Christina Sell

The Dance of Yes and No

2012-02-10T11:54:00.000-08:00

Well, I had a great time in Virginia. Kelly and I woke up early on Wednesday morning and caught a flight out at 7. We got to Virginia right after noon and had lunch, walked around a while and then my host picked up and took us to James Madison University for the talk I was giving there. It is Eating Disorder Awareness Month and over a year ago, the awesome folks at JMU invited me to give a talk and to teach a class at their school. I expected to be in a classroom with about 15 people there but to my surprise almost 600 people showed up for the talk and we even ran out of chairs. Mostly there were students there but there were also community members and faculty in attendance.

The theme of the evening was about The Transformational Power of Self-Love and it was such a great topic to talk about to that many college-aged kids. I look at self-love like an ongoing practice that we are going to be working with our whole lives because life is always changing and, when we look into self-love as it relates to body image, our bodies are also always changing. So to me, its not a fixed state that we arrive at. Self-love is a relationship, or a friendship with all aspects of ourselves in which we sincerely ask ourselves on all levels - physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually--what we want and need and then negotiate the terms of getting those needs met effectively.

The students paid attention, lots of them had tears in their eyes and a few even asked me some questions. I really enjoyed myself. The next day I taught a class on campus and then a class in town in conjunction with the local yoga studio. We had about 40 folks in the community class which was a lot of fun. The students were so open, sincere and I was struck by how polite they were and how well they listened. They were very sweet and open-hearted which made teaching a joy.

I did feel like I had my feet in two worlds during the last few days, however. I was having some very high and delightful moments teaching and some very difficult and painful conversations with my friends and colleagues who are working to bring clarity to the situation they are in as a community. I am not really sure whether I should write “we are in as a community ” or “they are in as a community” as, I suppose, a case could be made for either point of view.

On the one had, I formally resigned my right to identify myself legally as an Anusara teacher. On the other hand, the last 12+ years of my life have been spent in that community and a piece of paper and some disagreements with policy, procedure, leadership, and certain aspects of community culture don’t sever ties like that so easily. Disagreement is a natural part of life and mature relationships can manage love and opposing views all in the same heartfelt bond. So, like I said, it’s hard to know exactly how to place myself and more importantly, how best to be of service to the people I know and love.

So, as I was in the deep flows of teaching at some very beautiful events these last few days, I was also conferring, counseling and considering some pretty heavy stuff and bearing witness to the confusion, commitment and care that is circulating around the community right now. I have to say that the last few years of my involvement with Anusara yoga have been a lot like that. I have had some of my highest times teaching and some of my most profound personal and ethical challenges sitting side-by-side, sometimes in the same day. I have had more than a few difficult and confrontational conversations with John about topics ranging from ethics, legalities, loyalties, teaching methods, personal accountability, public image, branding, boundaries, organizational politics and so forth. I wrote a lot of this already and I do not want to dredge it all up again but the topic has come up again and people are asking me why I really left.

All those hard conversations eventually led me to recognize a deep and abiding feeling that I disagreed with too many things as they were to continue on in the same way, even though I loved John, was grateful for all I have gained and was deeply integrated into so many aspects of the Anusara community. It was my social life, my professional life and my practice life. Resigning felt like I was ripping apart the seams of my identity and yet I didn’t feel like I could effectively- without harming myself- continue to work for change from within nor did it seem to me that the system wanted to change.

I was living with an ongoing rub of anger and resentment that I couldn’t get to shift. I went to therapy, I went on retreat, I examined my marriage, I changed my diet, I had lots of bodywork and finally I came to the realization that I was angry because I was no longer aligned in the way I was portraying myself. My public persona did not match personal truth and so understandably I felt angry and misunderstood but the real thing is that I was the one keeping the game going. I have looked at this a lot and believe me more than few therapy sessions have been devoted to where that pattern has its origins. Add into that, the fact was that all this stuff was also my job, my social life, etc. and that made it difficult to face the truth because many times the truth demands action.

John himself told me several times that anyone who is not aligned with him should go their own way and so it was a huge wake-up call to own up to the fact that it was me who was not aligned, plain and simple. I disagreed with a lot of things that all added up to the stark and sobering realization that I was no longer able to hold my seat.

Did I know facts about covens, pensions, etc. and fail to expose them? No.

Had I heard rumors? Yes.

Did I mention them publicly? No.

Did I give feedback privately and repeatedly? Yes.

Did I protect John Friend by withholding my suspicion and comments from the public in forums like my blog or other articles? Yes.

Was that right or wrong? Did that enable the dysfunction or spare the innocent? I am still not sure, honestly.

Am I bit upset that my ethics are called into question because of my yoga teacher’s actions? Yes.

The hard thing about secrets and rumors is that they are not always ours to tell and yet once we know them we can become complicit as much by omission as by commission. I am sorting through that for myself. This cycle of events as been the hardest ethical challenge of my entire life. I am sure I made mistakes. If my actions- outright or otherwise- cause you or anyone else harm, I apologize and I ask for your forgiveness and understanding. If you need to speak to me directly about it, please email me or call me.

In my experience, which admittedly is not everyone’s, there have been very few formal channels for feedback in the corporate structure of Anusara yoga and very few, if any, checks and balances. The times that I tried to contribute in that way were painful and unproductive. With so many nuances and domains of relationships in play, it has not been easy to know what is best for me, for my friends and for the thousands of people who are associated with the method, most of which is very positive. Never in my whole life have so many people been so potentially affected by my choices. It is sobering to say the least.

I still don’t know about how best to really speak to some of these issues. When I resigned my legal right to use the Anusara trademark, I kept thinking about how many people run studios and make their livelihood on Anusara yoga and how much I love so many of those people and did not want to hurt them of give them a problem as a result of my choice. What’s a tricky thing to really look squarely at is that when John Friend was riding a popularity high all those years and and his reputation was good, we all benefitted from that and in some ways- not all ways- but in some ways, made a method that revolved around him and capitalized on his good name. And if our success is hinging on his good name, the hard thing is that the opposite sits close by as well. It’s hard to get one without the other, it seems, when it comes to esteem by association.

I think the cool thing that can happen now for the community is that it can begin- if it chooses to- to make some distinctions between the man and the method, the teachings and teacher and the practice/principles vs. the personalities involved. I don’t think it will be easy or quick and I think the road ahead will be fraught with difficulty. That being said, I think it will be a worthwhile process to engage.

All right- thanks for listening. I am very aware that my viewpoint is just that in and in NO WAY do I intend this to speak on behalf of anyone else.

More soon.

Hungry For What is Real

2012-02-09T19:31:00.000-08:00

Hey, here are a few clips from the talk I gave last night at James Madison University. There were almost 600 students there, which was really awesome. I had such a great time and loved talking to an entirely different demographic of folks none of whom were dressed for gym class. Such fun.

More son.

Yoga From the Inside Out Webinar Series

2012-02-07T14:52:00.000-08:00

Well, for years now, people have been asking me to talk about my first book and to discuss body image issues, yoga and practical ways to transcend the grip of these difficult issues. I am headed out to James Madison university to give a talk on the topic tomorrow and as I prepared my presentation, I realized that it was finally time to offer a short course to people who might be interested in exploring these issues for themselves, outside of a yoga classroom. I have always been a bit reluctant to talk directly about body image in a public class for a lot of different reasons. (I mean, think about it- Joe is there to get a good stretch and my theme is all about loving your body and letting go of cultural stereotypes, etc. Not that Joe couldn't benefit from that but seriously, it would probably be too much for the average Wednesday night hatha yoga experience. Just sayin.) .

Each week I will present a topic, open the floor for questions and sharing and offer some journal assignments, creative and practical suggestions to incorporate into the upcoming week. My wish is that the online community we create can be a support structure, an inspiration and a forum to look through the veils of our self-limiting beliefs and behaviors and to step into a new possibility of deeper self-love and self-acceptance.

Here's some more info:

Yoga From the Inside Out: The Transformational Power of Self-Love

Webinar Series with Christina Sell

February 22, February 29 and March 7

7:00-8:00pm CST

Tuition: $75

Regardless of a person’s actual body size and shape, many people are plagued with negative feelings about their bodies that affect their self-image and self-esteem. For some, these negative feelings result in eating disorders while other people live trapped in chronic patterns of dieting, self-criticism and self-doubt. Join author and international yoga instructor, Christina Sell, for a series of informative and inspiring talks about how negative body image can be recognized and transformed through awareness and self-love. Whether you or someone you know is struggling with these issues, this series will shed light on the important underlying issues related to self-defeating patterns and will offer practical suggestions, practices and tools for establishing new behaviors and beliefs.

Participants will need a copy of Christina Sell’s book Yoga From the Inside Out: Making Peace with Your Body Through Yoga, an unlined journal, a box of crayons, an open heart, a curious mind and a sense of humor and adventure. Each session will involve lecture, Q&A and journal questions.

For information, please email me at christinasell108@gmail.com.

To register, please visit- http://tinyurl.com/7t5k4du

Shadow and Light

2012-02-04T20:17:00.000-08:00

Well, we have been in the throes of Teacher Training for three full days now with 8-hour days so its been pretty consuming. We spent a lot of time this weekend on sequencing strategies- like I mentioned last post- and the work seems to be paying off. Today, I had the students work together to make sequences building toward a peak pose, integration repetition of shape, linking of a key action and utilizing progressive teaching methods. I gave them a worksheet to guide their preparation and to help them organize their thoughts and plan their sequences. Then they practiced the sequence they planned with each other and did some fine-tuning work on it. This was an experiential exercise to model how important it is to teach from our own experience. Authenticity is such a big topic these days as it relates to teaching yoga and there is no better way to be authentic relative to a sequence than to have worked with it firsthand to see where it is strong, weak and give ourselves a chance to sort out the kinks.

After that, the students taught the sequence to another group who then taught their sequence to the first group. It was a wonderful process and the trainees did really great with it. It was also fun to see how their individual teaching styles are really emerging. And because we have a small group I am able to really give a lot of personal attention to the trainees which is fun for me also. All in all I am enjoying the intimacy, comradery and maturity of this group.

It is so amazing to me how every training group has a unique flavor and personality and how much I enjoy being with every group I get a chance to be with. Its such an amazing thing to start a week not knowing anyone and end a week feeling like we have shared a very meaningful and sometimes multi-dimensional journey together. (of course this group is not brand new to me by any means.) Like I so often say, teaching these trainings is rich, rewarding and challenging work. I enjoy it immensely and I also suffer it a fair amount, truth be told. I am passionate about the subject of yoga, about my practice, about the craft of teaching, the challenges of learning, the psychology of both the teacher and the students and the dynamic process involved in engaging the study of consciousness in and through the body together. In fact, I live with a kind of divine discontent relative to this particular dharma as the task at hand is very difficult and multi-dimensional.

I was talking about it this morning to Kelly as we drove down to San Marcos for Day 3 of the training. As I have been reading through various blogs about current "yoga news and controversy" of which I am evidently a part, based on more than a few comments that I read, I have been thinking a lot about the distinctions between public and private lives, between personal and professional ethics, between non-harming and truth-telling, between need-to-know, right-to-know and want-to-know and how difficult it is to surf those tides in an elegant and dignified way now that social media dominates our lives and blogs and Facebook are considered "news sources." And since, as a yoga teacher, the majority of what I am teaching rests on my own experience, my own interaction with, assimilation of and reflection on my life as a yoga student and practitioner, there is no doubt about it-- the line between personal, professional, private and public gets more than a bit blurry most days.

My therapist recently talked to me a bit about archetypes and how, if we function under an archetype like teacher, doctor/healer, or artist, then we run the risk of being consumed by the archetype. (Think of Marilyn Monroe, Janis Joplin and you get an clear picture of artists who were consumed by an archetype.) We were, of course, talking about me, who lives many hours each week operating under the teacher archetype. So, like the good therapist she is, she was interviewing me about how often I relax that role, drop that mantle and allow myself to not have the answers, to be called on my bullshit, to own up to my frailties, to allow others to counsel me, etc. She asked me pointed questions like:

When is the last non-yoga related vacation you took?
Do you have friends who do not do yoga?
What do you do- really do- for fun?
Do you write things that you do not share with anyone else?
etc.

I am sure you get the point.To make matters worse she used a haunting phrase about a very prominent celebrity who she felt "cannibalized her own life for her fame" and while was met with great success, seemed to have become a somewhat empty shell of a person. My dad often says that a good minsters job is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable and it seems that is the role of a good therapist as well. We are knee deep, she and I, in a discussion about how persona and public image can be in service to Self or it can be a detriment. Persona can be so false that it is misleading and downright inaccurate. However, when used skillfully, persona can create a buffer-- a necessary and intelligent boundary so that we are not consumed by the archetypes that so strongly influence our passions and proclivities.

I have long talked about how easy it is to believe our own PR as teachers. I thought about how fun it might be to actually write a bio for a workshop that told the truth. For instance my bio might read: "Christina Sell, known for her sharp, sarcastic and sometimes-hurtful wit, is often fiery to the point of too-intense and opinionated to the point of arrogance. Clear, precise and passionate, she suffers from deep insecurities that often cause her to worry obsessively about what other people think and over-compensate through extreme competence and overwork. She also talks too much."

But no, the bio actually reads something like: "Christina Sell has been practicing yoga since 1991. She is the author of Yoga From the Inside Out: Making Peace with Your Body Through Yoga and My Body is a Temple: Yoga as a Path to Wholeness. Christina is the 2012 Art of Asana columnist for Yoga International Magazine and a regular contributor to Origin Magazine. She is a faculty member on Yogaglo, which provides online global access to yogic wisdom. Known for her passion, clarity and creativity, Christina's classes are challenging, inspiring and dedicated to helping people of all ages experience the joys of yoga practice and conscious living." Blah, blah, blah.

So, the thing is that both bios are true. Its not an either-or proposition and that is exactly my point. Truth is each one of us, in our humanity, in our condensed divinity, is both shadow and light. I am certainly not suggesting that we go around making ridiculous self-disclosures and airing our dirty laundry and personal issues publicly in the name of transparency and truth-in-advertising, but I am saying that we have to, as teachers, keep one eye on that shadowy material lest it consume us while we are busy believing our public image and basking in the love that our seat so often affords us.

enough on that tonight. keep the faith.

The Same River: Do and Do Not

2012-02-02T19:35:00.000-08:00

We started Level 2 Teacher Training down in San Marcos today which was really awesome. I love this group and as much as I am hosted well and welcomed in so many studios across the country, I really, really, really love teaching in my own space. Something in me just feels relaxed, happy and well, at home. So it was awesome to just dive right into the material.

In some ways, Level 2 is a lot like Level 1. We go over a lot of the same teaching skills and yet its also a lot different. However, in Level 2 I add in more variables, more layers and more direct teaching practice and make the trainees work a lot more. So it is the same and different. Anne, my very smart philosophy professor sister, told me that the "you can not step in the same river twice" is actually misquoted. Evidently, Heraclitus said that "we both do and do not step in the same river twice" which is a very different contemplation.

In some ways, life is the same. On one level, its another day, another dog pose. The poses are always there, the same poses, day after day. And yet each day is also different. We are different, our bodies are always changing, our emotions are in flux and so on and all of these variables play a part in determining how we experience the constant of these ever-present postures. We meet similar challenges in life off the mat as well and yet, hopefully, we are changing and learning how to respond more optimally. We may be faced with our own samskaras and patterns again and again and yet each time we circle back around with deeper awareness, clarity, compassion and self scrutiny, we get an opportunity to be different in relationship to what is arising.

For many years, I really thought I would be able to bypass that circling back around to what seems at times, an endless well of conditioned thoughts and behaviors. I thought one day, I would just be magically free of my neurotic tendencies and patterns. But as time has gone on, while somethings are really no longer problems for me, in a lot ways I think the main thing I can report is that I simply feel less troubled by the repetition of certain issues. They still come up- its the same river. But I see them differently- it is not the same river. I have learned how to be less identified with everything I think and so a lot of those thoughts which used to become long stories and dramas fraught with lots of emotion and the impulse to take action, are often just thoughts arising from the river of thoughts within.

Of course, the currents drag me down and have their way with me also- I am no saint or siddha. I am just happy that I no longer believe everything I think. Anyway...

Tonight the group did a lot of work in the teaching practicum with basic articulation skills and then adding in the observation, demonstration and adjustment/refinement/correction task. It was great to see how far the trainees had come since last time we were together and to also get a sense of where we can work this week and what to hone in on.

I spent a long time delivering a sequencing lecture and filling in the discussion about the General Template. In Part 1 I gave a very basic talk about how to plug poses into the template in a general way that follows a certain flow and organizational strategy. In Part 2 we layer that template work with the specific task of preparing for a peak pose utilizing the repetition of shape, key actions, and insight into progressive sequencing within the entire class design as well as with the various individual postures in the sequence so that difficult poses are progressively taught and presented. At this point the discussion is far from basic, which makes it very interesting indeed.

We closed the evening with the closing mantras, which was awesome. It's such a great way to end a session- praying for others and offering a traditional chant as a way to make our work be aimed toward higher principles and aspirations. We started this practice during our last week in Tucson at the Path of Practice Intensive. I really loved closing the day in a formal, ritualized way and so I taught it to the group here, who took to it right away.

Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah

Sarve Santu Nir-Aamayaah |

Sarve Bhadraanni Pashyantu

Maa Kashcid-Duhkha-Bhaag-Bhavet |

Om.

May all Beings be happy.

May all be free from sickness.

May all see and experience what is auspicious.

May no one be unhappy.

All right then. More soon.

Onward

2012-01-27T08:10:00.000-08:00

After our amazing week in Tucson, Kelly and I drove up to Prescott, Arizona for a few days to visit the ashram there. Kelly has a lot of patients in the sangha and local community so he did some consultations and treatments while I spent lots of time talking to my friends and generally being in the seat of "friend and sangha mate" as opposed to the seat of "yoga teacher." As usual, the time there was rich, multi-layered and provided lots of food for me. I will be digesting for a while, I think.

I have lots on my mind and heart just percolating around and none of it feels exactly reading for public consumption right now. I spent some time online following a bit of the wake of my friend Amy Ippoliti's decision to stop using the Anusara trademark to describe her work which gave me a lot to chew on as well. I feel inspired, saddened, reassured, etc. by the outpouring of commentary on her blog and others. Amy and I have been friends for over ten years but fell in love with each other a few years ago and I count her now as one of my closest friends and colleagues. She is visionary, hard working, sincere, funny, irreverent at times (which we know I love and enjoy), smart and courageous. Like me, Darren, and Elena, she has chosen to formally withdraw her legal affiliation with Anusara yoga and follow her heart in both similar and different directions.

What I am mulling over is the very interesting times we live in where the boundaries between our professional and personal lives are often blurred, where private lives are often made public, and how much commentary and sharing of all kinds is made possible through the conventions of social media. I am also really interested in exploring how the themes of authenticity, vulnerability, and transparency interact with elegance, dignity, obligation and the multi-layered truths of duty to self and others.

One thing I know for certain is that there is no rule book for any of this. I think living and teaching is, in many ways like asana. We study the forms of the postures, we study the actions required to perform the pose, we study the common misalignments associated with the position, we practice the component parts, we train ourselves in right action, we do these things over and over again and we practice. And, the thing is, then there is the pose. Even knowing all that we know, we will find that when we get in the pose, we still need to make adjustments. Even if we have performed everything as best we can we still need to adjust and respond. Mr. Iyengar calls this reposing. Finding repose in the pose so that we can, at some point, learn to reflect on the experience of being in the pose and respond to what the pose is telling us directly. And then we will need to adjust. And we may even need to raise our hands and say, "I know something is off and I can't see my own pose clearly. Help me!!"

I could go on about this idea forever because the asana practice is always such rich metaphoric soil to till. But in the asana of living, I think study and practice is key. We need to study ourselves to know where our misalignments are likely to come. Are we greedy, selfish, self-hating, too critical, undisciplined, too casual, too trusting, blind in our faith, etc. We need to study who has travelled the path before us and see if we can learn from their experience.

And yet, no matter what, we are going to have to actually do it. We are going to have to get into the messy business of life, make our choices and then listen, respond and chose again how best to proceed. Our truths and their resultant actions are going to affect others. They are going to have their feelings about it. That is only lawful since we are in the business of personal relationships. I think its a learn-as-you-go process, no matter how careful, cautious or sincere we are. I am convinced these days that Life is the Teacher and while we have help, guides, teachings, teachers, and practices to help us see clearly, we are, as yogis on the path of direct experience. Our moment to moment experience, when met with repose and skillful responses in alignment with our values is what we have.

So, in a day and age where so many folks are scared and worried and playing it safe, I love to see bold acts of courage in the name of vision and high aim.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

-Theodore Roosevelt

Today I am on my way to Minneapolis for the weekend to hang out with Laurel von Matre and her gang at Yoga Garden. I have never taught there before and we have been planning this for quite some time and I am really looking forward to it.

more soon.

School of Yoga Week One

2012-01-24T07:56:00.000-08:00

Well, it was a pretty amazing first week all in all.

Both Darren and I shared with the group and each other that we had our own variations of anxiety during the week prior to the intensive. I suppose the reality that we were stepping more fully into our seat and into the project we have taken on began to land in reality and not so much in theory. And like I have been writing about a lot lately, many times these kinds of thresholds are accompanied with emotions of fear and inner messages of doubt, like gargoyles that make us face ourselves and pay the price of honest self-scrunity and self-examination before experiencing the gifts and opportunities that live on the other side of the threshold. In facing fear, we develop courage. In hearing our own doubts and yet forging ahead, we develop perseverance. Like so many qualities of heart, the virtue we need lives in seed form in its opposite expression. And in these cases the only way out is through and the only way to the higher virtue is through the threshold itself.

The cool thing is that for both me and Darren, it was obvious that once we stepped into the work of the week we found ourselves enjoying the teaching, the group and each other more than ever. For me, I have always loved the work of the intensives and immersions but this week was really something different in both content and context. I did not expect the quality of my experience to be so radically different but I have to say I have never felt so at home in my skin, so relaxed in what I was presenting, so curious about the group I was teaching and so aligned with myself. In many ways, the week was both a culmination of my cumulative experience and training as well as a new beginning.

I think the thing that I loved so much about the week had to do with our aim of making the teachings relevant to the people in the room and keeping all of the larger concepts grounded in experiential exercises. I felt like we gave manageable chunks of theory and practice and provided what could actually be absorbed and digested. I watched the group have profound inner shifts and insights with relatively little breakdown in the process.

We used a model of self called the Quadrinity Model to identify the different aspects of who we are. We talked about how the School of Yoga is aiming its work on the harmony between the parts of the being-the physical, the intellectual, the emotional and the spiritual. We worked on clarifying aims for each quadrant of being and how an aim in one part should not be at the expense of the other. The conversation was rich, full of texture, grey areas and the tacit understanding that being human is not easy and that finding a way to live authentically in harmony with ourselves is a life's work. Yoga asana is one tool of integration and we worked with that while incorporating other pragmatic tools and methods as well.

We talked a fair amount about the power of ritual and ceremony and we started each day with an invocation to Ganesh, the singing of the Guru Chant which we are using as an invocation in School of Yoga and the Gayatri Mantra and a puja. It was amazing to me what taking 10 minutes to do formal ritual can do for me personally and for bonding a group. We closed every day with the offering of our prayers through a convocation or closing mantras. Many people shared that the puja was one of the most meaningful parts of the training for them.

We kept the asana focused on the level 1 syllabus and in the "hard work in the basics" which was awesome. We didn't push to big poses at all but we went very deep in the alignment and the relationships between the postures. We explored the outer alignment a lot and covered very simple unifying actions of inner alignment. We worked a lot with the shapes of the postures and how much gets accomplished in skillfully executing the shapes relative to one's actual capacity. We spent a lot of time building for work in inversions and the whole week laid a tremendous foundation for the physical practice.

The students did lots of journal writing, some art work with mandalas, small and large group sharing, learned mantra, pranayama, basic meditation techniques all with emphasis of developing a life of practice relative to one's true and authentic aim. The thing is there is no School of Yoga prescribed way to be. There are techniques we can teach and community we can share but really, the School is about offering a place to connect to one's Light and to explore ways to uncover it more fully and to express it more radiantly. That is going to look very different from person to person and it starts by having a place to come and just tell the truth about where we are at with ourselves and each other.

And all in all it was an incredible week.

Enjoy the pics.

Live the Light of Yoga: Lineage

2012-01-24T07:10:00.000-08:00

Check out Meg's Post on Day 4 and 5.

Live the Light of Yoga: Lineage

Enjoy!

Live the Light of Yoga: Ritual

2012-01-21T20:00:00.000-08:00

Here is the link to the blog about Day Three!

Live the Light of Yoga: Ritual

Live the Light of Yoga: Light, Articulation, Aim

2012-01-20T20:52:00.000-08:00

Here is a blog entry from Whitney from yesterday's session. Enjoy!

Live the Light of Yoga: Light, Articulation, Aim

Live the Light of Yoga: School of Yoga is in Session, QUESTIONS???

2012-01-19T20:28:00.000-08:00

Check out Heather's blog entry form the first day of School of Yoga:
Live the Light of Yoga: School of Yoga is in Session, QUESTIONS???

As It Is and the Messy Glory of It

2012-01-15T17:45:00.000-08:00

I am on my way from Athens, GA to Tucson, AZ for a few days before we begin the very first School of Yoga Intensive. I am pretty excited about this program because it is the first program that did not begin as an Anusara yoga program and get converted to a School of Yoga program. I have had no problem with that either and I have been immensely touched and moved by so many people's unwavering support of my shift out of Anusara Yoga but this program is the first full program we have scheduled that will begin under the School of Yoga banner with its own unique curriculum. AND- it is is SOLD OUT. So that is very cool.

The first part of the program is obviously modeled after the Immersion but will not follow the Immersion curriculum. the emphasis will be on direct, personal relationship to practice with an emphasis on asana but with an introduction to mantra, pranayama and puja. As time goes by we will be incorporating teachings from the Vaisnava bhakti traditions of India as well as relevant teachings from tantra with an emphasis on tenets of Baul sadhana and what Lee called Enlightened Duality. I have been consulting with my mentors and teachers and we have some cool things in store. I am excited about it and so excited to reunite with so many students who have already been in our trainings as well as meet the students who felt called to begin the journey of this new iteration of my teaching work and our journey together.

