A few weeks ago at the beginning of yoga class, the instructor asked the class to plug in. She wasn’t talking about plugging in our computers or our cell phone chargers; she wanted us to plug our minds into our yoga practice. We were being asked to feel the heat in our bodies as we went through our asanas and to plug into what our bodies were telling us. She wanted us to plug into the present and fully embrace the yoga experience.
I think my yoga extension cord may have a factory defect. My internal surge protector sometimes fails me, leaving my mind to plug into other things, like everything I didn’t get done that day or the shower gift I need to buy after class or why I can’t bend my elbows the way I need to in crow pose. Being fully present in yoga class is a challenge.
I think I may just draw a picture of an electrical socket on the top of my yoga mat to serve as a mental reminder to be fully present during class. When I do I can feel the prana my body and breath generates as it courses through my muscles and spine like an electrical current. I’m not focusing on how much time is left in class, but focusing, instead, on my breath, the graceful and purposeful movement of my hands in my mudra, every move perfectly choreographed as I embrace the dancing yogini I want to be.
At the end of class, when we got into savasana, the instructor repeated the request to plug in again. I always thought savasana was the time to unplug and check out, but really focusing on how my body felt and sealing in my practice brought a whole new meaning to savasana.
The cool thing about plugging into your yoga practice is that you don’t need to worry about conserving energy or having a higher bill if you leave the lights on. The more you connect to your mind and body, the more amazing your yoga practice becomes.
Breathing, it’s such a simple thing to do and so therapeutic, yet most people don’t realize the power of breathing and meditation to help with all those special things life throws at us like stress, fatigue, and one of my worst fears: stage fright.
No matter what I did or how prepared I was, as soon as I’d step out on a stage to perform, my heart would start pumping wildly, my palms would sweat profusely, and a sense of panic would erupt—not optimal conditions for a drum player. And can I just add that it’s nearly impossible to play drums with sweaty palms? I needed a go-to meditation mantra to help me through these bouts of stage fright.
How to Overcome Stage Fright with Yoga Meditation
I’ve been practicing yoga for four years now, and after trying out several solutions, I would like to share my stage fright cure through a mantra that has helped me tremendously: “Har Har Mukunday.”
Let me break that down for you. The har is the creative aspect of infinity, and mukunday is the liberator. Together it means “The infinite creator liberates me.” It is believed that chanting this mantra will remove fear and turn your challenges into opportunities.
I really like this mantra because it is easy to remember and something I can do right before I go out onstage. Plus, it is a natural way to prevent stage fright versus taking medication.
Just find a quiet place, sit in a comfortable pose, and start breathing in and out as you repeat these words. Clear your mind and try to focus on the mantra for at least three to five minutes.
I can tell you that it has brought me a sense of calm and the courage I need to make it out on that stage for an awesome performance. I hope this mantra will help you as well in dealing with stage fright.
Amanda Peyton is a yoga instructor, vegan, and a hard-rocking drummer in the alternative rock band Code Cherry. A long-time sufferer of stage fright, she has employed the practice of yoga and meditation to turn her into the superstar that she is today. The Daily Downward Dog is thrilled to have her as a contributing author. You can read more about Amanda’s rock star yogi lifestyle in the web-series No Songs for Men.
I’m doing a smiling Buddha kriya* with Y is for Yogini (a super fun yoga blog you should check out) for the next 40 days. I figured I needed some structure to my daily meditation to get me off my butt, and after reading the long list of benefits of doing this particular kriya (joy, bliss, happiness, balance, positive mind, confidence to overcome challenges, energy to inspire, intuition, expanded consciousness), I had all the motivation I needed to get started.
The lesson that I’ve learned so far is that when you smile while meditating, it makes everything better! I found it so much easier to clear my mind, focus on the chant, and receive the benefits of the kriya when a big grin was on my face.
Same goes for yoga. Next time you’re in a difficult pose, just start smiling and see what happens. I guarantee those negative thoughts about boat pose will vanish as soon as you curl up those lips into a smile.
