Daily Cup of Yoga

Ganesha Symbolism Revealed

Brian — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:06:24 +0000

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Ashtanga Yoga Podcasts from Miami Life Center

Brian — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:02:27 +0000

I stayed up way too late last night listening to Ashtanga yoga podcasts with Kino MacGregor on the Miami Life Center website. Very entertaining, motivating, and insightful.

Here’s a few podcasts that I downloaded (you can right-click on the links to save the files to your computer):

Yoga as a Spiritual Path Miami Friday Night Workshop Talk 2010 Part 1.

Guided Full Primary Series Richmond.

Miami Old Shala Q&A with Kino & Tim – The Ashtanga Yoga Method and Teaching Beginners.

In addition to the podcast page, the rest of the Miami Life Center website is chock-full of yogic wisdom for those seeking deeper insight into yoga practice. I plan on spending quite a bit of time there. Too bad I’m not closer to Miami so I could actually take some classes there. Not much Ashtanga yoga going on in my neck of the Florida panhandle…as far as I know…

A Morning Yoga Practice to Expand the Heart

Brian — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:56:53 +0000

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Yoga…in a perfect world

Brian — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:59:53 +0000

Found these insightful ruminations on Tumblr about one yogini’s (julia lee yoga) realization about the essence of a yoga practice:

In a perfect world (or in a world where money grows from trees), yoga would be freely accessible to all. There would be no such thing as $100 spandex pants or exorbitant yearly pass prices. Unfortunately, the world is not a perfect place – nor does money grow from trees.

Let’s face it – I’m far from rich. In fact, I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum. I’m a student. In other words, I survive off student loans and the clearance rack at the grocery store, which offers brown bananas and bread that expires that day. Living on a student budget and immersing myself in yoga has been challenging, to say the least. There have been times when I have neglected my practice completely for weeks due to financial or time constraints. At these moments, I feel guilty; guilty for putting yoga on the back burner and not making my practice a priority in my life.

Lately, I’ve been hit hard by a wave of yogic desire, and I’m itching to start a regular practice again. I spend most of my free time researching yoga studios, festivals and workshops, and then staring sadly at my empty bank account. I’m a bad yogini, I tell myself. Real yogis and yoginis travel to Yoga Journal conferences and study with master teachers. Real yogis and yoginis do asana practice at real studios with real teachers.

Then, suddenly, I came to a realization. I realized that my definition of yoga had been tainted and warped by the influence of the modern world. Yoga isn’t only about sporting the top-of-the-line clothing and accessories, and studying with “yoga celebrities”. That’s probably the worst interpretation of yoga there is. Yoga is a lifestyle, a conscious decision to make the world around you a better place. Just because I practice to online videos on a mat in my room doesn’t make it any less worthwhile. I am living my yoga when I do kind things, when I act with mindfulness and intention. Each day I embrace the true principles of the yamas and niyamas, I am engaging myself in the practice of yoga. So what did I learn today? I learned yoga doesn’t equate to dollar signs, and that I can be a true yogini after all.

Yoga Journal LiveMag ~ Great for Home Practice Yogis

Brian — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 04:27:37 +0000

As I perused through Yoga Journal during the wee hours this morning, I noticed that the magazine had plans to introduce a new online video channel called “LiveMag,” described as “an online extension of the pages of the magazine.” It sounded interesting. I didn’t have time to look into it this morning, but when I checked my e-mail this evening I had a message from Yoga Journal that the first issue of LiveMag was available.

In the first edition (which corresponds to the March 2010 issue of the magazine), you can practice along with the video versions of the Home Practice and Master Class columns and watch a demo of a few of the Sun Salutation variations highlighted in the feature story “Shine on Me.”

Based on initial impression, LiveMag looks to be a great complementary feature to the printed asana instruction in the physical magazine. I definitely look forward to this and future editions. Here’s the videos of the Yoga Journal Editor’s introduction to LiveMag as well as the featured Home Practice article.

What do you think? Is this a useful feature for you?

Introduction to LiveMag | Yoga Journal Editor Kaitlin Quistgaard

Home Practice Video Sequence | YogaJournal

Maybe you could practice Yoga with Deepak Chopra and Tara Stiles on your iPhone

Brian — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:46:19 +0000

Get your bliss on anywhere with a new yoga app for your iPhone or iPod Touch. iTunes has a decent number of yoga apps available. Some look good, some look horrid, but this one featuring Deepak Chopra and Tara Stiles looks somewhat promising.

Any recommendations for iPhone yoga apps? I’m possibly in the market, but don’t want to waste money on something that’s not top-notch.

Fall in love with less for stress free living

Brian — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:42:17 +0000

Stop buying unnecessary things.
Toss half your stuff, learn contentedness.
Reduce half again.

List 4 essential things in your life,
stop doing non-essential things.
Do these essentials first each day, clear distractions
focus on each moment.

Let go of attachment to doing, having more.
Fall in love with less.