I had an amazing week in Athens, Georgia with the teacher trainees. This training, like I mentioned in a previous entry began as an Anusara Teacher Training and had the unique distinction of being my last training as an Anusara Yoga teacher. It was great to continue the work and to take it directions that connected more to my own teaching methods and ideas- all of which can be applied to Anusara- but not all of which I learned directly in Anusara. In general, I am enjoying the creative freedom and the Possibility it all holds.

Of course, its not all unicorns and rainbows. I have found this transition to be a mixed bag of emotions, with clarity coming at a cost and gain sitting right beside loss. It's also a bit of uncharted territory to examine for myself my own thoughts, feelings, observations, criticisms and ideas and to know when, what and how best to communicate them, if at all. I find the current yoga climate at times a bit daunting to interface with at times. Continually I am struck by the irony of how "identified" we become with our various methods and non-methods of yoga, all of which is ostensibly about dissolving the hold that such identifications have on us. For instance I have experience a kind of identitity-death now that I am no longer defining my work by the same name, culture, group, etc. that I did for the last 12 years. I have started almost every class I have taught for over 12 years saying the same thing- "My name is Christina Sell. I practice, study and teach a method of yoga called Anusara Yoga..." Somewhere along the way, that became part of my identity.

When I realized that I was going to resign my formal affiliation with the Anusara system and surrender my legal right to use the trademark to describe my teaching, I felt as though I went through a very real tunnel or portal or threshold where I could feel those identifications tugging on me like psychic but actual tentacles. Some even had voices that sounded a lot like "You are nobody without that", etc. It was one of those most powerful initiatory experience I think I have ever had because while I was feeling the pull of the identifications in full effect, I was also aware of them acting on me and I could see them for what they were and I was able to offer a response from a Higher Perspective of knowing. I knew that in my truth, I am much more than those labels and associations and so is my yoga. And weirdly, something inside me was born, or perhaps honed, in the fire of that portal, that interestingly enough, is absolutey required for life on the other side of the portal, for life free of those identifying labels. A great reminder that, once again, the process makes us ready for what it has in store for us.

When I was writing Yoga From the Inside Out, I interviewed Lee. My first question was about what role a positive body image played in spiritual work or in sadhana. Lee was remarkably astute about psychology and in general wanted all of us to be well-adjusted with healthy functioning egos. So I expected him to launch into something about how important it was to have a positive self- image and he surprised me. He said, "Nothing. Positive body image has nothing to do with spiritual life whatsoever. Spiritual practice is aimed at Reality and not images. Now, if you want to ask me what a healthy body has to do with sadhana, that I could talk a bit more about."

And he did. He went on to say that having a healthy body was advantageous because sadhana is rigorous, demanding and when the kundalini shakti is activated, it is helpful to have a strong vessel to contain and channel its force. (Be clear, he said, helpful and advantageous. He did not say required. It is not required, nor did he teach that we should be body and health-obsessed or anything remotely like that. And he was always railing against the folks in the community who thought another cleanse would help their sadhana when generally greater self-honesty, deeper compassion for self and others and/or unrelenting service was what would actually be of the most assistance to one's awakening. He encouraged us to care for our bodies mostly so they were strong, bright and non-problematic. But I digress.)

So, in the same way that a healthy body image and a healthy body are different things, so too yoga, while it may improve our self-image, is not actually aimed there. Or it is not aimed there only. It is, I believe, most traditionally aimed at what lives beyond those kinds definitions and images of who we are, even definitions such as "I am a ______ yogi, not a __________ yogi" and "I am a _______ yoga teacher not a __________ yoga teacher." I suppose, we are even aiming beyond being identified with being "yogi's" at all, although these labels, like everything have their uses and benefits.

For instance, sometimes claiming a certain label for a period of time can help shift us considerably. For instance, when we are stuck in an addictive process, claiming the reality of being in addictive cycle by identifying ourselves as addicts and saying "I am an addict" actually helps us engage the recovery process. Until that point, there is no hope of recovery for most. So, in that way, the label is very useful. The identification serves. However, if 10 years down the road being an addict is all we feel like we are, what was initally helpful may actually have become problematic.

Also, I believe that clarity around one's clan is very helpful. I believe many of us have spiritual families and have certain karma to fulfill with one another and a certain dharma that exists relative to a lineage and to a Teaching and to the community that is constellated around certain ideals. No problem there. We are all going to have preferences and likes and dislikes and places where we feel at home more than others. All that is as it should be.

I even have no problem with insular communities. Lee always said our community was an insular community. And he offered absolutely no apology about it. It was by design. He never wanted the community so big that he didn't know everyone's name. Plenty of new people would visit the ashram and be like, "What is wrong with these people? They are so rude and unwelcoming." The truth is, its just that most folks weren't friendly according to conventional rules of social interaction. Spiritual community is a spiritual contract and not a social contract, after all. And because we all understand the connection to one another as eternal, we are fairly conservative about who joins the club! My point is, none of that is a problem in and of itself. Its more problematic, I think, to say you are friendly and open when you are not because all kinds of issues arise based on the expectations such a claim implies.

And I do think that we have self-esteem issue galore in our country and many of us come to yoga to get some help with that and I am all for that. Like sadhana needs a strong body, it also requires a strong and stable sense of self in order to sustain the necessary efforts over time. I am not anti-ego or anything like that. Honestly, it takes a strong ego to admit fault, to examine our shortcomings, to claim our weaknesses and to compromise, to sacrifice, to serve others and to claim our place in a lineage, within a community and the more we feel we deserve the dignity the path offers, the more naturally we will align ourselves in those ways.

Anyway, I had a point when I started writing, but mostly, this is more like a plea for us to lighten up a bit and check in to see if our yoga- no matter what we call it even if we are actually actively NOT calling it anything- is building walls or breaking them down. True practice does not isolate us. True practice will make us more tolerant, more forbearing and more accepting of ourselves and each other. And that does not mean we have to agree or to not ever criticize or see everything the same way or even think everything is good. Looking for the good (in my world at least) is an affirmation of non-duality and can exist in the midst of scrutiny, discernment and the realities of what is as it is, here and now in all the complicated and many-times messy glory that that implies.

Jai guru!

Athens, Georgia

2012-01-10T18:39:00.001-08:00

I have had a lovely few days of down time here in Athens, Georgia. I decided to come here straight from St. Louis mostly to save money since the round trip tickets for one weekend was more than half of what it cost to put 5 legs on one ticket. However, once I thought about it, I realized by doing a month-long trip instead of individual round trips, I would be able to have some time off before each teaching engagement. So I took a few days to rest, catch up on some writing and indulge my new found obsession with Grey's Anatomy. Seriously, I had no idea about how good that show is until I stayed a Brigette's house in St. Louis and watch a few episodes. Highly addictive.

So, I found out today that the 200-hour and the 500-hour program curriculums I submitted to Yoga Alliance were approved. So that is exciting news. Look for some program listings in 2012 and 2013. I am very excited about the programs and about moving forward into this next phase of creative expression and sharing. We are a registered school that teaches Hatha Yoga. On the application I defined School of Yoga Hatha Yoga as a "precise approach to asana with a heart-centered approach to spirituality that incorporates pranayama, mantra, meditation and contemplation." So there you have it.

Graduates would be certified by School of Yoga to teach Hatha Yoga, which is a fairly wide-open designation to work within. I am sure as time goes by there will be all kinds of details to sort out regarding how to manage the whole thing but for now, we are maintaining our stance that we do not want to create a method that needs to be trademarked, managed or defined. We want our graduates to be well-trained and empowered to offer classes, workshops, trainings of their own-informed by their studies with us but not limited to the curriculum we design.

I have lots on my mind these days and it's a bit tough to really know where, how and if to dive into it. I have been feeling a bit exasperated by certain streams of conversation around and about yoga these days and I am not so sure that ranting about any or all of it would be al, that useful. And I have this sneaking and suspicious feeling that my views are not necessarily going to be loved by all. Ah well, that seems to be my dharma these days.

One current thread that several people have asked me to chime in on has been the recent New York Times article on yoga being injurious. I actually find it shocking that it got so much press. But then I remember that we are talking about a mass media piece, not a piece that goes out to an audience that is educated about yoga. So in the name of education, I do have a few comments.

The first piece of education I have is for the new yoga teachers who feel worried about what people are thinking as a result of an article. Typically, as a result of their worry, these folks are rushing in to defend, explain and justify and reassure people- not just about yoga and how safe it is, but about their own involvement with yoga and their own credibility- lest people doubt them personally because New York Times induced general doubt about yoga.

Let's be clear- we do what we do as teachers because we believe in yoga's efficacy and it's transformational power. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NBC, CBS, Oprah, Sting or any other mainstream endorsement won't make it more powerful nor will their criticism make it less so. Yoga, as a path, has stood the test of time and that is what we are representing, in my opinion- the tradition. Yoga is riding a bit of a popularity high right now and it's is easy to get a bit addicted to that. It's all the rage and everyone loves it and therefore loves us as teachers. Chances are, this popularity high will fade, maybe in part, because of injuries like NY Times described and because there are consequences to taking an esoteric, specialized set of skills into mainstream applications. That is not about yoga, that is about the modern culture of mainstream yoga.

I am about to say a few things that may sound cavalier and that is not how I mean them. I am not cavalier about injury and I take safety seriously. I am into it. Big time. And having said that, before we talk much more about injury though yoga we have to remember that inactivity is probably the greatest source of chronic pain we have as a culture. Lay around all day for years and you better believe that your body is going to break down and be in pain. Also, not one physical activity we do is risk free. Runners have joint pain, tennis players have elbow problems, cyclists get back pain, gymnasts have bone fractures, swimmers have shoulder issues, and so on.

And the more extreme we get in the pursuit the riskier the activity. For instance, many fitness runners have no problems with their knees until they decide to train for a marathon. And the same goes for yoga. The further we travel down the syllabus into the advanced postures, the riskier the postures can become. So if you are going to go for advanced poses, make peace with the fact they have risk. Major risks. They are not inherently safe and just because we can do some things, does not always mean that we should. And while alignment is essential for mitigating the dangers inherent in the risky forms- and risky depends on who is doing what pose since for some touching the floor is a danger zone and for others nothing started to get challenging until much later-- we have to remember that alignment has several aspects to it.

In Anusara John talks about the 3 As- attitude, alignment and action which were the 3 A's of Anusara and also referred metaphorically to the three domains of the being as well as the three domains of practice: heart and will, mind, knowledge and understanding, and body which includes ones actual capacity to perform the posture and the required actions of alignment. We may want to do the alignment (attitude) and we may know the "right" way to do the pose (alignment) and lack the strength and ability to execute it (action). Or we can do it physically, we have the will and desire, but we haven't actually learned how to turn the key in the lock of the pose. And so on. The variations are endless and while alignment is the answer in a sense, knowing how to apply alignment is not easy, takes a long time, requires a lot of study, practice, trial and error.

And so to really learn how to do a lot of the yoga safely requires a kind of learning environment conducive to the challenge an investment of time and money is required. And it's going to be boring to many. I mean seriously, I've watch a lot of boring demos to learn a lot of what I know. So, it's not that compassionate sounding, I know, but to expect to learn, to be safe, to never be injured and to also expect an entertaining workout that gives you your personal space to express yourself, is kind of unrealistic in my opinion.

I mean, really, As much as I love a good, crowded and sweaty flow class with the music going and all that, not for one minute do I think that particular environment provides the optimal situation to really understand the postures, the alignment, the nuances. (not grinding an axe about flow, not at all. After all, alignment-oriented, demo-based classes do not always provide the same conditioning effect or the same kind of mythic, ritualistic means for self-expression. Not better than or worse than just examining different learning environments.) To have a keen understanding requires keen study and to expect and "doing" environment to provide a "knowing" relationship to the art and science of asana practice.

All right I could say more, but my two cents is spent for now.

St Louis

2012-01-06T21:36:00.000-08:00

I am attempting to wind down a bit after teaching tonight here at Southtown Yoga. It was a great night with a full house and many awesome yogis in attendance. The Friday night class is always such an odd thing for because it is a bit of a "getting to know you" kind of class. The students are new to me and my teaching style and I am new to them and what their abilities and knowledge. So, even though I am always really excited to be in town teaching a new group and I am always thrilled to have the opportunity to serve in this particular way, I never feel at my best on Friday night.

Over the years, I have talked to several of my friends who also travel and teach and they have told me they generally feel the same way. And over time I have gotten more accustomed to the circumstance and less affected by the fact I find it a bit awkward. Anyway, tonight I mentioned it to the group while we were in the middle of the class-- kind of without thinking about it-- and one of the students asked me why I felt that way. So I gave the whole rap and then it was the end of class before I knew it and any feeling of "getting to know you" weirdness had long disappeared. The group was warm, welcoming, attentive, well- trained and a pleasure to teach.

The title of my class tonight was Friday Night Lights and I worked with hip opening and we did some major leg stretching and we ended with pranayama and meditation. One of my favorite topics in teaching is this consideration of Light. I never tire of talking about how we might access our own inner light and establish ourselves, through practice, in the truth that is already, ever-present within us. It's kind of an ironic and paradoxical situation we are dealing with in yoga. On the one hand, the teachings tell us that the light of our heart is always shining brightly, it cannot be affected by circumstance, it can never be diminished or extinguished and so forth. And yet, paradoxically, we need to practice in order to recognize that, in order to stabilize our relationship to what has been true all along.

Lee talked a lot about his over the years. He said that enlightenment was essentially an accident. All practice did was make us accident prone. He said enlightenment was a gift of grace and we couldn't actually earn it through practices although we could and should practice to increase our resonance with its Influence.

And on a more personal note, if we bring these teachings down to earth and even to a psychological level, we can consider that no matter what has happened to us or no matter what we have done to others, no matter what harm has been done to us, and no matter what harm we have caused others, nothing separates us from the Light of the Heart and from the spark of divinity that resides within us. And yet, truly, in now way should we take that teaching to mean that anything goes and that our actions have no consequences. That would be ignorance. Someone recently used the example of money- you can take a dollar bill, crumple it up, stomp on it and even send it through the washer, and still that dollar bill maintains its value. So, too, as we examine our own history and the ways we may have been crumpled, stomped on and put through the rinse cycle more than a few times and still we remain valuable.

My dad's favorite and oft-quoted Bible verse comes from the book of Romans. In Paul's letter to the Romans, he gives a similar message and telling the Romans that nothing can separate us from the Love of God in Jesus Christ. Again and again, various traditions are pointing to these central truths that who we most truly are, where we most truly reside is not affected by circumstance, cannot be destroyed, is not ours to give away nor is it anyone's to take.

So, like I said, I never tire of this topic.

New Year's Eve

2011-12-31T18:57:00.000-08:00

Well, here I am on New Year's Eve, finished with my dinner of curried veggies and basmati rice and settling down with a cup of tea to relax a bit and unwind. My plans for the evening are pretty simple- drink this tea, write this entry, maybe watch a little TV and then hunker down with my book and get to bed early. I know it doesn't sound like a thrilling evening but it sounds completely decadent to me!

We have had two great days of strong asana classes here in Tucson. We started the first day with me teaching a class on the Four Pillars of Advanced Back Bends. This is a notion I learned about through George Purvis who is an awesome Senior Iyengar teacher, currently teaching in Dallas, TX. IN a workshop with him a few years ago, he said that Mr. Iyengar said one time that there are four pillars for advanced back bends: urdhva danurasana, kapotasana, dwi pada viparita dandasana (with the head down) and mandalasana. So we worked with this as a structure for the opening class.

Given that theses are the pillars, one could consider that they are like the gateway, or that they live on the threshold of more advanced postures. Now, truth be told, its easier for a lot of people to get into a semblance of eka pada rajakapotasana than kapotasana, but for many of us in that category, you will also see that we are not able to sit firmly against the floor in eka pada rajakapotasana and therefore our backs are not bending evenly which over time might compromise the quadratus lumborum and so on. So its not that other poses can not be achieved without these four pillars in place, its just that these four poses, when executed well, indicate that one is prepared well to go beyond them. That's my understanding at any rate.

So, we talked about these poses as the poses that live on the threshold of the advanced postures and how this intensive comes at the time of year when we are the threshold of a new cycle and so we contemplated the theme of threshold on Day One. Darren and I talked about having recently walked through a very intense threshold and that it held some very surprising lessons and outcomes that could not have been predicted from the other side of the gateway. And even more than that, I could see that the insight could not only not have been predicted but actually could not have even been known on the other side.

I think, truth be told, that is what the threshold is all about. I mean, in some way, transformation has this unknowable aspect to it. It may be an overused metaphor but the one that always comes to my mind has to do with how the caterpillar becomes a butterfly. There is a stage in the transformational process where the caterpillar is not a caterpillar anymore and it is certainly not a butterfly yet. It is in the in-between-stage of things, in a, shall we say, threshold, kind of time. It is in that time that doubt, worry, insecurities and fears arise. When we no longer have a grasp on the things we have always known to be true- about ourselves, each other, the world, etc. that we are the most vulnerable to fears' many voices. What if it is always like this? Maybe I never should have walked through the gateway of this change. Maybe there is nothing on the other side. Who am I if I am not what I was. Who will I be? What if I don't like it? etc. etc. etc.

So the gestation process takes its own time. It can't be rushed. We must, like the caterpillar persevere for, like the caterpillar, we must be undone in some way. The new must be formed from the dissolving or disillusionment of what used to be and there is no way to make the process happen one second faster than it takes.

And the metaphor gets even better because the coolest part is that, after the period of gestation, after the the caterpillar is formed inside the chrysalis it is finally ready to spread its wings and fly, right? No. Turns out that in order to become strong enough to fly free as a butterfly, the newly formed creature must actually break out of the chrysalis all on its own. If we were to try to break into the chrysallis and help the butterfly out, it would be crippled for life and unable to fly. It is in the breaking out of the shell that the strength is formed to actually be what it is meant to be.

I think the threshold place is like that in inner work also. Whenever I have walked through a certain kind of change or empowering shift, it was the walking through, the leap of faith, and the process itself that was the teacher and the agent of the shift or change. If, for instance, the process was never scary, how would we learn the depth of our courage? If we were never at risk of being betrayed, how would we understand trust? We can not, for instance, ever learn patience quickly. Patience only has meaning when something takes a long time to manifest.

So skill in the threshold is the thing-- We can cultivate faith in the face of fear, confidence in the face of doubt, etc. And one great way to get this teaching integrated physically is to practice hard poses. Every hard pose is a threshold training- uniquely designed to knock us out of alignment and to take us to an edge where something old is revealed and something new gets a chance to rise up within us. And the real fun starts when, in a threshold moment off that mat, we remember the Teaching.

One of the things Lee said one time was that we can know how our sadhana is going by observing where we turn when we are in crisis. Do we run to old patterns or do we turn to the Beloved? Do we take refuge in fear and patterned behaviors or do we see refuge in the the company of seekers? Do we look to society to validate our inner life or do we take refuge in the truth of our hearts and the wisdom of the teachings that we study and practice? And its not some kind of all-or-nothing game because he also said that we are not responsible for our first thought, only our second thought and our resulting behaviors! Part of this game is simply knowing our tendencies when we are in the threshold. That kind of clarity and skillful observation can move inner mountains.

So my point is that I do not think that hard poses necessarily make us more able to live in our hearts off the mat. It's no guarantee at all. Nor do I do think hard poses make us better people or that being stiff or tight makes us less spiritual or any such nonsense like that. I do, however, think that hard poses hold in them very potent lessons and since those lessons come to us in and through the body, the lessons get integrated in such a particularly powerful way that it might just give us a slight advantage in remembering the truth of the teaching when we get knocked off our center or when we are on the threshold of growth and change off that mat.

So like that.

The Eve of Tough as Nails Soft as Ghee workshop with Christina Sell, Noa...

2011-12-27T19:14:00.000-08:00

Last year me and Darren and Noah sat around the fire at Darren's house talking about the weekend intensive that we would be teaching:

One funny part of the story is that the whole reason we even had a fire last year was that Darren and Bronwin had a gas leak at their house that day and so the gas was totally cut off the first two days of our visit. It was really cold in Tucson - okay maybe not if you are from Boston or Wisconsin somewhere but keep in mind I am from Austin,Texas, Darren is from Tucson, Arizona and Noah lives in Los Angeles, California. So we built a fire and spent the evening cozied up in the living room talking about what we hope to achieve over the weekend.

It was kind of cool that there was some hardship for us to deal with that night because we were preparing a weekend of some intentional hardship for the students. Its not like a masochistic thing or anything like that-- its just that each of us believe in and resonate with a certain kind of intense environment when it comes to our preference for practice. So we sat there, envisioning a weekend that had what we call an "old school" kind of rigor. Darren and Noah and I are great friends and we love to laugh and have a good time together but what we all actually share is a definite passion for intensity when it comes to asana practice and spiritual work.

That shared passion for practice goes back to our early days when we met through Anusara Yoga during what we refer to as "The Inner Harmony" days. Those were the days when we thought 50 people in a room with John Friend was crowded. Back then no one knew what Anusara Yoga was, there were very few committees, no real emphasis on certification standards, hardly anyone travelled to teach and small hubs of serious practitioners were planting seeds of good alignment though heart-based practice and fiery devotion in their local communities. It was a golden age and still lives in my heart as a touchstone for what transformational opportunities exist when people come together to practice yoga with intensity, sincerity and focus.

Anyway, its hard to believe it is one year later and that we are preparing for another intensive. I set a lot of intentions and goals for myself last year and many of them came to fruition. Some came to fruition in straightforward ways- like my book was released in June. Other intentions manifested in unpredicted ways like the birth of School of Yoga, which I had not planned on. I suppose whenever we deal in intentions there is a bit of a wild card aspect to the game. As many of you know, I call that the fine print. At any rate, its been a very full year internally and externally. I am in the full-spectrum of feeling right now as the calendar year is ending and a new one is beginning. I am looking back with some grief, looking ahead with anticipation. I am feeling loss, relief, excitement and joy. My primary intention for the year is to be vulnerable to the many shades of experience life is offering me. I believe its in that vulnerable approach to the fullness of life that I am at my best as a student and a teacher.

I suppose that's the Soft as Ghee part of the intensive to me- the vulnerability. Lee talked about that a lot. He said, we had to be vulnerable in order to feel His Influence in our lives, because it was through that kind of sensitivity that we would be able to access the subtle aspects of what he was offering. All kinds of things cover up that vulnerability like addictions of all kinds, rigid adherence to dogma, self-righteousness, judgement of self and others and even self-hatred. Of course, there is the Tough as Nails part also to cultivate. To me that has to do with discipline and decisive action when a course is set. In terms of sadhana, we have to be tough in the face of the doubts and inner demons that seek to sabotage our hearts longing and desires. As always, its both aspects, the same way its both aspects when we work in asana.

I am definitely looking forward to this year's intensive. We have over 50 people gathering from across the country to ring in the new year with 6 hours of asana each day with me, Darren and Noah. We have new friends joining us as well as long time students who are coming. So being with everyone is going to be great. I mean, really- anyone who thought an intensive called Tough as Nails-Soft as Ghee would be a good way to spend a three day weekend over New Year's is my kind of person . Also, its always just good clean fun to teach with Darren and Noah, who are like brothers to me. There's really just nothing like it. Its a highlight for all of us for sure.

More soon.

Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T20:48:00.000-08:00

I had a really great Christmas Eve today.

I got up, met Gioconda for a yoga class at Pure. I was laughing to myself that even though I, myself, do not want to create a trademarked yoga system, I am thoroughly enjoying the benefits of the Bikram system these days and finding a lot of insight from my involvement with the well-trained teachers at Pure. More on that later.

After class we left and went to BFree where Gia was teaching at 10:00. So I got a chance to take two classes today and to spend some time with Gia which was fun. Also fun was to see a bunch of folks at class and to enjoy just being in class and sharing in the love of the practice on a holiday weekend. The folks at BFree are so open-hearted, accepting and fun. Shelby and her teachers have created a great culture there and I always love taking classes at BFree. It was such fun for me to roll out a mat and be with everyone. I really needed it.

After class I came home, ate lunch, took a shower and finally finished unpacking from my time away in November earlier this month. I had come home and went right into teacher training and have been dealing with business and family time and its taken me this long to actually finish unpacking completely. And Wednesday I leave again. Whew.

I have been processing a lot of personal feelings and emotions these days and reflecting a lot on the year which held more than a few surprises for me. It's probably symbolic that it's taken me so long to unpack from that last trip because in a lot of ways, I suppose I have also been unpacking the last few months of decisions. Not only have I had a chance to look at my own personal feelings while I have been home, I have spent a lot of time processing with other people this week and clarifying relationships, boundaries and what moving forward in my various relationships looks like.

Lee talked a lot about relationships and I think that his teaching in the domain of relationships was one of the hallmarks of his Work. He said, more than once, "Its all about relationship. That is it. How do you think are you going to be intimate with God if not through the intimacies you create and cultivate in your human relationships? God does not exist outside the domain of your interpersonal relationships." He said other things, too, that probably contradicted that but well, thats the nature of a living teaching- its paradoxical and so all sides can not always be seen at the same time. (Or like Manorama says, "In yoga, we have to keep our eyes on the opposite." Whatever we are focused on as "truth" in one moment has another side that also has its own truth. But, that's a bit of a side trip for what's on my mind tonight.)

Forward momentum and forward movement are what is on my mind tonight and the ways that the path is both charted and uncharted territory. Certainly, people have walked the path before and can steer us clear of certain pitfalls if we let them (charted) and yet some mistakes are necessary for our learning and growth and it is absolutely guaranteed we are going to make mistakes on the Path (uncharted). One of my mentors recently told me that not only is it certain we will fall down repeatedly but that some days, "all we will be able to do is simply forge ahead in the name of what we hold sacred."

It's actually a very interesting process, this "forging ahead." As I reflect back on the year and look forward into a new one, the expression seems very apt. So much of what I am doing is an organic figuring it out as I go along and simply trying to surf the wave of my choices, my vision and what is my dharmic task. In a later conversation with my mentor on the same subject, she and I got to talking about how, as I am forging ahead and stepping up to new challenges and opportunities, my fears, doubts, and insecurities are also arising. It's as though they are gargoyles that are guarding the entryway to the next phase of growth and development and trying to keep me from entering, etc. We talked a lot about how that is normal and predictable and yet she gave me a really cool nugget to chew on relative to that process.

