Roxtar Yoga

Yin Versus Yang March 4, 2010

At this point in my life I am a high energy, yang kind of gal. I’m a fan of vinyasa yoga, riding my bike, burning energy, and being challenged. I’ve even taken up circuit training lately just to try something new and challenge my body in a new way. Yet, some days, I have to honor the yin energy, the more subtle, restful nourishment or so I was reminded this week. Yin is usually characterized as slow, soft, insubstantial, diffuse, cold, wet, and tranquil. It is generally associated with Femininity, birth and generation, and with the Night. Yang, by contrast, is characterized as fast, hard, solid, dry, focused, hot, and aggressive. It is associated with Masculinity and with the Daytime.

After riding my bike with friends to Avila Beach last weekend, about 23 miles round trip, I noticed my legs were a little tired during my next vinyasa yoga class. Then I had a moment of tweaky pain that scared the crap out of me. I have had what I think is tendinitis in my right hip for the last few years and a regular yoga practice usually keeps it feeling pretty good. Before Monday, I hadn’t even noticed it lately. On Monday though, I don’t even remember what I did but I was practicing yoga and it was one of those moments of pain that makes you freeze and tear up and run to childs pose like it’s your mamma holding a bandaid after you’ve fallen out of a tree.

My hip was there to remind me that rest is just as important as activity. Aadil Palkhivala, owner of Yoga Centers of Bellvue, once said in a class, when you’re young, vinyasa yoga is appropriate, but as you get older your asana practice changes with your body and mind. It makes sense that our bodies need different types of nourishment and activities as we venture into different phases of life. One of my favorite aspects of yoga is that it reminds us how to listen to our bodies and not our minds. My mind thinks I should weigh what I did in high school, that I need to be the strongest person in the room, the strongest version of myself, that I need to sweat for my yoga practice to count (this week anyways). Sometimes it seems as if we “yang types” don’t feel it if it’s not a little painful and that kind of makes me a bit sad. Do I really need to beat my body up to feel something? What is my real goal? I want to take decent care of this vessel that I’ve been blessed with given the tools available to me. I want to become a more conscious, giving, and loving person. I don’t need to overly work it, nor should I use my aches and pains as an excuse to be lazy. Because, lets face it, the older I get, the more I realize my aches and pains are just part of life, little reminders that I’m human. May we find the balance between yin and yang this week.

yogis in the city January 28, 2010

I’ve arrived in San Francisco yesterday for the 7th Annual Yoga Journal Conference. The drive from San Luis Obispo was so beautiful, the hills of California were dotted with happy cows and luscious green grass. It was so lovely that even my phone camera was able to capture a tiny bit of the bliss. I highly recommend a road trip to enjoy the beauty that the winter weather has brought your way. It reminds me of how winter forces us all to slow down and how it’s definitely nourishing, even if our productive lives don’t allow us to slow down and renew as much as the earth does during winter. I am reminded to give myself the rest I need. We arrived last night and immediately went to dinner at Greens, quite possibly my favorite restaurant ever. We enjoyed fresh spring rolls, artisan cheeses, butternut squash crepes, mushroom pot pie, dessert, wine, and catching up with friends. We are all on “Bev Time” which is when our co-worker Bev is on East Coast Time and wants to go to bed at 9pm West Coast Time so we were all in our rooms by 9pm. It was wonderful to me as I had to work a long day today and woke up to yoga, meditation, and kitcheree for breakfast. That is the way to start a long day if you ask me.

Today at the Business of Yoga Conference we shared some great advice for people in the “yoga business”, but in reality a lot of the advice is relevant for many. As much as many people would like to just do yoga and meditate all day, sharing yoga is still a business in many respects, albeit one that should come from the heart. We enjoyed a video of Snoop Dog doing yoga. Take care of yourself as you would your own children, you don’t let them get too hungry or too sleepy, right? We were reminded to set goals rather than make more vague resolutions. To cover our bases regarding the more difficult parts of owning a business (and possibly our lives?), rather than burying our heads in the sand. Finally, we were reminded to just say no to free yoga classes, don’t do it, just don’t.

