Fierce yoga, I swear...

Dear Yogis

Last weekend I attended Ana Forrest’s workshops to experience her ‘Fierce Medicine’ to ‘heal the body and ignite the spirit’. Ana’s life was scarred by abuse and neglect and even alcohol dependency at 4-years-old. As a result, yoga postures are not the main message of her teaching. It’s about healing, building strength and integrity. I attach the afterword of her book ‘Fierce Medicine’ because I really like her advice. You don’t have to be from a challenging background to neglect yourself; disregard the fact that you are loved, ignore that you have the capacity to love, and to overlook the power of gratitude. We’re all like that a bit.

The ‘F’ word made appearances in these workshops! Like a fool I asked about this in a yoga teachers’ forum. A hurricane followed. However, of the answers that managed to keep a low pulse rate, one Forrest teacher said when he went to his first yoga class he was ‘firmly in the grasp of PTSD having witnessed the horrors of Afghanistan and other armed conflicts’ and if the teacher hadn’t been ‘authentic’ (including swearing) he would never have gone back to class. Another Forrest teacher said: ‘swearing or curse words are quite often used in the training as a way of bringing those of us who are more tentative in our personalities out of our shells. We are encouraged, ultimately, to step up and be our most powerful and authentic selves’. Another one who teaches in prisons and rehab centres says ‘You meet the student where they are’. Ana Forrest herself says that ‘A lot of people come to Forrest Yoga because they’ve got a storm brewing inside them’.

Interesting, eh! So many styles of yoga for every possible need!

Home Studio

It’s Bank Holiday Monday, Carnival weekend, and I have the usual two Monday classes – 6.00 and 7.30. Book a place and have a go. No swearing, I’m afraid. I’ll also be teaching Jenny Fearnley’s Ashtanga class again at Yoga West tomorrow, Saturday 26th at 8.30am-9.45. (Talking of Yoga West, they are in a fight for survival. They need permission from Ealing Council to continue to operate and ask for our help.)

Training

This weekend, Danny Paradise is at Triyoga Camden. I haven’t signed up for his classes but he is such fun that I recommend his classes highly. I will be attending Mastering The Splits with Nathalie Mukusheva at Indaba on September 2nd. I can’t imagine what tips she might have for me but I thought I would present her with a fun challenge.

I’m also signed up for Stewart Gilchrist’s Asana Chakrisation on September 9th, at Indaba. Come with me! (Here he is doing a Ted Talk on breathing. At the end he talks about the power of breath in his life and how he discovered how to wilfully move his body through breath as a paraplegic having broken his back.)

Yoga Jobs

Triyoga will be opening a yoga centre in Ealing in November of this year. How cool! They have a recruitment day if you fancy being a manager or front-of-house or a number of other roles.

Yoga in the News

It’s all the usual stories this week: Yoga and meditation are good for you, a survey shows; Yoga good for your brain, a survey shows; Goat Yoga is good for you; Beer Yoga is good for you! Here’s a nice story you can check out if you’re in south-west London. From Weightlifting Champion to Yoga Instructor. Peter Cardona has also been a tennis coach and now teaches yoga in Surbiton.

Spin Those Chakras

Dear Yogis.

The more I learn about chakras, the more intriguing it is. It's a subject that begins to make sense to me now that I have taught for a few years and a few hundred people. In Teacher Training I had no interest in it. Now, I can see that some parts of the body refuse to respond to physical posture practice. How can it be that I cue drawing navel to spine day-in-day-out but some yogis’ abs simply say ‘no’? Why do some bodies look delicate, ethereal and without groundedness? Why do some yogis seem to punish their bodies with yoga? Why don’t some yogis care particularly? Why didn’t I for so many years?

Our consciousness, personality, experience and posture are driven by energy. Actors study this in drama school. You know what your energy is like: forceful or not, hedonistic or not, loving or not. Is your dominant energy power-driven (third chakra) or driven to charity work (heart chakra)? Is it pleasure seeking (second chakra) or intuitive and meditative (third eye)? Is it driven by creativity and expression (throat chakra) or driven by materialism and the need for security (root chakra)?  The chakras actually refer to things we already know about. ‘Unblocking chakras’ is really just a way of describing some kind of counselling or therapy that shows you how to recognise and tackle harmful patterns laid down in formative years. It’s not an obscure subject. It’s actually a useful tool for that old chestnut, self discovery. James French, the brilliant teacher I did a chakra workshop with last weekend, is teaching at Triyoga till early September.

Home Studio

There are still places left in classes next week. Book a place and have a go. Spin your chakras. I’ll also be teaching at Yoga West for the next two Saturdays: 19th and 26th at 8.30am-9.45. It’s early... but gather a group of buddies for a yoga/breakfast outing and it won’t be so bad!  These are Ashtanga classes usually expertly taught by Jenny Fearnley. If you need an introduction to the only dedicated yoga studio in our corner of London, come along.

Training

I’ve signed up for two workshops that you might be interested in trying with me. The first is tonight; Ana Forrest’s Celebrate Your Practice. It starts a weekend of interesting but massively expensive workshops held at Lord’s Cricket Ground to hold the massive numbers of Ana Forrest’s Yogis! The second is Stewart Gilchrist’s Asana Chakrisation on September 9th, again at Indaba.

