Author: Andrea Loewen

Andrea is a certified yoga instructor with first aid certification. She has danced, sung, and acted her way through a life in the theatre and loves bringing her experience to her yoga practice.

The Power of Breath

I’m currently reading David Suzuki’s The Sacred Balance, and his chapter on breath is one of the most beautiful descriptions on our connection to breath I’ve read. You can read the whole chapter online here. This is my favourite quote:

“Air is a physical substance; it embraces us so intimately that it is hard to say where we leave off and air begins. Inside as well as outside we are minutely designed for the ‘central activity of our existence – drawing the atmosphere into the centre of our being, deep into the moist, delicate membranous labyrinth within our chests, and putting it to use.”

Later, he talks about argon. Argon is an inert gas that makes up about 1% of the air we breathe. These wonderful little atoms never go away, so every single breath you take contains argon from someone in history. According to Harlow Shapley, quoted in the book, “your next breath will contain 400,000 argon atoms that Ghandi breathed in his long life.” That means that every day you are breathing in atoms that were present during every major historical event! Talk about power!

The Yoga of Showing Up

Confession time: I have been busy lately. So busy, in fact, that I thought I was still posting this on a Monday when it is, in fact, Tuesday. Yes, I have officially lost track of time and missed my self-imposed deadline while thinking I was maintaining it.

In light of living in the kind of busyness that throws tracking what day of the week it is out of my brain’s window in favour of tracking where I should be next, you may not be surprised that I haven’t been keeping up with my yoga practice like I should be. Not even “should” – I haven’t been keeping up with my yoga practice like I want to be.

Just like it’s so easy for politicians to cut funding to the arts when the economy gets rough, it’s so easy to let your yoga practice be the first thing that slips when life gets busy. No matter how much we talk about how essential it is to a balanced life, at the end of the day it just seems a little expendable, doesn’t it? When you weigh and measure all the things demanding a piece of your 24 hour day, sometimes preparing for the board meeting, going to work on time, writing that paper, or going to back-to-back-to-back rehearsals take the priority.

While I’m not about to advocate skipping work to do your yoga practice, I am about to advocate for shifting your expectation of what your yoga practice really is so that you can fit it in. You know the saying “50% of life is just showing up”? Well, let’s bring that to our yoga mats – and then, of course, find ways to take it off our yoga mats.

My instructor in yoga teacher training once told us that if we feel like we don’t have time for our daily yoga practice, we should simply do the following: roll out our yoga mat, stand at the end of it in tadasana, and then roll that sucker right back up and put it away. There. We’ve done our yoga for the day.

The truth of the matter is that once you get into tadasana, you’re probably going to feel silly about just putting your mat away and maybe you’ll stretch forward into uttanasana. Then you might step back into a lunge and lift your arm into a twist. Then you’ll need to do the other side to be even, and so it will go until you’ve followed your body through whatever it needs for a yoga practice that day. Suddenly, you’ve found the time for yoga that you didn’t know you had!

The most difficult part, usually, is getting over that initial hump of forcing yourself to show up. Once you get there, you’ll find it’s easy (or easier than you think) to make the space you need for a quick practice. You may wind up finding a whole hour of time, or only 5-10 minutes for some invigorating flow. Even if you don’t find any extra time and you actually just stand in tadasana for 30 seconds, you have officially shown up and taken a moment out of your day that is 100% for you, and that’s what matters the most.

This afternoon on CBC they were discussing just this concept – the topic was willpower and the speaker was talking about how we imagine a lot of activities (especially the “shoulds” like working out or cleaning) to be a lot harder than they actually are. We psych ourselves up for inordinate amounts of time avoiding something and telling ourselves how much work it will be. However, once we actually get there and do it, research has shown again and again that the task usually isn’t really that hard. In fact, it’s often even enjoyable. The hardest part is showing up.

Yoga Recommended Reading List

This week I thought I’d share some yoga-related readings that I have come across through my teacher training and from my kula:

Light on Yoga by BKS Iyengar
The Bhaghavad Gita – the Penguin Classics edition is a great version for a newbie
http://www.dailybandha.com/
Yin Sights by Bernie Clark
The Heart of Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice by TKV Desikachar
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda
Yoga for Arthritis by Loren Fishman
Yoga Anatomy by Leslie Kaminoff
Yoga Mat Companion by Ray Long

You notice that I didn’t link each book to its Amazon page as is the norm on blog posts about books. That’s because Amazon may not be the best place to find the book! I recommend you check out http://www.abebooks.com first, as books are incredibly cheap there (I got Light on Yoga for $8 including shipping when it’s normally $25 in stores), but very slow with delivery. After that, check your local used book stores and your favourite online and in-person book sellers.

How’s This for Speaking Your Truth?

Lady Gaga is nothing if not true to herself – who else would show up for yoga class clad in such an uncomfortable-looking getup? I would find this a little too chafey for my liking, maybe Lady G is a bit of an ascetic and finds the discomfort adds to her practice. Either way, she’s certainly not trying to conform, and for that we can all appreciate her.

Via YogaDork.

Is Yoga Spiritual?

This is a question that everyone who begins a yoga practice (for whatever reason) must eventually face. The simple answer is yes, but not necessarily in the way you might think.

There is no question that yoga began as a very specific kind of spiritual practice. The history of yoga makes that very clear.

The thing is, though, that up until incredibly recently yoga was a practice that rested on the fringe of society, practiced by weirdos or, worse, the boogeyman (yep, in many parts of India the yogi is a scary, monstrous, not-quite-human type creature who is at best a trickster and at worst totally evil). This means that over time the spiritual practice of yoga has changed dramatically. The goal was always enlightenment (unless you were the boogeyman), but the specifics of what that meant and how to achieve it shifted with the times, either to complement or differentiate from the religious practices of the day.

