Stoked, and ready for change!

by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat

Oh yes loyal Lunchboxers, after weighing up what I need in my life right now, I’ve decided to forgo trying to earn a living wage as a yoga teacher and website publisher, and instead head back into the workplace.

I’ve been sprucing up my CV, writing cover letters, and getting in touch with recruitment agencies. It feels GREAT!

Normally the story we here is about people getting disillusioned with working for a living, with being in the corporate world, with having a job… and making a brave leap to follow their heart and their passion and become a yoga teacher (musician, artist, novelist…).

This is a different story. This feels like me coming full circle, right back to where I always was, but different. And I’m excited!

Here’s why:

1. I’ll no longer have to hustle to make a dollar

Teaching yoga isn’t just about teaching yoga – it’s also about marketing, advertising, accounting, taxes, training, planning and practice.

I love teaching yoga, but all the work that goes in before a class and after a class is beginning to wear me down. It’s going to feel like such a luxury to just get paid for the work I do, rather than not know whether I’m going to get paid at all. I can drop the hustle and focus on the things I do best.

2. I’ll be able to independently support my son and I

If it was just me on my own, I may have continued to do the yoga teacher hussle. I would have been free to teach those busy and lucrative 5pm – 8pm class slots. Plus I wouldn’t have had to earn so much money to stay afloat. But with a toddler depending on me to be there at the oh-so-important dinner-bed-bath-storytime hour, and depending on me to pay his living costs… suddenly making a living wage as a teacher gets more difficult. I’m excited about earning money again and being able to save too.

3. I can stop attempting to make money from The Yoga Lunchbox and just enjoy writing articles

Back when I launched YLB, two weeks after my son was born, my intention was to create an online income which meant I wouldn’t have to go back into the workplace (I wanted to be a stay-at-home mother, for at least the first few years). I’ve failed miserably.

Ideally, now I’ve built a media channel, and an audience, the next step would be to launch some kind of product that I could sell, and there would be my income. However, I’ve got gun shy. I don’t trust my instincts enough right now to pour hours of work into creating something that may or may not fly.

Besides which, the cynical part of me feels like the world’s already got enough info-products, do we really need something else? I’d rather just write articles for the love of it.

4. I can break out of the yoga & meditation bubble I’ve been living inside

Doing the solo-gig while looking after a toddler, mixing with my yogi and meditation friends, and running a yoga website… my entire world is about yoga.

I don’t watch TV. I don’t read the newspaper very often. I didn’t even know it was an Olympic year until I went out on Saturday night with some non-yoga friends. I’m sooooo ready to get out there and see what’s going on in other people’s lives, what’s making them excited, what’s making them fearful, what they’re hoping for, and what they’re dreaming about. The bonus of this? Better articles!

5. I can take my yoga off the mat and into the workplace

All this yoga stuff I’ve been immersed in for the last eight or so years is really about one thing – what it means to be a human being. And part of what it means to be a human being, is what it means to be a human being in connection with other people.

I’m so looking forward to being able to apply everything I’ve learned about being a human being – all that stuff about witnessing the mind and being non-reactive and seeing what truly is… in a corporate situation. I’m excited to go into high pressure situations that require discernment and risk assessment and the ability to set aside one’s own reactivity. I even suspect that my self-imposed yoga immersion will serve me just as well as an MBA. Maybe better.

6. Teaching yoga doesn’t require a mat or a studio

Once I’m out there in the world, being me, as I am, it’s going to impact everyone I come in contact with, one way or another. If I can hold my centre, and stand tall as an undercover yogi (no preaching or evangalism required here), I will affect other people. In fact, I may affect more people than if I was hiding away in a studio in the yoga world. It’s likely too that some of the people I will impact will be the kind of people who would never walk into a yoga studio.

7. There comes a point when one stops walking a spiritual path and just starts living

I’m at that point. I am sooooo at that point. All that intense suffering that made me question and look within and wonder why and seek answers… it’s gone. That which propelled me on to the path, gone. I can let go now and just let it all be. I’ve found whatever it was I was looking for and that feels good. It’s time to step back into the world and just live.

8. Teaching yoga is something that is an innate part of who I am

I may be going back into the workforce, but I will always teach yoga. I’m still going to keep my dedicated one-on-one students. I’m still going to practice. I may guest teach the odd group class here and there. I may teach the occasional workshop for fun. But because I don’t have to make a living from doing any of this… my energy will be freed up around teaching. Once again, I’ll be doing it for the love of it.

9. I’ll have the financial resources to deepen my understanding of yoga

Setting aside the challenges of doing more training when you’ve got sole responsiblity for a a toddler, right now I also have no money for such things. And I feel a profound need to go and learn more from the very best. The more I teach, and the more I practice, the less I feel qualified to teach. I feel like I know less and less sometimes! So I would dearly love to go and spend some time with serious yogis and imbibe of their goodness. Going out and working means I can save the cash and time necessary for this very thing.

10. I’m damn good at what I do and I love being me

I’m a communications specialist, and I love what I do. So much so that I’ve been doing it for free for years now… it’s going to be exciting to take my passion for communications and go back into the world and get paid to do what I love. Plus, I spend a lot of time at home on the computer. I miss interacting with real live people! It’s going to be awesome to be part of a team, part of a company, part of a world again.

Here’s the two video blogs leading up to this new direction. Enjoy!

Yoga brings up ‘Stuff’, and that ‘Stuff’ needs facing

Click here to view the embedded video.

After the stuff… uncovering the treasure

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yoga Teacher Training 2012

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Bring on the pungent and deliciously bitter flavours! Sauteed kale with garlic and ginger.

by columnist Valerie Love, Yoga on a Plate

Have you ever wondered why some people can eat heaps and stay slender, while others can eat less and still gain weight? Why in the same room, some people will feel cold and others complain of heat? Why some people respond to a difficult situation with anger or fear, while others stay calm and collected?

Ayurveda can help answer these questions.

