Ashtanga $20
Bikram $20
Flow $14
Swimming $5
Running Free
Walking Free, my favorite!
**Vancouver rates, per session
Yoga is definitely an elite activity, you got to make tons of money to spend on a yoga class.
Ever since I moved to Vancouver, I had not owned pillows until recently. I was meaning to get a few things for the house, but I simply neglected the pillows. In my minimalist lifestyle approach, I used to fold a thin cotton towel and used it as a pillow initially. It worked fine for me. And then I bought a couple of pillows as I had guests over the holidays and had to act civilized.
Now that I am an owner of two pillows, I decided to use them. Sadly, I do not like to use pillows anymore. I can sleep perfectly without them. I suspect it is my yoga practice which is causing this. I think there is some change in my spine structure. I am not sure if it is a good thing or a bad thing. I looked up online but I did not get any useful information. If any of you know if sleeping without a pillow can affect the spine, brain or whatever, leave me a note. If it is really a bad thing, I will have to figure out a way to like the pillows again.
Most non-Indians who take Yoga and spirituality a little seriously, often adopt a new name. Many of the women I have met have names like Radha, Indra, Sita and others. There is nothing new about it. I have also come across men and women adopting Hindu or Buddhist names or just partial names like-
Once in a while, I come across some yoga names that sound outstanding or stand out. Check out these names -
Have you heard of any such names? Share them here.
Will the real Vyasa please stand up? Please stand up? I guess this will go unanswered. For Vyasa literally means collator and there were so many by the pen name of Vyasa. Veda Vyasa is the one that collated the Vedas and wrote Bhagavad Gita apart from other works.
I was thinking that Bhagavad Gita was written after Yoga Sutras solely because of the reason that Vyasa had written the first commentary on Yoga Sutras. Many of the books that I was reading say that Bhagavad Gita was ahead of Yoga Sutras by three centuries. There are a few books that do say that Yoga Sutras was written ahead of Bhagavad Gita. (more…)
I have been using the stick figures for a while, when I want to come up with a pratice session. I was very impressed with this when I learnt it during the teacher training in San Francisco. I have had so much fun drawing these figures.
Little did I know that it was TKV Desikachar, who came up with this concept. He was a civil engineer by training and he took up Yoga after his college. When he started depciting asanas using stick figures, many people had told him it was not going to work as people would not understand it. Desikachar was not deterred. He continued to use it and kept trying to perfect it. He felt strongly that this was an efficient way to illustrate and easier to comprehend, instead of explaining the asana in words. He was familiar with the power of working with visual aids from his years as an engineer. (more…)
I am staying at a Yoga ashram in India, as it was close to the place I was traveling. I meet a lot of yogis here in the ashram. 90% of them are from Europe and America (as in continent) and the rest from India. After talking to many people, I get a feeling that a good percentage of the people are simply using Yoga to escape from the actual responsibilities of life. There is nothing wrong with taking a break to practice Yoga. But, I keep hearing the same stories being repeated.
can’t hold onto a job and decided to quit
giving up smoking
don’t know what I should be doing
wanted to meet new people
fascinated by all things Hindu, especially chanting
Of late I have been dining a lot with people that eat so quickly. I am one of those that eat slowly and I am shocked when people that I go out with finish their food so fast. I cannot understand how people can enjoy a meal if it is consumed at that speed. It is there this second and gone the next second, or so it seems. I catch myself saying, slowdown people.
Even in my pre yoga avatar, I would take time to sit down and enjoy my meal. I would frown at my colleagues who would eat at their desk, with one hand holding the mouse and eat lunch just staring at a monitor with a big frown on their faces. I simply could not relate to this eating habit, even many years back.
The first time I had coffee at a starbucks in the US, I remember thinking it is just no fun to have coffee from a paper cup with a plastic lid and then I notice so many people just walking with their coffee in the paper cups and having coffee while walking or talking on the phone. This sure was a culture shock to me. I was used to a sit down coffee or tea time. That was the only way I knew back then. And, this is one habit of the western countries that I have not made peace with yet or anytime soon.
Now that I dig yoga so much, I really s-l-o-w-d-o-w-n when I am eating, it is so much more delicious that way. I feel the others that eat so fast are simply missing out on the fun.
Time to change how I spell some words. I need to write colour instead of color. I have to say queue and not line. Say brinjal instead of eggplant. I have to switch to left hand side driving from right. I don’t have to say, water no ice, anymore. There will be no need to calculate 15% gratuity in a restaurant. These are things I know I should expect, when I move to India from San Francisco. Of course, these were the adopted new habits that I had changed many years back when I moved from India. Now, it is time to change them back.
