the dream became a reality

january 16th & 17th
it was new moon, and a solar eclipse and Twee Merrigan was in town. i did it! Twee gave me my first opportunity to jump into the fire and start the interviews i've been dreaming of doing now for some time. it could not have been a better time to start a project and boy does it feel good to have started this journey.
the interview will post on AnitaGoaTV on YouTube in February. i will let you know when it will "air" :-)

here we are after Twee's 'Rock on Hanuman' class at Sonic Yoga.

make room for exploring and discovering

i had such a fun day with my son, Lars today. on Fridays we often go on some kind of exploration. today we journeyed [from brooklyn] to manhattan to check out the farmers market at 14th street (forgot to take a picture of that) and walked to SoHo for a breakfast dosa at Hampton Chutney (picture below). well, i had the dosa and Lars had an oatmeal raisin cookie.


on lafayette street, we discovered this wall writing:

the way we are on the mat is often the way we are off the mat. if we allow ourselves to explore, discover and have fun on the mat, it happens off the mat (and vice versa).

in my experience, we get stuck, lack energy, feel un-inspired when we do the same things over and over again MINDLESSLY. yoga is all about repetition, but MINDFUL repetition. with joy. with curiosity. just like a kid. i notice this with Lars. he repeats movements and words over and over again, he never gets tired cause for him it's a game, and it's fun. to me, it's so inspiring. he is an amazing GURU (teacher). through him i reconnect with my own inner child and allow myself to explore and re-discover or discover new things by not thinking so much, or editing myself too much.

we adults get so easily bored: what do you mean? AGAIN???? the mind gets bored before the body, that is the problem.
so if we train our mind to increase its attention span (dharana - focus) we will move into the higher stages of yoga, into meditation (dhyana) and ultimately higher consciousness (samadhi).

i heard Malcolm Gladwell, author of 'Blink' and 'Tipping Point' say: we have to train ourselves to be curious, to be interested in everything.

exactly. it increases our consciousness. the yogis say the possibilities are infinite then.

making room for exploration has just as much to do with being curious and interested as in quieting the mind. a paradox ...? well, much in yoga is a paradox. curiosity killed the cat because he/she got too greedy and wasn't paying attention. so you need to know when to PAUSE.
as wonderful as the TV, blackberry, iphone, computer, internet and YouTube are we got to give ourselves a break from them.

should you feel that you don't have time to 'make room for exploring' think about how you spend your time.
sit and breathe and let the mind settle into a quiet place. when the mind clears; there is all the time we need.

happy exploration to you.

naturally high and letting go

oh my goodness, i had an amazing night last night.
for years i've wanted to go trapeze jumping, and last night i did, together with 3 girl friends. every couple of months we have Girl's Night Out and we try to do something fun and out of the ordinary. one of the girls had turned 40 recently and i am turning 40 in november. 40 ... it's a big milestone. i am not scared of it at all, i just can't believe i'm going to be 40. i still feel like that 16 year old girl growing up in Norway.

i guess i'm a bit scared of getting stuck. yoga does keep me honest in many ways and although i do get stuck and in a rut at times i know that i have a choice to either stay there or do something about it. i always chose to do something about it. it's in my nature to have to feel like i'm moving forward, otherwise i feel dead and un-inspired. and that's no life to live!

so on the theme of turning 40, and letting go of fears, i made the suggestion to the girls to go trapeze jumping. the girls are so game. off we went and what a blast it was. oh my goodness, it was scary, but it was sooo liberating. what a natural high. wow. even today i feel that jolt of energy pulsating in my veins. last time i felt this naturally high is 2 years ago when i gave birth to my son. i was naturally high for 2 weeks after that. 16 hour labor with no drugs, all yoga breathing (riding the waves with the contractions), that was the way to do it, for me. it was AMAZING!

as i'm writing this it's becoming clear to me. i realize i am in need of taking myself out of the normal realm of things. i am not into drugs, and never have been. i like things to give me natural energy. i guess i tend to get bored easily and tend to feel i'm not in the center of where i should be, so that's where i tend to feel a bit stuck.

i'm not complaining, i love my life and am naturally high on life. i love what i do. i love my family and living in new york city. i am a happy person. but still, every now and then it's like i need an extra jolt - to take me out of a comfort zone.

