What is Yoga to you?

So, I practice this morning, then I teach and its always amazing to me when I teach my Align and Flow classes, what comes out. It can very often be very Ashtanga like, but some days its just so not like that and today was one of those days.

I like to think I've tapped into the energy of the folks who show up and give them what they need, and most of the time it feels like that and they all leave happy. This morning of course was the same, but it was snowing and didn't know if anyone would show up at all, but 14 of them did and it was a great class.

So, what is yoga to them? I wonder sometimes, I used to take classes and sometimes at the end would feel very connected, full of energy and sometimes feel totally different. But nowadays I feel so fulfilled by my own practice at home that taking a class feels like something I will never want to do again, so even the thought of it makes me feel icky lol, silly I know, but true.

Since I began yoga I started with Ashtanga and there was only the one little class I took once a week and I wanted that and was usually broke, so didn't want to take any other classes at a studio or with the teacher I was taking with. I wanted to practice Ashtanga, so I ordered a book and few videos and practiced it at home. I think this is not the norm for most folks though, is it? Most of you take classes and then if ever faced with doing stuff at home don't know what to do, is that so?

Thats maybe why I was drawn to Ashtanga at first because it not only is a philosophy that one can work on their whole life, its also a set sequence of asanas that is laid out nicely for you. Opening up the hips and back, releasing the energy there so that you can then move deeper and deeper into twists and binds and release more energy, or rather move energy through those stuck places and free them up, then as you enter second series, move into more spinal extension with back bending and then flexion with deeper twists and legs behind the head, then arm balances and ever deepening it as you move into the more advanced series.

It also had a man at the head of it that I met 6 months after starting it who was just magical. I mean you watch videos of Guruji (K. Pattabhi Jois) on youtube teaching and you would never know that but I was drawn to him from the first time I saw his photo and read his name in the back of a Yoga Journal magazine, then after being in his presence I only just wanted to do everything he said, so I did. And here I am finding myself doing it again almost 6 years after his death. Only now I add in reading his grandson's (Sharath, who has taken over in Mysore, India) conference notes and taking away a lot more because he speaks such good English.

Funny it is how one starts, moves through a path, then shifts to another path, only to move back to the old one again but experiencing it completely fresh and anew and full of energy. I mean I used to hate primary series, once I'd been able to complete it back in 2002, and was happy to move on to the intermediate and the part of the third series that I was doing. Now I love primary series and see the magic of it in a way I never did before and am getting so much more from it, that I can practice intermediate and then lament that I didn't do primary lol.

But of course its not only about the asana practice, its about the philosophy and how it unfolds in your life, in your very being. But I must say Guruji was right, he always said this yoga is Patanjali's yoga, and now after 13 years, I believe he was right.

Patanjali laid out the 8 limbed path called Ashtanga Yoga about 2800 years ago, but doing all of that mental discipline would be impossible in today's society without having our bodies under control, and Pattabhi's Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga is something that gets our bodies so clear and so open that its almost not even an effort to discipline our minds, its just about easy. Maybe this isn't your experience? But it is mine, at least this time around with my practice it is, before I was still drinking a lot, spending time in smokey bars, hanging with people who weren't involved in that lifestyle, so it was hard. This time around I keep my own council a lot, enjoy my practice, eat a lot differently than before, teach full time so I'm not torn between a corporate lifestyle and a yogic one, and experience life from a fully different perspective due to all those things.

I think the Kundalini Yoga phase got my lifestyle under control to a great degree and cleared a lot of energy blockages I had and so now as I get the physical blockages taken care of the energy is all ready to just flow on through and fulfill my being!

I also think teacher trainings, not me taking them (although I'm okay with that) but me leading them helps a lot too. At Yogasource we started our yearly one this weekend and its always wonderful to share what you've learned over the course of your journey, but this group is quite awesome, they get what you say pretty quickly and are ready for the next thing, so I think they are going to challenge me, and I look forward to being challenged. In fact I love it!!!

So, off to enjoy my night at home, snowed in, with the cable on, yoga dvds to watch too if I want, and snuggle in with myself for some hours before I get up and start it all over again with practice tomorrow.

Have a lovely night...