“Ayurveda” is Sanskrit for “knowledge (or science) of life,” and provides a framework for lifestyle and medicine aligned with the laws of nature. We can use ayurvedic teachings to pacify imbalances in our lifestyles, eating habits, and behaviours in order to promote optimal health. Although it developed 5,000 years ago, Ayurveda’s wisdom is timeless, and offers insights into well-being that remain surprisingly relevant today.

Ayurveda teaches that we are all comprised of five elements: earth (structure/form), water (chemical energy), air (movement), ether (space), and fire (transformation). Each of us has different amounts of these five elements within us, which comprise our constitution, or dosha. When our bodies are in harmony with the proportions of these elements that we were born with, we are in balance. However if over time, one or more of these elements begins to dominate within us, imbalances arise which can lead to mental and physical issues in the body.

The three doshas

There are three doshas in ayurveda: vata, pitta, and kapha. If the elements of air and ether are strongest within us, we have a vata dosha. If the elements of fire and water are the strongest, then that creates a pitta dosha. Those for whom water and earth dominate have a kapha constitution in the body and mind.

Although we all have aspects of all five elements and each of the three doshas within us that together create our prakriti, or nature, rarely are we an even mix. Resources to determine your primary dosha are available online, and I’ve listed some at the end of this article.

However, as many of us have more than one predominant dosha, working directly with an ayurvedic practitioner is the best way to determine your constitution. Understanding your dosha and the qualities associated with it can provide insight into your body’s responses to the conditions around us.

Being a ginger, my primary ayurvedic dosha is relatively easy to identify. With my red hair, pale skin, and medium build, I have the classic physical characteristics of a pitta dosha. Personality-wise, the signs point to pitta as well: intense, determined, and with a strong desire for things to be done well (and generally my way!). My passion for food is a pitta trait as well— pittas are notorious for having strong appetites and never skipping a meal.

However, at the time in my life that I first began studying ayurveda, when I ticked the boxes on the list, most of my answers were in the vata column. As my teacher helped me to understand, this didn’t mean that my primary dosha was vata.  Instead, it showed an imbalance in my system. Vata had come to dominate over my original constitution, which was in fact not solely pitta but instead pitta-kapha, meaning that I have strong pitta and kapha qualities.

So why did my checklist show vata?

Vata is said to be the leader of the doshas, and the one most easily to become imbalanced. Vata embodies the energy of movement. Those with a primary vata dosha tend to be naturally slender, with dry skin and hair, and often feel cold.  Personality-wise, vatas tend to be more unpredictable than the other doshas, and love excitement and constant change.

In my case, the stress and long hours from my job and my attempts to do 15 things at once on any given day, had built up over several years and left me feeling scattered, anxious, overly fatigued, but yet unable to sleep at night because my mind just wouldn’t turn off at the end of the day. All classic signs of a vata imbalance.

When pitta becomes out of balance in the body, the characteristic intensity of pitta is magnified, and the result is generally anger and frustration.  Physical signs of pitta imbalance include indigestion and heartburn, which is one of the reasons why those with pitta doshas are advised to limit their intake of spicy foods.

Those with a predominately kapha dosha tend to be physically larger than the other doshas, with a solid build, steady temperament, dark hair, and large, shining eyes. Kaphas have greater endurance than other doshas, and tend to have a nurturing, selfless, community-oriented personality. When kapha becomes out of balance, this can result in lethargy, depression, or weight gain.

Ayurveda and food

Food holds a significant role in the teachings of ayurveda. Both the foods that we eat, and the manner in which we eat, can create imbalances in the body. Over time, these imbalances can lead to digestive problems and health issues more broadly. A specific food can compliment one dosha and aggravate another.

As Scott Blossom, a yoga teacher and ayurvedic specialist based in San Francisco states:

 “Eating is the most important activity we engage in for determining the health of the body and the mind. Eating nourishes the tissues, which in turn nourish the mind and emotions. It is essential to bring positive attention and reverence to the process of food selection, preparation, consumption, and digestion.”

In addition to the three gunas, which I discussed in my previous column, ayurveda teaches that there are 6 rasas, or tastes, to the foods that we eat. The first three tastes are probably the most familiar (and over-consumed in Western cultures), but there are benefits to incorporating all six flavours into each meal:

• Sweet
• Sour
• Salty
• Bitter
• Pungent
• Astringent

Vatas benefit from sweet, sour and salty flavours more than the other doshas do.  But because bitter, pungent, and astringent tastes have beneficial effects on the body, and tend to be under-represented in most meals, it’s important to try to include them, rather than focusing on just the simpler tastes of sweet and salty.

Obviously, sugary foods fall into the category of sweet tastes, but so do dairy products such as milk and butter, wheat, rice, barley, many fruits, and vegetables such as beetroot, potatoes and carrots. Sweet foods build tissues in the body and calm nerves, and this is part of the reason why we turn to sweet comfort foods during times of stress. Sweet foods offer the greatest benefit for thin-framed vata individuals, but pitta can also be soothed by a moderate amount of sweet foods. Kapha, on the other hand, is aggravated by sweet tastes and will be better served by other flavours.

Sour flavours are found in citrus fruits, yoghurt, cheese, and fermented items including soy sauce, wine, tofu, and vinegar. Sour tastes are warming to the body, and stimulate the digestive and circulatory systems. Sour tastes benefit vata, but in excess can create indigestion for other doshas.

Salty tastes, like sweet tastes, are often over-consumed, but good sources include miso, sea vegetables, and sea salt. Salty flavours are most beneficial for vata (again, in moderation), as the other doshas are less well-suited to them.

Bitter tastes are light, cooling, and dry, and can be detoxifying for the body. Examples of bitter foods include spinach, kale, eggplant, turmeric, fenugreek, and olives.  Bitter tastes can help bring balance to pitta and kapha doshas, but can be aggravating to vata constitutions, which are naturally dry and cool.

Pungent flavours have heat to them. They stimulate digestion, clear the sinuses, and can make you break out into a sweat! Pungent foods include chilli peppers, garlic, onions, black pepper, ginger, and cumin. Pungent foods help to balance kapha, but can be aggravating to vata for their drying properties and to pitta, who are sensitive to their heat.

