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.

Listen to Your Heart

Whenever I hear those words, the next ones that pop into my head are “when he’s calling for you…” Being a huge sucker for older pop music, this song holds a special place in my heart (there’s a pun there, I just can’t find it). This time the reference is different – a post that I came across on Trilby Jeeves’ lovely blog. She was reposting from Karl Staib’s Work Happy Now, and this quote jumped out at me:

“Your mind, heart, and cells want to do amazing work. They want work they can get lost in, be so consumed that time ceases to exist. The best way to do this is to find a deeper purpose behind your work. If you are working for the pay check the internal train will stall on a regular basis. There is never enough money to com­pensate you for your time away from things you truly love.”

Yoga: A Good Romance

I think it’s about time for me to tell a little bit of my story and my journey with yoga.

I started doing yoga when I was a teenager, to help my dance training. I was always a little behind the rest of my dance classmates when it came to technique, and I saw in yoga a practice that increased strength, flexibility, and balance. Well, those are three pretty good things to improve for your dance technique! I jumped right in.

Unable to afford yoga studios (although I’m not even sure if there were all that many yoga studios in my suburban town at that time), I bought a videotape of a 30 minute yoga practice and did it almost every day. It was awesome – I loved holding the poses, getting the stretch and the strength. I learned things about aligning my body that I had never learned in dance class. And, since I was doing it at home, I didn’t have to be embarrassed about my level of flexibility. In fact, my family was usually impressed by how far I was stretching so I got a bit of an ego boost from it.

I kept going like this for years. I developed a basic routine that was a mixture of yoga and dance exercises that took about 1-1.5 hours that I did almost every evening during university while watching TV (usually The Daily Show and The Colbert Report). Every once and a while I would take another class at school or elsewhere adding whatever I learned to my home practice.

A wonderful thing happened throughout my years of mindless yoga practice, in front of the TV in my living room, before I embraced a single thing about mindfulness in practice or breath work: my body moved from being an enemy to an ally.

You see, throughout all my years of struggling with nailing dance technique (something that did, in fact, improve with my yoga practice), I learned to blame my body for my shortcomings: any trouble I had in a ballet class was the fault of my stupid body. When my legs didn’t lift as high as the others in develope, when I stumbled through a pirouette, struggled to get into the splits, or fell out of a long-held arabesque, I cursed my frustrating, useless body for the things I couldn’t do.

The thing is, I was no better at yoga than I was at dancing. In fact, with yoga there’s probably even more I can’t do. The difference is that in yoga, that’s the whole point. The goal isn’t to master a pose, but to work on a pose. It’s not to show off how flexible you are but to feel where your limitations are. Somewhere along the line, I managed to embrace this notion without even realizing it. I grew to love the tight feeling in the back of my legs when I do my first forward bend of the morning and can barely reach the ground. I learned to laugh when I fell out of tree pose and to appreciate the beauty of a body in perfect alignment over a body that’s launched itself farther into a pose. I learned to work with my body instead of fighting against it.

That is when I truly began to fall in love with yoga.

13 Things Your Yoga Teacher Won’t Tell You (via Shine)

A great post on Shine (some kind of conglomerate of Yahoo!) about some yogic secrets… I don’t necessarily agree with all of them, but it’s a good perspective. Thanks to Ryan Chaddick for sending it to me.

1. I don’t have all the answers—about yoga or anything else—and I get irritated when I witness other yoga teachers putting themselves out there as gurus, therapists, or doctors.

2. Clean your mat. When you sweat on it and then roll it up and then sweat on it again, it becomes a petri dish.

3. I love teaching yoga, but teaching is torture if I haven’t been able to do my own practice in awhile.

4. Yoga is not a magic bullet or a pill you can take to solve your bad attitude if you’re not prepared to put in the work yourself.

5. Wear deodorant. Look up the Sanskrit word “saucha.” It means “cleanliness.” No one wants to smell you; it’s off-putting.

6. I may be smiling at you when you walk in late and loudly slam your mat on the floor next to your meditating classmates but that doesn’t mean I approve. We all have busy lives but if you arrive late please try to be respectful of me and your fellow students. Start thinking yoga BEFORE you come in.

