Feel Good. Live Well.

Tapas – Harness the Power of Transformation

Spring is a big season around here.  Minnesotans smile for no reason at all while walking outside.  As one of my students put it, “it doesn’t hurt to step outside.”  Indeed, it doesn’t.  We are met these days with sunshine and warming temperatures, and an ever changing kaleidoscope of ‘greenness.’  The world is transforming right before our eyes.  There is a steady pulse; a deep vibration of Tapas burning through and creating tapestries of high energy and urgent greens. Snaps of color burst through transforming the grays and browns of our recent days.  The landscape no longer resembles its old self.   Behind all this transformation is the power of Tapas.   The third Niyama, Tapas, is described as heat, fire and even discipline.  As yogis we know that to harness this power is to invite transformation for ourselves. 

Most of you equate Tapas with sweating on the mat.  And you’d be right.  Just as water has to heat up to become steam; so too, do you need to ‘heat up’ to transform.  This week we take the grays and brown of your ‘winter’ self, add a little Tapas and presto; lively colors burst through.  It’s time to shake off your winter paradigm and surprise yourself with a kaleidoscope of fresh green Spring.   Are you ready to step on the mat and step out of your old self? 

 Beautiful Spring, Beautful You

Look around this fine spring day and you’ll see 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!

Create beauty on the mat this week at Good Life Yoga.  Make every pose an artistic expression from your heart.  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.

Present Moment

At any given moment you are invited to step into your center, be aware of your body, and feel with all your senses.  You are offered bright blue skies, bright green buds and the day brand new.  Each breath is an opportunity to stop and truly smell the air as it rides over the newly warmed soil and icy cold waters.  At any given moment your life awaits your presence. Touch the trees, pick up rocks and savor the daffodil blooms.  Delight yourself in the now.  Present yourself to life.  Your next amazing moment is now.     

Plan to step on the mat this week with lightness and a desire to enjoy each moment.  Our poses will be full, every breath accounted for; steeped in gratefulness.   We are alive.  Together we practice yoga and together we are present to life all around and within.

 Sauca in Spring

This time of year invites the urge to clear out, declutter, remove the old and let in the new.  It’s early spring and our hearts are beginning to see the clutch of cold weather fading into warmer, brighter days.  A gladness for fresh days of blue skies, bits of green poking up and a general sense of relief and hope replacing the heavy coats of colder days.

We move into a powerful time of alignment with Sauca, the first Niyama.  Clean, clear, organized energy to focus on removing the old is strong.  Mother Nature herself is busy warming the soil, digesting the leaves and debris; clearing the way for lovely shoots of renewed, clean material to grace the earth.

As humans, we have the opportunity like nature, to digest and remove old patterns, emotions, attachments and anything else that is covering our potential for new ‘shoots.’  We don’t even have to know anything about the new shoots coming through, we just know the energy to clean out and make room for them is strong.    

Let’s align with this energy of Sauca.  Our deep breaths on the mat this week will concentrate on clearing out and making room for the newness of the season.  It is time for Sauca.  It is time to clean, purge and remove debris that covers the light of your heart.  Our work will be to  remember the deep order of our lives.  Mother Nature herself leads the way.  She is gently, yet thoroughly preparing the soil for new growth.  All her instincts tell her to remove that which does not serve.  All her energy is in nurturing the fresh new patterns of beauty and growth.  She is cleaning out.  She is letting go.  There is no remorse.  There is only joy in the process.

Inner Body Bright

In Anusara yoga, our inner body bright refers to the soft radiant, open-hearted energy that gives the outer form of our poses a sense of fullness and buoyancy.   It is an expansive energy that rides with us into poses, breath, thoughts and experiences.  It is in our intention to connect with it that it appears.  Like a lovely body double made up of pure beautiful energy, this inner body brightness illuminates our awareness of our deep connection to everything in the world.  She is the heart of our natural spirit, free, spacious and joyous.

When we set our intention to Open to Grace, Anusara’s first Universal Principle of Alignment, we choose to align with this deeper energy within us.  Imagine simply choosing to see and feel this energy as an expression of our deepest desire to reunite with something bigger than ourselves.  This energy illuminates our world from inside.  It puffs up, expands out and rides into being with our very intention for it to be with us, as us.  It swells in sweetness; an inner smile of adoration for us.

This week we will invite into our awareness the energy of inner body bright.  She is a lovely addition to your practice.  She lifts you up from inside and fills you out to your skin in every pose.  She is the heart of your energetic form; shining brightly, expanding widely to embrace the glorious physical form of yourself. 

Step onto the mat at Good Life Yoga and meet your inner body bright.

March Toward the Vernal Equinox

This is it.  The dark has had its day, so to speak and we make the push toward an equality; a balance of day and night on March 20th.

This week we celebrate the equality of light and dark with balance poses and ideas on how to establish balance in your life.  The Universal Principles of Alignment offer us the opportunity to create balance in our poses.  But can they help us off the mat?  If you’ve been a student of Good Life Yoga and Anusara yoga for awhile you already know the answer to that.  YES.

