can provoke anxiety & unease.  So the remedy today was a Sound DETOXIFICATION along with a super grounding practice to promote self-healing and meditation.

 

The time on the mat was dedicated to self reflection which let's us deeply consider what we find meaningful.  This practice is about fully stepping into ourselves and my hope as a teacher is to inspire you to live from your heart and simply open as many doors as possible.  Then you must courageously decide when and which doors to walk through.  While contemplating making sensitive and heartfelt decisions the cool thing is that you discover more of who you really are.  As a result your self-expression becomes healthy and true.

 

Right now, please take time you guys to bring your hands together at your heart in Anjali Mudra, appreciate your breath and renew your promise and commitment to live from your heart.  From looking inwards we bring the best of ourselves into the world!  

 

By stilling your mind your heart becomes clear and reflects purely to all those who you come in contact with so they see themselves more vibrantly too. Remember the yoga needs us to work through - so please keep sharing your light with the world!  Love in all ways, Silvia 

 

SELF-REFLECTION = HEALTHY SELF-EXPRESSION