Saraswati’s Scoop

In honor of Saraswati, the Hindu deity of knowledge and the creative arts, this is the YogaRose.net space for the latest yoga-related news.

Saraswait statue via jepoirrier’s Flickr photostream

Enlightenment 2.0? 21st Century Yoga: Culture, Politics & Practice is now out
Monday, Sept. 24, 2012

Collection of essays examining contemporary North American yoga and its connection to issues – funded through Indiegogo — is now available for purchase.
>>Read more

David Robson releases instructional video on jumping back and through
Tuesday, July 10, 2012

David Robson's instructional video on jumping back and jumping through

Online video rental and DVD available of David Robson’s latest instructional video, Learn to Float: Jump Back and Jump Through.
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MP3 of a practice drumbeat, MP3 of led Ashtanga primary series
Friday, Jan. 20, 2012

David Robson has released two MP3s based on his Learn to Float DVD. One MP3 features simply the sound of one drumbeat per second, so that you can feel a steady rhythm for your practice. The other is a led primary series class with the drumbeat.
>>Read more

Ashtanga Michigan Groupon
Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011

I’ve been out of town for work, so this is being posted a day later than I would have liked. A friend yesterday sent me the Groupon Detroit deal. I’m glad she did, since I live about 90 minutes west of Detroit, so I’m not as in tune with the deals there. It’s for Ashtanga Michigan, a traditional shala in the town of Royal Oak.
>>Read more

New ‘mesmerizing’ DVD teaches you to float
David Robson releases DVD/online video stream
Thursday, Sept. 29, 2011

David Robson, director of the Ashtanga Yoga Center of Toronto, has released this DVD that Ashtanga.com (via their Twitter feed @ashtangayoga) has called “mesmerizing.” I agree.
>>Read more

Ashtanga yoga — apparently, now there is actually an app for that.
Michael Gannon Yoga releases iPhone/iPad app
Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011

Michael Gannon announced on his website over the Labor Day weekend that he has released the first Ashtanga Yoga Mobile App for the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. The app, available through the iPhone App Store, costs $2.99 and features content for beginners and advanced students alike.
>>Read more

Ashtanga Yoga + Social Media Grid
YogaRose.net launches new database of digitally connected ashtangis
Monday, Sept. 5, 2011

The Ashtanga Yoga + Social Media Grid, curated by YogaRose.net, features mostly English-language yoga instructors, devoted practitioners, authors, bloggers and photographers who use social media to spread the love when it comes to the beautiful and challenging practice of Ashtanga vinyasa yoga.
>>Read more

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© YogaRose.net and Rose Tantraphol. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to YogaRose.net with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Featured Post

Life after Sriracha: Transforming my eating habits with Ayurveda

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Five years ago, an endoscopy told me that I needed to cut out coffee, other forms of caffeine, and chocolate. I said no effing way to nixing coffee and chocolate, and soldiered on, eating in ways that I knew aggravated my condition. Now, desperate to find lasting relief, I’ve turned to Ayurveda. Here’s the scoop on the good, the bad and the not-so-spicy. Continue reading →

Evening yoga practice vs. morning yoga practice

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If my koshas were like hardwood floors, practicing in the morning feels like adding a nice, smooth protective coat. (I’m standing at our kitchen island while I type this, noticing how beautiful the shiny hardwood floors look.) In the evening, it would be more akin to scrubbing away that day’s dirt and grime on a surface that’s only slightly treated. Continue reading →

Introducing the Way-Before-Breakfast Club for morning-challenged ashtangis

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Welcome to a little digital support group for people with a strange desire to wake up at brutally early hours to practice yoga. Why a club? Because we’re night owls. Because we’re morning people if morning = 7 a.m. or something more sane like that. Because we love to sleep. Because we love to dream. Continue reading →

The long and the short of it: On the Ashtanga breath (which, for the record, is not ujjayi!)