The thing is, she explained, that hidden in all of that dynamic mixture of excitement, doubt and so on is also a call for honest self-scrutiny. There is also the clarity of the soul, at every new level, reminding the seeker that the stakes are higher, the obligation is greater, the opportunity is bigger and the demand is more meaningful as one progresses. In 12-step communities they used to say that the road narrows in a certain way. Yes, we expand and grow our capacity and all that and yet, there is more of a razor's edge quality and not an a wide-road anymore.

So relative to those gargoyles coexisting with the call to clarity, my advisor said, in her experience of 30+ years on the path, that at each new level, its all there. The souls' impulse for clarity will come through the entirety of our being, sweeping along with it our neurotic tendencies of the mind such as doubt and fear, and our emotions like sadnesses, angers and so forth. It's all there, not just the easy, inspiring and Light-filled stuff. And while we need to make sure that we see the thoughts and emotions for what they are, we also need to make sure that we do not skip the soul-searching that this "sweeping through" is inviting us to. The soul is always begging for clarity and so its the "going through" of those things that is the work on self, not the bypassing of the discomfort. It seems to me that these pockets of discomfort hold the keys to shifting to new levels of consciousness. It is the very real work of experientially examining our places of discomfort and sifting through it all that they hold--the dark and the light, the joy and the pain, the agony and the ecstasy- that gives us the fuel we need for transformation and self-realization. I mean really, can we Realize the Self, without actually realizing all the stuff that lives in those nooks and crannies? Doubtful.

So- I suppose I should tie all that into the solstice and how its a going into the darkness time of year and with the birth of the Light, the days getting longer and the Sun/Son here at Christmas......but I think that's enough for now! I did have a fun time going to church tonight with Mom and Dad as I do love songs about Jesus and Christmas and think that the Christian faith is so very beautiful. On some other blog I will spin a yarn about that and stories of Krishna but for now, let's just wish ourselves a wonderful holiday. May the full spectrum of experience take each of us into deeper intimacies with ourselves and with those we love.

Wednesday Morning

2011-12-21T07:56:00.000-08:00

Well, I am up, I have done my morning practices- japa, pranayama, meditation, chanting and puja- and am sitting down with a cup of chai to write a few thoughts before my day gets underway. First of all, I want to everyone to celebrate with us on January 3, 2012 at 9:00 am which is the official birthday of School of Yoga.

If you live in Central Texas, please come and join us in San Marcos for a cup of chai, a short invocational puja (prayer ritual) and an all-levels group asana practice.

Here is a picture of the flyer. You can also get a copy online. And if you have any questions about the event, just send me a note via email or Facebook and I can help you out. The event is free, it will be fun and I mostly just want a community-based way to recognize the formal beginnings of this very exciting new chapter in my life which I also hope is a new chapter in your life in some way.

Speaking of the big picture of the new chapter, here is a short clip from what my astrologer said about the date she recommended for our official birthday:

The rising sign is Capricorn which is good for building organization and the star is "Shravana," which is the abode of the Vedic rishis and spiritual enlightenment. It is the modern constellation of Aquilla, the Eagle and is embodied in the three syllables of the mantra "A-U-M." It is auspicious for spreading spiritual knowledge, especially through the media. It relies on divine guidance and the channeling of higher wisdom. It is the abode of Lord Vishnu, as the preserving force in the universe -- preserving ancient knowledge, authentic knowledge, integrity, connection to the true source of life, listening deeply, and the bodhi tree of enlightenment.

Jupiter and the Moon sit together in the 4th house in Aries, which creates a combination known as "Elephant/Lion Yoga," bringing the strength of the elephant and the skill in getting what you want of the lion. It also connotes wisdom, royalty, fearlessness, and respect from all directions.

January 3rd is the 10th day of the growing half of the Moon, during the Vedic month of Paus -- which is all about nurturing the growth of something and is symbolized by the wheel of progress. It is also called, "The Prosperous," and "The Accomplished (Siddha)." January is the "growing" half of the year and 9:00 am is right as the Sun is ascending in the sky.

All in all, I think it's a great day. There will be a lot of work, I have to warn you. And sometimes you may have some conflicts with jealous people. But in my opinion, this day allows for the grace of your Guru and lineage to flow through protecting you from any annoying obstacles.

I'd celebrate the day with a Ganesha Puja and Sarasvati Puja -- as Ganesha, Sarasvati -- and definitely Lakshmi rule this chart.

Speaking of the particulars of the new chapter, I have been hard at work on the curriculum and applications for our registration with Yoga Alliance and its all going well. I am very exciting to be incorporating new program materials, resources and carrying over the best of what I have learned so far.

I have A LOT of questions and inquiries about School of Yoga and certification and so forth and what my vision is for that. Here are a few thoughts- some specific, some more general:

My vision continues to be that we are a school as opposed to a new style. Some of that has to do with my opposition to trademarks and other attempts to own yoga. Some of it also has to do with what seems to me to the impossibility of actually making what is the result of my life and learning-- which is unique to me -- into a system that others, with their own life and learning --which is obviously unique to them- could teach accurately, consistently and authentically.

Obviously, I have my style of teaching and so does Darren and so will everyone else who learns from us. I am not against personal stye, in fact I am very much for it. There is an important resonance that happens in part through personal style that is at the heart of the teacher-student relationship. I hope that, to the degree that my students find my style effective that they will emulate it in a natural and authentic way and give me respectful credit.

I am also very much for a systematic approach to education. I am interested in offering content-based trainings so that teachers have the information they need to be knowledgeable about the asana, the tradition, the philosophy and practices. I want teachers to be informed teachers, not just charismatic teachers. What I am philosophically opposed to is the thought/idea/fantasy that after you digest the teachings from me and my life experience that you would/could/should see it like me and be able/willing/interested in doing that in your sphere of influence.

For instance, when John teaches themes he doesn't link a feeling word straight up with a key action and an adverb at all. He just teaches as himself and generally stays with a central message as he conducts his class. Since he is an inspiring person, his classes are inspiring. However, in order to make the use of themes part of a reproducible system with consistent standards, all that other stuff comes into play, to varying levels of efficacy, in my opinion. Same like in Iyegnar Yoga. Long time students of that tradition say things all the time like "The only person really teaching Iyengar Yoga is BKS Iyengar." Everyone else is actually teaching what they learned from the people who learned from him.

Be clear, I am systematic by nature. I have educational training in creating experiential systems and formulas to help bring esoteric concepts to life. In fact, I have a masters degree in that. And I believe I have demonstrated my ability to get results and to train people to become what I consider very fine yoga teachers. But even still, there is no way I can imagine being able to training someone in Christina Sell Yoga, even if I called it a fancier Sanskrit name and trademarked it. And even if I could train someone to teach Christina Sell Yoga, the task of training someone to train someone else to teach Christina Sell Yoga seems fairly improbable.

I believe that the teachings filter through each one of us in both similar and unique ways due to our life experiences, temperaments, karmas and dharma. And while I want my students who teach others to utilize and benefit from my work, studies and practices in every way possible, I do not want to create a formal system for others to follow and to have to legally or ethically comply with. I want to teach the principles behind teaching others, not just create content for people to teach. I will certainly have a style about the way I do that but School of Yoga is not a "yoga style" as such. We will not be creating endorsements for other people to teach School of Yoga Programs any time soon. We will, however, in the near future offer some graduate courses and trainings on "How to Teach Effective Teacher Trainings" and in "How to Lead from the Heart and Soul" and so on.

Hopefully, these distinctions are getting clearer, not muddier.

And while graduates will not be able to offer their own trainings in the School of Yoga Style they will be able to say they are certified through our school at the 200-hour level and at the 500-hour level, registered with Yoga Alliance, and we will list their name and affiliation on our website, etc. They will be trained with the context, knowledge, skills, resources, and inspiration to offer their own classes, workshops and trainings and to make their own contributions as they are able.

The thing is, I mean it when I say that its a new paradigm and the people involved are going to be a bit like pioneers in the project. We have had the last decade in the world of yoga be full new styles, trademarks, trends and corporately-driven yoga to the degree that a new "yoga style" is expected. I am interested in shifting the conversation around that and banding together with people who want to usher in a new wave of yoga education. This is not an "anything goes, do your own thing and its all good yoga" kind of training though. I like and believe in rigor. I would be dead without discipline, make no mistake. This is not a softer, easier way. But it is going to be a great ride for sure.

Here we go!

Level one Teacher Training at the School of Yoga San Marcos with Christi...

2011-12-18T20:32:00.000-08:00

We had a full 4-days of teacher training in San Marcos this weekend. I was so happy to be teaching in my own space and initiating this new cycle of my work with such an awesome group of people. The group was intimate, kind, generous, funny, smart, profound, insightful, exacting, dedicated and sincere in the best ways imaginable. I was really moved by their work and bolstered by their support, enthusiasm and receptivity. It was four long days that brought out the best in us all, I think.

There is such an interesting thing happening in my schedule right now. In October I resigned from Anusara Yoga but the majority of my teaching work is teacher trainings right now- all of which began as Anusara programs but are continuing under the School of Yoga banner, which has been very exciting. I think it would be one thing to have resigned and be sorting out what this un-planned-for-transition meant for me as an asana teacher and the whole resulting set of challenges- use a theme or not? Use the UPA language or not? how much to talk about all the things I learned from John? How much to include teaching stories from my time with him? etc. But teacher training straight off the bat really takes it up a notch beyond all that. It has required such a clarity from me right away and some serious soul searching about skills and attitudes I really think are important for teachers to have and how best to create experiential training exercises to teach those skills. I have had to get off my routine of how I train people to meet the demands of the Anusara labyrinth and dive into the freshness of the immediate circumstance with each group and respond as authentically and skillfully as possible. Its been quite an amazing process for me and I feel like I have grown by leaps and bounds every day.

And that is just in the technical domain of offering these trainings. Personally, its a whole other thing to see my students stand for their practice, their relationship to yoga and to me, in a new way. I have talked about it a bit before but as a trainer in a system that is popular and "in demand" as product in the marketplace it was really hard to know if people wanted to study with me, or wanted Anusara hours or some combination of both. I recognize that Anusara is a marketable item and therefore Teacher Trainings in the method that"count" towards certification are sellable and in demand. And I think that is totally fine and I have no problem with that. All of that makes perfect sense to me as I was once an aspiring certification candidate who was counting hours and fulfilling requirements and so on. So I get it. And having said that, it has been the most amazing, heart-warming, affirming and humbling experience to look out into a room and see that people want to train with me and not just train in the Anusara method.

In fact, it has been such a powerful experience that I am going to say it right out loud: I wasn't sure that would be the case. I honestly did not know, in my heart of hearts, that people really wanted to learn from me, Christina Sell, and not just get Anusara training and hours that "counted" toward their career goals. (And again, it's not that I blame anyone for having career goals, because I don't. I have plenty of my own. I am talking about me here, not the students in or out of the room.) Being me, Christina Sell, and looking out into a room of people who are stepping away from the safety of conventional boundaries and certification standards and going into unknown territory with me AND trusting me to teach them and guide them has been the Number One most empowering, frightening, humbling, thrilling, demanding, affirming, lovely and enlightening experience of my life to date. Honestly, words don't describe it. And I have been trying. But one thing is for sure, the profundity of the situation is not lost on me.

We spent a lot of time on the basics this weekend and I implemented teaching techniques I have never tried before and I found the results overwhelmingly positive. The power of the basics and the potency of simplicity is staggering, really. The more I train teachers the more I realize how much we need to just back the whole thing out to the majestic challenge it is to get people into and out of well-aligned postures. And that one simple-sounding task is full of such rich terrain in terms of the skills, perspectives and insights it offers. The theme for the weekend was "Foundations" and that is what we focused on. We laid A LOT of groundwork that we can work with in the Level 2 training. I kept thinking of this weekend's work like creating a scaffolding that we can hang embellishments on later. Once we have getting into and out of postures with an clarity and an economy of words mastered, its a lot easier to fill in key actions, themes, and various other creative strategies.

All right, thats it for tonight. More soon.

School of Yoga- San Marcos Spring Intensive

2011-12-17T20:42:00.000-08:00

Save the date ya'll! You are not going to want to miss this program.

The Light of the Teaching, The Joy of Practice

Intermediate-Level Asana Intensive with Christina Sell

& Introductory Sanskrit Studies with Manorama

March 21-25, 2012

Join Christina Sell and Manorama for five days of asana practice, meditation, pranayama and Sanskrit studies. This intensive is perfect for anyone wishing to deepen their asana practice and dive more fully into the teachings of the yoga tradition in an intimate, inspiring and personal setting. Christina and Manorama, both known for their practical wisdom, clarity and passion for traditional teachings are teaming up together for the first time for what promises to be a life-changing week. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn, grow and live in the Light of the Teaching!

Tuition for the full program: $575

Tuition for Sanskrit Studies= $200 Tuition for Asana with Christina= $400

Register online through www.sanmarcosschoolofyoga.com

Questions? Please contact us at info@schoolofyoga.com.

Christina Sell is a student of Western Baul Master, Lee Lozowick. She is the co-founder and director of the School of Yoga. She is the author of Yoga from The Inside Out: Making Peace with Your Body Through Yoga and My Body is a Temple: Yoga as a Path to Wholeness. Her teaching style is intensive, passionate and clear. For more information about her, visit her online at www.christinasell.com

Manorama is a world recognized leader in the field of Sanskrit & Yoga, Manorama tours the globe training students in the Path of Luminous Shabda. Luminous Shabda brings Sanskrit, Meditation, and Yoga philosophy together to bridge sacred teachings into every day life for the purpose of Self-fulfillment and authentic happiness. Manorama's style is one of earthy charm, which is supported by deep scholarship and humor. She is a graduate of Columbia University.

Daily Schedule:

Wednesday, March 21

9:00-10:00 Registration and Orientation

10:00-1:00 Asana Class with Christina

3:00-5:30 Asana Class with Christina

Thursday, March 22

9:00-9:45 Pranayama, Meditation and Chanting

10:00-1:00 Asana Class

3:00-5:30 Asana Class

Friday, March 23

9:00-9:45 Pranayama, Meditation and Chanting

10:00-1:00 Asana Class

3:00-5:30 Asana Class

7:00-9:00 Satsang with Manorama

Saturday March 24

9:00-9:45 Pranayama. meditation and chanting

10:00-1:00 Asana Class

2:00-6:00 Sanskrit Studies with Manorama

Sunday, March 25

8:00-8:45 Pranayama, meditation and chanting

9:00-1:00 Sanskrit Studies with Manorama

3:00-5:30 Asana Practice with Christina Sell

HOME

2011-12-13T21:44:00.000-08:00

I am writing in the car the way home from our month-long sojourn in Arizona. I am tired and more than a little inspired by all that transpired. (look at that--tired, inspired and transpired...3 words ending in -ired one after the other! But I digress. I must be tired- one sentence into my post and I am already digressing with parentheses. Oy vey. Wish me luck ya’ll. Or maybe I am just channeling my guru who wrote extra-long run-on sentences with lots of commas, comments and commentaries in parentheses when he wrote in his journal. Of course, if I was channeling him I wouldn’t be writing on a blog since he thought the internet was the antichrist and so he would never write a web log which is how I prefer to say it since I do not like to turn the word “blog” made into a verb, but now I am really digressing... can you say vata-deranged?)

The last time I went to Arizona was in October, when Darren and I resigned from Anusara mid-way through week number five of what began as a six-week Anusara Yoga training. When I left home for that trip, Kelly looked at me and said, “I have a feeling its going to be a big week for the two of you.” Well, as we all know by now, his comment proved to be a bit of an understatement, to say the least.

When we knew we would be resigning, Darren and I talked a lot about whether or not we should cancel the final week of training or bring in other Anusara teachers to teach the final week and finally we came to the conclusion that we would just forge ahead and teach whoever came back. We didn’t know what would happen, what exactly we would and could offer the group or even whether or not people would sign on for more training with us, without our certifications.

But here is the thing that Lee always said about serving a function in “the Work.” He said to really serve, we have to commit ourselves internally before we see external outcomes. (I am not talking here about blind leaps of faith or rash impulsivity. Generally, in cases such as I am speaking of, there are some signs and signals already pointing the way to go. The ideas is that if we commit to a course of action, follow through reliably and hold the space with the same degree of excellence, attention, and dedication for 1 person that we would for 100, then the Work serves us right back. It is not always going to serve us back by more giving us money or more fame or more outer validation, but make no mistake, he said, if we serve the Work, it will make sure that we are taken care of. So Darren and I followed through with that principle, stayed the course and committed to teaching the training to whoever came back.

And lo and behold, the students came back! An overwhelming majority of the group stayed the course for the training, committed to something that was only in seed form and in so doing, became the first graduating class of the School of Yoga. Being able to list these pioneers as our first graduating class fills me with pride and joy because they, individually and collectively, ushered me and Darren through a pretty amazing transformational process this year. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house as we spent another week diving into our hearts, digging around and reclaiming the gold of who we are and who we can be when we are in such good company. A “certification” seems a small thing to offer back to a group of people who served me do deeply and yet, at the same time, I know its a big thing also. And after what we went through together, no way will I discount it or minimize it.

In some way, I suppose that was a bit of a personal theme for me in terms of really stepping into the fullness of my role without discounting it or minimizing it or indulging grandiosity, for that matter. I was personally in a bit of a spanda throughout the week with my own capacity to live in the wide-open vulnerability that such faith and trust inspires and requires of me as a teacher and a practitioner. When Darren and I left the ashram in October with the direction to formally forge a new teaching path, my mentor, Mary, looked me square in the eyes and said, “Get ready to upscale your practice. This will require more of you.” She is one of those intuitive people whose comments generally teeter on the edge of prophetic. Seems she, as usual, was on to something.

The cool thing is to really think about it all as a process of conception. Back in October, right when we resigned, an idea and a vision was conceived that has continued to take shape and grow inside both me and Darren and among the community of folks close to us. Since the “conception” in October there has been a lot of growth and development in the works personally and collectively. The school has a very real Heart beat, a most definitive backbone, a strong nervous system and it is already pulsing with vitality and possibility. I made a comment that last week’s training was kind of like a “baby shower” because I consulted my Vedic astrologer for an auspicious official birthday for School of Yoga. She recommended a date to me and I am proud to announce that the School of Yoga will be born officially on January 3, 2012 in Austin, TX. (We will be coordinating celebrations across the world at that time so stay tuned for how to join in and wish us well.)

I say all of this simply to say that the week in Tucson was radical. As always.

Entering the Heart of Yoga 2011 Teacher Training with Christina Sell and...

2011-12-12T18:34:00.000-08:00

More reflections to come in the next few days.

In the meantime, enjoy the show....Congratulations, graduates!

Live the Light of Yoga: The Quiet Night is Over

2011-12-11T18:56:00.000-08:00

The School of Yoga has a new blog!

Visit us, hear our theme song and join the conversation.

Live the Light of Yoga: The Quiet Night is Over:

More to come.

Authenticity

2011-12-08T18:45:00.001-08:00

Well, its been a very full month so far. Kelly and I came down to Tucson Monday and had a day to regroup before me and Darren started our training on Wednesday.

It's a really unique experience, this training. We are on week six of a six-week process that began in January as an Anusara Immersion and continued on in August as an Anusara Yoga teacher training. As so many of you know, half-way through our second week of Teacher Training, Darren and I resigned our Anusara certifications. So we have a room full of people who started with us in January with one thing in mind and who are finishing following unforeseen circumstances.

We have an amazing group of students who are sincere, dedicated, sweet and hard-working and who held a compassionate, encouraging space for me and Darren in a time of turmoil only a few months ago. It has been wonderful to re-connect with them, to be together again and to forge ahead out of one paradigm and into another. Darren and I have been a bit unsure this week about how much to talk about what happened and what we feel like is next and how much to just stay with "business as usual." I am mindful that the process of our decision making already has taken a lot of time from the groups' formal teacher training and yet when we checked in with the group about it, one thing that was so amazing was to hear them reflect to us that our transparency about our process was actually "teacher training" of a variety that is pretty hard to find. Very reassuring.

So I find myself in a steep learning curve these days as the transition from "certified Anusara Yoga teacher" and "community leader" is morphing into something else entirely and I am learning the ropes of how to live fully as a "voluntarily de-frocked yoga activist sage" as one of my Facebook friends recently called me. Anyway, I have had, as one might predict, some great victories and some misses and mistakes. One recent "miss" had to do with a lack of sensitivity at a workshop.

In retrospect I would have managed certain things more skillfully had I been aware of the fact most of the people in the room didn't know I had recently resigned from Anusara! I assumed everyone knew what had been going on but they didn't. I could've been softer and sweeter about it than I was. (I suppose in that way, it is business as usual! Anyhoo...) Also, I am with me and my news and my process every day and the rate of growth and change over the last few months has been rapid. I wasn't really tuned into the fact that this was the first time people would be hearing the news or seeing me and they were not up to speed with the process. Again, softer and sweeter might have been better...

The cool thing is that the path I am on is not a path where mistakes are not allowed. Mistakes and misses are part of the process of growth and change and being afraid of making a mistake is a kind straight-jacket to have to live in all the time. The cool thing is that being a yoga teacher invites a lot of feedback of many different flavors from a variety of sources and its always useful to reflect on what is being said as a way to refine and grow. As yoga teachers we tend to live a lot of our lives in public and so our mistakes are public as are our victories and triumphs. And because of that, feedback is a way that Grace has to communicate with us and to teach us. Lee used to say that "all feedback is neutral" even if it was meant by another in a harmful way. It's our relationship to the message that determines its meaning and value. We can run amuck in either direction-- seeking praise, avoiding criticism, buying into the critiques too much and fueling self-hatred, etc.-- and we always have ample opportunities to fall off the razor's edge of yoga in either direction.

We spent some time talking about that this morning in class. One of the class members shared a bit about how she worries her personality isn't "acceptable" as a yoga teacher since she is strong-willed, opinionated and outspoken. (And no, this was not me sharing!) It was such an interesting thing because on one hand, as yoga teachers, we have the opportunity to refine our personalities in certain ways and to cultivate ourselves according to certain virtues so that we can effectively offer the teachings to a wide variety of people in broad-ranging circumstances. However, we also have the opportunity to be authentic, individuated expressions of The Influence (I wrote about this a while back) and by being true to ourselves, give other people permission to be authentic and true to who they are. All that is great. I am totally into that.

So here is the thing- not everyone is going to like our truth. Not everyone we teach is going to share our outlook, our sense of humor or our values and ethics. (As an example, I once- and only once- dated a man who did not think I was funny. It was horrible. Shocking also, because how could you not think I am funny? I mean, really. Hello... But I digress.) My point is that just because I am being true to myself does not mean people are going to like it. In fact, I once had a 12-step sponsor who told me, "Christina, if at least 10% of the people in your life are not mad at you at any given time, you are probably not telling the truth."

And as soon as we are "too much" for one person, another person is going to step in and love our intensity. And as soon as we are "too honest" for someone, someone else is breathing a sigh of relief that we are finally talking about the HUGE elephant in the middle of the room. As soon as we try to be "compassionate and sweet" someone else senses we are fake. As soon as we are "cheery and positive" someone is doubting our clarity and depth. This goes on and on and on and at some point, we get to really see that people not liking our "individuated expression of Grace" is not necessarily cause to change. Sometimes, of course, it is. And sometimes outer success and popularity at the expense of our wholeness is just not worth it.

However, having said all that, I do believe that most feedback that comes our way is worth looking at squarely before we accept or deny its validity and take or not take action on it. And choosing to shift our personality expression as teachers may be a choice in the name of a higher service which is totally different than shifting from the childish perspective of wanting to be popular, well-liked or approved of.

Once again, context is everything.

Anyway, we spent some time today outlining our vision for the School of Yoga and our future course offerings: Look for a 200-hour program in Tucson in 2012 (which, if you have any inclination to do make sure you call Rachel at Yoga Oasis because its filling up!) and an additional 300-hours being offered in 2013 and the first part 2014. I have some cool programs planned for San Marcos next year and will start a 200-hour program in Texas in 2013 with the additional 300 hours to follow. As we clarify and evolve that vision I will be posting more about all of that. And even though I do not want to be a "system", I want to be clear that I have plans to teach an awesome curriculum in a very systematic, orderly way so its not a mishmash of random information. We have been consulting with several experts in the field of yoga, education and anatomy to craft a top-notch program of the highest caliber. So stay tuned for details!

Christina Sell teaches a Yoga workshop in Flagstaff, Arizona

2011-12-07T05:12:00.000-08:00

The Practice And Decision Making: Q&A with Christina Sell

2011-12-06T07:18:00.000-08:00

Here is a recent interview done with Bay Shakti. Enjoy!

The Practice And Decision Making: Q&A with Christina Sell

by FREDO on DECEMBER 6, 2011

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Editor’s Note: After Christina Sell announced her resignation from her Anusara Certification, I reached out to her to talk about her decision. Although I have never practiced with Christina, I did read her first book,Yoga From The Inside Out: Making Peace with your Body Through Yoga, and have greatly admired her approach to the practice. The following questions arose from that dialogue, and center on how as yogins we can leverage the practice in our decision making, both great and small.

Fredo: How did your practice inform or shape your decision making process? How has your practice supported you as you have announced your decision?

Christina Sell

Christina: This is a great question. When I talk about practice, I am not only referring to asana practice, but to an entire set of internal and external acts, observances, and outlooks that comprise the whole of my spiritual life. For instance, practice includes but is not limited to meditation, pranayama, asana, scriptural study, dietary observances, chanting, mantra as well as internal connection and remembrance of my guru and the lineage of which I am a student and devotee. The internal connection is, in many ways, primary, as it provides the context in which the outer actions play. All outer technique without internal connection would fall short of what I consider “practice.” All inner connection with no outer behaviors in place would miss the mark as well.

I was a student of Lee Lozowick when I met John Friend. John Friend has always been an amazing teacher, guide, and a mentor for me and Anusara Yoga has always been a great source of inspiration relative to my life on and off the yoga mat. As much as I have loved the teachings of Anusara Yoga, it’s important to recognize that my primary spiritual influences have always come through the teachings of my guru, Lee, and his guru, the great Indian Saint, Yogi Ramsuratkumar.