Astringent flavours are the least common of the six tastes, and have drying and contracting qualities. Astringent tastes can also have antibacterial effects and are found in legumes such as beans and lentils, cranberries, pomegranates, broccoli, cauliflower, quinoa, and green tea. Astringent tastes are most beneficial to pittas and kaphas, and can be aggravating to vatas.

The important thing to remember here is balance. Try to avoid meals which are solely sweet or salty, and give those more exotic of the six flavours a try! The next time you’re in the kitchen, experiment. Try adding a bit of cumin to a dish. Give quinoa a try instead of white rice or pasta. Or pick up a bunch of dark green kale or silverbeet and sauté it with some olive oil, fresh ginger, garlic and soy sauce, and serve over brown rice for one of my favourite autumn dishes. Yum!

Resources:

Perfect Health: The Complete Mind Body Guide, by Deepak Chopra

Eat Taste Heal: An Ayurvedic Guidebook and Cookbook for Modern Living, by Yarema, Rhoda, and Brannigan

Kripalu School of Ayurveda Online Resources on Ayurveda

Clean Food, by Terry Walters (This isn’t an ayurvedic cookbook per se, but incorporates similar ideas regarding the 6 tastes, and eating fresh seasonal food.)

Yoga Teacher Training 2012

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Meditation - Focus. Awareness. Feelings. Kindness.

by regular columnist Peter Fernando, The Meditation Guy.

You can ask him anything! (On meditation that is.)

I like to consider what ‘meditation’ is, from the perspective of a beginner, or someone who’s never heard of it.

Sometimes the more I think I know about something, the further away I get from really knowing the heart of it!

So, having reflected on it, from an experiential place, I reckon this thing called ‘meditation’ actually just consists of four qualities, or skills in the mind:

1) Focus

Take an object, such as the feeling of the breath in the body, and determine to focus on it. Keep coming back to it. Remember it. Make an effort to focus. This effort will gradually form a pathway in the mind, and it will become easier to focus, for longer periods of time. The quality of focused attention will become stronger, more palpable, and gather an energy of presence into itself.

Try this:

Feel for a place in the body where you can feel the rhythm, sensation or texture of the breath. Allow attention to rest there. Feel the flow, the pulse, the direct sense of breath as fully as you can. When the mind gets caught in thinking about this, that, me, him, her, tomorrow or next week, re-kindle your interest in this simple inquiry:

• What does the breath feel like, right here, right now?
• What is it like to feel it fully, in a direct, embodied way?

2) Be aware of your thoughts

Focusing on one object doesn’t mean we can’t be aware of what’s arising and passing on the peripheries. On the contrary, the quality of focus on the breath is enhanced by cultivating an all-round awareness of how the mind is trying to kidnap our attention, moment to moment. So we don’t become focused through willpower – we become focused through being aware of what, how and why we want to drift off somewhere else!

Try this:

See your thoughts in the same way as you would a movie. Say, the ‘Hunger Games‘, for instance. It’s riveting, it’s captivating – but something in you knows it’s just a movie. It’s just images on a screen. In reality you’re sitting on a seat, in a movie theatre. Amplify that in you which knows this. Trust it. Rest in it. Remember that it is what is actually happening, right now.

3) Feel your body as fully as you can.

The mind doesn’t only exist in the head. The mind is everywhere! In our toes, in our bellies, in our shoulder blades. So an all round, embodied attention goes a long way in terms of knowing our own mind. The body is a treasure trove, full of hidden secrets. Often what seem to be purely physical sensations reveal themselves to be aspects of our subconscious, or our primal mind. Through embodied attention these begin to reveal themselves and unfold quite naturally.

Try this:

Notice that you have a picture of ‘my body’ in your mind. Notice that underneath that picture there is actually a field of sensations. Choose any area – your hands, your belly, your face, and notice that actually it isn’t a picture at all. It’s sensation. Feel it. Connect to it. Be curious about it. You are now in the present moment, beneath the realm of thought.

4) Be kind.

One easy way to lose interest in meditation is to start judging oneself.

‘Why am I having these stupid thoughts?’

‘Why doesn’t my mind shut up?’

These kind of internal attacks only serve to make us more agitated, and create a war-zone in the mind! On the other hand, kindness is curious, and free of compulsive judging. It listens, it is interested in this moment. It’s an attitude of heart.

When focus, awareness, and full-feeling are engaged from a place of kindness and warmth, they work much better. The absence of kindness makes things feel hard, ‘wrong’, and unworkable. The presence of kindness makes every manifestation of mind feel normal. Even the crazy states. Even the thoughts we feel embarrassed about. All of it. It’s all here to be seen, held, and attended to with great compassion – for ourselves. Meditation flows much easier from this place.

Try this:

Relax any sense you have that your thoughts shouldn’t be happening. See the thoughts in your mind, the moods in your heart as natural processes.

Just thoughts. Just moods. Don’t do anything about them. Nothing. Receive them in your awareness as you would a good friend. Here they are. They are just as they are. You don’t have to believe anything they say. But your heart is open to them. Notice how this automatically relaxes and releases tension in the mind.

And that, in four easy steps, is meditation. Focus. Awareness. Feelings. Kindness. Anyone can do it, anywhere, anytime. Even you.

Yoga Teacher Training 2012

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Turning away from the truth causes suffering

by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat

Ok, the headline is harsh. I admit it. But also true.

See, over the last while, I’ve been working with a relationship pattern (a samskara) of giving away my power by not speaking my truth because I was afraid of the consequences.

It’s an insidious pattern because it has all kinds of detrimental effects on one’s self-esteem, and the relationships one is in. Plus it creates suffering as the desire to hold on to something while betraying oneself can only ever create misery.

The pattern itself is pretty basic.

It begins with attachment to love or approval, and the idea that these things are something that I’m getting from my partner.

Because I want to continue to receive the love and approval, and that desire is strong, I modify what I’m saying to make sure that I don’t say anything that might jeopardise that love and approval.

