Kino MacGregor

This past weekend I spent with some great friends and with aforementioned young lady. She's become someone I admire and who inspires me in ways I never thought would be able to happen.

I used to think no one younger than me could possibly teach me anything, I guess I'm old enough now to know better lol, and have embraced what this lovely, on the inside and out, woman has to share.

I also had a bit of hard time for the silliest reasons. Comparison, something which I'm not prone to do and therefore almost never do. But when I was there this weekend, and before when I read her mini bio book Sacred Fire, I became . . . jealous, maybe? No, not jealous, envious. Here's why...

We began the practice of Ashtanga Yoga at almost the same exact time, I was 30, she 21 I think. But she took the horse by the reigns and found a good Mysore class, learned a lot there and went even further and went to India to study with Guruji (K. Pattabhi Jois) and began a process of learning that I only dreamed of doing.

I embraced it to the degree I could at the time and drove to Boulder, CO, to study with Guruji on one of his tours and decided that I was going to go the following year to India and leave work and be there for as long as I could. I allowed things in my life to stop me though, and didn't forge ahead as I'd planned to. I'd planned to because never before in my life had something make me feel like this yoga, it was amazing to me and I was in love with it. Problem being I was also in love with someone who was a practical thinker and who had no intention of helping me figure out how to get there, and I allowed him this role in my journey, so NOT his fault.

So, again in 2002 when I retired from the corporate world and had a severance package (and was single again) decided, okay, now I'm going to do it! So I look online only to find out that Guruji and Sharath were on tour and would be the entire summer, so I said fuck it and bought a ticket to Maui to study with him there and decided to stay for a whole 5 weeks so I could enjoy Maui and study with Nancy Gilgoff as well. Neither of which I have any regrets about and I still have a great friendship with Nancy to enjoy too.

Anyhow, advance a few years and I was working part time at the St. Louis Bread Co and teaching little Mysore style classes in Collinsville, IL, which were doing pretty well and I loved teaching this style of yoga in this format. It is what I was born to do. I'm just plugging away at my own home practice and teaching and living, not thinking about it at all. Then the itch starts to hit me again in about 2006-7, so I went to the Ashtanga pre-conference at the Yoga Journal Conference in Estes Park, CO. Loved it, it was awesome, but I couldn't see a clear way to make India happen, then I met Desiree Rumbaugh, started learning Anusara and healing parts of my body that needed healing, then I started practicing Kundalini Yoga as well more often ( I had been practicing it as long as the Ashtanga but only once a week on my day off, this time I got into it heavily and kept going. The energy working aspect of it was healing me in many other ways). So got further sidetracked away from my original Ashtanga path and almost left it completely, only to come back to it at the behest of friends once a week in late 2011, then fully 3-5 times a week in February of 2012 and fully again 6 days a week in April/May of that same year.

Then I met Kino in May of 2012 as well but it wasn't until going back to Chicago to see her again this year that that little demon on my shoulder was whispering about looking at where I could've been and such and such. That's all nonsense, I am where I am and my path brought me here, and she is where she is and we are two different people.

So now, I want to go to India again, this winter, December through February, to study in Mysore with Sharath and learn and learn and learn. If I eventually earn my authorization and further to my certification in the process, so be it, but otherwise I'm just in it for the learning and the growth and the yoga of it.

I love the asanas in this practice, they are like nothing else, I want to dig deep into them and allow them to move energy through me, moving past and through any blocks, emotional, energetic or otherwise, that I may have. I want to learn Sanskrit from Jayashree and Narsimhan in the afternoons and I want to interact with the Indian people and adapt to their way of life for the time that I'm there.

I'm drawn to this as if I've lived there in other lives and therefore tend to believe I did. I mean sometimes I can feel and smell things that I know are totally Indian and I've never experienced here in America.

So, I'm putting it out Universe. I want this. The thought of it makes me ecstatic, lets do this!!!

Practice, practice, practice...

I've been practicing and teaching and not much else, including blogging lol. Didn't realize how long its been until this morning I happened to be thinking a bit.

I'm really trying not to get stuck in my head about things and the problem with that is that it doesn't lend itself to formulating something to write about, so haven't been on here since April.

But I'm seeing Kino MacGregor this weekend in Chicago and am super excited, so have put a lot of focus on my morning practices lately, even when they seem less than optimal. I still search and find the benefit I got from what I did or did not do.

I seem to be regularly practicing the primary series this past month or so and having so much sensation in my arms, from the upper chest down through the elbows, that I don't know what to do with it. Its not pain, its just like my nervous system is on fire, and then when my asanas are done, it seems to be fine, its just during my practice! So this morning I practiced second series to test it out and it did the same thing. The arms represent the heart chakra and as the energy channels that correspond with the arms open up it is the flowing of the energy through the heart chakra that can cause such sensation, but also such peace after the opening happens.