I mention all of this simply to point out that while I was a practitioner, a teacher, and a teacher trainer in Anusara Yoga, my primary spiritual practice came from another lineage. In general the two schools have quite a bit in common and yet as time continued and my sadhana and relationship with Lee deepened, I became aware that I was straddling two worlds and that stance was causing me a lot of stress. The deeper I connected to my own Heart through my practices of meditation, contemplation, and even some psychotherapy, I realized that I no longer wanted to teach John Friend’s curriculum and train people to teach what was important to him. I wanted to align my teaching more closely to my own heart, my own spiritual path, and to help people teach what felt important to them. I recognize that Anusara Yoga encourages freedom, advocates personal expression, and that most people do not experience a feeling of limitation within the system at all. I know John wants people to be individuals. However, for me, there were so many points of divergence that added up to the recognition that I was no longer aligned in the way someone in my position in the organization should be.

The decision, as one might imagine, was difficult and scary as John, Anusara Yoga, and the community has nurtured my growth and development for over ten years. I am a very loyal person and have always done my best to represent Anusara Yoga honorably, accurately and ethically. Additionally, my entire livelihood rested on Anusara Yoga and I have trained many teachers whose livelihoods rested on Anusara Yoga as well. So, financial fears reared their heads for sure.

And yet, I wasn not only a student of Anusara Yoga, I have been a student of John Friend, the man. I knew in my heart, he would not want me teaching his yoga for my job and career if I had disagreements about curriculum, policy, training protocols, certification standards and assessment, marketing, branding and so on. He would want my Heart fully aligned. So out of respect to him and our relationship and to my own personal integrity, it became obvious to me that I needed to resign.

Additionally, I needed to bring integrity to the lineage of spiritual teachings that inform my life and my heart and to give credit to the influence that is behind me, my practice, and my work. So at the end of the day I realized that I really couldn’t serve two masters without being out of alignment with each.

In the process of navigating the transition, practice has been a refuge. I meditate every morning and I find that time to be a source of direction, inspiration and spiritual connection. In the school I am a part of, we use Yogi Ramsuratkumar’s name as a mantra and also a prayer. In one of our devotional songs we sing a line in Tamil that translates as “All I have is your Name.” As my fears surfaced over finances, or as other people’s disapproval, misunderstanding, and anger came my way or as my own self-doubt bubbled up from within, I clung to that line, reminding myself that who I am is not limited to the label Anusara or to a paycheck or to a status within the culture of modern yoga. Who I am is a devotee of Lee Lozowick, the Spiritual Son of Yogi Ramsuratkumar, and all I have is His Name. This practice of remembrance soothed my fears and anchored me in the internal source of my sadhana.

Additionally, carving out time to focus on my breath and keeping a strong connection to my asana has been key as it takes me back again and again to that place within me that is much deeper than money, public approval, and certifications. And ironically, in facing my fears and listening to my Heart instead and forging ahead in the Name of what I hold most dear, I actually think I had my finest hour as an Anusara practitioner in the moment I resigned. I was truly following my Heart!

Fredo: How might you advise students who are struggling with their place relative to your decision?

Christina: The question isn’t really what someone should do in the face of my decision, but instead the question folks should be considering is “Are you practicing?” And from that question, others emerge such as: “where are you most comfortable practicing? What is the most immediately supportive action to take that will nurture and sustain your life of practice?” If you can answer these questions honestly and respond authentically, you will find your way.

On a practical note, my resignation simply means that I will keep being me and teaching what I am practicing and the people who want to explore that with me should find ways to study with me, regardless of what system they are certified in. I write about this a lot on my blog so I won’t spend to much time on it here but if you want to learn from me, you should come study with me. If you love Anusara yoga and feel comfortable practicing within that system then by all means, don’t jump off the ship! It is a wonderful system with some of my favorite people in the world associated with it. My issues may not be your issues. We each have different needs, desires, and karmas. This is no problem whatsoever as far as I am concerned. The yoga I love has very little to do with names, trademarks and outer designations and lives in the Heart of each of us, just waiting to be recognized and expressed. So my advice to everyone is LISTEN TO YOUR HEART and act according to your inner wisdom.

Fredo: Christina, thank you so much for your beautiful, heart-filled, and inspiring words. Blessings on your journey!

To visit Bay Shakti's site, go here: The Practice And Decision Making: Q&A with Christina Sell

Christina Sell teaches at Prescott Yoga in Prescott, Arizona November 2011

2011-11-28T04:58:00.000-08:00

Life is the Teacher

2011-11-26T06:54:00.001-08:00

Well, its been a great week so far here in Arizona. I have spent most of the time out at the ashram and came into town Thursday for the weekend. I had an appointment with my favorite miracle-worker Osteopath and I am teaching a yoga workshop this weekend in Prescott. In fact, we had a wonderful turnout last night for a 90-minute flow class to kick the weekend off. It was so fun to see so many folks in attendance who I taught when I ran Prescott Yoga and I also enjoyed meeting so many new folks who have joined the fun. Also delightful was having students from other cities taking the workshop.

I worked with the theme of the guru, since I have been using an invocation to the Guru for my classes since I resigned from Anusara. Obviously, Anusara Yoga doesn't own the invocation they use but it seemed appropriate to me to use a different invocation now that I am not formally aligned with the system anymore.

So this is the mantra I have been teaching with:

GURUR BRAHMA,
GURUR VISHNU,
GURUR DEVO MAHESHWARAH
GURUR SAAKSHAAT PARA-BRAHMA,
TASMAI SHRI GURUVE NAMAH.

Summary of the Mantra

The Guru is Brahma (The God of Creation)
The Guru is Vishnu (The God of Sustenance)
The Guru is Shiva (The God of Annihilation)
My Salutation to such a Guru, who is verily the Supreme God

This mantra speaks so much to me and reminds me of a great teaching that Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron gave about trust and about developing what she called a Reservoir of Trust. She said that as spiritual practitioners we develop trust, not in positive outcomes and not in some idea or promise that everything is going to work out in our favor at the level of preferences, hopes and dreams, but in the felt experience that Life itself is always attempting to communicate with us through its dynamic flow of energy. Our task as practitioners is not to learn how to shift everything toward our own egoistic desires as much as it is to learn to be sensitive to the teachings that Life is making as it creates (Brahma) as it maintains (Visnu) and as it destroys (Shiva). In that way, the entire cycle of life is the guru, the teacher, the force of revelation attempting to teach us who we are, not in an abstract way, but through the direct experiences of our lives.

Creation, Sustenance and Destruction are not value-based nor are they isolated from one another. Destruction, which often sounds bad, may be a positive thing. For instance, think about ending a cycle of abuse or dissolving a dysfunctional relationship or the death of an illusion or limitation. In those cases, we are grateful for Lord Shiva's presence as he destroys what is no longer serving us. In the same way, creation, is not always a wonderful experience- think about how an illness might be created or division may begin or how we often create a problems for ourselves and others. So these are just forces of energy and are not good or bad, right or wrong and when skillfully engaged, they can each be utilized and applied toward learning the truth of who we are. And in the dissolving of one thing is the birth of another; held in creation are the seeds of dissolution.

I am not someone who believes that everything we experience in life makes us stronger. I have watched plenty of people make mistakes, suffer terribly due to life's ups and downs and experience tragedies from which they never recover. It is not the case, in my opinion, that hardship makes us better people. I do believe that it can, however. I believe that difficulty holds within it the power and possibility to elevate us and our awareness to new heights. I believe the apparent "bad thing" has the potential to become our most profound teacher, but I also believe that the circumstance itself holds no guarantee that it will do that for us. The difference, in my opinion, as to to whether or not difficult experiences strengthen us or destroy us has to do with how well we are able to make use of them. The answer to growth is not on the side of the circumstance. It is on our side, as students of Life.

Once again, we come back to this idea of adhikara, of studentship, of preparation for the Path. Just because everything can be a doorway to the Heart doesn't mean that everything will be. To me that is the whole thing about the yoga. Yoga is a way that we can develop the skillful means required to be in relationship to life's lessons, to be in relationship to the guru function as it manifests through Life itself. As an idea, it can be very inspiring to say things like "we can learn from everything" and "everything can help us see the truth of who we are" and I do agree with that teaching. I really do. However, having that perspective is one thing while living in the work of that particular demand is something else entirely. To make use of the tragedies and triumphs of life and for them to help us develop a reservoir of trust, a firm sense of OK-ness inside ourselves that is independent of circumstance, requires tenacity, courage, persistence and lots of practice.

I am not a practitioner that is interested in a kind of Grace that gets me good parking spots, puts the traffic lights in my favor and gives me a perfect job and so on. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that level of "flow" but to me its way too simplistic of a world view. I am also interested in watching who I am when I hit every traffic light on the way to where I am going and there is no parking spot within walking distance to my destination, etc. and when my job gets hard. I am not praying for difficulty, mind you, its just that the domain of challenge holds such interesting insight and grist for the mill that there is no way, in my opinion that that too, is not "the flow." And come on, we are in Earth School and there is a ton of suffering here. Best, I think, we learn how to be with that in a skillful, elevated and down-to-earth way.

So, obviously, more could be said but its time to finish planning my class for this morning.

You Tell Me

2011-11-22T17:15:00.001-08:00

I have been in the world of the ashram this last week. Kelly and I drove out to Arizona a week ago and dove into the festivities of Lees mahasamadhi (his passing) and also his jayanthi (birthday) which are within days of each other. We had a 5-day celebration full of pujas, feasting, song, dance, talks, seva and good company. It was a glorious time full of great food for the body, mind and heart. The formal festivities ended late Sunday night and then we have been doing a bit of clean up and catch up after everything.

I have received so many calls and emails from folks following my Anusara resignation asking me "what does this mean for me?" and I suppose I need a better answer than, "I have no idea." I mean, that answer just does not sound very compassionate nor does it even sound very smart! And I think some of this is going to make more sense and become more obvious as the form of my direction continues to emerge and come into being. But in a simple way, its like this for me: I am going to continue being the teacher I have always been- I am going to teach who is in front of me as sensitively, passionately and creatively as I can. I wrote this on Facebook a while ago but I am still me. I still love to practice asana and to explore new and juicy ways into the majesty of the heart and mind through through the vehicle of the body through asana. I am totally into translating that experience into my teaching and staying as fresh as possible in my presentation of what I am learning. Simply put, I am still practicing and I am still teaching from my practice. If you are interested in that, keep studying with me.

If, however, you are primarily interested in studying and practicing Anusara Yoga and you are actively accruing hours toward certification in that system, then you will need a new Anusara yoga teacher, if I was your primary Anusara teacher. This is not because I am going to be teaching something radically different or because I have any negative feelings about Anusara yoga or people who want to be certified. I don't. I love Anusara yoga, I love John Friend, I love my colleagues, I learned a lot from the system and benefitted tremendously from my association with it. I would wish that for other people. There is NO problem with people continuing down the Anusara path on my side of things. It's just that I can not sign off on your hours nor will I be committed to "modeling the method" the way I have been. I am officially off that hook. So, on a practical note, that's something to consider.

However, if you want to continue down the Anusara yoga path and you are interested in learning what I am doing then its as simple as staying in touch and coming to a workshop or training and staying open to the process that's evolving. I will be happy to teach you no matter what certification you hold. My love of learning and my love of teaching has never been limited to Anusara yoga. I have always studied in a variety of methods even as an Anusara teacher and teacher trainer. I am happy to go learn in different environments and cultures to get the teaching. I have never required that the teaching be packaged in a certain way. It's really not a big deal to me to take hot yoga, flow yoga, Iyengar yoga, Ashtanga yoga so long as I am learning and improving from my efforts.

It's really about being a student of what the teacher is teaching that day. My experience is that when I go to a class or workshop in another method and I am in a place of sincere studentship, then I learn. A lot. It's very simple. It's the law of adhikara, really. If a student has passed the bar, so to speak, the teacher MUST teach them. It's not a conscious thing either. It's not like the teacher is actually considering or choosing whether or not they are going to help the student. In fact, I have watched purist teachers in other systems try NOT to teach me for a while but after an initial period of hazing, my persistence has always been rewarded. Always. Without fail. Good studentship evokes being taught. Its that simple. Its the law of the thing.

My guru always said that a good student could wake up around a bad teacher way easier than a poor student could wake up around a great teacher. His view on the responsibility of the student was that strong. Now, put a great student in front of a great teacher and that is a radical opportunity to really transcend the ordinary boundaries that often keep us from waking up to our potential.

I am, as you mostly know, working on creating some very cool programs and trainings and Darren and I are going to be creating a School of Yoga. I have said many times that I do not want to make a method or a new system of yoga. This sentiment is mostly practical and philosophical.

On a practical note- I want to teach yoga and teach people to teach yoga and eventually help train people to train people to teach yoga. I want to be in that work. Once we make something a "method" then, in my experience, the curriculum runs the risk of getting a bit frozen and standardized and the order of the day shifts from the organic response to the moment and become focused instead on teaching to the test and to the standard and to the system. Add in the reality that systems need trademarks in order to be "preserved" and "valued" in the marketplace and before you know it you have to manage all of that nonsense. You have to implement standards, licensing agreements and implementation is shortly followed by policing and enforcing. None of that is at all interesting to me.

And what also happens is that subtly, without realizing, a shift in consciousness occurs where emphasis is off the yoga and on the trademark and I am not interested in that at all. Lee called it "churchification". He hated it and was always warning us as his devotees about the danger of turning his teaching and what he called The Influence into a system. He said transformation just didn't work like that. The idea was to align ourselves with the influence- and, sure, there were techniques and forms for that- and then to get ourselves out of the way so that we could each become an individualized, authentic expression of The Influence. For instance, his teachings live in me in both similar and different ways than they live in my sangha mates.

So I am totally in to teaching a seminar on "Heart Themes and The Conscious Use of Metaphor in the Classroom" but I am totally uninterested in having a discussion with you about using them if you don't want to. I am totally into teaching you how to do demonstrations effectively but I am not interested at all in convincing you to use them or telling you how many is enough or how many is too much. I am more interested in a discussion about how can you be the teacher you want to be, not a teacher that meets a system's criteria. I am interested in how each of us can be the most authentic individualized expressions of The Influence in our lives as yoga practitioners, teachers and well, human beings.

So what Darren and I are creating is a school and a resource for practitioners and teachers and you will get to be a graduate of that school but I do not want to manage- for practical and philosophical reasons- what you do with the education and inspiration you receive from your training with us. Seriously, think about it, Harvard gives you a degree. They do not come into your life and tell you how to do business and they do not take your degree back if you fail to agree with administrative, curricular, personal or marketing decisions. You go to school, you get your degree and then you have your life and work. And its up to you. Think about it. I want to be part of a new paradigm in teaching yoga that is less concerned with systems, trademarks, and accruing hours and more concerned with living in the Light of the Teachings and sharing the joys of the practice in profoundly real, accessible and effective ways.

So, what does it mean for you that I resigned my Anusara certification? (Oh, technically, I can't resign a certification. I can, evidently, resign my legal right to use the trademark. Funny, certification lasts for a lifetime but a the legal rights to the trademark can be terminated. Anyhoo--)

So what does it mean for you that I resigned? You tell me.

Playist

2011-11-13T19:59:00.001-08:00

Some folks asked me to post the playlist from tonight's vinyasa class at BFree Yoga. We had a really fun time. Enjoy- Not a playlist for those of you who like a meditative, mellow flow. Not particularly introspective either. Its a playlist when back bends are on deck and a party is in the air.

Om- Soulfood
Guru Brahma- Jai Uttal
Elephant Power (Omstrumental)- MC Yogi
It's Love- Jill Scott
Funky Guru- Prem Joshua
Gotta Serve Somebody- Bob Dylan
We will Rock You- Queen
Beauty in the World- Macy Gray
Bring the Funk- Ben Harper
Om Shakti Om- Tervor Hall
Son of Shiva- Mc Yogi
A little less conversation- Elvis Remix
Ganesh is Fresh- Elephant Powered remix
Recreated- Denise Allen Band
My Baba featuring Krinsha Das- Trevor Hall
I am Yours- Jason Mraz
Hanuman Jai- Bronwin Rhodes
Amazing Grace- Atila the Hunza
I shall Believe- Sheryl Crow

Off to Arizona early in the morning tomorrow. More later.

Signs of the Times

2011-11-11T18:17:00.001-08:00

So, let's see. What to write about... I was remembering how, a few years ago, this blog was full of updates about how I went to get a mani-pedi before class with my sister and then taught a few classes and wrote about my theme and sequence. See 2007/2008 blog entries-- they were full of simple, sweet stuff with an occasional rant thrown in. Seems like as of late I am pondering large issues and making big sweeping declarations here. I suppose its a sign of the times. In fact, I have been thinking a lot about how the times are changing and how the culture of yoga has been shifting over the years.

I was struck by the interest and comments around heart-based themes on my last entry both here on the blog as well as on Facebook. (Thanks to everyone who took the time to comment and offer their insights and perspectives. They were all so interesting. One trend in the comments in particular had to do with the beginning level teacher vs. the experienced-level teacher. Elizabeth commented how she suspected in the early days of Anusara, the teachers John were training actually had teaching experience and so teaching them to weave a theme was a different kind of endeavor. (Not her exact words) I think that's an astute perception and it helps us understand a lot, I think.

In fact, I have been think about that very thing a lot over the last several years as a teacher trainer. (And so we are clear about where I am getting these ideas, I am not just blowing smoke here. I have been training Anusara teachers since 2005 and I actually have a Master's Degree in experiential education so I am not making random guesses here, although admittedly I am basing my opinions on my own experience. Anyway, I have observed the trends and challenges over many years and with hundreds of people.) So, to Elizabeths's point-- simply imagine and compare a teacher 's knowledge base who is relatively new to Anusara yoga but was already a certified Iyengar yoga teacher v. a teacher who may have practiced yoga for several years but without the firm boundaries of such a system behind them. The first teacher is going to know what I call "pose architecture" and be very schooled in the outer forms of the postures and how they relate to one another. They are going to be skilled at prop usage, modifications, progressive teaching strategies, demonstrations skills, verbal and hands-on adjustments and they would have already received training in anatomy, verbal articulation skills, etc. For that teacher, learning how to language loops, spirals and weave a theme is still not going to be easy. (BE CLEAR- it is not easy to pull this off well!) However, it will be manageable and will be an appropriate level of challenge.

So, what is really clear is that as yoga has become more popular, and as teacher trainings have become more accessible and as more people have entered the field of teaching yoga, we have more people learning to teach yoga who have not been practicing yoga very long at all. I used to rant about this a lot (check back through those old blogs, in fact) and somewhere a few years ago I got over it. I accepted that this was just how it was and regardless of the pros and cons that are inherent in the situation, it is simply how it is. Having made my peace with reality as it is, I soon realized that I, as a teacher trainer, had to develop ways to train teachers that took this reality into account.

See, not only are more people getting into teaching earlier in the life of their practice than they were 15 years ago, the climate of public classes has gone from small, intimate, personalized classes to larger, less personal, flow-based, mixed-level classes. I began to realize that so many of the teaching methods I was using as a trainer assumed that the teacher-in-training would leave my training and go back to teach at an all-Anusara studio where there were clearly designated levels of classes and ongoing, committed students. (In fact, I think a lot of the manual assumes this if you read it carefully. Just an opinion.)

Anyway, it began to dawn on me that almost NO ONE in my training taught in such a scenario as the one I just described. Most teachers-in-training (or teachers in my trainings) were teaching in what I call "ecumenical" yoga studios-- studios with a variety of styles and methods being taught throughout the week with open enrollment and mixed-levels. In fact, I, myself, had gone from running an all Anusara studio with clearly designated levels and ongoing, committed students to teaching in a larger urban studio that met the ecumenical yoga studio definition to a "T". So, after years of teaching Anusara yoga in one way, I had to learn a completely different set of presentation skills in my new environment. And my ideas of how to train people naturally evolved. And what I looked for and enjoyed in asana classes changed as I worked within this broader, more-inclusive community of yogis and yoga teachers.

I think a huge change we have seen in culture and climate of yoga over the last 15 years has been the rise of the vinyasa methods. "Back in the early days" if you did a vinyasa practice you did Ashtanga Vinyasa. nd anyone who has tried that style of yoga know that it is a rigorous, methodological approach to asana practice with its own set of parameters, conventions, tools and understandings which would give a new Anusara teacher a solid platform upon which to place the skills of teaching loops, spirals and heart language kind of like the afore-mentioned Iyengar yogis. Anyway, along with the rise of the vinyasa practices, there was been a increase of more movement in classes, more creativity, more fluid expressions of the asana, less outer form emphasis, more emotional expression, more music, breath emphasis, ritual environments and also, athleticism. (And don't even get me started on that, please. Since when is it such a bad thing to want to get a little exercise out of an exercise class? Keep in mind, we come to asana wearing gym clothes not tweed blazers with leather patches and not with a shawl and a cushion for meditation. Okay the kundalini folks have the cushions, but they are a slightly different clan than what I am talking about. So, yes, we have a bigger message and yes there is a lot philosophically going on behind the scenes of the asana and more is involved but yoga class is primarily--dare I say it--an exercise class! There. I said it. Whew.)

Let's face it- yes, asana is a spiritual practice. I get it. Asanas hold within their forms potent transformational power. We all know that. Ever feel like crap at the end of day and strike a pose- any pose- and immediately feel the shift in your state of consciousness? That's the power of the shape. That the magic of the asanas themselves. The Lords of Yoga smiled on us when they gave us this practice and I am not selling it short in anyway. Its a full package deal for me. But all that reverence, respect and awe for its spiritual power does not mean that I do not want, need or enjoy a conditioning effect for my body when I roll out a mat. I mean I come to asana class to, well, do asana! I want to get stronger and I do not want to lift weights to stay fit. (Although if you like lifting weights, by all means lift weights. Again, fine by me. Again, I digress.) I also want to see my flexibility improve. And I want to do poses this year I couldn't do last year. That's me. You may be different. I am cool with that. I really am.

And personally, I meditate every morning. I do pranayama every morning. I study scripture. I chant. I personally come to asana class to do asana. Is that so wrong? (And look, before anyone feels hurt and send me an email about it, I have to say that I have no problem with anyone teaching anything else in their classes. I get that asana class is a doorway to the contemplative practices. I get that we have an opportunity to educate and contextualize the asana within the scope of the larger tradition from which it hails. I am into that also. I am just saying that all of that work is not "required" in my mind for an asana class to be effective. Not at all. Do it if its important to you. Hold your head high if that's your message. I will sing your praises from the rooftops. I see the value. I really do.)

Anyway, one of my favorite things about most good vinyasa classes is you actually get to do close to 90 minutes of asana in 90 minutes! It's a wonderful contribution to the yoga conversation. Does it have flaws? Yes. Are there pitfalls? Certainly. But, come on everyone, since when is wanting a little exercise out of the deal a bad thing?

And this movement-based approach has changed the learning landscape as well so that while the conditioning effect for the body is getting actualized, the learning and cultivation of the knowledge of the poses and such may be getting cut short a bit and this phenomena effects the new teacher-in-training. They do not come in with the same knowledge base they used to have because what is being offered in the average public class has changed over the years. The average public class doesn't prepare people for teacher training in the way it used to. It's doing something else quite valuable, just not necessarily prepping teachers. I think I still manage to teach and educate the intellect a whole lot in a 90-minute public class and no one has ever told me my classes are not hard enough physically but that takes a fair amount of experience and practice to pull off. And I am always working on that balance. What often happens is the new-to-alignment-teacher slows things down to such a degree that the class momentum/interest is lost, the conditioning effect doesn't take place and/or the students are not actually warmed up to do the harder pose that the demo was all about anyway because they spent all that time watching not doing.

I think set postural sequences solve some of this problem nicely. Take the Bikram series- there are a handful of general cues for everyone. (Okay, truth be told, more than a handful of cues- its sort of rapid fire instructions for 90 minutes actually.) But my point is that everyone gets the script. And the cool thing is that poses stay the same so within that structure the students receive individual help. Newer students get personal modifications and advanced students receive refinements and no one has to learn everything about the pose today because you are going to get another two tries on it tomorrow. And the next day and then next day. No need to slow the class down to demo- listen as best you can, give the pose a go, come back again tomorrow. Are their pitfalls? Surely. Are there problems that arise with that approach? Certainly.

So -where is all of this ranting heading tonight? Nowhere, really, I suppose. Do I actually have a point? I think so but maybe it's not so crystallized. Mostly I am sharing some of my reflections on the trends within the yoga culture over the last 15 years and suggesting that the best thing we can do as teachers and especially as teachers-who-teach-teachers is to know what is happening out there in the world beyond our class and beyond our chosen method, if we have one. It will help us understand out students and when we understand them better we can teach them more effectively. Simple, really.

I never give "assignments" here on this blog but here goes--I dare you to- (so actually, its a dare and not an assignment) no matter what method you practice and teach by preference- and its really cool with me that we all have our preferences- go and take a few classes somewhere else. Not just one. Take several. In some style or studio you rarely do or go to. Best case scenario would be to find a really popular class in town, go to it with a very open mind and heart and ask yourself, "What is it about this class that is appealing to people?" And don't be snarky. Really look to see what that class and that teacher are offering to the people in attendance. Look beyond your bias and see what is truly being provided for the students. It can teach you a lot.

And as we see--and I mean, really see-- the beauty that is being offered out there in yoga classes everywhere and in so many different ways, absolutely wonderful things will happen. We will feel more beautiful ourselves. We will start understanding our offering within the larger scope of our community. We will see walls of division between studios, methods and teachers dissolve. Competition will subside. Fear will diminish. Confidence will increase. We will actually be in community rather than in the process of "cultivating community". We will be in the Light of the Teachings sharing the joy of the practice with people who are committed to The Path which is what all of this is aimed at anyway.

Have fun and thanks for reading. Let me know how it goes.

More on the Horizon

2011-11-09T06:26:00.000-08:00

Well, its been a busy few days at home with emails, phone calls, writing projects and lots of time on my mat. Thank you everyone who took time to send me and Darren words of encouragement about the School of Yoga. The School of Yoga will offer courses and trainings in various locations over time but first look for our offering in Tucson, AZ at Yoga Oasis and in San Marcos, TX at The San Marcos School of Yoga. Darren and I are working on the curriculum now so expect more details to come and soon we will even have a website. (You can tell we are figuring this out as we go along, right? Its not like we are without ideas and experiences to draw upon but honestly we didn't plan to leave Anusara Yoga until the day we resigned so its not like we had some perfectly orchestrated and smooth exit plan.)

