What an unbelievable gift to be here at the Yoga Journal Conference in Estes Park. My adoration of arid mountainous regions and altitude has been discussed in a previous blog, so I couldn't help but smile at the sheer perfection of it as I climbed from Denver to Estes Park last night—on my way into the mountains to think about Yoga, health, wellness, elevated consciousness and spirituality for 3 days without my husband, kids or even a friend. No one else's' energy, no one else's' agenda—just me nurturing my practice.
Today I was gifted with 4 incredible classes. I took two energetic Vinyasa classes and two completely restorative classes. Practicing with the masters is always inspiring. I'll share a little nugget from each class that stuck.
I started my morning at 8:00 a.m. with Seane Corne. At one point in class Seane said, "When half of the world's population is quite literally struggling for food, shelter, peace and safety, it seems like a pretty indulgent life to be on vacation practicing Yoga, but it's important to remember that we're not responsible for anyone else's' karmic journey." I've heard Seane say this before and I love it, I think some times we can feel a lot of guilt and responsibility for the woes of the world simply because we were born lucky. It's important to remember that we're here, at this time in this body to maximize our potential and live at our highest level of consciousness: who knows why so many of us were so lucky to be born free, safe, with plenty of resources, health and energy. Rather than worrying about survival, we get to practice Yoga and elevate our lives. But since our karmic circumstances have provided relative abundance, it's certainly our job to discover our dharma and live as consciously as we can.
I went directly from Sean's class to Baron Baptiste. First of all this was really great for me to practice with Baraon, I've studied and practiced Baptiste Yoga ad-nasuem and Shakti Vinyasa in Seattle. I know his foundational sequence like the back of my hand and I taught it for years, since I had never practiced with Baron himself, I always felt like a bit of a pilferer! It was great to finally stand in his presence and feel his energy come through the sequence I know so well, and his energy is amazing. I no longer teach nor practice much Baptiste Yoga, but I think it's an amazing foundational practice and the cornerstone for Vinaysa. It's a brilliant sequence that Baron's created, it's safe, it's stabilizing, it's strengthening, it doesn't require over-stretching and it's very hard! It's the perfect practice to prepare the body for "the flow." My favorite line from Baron today was, "The most important thing about your practice is that you actually have a practice." Right? To really be effective and to cultivate the ability to practice Yoga mindfully, with breath and presence, it's something that should be done often . . . otherwise we lose the breath, we get distracted by the rigor and it's just fancy and effective calisthenics!
This afternoon, I headed to Rod Stryker for Yoga Nidra. Yoga is Yoga (not just Asana, the 8 Limbs of elevating consciousness and cultivating Union) and Nidra means sleep. So a Yoga Nidra class effectively takes students into an almost trance like state that somewhere between asleep and awake. Nidra is the arena of the subconscious mind, the mind that creates, manifests and is always connected to source. He laughed, as he said "Here's the secret about The Secret . . . . it doesn't work." The reason so many of us are unable to manifest (in spite of the fact that it's entirely possible) is that we are unable to drop the monkey mind, the clutter of the thinking mind, the consciousness we know so well, relate to, live with and are attached to: the state that most of us perceive of as real. When we totally relax the body and surrender the thinking mind, we enter Nidra and create the space to dissolve fears, attachments, clutter. Rod is participating in a lot of leading edge and clinical studies about Nidra, it's now being used to effectively treat PTSD in cadets coming home from battle, insomnia and fibromyalgia. He summed it up when he said, "Most people live in a state of fight or flight. The Yogi gets to transcend it all." The state of relaxation that I achieved in this class, the buzz of the Vega nerve in my forehead and the high that lasted post class convinced me he's right, this class was the absolute highlight of my day and Rod will now be a teacher I seek out.
I finished my evening with a restorative class taught by Bo Forbes (Alice Harper did her teacher training with Bo in Boston). Bo is the most revered teacher of Therapeutic and Restorative Yoga in the country. She's a psychologist, and like Rod she's participating in a lot of leading edge research with the Beth Israel hospital in Boston and working with professional sports teams. We are so inundated with information; it's truly sensory over load. She's teaching people how to ground in, to reconnect with the senses and how to calm the parasympathetic nervous system. Bo's class was very similar to Rod's but Rod's class was a bit more hypnotic, he dialoged as we rested and his message took us into a trance like state. While equally restorative, Bo's class was more about complete surrender into the earth and into the body, no dialog. It's such an amazing and important practice, but one that many of us don't cultivate on a regular basis because "it feels like we're doing nothing." In
this hyper world, it's nice to be reminded of how important it is to do nothing other than restore. It was a completely divine and restorative practice, the perfect way to end the day.
So now I'm back in my institutional room at the Estes Park YMCA (wondering why in this state of relative abundance I didn't stay in one of the beautiful hotels I saw along the river on my way up . . . whatever, detaching). Preparing for restful sleep and another beautiful day tomorrow. I'll post about my classes with Shiva Rea, Janet Stone and Tias Little tomorrow night!
Namaste
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