YogaLife Lessons – Part 1

This is the first of a series of installations I’d like to call YogaLife Lessons.  It’s always cozy and uplifting to liken oneself to those we admire; and so, in that vain, I’m about to liken myself to Oprah.  (Yup – there you have it.)  The mega-mogul-slash-billionaire-goddess-turned-new-agey-life-coach shares her greatest lessons and learnings on her new hit series”Lifeclass” (insert love button here).  Whilst Ope’s got a few years wisdom tucked under her (very expensive) belt, here is a taste of what 12+ years on and off the mat has taught me.

1.  Power of Intention:  Do yourself a favour and let the first thing to pass your lips in the morning (even before that half liter of warm lemon water) be a prayer.  Mystical magical churchy magic is good, but a simple intention is all it takes.  You’ll be amazed at just how powerful the early morning is in setting the tone for the entire day.  Before the thinking brain wakes up, while it’s still wiping the sleep out from the Ego’s Eyes – sneak in a quiet intention.  Anything will do.  “I am calm and my day unfolds easefully and happily.”  “My life is full of abundance.”  Try to keep it positive, short and sweet.  Louise Hay is the high priestess of affirmations.  Check her out and get inspired!  (Hint:  intention setting is particularly powerful when dealing with that naughty co-worker who’s been driving you nuts, or that pesky telemarketer that calls right at dinner time.)  Listing words of gratitude is another great practice to rev up the power of intention flowing into your life.

2.  Everything you put in your mouth matters:  You get one body.  One. Uno.  Just like you get one crack at life.  No do-overs.  No magic erasies.  ONE.  Why would I pay to put super unleaded in the car when regular unleaded is expensive enough?  Why would I buy organic vegetables when fresh produce is just as good?  Organic – isn’t that just the new hippy word farmers are using to charge more anyhow?  Hmmm.  Pause.  Think back to your childhood and the food you were brought up on.  Think now to the abundance of nut allergies, wheat sensitivities and lactose intolerance running rampant in today’s classrooms.  What are our bodies trying to tell us?  When are we going to be ready to listen?  (Yesterday, you said tomorrow.)  The following three documentaries changed the way I look at nourishment.  (Don’t worry – they’re not sensational or creepy.)  Educate yourself.  It does the body good.  I’m on a foody-doco HIGH right now.

• Forks Over Knives
• Food Matters
• Hungry For Change

3.  Breathe:  So simple.  So vital.  I don’t think I realized how powerful my breath was until I did yoga.  As a gal prone to anxiety, having the capacity to expand my fullness and my calm was life altering.  To energize or to relax my body and my mind is all within my control by simply using my breathe as a tool.  Focusing on your exhale is the best thing you can do to calm anxiety.  Draw it out.  Make it long and free.  Anchor your melon on it.  Just like we sigh when we need to blow of steam, the exhale is linked directly to our nervous system. It turns off the sympathetic (fight-or-flight), and engages the parasympathetic nervous system – telling our body to chill.  Try it!  Either when you’re stressed or just before going to bed, slowing down your breath and watching and feeling your exhalation will remove bad energy and anxiety from your bod.

Feel free to add these little ditties to your tool belt, or better yet – share your go-to Life Tips in the comments below!

Recovering Perfectionism

About a year and a half ago I got rid of both my cell phones.  That’s right,  I had not one but TWO mobiles.  One for work.  One for play.  When I resigned from my quasi-important overseas gig with a tres forward thinking yoga brand (I’ll let you guess which one) to travel the globe, I surrendered my work phone.  My personal phone didn’t work much past Indonesia without loading an exorbitant amount of credit so ultimately I gave that one up too.  If your heart just started pounding and the cell phone addict in you just choked on her own text message let me confirm:  “At no point in this process did I experience the “oh-my-gawd-what-if-so-n-so-needs-to-reach-me” panic that our inner tech junky dreads.  Have we all developed an inability, or rather a resistance to becoming tech free (or simply disconnected, if only for a couple hours – or minutes)?

I used to be proud of my ability to text at the speed of light (and yes, regrettably I even used to do this while driving back before it thankfully became illegal.)  There was a little rush I used to get when I heard the tropical ring tone of an inbound SMS.  When I acquired my work phone, my Ego’s need to be important and connected inflated and I just felt so proud to be a ‘big-enough-deal’ that people needed to be in-touch with me all the time.  This false sense of importance was fleeting, and soon enough I felt shackled to my techno gadgets.  Though I couldn’t bear the idea of being unreachable I had so quickly come to dread that adorable little ring tone I once loved.  I would silence them on weekends and days off.  Friends would call my partner to get a hold of me because I stopped answering my phone.  I was rebelling. And then one day – poof.  Off the grid.