One thing I know we both want to do is streamline the 200-hour Intensive/Teacher Training curriculum towards personal practice through asana exploration, contemplation and introductory pranayama and meditation. The teacher training will be asana-focused, not philosophically-focused and will be aimed at helping new and seasoned teachers understand the postures and how to teach them in the scope of a 90-minute public class. One thing that I have noticed over the years is that with the curricular emphasis being so heavy on philosophy, heart themes and alignment principles, a huge chunk of knowledge isn't being conveyed. I call it "pose knowledge". We both want to re-infuse the alignment of asana, not just "actions" and put the intense philosophy and heart themes a bit on the back burner. I see that as an advanced teaching technique and not necessary in order to be inspiring.

I am passionately interested in helping teachers find an authentic voice for their words of wisdom and the deeper teachings they may have to share, but I am not convinced that heart themes are always the way to do that nor do I think the belong in the introductory teacher training curriculum. The amount of time they take in training just isn't optimal, nor is the amount of time new teachers are devoting to try to get good at them. They could be learning how to sequence better, how the poses fit together, how to use props, how to say more with less, etc. instead. I see so many other teaching skills as more essential when you get right down to it.

(Okay, so that is another difference...I told you there were some differences that would emerge over time. Like, think about it- I was an Anusara Teacher Trainer who wasn't convinced that heart themes are necessary! That's a conflict. I mean that little thing is central to our method and super important to John. And I used heart themes in every class and am pretty damn good at training other people in how to use them also. So, its not like a big and huge philosophical conflict but still, relative to teaching methods and outcomes, its huge.)

And before everyone out there who loves heart themes rises up in defense of the heart theme, let me be clear: I LOVE A GOOD THEME. I do. And I think that they can really help bring meaning to the asana. I am into the conscious use of metaphor in life- on and off the mat. I see the benefit. Please do not share with me all the reasons to use them. Don't you think after 12 years of teaching this stuff I have a good list of reasons myself? I get it. I do. I just do not think that heart themes, by definition, help make classes better. And I also think that many times they are cumbersome, time-consuming, false and distracting. And, call me crazy, but I am pretty sure I am going to be able to still be pretty darn inspiring without them. And I think the beginner teacher has enough on their plate without having to tie an alignment principle to an adverb. I mean really, using them as a tool is fine by me. I will still teach people how to use them but requiring them is not my thing. I can't make a case for it as a requirement. I just can't. (There I said it. Oh, the freedom!)

And speaking of upcoming training opportunities, I have a 100-hour teacher training coming up here in Texas. The training takes place over three long weekends and we will cover some pretty fun stuff. (And even heart themes! Oh the irony...) If you have questions about the training, let me know. For information you can also see the program description by clicking HERE.

All right then, until next time!

A Few Things on the Horizon

2011-11-07T06:32:00.000-08:00

So, I mentioned that in a lot of ways for me, it is just business as usual. I spent the weekend in Corpus Christi, TX finishing teaching a 200--hour Teacher Training program there. We had such an amazing final weekend together. The group had become so close and supportive over the year and the personal insights and changes that the program initiated were so inspiring to hear about. Such depth and richness.

I am home this week and then Kelly and I head out to Arizona for a three-week visit to Lee's ashram. The visit begins with a 5-day celebration in honor of his mahasamadhi which will begin at the time of his passing. While in Arizona I will teach a workshop in Prescott, one in Flagstaff and after our time in Prescott, I head down to Tucson to bring that cycle of training to a close with brother-D. So, its the seasons of endings and completions, which, as we know, give rise to new beginnings.

And so that we can all turn our attention away from the reasons why we "left" Anusara Yoga and toward the future vision that is calling us into its realm, I want to share with you a bit about a project that Darren and I are working on. We are deep in the process of founding a school of yoga. The school will provide training and resources for yoga practitioners, teachers and those who wish to train teachers to grow in the light of the teachings and to share in the joy of the practice. We are not making a new style of yoga as we are not interested in managing what you do with the information you get from us or in standardizing the way you express the inspiration you receive. So, to be clear, let's all think "school, not style." Think "trainings, not trademarks." Think "affiliation, not certification." We are dedicating our work to helping people engage traditional teachings in authentic ways so that a direct connection to the Heart's Light and its Source is established and the teachings of yoga are carried forward for generations to come.

Practically speaking, expect, over time, to see a 200-hour level Teacher Training program, a 500-hour Teacher Training program and supplementary courses in leadership skills, communication skills, group facilitation skills and curriculum design for yoga teachers. Plan on lots of asana practice, compassionate and rigorous self-study and expert guest teachers who are steeped in a life of yoga, philosophy and spiritual practice. Expect to hear about the great saints and sages who have walked the path before us and know that at the heart of this experience is the heart we all share and the company we keep along the way.

We have all kinds of details we are sorting out and more will be announced soon so don't press me too much on details! We are truly figuring this out as we go and as soon as we know anything, we are going to get the word out. (Of course, emails and messages that say "Yahoo" and "Can't wait" and "I love it" are always welcome) We are also working on programs together at The San Marcos School of Yoga so stay tuned for those announcements and trainings as well. And I will continue teaching weekend workshops and trainings and Darren has his work with YogaHour as well so we will also be working individually as well as collaboratively.

We are forging ahead in 2012 with a program that has 2 parts: The Path of Practice and Teacher Training. The Path of Practice, as you might guess by the name, is 100-hours of classroom time dedicated to helping participants deepen their personal practice of asana, pranayama and meditation. Particular attention will be placed on developing an authentic connection to your intuition and inner guidance through contemplation, study, writing and discussion. Experiential learning is key here so expect a lot of time on your mat.

The Teacher Training Program will help new and experienced teachers learn the fundamental teaching skills for teaching an effective and dynamic public asana class. The emphasis here will be on clear, concise articulation of the practice and potent demonstration, observation and adjustment skills. Particular attention will be placed on finding ones powerful authentic voice as a teacher and developing personal magnetism and purpose.

For more information , please contact me directly or Rachel at Yoga Oasis. (rachel@yogaoasis.com) Out the programs together and you can register with us and with Yoga Alliance at the 200-hour level.

Okay- more soon.

Dharma

2011-11-03T16:39:00.000-07:00

Well, one specific thing I do want to write about has to do with people's questions about "what is the difference between tantra as Lee taught it and Shiva-Shakti tantra?"

To be clear, while there are some differences between the schools, mostly we are looking at the differences in tenor and mood that exist between a small, esoteric school in a traditional guru system and a large world-wide yoga school with public access. Obviously, even if the teachings were exactly the same, the application of the teachings would be different in flavor. Not better. Not worse. Different. Add in that Lee is/was a completely different character than John Friend and you add in another layer of difference, even if the doctrine was exactly the same. Again, not better, not worse. Just different.

There are some differences sure. Like Lee didn't care at all about whether things were essentially good or not. He sided, I think, more with the Buddhists on that. Life, he taught more than once, is essentially nuetral. We are the meaning makers. He was influenced heavily by the Fourth Way work and so as much as he taught us that we were supported in the process of waking up, he had a very healthy respect for what they call the "denying force" and the ways that such a force manifested though the unexamined facets of our psychology and unconscious involvement in the world and would, when given a chance, work to kick us off the path without us even knowing it. The denying force might even dress up as a church or as a cause and steer us off the path with promises of salvation that appeared to be our dream come true. He wasn't a teacher who was concerned much about happiness. Not his own and not ours, when you get right down to it. He taught a lot that the deepest aim of sadhana was to become transparent to the flow of Grace, to be in service to the shakti to such a degree that he described his essential teaching as "Spiritual Slavery." He said that Spiritual Slavery was the deepest freedom a human could experience and there were no guarantees that your psychology would dig it. None at all. He was not casual and he was not in it as a hobby. He was also fiercely loyal, loving, compassionate and I think he may have been the kindest person I have ever known. I could go on but my point being is that sure, there are differences.

I am so hesitant to discuss things here because one thing about yogis in our current world is that WE LOVE OUR YOGA and its a personal thing and pointing to difference and comparing is really hard to do without implying value judgements. It's also hard to read about differences without inferring value judgements that are not there. And value-based judgements are not at all at the heart of this discussion for me. I think the most accurate way to explain my choice to resign my certification has less to do with dharmic differences between the two communities of which I have been a part and more to do with my own personal dharma; of how best to aim my teaching in the years to come. Its not so much about what "John says" and "what lee says" as much as it has to do with understanding the highest possibliity for my own incarnation. (Wow, this just got big.) And as a student of Lee Lozowick in the lineage of Yogi Ramsuratkumar my purpose lands squarely in that stream. (And yes its all one and all that. But on a practical level, it's also about resonance. Like we all love yoga, but we do not all love the same practices. Like that. We resonate at certain frequencies. It's as it should be. No problem.)

So we are clear: I love John Friend. I love Anusara Yoga. I love my friends in the system. My students continually inspire me beyond belief. I hope I have been super clear about that. I keep repeating it. It's the truth. I have benefited form my involvement with the organization and the method in so many ways. And I did my best to serve the organization and the community as an expression of my gratitude. Want a different story than that? LOOK SOMEWHERE ELSE!

So, having said that, a bit more of my personal process that might fill out the story goes like this: Over the last few years a very subtle yet strong and consistent interest has been rising within me. I started to realize that I was interested in yoga in general more than I was interested in Anusara Yoga in specific. I have never been an Anusara purist, as anyone who reads this blog knows. I like it all. I practice it all. (Okay, well, not all of it, but A LOT of it.) In fact, over the last 5 years since I moved to Austin, I have probably been practicing asana more outside of the Anusara yoga system than in it. Not by design or by intention but simply in an organic way of following my curiosities and inclinations and finding good teachers who could and would help me with my practice, regardless of method. And since I was the only Ansuara teacher in town, that left me the option of visiting other styles a lot. So Baptiste, Bikram, Ashtanga Vinyasa, Iyengar Yoga, Prana Vinyasa, etc. I do it all. I like it all. And I have for a long time.

And I am a student of the yoga culture beyond Anusara Yoga's culture, as many of you know as well. I am always interested in why people are doing what they are doing and how they are going about it. I love getting inside a system and seeing what they are aiming at and how they are going about meeting and aligning with their aim. I have that kind of mind, I suppose. And I see so many effective ways to do this thing called yoga.

And, I am bit funny, I suppose, because as much as I am not a purist, I believe in structure, methods and boundaries. Big time. I am a fan. I love nothing more right now than walking into the local Bikram studio and watching them just rock that script and transmit the method the way their teacher wants them to. They are good at it. It works. I benefit from it. I don't wish for it to be different. It is great with me. I get it.

Anyway, all my "research",was not consciously done as research but was more like me being me, just sniffing around for good yoga. Truth be told, I have never been one to fall for name brands. I am always gonna be where a good teacher is. So for me, I didn't leave my studies in Iyengar Yoga to study with Desiree and then John because I was unhappy in Iyengar Yoga. I was a believer. I still am. I love that system. Mr. Iyengar and his senior teachers are some of my biggest heros. Truly. I got involved with Anusara Yoga because at the time I was looking for a teacher in my area, Desiree was the best teacher around. She could have called what she did ANYTHING and I would have done it because my poses were getting better. That's the thing for me. She helped me. I got better. I stuck around. Simple.

In the long run I got way more than "better poses" out of the deal which is why my gratitude cup runneth over. (See paragraph #4) However, back to the story about my own interests: Not only did I realize I was more interested in yoga in general, I also got interested in yoga in 200 years, in 500 years. One of the big thrusts in Lee's teaching work had to do with "making the Teaching available" and preserving the majesty of tradition over time. He was kind of radical about this. In so many ways he was progressive and intellectually far out but by temperament, he was very conservative. He hated the internet, he thought that technology was the antichrist and after 30 years the ashram still has no dishwasher, no automatic clothes dryers and no television, wifi, cable or satellite.

So I got interested in how do we, in an age where yoga is becoming increasingly popular and increasingly paired with rock concerts, wine tasting, hula hoops and so forth, preserve the fundamental rigor of the practice, the fundamental sanctuary that a disciplined life yields so that the person who needs a sober, sane and profound access point to the teachings still has it in 200 years? in 500 years? Look, I am not interested in being the yoga police. I am not interested in telling you what is yoga and what is not. I am not saying the modern trends are in any way wrong. I get that those things on that list are some peoples access point. I am cool with that. I really am. None of that is my axe to grind. It's just that I realized what I am into is the preservation of the teachings through the training of practitioners in whom the teaching is so firmly rooted that they become an access point for others. And then my students become teachers and their students become teachers and the continuity of the tradition is carried on like that. I think, in my heart of my heart, that people preserve the teachings, not systems. Not trademarks. So I am interested in teaching today so that the person who, in 200 or 500 years, needs the sanity that yoga and all of its accompanying practices have to offer, will have a place to find it and people to learn it from.

So, as I continued to take council from the wise elders in my life, and as I continued to listen to my own heart, I simply got interested in that vision over and above my job of teaching and preserving the Anusara Yoga system and the standards that keep the trademark valid in the marketplace. It is not because of some major disconnect or drama with John or a quibble with the philosophical underpinnings of Anusara Yoga that I resigned my formal certification. Its more that I recognized that my work in the world would best be served teaching yoga in general over and above Anusara Yoga in specific. (And yes, everybody, I know that the anusara system is broad and inclusive and does not limit its teachers so please, not another conversation about that. Not here. Please, I beg you. If we descend into that I am going to change the subject abruptly. Be warned. That's what I meant yesterday when I said its not really an on-paper problem at all.)

And yes, I want to teach in the name of my guru and give honor to the fact I feel like the true potency of my teaching is informed more by my connection to Lee Lozowick and to his guru Yogi Ramsuratkumar than it is by Anusara yoga. But it's not like I want to make Lee Lozowick Yoga into some kind of style of yoga. I do not. In fact, I actually want to teach a whole lot LESS philosophy and a whole lot more asana. I truly believe that the shape carries the shakti and I am more interested in the practice of the practice itself as an agent of change. Yes, the theory of the practice is important, but that is not my job as a teacher right now.

And as time goes on, my job will shift and change, I assume. It's the way of things.

As for what's next, really its business as usual. I spent the day yesterday practitcing and teaching. I started to day with a practice and spent the rest of it writing an article for Yoga International. They asked me to be the Art of Asana columnist for 2012, which thrills me. I head out to Corpus Christi tomorrow to bring that training to a close and in the meantime I am catching up on a new website design, my schedule and rewriting curriculum for trainings that are still on the books. Most of my hosts for future workshops still want me to come and so my life continues much in the same way it has been.

One fun local thing on the agenda is that next Sunday- November 13th- I am going to teach a Level 3 Vinyasa class at BFree so those of you who want to join me for that, it should be a good time. 6:00-7:30. Come ready to sweat. This will not be a class for the casual.

Well, time to sign off. If you made this far into the post, I salute you. more soon.

Context Is Everything

2011-10-31T20:19:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking a lot about context these days.

Lee was always talking about context. He repeatedly instructed us that if we could maintain an optimal context for our sadhana and our lives, if we could keep the larger picture of The Teachings in our minds and hearts, then the content of our personal choices and outcomes would follow more naturally and easefully. Anchored in context, we would, as they say in 12-step recovery "intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us." The thing is that without an optimal context, the best we can do is memorize a bunch of rules and follow them or rebel against them, living always in the letter of the Law as opposed to the Spirit of the Law. Or we are left to take our bearings from other people, society's norms and the somewhat undependable whims of our personalities, patterns and ever-changing and/or static opinions.

The thing about context, though, is that it cannot be forced. We can not buy it and we can not pretend we have it when we don't. (Not for very long anyway.) Context develops slowly over time as we mature on the Path. We can study, we can ask questions, we can practice and most importantly we can entrain ourselves with people who are steeped in an optimal context themselves. And we can hold steady while the seeds of Context get established inside of us. But the process of growing Context cannot be forced or rushed as it does not happen at the level of the mind or conscious will.

Speaking of which, I have been getting all kinds of questions this week about the content of my choice to resign my formal certification with Anusara Yoga. I understand this completely. It is so natural to want to know "what happened?" and "what does this mean?" and "what are the differences between Shiva Shakti Tantra philosophy and the tantra that Lee taught?" and "what is next?"

I do, however, want to be very clear and forthright in saying that the lack of content-based answers I have been giving has nothing to do with secrecy or even with a desire for personal privacy. On a practical note, I have spent the last 5 days teaching a Teacher Training and have had no time to write. (I have been doing my best to get through the emails and phone calls and such in my off-time from the training. Be patient with me if you sent me a note, please.)

Also, while, in retrospect, I can see that this choice has been in motion for quite time time, I didn't resign with any formal plan. So, its not like "what's next" is very clearly defined either. Of course, I have a vision and its growing and taking shape by the moment and I will be sharing that as it forms more and more over the next few weeks, months and years.

And, while, of course, there were reasons, the deepest truth of my decision is simply that I came to recognize that my dharma could be best and most respectfully fulfilled outside the boundaries of Anusara Yoga and the circumstances of that recognition (the content) are a whole lot less important than the recognition itself (the context). I also worry a lot about making very direct comparisons at this stage of the game because, at the level of content and things on paper, there are very few meaningful differences to explain.

Also, I have no desire to argue doctrine or get in a discussion of perception and go down that road right now. I am very well aware that as soon as I explain something one way, I set myself up for others to argue my assertion. Mostly, I hope that as time passes and my direction emerges, the differences (and lack thereof) will be obvious to anyone with eyes to see. And if the differences and changes in context and presentation do not seem apparent to the casual observer then that, too, is perfectly fine with me. And, most importantly, talking a lot about those things right now feels a bit at odds to the valuable insights I have gained in walking through this particular threshold. Id rather talk about what I am learning now because its a mind-blowing process I am in.

I have been thinking of it a lot like an alarm clock this week. When the alarm goes off in the morning, I get up. I am not one to think a lot about the tone of the alarm. I rarely press snooze. I do not think back to what I was reflecting on when I set the alarm the night before. I just turn off the alarm, get up and get on with the business of the day.

So, before I say much more, let me be very clear that the people who have asked me direct questions are doing so in the most sincere and respectful way imaginable and are, in some cases hurt, disappointed and confused by my recent choice. Some, of course, are simply curious. Others want "the scoop" which is also understandable. I am aware of the wake that my choice left behind me. In fact, I am touched deeply with the kind of care, respect and concern that people have shared with me. All we really have in this life is ourselves and each other and to know that people are hurting because of my choice touches me deeply. I have never taken my place in the Anusara yoga community lightly nor am I casual about my relationships with my teachers, students and colleagues. It seems that my choice has catapulted more than one person into their own process of soul-searching regarding their relationship with Anusara Yoga and their own dharma.

And while I know that is not an easy place to be, I think it is a very good place to reside, this place of searching the soul. When we go into that terrain, we are doing the necessary work of nourishing our seeds of context. Context, such as Lee described, comes from the willingness to engage the difficult questions and requires that we hone our ability to make distinctions and to get underneath the surface of circumstances and into the Heart of the matter. Here, in the Heart is where our authentic truth resides. And when we recognize that truth, we have no other choice but to go boldly forward in the name of what we hold sacred.

May each one of us go boldly forward in the direction of our deepest truth.

More soon.

Letter of Love

2011-10-26T17:36:00.000-07:00

To my friends, students, colleagues and teachers,

In the fall of 1999, after many years of study in the Iyengar Yoga school, I met Desiree Rumbaugh in her studio in Scottsdale, Arizona. A few months later I had the great fortune to meet John Friend and to formally step onto the path of Anusara Yoga. I was certified to teach Anusara Yoga in 2003. Since that time I have had the opportunity to meet some of my favorite people on the planet, to make some of the best friends of my life and to serve this family of the heart as a member of the Anusara Yoga Ethics Committee, the Anusara Yoga Certification Assessment Committee and the Anusara Yoga Curriculum Development Committee.

Many of you know that I am part of a spiritual community and practice tantra in the lineage of the great Indian Saint Yogi Ramsuratkumar and his spiritual son, my guru, Lee Lozowick. For many years, the valuable insights I gained in my studies with John Friend and Anusara Yoga lived harmoniously within my heart and teaching work alongside Lee’s teachings. As time passed and as both streams of teaching evolved in unforeseen ways, I realized the dharmic choice for me was to continue to teach asana with the brilliant alignment principles I learned from John Friend while giving direct acknowledgement to the spiritual lineage which informs the darshan of my heart.

On October 24, 2011 I formally resigned my certification with Anusara Yoga. I will continue teaching the way I always have- with passion, clarity and integrity- with the sincere intention that my future work reflect only the Highest and best of what I gained from John Friend, Anusara Yoga and my many generous teachers.

Please know that I am not leaving Anusara Yoga, turning my back on anyone or severing the profound connections that have sustained me over the years. I am simply resigning my formal certification. Friendship, such as I have found in this community, is stronger than a piece of paper and what is most sacred, as we know, can never be destroyed.

In the Name of all that endures,

Christina Sell

Thoughts on Teacher Training and Community Building

2011-10-18T16:15:00.000-07:00

I am on a plane on my way to teach a 6-day Teacher Training with Darren Rhodes at Yoga Oasis. I have been reviewing the notes from Part One and remembering the dynamic group we had for training last time. I am getting excited to see everyone again and to add the next layer to the discussion.

I say it all the time on this blog but teaching Anusara Yoga is not easy and there are so many components at play that when mastered, create the wonderful synergy that we love. Anusara Yoga, after all, is not just a great sequence, not just a good message or heart-based theme. Nor are we just good alignment principles, a community of lovely people or even a shared vision. We are each of those parts brought together consciously and skillfully. And when these various components are brought together, its Anusara- that wonderful thing that is decidedly greater than the sum of its parts.

And for that to happen, each ingredient has to hold its own. I think about it a lot like cooking. One of my favorite ways to eat (And therefore cook) is with a few high-quality ingredients. For instance, I love a few in-season vegetable at the peak of the flavor, perfectly roasted in a high-quality olive oil and tossed into pasta or served over rice with maybe a few herbs. Maybe put a block of artisan cheese or olives or something nearby and I am ecstatic. I do not need crazy sauces and embellishments to be satisfied. However, take tasteless out-of-season vegetables, low quality oil and a cheap pasta and I am going to be looking for a way to make it somehow fancier, sauced-up or whatever because the individual ingredients are not holding their own.

So in Ansuara Yoga, when the whole thing is combined it is definitely more than the sum of its parts but this mostly happens when each part is refined well, as in the above example of my dinner preferences. (And don’t get me wrong, I love a great sauce.) But let’s get back to the asana class: So, for instance, as much as I love a good theme, I adore a great sequence. And a great sequence without clarity of alignment and key actions is not going to stand alone either. And while I love my yoga friends, community is not all its about for me either. When I go to class, I want to do some poses, learn some technique and get some inspiration! I want it all. (no shock there, I suppose.)

So me and Darren have been doing our best to tease out the very bare bones and the most essential ingredients of the method to begin with, focusing most on “How to put it together for a 90-minute public class”. Then we slowly layer in skills and techniques and inquiries as we go along. The last training we gave together was one of the best we have ever done in this regard. We were so careful not to overload the students and we maintained a very solid discipline about only teaching one element at a time and layering component parts slowly. We had no major breakdowns, no major anxiety attacks and a fair amount of positive, empowering experiences shared together. I know Part 2 is going to be just as awesome, if not more so.

I always love going to Tucson to teach. Darren is such a good friend and the community there is so stable, deep and open. It really is an oasis.

I have been thinking a lot about yoga community these days and what it actually is. This may be another one of my “blinding flashes of the obvious” but there is this way that, for me, community is more simple than I think many people realize. I think the people I consider “my community” in terms of yoga, are the people I practice with. I mean really practice with. I mean the people I roll out a mat with, sweat with, help into poses, get help from, and so on. It’s a really practical thing. To me, it has very little to do with potluck gatherings, Facebook forums, charming Twitter feeds or sharing fond feelings about the practice over a glass of wine. Nope, to me, my yoga community is, and always has been, centered around who I am actually rolling out a mat with.

And the form of that has changed over the years due to varying circumstances and so has the size of the people involved in the endeavor. But this clarity hit me like a ton of bricks when I was leading a group practice in Boise a few weeks ago. I was struck by the simple joy it is to practice yoga with people and to be together in that way. It is truly one of my favorite things in life. And I realized that my closest, most enduring yoga friends are the people I used to do the Eye of the Tiger Sequences with regularly. Like every week.

And then I got to thinking about how people write and share with me- from all over the world- a kind of dissatisfaction and genuine sometime-heart-breaking struggle they are having to create community where they are. And I got to wondering- are we thinking community is something much bigger and grander than just being together on the mat? Are we, as a community, looking for the large expressions of community and skipping the mundane, ordinary and enduring connection of practicing together for no other reason than because we love the practice? We may have to share in the love of practice first, I think, and then we might -slowly over time- grow to love each other.

And yes, I know the bigger vision of a caring community that supports each other off the mat is and always has been John’s vision for us. And I believe in that for sure. When shit hits the fan in my life, who do I call? My yoga friends. And they have never failed me. Not once. But I am just saying that the foundation of that “off the mat” connection- for me- is the “on the mat” investment of time, energy, attention and commitment.

So my advice if your “community” hasn’t gelled is to hold some donation-based group practices. Divorce the community from the finances a bit for an afternoon and just get together, ut on some good tunes, plan a solid sequence and give some boundaries and a bunch of freedom and be together in the love of the practice. And then do it again. And again. And see- if in a few years, you all love each other more. And if more of you are there loving more.

Obviously, more could be said and the issue is not exactly this simple and yet, thats my two sense on the topic for today.

2011-10-16T06:50:00.000-07:00

I am on my way home from a great weekend in Louisville, Kentucky. I taught a workshop at Yoga East. Yoga East is a non-profit yoga school with three locations in Louisville. Established in 1974, Yoga East has been dedicated to making the teachings of yoga available to the public for many years. Laura Spaulding, the president of Yoga East, and my host for the weekend is a pretty awesome person. She is the only authorized Ashtanga Vinyasa teacher in in Kentucky and has a long standing practice and many years of teaching experience. She is always so interesting to talk to since she is also a devotee of Gurumayi Chidvalasanada. Between stories of her studies with Pattabhi Jois and his family and her experiences in Siddha Yoga, as well as her wit and wisdom and no- BS attitude, I always leave her company feeling inspired and uplifted.