This is manipulation – I’m saying or doing what I think is necessary in order to create a specific result. It could also be seen as a tendency towards controlling life.

And it’s all fear based. I’m afraid that if I am just me, I wont get what I want.

Thing is, if my partner can’t handle the truth, why would I want to be with them anyway?

Because I’m attached to the love and approval which I perceive as coming from outside of myself. And also because in the past, when I spoke my truth, I’ve had partners leave.

So this was an unconscious behaviour for many of my relationships, a samskara that continued to deepen everytime I left it unexamined. Finally though, this samskara became conscious in the nearly four-year relationship I had with my son’s father.

In this relationship, could see that I wasn’t speaking the truth, I could see I was afraid of what would happen if I did, I could see that I was avoiding trouble and conflict and argument by keeping quiet. And eventually, I began to speak up. Mostly after I’d been to LA and spent two weeks in immersion training with Shiva Rea.

Yet even after I separated from my partner (because, yes, I spoke up), I could see that old pattern continuing to play out. I kept modifying myself to manage my now ex-partner’s responses, trying to keep him on side so child access could run smoothly.

I was aware of it, so I was able to observe the pattern in action and muse on it. Now that I wasn’t with this man, I could see I wasn’t keeping quiet to retain love and approval. There was something else driving my action – I was keeping quiet to avoid trouble.

Finally, I couldn’t do it any longer, and did what I knew I had to do, and applied to the Family Court for an interim parenting order. I’d spoken my truth – which was that it was really important to me that we agree on paper exactly how we’re going to each spend time with Samuel, by focusing on what’s best for him.

Right about that time, as the shit hit the fan and life got crazy busy and stressful, friend and yoga teacher Melissa Billington suggested I check out a particular practice – Meditation for Prophetic Insight and Power of the Word.

Only she didn’t call it that – she called it by it’s Sanskrit name of Drib Dhristi Lochina Karma Kriya.

Melissa’s a wise woman (find her at Powa Centre in Wellington), and I was stoked to have a practice recommended to me. And after just one 15 minute session, I was hooked. I’d found a new sadhana. One of the claims of this meditation is it gives you the power to speak the Truth in any situation.

Talk about dealing once and for all with that old samskara of mine! It was the perfect yoga practice during this tough time. Plus there was another reason why I’m determined to break this pattern once and for all – I didn’t want it to carry it into any new relationships.

I may have now been conscious of the pattern, but it was still very real in my life. See, samskaras go through different stages.

First they’re unconscious – why don’t know that this pattern exists, nor that it’s driving our behaviour. Then it becomes conscious as we see our pattern, and we see how it’s creating our experience. Finally, we get to a place where we’re able to drop into the gap between trigger and reaction. This is when something happens that would usually cause us to act in our patterned way, but we catch ourselves before we do the same old thing and we make a new choice.

That’s what it’s all about for me right now.

Making new choices.

Creating new realities.

Experiencing new ways of being.

I’m focusing on speaking the truth in all circumstances, regardless of the trouble I might cause, the love I might lose or the approval that might be withdrawn.

I’m still applying ahimsa (non-harming) and discernment to this, as truth must still be handled with wisdom. There are times when it’s wise to keep quiet. But mostly,when I sense the urge to censor myself, or I sense the urge to attempt to manipulate the situation by remaining quiet or agreeing, or the urge to pretend something other than what is true for me… I take a deep breath and speak up.

It’s changed my life.

That’s changing samskaras for you.

Life changing.

Yoga Teacher Training 2012

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Swami Samnyasananda

Two weeks ago, The Yoga Lunchbox published a text interview with Swami Samnyasananda, a consultant neurophysiologist who specialises in research on sleeping.

He sounded like such an interesting guy that we then lined up a Skype interview with him too.

The Swami is coming to New Zealand in May and June this year, and will be touring around the North Island giving talks and doing private consults with people about how to use breathing and pranayama to help with various health concerns.

Drawing on research from three or so decades of working in the field of neuro-science, the Swami has also travelled the length and breadth of India interviewing people such as Patabi Jois, BKS Iyengar, Kashtub Desikachar, Pilot Baba, Swami Niranjanananda, Dr Bhole and others.

He promises to share some of his findings on their input as well as findings from the medical literature.

In Part 1 of this interview we talk about:

- His role as a Swami and as a neurophysiologist
- His discovery of, and journey with, yoga
- What is it like to be a man of science and of yoga?
- Breathing and the rhythms of the body
- The importance of knowledge in yoga – how to find the right class for you
- The power of breathing with awareness
- Breath control

Click here to view the embedded video.

In Part 2 we talk about:

- The energetic process of breathing
- The difference between breath control and pranayama
- The difference between yoga and asana
- The power of conscious awareness
- Is pranayama dangerous?
- Swami Samnyasananda’s tour of the North Island
- The things everyone should know about breathing
- The importance of getting specific

Click here to view the embedded video.

Check out more on Swami Samnyasananda here:

• An interview with Swami Samnyasananda, a consultant neurophysiologist
• May 24th – June 4th: Where Science Meets Yoga – Swami Samnyasananda’s North Island Tour
• June 2 – 4: Anahata Yoga Retreat, Breathing & the Brain – The Science of Spirituality

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YLB founder KL practices yoga in her office all the time

by columnist Gabrielle Harris, The Suburban Yogini

Are you too busy at work to become liberated?

Would aliens snatch you up out of your office desk for analysis because of that mindless look on your face?

Do you want to incorporate more yoga into your daily work life?

Here are a few simple tips to turn your office day into a yoga day.

One of the definitions of yoga is to become disconnected from the connection to suffering. Going to work can potentially be a breeding ground for suffering. This is where we play out our life dramas. From lusting over the chick/bloke over the way to full on affairs. Work dos, morning teas, births, deaths, farewell parties. We get looked over for promotions or get promoted. Our boss doesn’t appreciate us, our boss loves us. It’s our life and a great opportunity to practice.

