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By Amber, May 19, 2013

When I started practicing yoga in the early 90’s, yoga was still relatively unheard of and certainly not practiced by many people.   I would often get the question:  “What is this yoga?”  Back then, being new to yoga myself, I didn’t know the answer and so I would often just tell people how it made me feel.  I felt better.  My neck was better.  I slept better.  I was happier, less worried about – well everything.  My body felt good and full of ease.  This to me is what I had experienced on the mat in a hatha yoga practice.

Many years later and thousands of hours of practice I have all those same conclusions and more.  Answering the question of what yoga is, is complex, varied and always brings you to another aspect of your relationship with yoga.  Ultimately this is what yoga is; an ever-deepening relationship with yourself and the world around you.  Your practice holds a desire to know yourself better, to understand how you tick, what your strengths are, your weaknesses – all of it.

What is yoga then? The history books and Sanksrit language would tell you that yoga means ‘a yoking together.’   If you are bringing things together, whether they were already there or not is remembering you have a relationship to the whole.  Each part of you has a relationship to the whole.

So you could say that yoga is being present to all aspects of yourself.  And not only are you are in a relationship with yourself – all your thoughts, emotions, body parts, but you are also in relationship with the world around you.   That means everything else – your friends, your co-workers, your career, your family, your home, the store where you buy groceries, the car you drive, the music you hear, the books you read – virtually everything.  So where does yoga end and just plain living begin?  You guessed it – there is no line.  Your yoga practice can take place during a conversation with your loved one or with someone you have controversy with.  It can be practiced while cooking dinner, or taking out the trash.   What does hatha yoga teach you?  To be present on the mat, to be accountable to all the thoughts, emotions, movements that are YOU.   You are still you off the mat.  In an argument with someone you may find yourself in that frustrating space of falling out of Vrksasana (Tree pose) or Vasisthasana (Side Plank) for the third time.  You try not to be frustrated, but there are times that it happens.  What do you do?  Get bigger and hold the line.  What does that look like in an argument?  Seeing another person’s view, while holding your own; making the choice of agreeing to disagree or of changing your own mind.

This is a tad simplistic and in life, just as on the mat, you are contending with a myriad of factors.  Your wrist may be sore and it is uncomfortable in Vasisthasana.  Your hips may not be open and your foot slips down your leg in Vrksasana.  In yoga, as in life there is always a pathway.  There is always a place of freedom and stability to be found.   Finding it requires fierce practice and skillful navigation through all manner of instability and confinement.  But we wouldn’t want it any other way.  This is our yoga.  This is our pathway through it all; touching it all holding gratitude for this amazing relationship we have with ourself and the world around us.

This week at Good Life Yoga we explore what yoga is for you.  We’ll encourage sharing our stories, our triumphs and our tremendous difficulties– and I think we’ll see that our yoga has shifted, just as our lives have shifted.  What came first the shifting or the yoga?  It’s the age old chicken and the egg scenario.  We are sure to carry this theme through to next week, because there is a lot to say about it.  It’s life after all.  And it’s your life.  It’s mine.  It’s our relationship to one another – it’s all that and there isn’t more because we’ve included everything already!  That’s deep, I know.  It’s fun.  It’s mysterious.  It’s yoga.

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By Amber, May 12, 2013

Mother Nature shows up every day for herself and therefore for us.  Everywhere you look you’ll see nature having her way in the world.   Right before our eyes she chooses to bedazzle.  Watch as wild buds of high energy green stretch into leaves lift themselves up to touch the sky.  Notice too her broken branches, chewed up earth and spent crocus and daffodils.  Dirt and debris mingled with new shoots and opportunities.  Everything is part of her landscape.  Sweep your eye on the whole of it; drink in the moments passed, the nature of creation in process.  And take that same eye with you on the mat.  See the essence and curve of nature in your own limbs.  Enjoy the strength of will and desire for joy.   Notice too, your own broken links, scars, lost dreams and pieces of yesterday that altogether are your unique landscape.  Creating life is deeply complex, messy and perfectly magnificent.  We are our limbs and our lost things; no two leaves the same, buds and fragrance exquisitely and subtly different from one another.

We own the entire landscape of our lives.  On the mat we offer up this understanding one moment at a time.  We raise our arms with reverence and acknowledge the gift of sunlight and rain.  Green leaves turn upward in appreciation of the sky.  We step back into lunge and ferociously claim triumphs or choose to stand tall in disappointments.  We slide shoulder blades down our backs, and present collar bones to a new day, a new start and a desire to show up and be counted.  May flowers push up through dead leaves and they too are counted.  The day we mastered handstand and the day we fell out of Half Moon.  There are days we can and days we cannot.  There is orderliness to this messy process of creation.   We don’t look to the French lilac to branch out with thorns or expect the barberry to hold purple flowers.  We are who we are.  Yoga is our vehicle to claim and unfold primal urges to be utterly and completely ourselves.