The most recent transmutations of yoga’s spiritual philosophies are much broader than they used to be, perhaps because it has come into contact with a wider variety of cultures and religions. Instead of prescribing a single method for obtaining a specific kind of enlightenment, it prescribes a few methods for obtaining whatever kind of enlightenment you fancy. An easy image is that of a ladder that can be set up alongside your religious or spiritual practice of choice. It helps you get in touch with your true self and connect to your Source as conventionally religious, atheistic, or new agey spiritual as it may be.

So while we often think of some specific religions when we think of yoga’s spirituality, the truth of the matter is that it’s more than that. Or maybe less. It’s a tool that you can use for your own spirituality, however you define it.

The story doesn’t end there, however, because since a physical practice was added to yoga’s repertoire, it can be even simpler: a practice of physical fitness, allowing yogis to stamp almost all of the spirituality out of yoga. Unfortunately, you won’t get off that easy – to get the full physical benefit of yoga it requires a level of self-awareness that doesn’t exist in other forms of exercise, and if you ask me, getting in touch with yourself means getting in touch with something deeper, no matter how you want to name it.

So at the end of the day, yes, yoga is a spiritual practice. But now you get to define what that means for you, and I think that’s pretty cool.

Speak Your Truth

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I just finished reading Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland, and there was one quote that really stuck out for me:

“No one is boring who is willing to tell the truth about himself.”

What I love about this quote is how it speaks so directly to my two loves in life: yoga and theatre (surprised?).

In yoga, you can’t lie to yourself. Sure, you can try to push yourself farther than you’re actually able to, but that will only take you so far. In the end, if you’re going to have a successful practice, you have to be honest and accept your truth. Your hidden foibles, quirks, and talents will become obvious to you, and if anyone was watching you (like say, your instructor who should be keeping an eye on you), they’ll see it to. Not to make you self-conscious while you’re practicing – that’s really the beauty of it all! Everyone has foibles, quirks, and talents and most of the time we hide and control them with all our might. During yoga you’re free to be honest, to tell the truth about yourself, and to be incredibly interesting.

How about theatre? Theatre is the art of telling stories. No, they aren’t always true stories, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t truth in them. If you frequent the theatre, think back to the last show you saw that had that magical extra something. The show that grabbed your heart and didn’t let go until the lights came up. Why did it do that? Because it was speaking truth. Pure and simple. Whether it was speaking truth with lots of flashy costumes and effects, one person on a stage in a coffee shop, or accompanied by singing and dancing, the play grabbed your heart because it spoke a truth that connects with your truth. And you couldn’t look away.

So speak your truth! You can practice living your truth in yoga, you can experience it in the safety of a darkened theatre, but ultimately, it’s all about bringing your truth off the mat, out of the risers, and into your daily life.

How’s that for a little yoga \ theatre \ life?

Yoga vs. Other Exercise, part 2

I did a post a while back comparing yoga to other forms of exercise, and have since thought of another difference, focusing on the joints and bones.

All weight bearing exercise is good for your bones – it’s that little bit of stress that encourages them to grow all strong and healthy-like. Weight bearing exercise includes pretty much anything where your bones have weight against them: walking, running, weight lifting, and of course, yoga.

The difference between yoga and these other forms is that it is no-impact when it comes to the joints. Not only that, but it actually is thought to increase the natural lubrication in your joints, putting off those creaky hips and knees we all get in old age just a little bit longer.

Yin yoga is especially great for this: it specifically targets your connective tissues and has been shown to increase production of synovial fluid in your joints.

This makes yoga, and especially yin yoga, a great bet for women trying to ward off osteoporosis, people with arthritis, and, well really anyone who wants stronger, healthier bones to last them through life.

Happiness in the Moment

There’s an ongoing study happening using the power of smart phones. Yep, finally someone’s using these things for good! (The only reason I say that is because I still don’t have one, otherwise I’m sure I would think that everything you do with them is for the good of humanity).

The study is an interesting one. It’s called Track Your Happiness, and they have an app that goes off periodically and asks people what they’re doing, if they enjoy that activity, what they’re thinking about, and how they’re feeling. Before anyone starts worrying about the validity of using an iPhone app for a psychological experiment, I’ll point out that before smart phones existed, researches have been giving people pagers or other devices that go off at random intervals and ask them to do something (usually, like this one, to record what they’re doing and their mood, or something along those lines). While there are some drawbacks to the technique, it is a great way to get in-the-moment data from the real lives of your participants, as opposed to asking them how they would theoretically feel in a hypothetical situation.

What they found in this study is that regardless of what people were doing – if it was something they enjoyed or not – they were the happiest when they were thinking about what they were doing in that moment. Happier even than if people were thinking about something else that was positive; distracting themselves from an unpleasant task by thinking about something they enjoyed.

So being in the moment, being present in whatever you’re doing at the time, will leave you happier than daydreaming about the future or mulling over the past.

To me this is one of these sort of magical scientific discoveries that uncovers some of the other-worldly power our minds truly have. The act of being present in your body, in your activity, and in the moment, is an act that will increase your happiness! It makes sense when you think about it – when you think about the past or daydream about the future, what you’re telling yourself is that the present isn’t good enough. That it’s not interesting or fun or challenging enough for you, which by extension means that to a degree you are not interesting or fun or challenging enough. On the other hand, focusing on the task at hand tells your brain that what you’re doing has some kind of value and therefore that you are valuable for doing it. It also makes you more likely to do a good job, another recipe for increased happiness.

So give it a shot! Next time you find yourself daydreaming about something other than what you’re doing, direct your mind back to the task at hand. A great place to try this out, of course, is your yoga practice. Holding an unpleasant pose is the perfect time to send your mind far, far away from yourself, but what happens if you stick with it? Where will you end up?