Right now I was supposed to be setting up the MINDBODY booth in the Yoga Marketplace but somehow our freight did not arrive on time and we’ll have to wake up early to set everything up. Hopefully I’ll be able to get my yoga in first. That’s one of the lessons of traveling, you just have to roll with it some of the time. Setting up the booth is quite the job though, setting up heavy kiosks with huge computers and this crazy backdrop that requires super strength zipper skills. I teach Online Marketing Strategies tomorrow, but tonight, I am off to enjoy some of the bounty San Francisco has to offer, Osha Thai it is! I hope you find some winter beauty to enjoy as soon as possible and don’t forget to roll with it when life demands it.

Cure a Broken Heart January 19, 2010

If you ever feel a little broken-hearted or down in the dumps, yoga is your cure just waiting to be unleashed. I am sharing this from Yoga Rants and Raves, a nifty little yoga blog, but I am adding my own input as well. Have you ever read or heard something someone said and thought, “yes. exactly.” That’s what this blog made me think, so I felt the need to share it.

1. When you wake up in the morning (or anytime throughout your days or nights) and the nagging sense of loss and directionless despair appear, get ye to the yoga studio. Welcome a sense of direction.
2. When dressing for yoga, be sure to wear your diamond earrings (for me it’s pigtails). Now you feel desirable again. (Bonus: you’ve found a healthy distraction.) But do not wear makeup (or cologne). That would be ridiculous.
3. When asked to state your intention at the beginning of yoga class, do NOT state this: “I wish to gain the ability through yoga to crush my ex (work/boss/mother…) with the psychic powers of my mind alone.” Instead chose this intention: “I wish to love and respect myself.”
4. When doing the chair pose (or the splits, oh they hurt so good), bend as deep as your legs will hold you. Let the lactic acid build up in your thighs until you want to scream. Realize there is a pain worse than a broken heart.
5. Breath. Don’t forget to breathe. Don’t worry about breathing through your nose or mouth specifically. Those restrictions are for the whole-hearted. Just respirate. If you can continue long enough, you won’t die. If you’re alive, then you are forced to accept that your heart isn’t actually broken. It’s functioning as normal and the other stuff is just a figure of speech.
6. When given the choice between vinyasa and child’s pose, take child’s pose. You deserve a rest. Rest. But do not stay there for long. You are better than that.
7. When in warrior’s pose, realize that you are a warrior. Applaud your inner strength. You are awesome. Repeat your intention. The loving yourself one, not the other one.
8. (When doing a backbend, try to breathe and feel your heart open. Feel love for all the other relationships and situations in your life that you are blessed with that nurture you.)
9. When the exercises are over, listen to the wise words of the yoga instructor. Realize that everything she says about letting go and about having nothing to do or UNdo and about not having anything missing in your life, all that is true. With or without a romantic interest, (job, friend, lover).
10. When in shibasana (corpse pose), imagine your consciousness as a tranquil sea (perhaps resembling the set of Cirque de Soleil’s O). When the sadness and regrets and anxieties rise up and distract you from the sea, imagine those thoughts as little flash-paper boats. Set them sail, and just before they dip over the horizon, set them on fire and watch them flash and disappear. Enjoy the tranquil sea. Repeat.
11. At the closing, when you say “Namaste,” remember what that means: That the divine in me salutes the divine in you. Remember that you possess the divine, too.
12. Go forth in peace. And do not check your cell phone until you’ve gone forth at least 30 yards from the yoga studio.