7. I am not doing this for the money. I could barely make a living teaching you this class, as I receive little financial reward for the effort I am putting into this. So please respect that.

8. I have poses I dread and avoid practicing and teaching.

9. I hate yoga sometimes.

10. When people have matchy-matchy yoga outfits and every single prop, designer yoga mat and accessory on the market, I question what their practice is really about. People, seriously, all you need is a heartbeat, willingness and a little space.

11. It’s one thing to modify a posture if you’re having trouble with it. But don’t just ignore the teacher and freestyle your way through class. That’s rude.

12. I am not a doctor. I ask you about your injuries because they affect your practice. But I am not a qualified cardiologist, neurologist, psychiatrist or podiatrist. So don’t expect me to be able to solve your heart murmur, figure out the source of your mysterious neck pain, or provide counseling between down dog and savasana. You need a doctor.

13. Yoga is HARD. It’s meant to be. Didn’t you get the memo?!

Life

Welcome to the blog portion of my website, chalk-full of musings on yoga, theatre, and life.

Read on!

Yoga vs. Other Exercise

These days yoga is becoming more and more popular as a method of physical fitness. This isn’t really much of a surprise, seeing as it’s gyms and fitness centres that brought yoga to the forefront of Western life.

Because of this, I thought it would be fun to take a moment and compare yoga to other forms of physical exercise one might take part in for the sake of fitness. For the sake of argument, let’s talk about both ideas in their absolute most general forms and avoid getting all nit-picky about specific styles of yoga or exercise.

The obvious similarities:
-Your body is moving
-Classes often take place in fitness centres
-At least a part of the goal is a stronger, more flexible body
-Physical release of stress

The differences:

THE BREATH

Physical exercise: We breath to get oxygen to our muscles. Sometimes we work to control the breath in specific ways, employing techniques like breathing out on the toughest part of the exercise, but that’s about as far as it goes.

Yoga: There are a variety of breathing techniques, ujai breath being the most popular, that allow us to participate with our breath throughout the yoga practice. We listen to and observe the breath, as it lets us know how our bodies are doing and keeps our mind engaged. We move with the breath, letting it bring us deeper into a pose.

THE MIND

Physical exercise: We do whatever we can to distract our minds from what we’re doing with our bodies. We multi-task while we work out; watching TV, reading, listening to music, chatting with a friend, memorizing lines (for the actors out there), or just plain imagining we are somewhere else, doing something different.

Yoga: We keep our mind with our body. Sure, we can practice yoga in front of the TV, and sometimes I do, but then all I’ve really done is spent an hour stretching. To truly practice yoga, your mind stays with your body, observing and noting what’s going on, learning from it.

THE BODY

Physical exercise: The focus is usually on endurance, strength, and body appearance. We can run farther and faster, lift heavier things, and have less fat on our bodies. You will raise your heart rate and work up a sweat.

Yoga: The focus is on having a strong, flexible, healthy container for your prana (life energy). You are in control of how far you go in your yoga practice, so it really depends on you what happens to your body. You may or may not raise your heart rate and work up a sweat, depending on the style of class and how much you challenge yourself in the poses.

Audience Dress Codes

I came across an interesting blog post today on The Guardian about dressing up to go to the theatre, and how nobody does it anymore. Read the full article here.

I’ve got to say, I identify. As a child the only plays I saw were church plays and touring Andrew Lloyd Webber productions (hello, suburbia!), and both were dress-up occasions. In the case of the former, church plays only happened on holidays, and we got Christmas and Easter dresses every year, mostly to wear to these events. When it comes to the latter, not only were we going to the theatre, but it was a famous touring production and we were driving all the way into Vancouver for the occasion. That made it just that: an occasion.

I’m not sure when that sense of occasion ended for me, but I think it was somewhere around university. It was probably inevitable: dragging yourself to the theatre after a 10-hour day on campus to see a play you’re not really interested in but need to see and review for class the next day, ushering because you can’t afford to buy tickets, and dragging your huge backpack along for the ride is bound to kill some of the magic.