Her no- nonsense approach to life and yoga definitely filters into the students at Yoga East. They were so well-trained and respectful that I always have a really awesome time teaching them and exploring the practices with them. One thing that is cultivated by practices like Ashtanga Vinyasa and Bikram Yoga, for instance, where the same poses are repeated over and over, is a deep understanding and appreciation for the power of repetition and the discipline required to practice the poses you do not like. See, in those methods, if there is a pose you don't like, you can never avoid it. It is there, every day, staring you in the face till you figure out how to master it or at least make a certain peace with it.

So for sure, those of us who do not practice set postural sequences, still have poses we practice that we do not like and making yourself do something you don't like "by choice" (and yes, its your choice to practice a set sequence but that is not the level I am talking about here,) is a different kind of thing and also very important to cultivate. But the students at Yoga East needed very few pep talks about staying with something till it improved. They are already established in that worldview, which was fantastic.

We used a unique workshop format this weekend- we had a teachers class on Friday afternoon, an all-levels class on Friday evening and two classes on Saturday. Almost all the students came to the whole weekend which also made the teaching feel very connected and united for me, What is so unique about the schedule is that we didn't schedule a class on Sunday so everyone had a full weekend of yoga and still has Sunday to have some down time. Even me! I get to have a Sunday at home, which is a wonderful thing for me.

I plan to get some sleep, do a practice, work on an article I am writing and then have a date with Kelly. On Tuesday I head out to Tucson for a week and then go straight to Athens. Georgia for a week and so I am gearing up for a big stint away from home.

Okay, more soon.

Wednesday Night Sequence

2011-10-13T18:40:00.000-07:00

Enjoy! I know I did!

1 minute timings:

Childs Pose
Down Dog
uttanasana
twisted lunge
down dog
sirsasana 2
leg lifts in 3 stages for 1 minute
jathara parivartanasana with straight legs 1 minute hold each side
Down Dog
Sirsasana 2 drills- lower legs to urdhva dandasana, back up, lower legs to urdhva dandasana and then revolve legs to one side then up, back to second side
anjaneyasana
virabhadrasana 1
garudasana - this one is here to open up the front hip for the next pose. We did it in two stages: with upright spine and then in a forward bend position with the elbows beyond the knees to prep for the future arm balances.
revolved parsvakonasana
crescent pose
revolved parsvakonasana- even out the sides of the torso top and bottom (make top side do crescent!)
Maricyasana 3
ardha matsyendrasana
maricyasana 3
parivritta parsvakonasana
garudasana to eka pada koundinyasana to garudasana (I got this from Desirae Pierce who got it from Baron Baptise. Super nice way to enter that pose.)
malasana
malasana to uttanasana
bakasana
sirsasana 2 to bakasana
pasasana
parsva bakasana
sirsasana 2 to parsva bakasana
Supta Padangustasana out to the side
Supta padangusthasana out to the side with bottom leg heel wide to the corner of the sticky mat
succirandrasana
supine lotus
seated padmasana
padmasana leaning back on forearms to learn the "no hands" entry
padmasana in sirsasana 2
sirsasana 2 to kukkutasana
(I worked on parsva kukutasana here but it wasn't formally in the sequence. if its in your range, is a great time to go for it. remember- if your left leg is in lotus first, twist and rest the lotus on your left arm)
chatush padsana 2X
urdhva danurasana 3X ( this is a counter pose for the arm balances, not a peak pose. For most people this will feel really good by the 3rd one but do not expect a great feeling back bend right away. Again, urdhva here is a counter pose, not the pose we prepared specifically for. However, with all the opening to the back and all the core work, it will feel great to many folks. Go for height in the pelvis and organic energy through the legs, more than deep upper back opening.)
Down Dog
uttanasana
parsva uttanasana
Down Dog
child's pose
sahita pranayama 5 minutes
savasana

work on the poses and let the poses work on you

2011-10-12T14:35:00.000-07:00

Well, it seems whenever Kelly comes on a trip with me I spend more time with him and less time writing. I suppose this is healthy, when you get right down to it! We had a great few days in Napa Valley. We went and did some personal work at The Hoffman Institute. Both Kelly and I completed the Process several years ago and so we went and did one of the graduate programs they offer there. It was fantasitc. The Hoffman Process is an amazing (an super intense and deeply healing) experience that is a very effective way to work on patterns of thought and behavior that are keeping us from experiencing ourselves and our lives fully. I recommend it to anyone who is struggling to move past their limits and wants to work on their psychological blocks from a spiritual perspective without dogma and with deep compassion. Truly an effective way to crack your heart wide open.

After the intensive we spent a day hiking and eating in Napa which was fun. Then we flew over to Boise for the weekend where I taught a weekend workshop. It was another great group and I had a really good time with everyone. (I suppose I say that after most weekend workshops I teach. Still, it was a wonderful weekend and it was a great to be there. And I loved the whole vibe of Boise.)

Kendra and Mark- students of mine from Tucson Immersions and TT- organized the event and it was an interesting mix of students brand new to Anusara Yoga, new to yoga, seasoned practitioners from other methods, long-time anusara teachers and students and everything in between. One thing I am really clear on these days is how much yoga has changed and evolved from the early days of Anusara Yoga. It used to be that if you did alignment you were from Iyengar Yoga and if you did vinyasa you were from Ashtanga Vinyasa and if you talked heart-based themes, you did Kripalu. In fact, those were the first three major group of people that came to Anusara Yoga when we were first on the scene.

John and a bunch of his students from Iyengar Yoga and then a wave of Ashtanga vinyasa students joined us. Back in those days, John was doing some teaching with Richard Freemen and there was a lot of sharing between the two of them and practitioners from both methods. Then John got connected up with the Kripalu folks and we had a wave of them join us and it all grew from there. (Of course, this is a generalization and told from my observation and recollections. bias noted.) In the meantime, the vinyasa practices have flourished some with "methods" like Prana Flow and Baptiste Yoga but also vinyasa practices that are more eclectic and creative have grown by leaps and bounds and have a huge influence on the way yoga is practiced and taught in America right now, from what I can tell. Bikram Yoga, of course, has been around for a long time and we see its influence in so many of these vinyasa practices utilizing heated rooms and so forth. So on it goes. And all the while over the last decade John has developed collegial relationships with the leaders in these other methods and they have been in his classes and so we are being influenced by the growth of other methods and they are being influenced by us. A fair amount of cross-pollination has occurred and the conversation of "how to do yoga" is still in motion.

One thing I have noticed over the last few years is that the conversation around Anusara Yoga and how we were "so different" that we were having around 14 years ago, is a bit outdated now. We are not actually as different as we used to be it seems! At the time we came around, we were inventive, creative and fun and the heart-based theme was a radical notion. Now, almost every class in Austin, Texas begins with a theme. We certainly have a certain way we try to do it in Anusara Yoga, but we are not the only ones out there using metaphor, myth and philosophy to bring people deeper into their hearts and bodies while practicing asana. Not by a long shot.

What is so funny to me is that while I still see our practice as creative, inventive and fun, its obvious that we are not "the funnest thing around" anymore and that people new to our method often find our alignment confusing and/or strict. I came to Anusara Yoga from Iyengar Yoga where they are super detailed about alignment so Anusara's broad strokes always seemed simpler to me. (I mean try to move the skin over the top half of your kidneys up your back while taking the skin on the lower part of your kidneys down your back. See, doesn't that make the instruction to "breathe into your back and inflate the region of your kidneys" seem easy by comparison?!)

But people coming to us from breath-based, movement-based flow practices get to us and feel the barrage of verbal cues to be obtuse and limiting. Makes sense. I mean, its not my experience and I do not see it that way but I know other people do because they (many many many people, in fact) tell me this. And I understand why. For years, you have been practicing yoga as a kind of ritualized, devotional movement-based prayer that allows you a chance to sink into your breath, your body and your heart in a private and yet also communal experience where you can challenge yourself as you want to and back off when you want to and express yourself creatively and so on. And then, enter your Ansuara Yoga teacher who stops the music, calls for a demo, makes you partner up with someone else, try poses you do not care about and breaks things down into these nitty, gritty details where you get caught in your head (and not just your head but the part of your heard where confusion lives) and let's just say you are not feeling the love, the grace or the shakti AT ALL!

See, I get it.

And so it seems to me that the people who come into the door of yoga through alignment methods have this idea that flow is advanced practice because "how can you do vinyasa and how can you do flow if you do not even know how to do the poses right? You can't stay safe, you will get injured and you won't know what you are doing?!"

And the people who come in the door through flow think that alignment is an advanced practice because "how can you get a beginner to actually learn all that stuff and be interested in the four corners of this and the inner spiral of that and the inner body v. the outer body when the most important thing is to breathe, move and feel?"

I actually think both perspectives are right. How can they both be right? Well, each perspective is based on practitioners direct experience and these experiences shape our perspectives, our biases and our teaching methods, regardless of system.

We talked about this a lot in Boise since one of the hardest things to really convey about Anusara Yoga is that we are so broad in your approach and the umbrella of "what is Anusara Yoga" is pretty darn big. I have been writing about this a lot on this blog so its just another day contemplating the grandeur of what it means to practice and teach this method, I suppose. The thing is that we have to understand the breadth of the practice on one hand and what actually is appropriate to any given group on the other hand. One of the things I love most about vinyasa practice is all that I described above. But one of the things I love most about an alignment-based class is getting a chance to really analyze, learn and repeat something under expert guidance until an opening or breakthrough comes. To me, one is a practice environment and one is a class. I love them both but I do not see them as the same thing. I do not even think one is better or worse, just different and serving different purposes on a given day but the same long-term purpose: improving my ability to practice yoga.

So- the thing is that the advanced poses I can do, I learned how to do them through a combination of both analysis and persistent practice. If no one had explained to me how to actually do the pose, it would have been a mystery or left to chance. If I had the "lesson" and I didn't practice it a lot, I would never have made use of the lesson and I wouldn't be able to do the pose. So I think we need both. I personally do not want to do a yoga of endless details, mind-numbing analysis, and endless corrections. Nor do I want to do a yoga of free-form movement limited forever by my creativity, knowledge or lack thereof. I want to do a yoga of both boundary and freedom, of form and creativity, of discipline and joyful expression.

Occasionally, you have to pull off to the side of a pose and see how you are going to get through it, around it and make some headway into it. You have to work on the poses.

And occasionally, you have to step into the flow, put on some music, breath deeply and just be with what you can do without trying to make it better, fix it or analyze it all. You have to let the poses work on you.

As always, if it doesn't depend and if the answer isn't "both" it is not Anusara!

more later.

En route

2011-10-03T18:04:00.000-07:00

Kelly and I are en route to Northern California for a few days of personal time and then we are headed to Idaho for the weekend where I have a teaching gig in Boise. The plane has some maintenance issues so our flight is delayed, giving me more than a few extra moments to write a blog entry.

I spent the weekend teaching in Corpus Christi, TX. I have directed a 11-month Introduction to Teaching Yoga Teacher Training Program over there. It has been a great venture- I brought in Desirae to teach Baptiste Yoga one weekend and Gioconda to do a weekend on Vinyasa Flow, we had Michelle and Gretchen teaching Restorative Yoga one weekend, we had three Sanskrit/Philosophy weekends with Manorama and the rest have been with me, doing Basic Hatha. People are generally shocked when I tell them I didn't really teach Anusara Yoga but I really didn't. I mean, I am trained and steeped in Anusara Yoga so I didn't teach anything inconsistent with Anusara Yoga but mostly I worked with the students on the basics of class construction and sequencing, the basics of verbal articulation skills and the basics of outer body alignment. No loops, no spirals, no heart themes.

One thing I have noticed in training people to teach Ansuara Yoga is that many people need better skills at what I call "good basic teaching" before they are going to be good at teaching Anusara Yoga. Good basic teaching to me is "getting the students into and out of the pose efficiently and effectively in a sequence that is appropriate for the majority of the group while offering intelligent modifications for those who are stiffer or more advanced." In fact, "good basic yoga" is at the heart of great Anusara Yoga. Its just that to make it Anusara Yoga we endeavor to teach all of that with a theme, connected to the grand purposes of yoga and using the Universal Principles of Alignment to enhance and refine the postures.

What I find is that when new teachers attempt to teach Ansuara Yoga and not just "good basic yoga" they get bogged down over UPAs and stressed out over the heart themes and catapulted into the cosmic dimensions with the chit-ananda aspect. So when Michelle asked me to offer a Teacher Training at her studio I told her that I would organize a broad-ranging, diverse faculty and develop a program that provided introductions to a few different styles that was geared to introducing people to teaching "good basic yoga" but that I would not teach an Anusara Yoga training to her group since they wouldn't be ready for it. John often says that Anusara Yoga Teacher Training is a graduate degree and so I was attempting to give the liberal arts undergraduate degree. And I am very please with how its gone.

This weekend was super fun. We covered a lot of asana through practice and some lecture and then did some work on Introduction to Prenatal. In a few hours, its obviously not a thorough treatment but it is enough to help them be aware of how to cope with the pregnant woman who walks into class, which is a very common situation for most of us. We had a lot of fun, we laughed a lot and its great to see how may breakthroughs can come from light-hearted laughter and honest sharing when a group has spent almost a year together!

The whole issue of "what is and what is not Anusara" is at play on this one. As easy as it is to define Anusara Yoga, its a bit harder to say what we are not. And like I have said, I get the need for definitions, especially relative to trademarks and the business aspect of all we are up to. At the level of practice, it can all feel a bit cumbersome to me, frankly. I have experienced John teach in very diverse ways and he certainly appreciates a diversity of presentations when it comes to his certified teachers.

In fact, I think a lot of what we actually think is "Anusara Yoga" is only a limited slice of the pie. I can't tell you the number of times I have answered the questions in the trainings I give: "But doesn't every Anusara class have to have urdhva danurasana? But doesn't every class have a handstand in it? But don't we need to have 2 demo's in it for it to be an Anusara class?" And so on. Its odd, because the classes people are describing sound so far from what I know to be true about the guiding precepts that inform what we are doing in Asuara Yoga. Its a bit weird to me. Weird to the point that I am convinced we are not all doing the same Anusara Yoga! Or at least we do not all mean the same thing when we use those words.

And yet, if people have only had my classes, then they think all Anusara is like what I do. And if they have only had teachers x, y, or x's classes then those classes become representative of the method. Once I get to thinking like this, I realize that I do not envy John's job one bit. Managing a system that is both boundaried and creative, that has standards but not rules, that has both celebration and rigor, etc. is no simple task. I know these contrasting qualities are definitely complementary and live together in a wonderful harmony and yet I also know that the key to that harmonious relationship is intelligent discernment.

As time goes on I think this might be one of the things I appreciate most about how John has endeavored to teach us over the years. He is famous for his "it depends" mantra whenever he is asked questions about our yoga. And he is famous for long, interesting, insightful commentaries on what depends on what. He has never given us hard-fast rules to follow but instead has attempted to educate us on the grey area that lives between the lines of rules written in black and white. In doing this I think there is an important subtext to really grok: He wants us to think. He wants us to evaluate out actions based on sound principles. He wants us to be discerning and he believes in our ability to step up to that challenge enough to allow us the sometimes-frustrating experiences through the wilderness areas of paradox, disagreement and mistakes.

Take the issue of music, for instance. (Although be clear, I am NOT interested in a big long discussion of why people wish I played more music in class. Seriously, I do not play a lot of music, not because I do not like music or anything like that but because, in general, I want the students listening to me, not to the music and I want them learning from me, when they are in my class. But I digress. Back to the story.) So the story goes that just days after John was teaching at Wanderlust on stage to music, he came home to the Woodlands Anusara Yoga studio and told the teachers to stop playing music in their classes. He told them he wanted them to fill the energetic space with their voice and with their prana instead.

At first glance, this seems unfair, right? Like, come on, he was just on a stage with musicians!! What do you mean we can't use music in Anusara?! Not fair. Whats up with that?! At second glance we can see that there is a trajectory of teaching skills being outlined and a deeper lesson to be learned. In the baby beginnings of learning to teach, maybe we put some music on and get used to being in front of the class and fill what is an uncomfortable silence (at first) with music. Once a teacher can do that, we want them to learn to be dynamic without the prop of background music and to learn to cultivate the energy of the class without it. (This is what I am guessing that John wants for those teachers he "pulled the music plug on".) Once you can teach in a dynamic way without the music, you can use music when you want for certain effects- like a party at a festival on a mountain or for a bhakti-inspired flow practice one evening with seasoned students. Its not "Music in Anusara" or "No Music in Anusara" its simply understanding the pros and cons fully and being able to do either so you can use it as you want to for a certain purpose or reason.

I could go on, but examples like this abound. Take demos. There is some rumor circulating that a teacher should use only 2 demos in a class. I asked John about it years ago because I use a lot of demos, depending on the teaching scenario. I do them quickly, efficiently and they are super-effective but I didn't want to misrepresent the method or how he wanted it taught and so I asked him about it. John was like, "Christina, you have a great practice and you are teaching in a new area. Your demos will be inspiring and informative. Use as many as you see is wise." Once again, we can see that he is wanting us to be wise as opposed to giving us rules to follow.

The trick here is that we have to realize that the process of going from uninformed to educated to discerning to wise is actually a time-consuming, labor-intensive, sometimes agonizing and humiliating process. Easier, I suppose, would be to have a bunch of rules to follow and for us to police and enforce the rules, but there would be a big loss in this approach in my opinion. I am happy and proud to be in a method that trusts my goodness enough to give me time to learn and trusts my capacity and intelligence enough to educate me about how universal principles can be applied to specific circumstances rather than just giving me a bunch of rules to follow.

more later.

Sequence from Wednesday Practice

2011-09-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

Enjoy!
I know I did.

Childs pose
Down Dog
Uttanasana

Surya Namaskar A 3X
Surya Namaskar B 3X

1 minute timings:
padangusthasana
padanhastasana
utkatasana
revolved utkatasana
deep lunge with forearms down
Virabhadrasana 1
Anjaneyasana to Parsvottanasana
-the deeper into the front leg you lunge here the better the parsvottanasana will be
parivritta parsvakonasana
- go for back heel down today to increase the twist

continuing on with 1 minute timings-

work for the feet:

Work with feet to open up the bottoms of the feet- turn one foot under as though you are sickling the foot. that is the bottom foot. Put the navicular bone of the other foot in the arch of the bottom foot and release the fascia of the bottom foot. I learned all this stuff from Iyengar Yoga teacher, Laurie Blaekeey. good times.)
vajrasana with toes turned under behind you to stretch the soles of your feet.
Repeat the previous two postures

work for the calves:

calf smashing with blanket roll behind knees in vajrasana
uttanasana with toes on blanket roll
repeat both postures

Still timing for one minute:

malasana feet together.
-this will also be the peak pose so get a sense of where it is now to see if the following work helps it out.
gomukhasana, classic form with feet and legs together
virasana
adho mukha virasana
supta padangusthasana variation
-with hands around top foot and forehead to the shin
triangmukaikapada pascimottanasana
janu sirsasana vairations with block
-put block between leg high up near the upper inner thighs, place the bent leg foot up on block
-bend forward between the legs
-bend over straight leg to ioncrease twist in the spine and release in the back
janu sirsasana-
- go wide, toward classic form with bent leg heel on bent leg inner thigh. this is to increase the twist
ardha badha padma pascimottanasana
bharadvajasana 2
pascimottanasana

maricyasana 1 with clasp
maricyasana 2 with clasp
maricyasana 3 with claso
maricyasana 4 with clasp
- on a blanket
-without a blanket if you make the clasp
pascimottanasana (which should feel very lovely at this point)

malasana
malasana to uttanasana
(we ran out of time but the sequence I wrote continues on so if you have time to keep going continue on to the following postures:
pasasana with clasp
- heels on blanket
pasasana with clasp
-heels off blanket if you made the clasp
1/2 happy baby- I call this deep supine hip stretch
Clasped uttanasana
kurmasana
- arms out to the side
kurmasana
- clasped behind back at waistline

windshield wiper
set bandha sarvangasana
windhied wipers
setu bandha sarvangasana

small rant

2011-09-26T20:28:00.000-07:00

I am home this week, which feels like an abundance of time with the amount I have been gone lately. Kelly and I spent the morning working on some photos for my new website (stay tuned for a new look soon! Milo is working on it for me and so far its looking great!) I met Anne for some yoga, had an afternoon in front of the computer and then spent the evening with Kelly, Mom and Dad. All in all a good and productive day.

I had a great weekend at Spirit House Yoga with Martha and Ted and their gang. Martha and Ted have had a studio for over 8 years and have been building a wonderful community of people in Oklahoma with great dedication. I taught there 2 years ago and it was really amazing to see the depth and maturity that has manifested among the group since the last time I was there. Many of the students participated in Todd and Anne Norian's Immersion at Spirit House and have been attending workshops and seminars and ongoing classes. All the work has really paid off- the community seems solid, deeper and unified at a new level. I had a great time. And we had a lot of folks there for whom this was their very first weekend workshop ever! (YAY!)

One thing that is cool about Spirit House Yoga is that Martha is an about-to-be-certified Anusara yoga teacher. (She is currently deep in the video assessment process) and Ted is a certified Baptiste teacher. And so the studio offers great vinyasa classes and awesome Anusara instruction and the two methods live happily together in one studio and the studentship is stellar. I have certainly taught a room full of more bendable people than were there in Oklahoma but I have not taught a room of better students. The group was attentive, real, eager, and hardworking so whatever Ted and Martha are doing is working.

I find more and more inspiration these days from examples like Spirit House Yoga-- where people are coming together in unity around yoga rather than using the yoga and the various conventions, techniques and ideas of different methods to create further division. I mean, let's face it- we all have enough division in our lives and experiences of being separate. It is really too bad that our strong allegiances within the world of yoga tend to recreate those same samskaras. They have really moved beyond that at Spirit House and it was a pleasure to spend time in such a community.

Don't get me wrong- I get the need for distinctions and clarity at the level of defining the parameters of the various methods. I certainly see it at the level of trademarks and business. I don't have an issue with it at that level at all. Its just that to me I think more about effective yoga in general, over and above effective Anusara Yoga or effective Iyengar Yoga or Baptiste Yoga, etc. And I am always interested in looking at the efficacy of any particular style of yoga relative to what its primary aims are, not relative to what my personal preferences are.

I talked to Baron Baptiste about this once. In my opinion Baron is a master at helping people see through the false limits of their psychology and getting real with themselves. His teachers are amazing practitioners, they know how to look at themselves, how to be accountable and how to create a transformational environment for their students that is rigorous and demanding. His approach, in my opinion is very effective. I have worked with a lot of his teachers over the years and they are great students--every single one of them. So if you get on his case because he isn't telling you something about the intricacies of physical alignment in a pose, you are missing the point. I am sure he could do that but he is not aimed there. He is aimed somewhere else- he is aimed at piercing through those false limits- and he is hitting the mark of where he is aimed very well in my opinion.

Or Bikram Yoga. They, too, are aimed in a very specific way. Bikram created a series of postures to challenge, strengthen, open and detoxify Westerners who are stressed- out, sedentary and overweight. He believes that if the body is purified self-esteem and spiritual tranquility will naturally follow. Don't ask them for short cuts, for an easy way out, for justification or excuses and do not expect to experience "the softer side of yoga." They are not aimed there. They, too, however, deliver consistently on where they are aimed.

Or Shiva Rea's work. I mean who better than she to deliver us to the mythic inner realms and to invoke the ritual aspect of the practice than her? If people would just stop getting upset that she is not a renunciate and start looking at what she is aiming at they would see that there is something quite grand that happens when she is teaching and through the vinyasa she and her teachers offer.

I could go on because really, every method has this delightful offering it is making to the conversation of yoga. When we get to Anusara Yoga I think it can sometimes be harder to really understand what we are up to because, as a method that is aligned with a philosophy of totality, it gets pretty hard sometimes to know what is and what is not Anusara. For instance, over the weekend I began the final class with 5 Surya Namaskar A and 5 Surya Namaskar B. No lunges, no creative embellishment and no major alignment instructions. Just move and breath and feel. Ted told me later that it felt like a Baptiste Class. But to me, that is a very Anusara Yoga way to start-- breath-based movement. In fact, it just so happens to be the Ashtanga Vinyasa way to begin also. (Why? Because its a freakin' great way to start asana practice! It works. So maybe its just good yoga, not good Baptiste Yoga or good Anusara Yoga, etc. Of course, for brand new folks, I don't see it as a great way to start but that is another story for another time.)

Anyway, I have talked to John about it a lot lately and he keeps saying "explain to me how something is not Anusara Yoga." He and I have had long talks about how broad the umbrella of Anusara Yoga is in his mind. He told me recently that he is expecting the fullness of the yoga to communicated to the students over a 6-month period of time, not in every single class. He says that he recognizes that some classes will be fiery and some will be mindful. Some will be fierce and others playful. Some classes will move. Some will have stillness. Some will have music and some will even involve the teacher rolling a mat to join in the fun. All of this and much more is "Anusara Yoga" as far as he is concerned.

And yet we also have standards and even beyond the basic standards of "have a theme, link the theme up to the postural cues throughout class, start with a centering, end with a blessing and sequence effectively to the level of the group," we have the ever present "Video standard" lurking close by creating for many students a very special kind of neurosis and worry. (Worry may actually be generous. Panic, upset. fear. Anger. All kinds of things arise in the the face of meeting up with that freakin' video standard!)

I personally look at the video as a time for the candidate to demonstrate a skill set and show the assessor that they know how to effectively utilize certain important teaching skills. I don't see that video standard as "The One and Only Way to Teach Anusara Yoga Effectively." No way could one standard be that because what we are aimed at is the recognition of who we are in totality. We are exploring the direct expereince of the singularity of that totality in a mulitiplicity of forms. We want to know what is the same inside when we are moving, when we are still, when we are crying, when we are laughing, when we are at ease, when we are in intensity. We are aimed at a kind of knowledge that cannot be achieved through predictable means and through recipes and through only one experience.