It’s a year and a half later and my Ego winces when I fumble trying to use my new iPod Touch.  I was a former tech wizard and here I am touch-screen challenged and have little to no idea how to Tweet.  (I simultaneously hate/love this about myself.)  Looking back this has been a remarkable exercise in letting go of my inner control freak.  My perfectionist virgo self had to take a back seat and surrender.  How incredible it is to surrender, and in doing so we open up space to simply allow life to flow.  No strangulation.  No text pollution.  More quiet.  More calm.

Though I am still cell free, I in no way feel disconnected.  I can be reached through up to 3 email addresses, 2 Facebook pages, a (new) Twitter account, my LinkedIn page, my blog, my home landline, my office line, my blog, my website, my Skype account and if you’re feeling nostalgic I can received snail mail at 2 addresses.  Oh – and my new iPod can send text messages and FaceTime.  It’s no wonder recent studies correlate technology use to increased levels of stress.  Anxiety bubbles up at thought of having another something to be accountable for.

Ironically, when I joined Twitter last month I read two words in someone’s status that revolutionized the way I see myself.  Recovering perfectionist.  I use yoga as a means to recover from my perfectionism.  I am rehabilitating that inner critic who constantly requires more enoughness out of me.  Life is a journey moving out from centre, only to return back to centre. To our calm  To our flow.  To our own innate goodness.  We can only do this by releasing control, and simply allow.

Q&A Thursday!  Are you a recovering perfectionist?  How do you release your inner critic?

Yo. What happened to the yolk in yoga?

If we look up ‘yoga’ in our dear friend Wikipedia, we learn that traditionally, the Sanskrit term ‘literally means to “yoke”. From a root yuj, yoga means to join, to unite, or to attach.’  There is sense of coming together.  An interconnectedness.  Of the body, mind and spirit.  Of us with the Universe.  Of us with one another.  A sense of community and connection.  Is this what you experience when you hit the mat at your favorite studio?   Are we cultivating the connection that Patanjali described in his Yoga Sutras back in the day?   Do you chat to the stranger a foot to your right on the mat next do you?  Do you ask them how their day was?  How their practice was?  How they’re feeeling?  Do you even make eye contact?  What happened to the sunny-side-up, sweet yellow yoke of our dearest yoga?  Has her amrita (yoga speak for nectar of the gods) oozed out, leaving her empty and causing all us modern day yogi’s to miss the point?

Yoga is designed to connect.  To connect us to our hearts.  To re-introduce us to how our bodies feel.  The journey ripples out from center outwards and returns us back to center.  It’s the connection, that keeps us connected.  We’re good at practicing the connect inwards bit but get stuck when it comes to authentically connecting outwards.  We spend our days “connecting” via text message on our iPhones, trolling on Facebook or tagging on Twitter.  But none of this teaches us the art of listening.  To ourselves.  To others.  We have begun to move at such a frenetic pace that we have grown uncomfortable to even hold eye contact for more than a glance.  And though yoga is designed to counter the disconnect we’ve created in our everyday lives, our habits follow us into the practice room and onto our mats.

Have you ever found yourself using your mat as a safety net?  A security blanket.  A safe little rectangular sweet spot where you can just forget about the outer world.  About your worries.  Your troubles.  The guy with the Nike tattoo sitting a foot to your right.  We carry so much fear in our hearts.  So much that the idea of speaking to a stranger, twists our insides.

It’s time to shake it up.  It’s time to take our practice off the mat.  It’s time to take yoga into the place that needs it most – out into the real world.  And in doing so into our hearts.  So go for it.  Ask the girl in the red yoga shorts on the mat next to you (who you see week in and week out) what brings her back week after week?  Who knows (after her initial shock that you speaking to her) you may discover commonalities in that simple connection, and perhaps also space and peace within your heart.  You are not alone.  Who knows – you both might, just maybe, even find it empowering.

Take it off your mat.  Yoke.  Unite.  Re-connect.  Smile at a stranger on the street.  Make eye contact when you say ‘Thanks’ the next time you check out at the grocery store.  Connect.  Support.  Transform.

Life is a scavenger hunt.

Clue. A hint. A sneak peak. Insight into what is coming next. The Universe offers these to us all the time. The trick is simply, are we paying attention? It’s almost as though we are playing a board game with the world. There are Clues hidden in the library or the conservatory. Just don’t be conservative with how you play your Life.

