Sep 6, 2011 |
There were a few weeks of summer left and that meant one thing for me: time to get in at least one chick-lit novel while lounging in a beach chair and sipping a cool, refreshing drink. I want to go on the record to say that I don’t take the term chick-lit as derogatory; there comes a time when you just need something fun, light, and entertaining, and this year mine came with the added bonus of spirituality, courtesy of Meryl Davids Landau and her first novel Downward Dog, Upward Fog (DDUF). Meryl stopped by the Daily Downward Dog (DDD) a few months ago and sent me a note asking if I would take a read of her book, and I’m glad she did.
This tale is about Lorna, a thirtysomething special-events coordinator for an ice cream company (cool job!), with a large circle of gal pals, a hot boyfriend, and a beautiful home. It appears she has everything, including the required plot tension of a mean-spirited mother, but even with all that, her life is feeling a little empty. No worries; she has the extreme good fortune of finding her spiritual path through a feel-good new age radio host, an awesome big sis with an extensive new age library, and the discovery of how cool it can be to practice yoga and meditation.
Yep, Lorna goes on an awesome yoga journey and starts to figure out the important things in life via her yoga mat, a few self-help books, and a burgeoning meditation practice. Through Lorna’s eyes, I recognized glimpses of my own early yoga journey, struggling to quiet my mind during meditation, letting go of judging myself and others, and wondering if I would ever get vertical in a headstand. As I read through the book, quite a few corners got turned down as I found passages that moved me. I’m not a big fan of the law of attraction, but I do believe that what you give is what you get, and Lorna became a shining example on how putting forth a positive attitude, opening your heart to others, and putting your dreams out into the universe can bring beautiful life-changing results.
One of my favorite parts of the book was reading about Lorna’s experience at a silent weekend yoga retreat, and even though I can’t imagine how I could ever possibly live through such an experience, I am now curiously intrigued by the idea! (Anyone know a good silent weekend yoga retreat I can attend?)
Of recent, I do feel that a lot of books are homing in on the popularity of yoga and sensationalizing the more extreme yoga practices. I’m not quite sure if it is just for effect, but the thing I loved about DDUF is that it just plain tells the story of one woman’s spiritual transformation in a nonsensational way. Not everyone has to travel to India and drink urine to find their spiritual nirvana; believe it or not, you can achieve Samadhi quite nicely on the comfort of your yoga mat in Hoboken (or Akron).
I’m not a fan of sugarcoated books that end with a big ol’ red ribbon to tie up all the loose ends, but I’m gonna give Meryl a little break for that and just say that yes, there is a little bit of sugary cheese in this read. But don’t let that stop you from diving in for some yogic fun. Downward Dog, Upward Fog will provide uplifting moments for any woman that has come to yoga and discovered that it is so much more than just the stretching.
If you are in a book club this book would not only make a nice pick, but also lead to some spirited conversation. Meryl has even included a list of questions for book club discussions at the end of the book. Whatever your reason to pick up this book, you will enjoy hanging out with Lorna and going on her spiritual joyride.
Aug 30, 2011 |
I love when a good discussion gets going from one of my blog posts, and that happened back in June when I posed “The Battle of the Languages: Sanskrit versus English.” If you didn’t read the post or the excellent comments, I explained that my style is to teach yoga, utilizing the English names for poses. I justified this as wanting to demystify yoga and to make it more accessible for my students. But let me be clear: Part of the reason I do so is that I’m not always the best at remembering all of the Sanskrit names, and, also, I’m a bit timid about the proper pronunciations.
Enter Cheryl Hall, Sanskrit super-teacher, to the rescue! Cheryl saw my post and reached out to me with an offer of a complimentary Sanskrit class via Skype. That was an offer I could not pass up and we quickly set up the session and Cheryl e-mailed me the following list of questions in order to prepare for our class.
1) How familiar are you with making the sounds of Sanskrit? For example, are you familiar with “the 5 mouth positions” and the different sounds made from each position?
2) Do you know how to read transliteration? In other words, do those lines over letters, dots, slashes & tildes mean anything to you?
3) Do you have some poses in mind (English name or Sanskrit name) that you would like to cover? If so, please send them on, and we will focus on your specific needs and interests. (Alternatively, I do have a standard list of poses used in flow & power classes, as well as each of the first 3 ashtanga series, if you would like to use one of them.)
My answers to numbers 1 and 2 were: very little, no, and no! Yikes, I guess the emphasis on Sanskrit during my yoga-teacher training was not as strong as it should be. As dorky as I felt admitting this to Cheryl, I also was really excited to learn about the proper care and usage of Sanskrit.