so my epiphany @ 39 years and 11 months is: if i'm not going to trapeze jump and give birth every week (LOL) in order to feel naturally high on a regular basis, in order to let go of fear i must constantly let go of stuff that robs me for energy. i have to forget about being politically correct, and i have to stop self-editing. now, HOW exciting does that sound? just think about it, how much energy would you have left if you stopped the self-editing? i think a lot.

i know, i am insane. i'm a scorpio after all :-) always seeking thrills and meaning. as if living in new york wasn't enough :-) (see, that gets old after 16 years too). all joking aside, the key is to wake up every day with new eyes, and do as helen keller suggested: go out there and do something that scares you every day. it doesn't have to be trapeze jumping or giving birth. it could be as simple as smiling to a stranger (some people are scared of that) or tell someone you appreciate that you appreciate him/her. anything, anything that scares you.
just as i know what it is for me, you know what it is for you. just don't get arrested and make sure it keeps that prana (life force) flowing.

live, breathe and believe.

here is a clip of me doing my last trapeze jump for the evening. you'll see - i almost got it :-)

hopefully the clip inspires you to try !

www.trapezeschool.com

LA "yoga king" teacher Vinnie Marino

Vinnie Marino was in town this week-end, and the town was sweaty and HOT. together with 70 other yogis, i participated in his class today from 2.30-4.30pm and my asana got kicked. 30 minutes into the class i was drenched. by the end of the class my clothes and mat were soaked in sweat. it's a long time since i've sweated that much in a yoga practice. it felt so good and de-toxing.

Vinnie taught a hip opening flow, which is my favorite, and the flow was amazingly challenging, but at the same time it was in a very gentle and thoughtful way. that might sound strange, but it's how it felt. i was pleasantly surprised.
last time i took Vinnie's class was in LA and i was 6 months pregnant, so needless to say, today was easier :-)

the class in LA was good with amazing classroom energy, but as a teacher, the sequencing didn't leave me curious for more. maybe he didn't have a good day that day, maybe i felt the class differently since i was pregnant and hormonal, maybe i had such high expectations since i had heard soooo much about Vinnie and his amazingness ... anyway, the past is the past. i wanted to give him another try (i believe in giving people second chances. LOL) and i'm glad i did. wow. the class was out of this world. the way he designed the practice was very intelligent, creative and clever. he prepared the hips in a very unique way for major opening. we did some stuff i had not done before (i'm definately going to borrow that), and if the beginning was YANG, the end was YIN as he had us hold all seated hip opening poses for a very looooong time. which was just DE-lish!

i was so sweaty and wiped at the end i could barely get myself to ask Vinnie for a picture. but with my blog in mind, i managed! to make sure i would look ok for the shot, i quickly took a peek in the mirror. i am sooo glad i did, cause i had mascara all over my cheeks (it's true!). i had to laugh and vinnie commented with his new york accent: "atleast it looks like you had a good practice." i sure did. not from tears, only from sweat :-)

this class left me curious for more (as a student and a teacher), so hopefully it will not be too long until Vinnie returns to new york so i can experience another amazing yoga practice!

the picture came out great, don't you think?

www.vinniemarino.com

natural born yogis

being a witness to my son's development and what i think of as his 'natural abilities,' i am convinced we are all natural born yogis. my son, lars is the best Guru i could ever wish for. he teaches me so much about being a yogi on a daily basis. he is free, happy, present and just pure LIFE FORCE. it's all within us!

[i had to post these pictures, pardon me, but it's my blog and i can post whatever i want to :-)]

balance: he started stacking these containers. it got pretty tall but he didn't stop. the taller it got, the more careful he was in how he positioned the next container. intuitively he knew it would fall. i think that is pretty amazing for a 21 month old, but i'm biased obviously

balance takes practice. let me see how it will work with glass! he is a libra after all.
open hips: just another natural position to be in on the floor watching TV.
ready to get into prasarita padottanasana
supta virasana: look at my spine, mom. can you do this?
kapotasana: you can see the joy in this backbending. no resistance! the heart is open :-)

jill miller Yoga TuneUp level 2 teacher training July 11-13 2009

i attended Jill Miller's 20 hour Level 2 teacher training last week-end. the focus was on the hips. now that i'm a mom it's such a production to get to these things, but i love learning from jill, so all of that extra work getting to a training is worth it!

