Orchid seedlings

I have been thinking about change lately and have been themeing on dedication, patience, forbearance, trust... On Friday morning I was happily surprised when I was reading about flowers in the garden and I stumbled upon the orchids. The general rule of is that orchids take 3-5 years to seed and sprout. However the stanphopoea orchid takes over 7 years of care to germinate and sprout.

I loved this. As I have been thinking about change I think of how much change can be happening without us noticing it until over time the change becomes so full it blossoms into our life and it becomes obvious to us and others.

I wrote about this a few posts back. But how many times have you felt stuck in yoga? you show up and practice but it doesn't feel like a ton is happening? I have had a few of these "plateaus" but it turns out that during these plateaus I didn't stop growing, instead the growth was happening on the inside and I continue to see new aspects in my life that are a direct result of my practice that I didn't have before (patience, wiliness, courage, openness).

This magnificent orchid may appear like nothing is happening on the outside, but that does not mean a TON isn't happening on the inside! All flowers to me are a visual reminder of grace. Grace is that force which reveals to us our true nature. This seedling just sits full of grace, although we might not think that at first since we can not see the insides, but it is always there, until one day years later it reveals its beauty to us and I connect with that beauty as grace and it helps me remember that the same beauty and grace in the flowers resides in my own heart. Grace is always there. It is a force that lives in us, that is us. We all experience it and we are all it.

Nameste to the flowers, to the people, and to you my friend.

Saturday Yoga 9-10:30 BY DONATION

I took over a class from my main teacher Anusara Certified Adam Ballenger. One of the awesome kind thing Adam offers is that the price is by donation. Its very laid back you just drop some cash in a box before leaving class and then he pays for the space that he rents at a small community art building called Sugar Space. I continued doing that when I took over the class. Which I love because it makes you more accessible for more people. I have some people leave 5$ and some people leave 20$. When I started teaching the attendance fell off a little. I totally understand because I came to that class every Saturday to take a class from Adam. Anyways I made a flyer to hang around at local coffee shops and other local stores hoping to inspire some new students to come and check the class. Here is what it said

Saturday Yoga!! 9:00-10:30 BY DONATION Weekly all level public yoga class that builds both strength and flexibility. Kim’s yoga classes include a heart based theme, alignment, knowledge of kinesiology, modifications for healing injuries, and smiles.

Kimberly Achelis Hoggan has been teaching yoga for over six years and is currently working toward being an Anusara-Inspired teacher. Often the physical body has to get to a place of less pain so the mind can become more still and the heart more open. In her yoga classes you move your body into therapeutic yet often challenging poses to get the body to experience “awe” instead of “ouch”

Where: Sugar Space 616east Wilmington Avenue (2200south)

For more information visit AuthenticSelfYoga.com

Changes happen... Its part of nature

On Saturday I taught a class at Sugar Space (9-10:30). I talked about how often I close my mind and I think that things will never change and instead always stay the same. A very fatal way of looking at the world and one that is totally inaccurate because this universe is fluid and is always changing.

For example, I've been staring at a hole in the ceiling of our new house, sigh, thinking this is always going to be here. Or its the middle of summer here in SLC, UT with average temperatures around 95 degrees. I assume that's how it will always be (until fall) and then I wake up to go on a hike and it is pouring rain and thundering. Or ill be in a fight with my husband over something stupid and I think this is how our relationship is going to be now, and a few hours later every thing is fine, Or ill be in a yoga class trying to do a pose which I believe is entirely impossible for me to do.

When I instruct certain poses in class I swear I can hear some of my students eye balls rolling around in their heads and their minds saying well I wont ever be able to do this pose...and it is sooooo cool and an amazing gift to see those students continue to practice regularly and see their skill ability and confidence improve and see them perform the pose that before made their eyes roll and now they maybe can or can not do the pose completely but they have improved and are strong and stable and proud.