So, my old advertising blood came pumping back to life as I started to imagine this award-winning advertising jingle: “Yoga Goes Better with a Smile.”
The thirty-second commercial would feature a montage of high-production-value video footage of yoga students on the beach, in a field with the sun setting, in a big-city yoga studio, all practicing various asanas, with huge, honking smiles on their faces and a catchy jingle. The voiceover would say:
Yoga is much more fun when you’re smiling
Inversions go better
Heart openers go better
Backbends go better
Savasana goes better
Even meditation is refreshing with a big, fat, happy smile on your face
So have a yoga and a smile today!
Okay, so this is a rip from the classic Coke commercial “Things go better with Coke,” but don’t you agree this would make a fabulous ad campaign for yoga?
Next time you’re in yoga class or meditating on the mat, remember that other old Coke jingle, “Have a Coke and a Smile,” and have a little yoga and a smile of your own. It’s refreshing!
*Kriya—Exercises and breathing techniques intended to purify and cleanse the body’s energy channels. In Sanskrit kriya means action, deed, or effort and includes personal work and spiritual efforts.
Trudie Styler is a lucky lady! Not only is she married to one of the hottest rock musicians, she looks fabulous in her mid-fifties, lives in this incredible villa in Tuscany, and gets to practice yoga with her husband, Sting! She also happens to be a pretty cool lady who is an organic farmer, does a lot of great work as a human rights activist, and promotes green practices.
I’ve always wanted to do celebrity yoga, so I couldn’t resist picking up her Warrior Yoga DVD. I plopped in this DVD about a week ago while my sister was visiting, and we both jumped on our yoga mats to enjoy a yoga workout and a little voyeuristic journey into Trudie Stylers’s yoga world. We both were also holding out hope that we would get to see a few shots of the tantra-tastic Sting as part of the package and we weren’t disappointed.
Yoga Workouts
The yoga workouts on the DVD consist of one 45-minute yoga workout with Trudie Styler and her fitness guru, James D’Silva, and a shortened 25-minute express version. The two go through an organic flow of yoga postures, with James’s calling the shots and providing wonderful verbal clues with his incredibly calming voice. The video was shot at Trudie and Sting’s beautiful, ecofriendly Tuscan villa, II Palagio, with the rich acoustic guitar sounds of Sting playing “Fields of Gold” and other music from his Songs from the Labyrinth CD in the background.
My first impression was that I really liked the flow that James put together. It was different than anything I’ve done before because he takes you through a long sequence of poses on one side before moving to the other side. I recommend you watch the video first before trying it, as there were a few poses I’d never experienced, and his version of mountain is different than what we practice here at my villa in Ohio. There are a few challenging areas in the flow, and I wish that James had provided some variations to the poses for people who are new to yoga (and for inflexible people like me).
This probably is not the best video for a beginner, so do what you can, don’t be hard on yourself, and gradually the flow will become easier.
One variation that James brought to the table was brining the hands down from above to your head, to your lips, and to your heart and then moving the hands out forward in an offering. The flow seemed more meaningful as my hands grazed past my head and lips and I felt my heart press out of my chest.
My sister and I were amazed that neither Trudie nor James broke out in a sweat during the workout. It must have been cold that day in Tuscany, because the two of us were sweating like crazy. This is a total-body-strengthening yoga practice, with plenty of time spent holding positions, so you will be challenged.
The express is a condensed version of the 45-minute workout—perfect for a quick yoga fix—and it will make you break a sweat. I’m going to use this in the morning when I only have a few minutes to get my back stretched and my body moving.
The only real issue I have with this DVD is that the workout did not include a savasana session, but I do have an insider’s tip for you. After you finish the workout, go ahead and lie down in savasana. The DVD will move to the menu page, and Sting is singing a mellow version of “Message in a Bottle” in the background. It made the perfect soothing accompaniment to my own self-guided savasana.