jill is very clear and confident in her teachings and is extremely knowledgeable in anatomy. i learn alot from her and she always makes me think twice about what i say and how i structure my classes after i've studied with her.

jill can be found at www.yogatuneup.com
here are some photos from the training.



we are having a ball stretching the fascia of our feet



no it's not kama sutra. however not sure i will do this hip stretch with my clients :-)




i'm getting an amazing hip stretch here!



giving a helping hand (foot!)




me and jill miller

flowing part 2

another excerpt from gabrielle roth's book sweat your prayers

" in flowing we learn how to inhale, how to take things in: compliments, put-downs, gifts, intuitive hunches, moods, music, space - whoever or whatever else is going on around us. we like to delude ourselves that we're encased in an impermeable membrane floating through life in our own little space capsule. we think we're so self sufficient, but actually we're all just passing thoughts in one huge universal mind.

flowing is more than a rhythm; it's a specific energy field in which the feminine aspect of the soul is revealed in all its awesome beauty, fierce power, and animal magnetism. deep within each one of us is a mother longing to nurture, a mistress impatient to flirt, and a madonna serene in her wisdom. and they all bop out when the beat kicks in.

flowing part 1

there is a reason i teach vinyasa yoga - i love to flow.

i love to weave the breath with the poses, connect,'make' connections and create movement. sometimes i 'arrive' at the place i set our for, other times i don't arrive exactly 'there' but i always arrive (somewhere). that is the fun part of flowing, to allow oneself to flow with the current of the river. we're not salmons who naturally flow against the current of the river!
maybe we're trying to be salmons cause; god forbid, it might be "too easy" to flow with the current, so we need to create that extra challenge of struggling against it??? i think so, we humans love to complicate things, instead of simply following the flow ...

i love spontaneity, but i don't always allow myself to be as spontaneous as i would like to be. well, that is about to change.

i'm into gabrielle roth these days. i pulled out her book that i bought back in 1998
'sweat your prayers.' it's fabulous. gabrielle is a dancer and the book is about the 5 rhythms: flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical, stillness. although i read the book back then (i see i have underlined allot), but i can't really remember much of the content. funny, how books come back again at the right time. now it is making so much more sense to me.

here is an excerpt from the book that i read in class thursday last week:

"flowing is the state of being fluid, of hanging loose and being flexible. the rhythm of flowing connects us to the flow of our individual energy, our base current. when we dance long and hard enough to cast off the world's spell, our inner rhythm takes over and we begin to sense who we truly are and how great our potential is. to my mind, michael jordan playing basketball is the essence of flowing. his internal rhythm connects with the energies of the ball, his team, his opponents, and the court, until they all emerge into one organic entity and it becomes as natural for the ball to swoosh through the net as it is for the breath to flow in and out of our bodies.

when we're in our flow, all we have to do is walk across a room to be mesmerizing. we feel confident in ourselves because we're connected to the earth and in harmony with her rhythms, cycles, and moods. in flowing, there are no separations or distractions between things, there's only continuous change.

we tend to resist surrendering to this rhythm because we prefer life to be predictable and safe, even if it means being bored. flowing is dangerous - who knows where it will take you or what you will find when you get there? that's why i love it."

meeee tooo!
she's talking about dancing, but all i'm reading is the essence of yoga.

i aspire to inspire you(and myself included)to:
be daring, find your own flow and just go with it!

core myths

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY
and
HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE

Check out the article on the Core today in the New York Times Magazine

Stuart McGill, a professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo in Canada, demonstrates a few core exercises that emphasize all the major muscles that support the spine.

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/06/17/magazine/1194841000095/core-values.html

Article: Core Myths
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/magazine/21FOB-physed-t.html?scp=1&sq=core%20&st=cse#

friends that practice yoga together ...

what horrible weather we have today. i do love the rain, but it has been raining for months now it seems, and i am quite sick of it. i know, it's not very yogic of me to say this, but it's true.

it doesn't matter what the weather is, my students are die-hard, they will come to class no matter rain or shine. for some reason today, only one of my die-hard students showed up, ron. he brought his friend, denise, who he has been friends with since they were 5 years old!!! how great is that. they are both extremely advanced yogis, and today on the most rainy day they decided to practice yoga together. so rod and denise were my two students in class this morning, it was basically a semi-private. they lined their mats up right in front of each other (see the picture).

i am not affected by how many people i have in my class. what matters to me is the energy the people bring to class. these two yogis had such wonderful energy and they were so happy to be there practicing together, it was such a great class and such a joy to teach them.

here they are in a side crow split/ekapada kaundinyasana.
they had already done one side and this is the other side. i quickly found my blackberry and took a picture of them.

so, the friends that do yoga together stay together.

