Roxtar Yoga

start a business in your pjs February 25, 2009

Tonight I attended a dinner and presentation sponsored by Softec, a local group that promotes and facilitates networking (of the human type), resource sharing, advocacy, and economic development for the software and technology industries on the Central Coast of California. It helps businesses and individuals establish contacts and share experience and technical knowledge with others interested in software and technology.

Start a Business In Your Underwear supplied tips and tricks from Branden Jenkins, CEO of Retail Anywhere and President/Chairman of Ground Control Systems on launching a new business. Based off his recent experience in creating eBackItUp.com, Branden will show us how he created a new business on a Saturday night without leaving his house.

“This was not the first time I have had a new business idea, but this was the first one I could do without adding much to my workload. In fact, I figured I could do everything virtually and not even leave my computer. That became my core business plan.

To get this to fly with my wife and not distract me from my real job I had to be able to pull everything together fast. Time is money and I am not very patient. I already work all day, everyday thanks to my PDA. I decided if I wanted to make this happen I would have to take my idea to go-live over just a few short Saturday evenings. After kids go to bed

My mission was to not have to leave my home office to start this business. It was not an option, I just did not have any free time and no one is open Saturday night. I mean everything, from LLC, logo & web design to banking & mail. I had to create a business from my home in my underwear (PJs).”

What I liked most is that he shared many online resources for starting a business. I had no idea companies like this existed. I thought these might be useful to yogis and roxtar’s alike.

• dreamhost – domain name & e-mail address…which ultimately determine your business name
• logodesignguru – company logo
• legalzoom – LLC, state filings, trademark
• ringcentral – 800 # and voicemail
• earthclassmail- a virtual PO box where they scan in the mail
• b of a – business checking account
• quickbooks – accounting and merchant account processing
• adwords – online advertising
• web.com – online optimization

He invested about $3000 to get started and about 6 hours one Saturday evening.  It’s pretty amazing what one can do online these days. It’s been a year and the business is breaking even already. He spends a few hours each month running credit cards.

back to reality February 21, 2009

As Eminem would say, back to reality, oh there goes gravity. Back to work. Back to teaching yoga. Back to my messy apartment. I taught a few yoga classes this week and tried to incorporate some of what I learned at Shiva Teacher Training without changing my teaching style and format too much. I don’t want to be lost or lose my students trying to teach them something I only half ass know. I forgot how there is a whole process for me after I learn something I want to teach in yoga. I have to bring it home and practice it on my mat alone quite a bit and also practice teaching a friend before I take it to class. I tried to incorporate more flow into my classes, which are Vinyasa style. I incorporated more pulsations while holding poses, more body vinyasas moving the limbs while in poses, and rhythmic vinyasas, going back and forth between two poses, all connected with breath. I think it went pretty well. I feel like I need to find more words for the philosophical aspect of yoga. I know all the queue’s for alignment, but once people are in poses I feel like I want to say more about the true essence of yoga but I’m not sure exactly what to say. I am not looking to say anything super spiritual, but some of the yumminess that people don’t really think about but are feeling in their bodies. I am going to bring the nerd in me out and make some index cards to study and bring to class with my favorite yoga tidbits to share. I also love teaching to my yoga mix! It’s so much better to do yoga with good tunes. It has some rock n’ roll (uh duh, i am teaching roxtar yoga) and some great yogi tunes from Shiva’s mix cd Yoga Rhythms. I highly recommend her music compilations. You can purchase most of them on amazon or google them to find other online stores selling them.

post shiva stress syndrome February 18, 2009

After spending a week with Shiva Rea at yoga teacher training it is hard to come back to reality. In many ways I am renewed, revitalized, energized, and inspired to share myself and what I’ve learned. In my head I am ready to bring the yoga training spirit back to my reality. After all, it is in day to day life that real yoga happens. It is how I respond to work that piled up in my absence, the undesired expectations placed on me, the difficult life situations, messy house, and exhaustion. All of this is what people live every day and I believe yoga can help make it all better. And it has for me over and over again. Yet, in true human contradictory form, I kind of want to ball up into a corner, be lazy, and forget about it all and submit to the naysayers. Don’t worry, I won’t, but I feel the pull to do so. It’s funny how energy works, how being around so many like-minded people can make you feel so high on life, and how coming back to familiar reality makes you feel a little less somehow. I refuse to let this feeling settle though and am hitting the mat tonight to practice my art and bring my best self to meet these silly mental challenges head on. The inspired feeling will win this battle I assure you.

