Wrist Yoga For A Distal Radius Fracture

Dear Yogis

Having a fractured wrist has been my great teacher since December 1st! Whenever a set-back comes along, it shines a new light on postures and gives me added knowledge to pass on to injured souls in classes. In any case, at some point your wrists may need some attention. Keyboard warriors and people who use their hands in their job or sport (cyclists) may have short and tight wrist flexors. Chaturanga, Upward Facing Dog and other weight-bearing postures need flexibility in the wrist – a 90 degree extension. This is problematic!

The posture revelation for me and my ‘intra-articular minimally displaced distal radius fracture’ (!) was in Padangusthasana and Padahastasana. Those are the forward fold postures where you start with holding your big toes and end up with the whole of your hand under the foot with toes up to the wrists. Who knew these postures could be something more than Total Hamstring Torture?

In the first one, Padangustasana, you grab hold of your big toes and PULL, despite the hamstrings begging for mercy! That’s a wrist stretch. For people with wrist pain or Carpal Tunnel, traction of the wrist might correspond to an exercise your physio has given you. (Here is wrist traction cleverly using a belt).

In the second of this pair of postures, Padahastasana, the hands and wrists get a counter-posture for the Chaturanga wrist work of the Sun Salutations. This posture has wrist stretch/traction, massage via the toes on the wrists, and stimulation of the meridians (I’m told) or hand reflexology. To get the full benefit to the wrist, let the hands totally disappear under the foot. Bend the knees if you must.

Finally, this wonderful article by David Keil  looking at postures associated with wrist pain concludes that a hand and forearm ice bath will do the trick and rid you of wrist pain. Have a go! (I also bought a Power Web for strengthening. See attachment.)

Greek Retreat

Soothing Kapsali awaits but before I firm up details of this year’s retreat please let me know if you’d like to come for the first week’s Yoga For All Levels retreat. I’m not sure if there is demand. The second week’s Ashtanga Retreat has had a lot of interest; the massive pull factor is our mission impossible teacher Lisa Maarit Lischak. I plan to choose the second and third week of September again. Have a look at last week’s email if you want to see an example of flights. Many returners sign up yearly but if you haven’t been before, “Kythera is a truly divine, special place”, said one yogi last year. Last year there was a particular magic when we did evening candle-lit Yin Yoga so I’ll add more of that this year.

Home Studio

Next week in my lucky Home Study is a magic week. It starts with my 7th anniversary of teaching and ends (Thursday) with Valentine’s Day. What could be better? There’s plenty of space. You can see class availability on my website (which I update often).

Yoga in the news

The Daily Mail tells us that: Yoga could help millions of arthritis patients. A study of 72 sufferers, published in the journal Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, ‘found the ancient exercise slashes inflammation and reduces pain in the joints of sufferers after just eight weeks’. The paper says that ‘Scientists are currently unsure as to the exact cause of rheumatoid arthritis, but smoking, eating lots of red meat and coffee drinkers are at higher risk’.

Why Do Breath Work?

Dear Yogis

Welcome to snow-covered Friday! Come to class and warm up! And, while you’re moving through your shapes and stances, have you ever wondered at the health and medical claims of yoga teachers? If you’re interested in finding out how science backs up what we do on the mat in meditation and posture work, that Qigong and Meditation workshop is coming around again! Let me give you a taster of the science Dr Anthony Soyer took us through around which, he said, we could build our practice.

“Why breath work?”, he asked. This teaches us to gain resilience under stress. He introduced us to the Hormesis Principle which says something like What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger! (We do this in yoga. We learn impossible postures and, in the beginning, have difficulty breathing. With practice we can do the same posture with calm breathing!). This approach strengthens the breath, the heart and the nervous system. We gain resilience to prepare for when we get stressed in a very big way.

“Why do we breathe through the nose?”, he asked. Doctors found that instead of giving oxygen to patients through the mouth, nose respiration oxygenates the body 15% better. This is to do with the vibrations in the sinuses when air passes through. It produces nitric oxide which opens up the arteries in your brain. Nasal breathing inflates the lower lung, reduces the heart rate and blood pressure. Yogis discovered that you can do exactly this with humming breath and chanting.