(And truth be told, even if the sequence stays the same and even if the teacher works from a script, every practice is different because each one of us is always in a relationship with the singular, eternal presence and with the ever-changing nature of the manifested world in the form of us and our life. But I digress. All I am saying is its not a cut and dry kind of thing.)

ANYWAY--I could go on with this because one thing that I have noticed this year in my travels is a lack of generosity among some circles of Anusara teachers. Having gone through the fire of passing that video for certification, the teachers are looking at other people's classes and saying "they wouldn't pass assessment" and instead of being generous with one another, there are pockets of criticism and nitpicking arising. And it's not pretty. We have been given an amazing method to teach with broad parameters by design. We are invited, within these broad parameter to find our authentic voice and to represent the majesty of the method through a variety of means. This kind of generosity could inspire the same in us, if we let it.

And look, I know how hard it can be to pass that video. And I know how hard it can be to train teachers according to certain standards and not see the standards being upheld by others, especially if those others are very visible teachers. I get that. I really do. But still sometimes, we are so stuck on video standard, that we may not be really trying to see where was the teacher aimed that day and whether or not they were hitting the mark of where they were aimed. Believe it or not, we are not always trying to model video standard!! I know for me, if I teach vinyasa, I may not be offering my best alignment experience and knowledge to the group that day. I let a ton go to get something else to happen for the students. And as much as I love alignment and believe in it, I am not that worried that one false move in uttanasana or chataranga is going to injure someone. Seriously. People bend over all the time. No big deal.

So we do our best and I suppose this rant was just a call to all of us to extend some generosity to one another and to open our eyes a bit to the many effective ways that yoga can be taught. Its a happier way to go.

Enough. Thanks for listening(that is if you made it this far!)

Anusara Yoga with Christina Sell Sue Elkind and Niame Jezzeny and Dig Yo...

2011-09-22T06:14:00.000-07:00

Here are a few great scenes from the weekend at Dig Yoga. Enjoy!

Same and different

2011-09-21T10:54:00.001-07:00

Kelly and I are in LaGuardia Airport with a lot of time before our flight. Our hotel in NYC was in the United Nations neighborhood and Obama was there giving a speech this morning so the hotel folks suggested we allow about an hour and half to get to the airport and a full two hours to get through security. Turns out that we made it to the airport in 20 minutes and there were no lines here at all. So, now we have plenty of time to catch up on computer work at the gate!
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The weekend at Dig Yoga was fun. Me, Sue and Naime shared the teaching duties which went well. I so enjoyed getting a chance to meet so many new folks and to reconnect with friends and students I have met over the years. One thing I really like about my work right now is the growing sense of community that exists beyond the borders of state and country, both with students and my colleagues and long time friends. . For instance, I have known Sue and Naime since I was first involved in Anusara as they were such key people in the early growth and development of the school. They used to own City Yoga in Los Angeles and John used to come and do trainings every year in LA. And at that time I lived in Arizona, so I could drive to LA any time John was there and I did. In fact, I would load up my minivan with students and friends and we would take road trips to southern california. Anyway, we have known each other for a long time but this was the first time we have actually seen each other teach or collaborated on an event together. It was fun, interesting and thought-provoking in so many good ways.
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About the same time that I moved to Austin, Sue and Naime moved to the NJ area and opened Dig Yoga. It's a wonderful yoga studio and training center. They have great teachers, wonderful programs for all levels of students and even for kids and they host workshops, trainings and seminars for continuing education that serve the entire region. Dig is definitely one of those Anusara Yoga meccas of greatness everyone should know about. I will be back there in 2012 contributing to the Teacher Training conversation, which I am already excited about.
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On Monday, me and Elena teamed up for an afternoon class which was another first. She and I have been good friends for ten years and have never taught an asana class together. We have very different teaching styles but we blended them together in a strong and deep practice for people of all levels. It was so fun to be teaching with her and to meet so many people I know via social media, etc. Also interesting was how many people came to the even because their friend told them they "had to" be there. I met friends of friends and reconnected with long-time colleagues and students and all in all, it was a grand success.
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Kelly and I took and extra day to visit the city, which mostly meant eating italian food at every meal, walking through central park and a long visit to The Museum of Natural History along with a brief stop at FAO Schwartz, where we played with the toys and La Maison Du Chocolat, where we spent a small fortune on chocolate. It was a great day of playing tourist and this morning, after an asana practice the hotel room, we packed up and are making our way home.
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There is a lot on my mind these days with regard to teaching, practice and how the industry of teaching yoga coexists with the practice of the yoga but I am not sure it's coalesced into anything really useful yet. One thing I am certainly enjoying a lot is watching my friends- myself included- grow up in the method and in our teaching work. It's an interesting Spanda, in a sense, to watch our personal growth, the grow and changes in Anusara Yoga and see how those two trajectories are in relationship to one another in both easeful and sometimes difficult ways.

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I remember when I left teaching at a particular yoga studio in Austin, where I taught a certain way because of the clientele and the environment and starting teaching at another studio where the students, the methods and the ethos were very different. As a result of the new environment, my teaching style shifted. And while the shift was perfect for the new environment it was not so great for the students who knew my teaching the other way and liked it "the old way." It was still me, it was still Anusara yoga but it was also different and my shifts were not the right shifts for everyone.
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There is always lots of talk about how Anusara is changing and growing and big discussions about the process of growing from a small grassroots community to a worldwide movement. I think as a method, we are both the same and different and what those differences mean to different people seems to vary greatly. Some folks found the difference between the old and the new so much that they no longer felt resonant with the method and chose to leave. Others I talk to are happier now than they were in the past. Still others have a list of pros and cons, costs and benefits they continually weigh. And that's the fun of it, really. I mean, being in community means that a bunch of different people, with different outlooks, opinions and ideas join together with a common aim and vision. Community does not mean that everyone sees everything exactly the same way and has all the same views, experiences and so forth. How boring would that be?!

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I mentioned this process of change and growth over the weekend at Dig Yoga a bit. To me, I teach Anusara because of the majesty of the method and because on the whole, it works for me in the same way it did in the very beginning. Much of what I love about Anusara has history in my early life-changing experiences with John and I am, admittedly, very old school about the yoga, in a way. For instance, now we have hoola hoops, acroyoga, music festivals and such. And honestly, I couldn't care less about all that. Don't get me wrong, I do not mind it one bit that most people like those things, it's more that, for me, all of that stuff has no real relevance to what draws me to the practice of yoga. Seriously, I am not grinding an axe about it so there is absolutely no need to send me a note extolling the virtues of the hoop, slack line and so forth. I get it, I really do, it's just not in my field of interest, that's all.
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My field of interest is focused on the fire of practice and the ways that living these principles on my mat translates directly into helping me mobilize myself in meaningful, life-affirming ways off my mat. I came to yoga, not looking for fun but for a way to actually live into the truth of who I was without self-destructive patterns of food addiction, substance abuse and self-hatred. I did not need entertainment, I needed a lifeline.
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And I needed to learn how to be vulnerable enough to let people help me along in the process. And so the yoga offered me a life of dignity, self-respect and self-honor and a community of people to lean on and to in turn, support. And these connections also sustain my interest. I have such fond affection and commitment to the vision and to the community of practitioners with whom I have spent the better part of my adult life and most of my best friends are Anusara Yoga teachers.
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So the yoga is not a casual thing for me. Never was. People think I am a really strict teacher. I suppose I am. And that's why. So much of this was a life or death thing for me and while it's not that way now, I have an interest in the rigor of practice that provides useful boundaries for moving through patterns and blocks. And it's not that I am anti-fun because anyone who knows me knows that's not true either. (i mean really, i am actually a very funny person!) Seriously, though, I love to have fun and the laughter in Anusara is healing nectar for sure.

I suppose when you get right down to it, what I love about the method hasn't changed a lot- same five principles, same seven loops, same great friends and new ones, same vision of intrinsic goodness, same flow of grace, same life-saving connection to my body, my heart and to what matters most to me.

More later. Time to get on a plane.

Sequence

2011-09-15T12:28:00.000-07:00

Sequence from last night's group practice.

theme: FUNdamentals- having fun with the basics
sub theme: small agonies in service to a greater fun and freedom)
alignment emphasis: root to rise; get in the legs to stretch and free the spine
Heart theme- commit to the here and anchor yourself.
relevance: first requirement for having fun is to be present. best way to work against fun is to wish you were somewhere else. (therefore commit to the moment and anchor yourself in it.)
Additional info you need to know: make sure the room is warm if you really want to mimic last night's class. it was a sweatfest. Oh, and when the energy gets a bit low after the serious standing poses, tell some jokes and funny stories.

childs pose
down dog
uttanasana

surya A-5X
Surya B-5X

handstand- 4 minutes
pinca mayurasana- 4 minutes

1:10 timings with back foot at the wall; the extra 10 seconds allows for transition time; no chatarangas or any vinyasa between just hold the pose, come up and switch sides efficiently.)

parsvakonasana
trikonasana
vira 2
ardha chandrasana
ardha chandra chapasana
parivritta parsvakonasana
parivritta trikonasana
reversed revolved vira 2
parivritta ardha chandrasana
parivritta ardha chandra chapasana

virasana- 2 minutes
supta virasana- 2 minutes

shalabasana
makrasana
shalabasana with knees bent shins vertical
danurasana
parsva danurasana

eka pada rajakpotasana prep
eka pada rajakapotasana prep with thigh stretch
eka pada raja kapotasana prep
eka pada raja kapotasana with thigh stretch
bhekasana

1 minute timings: (1 minute in the pose, 1 minute rest between)
urdhva danurasana X5
dwi pada viparita dandasana, head up X5
eka pada urdhva danurasana X2
eka pada viparita dandasana

supta padangusthasana variation
down dog
childs pose
baddha konasana
janu sirsasana
adho muka parsva vajrasana
pascimottanasana

viparita karani

have at it.

Enjoy. We did.

just sayin

2011-09-14T05:45:00.000-07:00

I am up early this morning. I woke up refreshed, made some tea, did my sitting practices, glanced through my ever-elsuive and ever-mounting email account and now, after some breakfast and more tea, I am taking a moment to catch up on a blog entry.

Kelly and I are going to go down to San Marcos for some time on the river and then its yoga practice, several appointments and then I teaching the practice tonight at Castle Hill. Its great to have a few days at home to get somethings in order and to have some time to catch up on work before heading back out. I am also prioritizing some personal time for play and self-care while I am home. All in all, its been a good week so far.

I had an interesting talk with Anne the other day. She spent the weekend in Dallas at a workshop with Swati Chanchani who is an Indian Iyengar Yoga teacher. (I studied with her for a month in 2004, on my first trip to India and she is awesome, by the way.) One of the great things about studying with her or her husband Rajiv is that, since they are Indian, the cultural translation of the teachings is a whole different thing.

Learning yoga in India, for me, was a radical experience and more than once it dawned on me that the culture of yoga in India has very little to do with the culture of an American yoga studio. Now, I am not going down the Indian Yoga=Good and American Yoga= Bad path or the opposite or anything like that. I am simply saying that in my opinion, A LOT of what we think "yoga is" in America is influenced by a kind of politically-correct-organic-lifestyle-non-violent-communication-be-all-you-can-be-while being- polite- and-maintaining -the status-quo kind of paradigm. And let me tell you, that is not yoga in India.

Take driving for instance. A question evidently came up in the workshop where a student asked, "well, if we were really established in yoga, would we get upset when someone cut us off in traffic?" Anne said Swati was like, "What does it mean to cut someone off?" Finally, the students explained to her by saying, "Like, if someone insults you."

Now, Anne's point on this was that because we are so identified with our cars and see our cars as an extension of ourselves to such a degree that when someone cuts us off it feels personal and insulting, when in actuality, it is nothing personal at all. So in that way, sure, yoga could help with dis-identifying with the car and de-personalizing the various circumstances of our life that are actually only neutral occurrences to which we assign great meaning. Yoga could help with that for sure. At least in theory it could.

The problem is a lot of us come to yoga with an agenda to feel better about ourselves and as we strengthen our vessel and increase our prana, we do begin to feel better about ourselves. And, as we all should know by now, I think this is a great and wonderful thing. However, this kind of growth and self-esteem can tip to the side where we feel so good about ourselves, that we actually feel so important that things feel even more personal. In short, the ego is getting stronger through the practices, rather than put in its proper place. (And yes, a strong ego is needed in yoga and I am not anti-ego or anything like that I am just saying that the proper place, in my opinion, for the ego is to be strong enough to see that it is not the primary aim of the yoga. But I digress.) Lee used to say that as essence is strengthened, so too is ego and that stage of development is pretty dicey territory. We have real attainment and we feel really good about our very real attainment and this causes some pretty serious problems if left unchecked. (Which is why teachers need teachers and we all need to beware of the teacher with not teacher!) Trungpa Rinpoche wrote about this in his book Spiritual Materialism. More on that another time.

But the other part of the driving example that was obvious to me was the hilarity of Swati trying to understand the concept of "being cut off" from her cultural perspective. If you have ever been to India, cutting people off is not rude at all. It is simply how they drive there. If you were to get offended every time someone honked, pulled out in front of you, switched lanes quickly, you would be in a constant state of inner upset. It is not "un-yogic" to drive that way in India. In fact, it would be a death wish to drive any other way.

Or try to be "polite" at the store in India and wait your turn patiently. You will never get any help. Their whole cultural concept of waiting in line is completely different than ours. It is not un-yogic to assert your place in the cue, to nudge the person who is trying to get in front of you, to yell loudly to the person behind the counter to get their attention and to ask for a better price, etc. It is simply how you do it there.

Lee used to say that spiritual life wasn't about becoming a new and improved, more palatable version of ourselves with better hygiene. He was somewhat opposed to us spending all of our life energy on eradicating every little possibly offensive trait of our psychology or endlessly trying to make ourselves more comfortable. He was insistent that spiritual life was about getting off that conversation and directly experiencing the energy that was underneath all that phenomena within ourselves. This is what he called the Essential Self. So that was the inner work.

And as for the outer work, he was always telling us to be sensitive to what was wanted and needed in any circumstance. So often he said, we are simply mechanically reacting to the world around us rather than sensitively responding to it. It is a bit tough to take that kind of feedback and reflection, but time and again, he showed us how, even in our sincere attempts to "help", we were doing so from unconscious biases and projections, not from a true or accurate read on the situation as it was.

And speaking of driving, the guy drove more like an Indian than an American and I remember so many times trying to follow him and I was hardly driving in a new-age-"yogic" way to do it! But the context for following him was "follow the guru" not "be a polite driver."

Anyway, there is more to the story of course, as there always is but it occurs to me that while so much of American yoga is about making life nicer, more comfortable, and less offensive, the tradition itself was not aimed at improving that level of experience. Sure, once we are established in the Essential Self, in a state of yoga, we are probably going to act more peaceful, loving and so on, but one must remember that there is a difference between cultural expressions of Peace and Love and the very virtues themselves.

Probably good for us all to think about this next time any of us want to call someone or something "yogic" or "not yogic" after all those kind of divisions exist at the level of the mind, not at the level of the Heart. Just sayin'.

Tuesday in Austin

2011-09-13T06:33:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend in Corpus Christ, TX with my Teacher Training group there. We had Manorama teaching on Friday night and Saturday and I taught on Sunday. I always love getting a chance to spend time with Manorama and listen to her teachings. This weekend was no different. She spent Friday night in what she called a "traditional satsang" where she had a student read from a book by Ramana Maharshi while she interjected commentary, gave explanations, asked provocative questions and fielded questions from the group. It was a wonderful evening full of great gems and insight.

A few pearls:

And so begins your journey of not taking everything literally.

You have to study your translation. First you study someone else's translation (of a text). Then you have to study your translation.

The one thing never absent from the study of yoga is you. Of course, that opens up a much bigger question: Who are you?

What is You is not limited self alone but it is not Absloute Self alone either. It is both.

We have tons of practices for the body and mind but we have limited experience with understanding what underlies reality as we know it.

Tantras are tools.

On mantra: That which protects the mind. The mind is the bridge between the relative and the The Absolute. We do not leave the mind behind.

You can use experiences as tools to create your life artistically.

It is not going to help you to be obsessed with preferences.

Perfection of mind means a quiet mind. Then the free flow of energy will come through with great force.

You can't fool God.

Everybody plays a fool before the Guru... and that is not a bad thing.

Everybody needs a place to fall. It is impossible to train a student who won't let themselves fall..."

Your expression is always expressing something.

Confusion is the partner of clarity.

Learning is a grueling, ego-bashing process. It's brutal. It's not fun.

I am starting the Nobody movement.

The network gets revealed the more you perfect your consciousness.

Dating is like practice because in order to date someone you actually have to spend time together.

Union is the way into the network.

If you get the essence of the class, you will not have missed the class.

Devotion is nothing more than knowing oneself.

The work of the mind is always to divide.

Yoga is not a better or worse game.

The yogi is not after partial. The yogi is after total.

Are you interested in being something or in Being itself?

Play with the clay you have been given.

Yogis learn not to activate on all the energy they experience. Nor do they fall asleep to it.

Don't get into yoga if you want it to make you happy.

Yoga is not here to grant you your preferences but it will teach you find happiness beyond your preferences.

If you are sincere, the Force of the Teachings will draw themselves to you.

What you want to want will always elude you. What you want will come to you.

On problems: Nobody had more problems than Jesus Christ and by the benefit of those problems he realized he was the Son of God.

knowing what you do not understand gives you a place to start.

On surrender: Everyone loves the topic until it comes knocking on their door.

When you surrender the things that bring you to that state will ALWAYS bring you to the new.

You don't get to divinity by leaving humanity in the dust.

Getting angry is different than living in anger.

Whatever is going on for you requires your presence.

God Alone Exists.

Everybody is a whole Universe.

The untrained mind always wants what it doesn't have and has what it doesn't want. the yogi-in-training is learning is learning to reverse that process. When you get to the place where you have what you want and you want what you have you are in the state of the trained or restrained mind.

And that was just Friday night! Obviously, each one of those statements could inspire a blog entry on its own. Perhaps I will take a few and run with them as the weeks go by. As it is now, its time to get on with the work of the day.

Musings on community

2011-09-07T09:20:00.001-07:00

I am sitting on the front porch of the lovely Daily Grind Cafe in Santa Barbara enjoying some breakfast before we head back home to Austin, TX. I had a short teaching gig in Santa Barbara followed by a few days of camping on the beach in Carpenteria. Kelly and I have been trying to make some time for some fun and play- thus the camping trip in the Rockies and now along the beach in California. Now that he is out of school he has a bit more time for these kind of adventures! We had an amazing few days of rest, hiking and sleeping to the sound of the ocean. It was really great.

The Master Class in Santa Barbara was fun. We had a nice turnout with a very mixed level group. I enjoyed a chance to teach the group, get to know some new folks and plant some seeds for Anusara Yoga there. The theme my host asked me to work with was community and so I did. I talked a lot about "coming into union" (coming into union- communion- community) with oneself and then from that coming into union with one another. I also talked a lot about how I am much more interested these days in facilitating yoga community in general more than I am interested in working for "Anusara Community" specifically.

Now don't get me wrong, I love being with a bunch of people who love Anusara Yoga so I am not saying I am against "Anusara Yoga community." anyone who knows me knows that is not the case at all. However, I have seen a very unfortunate trend amongst our people over the last few years. Obviously, this is not in all cases and if what I am going to say doesn't apply to you, let it roll on by like water off a ducks back. I have noticed that people, in an attempt to create "Anusara community" are creating unnecessary division within the larger yoga community of which they are a part. For me, its not so much about whether or not we all like Anusara Yoga as much as it is coming together in the love we each have for yoga. My aim around community is to grow yoga community period. Within that overall aim, I know that Anusara community will fall into it's natural place.

See the thing is that over the years I have talked to thousands of people about yoga and whether you like to practice loops and spirals with a heart theme, 26 postures in the same order in a heated room, 5 surya A and 5 surya B, heated vinyasa, with music, without music, with or without props and so on, I have observed that what keeps people on the mat for over 5 years is more similar than it is different, more unifying than it is dividing. Without fail, long time practitioners of all methods report a greater clarity, a greater compassion, a greater sense of self-love, a deeper desire to help others, etc. as a result of practicing yoga. And all this happens regardless of the method!

So years ago I signed up to teach Anusara Yoga and it is my primary practice but in so doing, I never felt like Anusara Yoga was the ONLY way to do yoga. I simply felt likely was a very good way that I felt happy to represent, teach and be part of. I still feel that way, in fact. I have never stopped learning (or wanting to learn) from great teachers in all methods and I have always enjoyed intelligent conversation and comparison about what each approach has to offer.

So the thing about community is that it happens and it has many faces and each community is a little different in how it expresses itself. There is no one way to be in community that is "The Anusara Way" or anything like that. And as far as a little free teacher training goes I have some advice: When I am cultivating community in my classes, or in my studio, I am not talking a lot about it. In fact, I never talk about it at all until I feel that it has already gelled in some way. I wait until I feel it happening to give voice to it, to point it out, to bring it to conscious awareness. A big mistake new Anusara teachers make is that they come home from a big Anusara community love fest- like a workshop with John, wanderlust, etc- where they were deep in the throes of community- and start talking about this great community with a group of people who are not yet bonded with each other and it lands sounding false because the group doesn't have it yet and therefore the teacher is referring to their own experience, not the group experience. And without realizing it, an emperor's new clothes situation follows.

And also, community, is not about potlucks or about performances or anything like that. Community comes from the decision (and the ongoing follow-through) to genuinely care and invest in each other. You can have great potlucks and no community. You can have great community with no potlucks, etc. In my experience, community happens in an organic way that cannot be forced or hurried but must be tended to and is specific to each group. And I think the biggest thing to help create community it is having projects and shared interests and endeavors. Community is not just me making a nice event for you to come to. Community is all of us making a nice event for all of us. It takes a village to have a village, it seems.

For instance, whenever I go home to Arizona to visit the ashram, the first thing I do is make sure I am on the dish crew for the group meal. I know that if I roll up my sleeves with my sangha mates I am going to bond with them in a few moments and in a way that just sharing a cup of tea is never going to measure up to. I am closest to the people with whom I have served on cook crews, work projects and so on, not just people with whom I have conversations.

Anyway, I talked a lot about these things in my class and we had some nice learning, some great sharing and some wonderful openings in a short time.

The week before, as most of you know was a week of Immersion 3 with Noah and it gave me lots of food for thought as well, largely on the topic of expectations, but that is a story for another time as this post is long enough.

Have a good day!

asana sequence from this afternoon

2011-09-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

Childs Pose
Down Dog
uttanasana
lots of jumping back to down dog and forward to uttanasana to get hips high and to start the work of "floating" forward
handstand work at the wall
sirsasana 2 X2
succirandrasana X2
supine lunge X2
AMS with jumpings
lunge, forearms down
lunge, with forearms extended out and back knee down
1/2 malasana lunge (front leg foot on midline, knee slightly wide, like malasana)
malasana X2
sirsasana 2 to bakasana
standing baby cradle prep
eka pada galavasana
sirsasana 2 to eka pada galavasana
uttanasana
setu bandha sarvangasana
windshield wipers
setu bandha sarvangasana
savasana

Los Angeles Immersion Day 2

2011-08-31T19:38:00.000-07:00

It was another fun day at yogaglo with the Immersion. We started the day with pranayama and then I taught an asana class with parivritta trikonasana as the peak pose. It was a good straight forward Level 1/2 kind of class with strong work in basic postures.

Childs pose
Down dog
Uttanasana
simple lunge surya namaskar variations 2 X

This whole next section was to open the feet, the ankles and the lower leg to get it to release. I saw that lots of people did not have their heels down in down dog which told me that their back heel in revolved triangle pose was going to be tough to keep down also.
blanket roll under feet uttanasana
blanket roll behind knees in vajrasana
blanket roll under feet uttanasana
blanket roll under feet uttanasana
down dog
foot work to open the soles of the feet which is too hard to explain here
sitting on the heels in vajrasana with the toes turned under so the balls of the feet are on the floor
repeat both
down dog
down dog with bent knees and really reaching through the heels to stretch the soleus
AND voila! So many down dogs with heels down. YES!

jathara parivarttonasana with bent legs squeezing a block- 3X each side
with straight legs- 3X each side
succirandrasana
supta padangusthasana
parivritta supta padangusthasana

Vira 1- 2 X
parsvottanasana- 2X
parivrritta trikonasana- 2X

uttanasana
down dog
adho mukha parsva vajrasana
pascimottanasana

ujayi pranayama
savasana

Noah did a little Bhagavad Gita introduction and then we took a break for lunch. I practiced the sequenced with some additions- sirsasana after the opening 3 poses, after pascimottanasana I did malasana, uttanasana, maricyasana 1, 2, 3, and 4 and then malasana again with much greater success. Then pasasana and then malasana and uttanasana. then chair-supported shoulderstand. Good times

Anyway- it was a great sequence to work with and we had a short afternoon with some more work on the Bhagavad Gita.

Its always interesting to teach the Immersion Curriculum and see what directions we go in as a group and where it leads. Its never "just" the curriculum and each group has a different flavor and interest and insights they offer. One thing that is interesting for me is that as time goes by and Anusara's standards and curriculum are more and more clarified and outlined, I actually feel less like an "anusara" teacher. I know that must sound really odd but I always find it jolting when asked, "Well what is Anusara's viewpoint on _______ and how are we supposed to think about _____________."

In terms of asana, I have no real problem with those kinds of questions but I always feel a little weird answering the "Anusara doctrine" kinds of questions. I really do not want the teaching I do to be a conversion experience or a time when people are indoctrinated into something or told a way to think, perceive or relate to these time-honored teachings. I am more interested in what the Gita means to each person personally than teaching what the "Anusara viewpoint is on The Gita." I just do not relate to Anusara Yoga from that vantage point at all and when we started learning all the philosophy, it was, at least for me, more like The Gita for the sake of The Gita, not the Gita for the sake of Anusara Yoga Philosophy as some separate thing.

I am thinking about this a lot these days. Being around in the beginning when things were evolving naturally and organically was a really different thing than meeting all of this now that it has become something more boundaried and codified. I find I am really having to examine my own way of relating to the system as it is now since I am so involved in the curriculum and teaching people who are encountering it for the first time and meeting a "whole thing" that didn't really exist when I first came around.