Sometimes as we meander through the halls of Life’s hilltop mansion, we lose our way.  We forget to look for the clues that tell us which way to go.  Oddly, in hindsight (20/20), life really is kind of kismet.  We don’t always see the clues when they’re there, but in retrospect the fog rises and our path through the maze seems so obvious.  But even the blind squirrel finds the odd nut.

And so our practice on the yoga mat contributes to our practice off the mat: Life.  We learn to become more aware.  To notice the clues.  The meaningful coincidences that show up to guide us so effortlessly to our dharma (fancy yoga word for life purpose).  So that instead of zig-zagging blindly through Life, we can like Alice, stop and smell the roses – trusting, absolutely knowing, that we have already found our way.

This post was inspired by One Word.  Simple genius for the author within you, simply trying to find her voice.

30 day yoga challenge – anything for a gold star: part deux

I’m not kidding when I say just about anything.  It’s ten days into the 30 Day Yoga Challenge and I’m going strong.  I feel a little bit sore and ache-y but energetically I’m amped.  There is so much satisfaction in getting to select my coloured, glittery star at the end of my practice to reward myself on the tracking sheet.  And wow the community and conversations these glowing adhesive numbers have sparked is incredible!  (Insert $h!t Yogi’s Say voice here:) “Yeah – I’m using red stars to track my studio practices and purple ones for my home practices…”  “Oh really – I’m using orange for 90min classes, yellow for 60min classes and green for meditations because they’re green like my heart chakra…”  This gold star thing is seriously brilliant!

I think it was around grade three that our elementary school teachers really had us hooked into the star system.  Like a drug, we just couldn’t get enough of that perfect, glistening little number.  I have distinct memories of each and every Friday, having a half sheet of lined paper handed out to me.  The room would quiet down to a whisper and we were all trained to write the numbers 1-10 down the left hand side and print our names clearly in the top write hand corner.  It was time for Dicteé!  The teacher would read each word slowly out to us and then use it in a sentence.  I would always cover my work with my cupped hand so that little Michael wouldn’t copy my words over my shoulder.  And then it was time to face the music.  Handing it over our shoulders to the person behind us to mark.  Had we studied hard enough to deserve the precious and prized little gold star? (Or smiley face or puppy sticker or Très Bon in red pen when she ran out of stickers!)

The psychology of positive reinforcement that was used on us when we were oh-so young remains engrained in us today.  What would I not do for a gold star?!  Getting a star for each time I go for a power-walk?  DONE.  In the bag.  One for getting up early to meditate?  I’d never skip a day to sleep in again.  Heavens, I was chatting to my mom today on skype and she and my father are considering the use of gold stars on the calendar to reward ‘wine-free’ days!  Awesome.  Is there a cap on the star system?  Does the novelty wear off?  Is there a reason this is a 30 Day Challenge and not a 50 day challenge?  Is there a statue of limitations on gold stars?  Only time will tell… stay tuned.

(For a giggle – check out what I stumbled across in my search for an image for this post. The unfortunate mistake of a first grader!)

What would you do for a gold star?  Have you used the gold star system to create positive change on your life?  Share your ideas in the comments below and spread the glittery goodness…

anything for a gold star

In the last post I chatted all about looking inwards to find your true self.  By looking towards an intangible innate inner wisdom we can step away from all that mental chatter that clouds our minds and hearts.  And while yes I believe this infinite wisdom is the ultimate, sometimes it’s hard to muster up the internal motivation to pursue our life passion, our goals, our truth.  Whether it be rocking out hanumanasana (yoga speak for ‘the splits’), eliminating gluten from your diet (buh-bye bagels), or simply committing to cutting back your time on Facebook (which, I digress, is a pretty significant contributor between me and santosha -  ‘enlightenment’), sometimes dangling a little carrot in front of us does just the trick.

In the yoga world you hear people talk about their ego’s all the time.  It’s up there with “It feels like a full moon right now” and “My chakras are SO aligned right now” as top things overheard at a yoga class. (And if you’ve been living in a hole and haven’t yet seen this- do yourself a favor and get your YogaTube on.)  The aim in yoga is to develop an awareness of your ego (aka that little voice in your head that isn’t real), so that you can start reconnecting with your true self (perfection and bliss).

As Self Blossoming says:  “Ego always tries to achieve something, something that is unreal; Ego is manipulative. Ego is always fearful.  And Ego is very tricky. It will tell you stories, give you reasoning, make you caught up in explanations.”

Wouldn’t it be cheeky though if we could trick the ego?  Pull one of it’s own sneaky tricks against it?  This is so simple it’s laughable.  It is The 30 Day Yoga Challenge.  While yes yoga is a competition-free activity, the ego on the other hand is highly competitive.  Marry the two together and you can experience the benefits of yoga WHILE satisfying the ego’s need for competition.  Hmmmm are we really that smart?  Is this like John Connor trying to outsmart the Terminator that he designed?