One thing I love about the yoga practice is it is called practice. It isn't called perfect. Or "if you arnt good when you start you never will be good". Its called practice. As long as you show up to your mat on a regular basis and push yourself but not to hard you will be able to do poses that before you could only dream about.

I used to find myself in awe and in some jealousy when I would admire the strength of some yogis and their dedication. Not to mention their ability to fall upside down into a handstand or forearm balance. I say fall upside down because they did not kick and hop around to get inverted instead they would float up and it looked like they were falling upside down. I thought that would never be me! I would never be strong, stable, dedicated. I would always be weak, off balance, with my mind racing at 100 miles per hour. However now a few years later I am much stronger, stable, and focused. Now I can kick up to handstand in the middle of the room and hold it for a minute or two. I NEVER thought I would be able to do that.

Take a moment to pause and breath, maybe even close your eyes. Think about your practice and whether you have been practicing for 3 days or 30 years think about how your practice has evolved for example how poses that you thought you would never be able to do are now doable. Or feelings to have in a pose which you never thought would come like feeling flexible, or strong now are a part of your practice. Remind the deepest part of your heart that everything is fluid and everything is in a flux of chance so when the thought comes that "it will always be that way" "or I will never be able to do that" remember if you continue to practice or work toward something or patch the hole in the ceiling you'll get more in the direction of the change you want to see. In my experience the changes I see are always slightly different then the way I plan them in my head but they are wonderful never the less.

Shri

I was in Tiffaney Wood's Anusara immersion this weekend At The Yoga Vented. Tiffaney talked about shri a Sanskrit word often translated as divine beauty. Tiffaneys definition which I love so much is: when you meet a moment or situation with the appropriate amount of effort and surrender.

I love how this can so easily be applied off of the Tog mat. I can also see that when I can skillfully choose to use more effort or surrender that it does add beauty to my life and the situation I am in. In this way every minute every breath is an oppurtunity for us to create beauty/shrill by consciously dancing with our effort and surrender.

Thinking about surrender I am reminded of ishvara-pranidhana meaning a wholehearted openness to Grace. I can sometimes find myself thinking I am surrendering when in fact I amjust being lazy. However real (nit just lazy) surrender for me is when I can let go of my will, my wants, my presevied needs and instead merge my will with gods will.

"By voluntarily dropping your identification with the limited concept of yourself, you are able to realize your fullest potential. When you offer your heart to God, you won't lose individual power. In fact as you empty out in an unconditional offering, the ocean of Consciousness fills you up. By surrendering, you actually become vastly more powerful than the limitted person that you usually identify with." Anusara Teacher Training Manual

Just like I would be lazy instead of surrender,I would also overly effort which leads to a hardening and percents grace from flowing through me.

I can tell a huge difference and I can feel the shri when I am not being lazy or over efforting and instead have met the situation with balanced effort and surrender



Its always such a pleasure to practice and learn from tiff.

Spiritual Awakening

When I started practicing yoga 7 years ago my mission was to heal my broken body, quite literally a broken back and a hurt knee. Yoga healed me right up. But it also started to plant some seeds in me about being more connect with myself, with others, with nature, with spirit. After my body healed instead of going back to my extreme sports where I continued to hurt myself I started practicing more yoga, and being more loving toward myself and others. Instead of being extremely competitive and jealous of others. A few years later I found Anusara Yoga.

Anusara yoga is a very physical practice. I learned to really use my gross body (gross as in muscles, bones, solids mass of the body). I learned how to squeeze my muscles and become more solid, how to broaden my hips and shoulders, how to tuck my tailbone, how to lengthen and extend out. I learned how to layer these physical commands, for example hug in here, rotate this up, scope this down reach from here to here all at the same time. So yes, the practice of Anusara yoga can be a very physical experience.

One reason having such a physically based alignment practice is so beneficial is it address injuries, areas of pain and tension. When we have these feelings in the body it is harder to connect to spirit and to experience all the beauty in the word. This kind of practice helps bring our body into a place of ease allowing our awareness to move from say, the throbbing pain in your stick neck to the pretty your breath and the mountains that surround you.