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How long and fast should the breath be? How about “medium” and “breathable”? Or maybe long and deep? And what’s all this talk about ujjayi? There’s no ujjayi here. Continue reading →

Unpacking my patterns of excess

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A pack rat by nature, and surrounded by stacks of slips of paper I should have slipped out of my life long ago, the ayurvedic observation about patterns of excess deeply resonated. At least moving forces you to go through piles and open boxes and make decisions about how many physical mementos linked to emotional baggage you want to carry on with you to the next space you occupy. Continue reading →

The daily grind (or, how I’m trying to avoid another surgery on my gums)

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Do you know how where your stuff flows? I hold most of my tension in my neck and shoulders. There is this one spot in my right upper back in particular that seem to serve as the reservoir for all my stress run-off. Even yoga doesn’t always provide relief. Continue reading →

Under, over and breathless: Reflections on my fear of swimming and my students’ fear of headstands

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So to everyone out there struggling with going upside-down — I am right there with you every time I get into the pool. Like you, I’m working on it, one attempt at a time. Baby steps. Continue reading →

She’s got curves — are you sure she’s a yoga model?

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Be honest: What was the first thing you thought of when you saw this ad? Unless you’re immune to what American society seems to constantly tell us about what the ideal female body looks like, I think it’s hard not … Continue reading →

What my salsa teacher wants my hips to do

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Making the transition from looking like you’re trying to salsa and looking like you’ve spent your whole life dancing this way starts, like so many things, with the hips. Continue reading →

Recent Posts

Moment-to-moment practices

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I take it as a good sign for our meditation practices that in packing for a brief getaway to celebrate our first wedding anniversary, my husband and I packed our meditation cushions.

meditationcushions

Last month, without leaving mid-Michigan, we both had the happy coincidence of getting time with two extremely clear, direct, accessible and accomplished meditation teachers: Shinzen Young and Sister Sayalay Susila. I’ve written about Shinzen and why I’m drawn to his scientifically inclined outlook.

Sister Susila is a Buddhist nun from Malaysia, and she was delightful. (More recently, I also had the chance to attend a one-day session with Ajahn Sucitto, whose teachings I found beautifully poetic and refined. I will be seeking out more of his teachings as well. Here is Ajahn Sucitto’s blog. )

Despite being introduced to meditation by my father at a very young age, I think it has taken years of practicing yoga to get me to be able to accept a meditation practice. Some people are naturally drawn to turning inward, but I always experienced my mind as too restles and my body as too stiff to want to regularly return to long sits; yoga was my meditation.

But these days, when Sister Susila says something like, “You must contemplate impermanence until cravings drop away” (which I took as, “force won’t rid you of your cravings”) or “The body is not solid the way you think. With concentration and wisdom, you see the body and mind as they really are . . . so you can accept your body being old with equanimity” — well, I believe it deeply, because I’ve spent years returning again and again to the mat, which is nothing if not a constant reminder of the ever-changing nature of the body and the mind. I think I needed these years of a yoga practice to get here, though. Simply contemplate impermanence? Not concrete enough.

In case anyone who happens on this post is interested in Buddhist concentration and insight meditation practice, I thought I would share Sister Susila’s handy one-pager on the mental factors of mindfulness and wisdom needed in vipassana (opens as a PDF).

The Ashtanga Yoga: Ann Arbor Facebook page frequently posts about meditation, and this little gem was posted a while back:

Real meditation is the highest form of intelligence. It is not a matter of sitting cross-legged in a corner with your eyes shut or standing on your head or whatever it is you do. To meditate is to be completely aware as you are walking, as you are riding in the bus, as you are working in your office or in your kitchen—completely aware of the words you use, the gestures you make, the manner of your talk, the way you eat, and how you push people around. To be choicelessly aware of everything about you and within yourself, is meditation. If you are thus aware of the political and religious propaganda that goes on ceaselessly, aware of the many influences about you, you will see how quickly you understand and are free of every influence as you come into contact with it. (Jiddu Krishnamurti, Collected Works, Vol. XIII, Individual and Society, p. 323)

I haven’t blogged since April because my work demands have been relentless again. There were periods that I felt a saturation — experienced as a lowered tolerance for external stimulation. And I wondered whether meditation could eventually help shield me from feeling drained during times like these. I want to achieve an unstickiness with my job — to be “free of every influence as you come into contact with it.”

In the meantime, though, I’m simply looking forward to putting down my meditation seat in a different setting.

P.S. — About the meditation seats above. The cushion on the left is the ubiquitous kapok zafu cushion. The meditation seat on the right is the very light — two pounds — and portable Salubrion Meditation and Yoga Seat that I got from DharmaCrafts.

© YogaRose.net and Rose Tantraphol, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to YogaRose.net with appropriate and specific direction to the original content

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