I once taught in this huge office of around 1200 people. Only around 12 of them came to yoga. I was going up a lift one day and I asked a man if he was coming to class, ‘No,’ he snapped, ‘You are all a bunch of weirdos. Hahahaha’. That gave me some insight to the fact that most office workers would rather be caught up in their own daily chaos rather than take a few moments to, well, practice yoga.

We are all different in the way we think, feel and react to situations. Luckily the sages of old came up with some different systems of yoga so we can enjoy liberation even when we are having morning tea.

Jnana Yoga: This is the yoga of knowledge, seeking and intelligence and wisdom. Some of the great jnana yogis were Buddha, Ghandi, Socrates and myself. Our philosophy is simple, it asks the questions ‘who am I’ and ‘Who are you’? It doesn’t mean you know everything, this is more worldly experience. It is concerned with self-knowledge.

Office tip: Cut out a little bit of card and write ‘Who am I’? on it and pop it on your computer. It’s ok to use office stationary as this is part of your personal training and development. Spend vast amounts of time thinking about this during work hours.

Alternatively if you are a visual learner get a wee mirror (not magnifying) and put that on your computer, every so often look into the mirror and chant like an owl. Who…who….who?????

Bhakti Yoga: This is the yoga of love and devotion. There are 3 stages on the cline to enlightenment through Bhakti yoga going from most unenlightened to enlightened. The first is the easiest in the office situation and that is devote all your actions to the divine without expecting anything in return.

Office tip: Pop down and buy a cake for the staff without anyone knowing and put it in the staffroom with ‘please enjoy’ sign. See what happens. How do you feel without praise, acknowledgement, gain or pleasure from this action? If you feel someone should have acknowledged you for this then you have a few more cakes to buy and probably some coffee as well. Keep practicing.

Karma Yoga: The yoga of action. When you are performing Karma yoga you are doing everything with a meditative like awareness or presence. Your senses are on fire and you are aware of every part of every action.

Office tip. Eating your lunch. Notice your food, the shapes colours and textures. Take a sample and feel it in your mouth, appreciate your food and all that has taken to get it to you. Not Karma yoga, sit at office desk and stuff food into your face while reading the newspaper and then wonder what happened to your lunch.

Mantra Yoga: The yoga of sound or vibration. We can aim for liberation in our office by enjoying listening to or reciting powerful sounds or Mantras such as om, hum, ram, hare Krishna, I am that etc.

Office tip: Put your elbows on your desk and block off your ears with your fingers and hum internally to yourself. Also known as bee breath Bhramari. A great way to cleanse the mind and enjoy your own vibrations especially when someone else’s vibrations are putting you on edge.

Hatha Yoga:The physical side to yoga, the asana or postures. Here is a sample for when things get a bit stressful.

Deaf mans pose: Particularly useful in the middle of a meeting with your boss when he/she is talking rubbish.

Savasana: The corpse pose. Push everything off your desk and take time out, good around that lull in the pm when you are feeling tired.

Child’s pose: A great one to do under your desk as you have the added benefit of the cocoon-like environment.

Happy baby. You can use this to attract attention to yourself. Also good for calming the nervous system.

Remember, the Yogic path you choose on the road to Self-Realization is irrelevant; they all lead to the same outcome.

Whatever approach we take, there must be a commitment to self-change. Whether the practice is physical or mental it must lead us to letting go of our old behaviour patterns revealing to us a deeper side to our nature. The closer we come to Self-realisation the more ordinary we become. If we use the yogic teachings in our daily life we can be at home either washing the dishes or going to work. It is through this ordinary life that we can truly disconnect with our connection to suffering.

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Lucinda on the mat..

by new regular columnist Lucinda Staniland, Off the Mat

This is the first of a regular column  presented in collaboration with Off the Mat, Into the World New Zealand, It will explore what it means to take yoga ‘off the mat’ in both my life as a yogi and climate activist, and in the lives of other changemakers.

A friend asked me the other day:

“How did you get involved in all of this?”

“All of this” being an all-encompassing voluntary role with the youth climate action movement, plus involvement with other social and environmental justice groups including – but not limited to – Gecko and 350 Aotearoa.

I told her, feeling like a complete cliché, that I’d done this yoga-based course called Embodying Your Purpose. It’s part of an initiative called Off The Mat, Into The World and it had, um. Changed. My. Life.

For the first 19 years of my life I was a perceptive, but apathetic citizen. I got it, bad stuff happened in the world. Forests got cut down, people got killed, oil got spilled, governments were corrupt, millions of people died of starvation, animals went extinct, and chickens lived in cages the size of an A4 piece of paper.

Not to me – I lived in a privileged, middle-class, suburban, Garden City bubble. I could get away with not ‘doing something’ about any of this, in fact it was easier not too. ‘Doing something’ always felt futile and impossible. It was too hard and it was much more comfortable to read endless books and daydream while doing well at school.

Helping the blank-eyed Bosnian refugees meant you had to organise a fundraising barbeque at school.  Slowing the ever-approaching threat of climate change and halting the extinction of hundreds of species meant you had to run a campaign to get people to change their light bulbs. Not only was it hard, boring work, but it didn’t even seem to help very much.

Refugees still died of starvation, the globe still got hotter and the tigers died anyway. So why bother taking action?

But part of me knew that I didn’t want to feel like this. I wanted to be able to hope, I wanted to dare to be naïve and brave, I wanted life to feel fresh and full of possibility. I did not want to be a cynic. Cynics are those who sip their G’n'Ts on the top deck of the Titantic while waiting for the lifeboats to launch and loudly proclaiming they saw the iceberg coming.

Cynic be damned, instead I signed up for a course called Embodying Your Purpose.  I wanted to get the meaning of life on a plate, a road map to happiness, and the answers to all my questions in four easy sittings.

And so, every Saturday for a month I attended a day long workshop where our group of 12 were given the tools and space to explore our stories, our strengths, our pain, and then to turn outwards to see how we could connect our own stories to those of the world.

Most importantly for me, we thought about how the things that made us come alive could in fact be exactly what the world needs. The course was grounded in yogic practices, and in how a yoga practice can make activism more sustainable and effective.