funky wild thang January 7, 2010

Have you ever done funky wild thing in yoga class? Maybe on the dance floor? What’s that you wonder? Why it’s Parsva Vasisthasana! It’s what you’ve been missing in your life and yoga practice, I swear! I can’t really find an English translation of this pose so I am calling it funky wild thing. I will try to include a photo of it later, this photo is the traditional “Non-Shivafied” version, but the funky wild thing version is so much sweeter. This week I decided to bust out of my yoga teacher rut and taught and practiced a sequence which featured this pose from Shiva Rea’s Fluid Power DVD. My yoga teacher toolbox has some good sequences, but sometimes we all have to be pushed outside of our routines to experience something new. I love most styles of yoga, but Vinyasa yoga still has me by the heart strings. Each time I get on the mat and start flowing, the world around me drops, I smile, breathe, and enjoy feeling my muscles and body move in a way it should be (or so it feels at least). After the standard holiday excesses I am happy to find my way back to yoga this week. I think most people enjoy practicing yoga in a classroom format, but I really enjoy Shiva Rea’s DVDs and I highly recommend Fluid Power for anyone who is looking for a way to get into practicing at home or for new, fun, flowy vinyasa sequences.  When writing this I also noticed she has a new DVD out, Daily Energy.  I will be sure to check it out soon and let you know how it is.

This week I have meditated and practiced yoga asana every morning, eaten vegan, and ridden my bike every day. It’s been a great week. No matter how far I find myself from my nourishing routines at times, they always feel really good to come back to. It makes me wonder why I insist on veering so far off track, yet I know that is just the way it is and hopefully it is getting better with time. If you haven’t meditated, practiced yoga at home, eaten tons of fruits and veggies, or enjoyed some fresh air lately, I urge you to do so. These practices make me sparkle in so many ways.

I have a healthy little competition going with my man friend to see who can lose the most percentage of body weight within the next month or two (we haven’t decided how long this competition will last yet). It has been really fun! I am typically not a very competitive person, but I am enjoying this. It’s been interesting to notice peoples reactions to our competition. It often seems like many of the women I tell this to immediately internalize it and think it implies something about their own health or weight. “But you don’t need to lose weight!” I hear often. We decided to do this because we had both gained a little weight recently and although we are technically still a healthy weight by the books, we felt unhealthy and were heavier than we have been for most of our recent adult lives. A little pro activity now to prevent dramatic changes needed later in life. I plan on living until I’m 100 years old (at which point I’ll probably laugh at this blog) and I don’t want to do so miserably riddled with every degenerative disease in the book. I want to be vital, smiling, and kicking asana. I have learned that we can’t exactly question each other and our intentions and motivations when it comes to healthy living, but at least we can get a little inspiration from each other, if we want it. Compare not my friends.

I have no idea how old Dharma Mittra is, but wow.

2010 January 3, 2010

A new year just demands inventory, adjustments, changes, and reflection, doesn’t it? No matter how silly I think New Years resolutions are, I still find this a great time of year to reset and reboot. What kind of changes would you like to see in the new year?

I’ve been keeping this blog for about 18 months and you may have noticed that there is a lot going on here. I have recently started writing more often and since doing so I have realized that I mostly post my thoughts on life, through the eyes of a Detroit raised California yogini whose looking to live life right. Yoga happens to be the one practice that has made the largest impact on this quest, and I love teaching yoga and sharing it with whomever I can. So, I shall update my mission statement on this blog accordingly and just thought I’d share that with you. I want this to be a forum for sharing thoughts on life and yoga and everything in between.

So what’s my vision for life in 2010? I want to live a little more simply, making as much of my own food as I can, maybe making Sunday a food prep day. I want to continue to make my home more “homey”. No, I don’t mean to make my home like a hip-hop superstar. I mean a place that I feel at home in, that I enjoy existing in, and that I can practice yoga in. I want to spend less money, especially on food and fun. Their are lots of things to enjoy on this bountiful planet, I feel like I’ve blessed to live where I live and do the work I do, yet I think I’ve been a bit liberal in my enjoyment of the good stuff. Hence the few extra pounds of holiday joy that are lingering around my waistline.

