:: YogiSutras: Yoga Blog - Journeys into Yoga ::

Yesterday, we spent the afternoon in the Cadaver Lab. This was a much antipated, yet much feared part of our CorePower teacher training. I can honestly say that I went back and forth in my mind dozens of times on whether or not to attend.

But, after everyone said that this was “an experience NOT to miss”, I decided to go.

The first 45 minutes or so, we sat in a nice yoga circle (with little desks), while the Cadaver Lab owner, Todd, made us feel at ease. The cadavers were all part of a Donation program, and he wanted us to understand that they are all there because they willingly donated their bodies to science. Meanwhile, four bodies were lying on the right-hand side of the lab, awaiting our viewings.

All the cadavers had names. I can’t remember the first cadaver’s name, but he was roughly 6 feet tall, and Todd had him “pre-disected” for us. The unveiling of the cadaver was slow, and section by section. After unzipping the bag, and carefully unrolling the towels to show the body, I was caught between complete, utter fascination, curiosity, and amazement, and becoming physically ill. I found myself getting closer to gain the knowledge, and then carefully stepping back when body parts continued to unfold.

We went through the entire front of our first cadaver, exploring the diaphram, muscular system, layers of facia, kidneys, liver, lower intenstine, and more (actually, more than I want to really share). Then, we explored all the muscles of the thigh. It was interesting how thoughtful Todd was of the bodies, and how carefully he could reconstruct the chest cavity after he pulled everything out for our combined educational purposes.

The second cadaver we got to view was “Lady Margaret”. She was a much smaller cadaver, and was placed face-down, so that we could explore the muscular structure of her back. But, that didn’t stick in my mind as much as the female reproductive system that Todd so carefully held up for us to examine. It’s fabulous how the body actually lives, creates life, gives life, and then dies.

And finally, Todd got to show us a “new” cadaver, only five days old. He had just started disecting this cadaver, and showed us his brain, scull, and jaw. Illness was really taking over at that time, so I slowly backed off from learning more.

After our visit, I just could not stop thinking about it. One overwhelming thought is that even though I am not chosing to eat meat regularly, the afternoon sealed my intentions of no longer eating meat.

But more importantly, seeing a body that no longer has a spirit made me respect life, and the short time we have on this earth. These vessels that we are blessed with are absolutely one of the greatest inventions known. How we move with intention, how we take care of our bodies, and what we do with our vessels in our lifetime are completely our choice. Choose to make a difference. Choose love over hate, and choose to take care of ourselves, our fellow living creatures, and the earth that we live in. We can all make a difference.

Namaste

And it’s the beginning or middle of week five of the training, and it is amazing. It is absolutely fantastic. And words cannot even describe how amazing this process really is.

All right, so in all seriousness, this is Brandon Cox and I am the director of teacher training for the CorePower Yoga Studio, Boulder, Colorado. I’m co-directing it with Sierra White. This is my seventh teacher training that we’ve done through Core Power Yoga, and it’s an amazing experience being able to teach teachers, to be able to actually feed people who are hungry for knowledge, and it’s so inspiring to actually be able to share knowledge. What a great experience, and I feel honored and blessed.

S I E R R A

I’m not exactly sure what to talk about on this, besides to introduce myself to the blog, and so many things to talk about in these trainings, which we’re getting close to wrapping up. But let’s talk about love, and it’s an interesting thing to bring into the yoga room. But ultimately, if we don’t love ourselves, then we don’t do programs like teacher training, right? Because we’re not worth becoming a teacher, we’re not good enough.

So, to understand and love, we must first love ourselves, undetstand that we’re good enough to be loved, and that we’re good enough to take care of ourselves. I read something that was inspiring to me, and I’ll read it to you briefly.

It says: “Choosing to follow yourself is a very personal process that takes time. There is no magic wand you can wave to make this just happen, but there is the magic of your intention and the power of your actions. Whether you are taking the time to do activities that you like, speaking to and treating yourself with respect, taking inventory of all your wonderful qualities and accomplishments, or nurturing yourself plenty of rest and self-care.

