Tuesday, March 14, 2006


examining the outclick

" 'swami satchidananda said, 'the truth is one, the paths are many.' therefore, people of any faith or belief can practice yoga. even if a practioner of yoga does not believe in any form of divinity, this does not present a problem."

and here's a nice article by jivamukti teacher alanna, who ironically i last saw at her workshop in sydney, when i was in oz last year! that was a case of travel round the world, meet the girl next door.

ad long-time readers know, i had a little surgery last year before i went to australia. as a result, i have been taking it very easy with headstand -- in fact, i've pretty much been skipping it.

now however, i'm good to go with it, but i have to get myself back into the neuromuscular pattern of it -- it's amazing how you can forget it. to help me out with this, i've been taking a pilates mat class once a week to help improve my nice straight alignment in inversions.

thus by april i hope to begin working towards lifting myself from a half-downward dog right into forearm stand, and then gently into headstand, just like i used to.

spring is slowly coming to nyc -- we even seem to have entered the april showers portion of our weather a tad early -- and that's so helpful. winter doesn't suit my yoga practice at all; i'm always cold and stiff.

it's been especially hard since there seems lately to have been a city-wide trend towards reducing or eliminating sun salutations from classes. no matter where i go or who's teaching, everyone lately really seems to be cutting back on the sun salutation vinyasa.

oh, that's hard for me in the winter! i really like a good 10 or 15 sets.

so this new thing of doing oh, 3 "a" sets, and "2" b sets just has not been working for me at all. (i even love it when teachers toss in a set of 5 of the sivananda version, which some people call the "c" series!)

why oh why do teachers skip these?

i shouldn't ask, i know: most nyc yoga students are lazy and want to hurry up and spend class time on "cool" or "fancy" poses. but if they're not warm enough for them, they're going to get hurt!

i've seen some of my yoga pals suffer injuries this winter, but what can you do? shake a teacher down?

those poor yoga students trapped in classes with me know that if the teacher asks for requests i'm there in the back of the room (where it tends to be warmer!) begging for an extra round of sun. to my mind, the sun salutations are like playing scales.

the most famous jazz players and classical musicians always begin rehearsal every day by playing scales. it's just part of the discipline of rehearsal.

and i guess that's how i feel about the sun salutations. they're your scales -- do them diligently every practice, in whatever form suits your body that day. . .imvho.

oh, and about that outclick -- it's interesting to see what links here prove the most popular. this week for some reason, most people have been clicking on nancy la nasa's link on the left.

bravo! i love nancy's yoga -- it's a shame she seems to have truly moved to florida for good now, and has stopped commuting between nyc and the beach. i learned so much from her when we had our private lessons, and i really miss her!

posted by fortune | 8:12 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 1 comments