Our class started out with some of the basics behind the phonetic marks, like what the macron (the line that appears over vowels) means and how you should hold those vowels for two beats. Then we launched into a list of the most common yoga poses, and Cheryl coached me in their proper pronunciation.
Major takeaway 1: I’ve been butchering the Sanskrit language. (But not anymore, thanks to Cheryl.)
2: The Sanskrit language is beautiful, and I need to get over my fear of using it while I teach.
One of the best pieces of advice that Cheryl provided is to practice the pronunciation of the words slowly and then work on increasing the speed.
If you are curious about Cheryl’s background, she is based in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she teaches asana, Sanskrit, and chant along with her husband at their studio, Dave’s Astanga Yoga. She is E-RYT-500 and has been teaching Sanskrit since 2004. Like me, Cheryl has recently taken the leap out of her Corporate America day job and is focusing on teaching full-time (woo-hoo, Cheryl!). Cheryl explained to me that her practice used to be 100 percent asana-based, but today it is 30 percent asana, 60 percent chant and Sanskrit study, and 10 percent meditation. That shift in focus to Vedic chant and Sanskrit shines through in her enthusiastic and patient approach to teaching neophytes like me.
If you take a class with Cheryl, you will find her extremely efficient. She keeps the class personable but knows how to keep it moving so you get the instruction you need. If you are lucky, at the end of your class, she may just sing a chant to you (and if she doesn’t, make sure you ask her to, as her voice is heavenly).
WIN A FREE CLASS
Now for the good stuff! Three lucky Daily Downward Dog readers are going to get the chance to win their very own 45-minute private Sanskrit yoga class! To enter, please leave a comment below, and if you are inclined, please share your funniest Sanskrit misstep. You know, like the time when you accidentally called tree pose trikonasana or really butchered up a pronunciation. Don’t worry about someone laughing at you; there will be no judgment at the DDD, just love and respect, as we all need to help each other move along in our knowledge of this language. The deadline to enter is September 9, 2011, at noon, when I’ll pick the three winners.
SAVE $5 ON YOUR FIRST CLASS
If you would like to schedule a class with Cheryl, you can contact her through her Web site or e-mail her at azvedicchant at gmail.com or by phone at 480-216-2602. Be sure to mention The Daily Downward Dog, and you will get $5 off the 45-minute class (which is $35).
If you are not familiar with Skype, it is a FREE online service that allows you to call people online, and if you have a camera hooked up to your computer, you can see the person as you talk to them. I have to tell you that I think Skype is super cool, and I have used it to visit with my cute little great-niece who lives out of state and to stay in touch with my nephew who was in the Marines and serving in Iraq. Cheryl loves teaching via Skype to not only bring a personal touch to the class, but also so she can watch the mouth and enunciation of her students in order to provide expert feedback.
Image: Isadora Lollo
Aug 25, 2011 |
Over the weekend the Daily Downward Dog (DDD) celebrated its one-year birthday! Like a proud mother, I’m feeling a little nostalgic, and I just can’t believe my little yogini baby is already one year old. I’m also getting the strong urge to dig my hands and face into a big ol’ birthday cake with a thick layer of gooey frosting. I just had the pleasure of witnessing my great-nephew do the same cake dive on his first birthday, and it looked pretty darn fun!
If you are interested in the humble beginnings of The Daily Downward Dog, it first launched as part of MariaMedia in February of 2010. The DDD was a small part of the content that comprised MariaMedia and included quick little musings about my budding yoga practice. I quickly realized that this yoga thing had blossomed into an addiction and spun off The Daily Downward Dog as its own Web site on August 20, 2010.
To celebrate, I thought it would be fun (well, fun for me; not so sure about you) to go back over the year and pick out a few highlights—kind of like the “Year in Review” issue of People magazine—covering everything from a 83-year-young yogini to finding your yogic path on a Wienermobile. And then, in a serendipitous twist of fate, one of my fellow Ohio bloggers, Becca of @peacelovebagels, nominated me to participate in the “My 7 links” social media meme, and the themes for the seven links to my blog just magically wrapped their way around my year-end review.
Yoga Victories/Most Proud Of: One of my favorite things about yoga for me and my students is celebrating all the progress you make as your body gets stronger and more flexible. I call these yoga victories, and I chronicled quite a few of mine from the first time I made it into tripod headstand in “Amazing Yoga Moments” (9/2) to getting all the way into a headstand in “With A Little Help” (9/22), and “Making Dreams Come True” (4/19).
Becoming a Yoga Teacher/A Defining Moment: When I started The Daily Downward Dog, I had no idea I would ever become a yoga teacher, but just a little less than a month after launching the DDD, I enrolled in yoga-teacher training. In “Bliss and Joy” (10/26) I wrote about the bliss I felt immediately after teaching my very first yoga class, then moved on to my very first teaching job in “A Toast to First Times” (12/7) and the thrill of becoming an “Official Card-Carrying Member” of the Yoga Alliance (5/10).