“When you fall in love with yourself, you begin to see yourself more positively, appreciate your unique outlook in life, and treat yourself in a more more nurturing way. In loving yourself, you are acknowledging that you are special and deserving of love. Best of all, you’re giving yourself one of the greatest gift you can, one of the greatest gifts you have to give another. You’re giving yourself the gift of your love.”

Which is great, it’s a great way to understand that. It doesn’t have to be vain, it doesn’t have to be all about you, but ultimately it starts with you. So it’s a great thing to understand as we approach yoga. So that’s it for now — I may give another blog in a few, but thanks for listening.

I know I said my next blog would be on Satya, the second Yama, “truthfulness”, but the truth is I’m still working on Ahimsa. This is not surprising, as Gandhi spent his entire life practicing Ahimsa, and made great political advances in the process.

Last night, Alanna came to our teacher training last night to share her knowledge and journey into yoga. Alanna is the JivaDiva. I wanted to personally thank her. Not only did she inspire me to continue my journey towards Ahimsa, but she has also inspired me to further investigate my interest in Jivamuki Yoga.

As in my last blog, Ahimsa means “non-violence”. A good place to start is to simply, be kind. With the simple practice of always being kind, you yourself are practicing Ahimsa. This may not be as simple as it sounds. As soon as you hop into your car in the morning, start thinking “be kind”, as your neighbor cuts you off, or a bus decides to put on his blinkers in front of you.

Start by being kind to yourself. One of my students related to this last week in class. I started the class with the simple notion of being kind to herself. She was stressed from a long week of working in the high-tech world. We started with grounding in child-pose, and recognizing that it’s OK to take care, spend the next hour focusing on yoga, and being kind to herself. In order to share kindless and peace, it must come from within, and being kind to yourself is the perfect foundation.

Be kind to yourself, your co-workers, your fellow parents at your child’s school, your neighbors, your x-spouse, your family and everyone around you. Be kind to your enemies, and they will learn from your kindness. Kindless comes from the heart. As your kindness spreads, good karma will return to you.

Namaste

PS: If you haven’t already, please visit Alanna’s JivaDiva website. It’s a wonderful educational resource on yoga, complete with Podcasts (yes, Yogi’s Podcast!), chants and meditation, and other great treats for yogis.

The day I started my journey down the Core Power Yoga Teacher Training, I bought a book called Jivamukti Yoga. Written by Sharon Gannon and David Life, this book provides a very readable, detailed journey down the “yoga as a philosophy” path.

I took to this book immediately, (maybe because of the forward from Sting), as it jumps into the history of yoga, dating back to 600 B.C. Fascinating! It was from this book that this website, The Yogi Sutras was inspired. Sutras are compact, documented words of wisdom written by the ancient yogis that students can learn from. The goal of this site is to share little tidbits of knowledge that we learn along the way.

The Indian philosopher Patanjali did not invent yoga, but he did document his Sutras, which have become known as The Yoga Sutras. We all have access to these sutras, and whether or not we chose to follow or observe them, is clearly our decision.

Patanjali recommends an eight-limbed (you can visualize this…right?) system of yoga called Ashtanga, or Raja Yoga. Over the next few weeks, I’d like to share my attempt to apply the first two limbs: the Yamas, and the Niyamas, to my life. These limbs are slowly becoming my own inner psychotherapeutic tools that I can use in my every day life in a personal attempt to achieve mind/body purification, peace, or a glimpse at the devine (samadhi).

Let’s start with the first limb, the Yamas. The Yamas are simply guidelines for how we interact with the outer world. They can also be regarded as social disciplines or respects to our relationships with others. There are five Yamas: Ahimsa, Satya, Asteya, Brahmacharya, and Aparigraha. (note to Ifer…remind myself to digitally blog some Sanskrit, as it is the most beautiful ancient language to actually speak.)