“Be Content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” ~ Lao Tzu

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” - Albert Einstein

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your affairs be as one, two, three and to a hundred or a thousand. We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.” - Henry David Thoreau

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” - William Morris

“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.” - Will Rogers

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” - Hans Hofmann

Time to Simplify and De-Junkify!

Brian — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:22:02 +0000

Yoga for Dummies, p. 277

Yoga encourages you to cultivate the virtue of greedlessness in all matters. The Sanskrit word for this is aparigraha, whcih means literally “not grasping all round.” The yoga practitioner who is well-trained in the art of greedlessness is said to understand the deeper reason for his or her life. Behind this traditional wisdom lies a profound experience: As you loosen your grip on material possessions, you also let go of the ego, which is doing the gripping or grasping. As the ego-contraction relaxes, you increasingly become in touch with the abiding happiness of your true self. Then you realize that you need nothing at all to be happy. You are unconcerned about the future and live fully in the present. You are not afraid to give freely to others and also share with them your inner abundance.

Lately I’ve felt a strong desire to simplify and reduce the number of needless possessions I’ve accumulated over years of mindless consumption. It’s shocking to step back and take a no-holds-barred inventory of all the junk filling up space in every corner of my house. Over the Christmas holiday I got the organizing bug and decided it was time to purge the bookcases in my home office, which I had jokingly nicknamed the “Harry Potter room” because there was no telling which piece of paper stuffed into the shelves was magically holding everything together. Unfortunately, even after buying three new bookcases, the purging turned out to be more of a paper shuffle, and now a month later I’m still feeling a bit overwhelmed by crap on the shelves. That’s just one room in the house. Obviously, more bookshelves wasn’t the correct answer.

I now realize I didn’t need to be better organized (although organizing the stuff you truly need isn’t a bad thing), I needed to get rid of stuff and stop buying things I don’t need. Of course, deep down I think I knew that answer all along, but that’s a tough pill to swallow. It’s hard to explain the mind-shift that I’m having right now about consumerism, but it’s almost as if someone grabbed me about the shoulders and shook me back to reality. It’s about time to start living more simply.

Of course, renouncing all possessions simply does not present a realistic approach to minimalism and simplicity. Most of us have families, jobs, lives, and unless we’re willing to give up those lives, our approach won’t be so drastic.

What we need is a realistic approach to change. Slow change is best for most people.

Here are 10 steps to minimalism as adapted from one of my favorite blogs, mnmlist, that I intend to implement over the next month:

1. Stop buying unnecessary things. Only buy the necessities, and always ask yourself: is this truly necessary?

2. Get rid of the obvious things. Stuff that’s getting in your way, that you rarely ever use. You can often fill up a few boxes immediately, put them in your car, and donate them to a thrift shop or to friends and family the next day.

3. Get rid of more obvious things. Now that you’ve cleared up some of the clutter, you can take a look around and start seeing other things you rarely use. Box these up as well.

4. Clear the clutter on your floors. If your floors are barely visible because you have clothes and boxes and different items all over the place, start clearing your floors.

5. Clear other flat surfaces. Shelves, table tops, counter tops. They don’t have to be completely clear, but should only have a few essential objects.

6. Start going into closets and drawers. One place at a time, start clearing out clutter.

7. Cut back another third. At this point, you should have simplified drastically, but you can revisit what you still own and see things you don’t really use that often.

8. Start letting go, emotionally. For emotional reasons, there will be things that you “just can’t part” with — clothes or shoes or books or mementoes or gifts, childhood items. This is difficult, but given time, you’ll learn that such attachments aren’t necessary.

9. Get rid of another third. At this point, you’re pretty minimalist, but you can cut back more.

10. Et cetera. The process will never end, until you actually give up everything.

I intend to blog about my de-junkification project over the next month and would love to hear any experiences or insights you might have on the process of creating a more simple, minimalist life.

Best Part of Grammys ~ iPad’s Big Moment

Brian — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:36:17 +0000

Apple iPad Feels Like Christmas in January

Brian — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 04:09:57 +0000

Over the last few years I’ve become an unabashed Apple fanboy. It didn’t take long, but the conversion is essentially complete. On my desk at home sits a 24″ iMac, a 15″ MacBook Pro (which I’m using right now), an iPod Touch, and an iPod nano. Before this last Wednesday, about the only thing missing was an iPhone. But with this week’s iPad announcement, which I’d been waiting for like Christmas day, I now have another gadget to add to my wish list. Who knows, maybe the iPad will replace my cell phone when I move to Japan this summer. The iPhone may become a mere afterthought. Not nearly as expensive as most critics supposed, even the most expensive 3G capable version only costs $829. In terms of Apple products, that’s pretty cheap, and the base model seems like a veritable bargain at $499. The main selling point for me will be the international data plan options that should be revealed this summer. So much for brahmacharya, santosha, and aparigraha. Long live the digital lifestyle!

Watch higher quality version on Apple.com