I’ve Got the Music in Me/Most Popular Post(s): Last September, when I stood in mountain pose during a yoga class and heard the song “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” ringing in my ears, I got the inspiration for yoga theme songs. Since the birth of the yoga theme song, I’ve shared yogic musical inspiration from Lenny Kravitz, Natalie Cole, Elton John, Chicago, MC Yogi, Kiss, The Monkees, Kenny Chesney, and the New Radicals. Music and yoga are two of my biggest passions, and you can catch up on a whole year of yoga-class playlists and yoga song parodies on the Cool Yoga Music page.
Demystifying Yoga/Most Helpful: When you are new to yoga, it can be a bit intimidating, and I really like to guide new students through some of the areas that mystified me when I first started. Throughout the year I covered topics like what namaste means (“Namaste 101,” 10/4; “What’s Om Got to Do With It?” 8/23; “Does Chi Mean Pain?” 8/24; “The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Om,” 10/6) and got published on the Urban Dictionary by coining the definition of yogalicious (12/12). You can find more articles like this on the Yoga 101 page.
High Times/Most Controversial (well, sort of): Yep, I’m not afraid to admit it; I’m a yoga addict and I will go on the record to say that the best high I ever get is a direct result from practicing yoga. Achieving the yoga high was a consistent theme on the DDD, but I especially liked “In Search of the Yoga High” (11/9), “Yoga You Had Me at Hello,” (2/9) and “Yoga Crack” (8/11).
Community Confessions/Surprise Success: I really tried to keep it real and bare my soul, and when I did it really resonated with the yoga community. These blogs really sparked some great conversation, and I loved how the yoga kula all came out to join me in the confession booth. If you like a good conversation, you will like these blogs: “Neti Pot Confessions” (3/24), “Real-Life Confessions of a Yoga Teacher” (4/1), “Confessions of a Kirtan Virgin” (4/26), and “Battle of the Languages: Sanskrit vs. English” (6/21).
YOGARS/Not Enough Attention: I’m a big Oscar-award geek, and on the same day they announced the Oscar nominees, I announced my YOGAR nominees for best asana, best supporting asana, etc. The winners were announced on February 28, and I’ve been busy ever since researching and preparing for the 2011 nominations. I’m hoping the YOGARS really take off this next year.
Ho Ho Hah/Funniest: Last year I attended my very first laughter yoga class and loved it! I’m really hoping I can get certified as a laughter yoga instructor sometime in the next year, but until then you can read all about why laughter yoga is so dang cool in “Do You Suffer from Serious Disorder?” (10/15), “Get Your Giggle On (1/28),” and the “Best Bedtime Story” (4/12).
It has been a yogalicious year, and I want to thank everyone who stopped by The Daily Downward Dog and for all the love and support the yoga community has shown. You know who you are and you ROCK!
I set some dreams out into the universe this past year, and quite a few of them came true! When I blow out my birthday candles this year, I am going to be sending out a few new dreams and wishes, so watch out; my intentions have proven to be pretty powerful!
I never follow the rules, so, of course, I have way more than seven links in here and even felt the need to add one more category. Here are my nominations to pass along “The #7Links” baton:
Meredith at The Pondering Yogini
Cathy at CIE Change
Lo at Y is for Yogini
Erica at Spoiled Yogi
Brian at Daily Cup of Yoga
…or anyone who wants to join in the fun!
Aug 18, 2011 |
Don’t you just love when you hear a song and it instantly makes you happy (and maybe even a little high)?
You hear it on the radio, groove into a little happy dance, and the smile starts to spread across your face.
When a song has a title like “Lovely Day,” you know it has a damn good chance of being one of those feel good songs, and this classic from Bill Withers (circa 1977 ) is my new yoga theme song. Go on, hit the play button below, you know you want to feel the love…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYi7uEvEEmk[/youtube]
I’m convinced that Bill has to be a yogi with amazing breath control, because at 3:05 in the video he holds a note for 18 seconds! According to Wikipedia that note remains the longest held in any Top 40 hit in the United States. Yowza – nice pranayama Bill!
This song will be on one of my yoga class playlists real soon, and when it does, I’ll be singing the official Daily Downward Dog song parody lyrics….
…
A Yoga Day
When I wake up in the morning
love
and the muscle ache hurts my eyes
And stressful mindless chatter
love
bears heavy on my mind.