Yoga in the News

Sweet, local stories this week. The Louth Leader celebrated the birthday of a 90-year-old who says that yoga saved her life. Half her life ago doctors told her she wouldn’t live long due to an incurable chest complaint. They seem to have been wrong. She’s still teaching yoga. For Cambridge yogis, the launch of an illustrated guide to children’s yoga makes the news. It looks like a good one.

This is an entertaining article if you agree that “all this constantly changing information on what to eat or which exercise class to take” means that we form distorted mindsets towards the idea of a healthy lifestyle.  Vogue UK asks; ‘Are You Suffering From Wellness Fatigue?’ I think it’s only about people with too much money and not enough sense... but see what you think.

I Did It My Way

Dear Yogis.

Following on from last week’s Letter From Finland and my little history lesson about yoga in 1975 California, hippies, drugs and carrot juice, here is Manju Pattabhi Jois’ account of yoga according to his father. It’s rather different to the accounts of the first western yogis who trained with him in the 70s and became today’s senior teachers. Manju said: 'My father never tried to control anyone’. There were no rules and regulations. We just enjoyed yoga. Westerners asked him questions but he laughed and nodded. Those people took that laugh and nod to be affirmation but ‘my father didn't understand English'.

Yoga was simple and easy and to be enjoyed back in those days. “Our job is to keep it that way”. (I relate to that entirely). If you miss a day it doesn't matter. Do it the next day. (I relate to that more than is good for me!). “If you can’t do certain postures you can skip them and go to the next one. That’s how you open up your body. The body has to open one way or the other. That’s why we have so many postures. When you start practicing like that then you really enjoy it and you get all the therapeutic benefit”.

How could this man not be my guru?!

Home Studio

I’ve been heady with my Finnish experience of Mysore yoga under the guidance of such a liberating teacher. On Thursday in my Home Studio all the classes were Mysore. This means self-practice in a class with a teacher to help, not to teach a class. Most people liked it! Some thought they might get to like it! It’s clear, even when not knowing quite what to do next or what direction to go in, everybody still gets a lot further into the Ashtanga practice than would otherwise be the case. I might add it to the timetable if there’s demand. We also had an extra 4.00pm class yesterday (Thursday). Let me know if that would suit you or if a lunchtime class would work for you. And there are still places left in the usual classes next week. Book a place and have a go.

Training

For something completely different, I’ve booked a day-long workshop called ‘7 steps to transformation: a chakra daylong workshop with James French. It’s this Sunday. This is a subject I gave no thought at all to before teaching. Now, it’s just obvious. The description tells us to dive into the hidden knowledge of this beautiful system. Come with me!

Yoga in the News

Here’s a lovely article from Business Insider on how to be happy. Matthieu Ricard, 69, a Tibetan Buddhist monk, is scientifically the world’s happiest man. The article is from World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland where Ricard has been scattering his happiness to business leaders.

The New Scientist tells us that: Hot yoga classes reduce emotional eating and negative thoughts. They report on a small selection of women with high stress, unhealthy eating patterns and depression who were sent to Bikram yoga. Well done those women! If you’ve never been to a Bikram class, reading this account is compulsory!

Yoga is Dope

Dear Yogis.

I write this from Finland in the beautiful haze of its late evening sunset. I’m learning the traditional technique of teaching ‘Yoga Chikitsa’, yoga therapy and healing, with Manju Jois. This was the original use of yoga in Mysore in the 1930s when Manju’s father, Sri K Pattabhi Jois started teaching. Doctors would send hopeless cases to do yoga and be cured.

On our first day in class, Manju spontaneously recalled the simple and easy time of 1975 when he and his father took Ashtanga yoga to the hippies in California. “Everyone wanted to get high one way or another and when they started yoga they were already high. They all had the same kind of smile. My father did not understand why they were smiling. Then everyone was saying :’Oh man, there’s a new drug in town called yoga’. So that’s how it started. Everyone was looking for some kind of escape or some kind of answer.”

Manju said in those days it was very, very simple everybody just enjoyed yoga. It was never serious. “Yoga is a beautiful subject if you do it right. You’ll be happy all the time. But if you do it wrong it’s the satanic version. You get angrier and angrier. When people take it too seriously they ruin everything and become like militant sergeants”.

“The 70s was great. Nobody was serious. They practiced yoga, smoked dope, and drank carrot juice. Instead of rules and regulations it was free yoga”. (Interesting to learn that Guruji never preached giving up drugs. He just taught the yoga and let people move away from drugs themselves.)

Home Studio

After a week off, there are plenty of spaces available next week. I’ve missed you and, if you’re interested, I’ll demonstrate some of the yoga massage that I’ve studied this week. So far we have been concentrating on the back (scoliosis) and a small amount of knee therapy. All classes but the Tuesday class have spaces. On Thursday we can have a go at Mysore style yoga. Book a place online here.

Yoga in the News

Here’s an article that tells you who the best yoga teachers in London are. It’s a surprise list. I know a few and the others look interesting. Some of the more obvious names are not there, though, so I’m guessing this is the personal favourite list of the writer.

The New Scientist weighs in on the subject of yoga and depression and reports on a study which looks at the ‘link between meditation, which is at the core of many yoga styles, and boosted insulin production and slower cellular ageing. Yoga may also dampen down inflammation genes. (If you’re interested in the links between stress, sleep, hormones and weight loss, FMTV carries an entertaining interview with Jon Gabriel who lost 230lbs by rediscovering sleep!)