Dr Soyer told us about Professor Konstantin Buteyko who studied breath work for therapy with a sample of a quarter of a million people over the last 30 years. We tried the Buteyko method of checking the health of our biochemistry! With a very specific set-up, we timed how long we could hold our breath – the Body Oxygen Level Test. Depending on how long you last, you can tell if you’re either already in hospital, have some health issues or have the resilience, endurance and the ability to keep infection away that Buteyko admired in yogis!

Finally, for this Friday Email, Dr Soyer discussed Heart Rate Variability, what he called ‘hard-core science’! When disease starts to appear, the top and bottom measurements of the HRV flatten. HRV can apparently predict illness ten years before it happens.

There was so much more! He talked about carbon dioxide levels, reduced blood calcium, cleaning up the arteries, decalcifying the pineal, melatonin in the brain… Go and blow your mind! The workshop is on at Indaba in Marylebone – a lovely studio – on  1st March from 2 – 5pm.

Greek Retreat

I’m beginning to plan this year’s September retreats and looking into flights. If you’d like to come to the Land of the Gods and to our corner of heaven in Kapsali, take a look at this example of flights. As usual I’m picking the second and third week of September. You need two carriers. The first retreat: Saturday 14th to Saturday 12st. The 06:55 flight from Heathrow arrives Athens 12:40. The return to London from Athens the following Saturday is at 19.55 to arrive in Heathrow 21.45. In-between you have Sky Express to get to the island: To get to Kythera it’s 15:00 from Athens and to get back to Athens from Kythera it’s 16:10, arriving at 17.00 in time for the London flight. The second week follows the same pattern. If that looks ok to you, let me know and I’ll start pinning it all down.

Home Studio

There’s plenty of space next week. You can see class availability on my website (which I update often).

Yoga in the news

Steve Wright on Radio 2 interviewed Haemin Sunim, Buddhist monk and author of The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down; How to Be Calm In A Busy World. He has 1.2 million followers on social media. He’s the Monk of the Moment! (The present moment!) He tells us to connect to the body and the breath and also to the people around us to have a happier life! It’s a lovely interview with lovely quotes from the book.

The Mirror tells us: UK airport launches pre-flight yoga classes to help passengers de-stress. Stanstead has pop-up yoga classes for what the paper calls ‘nervous flyers’. Sadly, they are only scheduled from Tuesday 5th to Thursday 7th.

The Qigong Yoga Connection

Dear Yogis

There were so many interesting nuggets in the Qigong/Meditation workshop last weekend with Tracy Elner and Dr Jacques Anthony Soyer. We practiced meditation, breath work and finally Tracy guided us through a Qigong practice, discovering the magic of its tingling, pulsating, warming, energy-moving techniques. They’ll do the workshop again and I urge you to go.

Up to now I hadn’t thought of the history of yoga in China or the history of martial arts in India. The fingerprints of yoga, meditation, Buddhism, breath work, internal body cleansing and aiming at enlightenment are all over the region. The many Indian martial arts are hardly surprising when you think of the warrior caste of the Mahabharata which is highlighted in the Bhagavad Gita. Also before enlightenment and becoming a Buddha, Prince Siddhartha was trained, as you would expect in a royal court, in the prized arts of archery, swordsmanship and wrestling.

Tracy’s taught us an old martial practice which developed at the same time as the Indian and Taoist systems of yoga. The Vedas in India had martial art called Vijra Mukti which means thunderbolt fist. This system embraced all aspects of yoga: meditation, pranayama and posture practice. Through the spread of Buddhism in the 5th Century BC, this system turned up in China. Later, the legendary Shaolin Monastery was set up by an Indian Buddhist monk who brought the Indian system of yogic asana and fighting to the Buddhists monks in China who weren’t doing any exercise. That’s no good! There’s no energy in that! The Chinese realised you can absorb energy from all living things around you and end up with more energy that you started with. The goal is to live longer in order to achieve enlightenment. It buys you time! Through a blend of practices, Qigong appeared.

I watched this 30 minute Qigong for Beginners You tube (have a go) and thought about monks practicing this. I have known Buddhist monks all my life. I think they should! Finally, I thought this was nice. The original meaning of Tai Chi is ‘Enhance what you have’.