I’ve also been feeling such gratitude. I’m really thankful for my job today, the people in my life, and my life in SLO. I want to continue to appreciate all of this and give it my best.

Lately I also realized that I, like most people, get stuck in the day to day and wasn’t spending enough time thinking about long term goals. In fact, I didn’t have any long term goals after I stopped going to grad school in 2006 and was just living my SLO-life having a good ole time. But somewhere in the back of my mind I did have things I want to do that weren’t getting done. Such as traveling to new cultures for leisure. Continuing education. Owning a mini coup convertible. Becoming a rocking yoga teacher. Living in the present moment. Stuff like that. One goal I set was to save a large amount of money by 2010. It sounded kind of scary, but I felt I was living too ‘paycheck to paycheck’ and wanted to have an emergency fund. You know, one of those things people dream about but never do in reality? I kind of stole this idea from the CEO of MINDBODY. One day he walked in with a sign that said “50,000 clients by 2010″. While the sign almost gave me a heart attack (at the time in 2005 we only had 1500 clients and I was in charge of talking to the angry ones) but I liked the idea of this nice, slogan-ish goal that I could say to myself over and over again and maybe get myself to remember my long term goal.

The outcome of my 2010 savings goal? Well, I didn’t hit my goal, but I did save quite a bit more than previously and I feel good about my effort. Part of the reason I missed it was unplanned, large expenses. I also just spent a lot of money on stuff that wasn’t really necessary. Rather than go without once in a while, I satisfied most of my whim desires, most of which seem fair enough, but add up to a lot at the end of the year. Did I really need to spend so much on books and music?

So I am making a more aggressive plan for 2010 and I hope you’ll do the same. Cheers to a new year and a new decade of juicy goodness!

home base December 27, 2009

After yet another wonderful holiday season I found myself pondering the idea of a home base. I spent the holiday in the Garden State cuddling around a warm fire and playing games with new people. It was everything a holiday should be, spent eating wonderful food and sharing and connecting with loved ones. Being away from my family during this holiday got me thinking though. I wonder how much travel, jobs, and shifting cultural centers have had an effect on our families, and will continue to have an effect. For many it’s difficult to stay in the same towns or communities we were raised in making quality family time a rarity. I wonder what we are losing by leaving our hometowns and living where ever our jobs and lives take us, if anything at all.

Much of my family immigrated from Germany to Detroit, Michigan around the early 1900’s and many of my ancestors are still located there. I often miss knowing neighborhoods well, being so close to my roots and the places my grandmother’s lived and frequented, running into people you know, and feeling connected to those people for so long. Yet, aren’t those just physical places, isn’t the real history in my heart and mind passed down from my rockin’ grandmas and everyone in between? Is it detached to feel like the people who are right here, right now are the ones that are your family? I don’t feel like it is. Not that I don’t love and miss my family! I have found that the physical distance that separates us can effectively be lessened by connecting over the phone, via e-mail, random visits, or by sending a little love via snail mail unexpectedly.

Just a little Christmas food for thought as I lay on the floor in my pajamas doing a little head-to-knee forward bend. I have to say that is my favorite pose to do out of the yoga studio. It feels oh so good. I hope everyone enjoyed some sort of holiday time this season. It seems the cold, shorter days demand it.

