advanced practice

Went to Adam Ballengers Advanced practice at Centered City Yoga. He talked about listening to our mind versus listening to our heart. Our mind is similar to our ego and our intellect. These want to make us happy and doesn't always consider the deeper purpose and more long term happiness. Adam used the example of milk chocolate. It might make you happy in the short term but but doesn't make you feel as good in 30 minutes or in a day or week. He went on to say we need to parent our heart. When the brain suggests a short term fix to happiness we remind the brain that maybe eating 10 bars of milk chocolate isn't the best choice if we want to align our self in a way that continues to cultivate happiness.

In class I jotted down a quote I really resonated with:
"do you line your body up with your brain or do you use your brain to line your body up with your heart", "Goal: to feel intuitively good".

It was a great practice I saw some friends who I haunt practiced with in a bit. We did partner work in various arm balances. I love how partner work builds community. I partnered with two yogi's I haven't worked with much before and I feel like after working and sweating with them we are a lot closer. So cool! We did lots of inner spiral/ expanding spiral work in the legs and the arms, + core work to link the legs and arms together.

Adam also talked about the recent articles that has come out about John Friend. He reminded us that Anusara Yoga is a system of yoga, and that anusara yoga has not changed. Its not John  Friend yoga. Reminding us that we can still like and practice anusra yoga without agreeing with everything John may or may not have done. This made sense to me. People make mistakes. It can be easy to place people up on pedestals and think they are perfect, but the best anyone can ever be is human. I am interested to see how John handles this situation.