Home Studio

On Tuesday I had a little go at teaching Qigong in class. Everyone felt the energy/force/presence in their hands. It’s a delight to feel it. There’s no class next Wednesday (30th) as it’s my Mum’s birthday. I’ve added a 6.00 class on Thursday to try to make up for it. You can see class availability on my website (which I update often).

Training

I’ll be assisting in Valentina’s last Aerial Yoga class in her present studio, Saturday 26th, at 10.30. Come along. Book here.

Yoga in the news

Prince Charles helps bring yoga to mining town, The Times tells us. He opened a health and wellbeing centre at Dumfries House, Ayrshire which was inspired by a wellbeing programme which involved local GPs prescribing ‘natural remedies and traditional techniques’ such as mindfulness, yoga and Reiki.

The Oxford Mail tells us of free charity yoga in Oxford this Saturday from 10.30am – 9.00pm, finishing with a party.

You Are Not Who You Are

Dear Yogis

This week I have been captivated by a book called Yoga and the Quest for the True Self by Stephen Cope. In a chapter called ‘You Are Not Who You Appear To Be’ he quotes Amrit Desai, a ‘yoga pioneer’, who says “In yoga there is only one problem and one solution: the problem is that we’ve forgotten who we are; the solution is to remember who we are, to reidentify with the entire reality of atman (the true self/soul). We are like people walking around in a room with the lights off. We are attempting to move around and live in this room without light. So naturally we bump into things and into each other. We continually hurt ourselves and others. And we feel a sense of dissatisfaction and pain. We are deluded because we think that our fundamental dilemma is that there is something wrong with this place that we’re in. Even more painfully, we think there is something wrong with ourselves. Actually, there is nothing wrong. If we could simply turn on the lights, we would see reality more clearly.”

“With the light of vidya (knowledge) we might align our movements and our behaviour with the way things really are and we could be quite content and effective in living life with ourselves in the very same reality.” Cutting through avidya (ignorance) “is simply turning on the lights. One problem; one solution”

The author follows this with: ‘Through millennia of practice, yogis learned to reverse the process of extroversion. They discovered that they could unwind the painful misidentification, retracing the steps of the human self back through the layers of reality, from the gross, physical plane with which we now exclusively identify, to the most refined planes of pure consciousness. They mapped the process, and called it, not surprisingly, introversion (nimesha). The process of introversion required the use of practices that worked directly with both consciousness (chitta) and energy (prana), and included deep states of concentration (samadhi) as well as the refinement of energy through postures (asana) and yogic breathing (prana). This path eventually came to be called yoga.’

I’m attaching a couple of other excerpts that I enjoyed… there are so many.

Home Studio

I have been asked about mats again. Keen yogis want to have a decent mat at home! I have previously written about the mats that I have experience of (click links)… Cat on a Mat, Under The Mat, (about thin mat toppers) and I have a little stock of the LOVE MAT by Lāal which I describe in my Christmas present suggestions. (That email includes the beautiful Destination Karma travel mat).

There are so many new year resolution people are coming to class and it’s lovely seeing new faces. It’s such a positive time of year, but classes are filling up so book in advance. You can see class availability on my website (which I update often).

Training

I write about these workshops in the hope that you’ll try one with me. I had absolutely no idea about workshops before my teacher training and I can’t imagine what magic I missed. Here’s what I’m doing in the near future: tonight I’m going to Triyoga Ealing at 19.45 for a silent yin + gong workshop – 2 hours of bliss. Tomorrow over to Triyoga Camden at 9.30 am for Dr Jacques Anthony Soyer + Tracy Elner breath, stillness, movement + holistic modern medicine – exploring the benefits of pranayama and qigong and combining ancient teachings with scientific developments that support the efficacy of these systems.

Yoga in the news

The Metro has: Why Fulham’s Aleksandar Mitrovic and Aboubakar Kamara were dragged apart at yoga class. How I wish I’d been teaching that class! The paper helpfully tells us: ‘Maybe it’s a good thing that the players are able to relieve their feelings in such a way during Yoga which is good for body and mind’. The Sun, on the same story, tells us that they were: ‘at each other’s throats during the relaxation session’.