The first Yama is Ahimsa. Ahimsa is defined as non-violence. Non-violence in the physical sense, as well as gentleness in our speech, thought, and actions. I had the opportunity to practice Ahimsa last week. I recently went through the experience of adding a room to my house. The word “recent” is relevant, as the project started in February of 2004. (note today’s date). All through last summer, I went through the joys and challenges of managing this project with an outside contractor. Together, we managed to complete all of the project, except, the roof always leaked when it rained. As you can imagine, this caused heartship for both myself and my contractor, as he considered himself “done”, when I still had a leaky roof. And, the city would not approve the structure. This “discussion” went on for month after month, with neither party leaving the conversation in peace (a nice way of saying, well, we were not agreeing). I even got to the point of not being able to converse with my contractor, as the conversations always became verbally ugly.

After our yoga teacher lesson on Ahimsa, I decided to face my fears, embrace Ahimsa, and call my contractor in an effort to “get done, and come to peace with the project.” With kindness through my voice, the non-violence through my mental and physical actions, my roof was willingly replaced by my contractor within the week.

Ahimsa energy spreads good will. By alluding Ahimsa, those around you will share Ahimsa as well.

Next: Satya - Truthfulness

Finding your guru could be a lifelong journey. In my lifetime, I’ve had two. Yes, two. How do I know that and what was I looking for? For most Westeners, “guru” is somewhat of a mysterious concept. What is a guru, and why would I want one? I’ll try to simplify the meaning of guru in this blog.

For someone to be your guru, first, you must recognize him or her as giving you inspiration, knowledge and guidance. Gurus will not come to you and say “I am your guru.” This recognition will come from within yourself.

For me, I have always looked for someone who will effectively reset my direction when I am trotting down the wrong path, while at the same time deliver to me an optional path or two that will generate growth. My 2 gurus have been mentors in my career. They have taught me people skills though various mechanisms, and have placed me in growth situations that I would not venture into without their gentle prodding. They’ve helped me with career knowledge, domain expertise, personal confidence, and taking pride and grace with my work.

It’s interesting, my career and mentor path have gone hand-in-hand. I have an emotional block that disables me from working for an organization that does not bring me potential mentors. When I interviewed for my current position and they asked me what type of boss I was looking for, I said, one that is smarter than me. This proved to be double-edged, because my interviewer, who happened to be my future boss said, “well, I look for people who are smarter than me.” I thought I blew it at that moment. What I was really thinking was that I was looking for my mentor, my guru through my employer. I was looking for mental and spiritual growth, as well as an opportunity to learn, through each precious moment of life. Why would I want to spend 8-9 hours a day working for someone that I could not learn from? And why would they hire someone who could not bring talent and knowledge to their organization?

Yesterday, my heart opened to a new mentor, who could very likely be my third life mentor.

Open your heart and find your guru. Hunble yourself and acknowledge that another person could shine light into your life, and your spirit.

Namaste

Kay, good morning, Tuesday morning , it’s Ifer. Just a quick blog on yoga and smell.

It’s actually kind of funny. Last weekend I got to bring my son Greg, who I’m going to talk a lot about, because I adore him, to a CorePower yoga class. He’s 14 years old, and I brought him to a core power yoga class, taught by Brandon. I don’t think he wanted to come to a class, but he came with me because I asked him to come. He’s doing yoga in his basketball practices at school.

So we had a good time, we sweated a lot, and Brandon played some great music, and it was really nice practicing next to Greg, but what’s really kind of interesting is that same week — or in that same timeframe — I was really getting kind of concerned because my yoga mat was really starting to smell. And I guess this was bound to happen, because you sweat so much in power yoga.