Never doubt the process of your own DNA.  You are hardwired to be exactly who you are.  Yoga unfolds this awareness and offers the experience back into the world.  Why else do tulips bloom yellow or red?  Why else do they shrivel and pull back into a blank canvas?  That one breath in Triangle equals a moving, living testimony of yourself in this world.   Corpse Pose a respite and clearing away of moments already lived.

Just as the wind moves the branches and changes the shape of a leaf, you too are moving art; utterly and entirely yourself infused with the creative power and support of all things seen and unseen.   This week we settle into the bones, breath and muscle of our mind and body and reach out from inside to offer the highest offering of our own unique self.  We remember in one moment our capacity for alignment and orderliness, strength and stretched awareness of both grace and process.   We strike a chord of our own individual beauty and essence and let it all be seen; each amazing bud and spent flower of ourselves.

Choose to remember and offer the world the only rendition of you that exists.  If you can remember that, you remember how precious you are.  If you can remember that, you can fill out your form; claim your life, your body and its entire messy and magnificent landscape.  You and everything about you is a lovely, lovely gift to the world.

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By Amber, May 5, 2013

This week we witness nature in the throes of a creative superstorm.  Right before your eyes buds burst free and new leaves emerge.   Life is being created and celebrated all around you.

In this remarkably changing landscape you are being challenged to see your own ability to grow and create beauty in the world.  You too are capable of offering bright green ideas, and new expressions of delight.  Unfurl yourself!  It can start small; it often does.  You don’t see fully deep green leaves on the tree happen in one day.  No, there’s a bright idea of green; a bud and then flowering.  Not every bud is destined to burst free and delight the world.  This is why we have many, many buds.  Nurture them.  Breathe life into them.  Support them and watch them grow.  Some will absolutely amaze you.

What is busting out for you?  What fine idea do you have?  What creative juices are flowing?  Harness this special time of year and put pen to paper; hands to the task; mind to the future.  What, what, what is budding within you?  Which ones will burst through?  No matter your choice, you will have inspiration from nature herself.  She’ll egg you on with her wild choices of color, texture and placement.  Go for it.  She doesn’t hold back.  It’s in our nature to push forward this time of year.

On the mat we place our feet firmly at the top; aligned and steady.  Hands at the heart we breathe into the fullness of ourselves and make way for ideas and creativity to bubble up.  Exhaling we bring our arms to the side and inhaling up over head.  From inside determine how far apart you’d like your arms today.  Do your fingers feel steady and resolved or do they need to wiggle and move with your own inner groove?  No matter, embrace your moment and exhale bow forward.  Fingers on the floor inhale and look up.  Jump or step back and hold plank.  This steady platform of yourself is ripe with ideas; capable of pushing into fruition something magnificent.  Trust yourself.  Exhale float to the floor and roll your shoulders back for a beautiful baby backbend.  Hold here and move your head side to side; roll your shoulders, roll your neck; loosening up your creativity.  Then push back and lift your hips high.  Here keeping your feet on the floor, bend your knees one at a time to your own rhythm.  Enjoy the sway of your hips; wiggle, bend your elbows then straighten them.  Get the kinks out and prepare for your own creative storm.  Jump forward and bow.  Inhaling extend arms and face upward; flex your hands, first a soft fist and then open fingers.  Repeat and remember the buds bursting everywhere.  You too are bursting forth.  Bring your hands back to your heart and smile.  You are beautiful.  You are creative.  You are giving the world something wonderful of yourself.

Bubble up some creative power for yourself this week at Good Life Yoga.  Make every pose an artistic expression.  What’ll it be?  Big, glorious and showy like the lovely daffodils?   Or perhaps small and sweet like a simple lilac leaf?

Show up and burst free.  It’s all good.

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By Amber, April 28, 2013

Wintry weather has so heavily influenced our physical, mental and emotional bodies it has no doubt seeped into every particle of our being.  And it is at an end.  Completion.  We have come to a final resting place for Mother Nature’s wild and wicked winter that was.    It seems only fitting that we mark this end point with the finality of quietly closing the door and facing our new reality.  Warmer days are here and more are coming.  There’ll no doubt be a whiff of colder weather to remind us of the heart of winter, but it is only just that a whiff; insignificant and nothing more. There is no way to hold onto this colder air.  Mother Nature is resigned to this fact and just for grins jerks us around a tad.  That’s okay.  The door is quietly closing.  I can almost hear it ‘click.’  I am ready to say good-bye. Let’s get to the mat for a ritual of completion.  You, no doubt have something in your life that you, too, are ready to say good-bye to.  With all of our spring cleaning these past few weeks, let’s take an opportunity to mark the completion of a cycle; a winter cycle on every level.