Hurray for The South China Morning Post which tells us: How yoga and a vegetarian alkaline diet can help you run faster and further, and cheer you up. A runner quoted in this article says: ‘the more veggies one consumes, the more balanced one’s blood pH level, and that yoga contributes to this state from the deep breathing that oxygenates one’s system. Both conditions contribute to raising energy levels’.

Home Practice, Studio Practice, Doctor's Practice

Dear Yogis

This week an article called Characteristics of Yoga Practice and Predictors of Practice Frequency captured my interest. The article is from the International Journal of Yoga Therapy and the reason for the study is to understand ‘practice behaviors’ to ‘better enable health providers to implement yoga for health’. Good so far.

They found that the least frequent place of practice was at work (that’s got to rise!) and the most frequent was the yoga studio.  However, most of the people they surveyed (61%) had a regular home practice and, of those, roughly half followed a routine taught by someone else and half made up their own practice. That’s a really high number! Not many people (1.6%) had private classes and a tiny amount (0.6%) used a dvd at home – incredible given the sales in yoga dvds and apps.

I can’t help thinking that the outcomes would have been fascinating if the survey had been taken in India, not America. Yoga therapy in India is taken seriously and has a long history, longer than yoga for sport or pastime or fitness. (To pass his ‘teacher training’, Pattabhi Jois had to cure a sick person with yoga.) However, this survey is looking for answers for health providers. If group classes come out on top then perhaps doctors’ surgeries need to become venues for yoga therapy classes! That waiting room, after hours, can host a class!

Yoga for health is something very different to what we find in gyms or studios. Here’s a list of 101 different health conditions that can benefit from Yoga from Dr Timothy McCall who wrote Yoga As Medicine. People don’t generally go to a happy, skippy gym or studio class hoping to combat alcoholism, obesity, Guillain-Barré Syndrome, cancers, PTSD, Psoriasis, Kidney failure, Parkinsons... - Dr McCall's list is mind-blowing.

Getting back to your home practice, here’s something for you. The totally free method, online video at home, came up with 2.9% in the survey (which doesn’t explain the popularity of Yoga with Adriene – people love her). Here are another couple of videos to try to inspire you: David Swenson 30 minute practice with his beguiling voice; Kino Macgregor’s Half Primary Series, Power Yoga, Mark Gonzales which will work up a sweat for you.

Home Studio

Come to class! Come and be inspired. Come with health issues and I’ll see what I can do. You can see class availability on my website (which I update often).

Offer

I received this very kind offer from Sara Castoldi, an osteopath at Osteopathy West London on New Broadway. She would like to offer a 25% on the first consultation and treatment and 20% discount on further treatments for yogis who come to my Home Studio. She also specialises in paediatric and pregnancy care. Contact her on 07988661917 or castoldi.ost@gmail.com

Yoga in the news

Prince Charles funds yoga and meditation for young prisoners the Telegraph tells us. He wants to restore “hope and positivity” behind bars and so has given a grant to the Prison Phoenix Trust whose project is to bring harmony to young offenders through yoga. £5,000 was granted to yoga; £37,000 to the Bumblebee Conservation Trust; £118,000 to Oxford Plant Sciences.

The independent has Plus-size woman becomes yoga teacher after noticing lack of diversity among instructors. The Californian teacher says ‘she is the healthiest she has ever been, just wants to help and inspire other people to exercise and feel confident through yoga’.

The London Post gives us FREE Yoga Classes at Boxpark Shoreditch. A French yoga company, Baya, is hosting a pop-up yoga shop from January 15th-21st and offering free classes on the 16th and 20th.

Tempted by Temperance

Dear Yogis

Are you trying Veganuary or Dry January? Are you harnessing the magic energy of the New Year and taking the plunge? I read that February this year will see the British Heart Foundation’s Dechox campaign– you give up chocolate for the shortest month of the year! In March, Lent will begin on the 6th so you’ll need something else to forgo till April 18th. We can think about the other months later but caffeine will need to claim one of the subsequent months! Pairing down wants and needs and navigating the way towards essentials means that treats are all the more appreciated in an uncluttered life.