Yet it’s still a little sad, don’t you think? Let’s bring the “special occasion” back to theatre. On three!

Dare You – to try yoga?

Want to try out yoga in a non-intimidating setting and support two amazing local theatre companies? Then check out Dare You – a fundraising initiative by Vancouver Theatre Sports League and Pi Theatre.

It’s a pretty cool idea to begin with – you can sign up to be a “Dare-ee” or a “Dare-er”, Dare-ees will perform dares assigned by Dare-ers in one night that promises to be a bucket of fun. Topping it off, they’re holding a silent auction throughout the night with a whole variety of prizes, including (drumroll please…) a private yoga class with yours truly!

Check out the companies and the kind of work that they do, check out the Dare You page, and then consider making a dare, taking a dare, or coming out to watch the pieces fall where they may (and maybe bid on a silent auction item or two).

A Brief History of Yoga

Estimates of how long yoga has existed go back as long as 7,000 years or more, depending on how you interpret the data*. The theory and practice of yoga has evolved many times over throughout that long history, influenced by the religions and philosophies of its time, being refined and changed by its practitioners to fit their needs and bring them further along their journeys.

At this point you can more or less divide the practice of yoga into two categories: Classical Yoga and Tantric Yoga. The majority of us spend our time practicing Tantric Yoga these days, and no, it doesn’t involve any of the scandalous things you are thinking about. Well, okay, it kind of does, but that’s a longer story.

Classical Yoga was all about getting your spirit out of your body as quickly as possible. The story goes that Consciousness got trapped in this reality by mistake, and it’s a big problem. Therefore, everything about this life is problematic, including our bodies, thoughts, sense of self, and the multiplicity that surrounds us. Classical Yoga uses meditation techniques (among other practices) described in the Yoga Sutras to get in touch with the true Consciousness and liberate oneself from this reality. There were no asanas (yoga poses) except one: find a firm, steady seat for your meditation. Enlightenment is the goal, and enlightenment can only be found by leaving this reality and life.

Tantric Yoga arose in reaction to Classical Yoga. It said that this world is not a problem, and that if our consciousness exists in this world, then it must be a function of the same Source and we should celebrate it. Tantric Yoga affirms life and this reality, and seeks to honour the Source in everything.

Eventually asanas developed as a part of Tantric Yoga, in order to prepare the body and mind for meditation, to create a strong physical container for our energies, and to honour our bodies, as they were no longer crippling vehicles to be ditched as quickly as possible, but a part of our connection to the Source. Enlightenment is still the goal, but now enlightenment can be reached while in this reality.

This is hatha yoga (the name for any physical practice of yoga as well as a particular style of physical yoga). Interestingly, this practice that has become so popular it almost completely overshadows all other forms of yoga, is actually the youngest. Depending on how you qualify it, hatha yoga has only existed for a few hundred years!

Before, after, and in between the creation of Classical and Tantric Yoga, there have been many incarnations of yoga, and they keep changing. Recent innovations in hatha yoga include variations like yin, or entire schools of yoga like Anusara, and they keep growing.

This means that no matter what your reason for practicing yoga, and no matter what the particularities of how you prefer to practice, it’s all good! Yoga has been molded by each guru, teacher, and practitioner, and it will continue to change and evolve over time, so follow your heart and where it leads you in your yoga practice.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can just fly in all willy-nilly and do whatever you want, calling it yoga. Just as a true artist, one who revolutionizes the practice, innovates, and touches the hearts of the world, masters the teachings of those who came before them, so a yogi will explore and examine the paths of those who came before them before forging their own path.

*Fun fact about historical research: a lot of it is guesswork based on things like pictures painted on urns or plates. I first started exploring this in theatre history when I learned that what we know about early Greek theatre is pieced together from things like pictures of masks painted on broken urns. When it comes to yoga, there’s an old picture of a man who may be Shiva sitting in what could be lotus position. Could be he was doing yoga, could be he was employing one of the few ways to sit on the floor. Take your pick!