This was a new approach for me. Up until that point, yoga had been both my crutch and a way of retreating from the world. It wasn’t a bad thing necessarily. At the time I needed it – yoga had helped me  look inward and begin to heal myself, after struggling with disordered eating and depression.

...and into the world with the Generation Zero crew

But what I learned on the Embodying Your Purpose course was a revelation. Yoga was not just something that affected me personally, it was a way of living and a way of, finally, ‘doing something’.

I didn’t come out of the course with a shiny new life all set up for me. But I did have a new direction I wanted to explore, and, almost instantly, new possibilities opened up. A life that had been closed and narrow was pried open.

I soon found communities and individuals that inspired me. I got involved with a range of local environmental groups over the year and this helped me find my feet. I found my home with Generation Zero, a nation-wide network of young New Zealanders calling for action to solve the climate crisis. Generation Zero works together to create a future that we, as young people, want to live in.

I guess I got, as my friend Lance describes it “activated”. Empowered, woken up, switched on, given a kick up the bum. Goodbye apathy and inertia. You don’t define me anymore.

I know that bad stuff is still happening in the world. The Amazon is disappearing bit by bit everyday, millions live in poverty, orangutans could be extinct in the next five years, New Zealand is mining it’s conservation land, and everyone seems fixated on endless economic growth, with no thought of the consequences.

But the difference is that I am no longer just a despairing onlooker. I am part of the solution. Taking action and ‘doing something’  enriches my life. Alone I can’t tackle all of the world’s problems, but I’m proud to be part of  local and worldwide networks of people who dare to hope, and who take concrete action to find new ways forward.

Now I’m starting this regular column for The Yoga Lunchbox, where I want to focus on the role yoga has in the lives of changemakers and activists.

There are questions I want to explore, questions like:

• Are activism and yoga inherently connected? 
• What does it mean to make positive change in the world? 
• How do we know what the ‘right’ thing to do is? 
• Can you riot and protest in a yogic way?

Watch out for interviews with other yogis and activists, as well as insights from my own experiences. I’m hoping to learn more about myself, the world and my yoga practice in the process. It should be an interesting journey. I hope you’ll join me.

Namaste,

Lucinda

More on: Off The Mat, Into The World, an international non-profit organisation.

“OTM uses the power of yoga to inspire conscious, sustainable activism and ignite grassroots social change. We do this by facilitating personal empowerment through leadership trainings, fostering community collaboration, and initiating local and global service projects.”

They run trainings, like the one I attended, which help people to connect with their purpose and to become more effective change makers. They also foster community collaboration, and initiate local and international service projects. More information about what the Off The Mat New Zealand team is up to can be on found on their website.

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Ana Forrest Yoga Teacher Trainees

by guest author Seka Ojdrovic-Phillips

The practice brought me to Denver for 27 days of karmic hell and dharmic euphoria. The practice reincarnated 28 years of emotional bullshit compost into rich spiritual soil. The practice destroyed the facade of “reality” in terms of conditioning and societal truths.

I died in the practice.

The practice brought me back to life.

I realized this all at about 5:30 in the morning on Week Two of my Forrest Yoga Teacher Training. It was finger-numbingly cold (as one would expect from the Rockies in Winter) and I had been biking for two miles with another two to go.

The day before I’d, quite literally, faced my end in a Death Meditation that brought TRUTH to the forefront of my life. The absolute certainty of death is a no-brainer way to cut what doesn’t serve you. It’s also a pretty good way to ensure an uneasy night’s sleep, which was my experience.

I’ve thought a lot about the structure of this article throughout the month of March. It usually started with: How the hell do I write about the most life-changing experience of my life in a concise web-friendly article? And the answer was usually: There is no way, don’t worry about it. Just start sharing.

Deep breath. Feel the inhale, it’s rich and ripe with truth. Savor it. Go.

My husband said that he sees me as a statue now, looking deeply toward a limitless horizon. My dad said that he’s a little nervous about relating to me in my changed form. And me? I’ve gotten to know my Spirit for the first time in decades. I know myself to be a powerful healer, a powerhouse, concentrated beauty, so much more than what society has trained me to expect from myself (hmm… soft, squishy caregiver? An object to have sex with? Emotional basketcase because it’s “that time of the month”? Which shall I choose today…).

Spirit is a beautiful thing, and it’s inside all of us. You can re-connect with it, no matter your story or barriers. Sprit is where absolute truth lies… and people respond when you move from that place of truth. For so long I thought of truth as something that you had to hide, lest it hurt someone’s feelings or come off as less than politically correct.

Fuck political correctness. Glance at the paper to see what happens when truth falls away to make room for what’s PC. Or, better yet, check in with how you feel when you’ve knowingly shunned truth in favor of “not stepping on any toes.”

Truth becoming a mirror for all we meet. It’s removing the neediness, the desperation, the addiction, the [insert your habitual spiritual disease here], from our message, from our intent. It’s stalking your shadow side, getting to fully understand the nature and reason for your murkiness, and then finally releasing it. Doing so is the first step in creating a safe, supportive space for Spirit to grow.

My addiction was seeking the approval of others because I couldn’t find it in myself. If only I could groom someone to tell me how pretty I was, how smart, how clever and funny, if only I could get someone else to justify the space I take up on this planet, then I just might believe it myself… for a little while. Problem was, there always came a point when I started Jonesing for Approval Smack again, which usually happened in a month or so.

Following the Death Meditation I was immediately confronted with two choices: continue to soothe the addiction by behaving exactly the way that hadn’t been working for me all this time, or take the other path.

I took the other path. It was intensely painful.

My reward for making the Warrior’s Choice was five days of emotional hell, complete with the reappearance of emotions I hadn’t experienced in decades and rogue thoughts that, had I chosen addiction instead, it would have been easier and even better for me in the long run. Addiction made the pain go away, but it prevented me from clearing the cause of the pain out of my life entirely – a crucial difference.