I am particularly interested in Dry January since I heard this week of someone being refused a pay rise at work because, HR said, they provide ‘Beer O’Clock’. I couldn’t help thinking that promotion of drink at work and pressure from an employer to drink has an unsavoury past. History finds many examples of rulers who created a pliable workforce and increased tax revenue by promoting taverns and liquor licences. My mother’s father was a member of the Temperance Movement in Ceylon and Hansard in 1912 records how ‘minor English officials’ harassed members of the movement (which became the independence movement!). Under apartheid, the ‘dop system’ was one in which employers pay their labourers with cheap wine, kept them addicted, dependent and loyal to the farm or vineyard.

Back to yoga! Traditional yoga suggests avoidance of alcohol because it clouds the mind. If yoga is about stilling the mind, it’s incompatible with yoga and the focus on meditation. Regular yoga practice highlights effects of drinking, perhaps lethargy, unhealthy digestion or constant colds. In yoga terms this is ‘Tamasic’, one of the three basic human qualities (Gunas), the others being Ragastic (activity) and Sattvic (goodness). In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna describes the Gunas and says that Tamas ‘Is born of inertia. It binds by ignorance, laziness, and sleep.’

Try it for January! It’s more radical than you think!

Home Studio

Yogis are working hard in the first classes of the year. It’s a total pleasure to see the little Home Studio full of hard-working yoga practitioners. There’s plenty of room next week. Come along. You can see availability on this website.

Yoga in the news

The Observer in Uganda has: How yoga is saving lives of street kids. In the largest slum in Uganda an American started yoga classes, picking up children from the slum area and from the street for yoga, a hot meal and protection from police raids.

 Should yoga be compulsory at work? asks My Business. The article says that ‘several companies around the world have already trialed making such programs mandatory for their staff: Swedish company Björn Borg has reportedly introduced compulsory gym sessions for its staff each Friday, while KPMG reportedly included sessions on yoga and mindfulness as part of a three-day course for its auditors in the UK.’

Happy New Year's Resolutions 2019

Dear Yogis

Season’s Greetings! I hope you had a nice time this week. Just a few days of not teaching and I miss you! However, it’s so important to take time off to rest and reflect. It’s what makes the New Year the right time for resolutions and aiming for a higher version of yourself. Not for nothing people try to stay dry in January (alcoholically speaking) and Veganuary has been going since 2014 and looks like it’s here to stay. Here are some non-alcoholic drink recipes and/or, for Veganuary, you could join me for a cooking course by Yuuga Kemistri. And if you live in East London you have your very own M*lkman doing rounds with his nut-milks of joy.

What about a yoga resolution! Do you need one? Just enjoy classes! Maybe you could try a class you wouldn’t normally take. Triyoga has end of year special packages: 5 class festive pass for £65 (£13 per class) 8 class festive pass for £96 (£12 per class). Try something different!

Home Studio

I’m really looking forward to starting up again next week. Only two classes next week; the Ashtanga classes on Wednesday and Thursday. Updated bookings and spaces left can be seen on the booking page of this website.

Training

I’m signed up for a few things this year and I hope you’ll join me. Teaching Yoga in Sport is a course that takes place over six weekends over the year with Sarah Ramsden. In February you’ll find Day Christensen in Winchester. She’s a favourite teacher of my friend Lisa and you can register interest here. I’ve signed up of Ty Landrum in April at Triyoga. Whatever you do, try a workshop.

Yoga in the news

GQ Magazine is promoting meditation with this: ‘Before you swear off meditation for good, try a gong bath’. ‘Leo Cosendai is a gong meditation teacher who believes sound baths are the way to meditate if you don't like the mainstream approach.’ He says: ‘“I think meditation can seem really abstract and complicated and reserved for certain people. Really a gong bath – or a sound bath or sound meditation – makes meditation accessible. It makes it an experience rather than homework or something on your to-do list.’

This is one for cricket fans. Sky Sports tells us: Cameron Bancroft 'nearly quit cricket for yoga' following ball-tampering ban’. He says: ‘"Until you are able to acknowledge that you are Cameron Bancroft, the person who plays cricket as a profession, and not Cameron Bancroft the cricketer, you will not be able to move forward.’ How yogic!