Along with that I'm opening up finally in my sacrum and my shoulders have been having major opening lately. The sacrum though is where I've been locked up on the left side since January and it started to subside when I went to the Ashtanga confluence, but came back strongly, but yesterday during my practice I felt movement in the area that was bound up and it feels so free after that and today, so I'm grateful I kept on practicing through whatever was going on with it and have mostly come out the other side.

It was through pain though that it found the opening, not acute, sharp pain, but tension and just feeling locked in a knot that created a shorter hamstring and pain down the leg, but when the movement happened it hurt for a second and now feels amazing, so we'll see how it goes with this weekend.

It seems that pain has been a theme lately, especially around articles I've been reading, and talking about how Ashtanga brings pain, but its really about it being in the areas that the energy is blocked or not flowing well and if you stick with it, work within your bounds, not pushing through it, but breathing and maintaining your practice through it, that on the other side is a great and amazing place to be.

I will say I agree and I will not quit practicing but will be mindful of how it needs to be adjusted to accomodate or to help heal different things as they come up. And I feel amazing lately, inside and out, so I'm not really worried about any of it, just being with it as it comes up, observing and learning from it and taking that into my teaching.

Namaste, and may you be present and observing in your own life from today onward and see what it brings you!!!

Your path to excellence...

So, I just watched an interview with Kino MacGregor, one of many that I've watched with her and heard with her in person. This one is called Living Your Genius and is a series of separate interviews with people who are living their dharma and then a phone call with them later in the week to ask questions.

So, the way she began teaching yoga and the way I did are the same. I was asked by someone and then another and another, and they wouldn't take no for an answer and my first student in Collinsville still practices Ashtanga every day and is 67 years old!

So, have I become victim to the same thing many, many others have? Thinking they have to follow a certain path that is laid out for them by another? Or following that inner voice that leads you in a certain direction, and it may be a direction you think is leading you away from the path you're "supposed" to follow, rather than the one that you lay out for yourself by following that inner voice?

Ummmm, yes, I did fall victim to that idea that I'm supposed to be doing things a certain way and forced it to happen (anyone read the book "Power vs. Force"?). But all the while my inner voice was leading me in certain ways, and when I listened to it it was lining me up with those things that I really wanted anyway, much as Abraham teaches in the Law of Attraction teachings.

So, I was an Ashtangi and an alcoholic, then dropped the alcohol and meat when I started practicing the Kundalini Yoga path. Was so drawn to it that I even became a Sikh, taking the vows of the Amrit ceremony and legally changing my name and almost exclusively teaching Kundalini Yoga for a while, a short while in the scheme of things, but none the less a while.

Then my body started craving more activity again and the Ashtanga practice came back into my life and the two started merging, I started seeing the energetics of the physicality of the primary series, or rather feeling them. I'm not a seer of energy...

So, I came full circle and may still have further to go, oh, I know I still have further to go. But interesting to note that this time around, I'm slowly building an audience who loves the Ashtanga, which is something that I want (its not a huge thing in St. Louis), but who are also just drawn to the teachings the way I present them either way. More are asking for Kundalini Yoga too, which is a very strong path as well. So I'm doing workshops of it here and there, and then those who are drawn to one are trying the other and strengthening their experience of yoga within themselves, rather than following just what someone else tells them is the right path.

Isn't that the strength of the yogic path, that it leads you to your inner voice? Yes, one of them anyway, no matter what sort of yoga you practice.

So, am I living my genius? Maybe, I'm starting too, I'm starting to feel the pull of the path and where it wants me to go to, and that it wants abundance for me whilst I'm on this path. I may not be completely there yet, but I'm getting closer, and closer, so watch out summer, I'm unleashing myself on you and once the park class starts a week from Saturday (its the biggest class in St. Louis at almmost 250 weekly and being part of a farmers market) I'll have a greater range of influence and expect full liftoff!

So come join me, are you up for the ride?!? lol

Namaste . . .

Body Issues = Healing

So, I'm having stuff going on with my body. Last time I practiced I went through a few things but they resolved themselves. They weren't things anyone could find, but they were there none the less. And for the life of me I never though I'd be having to deal with it again, I know I stopped the practice of Ashtanga daily for almost 4 years, but I kept practicing it every so often and I was practicing Anusara and Kundalini the whole time, non-stop.

This alone tells me there is something to living the Ashtanga yoga practice as a lifestyle, all the things that go along with it, like the castor oil baths, the ayurvedic remedies, the diet, and of course the practice 5-6 days a week (5 days on weeks of the moon). I kind of poopooed that while I had moved away from it, but since beginning it a year ago, or restarted the 6 day a week practice and the whole lifestyle of it again, I've encountered the sacrum trouble I had back in 2002 and the elbow stuff I had after that in about 2005 or 6, and this time I'm having a new thing in the outer hamstring/it band area of my left leg.

Now granted, last time it took years, about 8 years to work through these issues and this time it has all happened in just over one year, so its like I'm on the fast track to healing lol. So I shouldn't be complaining, but right now I'm dealing with the it band thing and the opposite elbow thing at the same time, so it seems dramatic.