passion and work, mutually exclusive? December 14, 2009

How passionate are you in your daily life? I have been thinking lately of what it means to have true passion in life. I’ve always agreed with the yogic philosophy of bringing joy and presence to anything you do. It says it doesn’t exactly matter if you sweep floors or program computers, it’s the attitude and presence that you bring to that activity that counts. Yet, I notice that I have often felt just a little something was missing here and there. My first desk job, my mid-twenties crisis, graduate school. I always start with a whirlwind of passion, activity and joy in my new adventures. Then I inevitably hit a passion wall. I get tired, bored or frustrated and it shows. I’ve often wondered what it would be like if I could hide what I’m thinking, but my face very accurately shows what I’m feeling, whether I want it to or not. I wonder why the passion seems to go. Is it just me and my life cycles? Will I always lose passion every so often? How much passion is normal? I have to admit that there have been activities that seem to keep the passion alive in me. Teaching is one of my passion activities. I have enjoyed teaching math, yoga, business, and technology, although teaching yoga really feels the best.
Maybe it boils down to the potential for growth. One common denominator in my life is that I seem to lose the passion when I feel stagnation. Sometimes it’s appropriate to work through the stagnation and try to freshen existing situations up. Often, I find that it isn’t exactly appropriate. Maybe it’s my age, but it seems that more often than not, once the passion goes, Roxy will have to go too, sooner or later. Somehow, things get better each time I leave those situations too.
A lot of this comes from my history. Many of my family and friends growing up felt work was just that, work, and fun time is separate. I have to say it sure feels a hell of a lot better when you’re doing something you feel passionate about. No matter how hard of a worker I am, I inevitably won’t work as well if I don’t feel passion about it. It doesn’t matter what I tell myself, I just can’t focus on it or enjoy it.
Food for thought.

the 3/50 project December 2, 2009

The idea behind the 3/50 project is for you to spend $50 per month in each of 3 local businesses that you would miss if they disappeared. According to the project, of every $100 spent in locally owned independent stores, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll, and other expenditures. If you spend that in a national chain, only $43 stays here. Spend it online and nothing comes home.

I personally don’t make many purchases online, I do mostly research, but I really appreciate hearing an actual cost of where I’m spending my money. This just reiterated the fact that so much of what we consume, some necessities and some not so, really have bigger costs than we often think about or realize or are told.

I really enjoyed my Buy Nothing Weekend as well, instead of participating in the excesses of Black Friday. I went out to eat at a local restaurant and bought some onions at a local grocery so I could cook for a friend. It really brought some awareness to my spending, it wasn’t really that difficult to minimize spending and to focus on local spending, and I look forward to trying to spend my money locally more in the future.

I also happen to be reading the Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan which I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in the true cost and implications of what they’re eating. I like to spend money on food, a lot of money, and I often wonder how much of the money I spend is necessary and how much of it is just me consuming for the sake of consuming, hoarding, listening to the pretty packages offered by Trader Joe’s pretty shelves.

I’d like to share some interesting tidbits from the book…
“It’s true that cheap industrial food is heavily subsidized in many ways such that it’s price in the supermarket does not reflect it’s real cost. But until the rules that govern our system change, organic or sustainable food is going to cost more at the register, more than some people can afford. Yet, for the great majority of us the story is not quite so simple. As a society we Americans only spend a fraction of our disposable income feeding ourselves – about a tenth, down from a fifth in the 1950s. Americas spend less on food than any other industrialized nation, and probably less than any people in the history of the world. This suggests there are many of us who could afford to spend more on food if we chose to. Aren’t we spending it on cell phones, tv, and other goods?”
“Our food system depends on consumers’ not knowing much about it beyond the price disclosed by the checkout scanner. Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing.”

buy nothing day November 25, 2009

Could you go without buying anything for a day? This Friday is known as Black Friday in the U.S., one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Isn’t it funny we have a holiday for shopping? One of my favorite magazines, Adbusters, a wonderful little anti-consumerist gem, has proposed that everyone buy nothing for this day of typical over consumption. They say: “You know the saying: a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. You feel that things are falling apart – the temperature rising, the oceans churning, the global economy heaving – why not do something? Take just one small step toward a more just and sustainable future. Make a pact with yourself: go on a consumer fast. Lock up your credit cards, put away your cash and opt out of the capitalist spectacle. You may find that it’s harder than you think, that the impulse to buy is more ingrained in you than you ever realized. But you will persist and you will transcend – perhaps reaching the kind of epiphany that can change the world.”