Happy New Year!

Shimmering Silvery Sound of Silence

Dear Yogis

Are you ready with your New Year Resolutions? Get your ideas together so that you can get excited by them. Yogis are great at resolutions. We know exactly how to set our focus and intention. I found my main resolution for next year when listening to an interview about the recent climate conference in Poland. The studio guest said that he converted from shower gel in plastic bottles to bars of soap. I’m stealing that idea. I can’t even remember why I stopped using bars. I’ll also add laundry liquid refills to my resolution list.

I keep meaning to make meditation a more regular practice but I hesitate to make it a resolution in case I fail to keep it. I’m adding it this year because a cure to my hesitation came when I read a booklet by Ajahn Amaro, Abbot of Amaravati Monastery called ‘Inner Listening’ (downloads and pdf here). Maybe this little extract and the one attached will spark your interest.

Inner listening “refers to attending to what has been called ‘the sound of silence’, or ‘the nada-sound… a high-pitched inner ringing tone. When you turn your attention toward your hearing, if you listen carefully to the sounds around you, you’ll hear a continuous high-pitched sound, like a white noise – beginningless, endless – sparkling there in the background. See if you can detect that gentle inner vibration... We can use it, just like the breath, to dominate our attention”.

“It becomes like a screen on which all other sounds, physical sensations, moods and ideas are projected… It helps to sustain objectivity and untangled awareness, an untangled awareness in the present.”

I have to tell you, when you first hear that shimmering silvery sound, it’s magic and there’s a feeling of a voyage-of-discovery about to begin. It’s about time I made this resolution!

Home Studio

Can I tell you what a joy it is to teach you here! It amazes me how lucky I am that you come week after week or that new yogis pitch up for a class after a Google search for yoga in Ealing. What everyone has in common is that they want a small class. Hurray! And it’s always a joy to teach you. However, the studio turns into a bedroom and playroom for the Christmas week and there’ll be no classes till 2019. Classes are booking up for the first week in January. There are classes on the Wednesday 2nd and Thursday 3rd. You can see what’s available on my website. Also attached on this email.

Training

Valentina’s last Aerial Yoga class of the year is tomorrow, Saturday 22nd, at 10.30. I’ll be there to do my assisting session which is part of the course. Come along. Book here.

In 2019 I hope you’ll join me for some classes and workshops with the phenomenal teachers who come to this country and give us the best of their years of learning and teaching. It’s always such a joy to train with David Swenson or discover phenomenal teachers like Gregor Mahler. London is a blessed place to be a yogi!

Yoga in the news

Yoga exponent Geeta Iyengar, daughter of B.K.S. Iyengar, passes away, reports the Hindu.

“Like her father, Geeta Iyengar kept ill-health through much of her childhood…This caused her father great consternation, as he was not able to afford the high cost of medication; he instead recommended that she practice asanas to improve her health, spurring her lifelong devotion to Yoga.”

Happy Christmas, Happy holidays, Happy Kwanza, Happy Eating with loved ones.

Yoga Christmas Presents

Dear Yogis

It’s time to think about Christmas Presents. There is usually a funny top you can get someone. Here’s a Namasleigh T-Shirt! Here’s a Namasleigh sweater and lots of other top ideas there. For Christmas leggings there are lots of ideas here. I might have to succumb to that website. 

Back when we were in Kapsali on retreat I made a mental note to tell you how important a heavy mat is for outdoor practice! A light breeze turns a light travel mat into a flag. I have four sturdy mats in my home studio for sale at £55 - the LOVE MAT by Lāal. They’re similar to the Liforme mat but half the price! On the other hand, if you do want a beautiful mat topper, Destination Karma’s mats feature inspiring scenes from Bali, The Greek Islands, and Cornwall and other gorgeous places. The company also donates a percentage of profits to charities from those countries. You can also design your own.

Home Studio

If you want to try the Destination Karma mat, let me know and you can use it here. I have a beautiful one that reminds me of Kythera. Some classes next week are filling up fast but Tuesday 6.00 and Wednesday 8.00 are crying out for yogis as people start going away or skipping yoga for office parties! Can you imagine! You can see whats available on my website.