When I came out the other side (of course I did!), I knew where my Spirit was. For the first time in over twenty years, I knew that Spirit was alive and well, residing in my soul, eager to lead me on a more beautiful and fulfilling path than I’d ever known existed. Ah! So there’s my reward! Definitely beats the relationship of Addiction as ruler and Spirit as slave.

I was free!

I’m (almost) completely comfortable sharing my Shadow Side with a virtual roomful of strangers for a few reasons. To start, I have a new standard of truth speaking thanks to this course and I know how good it feels to acknowledge, speak and respond to unimpeded truth. Second, I know that I’m not the only one with addictions blocking my connection with Spirit. Whether they’re written, spoken of or not, I know you have them. Yes, you. The lovely soul reading this story right now.

So use my story to question your own addictions. Start to be more honest with yourself, because you can’t start speaking truth to others if you don’t even know what truth looks like.

Journalist Malcolm Gladwell writes that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve greatness. You have 24 hours each day to practice truth speaking on your way to 10,000. Don’t waste one precious second.

____

Dharma homework!

1) Catch yourself saying, “I’m sorry.” What are you sorry for? Did you really mean it or are you apologizing for taking up space? STOP APOLOGIZING FOR TAKING UP SPACE.

2) Get to know your addiction. Smell it. Taste it. Feel its texture. If you don’t think you have one it just means you haven’t stalked it closely enough. When did your addiction start? What are you stopping yourself from feeling by making the choice – over and over again – to feed the addiction rather than FEEL what’s between you and your Spirit.

3) Change the response to your addiction in at least ONE situation. Congratulate yourself lavishly when you do.

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Swami Samnyasananda

Article courtesy Anahata Yoga Retreat

Swami Samnyasananda is a consultant neurophysiologist whose research explores the effects of pranayama, meditation and relaxation on the heart, brain and autonomic nervous systems.

He is a Certified Yoga Teacher, Life Member and Fellow of the World Society for Clinical Yoga (Lucknow, India), and has over 30 years of experience in classes, personal tuition & clinical counselling in yoga, meditation, relaxation and stress management (M.B.T.I. Accredited).

He is currently teaching and tutoring at Monash Medical School’s Department of General Practice, while sharing his knowledge of health and wellbeing through seminars and retreats around the world.

Swami Samnyasananda will be in New Zealand from May 24 until June 4 on his North Island tour; “Where Yoga meets Science”, presenting workshops in Wellington, Rotorua, Hamilton and Auckland as well as a 2 day retreat “Breathing and the Brain – The Science of Spirituality” in Aio Wira, Auckland over the Queen’s Birthday weekend.

1. You are a neurophysiologist, research scientist, yoga practitioner as well as a Swami in the Satyananda Yoga tradition. How do you manage to find a balance between such diverse paths?

That really is a challenge. For a start I have two names, a swami name and a western legal name. So people already get confused there and some assume I’m a holy man touting some eastern religion, which I am not. Otherwise my western research is entirely into how yoga works from a neurophysiological perspective, looking at evidence behind the benefits.

My background is sleep research, where I looked at how certain meditation techniques assist in getting better sleep and can even produce more melatonin, a brain hormone that helps the immune system to function and fights cancer.

I do my best to live a yogic life amongst the demands of modern life, bridging the best from East and West.

2. Are there any correlations between your research in Western medicine and Yoga? Where does Yoga meet science?

The meeting place is the methodology. Good science can be on any topic. My interest is in the physiological mechanisms behind how the body is affected by the techniques being practiced. I’m more interested in real-time changes in the heart, brain and nervous system rather than bones and muscles from an exercise perspective.

Correlations exist because Yoga uses the same human-body systems as other medical research, but in yoga we tend more to focus on wellness, rather than sickness and use yogic interventions rather than drugs or surgery.

3. You will be in New Zealand this May-June presenting numerous workshops, one of them being “Breathing and the Brain”. Can you go into a bit more detail about what to expect on such a workshop?

The Breathing and the Brain workshop will explore the correlations and research between certain breathing practices and how they affect the human brain and autonomic nervous system.

For example, some yoga styles teach a thoracic preference of breathing and some favour an abdominal focus. Both have their place in yoga, but it is important to know how each breathing style can have different effects.

I travelled the length and breadth of India interviewing people such as Patabi Jois, BKS Iyengar, Kashtub Desikachar, Pilot Baba, Swami Niranjanananda, Dr Bhole and others, and can share some of my findings on their input as well as findings from the medical literature.

The weekend retreat will also include asana, Satyananda Yoga Nidra (deep relaxation), havan (ancient fire ceremony) and kirtan (mantra chanting).

4. Please expand more on the importance of breathing and various breathing techniques in yoga?

We all breathe, it’s just that most people do most of their breathing without any awareness or control.

There are many breathing patterns we can use and then there are various pranayama or breath control techniques that can also be used. If you are going to practice the powerful breathing techniques in yoga, it would make sense to find out how they work, how they affect the body and brain as well and why you would choose one technique over another – depending on your desired outcome.

Overuse of certain styles or types of breathing can have unwanted effects and many people who have learned to breathe through the mouth rather than the nose, for example, find that they have more upper respiratory tract infections, sinus problems as well as higher incidence of allergic asthma. There are some breathing practices that can help calm down anxiety and other breathing practices that can make it worse.

5. What kind of benefits and/or ailments can this yogic breathing assist with?

Different breathing techniques can be used for: stress, anxiety, some types of asthma, depression, high blood pressure, birthing, pre and post natal health, women’s health, pain management, epilepsy, nausea, this list is huge really. Various meditation techniques use breath awareness or breath control as an integral component as well.

6. I have heard Yoga Nidra being referred to as ‘psychic sleep’. Give us some insight on this amazingly beneficial practice.

This is a huge area and I will cover it in more detail in the seminars. You can get a free copy of my 10-minute Yoga Nidra here.   Yoga Nidra is that relaxation simply and effectively enables you to take time out to relax and disconnect from the enormous amount of inputs we have each day.

It works by rotation of awareness around the body in a specific sequence, which becomes subconsciously ingrained over time with regular practice. Breath awareness and cognition of bodily sensations and mental images in a constructed pattern lead to a very deep state of detachment and relaxation.