So I raised my concern to one of the instructors, Naomi, and she told me to just take my yoga mat in the shower with me And so I started doing that and using Dr. Bronner’s soap, and it started to fix the problem. So this morning I was walking around the house, starting to gather my yoga things together and I was thinking about the smell, and Greg, my son, who is six feet tall and has a size 12 foot comes to me, looks down at his shoes and says, Mom, can you do anything about the smell of my shoes?

And this is about three minutes before we’re leaving for school, and I was kind of like — well, hmmm… — I thought about taking them in the shower with me, but then I thought that wasn’t a good idea at the present time — and I said, “Actually at the moment, I don’t know, but maybe if we just put them outside some of the smell will subside.” And then I thought, well, maybe we’ll buy you a new pair of shoes, and he said, “That’s a good idea, but what should I do today?” We changed out the shoes, and placed the smelly ones outside.

So, he was pretty concerned about the smell as well. So, as we walk the journey of life, smell is part of it. And I hope you enjoyed this blog. Namaste.

Hi, it’s Ifer again, Monday night. So, one of the things I’ve found that I’ve really connected with again, (I keep finding the things that I’ve really connected with) , is music. Music, it’s a wonderful thing. It’s got breath, it’s got sound, it’s got feeling and emotion, and for the most part it’s talking about “the now,” right? People are singing in the now.

So one of the things that my son, Greg, does for me (he’s 14 years old) is he loads my iPod Shuffle with music and he calls it the “Mom shuffle.” and so I’ve been listening to these Mom shuffles and I’ve been thinking about the music that I want to play in my CorePower classes — some Elton John, some Pink Floyd, Lyle Lovett, even parts Dan Fogelberg that could work — so keep an eye out for the Ifer shuffle CorePower yoga class. Namaste.

Hi, it’s Ifer, and it’s Monday after a long weekend of core power training, and I’m taking the day off from yoga because I feel like I deserve it.

But I wanted to just note that one of the benefits that I’ve been getting from taking this yoga and spending the time for myself and, pending the time to share the yoga practice with my friends, is that my ability to focus has increased, I want to say, hummm, 100%.

I mean if you try to add up all the things I’m trying to do, an additional 20 hours of yoga practice and training on top of my 40 hours of regular paying job, on top of whoever knows how many hours of little consulting jobs that I can’t seem to kill — (I guess that’s in part my fault because I tend to love it) — and a son, and a … I guess you could call my husband, and two houses, and three dogs, and a cat — and trying to balance some kind of a lifestyle and some fun that I’d like to have — maybe some fall running in Boulder — how am I able to focus?

And the only thing I can attribute it to is this training of core power yoga that I go to, that I spend six to 10 hours a week doing. It helps me focus. So on that note, namaste.

Hi I’m Chalice, and I’m a part of this wonderful yoga teacher training here at the CorePower studio, and I’ve been practicing yoga for a very long time, different styles of yoga, and something really special happened to me when I came to CorePower yoga for the first time. Really experiencing the flow, the music, and just the powerful group energy that this kind of Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga brings to the whole “banquet of yoga styles,” I guess you could say.

Anyway, there’s pretty major growth and transition in my life, and I decided to make the yoga CorePower teacher training an intensive part of that transition — to keep my head in a clear space, and also pave the way to a new chapter of my life. I plan to teach yoga, and I’m thinking of relocating to France: I’m a French speaker, and I just absolutely love it out there — talk about being present – it’s really a different pace of life, people take time to smell the roses and taste the wild strawberries, what can I say? — so thinking of taking my five-year-old daughter out there, and giving her the opportunity for an international upbringing, and opening a studio.

Probably on the Atlantic coast of France, or perhaps further south on the Mediterranean near the border of Spain, and I’m going to take an exploratory mission out there this winter holiday, and just see what’s out there in terms of the yoga and what I can possibly bring and share with that part of the world.

People here at the teacher training are just absolutely wonderful, I made some lovely friends, and it’s just an incredible experience. And that’s about that. I can’t recommend it enough, it’s just a fabulous, life-transforming experience, no mistake. namaste