Training

I’m half way through Aerial Yoga teacher training and I have to recommend that you have a go; you will find that it compliments mat yoga and works muscles that you can’t possibly use on the mat. If you don’t know what aerial yoga looks like, there’s a ‘hammock’ from the ceiling, pegged to the ceiling at a little more than shoulder distance apart and the material falling down to your hip level. First of all, there’s a lot of joy in the practice, from floating in the hammock, from giving your weight to the hammock and moving with speed and grace and lightness. Everyone can achieve inversions. It’s a democratic practice; there’s no drama, no-one has to move their mat to the wall, everyone can do a handstand and get the benefits of lengthening the spine.

Valentina’s last class of the year is on Saturday 22nd. I’ll be there to do my assisting session which is part of the course. Come along. Book here.

Yoga in the news

Today is the centenary of BKS Iyengar’s birth, 14 December 1918. Newsd celebrates the day with: BKS Iyengar: The Father of Modern Yoga and says ‘we bring to you some lesser known facts about the yoga guru’. The paper claims this: ‘he taught an 85 year old Queen Elizabeth to stand on her head’.

This article from Deccan Herald has pictures of mass yoga sessions celebrating his anniversary and a couple of interesting details about the great teacher: “After suffering a spine dislocation in a scooter accident, he began the usage of props to help disabled people practice yoga”

Gu Ru - Darkness To Light

Dear Yogis

During the weekend with David Swenson recently he gave details about his life that he has apparently never given before. In his search for the purpose of life he studied philosophy, astrology, palmistry and past life regression. He joined the Hare Krishnas where he got up at 3.00am with a cold water bucket bath, studied scripture, did deity worship and chanted on the streets. His CV jumps from yoga to Hare Krishnas to salesman to homeless yogi. How can I encourage you to seek him out next time he’s in this country?

Here’s a definition he gave of the word ‘Guru’. Guru, he says, is made up of two words; Gu and Ru. It means ‘from darkness to light’. To illustrate the word he said this: imagine you’re in a dark cave, you have a candle but no way to light it and you’re stumbling around. Deep in the recesses of the cave you see a glow, a person with a candle. They extend their candle, yours touches it and you get light. ‘From darkness to light’. It means passing on knowledge. No demands are made, no drama.

That’s what he’s like to learn from. He simply gives you light. This is more remarkable when you think of the strictness of the old school teachers including his teacher Pattabhi Jois who’s own teacher Krishnamacharya was known as the ‘Lion Guru’. He would bark and yell and injure. He had three famous students, his brother-in-law BKS Iyengar, his son Desikachar and Pattabhi Jois. Iyengar was fierce and had a stick to hit people with! Pattabhi Jois would show his students a deep scar from Krishnamacharya. Desikachar refused to learn yoga because his dad was so mean. When he was a child, he would hide in a tree so that he wouldn’t have to practice yoga. When he came down, Krishnamacharya would tie him up in a posture, tie his hands to his feet, and leave him for three hours in the yard. Desikachar didn’t practice till he was fifty!

Home Studio

There’s only mild tying up in my home classes. No sticks! And there’s plenty of room in all but the 7.30 Tuesday class next week. And you’re welcome to bring your asana requests to class and I’ll be your DJ. One yogi this week wanted Mayurasana -take a look at the link – it’s me a few years ago with David Garrigues! It’s doable. You can see what classes are available on my website. Also attached on this email.

Training

I’m wondering what to book for 2019. Let me know what you’re doing.

Yoga in the news

The Business Standard in India tells us: Yoga exposition in Pune to mark BKS Iyengar's birth centenary. 1,000 people from 50 different countries are expected to attend over a week of celebrations.

The New York Times gives us: How to Relax With Yoga. Not an article but give a little 3 minute routine which is nicely filmed and edited. That’s all!

Reuters tells us: ‘Yoga, acupuncture might ease menopause hot flashes’. Women tested acupuncture, attended yoga sessions or took health and wellness education classes. Not surprisingly, their health improved. This would improve anyone’s health! It’s not news!