Some of the questions that came up today got me on this train of thought and so its on my mind. To me, its more about how the teachings land inside me and not so much about conforming to an outer way or anything like that. I suppose, it is, like so many things, a spanda.

More on that later.

Immersion Los Angeles Part Three Day One

2011-08-30T21:23:00.000-07:00

It was a great reunion with our gang here in Los Angeles today. We are reduced slightly in numbers this time around and the intimacy is so very sweet. One thing I notice about my life right now that is the hardest part is not the travel schedule exactly or even the lack of the routine. It is more like the level of emotional connection required is a lot to sustain. I usually land in a town the night before a training starts and connect with my host or co-teacher and then we do our best to go to be early so we can start the training fresh. Then we get up and meet a group of students and dive into the teahings and personal sharing and self-inquiry and the whole ball of wax that it is to teach Anusara Yoga.

And for me, I have started to realize that it can take me a while to really "arrive" in an emotional sense. I am always really happy to see people and it has NOT ONE THING to do with anyone in the room or anything external. Its more that for me, personally, I have started to realize that my job often asks me to open up emotionally at a faster rate than is natural for me. I am very comfortable meeting people and carrying on a surface level type of conversation but for me to really engage in an intimate way, I need a little time. Walking into a room of folks for what I know is a deep and intimate process and being "ready" requires a kind of internal shift and focus for me.

I am not complaining. I actually think its a good thing and a great opportunity to work with my tendencies. And, like so many things in yoga, the more I am aware of my tendencies, the easier it is to make conscious choices about how I want to be in relationship to them. But, for instance, just Sunday I was wrapping up an Immersion at home and reveling in the community experience there and then this morning I am looking at another room of people knowing we are diving in again. All this to say that I felt that shift happen pretty easefully this morning as I looked around and saw all the sweetness in everyone's faces and the anticipation and gratitude for one another. And yet, its a definite moment for me when I really feel like I "arrive." It can even take a few days sometimes.

We did have a great day.Noah and I experimented with some slightly different teaching strategies to great effect and we made another obligatory dive into the tattvas followed by a discussion of the malas and ending with a forward bend practice. Tomorrow we will start with pranayama and go into asana right after that and get to work on The Gita. I love talking about The Gita and the malas were a great way to ease into a discussion on the many reasons why we need to "fight the good fight" and resist the powers within us (the malas) that cover our light. Manorama, when prepping our group for a talk on the The Gita was talking about how the good guys in the story had pretty much been exiled from the kingdom. She said, "When the light has been given mo place to exist, battle must ensue."

Its like that inside ourselves also. there are forces that are working against the experience and expression of our Light and we must do battle with them. And sometimes the battle is violent, sometimes merely assertive and other times the strategy is more like a tai chi or aikido move. But while these forces in us can be acknowledged and accepted for what they are, they need not be tolerated and certainly they can not be given free reign. At some point, we have to do battle and defend our light so that it has a place to live in the kingdom that is us.

So we talked about that as we talked about the malas, the way the Light of the Heart gets covered. It's always a great conversation- oddly confrontational and liberating all at once.

More tomorrow.

Fire and nectar

2011-08-29T20:31:00.000-07:00

Well, let's see... It's been another full weekend for sure. We had our final Immersion weekend here in Austin this weekend. What a strong finish it was! We pushed the envelope quite a bit in the asana, looking at scorpion pose, arm balances from sirsasana 2 and drop backs and so on. That was fun. And we spent a lot of time in review of the curriculum which was great. Review is not exactly the most scintillating kind of sessions but it is so great to have a chance to clarify confusions, to ask people to compare and to contrast ideas and principles, and to really get down to some of the more academic points of the curriculum. And from what I can tell, people like to have a chance to actually "get the answers" to those empowerment reviews!

So that is kind of the content part of the weekend but the context of the final weekend of an Immersion is always a bit richer than that! It is so rewarding to bring a group through the whole nine yards of an Immersion and to see how far everyone has come in terms of asana practice and also inner shifts. This group had many inner and outer shifts and like I always say, I feel like I shift right along with a group anytime I teach one of these trainings.

I think for me one of the most rewarding aspects of this training was in recognizing how deep and sincere the students were. I had an ongoing feeling that the Austin Anusara Yoga Community has evolved to a new level of focus, commitment and and has become much more mature. I felt like this group marked the end of a "pioneering" phase with the teachings here. I had free reign to teach and not convince, students came ready to learn without needing to debate or compare a lot and most of the students have been in my classes or in my student's classes and so they already knew the method worked and was viable, they just wanted to go deeper. It was a truly pleasure to teach. I really loved it.

The Immersion curriculum is intense and powerful and challenges even the most seasoned practitioner. As much asana as there is there is plenty of philosophy, lots of soul searching and it is a big dose of community, to be sure. Asana junkies have to get with philosophy, the mystics have to deal with a ton of physicality, introverts have to share a lot, extroverts have to listen to other people and on it goes. Just being in a room for 100 hours with 35+ people is no small feat! Anyway, the students did great and I left feeling uplifted and grateful for opportunity to share the experience.

After the training, we had a small gathering to celebrate Kelly's graduation from college which was sweet. He has started college 8 different times and finally completed his studies last week, earning a MA in Traditional Chinese Medicine. It's a big accomplishment for him and in a lot of ways for our family, as we have been cheering him on and supporting him through the process.

And as I looked out at the folks who came to his party, I realized that they were all my yoga students and it really hit me that Kelly's graduation is also a community victory. Every person in the room has paid money to learn yoga from me over the years which made it possible for us to pay for Kelly's school. The community "support" in this case was tangible and real and so potent for me to recognize.

Once again, I am struck by the power of community and the many ways we can help each other be great and live into our goals and dreams. As we all know, teaching yoga is not easy, nor is being a student. The process asks a lot of us. And as we walk the path, it gets harder, not easier in a lot of ways. Like I so often say, we get rewarded for a job well done with harder things to do.

One time Manorama said, "it's not like yoga is going to tell you to take a break and have some tea." Of course, occasionally we do take a break and enjoy some tea or any one of life's amusements and that's all well and good. In fact, in that same talk she said, "sure, distractions are in this realm for a reason and they have their purpose but that is different than living a life of distraction."

So, for sure, we know none of this is easy, and it's not meant to be. There is tapasya and fire involved. ("it's called tapas for a reason- it BURNS"- Manorama) However, there is also nectar and sweetness as well. Kelly's party had that sweet quality of community and friendship that was really delightful to experience and be part of. As time goes by, I find this to be some of the most important part of the yoga to me-- these connections in community and glimpses of the deep support we can be to each other. Certainly, community has it's own fair share of tapas to offer us as well, but that's another entry for another time! Right now, I am reveling in a sweetness of gratitude for all of you who I have the opportunity and honor to teach.

We got up early this morning and spent some time boating in San Marcos. Then I had time to practice asana, before getting on the plane to head out to LA. Here I am now, unpacking and getting ready for bed.

More soon.

Anusara Yoga teachers Christina Sell and Jeannie Manchester teach yoga i...

2011-08-26T19:48:00.000-07:00

2011-08-25T15:12:00.000-07:00

Well, this has been a very long stretch without a blog entry. I have been busy but also without a lot of time alone to sit down and write.

I have been up in colorado since Friday and camping since Sunday.

Friday night we had a wonderful book signing event in Boulder that Jeanie Manchester helped me organize. We had a lovely turnout with folks from all over Colorado. I taught a strong flow class with a theme of devotion- fun flows, arm balances and good strong work. Some of the students from higher elevations told me it was the first time they have sweated in an Anusara yoga class! Of course, that made me laugh. A lot. To be fair, they live at like 10,000 ft above sea level where it is never hot or humid!

Over the weekend Jeanie and I co-taught some group practices which was fun. I had never taught with her before and so it was a good chance to see what she has been up to in her teaching and to connect with the Colorado gang, many of whom I know from workshops I have taught in other places and many of whom I met for the first time. We had a good strong back bend day on Saturday and a hip-opening arm balancing day on Sunday. Jeanie and I have very different teaching styles and from what I could tell the students enjoyed the practices and seemed to benefit a lot from the different presentations we offered.

After the session on Sunday Kelly and I had a jyotish astrology reading with Dr. Katy Poole, who Jeanie recommended to us. (the two of them are doing a retreat soon, so check that out- yoga and jyotish. Yum!) it was a fantastic reading for me, full of great inspiring insight as well as a good healthy dose of "tough love" relative to my dharma. ("Get on with it- stop playing it safe, tell the truth and stop pretending to be someone you are not! Your guru gave you a job to do, now do it." So kinda like that.) I highly recommend her and her work. She is smart, passionate, authentic, and down-to -earth while, without a doubt, dedicated to the Highest Possibility in each of us.

Before the time in Boulder I had three very full days of teaching the course "Teaching to the Raw Beginner" at Yoga Oasis. It was an amazing experience for me for so many reasons. I have never been to a training on the topic nor have I ever taught a workshop like this before and so it was truly uncharted territory. I have taught plenty of Teacher Trainings and I have taught plenty of raw beginners how to do yoga but putting it together was new.

One thing I really enjoyed a lot was having a chance to talk very frankly about teaching yoga and the challenges and realities of teaching public yoga classes. So many of the challenges I have faced as a teacher- both internally and in the classroom- have done so much to shape my ideas about teaching and have helped me hone my skills and refine my personality traits over the years. And the funny thing is that very few of all of the challenges I have encountered were ever mentioned in the teacher trainings that I have been to. So it was fun to actually speak directly to the heart of our challenges and to share the insight I have after 12 years or so of mistakes!

I am more convinced than ever that being an effective teacher is about three primary domains- I called them The 3 C's of Teaching in the training: Context, Content and Conversation.

Context refers to the aim we have as teacher, both in the larger sense of our own dharma and in the immediate sense of what aim we have for the class we are teaching that particular day. Content is actually the "stuff" we teach like poses, principles, sequencing, etc. And Conversation is about the way we present it- the words we use, the tone and tenor of our presentation and our relationship with the students. It seems that the more these domains are in a healthy balance, the better the teaching.

Context is super key because it is our vision, our darshan as teachers. If we are clear on what we want to offer students- both in the big picture and in the immediate sense of the class we are teaching, then we can know how to aim our efforts. If we are unclear, then we may have great sequences, and great tips about the poses but we will be less likely to really meet our aim if we do not know what we are trying to accomplish. Furthermore, we will not be as able to assess our efforts and our efficacy as teachers because we won't know what to evaluate ourselves on. For instance, if I want to provide a nurturing atmosphere and I am clear on that aim, it will determine a lot of how I will proceed in class. Those of you who know me, know that I am rarely aiming that way- I am generally going for focus, determined strong work and courageously devoted effort so my teaching style isn't soft. (but if you want to see nurturing Christina, download this class on yogaglo- it's an awesome example of me aiming at gentle and nurturing and, if I do say so myself, hitting the mark pretty darn well!)

This idea really hit home for me recently as I listened to a colleague of mine talk about how, in the opening 10-15 minutes of class, she wants people to feel at ease and so she give spacious, movement cues that are not very detailed or alignment-oriented. She feels that too much alignment instruction right up front makes people contract and worry too much about doing it "right" or "wrong".

I got to thinking about how I am the exact opposite way when I teach. I cue my basic alignment actions in the initial centering and don't stop until savasana. I want people focused from the git-go and I give them very little room to explore or think for themselves initially. I have found that I have better success at actually helping people get into hard poses when they are on my train from word one.

So both my colleague and I teach effective Anusara Yoga and both of us have well- attended classes and both of us train skilled teachers. However, the "content" of our teaching is different as is the "conversation" because she is aiming at facilitating ease and I am aiming at facilitating focus.

Anyway, we had a great group of new and experienced teachers. I learned a lot from them and got some great feedback about what to keep in the course, how to improve it and how to streamline the presentation. I am sure I will offer it again so stay tuned for details on that.

The week before the Raw Beginners course, Darren and I taught what I think was our best ever Part One Teacher Training. It was the most streamlined, simplified, accessible and concise training he and I have ever taught together. We overhauled the curriculum and made changes to the way we presented it and it was super effective.

One thing I am noticing in the process of training teachers over the years is that students are coming to our programs with less teaching experience than in previous years and people are learning to teach much earlier into their yoga life than they used to. For instance, I did yoga for 7 years before teaching. By the time I learned to teach I had been a student for many years and had seen a zillion modifications for poses in class and so I didn't need that as much from TT, I had learned it in classes. And, as far as Anusara methodology goes, an experienced teacher can be taught how to teach the UPAs right away but a new teacher needs to learn how to teach the poses and how to teach what I call "good basic yoga" before they learn how to teach "Anusara yoga".

Of course, some of that is a false distinction as "good Anusara" and "good yoga" are not entirely different animals but thatis a story for another day! At any rate, we revamped the curriculum to spend Part One TT more on "teaching good basic yoga" and we had great success. The students were challenged in a realistic way without being overwhelmed. I swear if we can just get people into and out of the poses efficiently and with accurate instructions, we will elevate the way yoga is being taught and practiced world-wide.

Of course, we had lively and interesting discussions on other topics for sure and I will be exploring some of those themes in the next few weeks. All in all, it was an amazing few weeks for me. I enjoyed the work and I enjoyed taking some time to retreat to the mountains. I was unplugged for five days with no Facebook, Twitter, email, blog, phone or text messages and it was awesome. I actually felt my consciousness shift considerably away from Facebook Mind and into a much more profound current. Something about nature and her rhythms....

More soon.

Sunday Night

2011-08-14T22:49:00.000-07:00

Another day of teacher training complete.

We worked with the theme in this morning's practice about True North and how if we have True North within us- the light of our heart coupled with discernment and discrimination- we have access to an inner guide as life takes us through twists and turns.

Heart Theme- steadiness and steady remembrance of guiding light
UPA- midline
Postural emphasis- vinyasa prep for twisting action of janu sirsasana, parivritta janu sirsasana and wait for it)... compass pose!

It was a great day because the sequence and the theme worked so well together and for the students and the concept was so meaningful for so many. After we debriefed the class we had a chance to work with weaving heart-based language into verbal instructions. After lunch we had an excellent discussion on ethics- which are ideally referenced in True North, not a bunch of outside rules- and about the distinctions between ethics and personality differences. Its just so clear to me the longer I do this the more complex and intricate the web of interpersonal relationships becomes and the more likely it is for conflict and discord to arise. Also, wonderful and rewarding intimacies arise as well, that is for sure.

I had a really interesting experience at a personal growth seminar a few years ago. We were working with the concepts of projection and transference and how so often our reactions and impression of people are not dictated by present-moment information but are colored and influenced by past experiences. We were given an exercise to do where we, the participants, were to identify a "negative transference" we had with one of the teachers of the seminar. We were given a step-by-step process to help trace the reaction back to earlier life influences to see the source of the negative reaction. Then we went up to the teacher and shared what we had wrote.

What was so amazing to me was watching how 40 grown adults, all of who were competent people and well-educated each had had a negative reaction to one of the teachers at some point in the seminar. Each of us had felt hurt in some way. Each of us had felt "less than" in some way. Each one had felt disregarded or misunderstood in some way. And since I teach people for a living it was particularly stunning to see that no matter how hard I try to "do a good job" or "do it right" this process of transference is at play. (Every. Single. Person. In. The. Room. Had. A. Negative. Reaction. It was not random! or haphazard. very compelling evidence, really.) Also, there are plenty of positive transferences headed our way as teachers as well. As students it can be easy to project positive traits on the teacher that are not exactly accurate.

At any rate, there we all are, in a room, doing the yoga, opening up our energy channels, contemplating Big Ideas and, all the while, the transferences can be happening underneath the surface of awareness. This is super important to keep in mind because a lot of times feelings get hurt as a result of these kind of psychic misunderstandings and the misunderstanding can be detrimental to both the student and the teacher in a myriad of ways. Add to the situation that the expectations for teachers that are lined out in the Anusara Yoga Teacher Training Manual are super high. Even the simple sounding intention that an Anusara Yoga class help each student feel better about themselves is, in my opinion, a bit unrealistic.

I mean sure, of course we want that for everyone who comes into our class. Of course we do. However, what achieves that aim and interferes with that outcome can vary widely from person to person. One student feels great because the teacher paid so much attention to them and gave them a ton of hands-on adjustments through class and the person next to them felt criticized and picked as a result of the adjustments they were offered. Some people feel respected when you give it to them straight while others need a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down, so to speak. And the variations are endless.

My point- or one of them- was that all of that stuff is more psychological whereas ethics are more about right, wrong, and dare I say it? (Yes, why not?) Ethics are about morals.(Funny what a bad word that has become in modern society. But I digress.) I did, in fact, I look up the word and that is what the dictionary said- "having to do with right, wrong and codes of conduct." The word moral also has some etymological relationship to the word mood which is interesting as our ethical conduct- or lack thereof- does relate directly to the mood of our teaching, the mood of our class and the mood of the way we conduct ourselves.

More was said, and more could be said to recap the day but that's a glimpse at the tenor of the discussion. It was a rich topic with many fascinating facets.

We spent the remaining portion of the afternoon on observation and adjustments.

Wow, what a full day.

In the Thick of It

2011-08-13T22:15:00.000-07:00

We are in the thick of Teacher Training here in Tucson and I am having an amazing time.

I think the thing I like most about teaching Teacher Training is how much I learn every time. Not only do I get a chance to reflect on the practice of teaching, clarify what I think about it, and refine my articulation of various concepts and challenges related to teaching, I also get a chance to practice my skills all week since we do some much skill building exercises throughout the week. Its like getting a teacher training for myself!

I re-worked the curriculum for this training and strream-lined it, simplified it and I think its the best Part One me and Darren have ever done. I think the material is perfect for the group- manageable, appropriately challenging, informing and inspiring. I feel really good about it.

One recurring theme for me that keeps coming up is how important the basics are. I actually love refined teaching and interesting sequences and nuanced instructions but it is very clear to me that Part One Teacher Training is not about that at all. It is about teaching people to do a good job with the basics- like getting people into and out of the poses well, instructing with the breath, being economical with ones words and so on. The better we are at the basic skill set, the more effective our teaching is going to be.

So its been a big foray into super basic teaching fundamentals and the students are doing well with it. As the year progresses we will get to add more details to the instructions and more refinement to the presentation but I am firmly convinced that if teachers everywhere were doing the basics well, the world of yoga would be a better place. Just like in asana, the basics are not necessarily easy to do.

Its tie for me to get some sleep so I am not going to write for very much longer. Tonight I taught a class at Yoga Oasis East which was super fun. We had 48 people show up which packed the room to capacity and we worked on drop backs. I used the theme about creating refuge within our bodies and becoming beacons of light as a result of being anchored. We worked a ton with Inner Body Bright and just about everyone in the room learned how to drop back and stand up. It was super fun. The students were receptive and joyful and we really had a good time.

Well, I have lots of gems and insights rockin' around inside but I need to turn my mind off for a while and so perhaps tomorrow I will dive into that treasure trove. I had so many very interesting conversation that made me really think this week. I think thats the sign of a great training- getting asked interesting questions! Sure there are the predictable, always-asked Level 1 appropriate questions that we expect. And then there are the deeper questions of personal inquiry that people explore and invite me into and that is rich territory indeed.

I am thinking about a lot so stay tuned.

Anusara Yoga Teacher Christina Sell teaches a workshop at Sundance Yoga ...

2011-08-11T22:23:00.000-07:00

Worth, Worship and Worthiness

2011-08-10T19:59:00.000-07:00

We had a great day one of Teacher Training here in Tucson. I have a bunch to do tonight and so instead of a full blog entry about the day I thought I would post this little clip from the weekend in Friendswood.

Enjoy!

Responsiveness and Necessity: Kayaking and Yoga

2011-08-09T06:51:00.000-07:00

I had a really good morning down in San Marcos. Kelly and I spent some time on the river which is always super fun. We are in desperate need of some rain around here and so the water is getting lower and lower but there was still some wave to play in and it was refreshing to be in 72 degree water. That is a cool thing about The San Marcos River- The water is spring fed so it is 72 degrees year round which is pretty mild as far as rivers go. I still wear a wetsuit even in the middle of the summer since I get cold easily but is not a frigid experience by any means. Plus, I suppose that after 40+ days of triple digits already this summer, cold is welcome!

One of the things I like most about whitewater kayaking is how alert I have to be. While yoga requires focus and concentration for sure, kayaking has a whole other element because the medium we are working/playing in is moving. Balancing on one leg on a stable floor is one thing but a river is never the same- the water is moving, the current is changing and the kayaker must be continually responding to those changes. For instance, what worked in the wave when you first get into it will not necessarily work all morning long. In white water kayaking, one has have to rely on their skills and not on formulas or habits. Its like in teaching yoga- we teach with principles of teaching, not rote sequences, rote instructions or formulas guided by "always and never". Discernment and responsiveness are the guiding principles in my opinion, not rules or standardized, predictable answers.

And the responsiveness is key because while a lot of us can get scared or freaked out in yoga doing a new move, in kayaking you are not just be upside down but you are often upside down, getting pummeled by a wave and under water holding your breath! So maintaining composure is both more difficult and more necessary.

Lee talked a lot about Necessity as it related to spiritual practice. He was fairly adamant that a life of true spiritual practice was difficult and the easier thing was to simply allow one's desire for comfort, ease and unconscious mediocrity to take over and be the order of the day over and above self-scrutiny, self-sacrifice and surrender. (He was not saying and I am not saying that we should never be comfortable or anything like that- he was simply talking about the force of habit we have to overcome if we are going to align with who we truly are over and above who we think we are.)

I think in 12-step recovery a lot of what gives Necessity is the fact that one has reached a point of despair or a "bottom" of sorts where the negative pattern or behavior has escalated to such a degree that the person is "sick and tired of being sick and tired." Keep in mind, this is not limited to outer behaviors or substance addictions. We might be sick and tired of feeling unworthy, of feeling unimportant, etc. These bleak moments often yield a stark clarity of insight where we know we need to change something, even if it is "just" our perspective, context or attitude. It is in these moments of clarity where we actually see the that the stakes are higher than we thought and there is a cost to our habits that is greater than we realized.

And yes, I think we can also grow from a place of longing to be greater and from the recognition of goodness within us that we want to bring forward. I definitely think we can feel a creative resonance with something profound and want to bring that awareness into our lives and that longing can create Necessity as well. I have felt that also, that deep yearning to really love from the expansive quality of my heart.

So the point is not so much what gives Necessity as much as that we have it. And that we stay tuned into it because it gives us a lot of fuel to keep walking the path when it gets difficult. And it will inspire us to stay responsive, not reactive and to maintain our connection and composure when we are upside down in a rapid getting a bit pummeled!

So here is a picture of me in the wave.

We also checked in on The San Marcos School of Yoga to see how its paint job is progressing. The property is a corner lot and there is the yoga building (pictured below) and a house on the lot. Both are getting painted and they had made a lot of progress. When we have programs here we will use the house for meals, massage, acupuncture and community space and the yoga space for asana and morning meditation.

Here are a few shots of the inside. These are taken with a wide angle lens so it looks a bit bigger than it is but we laid down mats. 40 people will fit with room to spare. Good times.

When you first walk in the door, this is the view.

And when you are look back at the door, this is what you see.

We have a huge space for prop storage as well. So I am going to outfit the school with chairs for 40, blankets for 40 people to have 3 each, 80 blocks and straps and so on. Just think of the fun we can have!

I am really excited to be able to create a training center like this right here in Central Texas. I will be able to offer a variety of trainings, intensives, immersions and educational courses to help us grow as a community in a down- to-earth, intimate and rigorous setting. The cool thing about San Marcos is that its close to Austin- about 35-45 minutes- but it's low key, relaxing and connected to closely to the life of the river. Its such a great place.

More soon. Off to Tucson.

Monday Morning

2011-08-08T05:20:00.000-07:00

Well, it was a busy weekend with no time to sit and write. I am behind on emails and I haven't written a blog entry in a week. And I decided instead of chaining myself to the computer this morning that I would take a trip down to San Marcos to get some time in on the river. I am always happier when I get some time each week paddling.

Plus The San Marcos School of Yoga has been getting a new coat of paint and I am excited to see how it looks now. I am getting really excited about the re-opening of the school. Sam and Anne will be offering some classes there this fall and I am going to be offering more and more trainings there. Teacher Training 1 in December, Int/Adv Asana Intensive in March and Teacher Training 2 in April. And lots more to come so stay tuned. I am so thrilled to be able to offer high quality training in an intimate, community setting here in Texas. My vision is that many of you from all over the world will come and join us at these events and enjoy the simple, down-to-earth setting. So fun.

I had a very full weekend. Thursday night I taught a class at The Woodlands Anusara Yoga Studio . We had a great turnout with people from all over which was really fun. The studio used to be owned by certified teacher Vicki Beilharz who ran it for years. When I first moved to Texas she was the owner there and I taught a workshop there then. Vicki moved and the studio has passed through two more owners and was recently taken over by Anusara Yoga. It was so fun to be invited to teach there again, to see some old and new faces and to be part of the new wave of inspiration that is happening there, now that it is Anusara Yoga's studio, right down the road from the main office. We had great students, good times, and lots of learning together. We also did a group practice on Friday morning which was a dynamic blend of vinyasas, pose analysis and explanation as well as some sermons and pep talks!

Skip back to yesterday's post and you can see some footage from the classes.

After lunch on Friday Kelly and I went to Friendswood, which is about an hour away on the other side of Houston from The Woodlands. Valerie is a good friend of mine and was the first person in texas to invite me to teach at their studio once I had moved here. She reached out to me with such love and acceptance and we have been close ever since. This is the fourth year I have gone to teach at Sundance Yoga. It is so fun to go somewhere every year around the same time because it provides such a touchstone for one's growth and development. Valerie is a very loving and nurturing person and teacher and her students are really great. I gave them a big dose of fire and passion which they seemed to receive well. We had four sessions together and covered some major territory inside and out. Good stuff.

Kelly's working on a video now so we will get that up soon.

I have lots on my mind and all kinds of insights percolating around that I cannot wait to get down on paper (or computer) but right now, the river is calling. If we don't get there early, all the tubers are in the rapids and we can't play.

more soon.

Certified Anusara Yoga Teacher Christina Sell teaches a workshop in The ...

2011-08-07T19:28:00.000-07:00