The first time around, Guruji told me my anger was in my knees and elbows (or yelbows as his English allowed it to be) so had me doing the castor oil bath to deal with pulling the heat out, I'm already doing that this time, so its been easier and I'm definitely less angry but am still having a bit of it, obviously.

People check me out, professionals, and they find nothing wrong with my body on the physical side. So that means its energetic and that I can deal with, move the energy through and it shifts you. The Kundalini training definitely qualifies me to move the energy, and that I shall do more often on my days off, maybe on my days on, so that I can get myself healed and can then be the teacher and inspiration I intend to be.

So, now that I mention that I'll speak to it. I've studied with many, many teachers, Ashtanga and otherwise. None of them are perfect, but most of them are in control of their emotions and their states of being in ways most Westerners would never understand, unless they've studied the arts of the East. So I equate that to the St. Louis yoga community and I see how many teachers here are so respected, but they are so fucked up, meaning they haven't used the teachings to heal themselves. Now, there are a few, maybe, and I intend to be one of them. I want people to take my classes and say "I really want some of whatever he's got." Not because I want the recognition, but because I want the people in this city to be healed. There is a lot of pain here and if people start to use the teachings fully, not just haphazardly and when they feel like it, but especially when they don't feel like it. It will heal them and once healed they would get it and then maybe help others to heal themselves as well.

I don't know, maybe its idealistic but who gives a fuck, I'll be an idealist. People need to know that we create our own reality, take responsibility for that and start controlling their states of mind so that they don't keep creating the shit that makes them miserable like they have been forever now, its time. This is a new time, the energy is moving fast and it is possible to help ourselves, so come on, lets do it!!!

I love you and I love myself, so this is how its going to be now, I'm holding myself responsible for my happiness and peace and you for yours, I expect you to hold yourselves in the same respect.

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...

Well hello Marichasana D, long time no see...

Since restarting the practice of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga back in late 2011, but not starting the full 6 day a week practice until February, so just about a year I've been doing it again. I haven't been able to get Marichi D, and had trouble until about December getting C. Twisting is hard for me and my lower spine, but as I've practiced its opened back up and released slowly again.

So last week at the Confluence I got brought into D on Sunday and at Tim Miller's studio on Monday and since then practicing at home I've been able to get it on my own.

It is so deep and opens up so much flow in the energy channels of the subtle body, I swear I'm not sure if I can stand it it flows through so strongly.

But I can stand it, its been wonderful. So, again I try it in the morning...

Ashtanga Yoga Confluence

So, first of all I have to remark about being back in St. Louis, snowing and cold, after being in San Diego, 70's/80's and sunny, for 6 days. Nuff said, if I go there it'll take me to a negative place and I feel really awesome and don't want to go there.

So the Confluence. It was amazing, I wasn't sure how I would feel about it because of my sciatica acting up on the opposite side of what it used to act up on. But I got rid of it with Ashtanga the first time around and it was on the right side, so maybe this is it working its way out of my being on the left side, creating balance? Sounds good to me, I'm sticking with that story.

The first night was a lovely ceremony starting off the event and I got to talk to Nancy (Gilgoff, my first ashtanga teacher) and see a lot of folks from around the globe that I knew or know via previous contact or Facebook and that was awesome. I was to meet many more folks over the weekend that I had met before in those same ways, or just through practicing next to them.

I took the Mysore classes each morning and was adjusted and spoke with David Swenson, Nancy, Noah Williams(a certified teacher), got some profound adjustments by Eddie Stern, very profound prompting emotional release, also some great contact with his wife and with John Smith, who I had not previously heard of but is an authorized teacher in upstate California and who taught me some adjustments I will use for the rest of my career of teaching!

So the first day I wasn't sure how I would be able to take another asana class in the evening, and it was with Nancy teaching the old style of primary series she was taught and it was awesome and actually made me feel better and the subsequent Mysore classes were better and better, even so much that we went to Tim Miller's studio yesterday morning to keep it going. By we I mean my friend Lance, who went and it was his first ever yoga event and his first time doing primary series that many days in a row and taking Mysore classes, especially ones that big!

The real treat, and I had no idea they would be, but the real treat were the panel discussions. Discussions covering the 8 limbs, practicing as we age and many other things like this, they were amazing. Especially coming from such a diverse group and all who had been practicing at the least 27 years, and at the most 40 years, I can't even really articulate the depth or profundity of what I received from those talks and will be forever in appreciation of them.

Dena Kingsberg was one of the teachers, studied with Guruji for 27 years and is from Australia. Kind of a recluse mostly, but is coming out more and more lately. She turned out to be the most heart filled and loving person one may ever meet. Amazing woman and Ashtangi, her and her husband, both just inspirations beyond I could've hoped to meet.

Needless to say, I had a great experience and am glad to be home to integrate and use what I learned but am also convinced its time for me to move to a place where I'll have a regular teacher too, I need it right now to help me develop and grow further, not only in the practice but in applying the practice to life as well.

So we'll see. Encinitas is damn nice, not just this time of year, but just about anytime of year! lol