Today is the first day I’ve eaten cheese in 4 weeks! Oh sweet dairy goodness, thank you for your loving flavor on my bean burritos, how did I live without? I actually feel really well. I am still working with a nutritionist trying to find an optimal way of eating to take care of myself and prevent the sickness and fatigue that have plagued me lately. I have tested myself for wheat, gluten, and milk sensitivity and have found little to no reactions with those foods. It felt good not eating so much of those foods though and I will try to keep my intake of these foods down for the time being. I am testing myself for cheese sensitivity today and tomorrow. If I’m sensitive to cheese I might have to cry. No, I will cry.

shiva tt conclusion part ii February 15, 2009

My training is officially over and I am home after my 3 hour drive from LA back to my lovely home in San Luis Obispo. I really enjoyed my last day to the fullest extent! I wandered to the Venice Beach Farmer’s Market for a little raw food from this booth I stopped by last week. Yum. Our last hour of training Shiva shared some practical tips for taking the flow back with us into our lives, wherever our lives are. She created space for paparazzi rituals which I thought was pretty freaking cool.

In the end I really need to share my gratitude! I feel so blessed to be able to spend time learning from someone whom I honor, respect, and want to learn so much from. I feel so thankful that my life path has brought me right here, right now; living in SLO, working at MINDBODY, teaching yoga, with so many great people in my past, present, and future. I have to concur with Shiva’s teaching philosophy of sharing and paying it forward and I want to do the same in whatever ways I can. I believe in the impermanence of life and I know that my life situation may change at any time. I also know in my heart that I manifested many of the situations I’ve been blessed with and I pray (for lack of a better word) that I can continue to do this and teach others how to do the same. I say this with confidence not cockiness. I don’t share much of my past life situations because I feel like I have their stories in my heart and soul and I’m not sure how much of it is necessary to share. I have lived life, felt pain, felt utterly alone for long periods of time, had no idea what I was doing wrong but realized that I was indeed living some things very wrong, broken hearts, participated in cheap love, forgiven when I didn’t really want to, meditated when my hips throbbed, saved when I’d rather spend, smiled when I wanted to cry, hurt people, hurt myself, been selfish. So it goes.

Thank you Shiva for teaching me how to breathe again. For teaching me how to honor and love my body where it is today. For teaching me how to feel and love the flow and cyclical nature of life.

shiva tt conclusion

I have mostly completed my Shiva teacher training experience. As I expected I am walking away invigorated, excited, more in love with yoga and myself, inspired, ready to bring some of this back to my own personal yoga practice, my day to day life and to my students. I came to this training on a whim, and it was a good whim indeed. Last year I went through a bit of life changes which culminated in a pretty painful Christmas time for me. I’ve been sick a lot over the last year and I have been feeling inspired to take better care of myself on many different levels. I have been teaching yoga for just under a year and I really feel like I’ve grown as a teacher and person in this time frame. I was begining to feel bored though, with yoga, and needed a little infusion. I’m thankful I was able to make this training happen.

I wanted to articulate some thoughts about yoga, training, and life that have arisen over these ten days.

I have to send some love to Camille Thom and Baron Baptiste for creating space for me to become a yoga teacher. I feel thankful that I get to teach something I love, that I feel has practical relevance to day to day life (especially compared to teaching math, one of my past loves).

I was feeling a little relief that this training wasn’t like Baron’s boot camp I attended last year (aka the bubble), but now I realize that boot camp served it’s purpose in a different way.