Then I grab my mat and the world’s alright with me
Just one breath and stretch and I know it’s gonna be –
A yoga day – yoga day
yoga day
yoga day
yoga day
Yoga day
yoga day
yoga day
yoga day
A yoga day – yoga day
yoga day
yoga day
yoga day
When the day that lies ahead of me is full of stress and angst
And someone else instead of me always seems to know the way
Then I grab my mat and the world’s alright with me
Just one breath and stretch and I know it’s gonna be –
A yoga day – yoga day
yoga day
yoga day
yoga day
…
To me a lovely day = a yoga day. Just a little yoga every day and the world’s alright with me. Just a few asanas and some breathing and suddenly the day seems possible to face. Wishing you a beautiful yoga daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy (that was 22 seconds a new DDD record!).
Image: Yasin Oztürk
Aug 9, 2011 |
I get a ton of spam, so, last week, as I was scanning through my e-mail inbox to weed out the important messages, my eyes fell upon the following subject line:
Oscar Mayer Wienermobile in Stow/Canton/Akron—
I was just about to hit the delete button when my eyes were drawn to the remainder of the subject line that read:
Driver HUGE Yoga-Nerd
Now that got my attention! Next, I noticed another e-mail from the same person with this subject line:
Oscar Mayer Wienermobile-Hotdogger Yoga-loving Proof
After seeing that e-mail message, I knew I had to find out what was doing with the yoga nerd driving the Wienermobile around my hood.
First, you should know that the moniker of this yoga nerd is Dyl-icous Dylan and his cohort on the Wienermobile is Kylie Ketchup. Turns out Dylan is a huge yoga aficionado, and all those miles spent driving cross-country, bringing hot dog joy to the world had left him hankering for a different kind of dog. Yes, Dyl-icous Dylan needed a few downward dogs to stretch him out and get him back on the yogic path.
Dylan is a fan of hot yoga, so he was right at home at Yoga Bliss Akron, where he pulled up in the Wienermobile last Thursday night to take a class. Even though I’m a vegetarian, I was thrilled that Dylan chose to come to Yoga Bliss Akron, and although I would have loved for him to take my class, his Wienermobile duties got him to the studio just in time to take a hot Vinyasa Power class from the awesome Amy Boswell-Graves.
After class I got to sit down and chat with Dylan, who commented that no matter how much yoga he tries to squeeze in on his own or with videos while on the road, nothing beats attending a live class! This, quite frankly, is music to any yoga teacher’s ears.
Dyl-icious Dylan showing me the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile
Although the job will be full of great adventures, it will also be full of challenges, so I wasn’t surprised when Dylan asked my advice on how to stay on the yogic path.
I gave Dylan a few yoga poses he can do while in the car seat (not driving) to get his body stretched. When he’s off the mat, I told him that he is going to meet a lot of shiny, happy people this year, but it is highly likely that he is going to run into some mean people as well. I went on to explain about The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and Patanjali’s four keys to the four locks. Basically, there are four locks in the world: the happy people, unhappy people, the virtuous, and the wicked. There are four keys we have to deal with these people: friendliness, compassion, delight, and disregard. If we keep these four keys with us at all times, when we come across any one of these four locks, we have the key we need at our disposal. For example:
When you encounter a happy person, use the friendliness key.
When you encounter an unhappy person, have compassion and lend him a helping hand.
For the virtuous (you know, the person with a shiny new car or a big house), instead of feeling envy, appreciate the virtuous and be happy for him.
Finally, for the wicked, look at him with indifference.
This one sutra is said to be one of the most important for keeping peace of mind in our daily life. I have to say that these four keys have helped me get through many a situation, and I’m thinking they will help Dylan in quite a few Wal-Mart parking lots or wherever he is out greeting the public.
I have to admit, I am very impressed with Dylan Hackbarth, a recent University of Minnesota graduate who went up against 1200 talented college students to win one of 12 coveted spots on the Wienermobile team. When he finishes up his 52-week journey, he will have seen a good portion of the United States, great stories to tell, and a hell of an entry to put on his résumé as he heads off to graduate school at Johns Hopkins University to study youth social work.
His trip highlight so far was celebrating the 75th birthday of the Wienermobile in New York City on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Dylan was interviewed live on CNN and gave an exclusive “behind the bun” tour to AOL. And I thought my summer job was cool!
Dylan, here’s hoping you find your way to many more wonderful yoga studios along your journey, and, when you don’t, keep on busting those yoga moves outside the Wienermobile. Oscar Mayer is lucky to have such a balanced yogi and brand ambassador representing them!
I’d like to make a product suggestion to Oscar Mayer, though: How about a veggie-style hot dog?
For those of you who travel a lot, what other advice would you give a road warrior like Dylan to keep him on his yogic path?