Then there will be many things I cannot anticipate. The places go through so much change that I may not even be able to recognize them. We change so much too. I remember having a discussion with a teacher that teaches Pre natal yoga classes. We were talking about if the women after pregnancy will ever go back to the physical state that they were in before having the child. She said that people who come in for a yoga class will leave the class a changed person. We are constantly changing minute to minute. We will not be the same person, but a changed person, one hour from now. Our thought processes go through changes, our body is changing constantly.
Not all changes are pleasant. Some are good, some are not so good and you wish they didn’t happen at all. How can yoga help understand change that we go through? Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra can be of some help here.
Yoga Sutra talks about Avidya which means incorrect comprehension. Avidya can be understood as the accumulated result of our many unconscious actions without clarity. It is the root cause of the obstacles that prevent us from recognizing things as they really are. The purpose of yoga is to reduce the Avidya. When we learn to observe ourselves (yoga can be very useful here), we can explain why things are turning out certain ways and accept responsibility for the results. When we understand the cause and the effect, it gets easier to accept change.
This post will be incomplete without mentioning Shiva the destroyer, when a topic of change is discussed. The cosmic dance of Shiva has such a beautiful meaning. Shiva’s upper right hand has a drum that symbolizes creation. At the same time his upper left hand has agni or fire which stands for destruction. It does not have to mean destruction; it can also mean change that enables new things to happen, transformation. The dance can also be seen as a balancer of cosmos. Balance is a good thing.
As Thoreau said ‘all change is a miracle to contemplate’. Nataraja’s balance of the cosmic dance and the clarity which Yoga Sutra prescribes come in handy to deal with change.
When I hear Sun and Moon in the same sentence, I cannot help but think Hatha yoga (pronounced hatttta yoga). The total/partial solar eclipse that happens today on August 1st this year, makes me wonder how this might affect somebody’s practice. Especially if one practices mindfully keeping track of the time of the day and changing the practice according to Nature’s rhythm. Maybe, no Surya namaskars today as the rays of the sun will be blocked momentarily in some parts of the world.
Surya namaskars which mean Sun salutations are supposed to be performed at dawn coinciding with the rise of the sun. The classic form of Surya namaskar which is a vedic ritual says one has to face the sun, in praise of the Sun. One prays and welcomes the Sun in, who is the sustainer of life to enhance good health. I found this related post on Darren’s blog.
With the yoga practice completely shifting inside studios, this kind of traditional practice cannot be kept up by all. Surya namaskars are used even in the 8 pm classes inside a room to build up a sweat before proceeding with the rest of the asanas. Even though the traditional meaning of Surya namaskar is lost here, there is a lot to be gained in terms of health.
Coming back to the dance of the Sun and Moon today, hatha yoga is the union of Sun “ha” and Moon “tha”. It also means the pairing of the opposites, the divide of day/night, the male/female, Shiva/Shakti, force of life/force of consciousness, exhale/inhale, strength/flexibility leading to balance and equanimity in any given situation.
Every time I go to a yoga class in SF, I cannot help but wonder how is it that so many women are practicing yoga. And, where are the men? There are a few in the class that look totally forced into being in the class by their girlfriends and few others seem natural and at home in the class. I see more men in the class if the teacher is a guy. As part of the teacher training class, I see that 90% or more of the students are women.
Being from India, I always thought anything to do with yoga had to do with men. I had only seen yogis who were men, same goes for rishis and munis and all the ancient wisdom being written by men. I am not even sure how common yoga was in India with Sanskrit being studied by the upper caste Indians which was not the majority of India. The students were taught by a guru and they had to live in ashrams and a big part of their lives dedicated to the spiritual life.
So it makes me wonder if all the yoga asanas being invented by men apply equally to both men and women as there could be some differences in the structural make up. All the yoga asana names are either based on animal poses or the names of sages, all men. I am not able to get any references of any women yoginis in the ancient India. The only topic that I have come across discussing women is the tantra, but it seems more about the female energy shakti, rather than women in yoga. It is all about releasing the kundalini which is said to be equal part feminine energy and male energy coiled at the pelvic floor. This part of yoga gets murky as there is so much deviation from the asanas and moves on to the energy aspect.
The references of women in yoga that I could find are BKS Iyengar’s daughter Gita Iyengar, American yoginis Indra devi and Patricia Walden. From this recent generation onwards, the practice has been dominated by women. It is interesting to see that a practice that was started and practiced by men for centuries is so popular with women in the west. And, it has taken on a feeling that yoga is for women and now men somehow seem reluctant to take it on.
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