This week I am winding down after a busy week of working in New York City, helping wellness businesses become more successful, a job I feel blessed to have. My gift to myself this holiday weekend is that I have kept my schedule clear and will be spending the weekend chillaxing in my humble abode in SLO, CA. I have a tendency to do too much and wear myself out so this weekend I decided I wanted to give myself a Roxy Style Staycation Yoga Retreat. This will include home cooked meals, daily yoga and meditation practice, some time enjoying the great outdoors, and I’m not exactly sure what else. Maybe it will also include a day or full weekend of buying nothing, a little technology break, no driving. I was thinking it wouldn’t be that hard to make an efficient compromise to do this more permanently by only supporting local businesses, and once I started thinking of it, I realized how lucky I am to have farmer’s markets everywhere, a locally owned co-op, and local restaurants, movie theaters, everything, all right in my back yard.

I am grateful for everything in my life this Thanksgiving, my loved ones, yoga practice, work, health and more. Yet, I also feel like this is a great opportunity to acknowledge what I don’t like and what I can do to help change it. I think it is possible to enjoy the good part of the holidays, and to find a way to stop making them so much about consuming but about the subtle, yet sweeter things we can give each other.

yoga for fitness November 6, 2009

Many of the best conversations happen in the most random places.  This is especially true at the MINDBODY offices where we are lucky to share a full service kitchen where I often connect with many of my peeps.  Today my friend Stephanie who is a fitness instructor, oops, Group Ex instructor at Equilibrium Fitness for Women in SLO town mentioned that she took at Bikram yoga class last night and wore her heart rate monitor out of curiosity. Her monitor reported some crazy results.  She burned a total of 826 calories in one 90 minute class (max heart rate 170, low 130)!  When she teaches the Body Attack class and Equilibrium she burns 726 calories in 60 minutes (max heart rate 195, low 156).  When teaching she is doing the activity while talking into a microphone so it is likely she would burn closer to 600 while taking the class.  If you do the math the amount of calories burned in a Bikram class is about the same as the Body Attack class. The Body Attack class is cardio and strength oriented.  Her stats are similar for the Body Jam class which is all cardio, except she burns a few more calories. I don’t practice yoga to burn calories so to speak, but I do enjoy the way Vinyasa yoga gets my heart rate up, working a sweat, and feeling challenged and pushed to my edge. I am going to borrow her monitor and see how a Roxtar Vinyasa class measures up. I don’t expect the same caloric burn, but I feel like that’s a good thing.

This got me thinking. I wonder what the biggest reasons people practice yoga are?  I think many of us are drawn to yoga for the physical benefits we feel in our body, and we stay around because we like the message of the practice and get continually challenged.  According to the Yoga In America Study published by Yoga Journal and MINDBODY in 2008, fitness is definitely part of what draws us to yoga, along with flexibility, stress reduction, overall health, and even weight loss.  For me,  I tried it because a friend recommended it and I was into being physically active. Living in Michigan my activities were mostly gym oriented, group ex classes, kickboxing, step aerobics, aerobics, spinning, stairmasters, ellipticals, weights, riding my bike outside when I could, jogging, and the list goes on.  The funny thing is that I got sick of all those activities eventually, some quicker than others.  I also ended up with injuries.  Yoga and riding my bike outside or hiking have been the only “activities” I’ve stuck with.  Why do I continue to practice?  I would have to agree with the survey, “yea, what you said.” My body is more flexible and I feel more comfortable in my own skin, yoga definitely relieves my stressed out feelings, improves my overall health and strength (yea chaturanga!). Bikram’s Yoga was good for me for a period of time, but it eventually just didn’t feel good. I think once in a while the detoxification by sweating feels really good, and maybe I was really toxic before and needed to sweat out a few years of build up.  It’s good for us all to remember that different activities and passions resonate with each of us at different moments in our lives. Just think of how healthy we would be as a planet if we all listened to our bodies and found the practices or activities that really nourished us, yet challenged us, the right balance of both. And we actually stuck with those practices. Wow, a girl can dream can’t she?