Yoga Nidra is based on an ancient tantric technique called Nyasa Meditation from the teachings of Swami Satyananda. Yoga Nidra leads to “Pratyahara” or sensory withdrawal, which allows a very deep state of peace and stillness within, where powerful healing can occur.

7. What practices can you recommend to someone who is highly stressed?

Yoga Nidra is one of the best, see above answer, as well as learning about getting a good night sleep. Many stress problems come from poor sleep or not enough sleep or sleep in the wrong part of the day/night cycle.

Generally living a more yogic lifestyle will help overall, but there are five main types of stress and each needs to be dealt with differently for the best effects. Try not to overdo things, we live in a very busy society with endless demands. We have to learn to slow down, let go and relax. (Easier said than done sometime though, I know.) If people really need extra help, I can be available for some private consults while I’m in NZ if they want.

8. How has Yoga transformed your life?

I’m sane, happy and healthy and I get to meet amazing people. What more would you want?

9. How have you integrated Yoga and spirituality into your daily life?

Yoga is the vehicle for me to express my spirituality, my everyday practice of mindful awareness in whatever I do helps to keep me grounded. I practice Seva (selfless service) karma yoga (yoga of action) meditation, breathing as well as a few asana now and then. Mostly I try to live each day as yogic as I can and let the spirituality part unfold naturally.

10. How do you explain what Yoga is to someone? Is it a religion, a science,   a lifestyle…?

The word “Yoga” comes from “Yug” meaning “to join”, “to balance”, “to bring together”. It’s a verb, a doing word, it doesn’t mean “exercise” or “religion”.

Yoga comes from the same root as the word “yoke” – that wooden thing that originally joins two oxen or buffalo together by the neck to pull a cart or a plough.

If you can imagine two animals pulling on a central wooden beam connected to the cart or plough by a yoke, then take your mind to a medical symbol, the caduceus, you should see the similarity. The two animals represent Ida and Pingala (Parasympathetic and Sympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system). The yoke is there to balance the energies of the two animals so the cart doesn’t go in circles. That balancing is a dynamic process, not an end in itself and so is yoga, it’s a process of balancing.

Yoga is something we practice, it’s not a goal to achieve. In the modern world we don’t use animal carts very often but the word “yoga” still means to bring together and balance various streams of energies within the human body.

There is Ha and Tha (Sun and Moon) where we get “hatha” yoga from, a system designed to balance physical and mental energies. We also have pranayamas (breath control) to balance the cerebral hemispheres. There are techniques to balance head and heart as well as techniques to balance male and female energies – within the one body as well as between two bodies.

There are many techniques in the science of yoga, but without a meditative or mindful component, what many people think of as yoga is just exercise. While asana and other physical poses are good for you, what you do is not as important as how you do it. It is the mindful awareness that makes it Yoga, it is what is going on while you are practicing asana, pranayama and other techniques.

Yoga is not a religion, though all religions use techniques known to yoga in their systems. Yoga is a science because outcomes can be predicted and we are the experiment when we practice yoga, we get to feel the effects and benefits. After a while, yoga classes become yoga practice, which can lead to yoga sadhana (more personal spiritual practice) and/or lead to a more yogic lifestyle. Enjoy . . .

You can find Swami Samnyasananda at his Auckland workshop, or North Island Tour. See Anahata Retreat’s website for more details.

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Peace on earth is possible, right now

by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat

Peace on earth? Possible?

Yes. Not sometime off in the future. But right now. Peace is possible – in my heart, and in yours too. I know this. And I know you know it too, although you may not have remembered it. Yet.

Each day, small reminders of the power of now seep into my bones and make me feel grateful for being alive. For the work I’ve done to change the way I perceive the world. For the road I’ve travelled and the path I’ve been on. And now, the work is done. The path has disappeared. All that remains is perception.

Just perception.

For when all else falls away – all the identities, all the roles, all the drama, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the resistance – what else remains? If we are not our thoughts, not our feelings, not even our bodies, then what remains? When the past ceases to exist and the future fades and we step fully into the present, what else is there?

Music playing on the stereo. A child asking for a banana, without a bowl. A car driving past. Tears in my eyes as my heart softens and I feel the sweetness of being at home. Not in a place, nor a town, or even a country, but inside me. Whoever that is. Whoever it is I’m required to be in the moment.

A mother. A writer. A friend. A sister. A daughter. A yoga teacher. A businesswoman. All just roles in the great drama of life. not who I truly am, but who I play. Who I truly am, plays these roles. The roles – they come and go and shift and change as life comes and goes and shifts and change.

I remain.

At peace with what is because how can perception be anything else?

It’s a beautiful day. Don’t let it get away. Listen to the music. Feel the sun the wind the rain. See the birds, see the spiders, see the bees, see the people. See, truly see. Feel your heart beating, the expansion of your inhale and the surrender of your exhale, feel your feet on the ground and know that you are here. Know this this is all there is. That this is all there ever will be.

If peace is possible, it must be possible right now. If love is possible, it must be possible right now. If joy is possible, it’s here. Now.

Those concerns of the mind – the thoughts that circle and worry and fret? Just thoughts. Not who you truly are. Watch them. See them. Watch them come. Watch them go. Now they’re here. Now they’re not. Do they matter? Not worth worrying about. They’ll go. Before they come again.

There they are again.

What lies beneath? Who’s watching those thoughts? Who is the watcher?

There never was a better time to be. This is the time. This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for… this moment. And this one. And this one too. What will you do with this moment? Such a precious, precious time, this moment. And this one too.

Call someone you love. Hug someone you love. Kiss someone you love. Just love. Be love. You are love, the source of Love. It flows through you, of you, because of you.

Once upon a time the human race loved to make up stories about who they were and what they were doing and where they were going and what they would do when they finally got where they were going and how amazing it was all going to be one day.

One day.

Why not this day.

Can this day be that one day?

That one day we’ve all been waiting for?

Yes.

It can.

Welcome.

You’ve arrived.

One day is today.

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