There were things about it I loved, and things that didn’t resonate with me as much. I loved that we did so much yoga at Baron’s boot camp that the sequence he teaches was ingrained in my body and soul. I think that I needed a skeleton to start teaching from to help me get my teaching voice and it was pretty easy for me to teach after his training even if I was a bit robotic at first. I loved some of the personal growth exercises, I had to face myself, my lack of authentic listening, my tendency to bury the past rather than truly let it go. I loved gazing into the eye’s of every single person there.

I love the way Shiva teaches yoga in a creative, dynamic, living way. I love that I always feel so juicy, alive, happy, ecstatic after practicing with her, even if the class kicked my ass in many ways. I have been craving a little more juice in yoga, in my personal practice, and the classes I teach and she has definitely given me some great tools to create the juice. I love how intuitive her philosophy is and how it makes my heart smile. I love what she says during class. I am excited to bring some of this to my classes.

I am not even going to think about what doesn’t resonate with me from Baron or Shiva or anything else for that matter. I have decided that I will no longer say, “I don’t like …” in life. There are things that resonate with me and that I’m drawn to, and there are things that I’m not. I will focus on the things that resonate and try to find something of value in those things that don’t resonate as much.

I am a bit frustrated that I feel so out of touch with my body and what it’s saying sometimes. I have to get sick to give myself rest. I don’t want to do that anymore. I think I need more quiet in my life now than I have in the past to hear the subtle messages my body and intuition are giving me.

Some questions/thoughts to ponder:

Few of us have lost our minds, but many of us have long ago lost our bodies.
My mission in teaching yoga.
Three practical ways that I can fulfill this mission for myself.
Write down 10-20 verbs, adjectives, adverbs related to my mission. I like quasimoto land and tight hips anonymous.
You can measure strength gains in 2 weeks, but it takes much longer to measure flexibility gains.
Our goal is essential verbal queuing, more than 3 breathes and can talk more.

just say no to burnout

One of the most difficult aspects of yoga for me is actually listening to my body and taking it easy when I need to. I really don’t notice when I need to take it easy in life or yoga until I get super fatigued, feel sick or extra grumpy. The last two nights of my 10 day teacher training I just came home, vegetated, and slept. I was too tired to participate in the late evening classes. Last night I was relaxing and watching a little tv and I just zonked out at like 9pm. I woke up with my laptop on, lights on, after 4 hours of sleep. I had a headache the last two days too, which made it difficult to bring my best self to class each day but luckily the extra rest has helped and I think I will end this training on the top of my game. I really don’t want to get super sick after this like I did after my last teacher training.

The last few days have definitely been the most difficult due to the fatigue. We learned a lot of ways to enhance people in postures with Simon Park. Some of the assists were just too much, I wouldn’t really want to molest a student that way in class. I feel like I will definitely bring some juicy assists back to my classes though. It was funny, he was getting annoyed with our chattiness during class. I mean come on, we’re a group of 50 women teachers, we like to talk! I have a great respect for my teachers and the more I practice, the more human they become.

Yesterday we had a sweaty Valentine’s love class where we meditated on all the love we get from our working bodies, the love that is radiating from our inner being, the love we have for ourselves, while chanting om throughout the whole practice. I had to take it easy during this practice, but the full class made it so sweaty, it was kind of gross at the end. We ended with a dance party which I thoroughly enjoyed. I love her taste in music, a perfect combination of songs we knew and yogi songs. Shiva and I could definitely be friends off the mat. Shiva made me laugh when she mentioned how many people would be making love last night, the night of Valentine’s Day, and that we should all channel that energy. She also mentioned that it didn’t matter whether you were in love with someone, or wondering where your love is, or loving yourself for the moment, that we can all find a place to practice from and we’ve all experienced those different states of love. It was very down to earth and warming coming from a teacher. Check out two of our assistants who were feeling the love, Dorman and Shantel, who are expecting a baby soon. They were so cute I couldn’t resist.