Gold Star enter stage left.

The little glittery gold star.  So simple.  So pretty.  Maybe it’s the nostalgia of these turning up on spelling tests in our youth or being posted on the fridge for all to admire (ego ego ego).  Whatever the reason, the gold star is the ultimate cheap and cheerful extrinsic motivator.  And what better way to encourage a group of mature adult yogis to commit to their practice.  Gold Stars.  You do a class, you earn a star – and it get’s posted publicly at the studio next to your name for all to see.  I can feel my ego swelling up with pride for the two stars next to my name so far (and just so that everyone’s aware, it’s day 2 of The Challenge.)

Studies show that while extrinsic motivation is great for getting people to start a new habit, it’s ultimately intrinsic motivation that keeps you repeating that pattern for the long haul.  Take professional athletes for example – countless young athletes go pro and earn the big bucks (extrinsic motivation) and ultimately have their ‘love of the game’ (intrinsic motivation) destroyed by the extrin$ic payout.

The 30 Day Challenge is no different.  It tempts the ego who keeps you in check with it’s competitive nature, keeping you coming back for more so that you can ‘save face’, prove that you can do it, measure yourself as stronger, fitter, or more hardcore.  Whatever false beliefs the ego is feeding you, it ultimately get’s blindsided by the inner peace, awareness and self reflection yoga opens you up to.  The more you practice, the more it seeps in. Until one day – (fingers crossed), the ego melts away completely, and poof… enlightenment!  Speaking of which, do you think the Buddha would approve of my Facebook habit?

What are you thoughts on yoga challenges or any challenges for that matter?  Add to the discussion and share your story…

I can feel it coming in the air tonight.

Hold on.  She’s creeping up on me I know it.  I can feel it.  She’s been oh-so patient and compassionate but I’m pretty sure we’re both onto what I really need.  I anticipate that She (The Universe) is about to slap me upside the face.  Hold on.  Or at least give me a good hefty “Oops-that-was-harder-than-I-meant-it-to-be-but-we-both-know-it-was-for-your-own-good” kind of nudge.  Hold o-o-on.

One of the things that yoga teaches is to be a witness.  To witness our thoughts, our habits, our patterns.  This has been hands down, my biggest take-away from my mat over the course of a zillion or so chaturangas.  Witnessing the little voice in my head is such a  rad powertool. Possibly because my little voice is just so sneaky, sometimes nasty, but occasionally funny.  The longer I observe her, the more I am able to separate myself from her (my ego) and realize that we aren’t in fact one and the same.  The Universe is aware of all these small, doubt-infused conversations my ego has been feeding me and has decided to step in.  Big Mama U has heard just about enough and is stepping in to have a little ‘chat’ of her own.  So climb on inside my noggin’, pull up a seat in the back section and take in a bit of her Motherly wisdom…

Universe:  Stop over complicating it all in your melon.  Seriously girl!  Simplify.  You already have the answers.  You just keep messing with your frequency and jumbling up all the synapses with all your trying.  Connect back to The Source.  Stop looking outside yourself for creativity, inspiration, material, something more…  You are The Source.  All you need you already have within you.

Really?  Really. 

Already?  Already.

Are you suuuure?  Drop the sass and quit gettin’ lippy with me girl.  I’m sure.

But I don’t feel ready.  Trust me.  You can never not be ready.  Oh love, you’re always seeking without.  Always doubting the infinite wisdom within.  Begin trusting.  Ok, how about this?  Let’s pull a card from those fancy-pants new Goddess Guidance Oracle Deck that I so generously gifted to you?

(Shuffle.  Shuffle.  Breathe.  Pull a card.)

‘Yemanya – Golden Opportunity:  “Important doors are opening for you right now.  Walk through them.” ‘

Let the credits roll.

So here I am learning to be a master beginner.  I am learning to dig deep and develop an inner trust.  Oddly, one would expect that this would be far simpler than the complicated trust-dynamics in other relationships but alas this one is prooving to be a doozy. One could argue that my ability to chit-chat with Mother Universe is a pretty fine sign that I’m “connected”  (or “cookoo” as indicated by Mother Universe sounding more like a home-girl and less like a great sage in this post) but I digress.  Her message is clear:

Simplify.

All you need you already have within you.

Listen.  Learn.  Leap.

In the words of Phil Collins “I’ve been waiting for this moment, for all my life.  Hold on.”

It’s time to stop waiting.  Let go-o-o.

Best version ever:  Gorilla does Phil Collins In the Air Tonight