Practice with Aarona Pichinson's Yoga Soundscape

wow, this was an amazing week for me. i got in ANOTHER practice with a teacher i had not experienced before. yoga works is opening it's new location in SoHo next Friday (i will be teaching there!) and to celebrate this opening, Aarona Pichinson, master yogini goddess creator of Yoga SoundScape led us through an amazing 2 hour class of movement, breath, heat and pumping beats by Derek Beres (and others) last night.

{sidenote: every friday night i make a delicious pizza, but last night i skipped that, gave my husband veggie burgers and dal (he was happy) and had him put lars to bed as i went off to class. see what happens when you get your priorities straight! i felt like i was back to being a free bird, let out of its cage :-) just partially kidding.}

this class was right up my alley, i have wanted to incorporate more movement/dance into my classes and aarona did it in a very nice way. you could feel the energy moving through you, and derek did a wonderful job playing music that pulsated with you. (derek is also a yoga teacher so he knows what music works for a yoga class!). re: dj'ing: it reminded me of my own dj'ing back in oslo, norway. i took a dj course while in college and did some spinning then "back in the days." i've always loved music and hence find it natural to play music in my yoga classes. i love dance (as you all know from my jane fonda, flashdance days), so the next step is to get going on the real GOA TRANCE class. oh, so much to do, the priority list keeps growing :-)

anyway, the theme of the class was NEW BEGINNINGS, and aarona put a card in front of each of our mats and mine read:

delight in the light!

take yourself lightly and you will cut through the dust and grit of the journey onto outright celebration. when you don't take yourself too seriously, you will be lifted out of causative thought patterns that hook you into believing you are here simply to cope with existence and overcome challenges. instead, you will thrive by delighting in the light that you are.

hmmm. i thought i was pretty serious about taking myself lightly ... maybe i'm not light enough!? :-)

so from practicing with two new teachers this week i got: alignment and pause/ease (natasha rizopolos) and lighten up! from aarona!

two very different practices, but both so wonderful in their own way. that is what i love about yoga, we can all interpret it the way we want. i practice/teach it my way, and they practice it their way. from that, i learn a lot. how boring it would be if we all did it the same way. we would not learn a single thing.

to check out aarona visit http://www.yogaofnourishment.com/

and derek visit http://www.derekberes.com/

move to the groove of your own beat!

Practice with Natasha Rizopolos

yoga works sets up a teachers practice every 2-3 months, either with a local teacher or a visiting teacher. yesterday we were so fortunate to be led by visiting teacher from Los Angeles, natasha rizopolos. i'm sure you recognize her from the pages of yoga journal magazine.

i had heard so much about her but had never practiced with her before so i was very excited to be able to spend two hours soaking up some of her knowledge. natasha has an ashtanga background (like me) and i was wondering how hard the class was going to be.

she started us off in a supported backbend for about 5-8 minutes and from there led us through sun salutations and standing poses with a focus on backbending. she always made it a point to PAUSE and focus on alignment.

natasha is very softspoken as well as well spoken and has a wonderful way of explaining what she wants from her students, all while being encouraging. her voice makes your body want to melt into the asanas.

the practice felt very easy, i was a bit surprise, but when i woke up this morning i felt areas of my body i had not felt in awhile. so it wasn't that easy ...

when i experience this, i am always reminded of how hard an easy class can be when it is designed to focus on the right things.

key words i took away from the class were ALIGNMENT and PAUSE.

natasha made an impression on me and has inspired me to pause and to find more ease in the flow.
practice, practice, practice :-)

[i brought my camera so i could take a picture of us together, but after the class i felt so dazed that i totally forgot, hence the picture above that i found on yogajournal.com. oh, well, next time].

for more info on natasha, check out http://www.natasharizopolos.com/ when she's in your area join her class/workshop. i'm sure you will leave with your own key words to practice.