blog

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  The Benefits of Sadhana
  November 13, 2011
  I want to share with you an interview I did with Integral Yoga Magazine, in which I discuss the benefits of a regular practice of Yoga and how obstacles to a consistent practice of Yoga can be overcome, allowing us to still the mind and develop a relat...
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  Those Famous Fluctuations of the Mind
  April 8, 2011
  Years ago I worked on a project with someone who showed up one day with a tee shirt that had Yogas Citta Vrtti Nirodhah printed on it.  He was clearly horrified that I had only a rough idea what the words meant, and it was fairly obvious that I plumme...
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  Refining Your Vinyasa (Part 2)
  March 18, 2011
  Since so many of us practice a version of Vinyasa Yoga, I’m devoting a couple of pieces to refining the transitions in these powerful sequences.  Last week I wrote about the transition from Chaturanga to Urdvha Mukha Svanasana. This week we’ll loo...
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  Refining Your Vinyasa (Part 1)
  March 7, 2011
  It’s March, and in the (vain) hope that we are on the verge of transitioning from Winter to Spring, I’m going to make the next few pieces about transitions of the Yogic variety. First up is one of the most important transitions in a Vinyasa-base...
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  Teaching the Scary Stuff
  February 19, 2011
  I recently read an article about a popular Asana teacher who makes a point of eschewing any reference to the less Western elements of Yoga -- Sanskrit, chanting, “spirituality” etc -- because these aspects supposedly scare Americans away from Yoga ...
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  Savasana
  February 9, 2011
  As a new Yoga student I remember being told that Savasana (Final Resting Posture) was considered one of the most important and difficult of the postures, and I distinctly recall rolling my eyes and thinking “Puleez, what’s so hard about lying down,...
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  How I learned to Sit
  January 28, 2011
  When I first began practicing Yoga I was only interested in Asana.  And not only did meditation hold absolutely no appeal, but I was also completely convinced that I was the one person on earth who was actually incapable of it. Sadly, this seemed t...
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  Do Just One Thing
  January 20, 2011
  It’s pretty hard in this day and age not to succumb to the siren call of multi-tasking. There never seems to be enough time to get everything done, so we try to do many things at once.  Which really means we don’t do any one thing fully or comp...
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  Asana - The Big Picture
  January 13, 2011
  Recently a student told me she missed the philosophy page that was on my old website, so I decided to revisit what I had written and bring it up to date as a kind of statement of purpose for why the physical practice of Yoga is such an ongoing source o...
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  Injuries - Our Best Teachers
  January 3, 2011
  Many years ago I tore my rotator cuff and was complaining about it to Richard Freeman, hoping for some insight about salvaging my Ashtanga practice or at the very least a heavy dose of sympathy.  Instead, he smiled benignly and said, “It will be you...
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  New Year's Resolutions - A Yogic Approach
  December 31, 2010
  The New Year is upon us, and with it the promise of transformation, in the familiar form of New Year’s Resolutions.  Oh, the pressure. Like all of us, I’ve had varying degrees of success with resolutions, and I’ve learned over the years how a...