In Anusara the first universal principle of alignment is Open To Grace. When I do this I remind myself that this is so much bigger then what is happening on my yoga mat and in my muscle bodies. That I am so connected to this one source of power call it Grace, God, Great Out Doors, Science.... what ever you want to call it.

Looking back I smile  at how I started practicing yoga to fix my back and now I practice because I want to be a better person to myself, to others, to serve the earth, and connect with my higher power. I also see it happen other yoga students. They start practicing because they are in pain or want to lose weight and they end up practicing for so much more.

I found this on facebook and thought it was funny and I can see a lot of these changes happening in my life.

A Day In The Garden

Wow my body sure adapted to gardening, as in my psoas is super tight and my hamstrings are extremely over stretched as I dance around the garden either in a forward fold (uttanasana) or a squat (malasana). Looking for the good, a forward fold places the head below the heart which makes it an inversion. Inversions are said to have many benefits including a literal change of perspective and benefits the cardiovascular, lymphatic, endocrine and nervous systems. I have also heard argument's that inversions can help heal depression. Basically I am in an inversion for many hours of the day. It is hard to not get frustrated as my body gets tighter and I struggle doing poses that used to be so available to me. Although I have been feeling more confident and stable in my practice, wonder if its from spending so much time outside with the flowers.

 

To prop or not to prop…That is the question?

I had a student ask me the other day about her prop use. She was concerned she might be using her prop to much, her example was for ardha chandrasana (1/2 moon pose). She wasn’t sure if she was using it appropriately. I just love comments and question. In class I talked about this I let go of my original class plan, theme, heart quality, principle of emphasis and instead wove this prop conversation throughout the class.


I think props can be a hindrance. When I first started teaching I was told that you want to move past the prop as soon as you could hold the general shape of the pose without needing any additional support. Reason being that the body will stop gaining flexibility and won’t get the opportunity to create more stability. However, I now challenge that argument. Because even if I can assume the general shape of the pose, lets say in ardha chandrasana, but in order to get my hand on the floor I sacrifice the alignment say I lose the muscle energy in my standing leg, my top leg might be turn down keeping my pelvis more closed, and my shoulders are rounded on my back. But when I use a block, I get more stable, I can firm my muscles for even greater stability giving me more ability to rotate my leg, hip, torso, head towards the ceiling, and I can extend out from the focal point with a sense of “aww”.


In the example above using the prop was still helping me to get into the general shape of the pose with some alignment. However I still believe in using props at time to refine one of the alignment principles, even if it aids just a small adjust. That small adjustment can make a huge difference. For example, let’s say I can do a perfect parsvotonasana (runners stretch both legs straight). I can even fold down and get my forehead to my shin. I can be doing the 5 Anusara universal principles of alignment in pretty good balance and get my hands on the floor. Yet, if I prop each hand up on a block (my ego might hesitate like “I don’t need blocks for this pose buddy”) I get the ability to adjust my sacrum position with more ease, even if the sacrum moves just a little bit (this is part of pelvic loop). But getting that sacrum to go in and up really benefits the body and ensures that you are gaining flexibility in the hips and legs instead of in the low back which doesn’t need more flexibility in the Charley Chaplin tucked tailbone position.


My stand now is, don’t use props like a cane and if you do try not to get that habit going for long. But do use props if it helps to refine your alignment and your practice. I used to think props were for sitting on and making poses easier. Now I know that props can make you work so much harder it’s just the way you use them.
I looped this into my theme by commenting on how many things in this world we can lean on and use as props. For example prescription drugs can be fabulous and can help your body heal injuries and diseases however if you lean on them to much it because a hindrance and a handicap. You can apply this to anything, the relationships you have, your diet, your behaviors… It is good and healthy when you are refining yourself and the way, in which you behave and serve the world, it is a hindrance if you over lean on it to much and get hooked on the crutch, or get addicted to it, or get lazy…