It’s always funny to see how much yoginis, actresses, and other artist types love their mac computers! Mac has done a great job of focusing on that demographic. The other day we were trying to do a presentation on anatomy and the assistants couldn’t figure out how to get the computer to work with the projector. I realize that I am rare with my love of technology and yoga, and I also work with projectors and laptops quite regularly with my day job so I was glad when they solicited our help. I find it interesting though that most people who need help with their macs in the presentation situation don’t want to know how we fix it and get it to work. I’ve done this at Yoga Journal too. I think everyone in that situation experiences some type of adrenaline, myself included, I sweat and get all flushed in the face, so I suppose it’s logical. I will document it here for future reference: The mac was not mirroring the desktop on the projector screen, it was automatically extending the desktop. We had to go into display, then to some secondary screen that wasn’t obvious but it was the middle menu option within the display screen, and we found a checkbox that said something about mirroring the desktop. Voila!

Today is my final day of training and I am excited to go home! I miss my friends, my man friend, my kitty, my apartment. Future reference…I think a 10 day intensive might be a little much and doing 5-7 days is plenty of time. My yoga mat is thoroughly thrashed from all the Vinyasa. I also need to remember ear plugs, painkillers, travel coffee mug, more energy bars, like one a day, trail mix, apples, and a fun book that isn’t at all serious, and my veronica mars dvds. Adios, I’m off to my last yoga practice with Shiva of the training!

yoga thoughts from venice beach February 12, 2009

Today while attending day 7 of Shiva Rea’s yoga teacher training in Venice Beach, CA my brain was officially fried! I couldn’t go to sleep last night, something about eating and sleeping and learning and yoga made the rebel in me come out and say, “I can stay up and watch tv just like everyone else!” Let me respond to the rebel in me with a big giant, old school, NOT. “Tis not true my little red headed hard working yogini”, my body and mind said to me today. We had to do our practice this morning on our own, at our own pace. We chose from a couple Vinyasa classes that we had learned this week that are completely new and foreign to me. New and foreign in the sense that I’m not always sure what comes next and I don’t have a teacher there to guide me. I just kind of brain farted and was standing there at one point gazing into nowhere land while all the people around me are getting their yoga on just fine.

We had a 4 hour class this afternoon doing hands on assists with a partner and it was ridiculous how much the whole class, including the teacher were just fried. Words weren’t flowing as smoothly. None of us could hold the yoga poses anymore. Luckily the schedule had us ending today at 5:30pm. I am sitting in Coffee Bean in Venice Beach pondering my training thus far. I don’t feel like being stuck in traffic for the time being.

One great thing about this type of training is the people you meet and the random conversations you can have. Something about the total removal from your day to day life allows you to be very transparent and open to those you meet. After explaining my current life story I find it crazy how much of life is really just timing. When people ask about my job my answer is right place, right time. I started my first yoga teacher training in Boise in 2007 because of lucky timing (and cost and lack of application requirements). My friends and great loves…timing. It’s a combination of timing and making some big choices and going all in blind and not ever really knowing what will come of your choice. Being ok if your choice sucks.

Many of the people here have taken a big chance becoming a yoga teacher. It’s one of those jobs that is really difficult to make a living doing, yet has the potential to make the world a better, healthier place. Shiva said it’s a very brave choice. It’s invigorating being around people who are brave enough to make difficult, life changing decisions like the people here. Yoga has absolutely changed my life for the better and I think people need more of it than they know. I wonder about the things our society places value on and the things it doesn’t. I wonder how you can change those things. Hmmm. The answer to most of the people here is that they don’t care about society placing a value on these things, they do it anyway. I love them for that although something about that answer doesn’t sit well with me.

In yoga I have found my creative, artistic side. I didn’t even know I had one. This training has really shown me that. I have also found that I LOVE SHIVA REA! I am not kidding either. I am head over heels for that woman. She is one of the most amazing women that I have ever met. If you are looking for someone who is completely at home in their own body and being, who radiates the potential that every person on this planet has, I urge you to connect with her in some way; dvd, books, classes, music, anything.