This week we explore the qualities of the two pulsations that have the most bearing on creating balance in our worlds:  Muscle Energy and Organic Energy.   When these two are in balance we feel powerful, connected and joyous.  We step into the middle of a grand river of energy that delights in uplifting us.  Finding balance with these two energies requires not only understanding your own tendencies but understanding deeply the qualities of these two energies.

As always, the UPA’s offer us tools for better living.  And as always, you are perfectly supported in this endeavor.  The earth is aligning in a perfect balance of light and dark just for you.  Take advantage of this offering and join me on the mat.  You’ve got a shot at your best Tree Pose ever!

Serve and Support Your Strength

The point is, you ‘look’ around inside and sees what would serve the whole; what would strengthen the whole.  The strength is there, we just have to look for ways to reconnect with it.  Sometimes that means bringing in more muscle energy and sometimes that means allowing for more organic. 

As a teacher, I look for ways for you to find additional strength by cueing alignment principles that serve the flow of big energy.  Many times, I layer on instruction starting with the largest most dynamic pulsation of muscle and organic energies.  Then I move on to the expanding or inner spirals and outer or contracting spirals.  And then from there, I cue the loops.  Depending on the journey planned for the day, I cue on certain alignment principles more than others.  Every time, the end result is a fuller experience of the pose for you.  There is more of you to enjoy, move with, breath with and adore.

Off the mat when we look for ways to reestablish connection to the big energy through better alignment our lives become less stressful.  We accomplish more and with less effort.

We are powerful amazing beings and even more so when we use everything to our advantage.  Take advantage of all your strength this week at Good Life Yoga.  Look for longer held poses and an opportunity to find a stronger you.

Measuring Goodness

“I think we can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do, by what we deny ourselves what we resist and who we exclude.  I think we’ve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create and who we include.”

The ending line to one of my all time favorite movies, Chocolat, conveys a message of expansion and creativity at the heart of Goodness.  I love that.  And the movie.

Anusara yoga is a practice of recognizing goodness, supporting it and creating more.  Sometimes we have to step out of our comfort zone with a willingness to serve this radiant Goodness in ways that may not be easy.  It’s not easy to help a stranger, or to include a difficult person in our daily kind thoughts.  It sometimes takes effort to create opportunities for goodness to flow.

It’s not easy to practice challenging poses, or to meet the business of the mind with patience and compassion.  It’s not easy to embrace the fullness of what we are and harder still to embrace it in others.  Goodness flows when we are willing to embrace the best of ourselves along with our limitations.  Goodness flourishes when we create space for kindness and compassion to flow both on the mat and off.

What will you do this week to expand and create goodness?  How can you expand your heart to include more kindness, compassion and ultimately more joy?  What will you do to offer more goodness in the world within and around you?  I can’t wait to see you this week and find out.

Transitions

How well do you live transitions?  What are the tendencies of the body and the mind when between two things?  Can you settle into the moment or do you push through to find the next activity?  If an activity has been highly charged, do you ‘discharge’ during the transition, i.e. laugh, discount the activity, or feel a tad off balance?  Remaining in a constant state of awareness or presence during transitions takes skill – and that takes practice to develop.  There is power, knowledge and connection to your greatest self in these in between spaces.  And that makes them highly prized and worthy of your attention.  This week we cultivate the skill of staying present during transitions. 

Off the mat we find ourselves continuously between two things.  Some are minor, like being ‘at work’ and then leaving, being with friends and then being alone.   Some are major, like moving from one house to another house, being between two jobs, being separated from a significant person either through divorce or death.  What is common about these transitions is that the space holds power.  We either step consciously into transition or it has the potential to overwhelm us.  Think about the major transitions you’ve already been through in your life…these times were ripe with every possible emotion from great joy to intense sorrow; from absolute clarity and certainty to utter confusion and fear.  Here is a space that holds both the reassurance of OM and a panic attack.  It is an exhilarating place of pure potential to say the least.   Staying balanced, focused and in the flow of the big energy is a worthy endeavor while in transition.

This week we cultivate full presence during transitions from one pose to the next.  Our learning comes from what we find as our tendencies during transitions.  And then we decide if these tendencies serve us any longer.  

Come to Good Life Yoga this week and find yourself in the in between spaces….

Recharge

We are half way through February and I am noticing a distinct drop in energy level not only for myself, but for you all as well. 

Sometimes it’s useful to slow down and recharge.  The long winter months take their toll on our physical, mental and emotional bodies.  Think about the gear you have to put on just to go outside.  Throw in the extra shoveling, difficult driving conditions, abundant gray skies and this can all add up to an unhealthy state of being.  Not to mention that we will be moving into our snowiest month yet – March in about two weeks.  Whew.  No wonder many of us are a bit frazzled around the edges and unusually tired.  No worries: Yoga to the rescue!

This week we replenish the coffers, slow down and nourish our entire self with, forward folds, hip openers and a few restoratives.  For many of you this is good news.  February is a tough month to slog through and sometime you just have to take a step back and reconnect with the big energy.  Step in to Good Life Yoga this week.  We have just what you need.