What has had you in its grip and is now softening?  What cycle of life are you completing?  On our mat this week we pay honor to the completion of winter and cycles small and large that we all must move through.  Here might be the first of Sun Salutation offering a ritual of completion:

At the top of the mat place your hands together in a quiet gesture of honor and contemplation.  Your very breath and intention lengthen the spine and strengthen resolve.  Honor and say farewell to these hard days of winter.   A season has past.  Breathe into its endpoint and let your eyes light up with celebration as you and your mat mates cross over the finish line to spring. Exhale and smile; inhale and lift your arms high in salute. Exhale, bow forward close your eyes and whisper goodbye. A cycle is completed.  Enjoy a deep grateful forward fold before you inhale and step or jump back to Plank Pose.  With steadiness, hug your arms toward one another and lift your belly and tilt your tail bone toward the floor.  Admire your own strength and support and acknowledge all those who helped you, who cheered you on as you moved toward your own finish line.   Lower down and inhale up to Cobra.   Gently and firmly throw your shoulders back and shake off the cold.  Tilts your eyes upward, collar bones square across; look toward the next warmer season.

Exhale back to Down Dog and hold.  With each inhale lift your arm bones skyward with strength and purpose.  Exhale and bring your shoulder blades deeper onto your back.  Stay and enjoy this pose.  With the next inhalation look forward, not only to the top of your mat, but to the start of something new then step or jump triumphantly.   With gratitude exhale and hold another forward fold.  Hug into your legs.  Delight in your capacity to move through a cycle.  Inhale and stretch your spine forward and lift away from the comfort and warmth of a deep fold into another beautiful day.  Exhale and fold again.   Stay here for a moment.  Stay and with each exhale release what holds you back and weighs you down. Release and breathe into fresh spaces in your body, mind and heart.  With new purpose and courage, inhale all the way up, arms stretch high; waving, saluting, celebrating:  Good bye.  Hands back to the heart; the door closes. The cycle is complete.  You made it.  Let’s do that again….

Join us on the mat this week for more Sun and Moon Salutations as we metaphorically and literally mark the end of a season.

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By Amber, April 21, 2013

Nature has her own timing and it isn’t always ours.  The constant struggle we have with the crazy spring weather here in MN provides plenty of opportunity to witness our incongruence and impatience with her rhythms.   It should be spring, we say, it should be warmer, it shouldn’t be snowing, it shouldn’t be so cold.  How much energy do we waste in complaining and resisting just what is?

I mean it’s not like we can have a ‘sit’ with Mother Nature and let her know in no uncertain terms she should be dispensing bits of green and warmth instead of snow white and icy cold.  But, that’s not going to happen.  We cannot affect the weather.  And so we take a breath and embrace patience and dare I say our ability to play along with her in her fetish for doling out the unexpected.  Mother Nature dances to her own tune, so maybe we just grab a drum and march right alongside her.

What about all the expectations we have for our yoga practice?  We may tell ourselves we should be able to do a certain pose.  We should be able to hold a pose longer.  We should have more opening in our hips by this time.   Sometime we get so focused on where we want to be that we do not spend time enjoying or applauding exactly where we are at.  I tell myself this on and off the mat.  Like right now, looking out the window it looks exactly like December.  Truly.  And I cannot change it.  I can only applaud and spend some time remembering that it is beautiful and a great time to bake cookies or simmer a marinara sauce for a couple hours.  Cold weather cooking can be awesome.

On the mat take into account your own inconsistencies and natural rhythms.  Dare I say even embrace ones you cannot change.  If you are under the weather, you may not be able to go for a fierce practice (nor should you).  So use your condition to your advantage and enjoy restoratives.

You might be struggling with an unexpected shoulder injury and dying to do a headstand.  But you can’t.  I want it to be warm, but it’s not.   If you have a fused ankle or an overly flat foot perhaps your balance poses may be just what they are:  always challenging.  It is what it is.

Do what you can to support the situation, use wedges, blocks or a wall and accept that that is the way of your nature. Use everything to your advantage.  If you can’t balance well on one foot, spend an entire practice working it through without losing patience with yourself.  Learn to love any support you need and give yourself the most support of all. Celebrate your own incongruencies.  You do that on the mat and that’s doing some tough yoga!  That’s exactly like looking out the window and deciding to wear a Christmas sweater in April. That’s pulling out the ‘winter’ coat again, stuffing your feet in some boots and just going for a walk – oh don’t forget the hat.  I see really bright orange hats are the new thing in my neighborhood.  That’s kind of a ‘nod’ to just what is, if I ever saw it. Chin up, my friends!

This week, let’s find some patience and humor with what we can’t affect and celebrate our ability to embrace what ‘just is’.  Let’s nourish ourselves with acceptance when necessary and applaud all our efforts no matter how small.  It’s all progress.  Just like’s its April and progress looks like one more day moving toward spring.  We can keep on keeping on.  So let’s do just that.  Bring your humor, patience and willingness to look anew at what you can’t change and just have some fun this week.