I hope that you, my reader friends, find the courage to make the choices that matter. Once the energy and mojo in your life is flowing in the right direction, even if it’s uncertain, blind, and seemingly difficult for a while, abundance of everything you ever need will most definitely follow.

xoxxxooo

agape service February 11, 2009

Today we had a lunar practice that rocked my socks.  A lunar practice is a little less active in some sense, but still challenging, strengthening, opening, still gets that pranic life force pulsing through your veins. My hips were thankful. I look forward to taking this back to my classes.

It was finally California gorgeous during practice teaching at the grassy knoll ashram.  We learned how to make adjustments to students in downward facing dog, ardho mukha svasana, one of the poses you do a billion times in Vinyasa Yoga.  You cannot be afraid of a little touchy touchy if you are going to do a yoga training, let me tell you.

I got a pedicure today and the guy massaged my poor Vinyasa toes and sore arches.  After 6 days of rolling over my tosies they are a little sore, red, and scraped up.  It felt so goooood.

Then on to a service at Agape, a multi denominational church in LA.  Too much lord, god, and hallelujah for me.  The singing was amazing though and the message of the sermon was good, to get off your asses and be the beautiful being you are meant to be. It was a great place for people of any denomination to unite. I’m not sure I have a single religious group I would agree with and the references to typical Christianity terms of spirituality bothered me at times. Here is their mission statement:

The Agape International Spiritual Center is a global community dedicated to recognizing, honoring and nurturing the dignity and uniqueness of all peoples. Through devoted practice of universal spiritual principles embodied in the New Thought-Ancient Wisdom teachings, we are agents of transformation.

I am loving the training so far but and I am already trying to think about how to incorporate all this new stuff in my classes in SLO.  I don’t want to forget any of it!  I know it’s unrealistic to have super duper expectations about what I can bring back and teach in a competent, healthful, enjoyable way, without freaking my students out or getting them lost.  Hmmm.  Yogi dreaming on such a winters day.  Namaste for now

yogitis and tree man February 9, 2009

Yesterday was the first day I practiced teaching some of the new Vinyasa flow’s I’ve been learning at training so far (day 3 of 10). We had to teach only by saying the following for each asana:

1. Breathe (inhale/exhale)
2. Action Verb (reach/lift/open…)
3. Body Part (your hands/legs/feet/arms…)
4. Where (direction/to the sky/floor/to your heart)

Trying to teach without saying the pose name was challenging, but it made me think outside of my typical teaching box which felt good.

Later in the day I was walking down the street engrossed in conversation with another yogi and this tree suddenly moved and stepped in front of us!   The tree looked at us and said “the tree has moved.”  The tree turned out to be a man on stilts dressed just like a tree, with bark, crazy branches coming out of his head, face paint, and who knows what else.  He made my heart jump through my chest and my friend screamed and we just laughed.  I thought, this is totally part of my Venice Beach Experience. I snapped a photo of him fixing his branches while looking in some windows. I wish I had a better photo, this does not do him justice. Later in the week he was hanging out in my hotel and I was so excited! If I lived in Venice Beach, I would be friends with Tree Man. I send him positive yogi mojo for making me look up instead of fiddling with my blackberry.

We also went around the whole room and did introductions today and spoke of what inspires us in yoga.  It was really inspirational and amazing what people decided to share.  My reason?  I get to love complete strangers all the time!  Yes, I think that’s the shit.  There are more reasons for me of course, but that one popped into my head.  Other thought provoking questions?  What changed and made me want to start teaching it?  What do I dedicate my teaching to?

Today teacher training yogitis set in, day 4. It feels something like this. We had an epic arm balancing class first thing this morning and I felt like falling asleep right afterward but had many more hours of yoga ahead of me.  I felt a little grumpy.  I felt like I couldn’t quite comprehend what she was trying to teach me today.  It’s like you hit some kind of capacity or something.  I powered through it though.  My eyeballs are burning right now and I’m falling asleep as I type, but a little push is good and a-ok by me.

Arm balances have always been difficult asanas for me and we did 9 of them this morning! This is an example of Crow Pose, Bhakasana, from Yoga Journal. Arm Balances require a crazy strong core and the ability to suck in your lower belly and keep it locked. I don’t quite have this down yet. My buddha belly is happy to stick out and announce itself to the world. Love me with more cheesy goodness it says!  Arm balances also require flexible hips and I really don’t have much flexibility in my hips yet either.  I need to start teaching these much more than I do.

I have more I could say and ellaborate on, but yogitis is telling me to go to sleep.

sparty on like monkeys February 8, 2009

This morning we started our training by participating in a Vinyasa class that was taught by Shiva that was also open to the public. It was crazy packed with people! I noticed the capacity of the studio was 147 people and we must have been close. Her style and formula of teaching Vinyasa Yoga is so amazing. After every class rather than sighing this exacerbated sigh of relief like most students, I just think to myself, “Holy freaking shit. I don’t know what just happened, but I feel blissful right now.”

We had a short lunch break and I grabbed a salad, edamame, and fruit to enjoy on the beach. It’s cloudy, but there was no rain thank god and the sun felt great on my skin while I enjoyed some alone time.

Our afternoon session was philosophy by Dr. Paul Muller Ortega. One would think that sitting on a hardwood floor for 3 hours and listening to the history of yoga to be icky or boring, but it was really a great lecture. He started out mentioning that he taught at Michigan State University, my Alma Mater (sparty on!). I felt like this was just a little cosmic spark in my direction sending me some love. He shared his story of being sent to college to become a functioning member of society. He used to walk up to his professors, look them in the eye, and ask the question of life, why are we here, what’s the point. He was mostly unsatisfied by the answers until he met a man who practiced meditation one day. He thought, “This guy has something. I don’t know what it is, but I want to know what he knows.” We are all on our yogic journey because of our hunger and instinct for knowledge. To get the most from this life. Let us not waste our time counting down the days until death. All of the historic yogic texts attempt to answer the question of how to live life and the meaning of death.

This made me think of some people from my past. I have known men who hunger for this knowledge, who are cynical about the fact that many people live life doing what they were told, or doing what everyone else is doing for no real, concrete, personal, inspirational reasons. They say, “I never thought I’d live this long” and their life situations inevitably mirror that assumption. I feel sad that most of these people who’ve crossed my path stopped there. Or so it seemed. It reminds me that we can never really stop questioning, learning, living, experiencing.

Yoga has always reinvented itself at each generational change. Otherwise all you have is some dead artifact in a museum. The sacrificial process of yoga is letting go of the part of yoga that doesn’t really serve you. The point is to let through something better. There has to be living, creative aliveness to it. We don’t ignore the past, but embrace it, turn it into our own interpretation and embodiment. We have this habit in the U.S. to take things from many different cultures without acknowledging where they come from, why they are there.

I love this teacher training process! I love Shiva Rea and this space she’s created and the people who are part of it! It is truly inspiring, creative, nurturing, everything a learning process should be. I can’t help but compare it to my experience at bootcamp teacher training last year. Before we even got into practice teaching she spent time to remind us the purpose of it. We have to learn how to be one hundred percent honest and remember that we are helping each other grow as friends (mitra) on the path of yoga. We have to try to remove the lemon factor, the nerves that practice teaching with your peers brings.

Finally, we finished the night chanting like monkeys for 2 hours. No, I’m not kidding. Cee. Di. Bo. Di. Cee. Di. Bo. Di. It was called Primal Yoga and Monkey Chant and was with Parradox Pollack and Shiva. Awaken your inner monkey, your primal primate wild, playful and instinctual monkey self. Monkey Chant is a style of interlocking vocal percussion and singing which explores the root language of trance and integration with ones own innate nature based upon the Baliness Ritual form of Kecak. It was interesting and fun overall. I had a problem sitting cross legged for 2 hours on hardwood floors without a pad after all the yoga. My bony ankles and tight hips were not happy. I have also met someone from Michigan or Michigan State every day while I’ve been here. It makes me smile.