Guided Meditation with Trudie
When we did the DVD and saw that it featured a meditation session with Trudie Styler, my sister and I both got excited about the opportunity to om with Trudie. Imagine our disappointment when the meditation session was Trudie sitting in a field of lavender, with James’ voice leading us through the meditation. Well, actually—no offense to James—it was really nice.
A few days later I checked out James’ meditation sequence and was delighted to find that Trudie was offering up the guided journey as he sat in the field of lavender. In her lovely English accent, she had me breathing in rays of sunlight and breathing out into the depths of the ocean. It was an incredible meditative journey, and, Trudie, thank you. I did find my inner peace! I’ll be going to this DVD often for my daily meditation routine—shanti.
But Wait, There’s More!
The bonus tracks on this DVD are really cool. There is an interview with Trudie, James, and also one from Sting. The interviews give you a nice peek into the making of the videos and Trudie and Sting’s core beliefs about exercise, living a healthy lifestyle, and their involvement with the Rainforest Foundation and the UNICEF Ecuador Water Project (a portion of the sales of this DVD go to this organization).
I love what Trudie has to say about giving yourself the gift of exercise. “We’re given one body in this life. It’s our precious vehicle, it needs maintenance, and it needs to be empowered.”
You also get a glimpse into the making of Sting’s album If on a Winter’s Night. In a couple of the interview shots, Sting has a beard, which I didn’t care for (looks a little too Grizzly Adams for me), but don’t worry, there are also shots of the clean-shaven Sting we all love, and the CD sounds pretty amazing too.
The DVD does a good job of selling the other workout DVDs that Trudie and James did together. I’m especially curious about the Sculpt & Tone Ballet DVD, as I’d really like to visit the inner ballerina in me, and the Cardio Dance Flowand Pilates workouts look like a lot of fun. James is a classically trained dancer from the Royal Ballet, so I’m thinking the dance elements have got to be good.
I highly recommend Trudie Styler’s Warrior Yoga DVD. It left my sister and me feeling invigorated, centered, and fully present as we got the added bonus of hanging out with Trudie and Sting for the afternoon.
Here’s my overall score of the video based on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best.
Yoga workout: 8.5
Music: 10
Bonus features: 9
Meditation: 10!
Repeat factor: 10 (meaning the likelihood of me doing this yoga workout repeatedly)
If you’re one of those yoga aficionados that can do all the crazy poses, like headstands and bird of paradise, this blog post will either bore you or amuse you, but if you are a yoga nerd like me and still working on the basics, hopefully this blog will encourage you to keep plugging away at your yoga practice.
I have a couple of yoga instructors who always ask at the beginning of class if there is a pose we would like to work on. I really appreciate this gesture, but, inevitably, the pose that always comes up is the headstand. I’m afraid to try a headstand because I don’t think my core and upper body are strong enough yet and, to be quite honest, I have a really hard head and resting all of my body weight on it really is not appealing to me. That and hearing the thud when class members fall out of a headstand is a little unsettling.
So, I always dread the part of class when we work on the designated pose because it forces me to go out of my comfort zone. I’ll try a few basic steps of the pose but always go to something more safe, like childs pose or goddess pose, to hang out and look busy until the rest of the class is done experimenting. I always figured one day I would get up the nerve to really try it out.
Well, that day came yesterday.
My yoga instructor must have known I needed a nudge, and she gave it to me. We were practicing tripod pose, and I got myself into the basic position just to see what it would feel like when she came over and pointed out the proper way for me to place my head. I had been doing it wrong all this time, and once she got my hands and head in the right position, it felt totally natural to pick my legs up and rest them on my arms.
I got into tripod pose (pre-headstand) with the help of my yoga instructor, Deirdre Sargent, and it felt amazing! I let out a little Woohoo! because this was a big deal for me. I was one step closer to a headstand. Hell, I think I probably could have raised up my legs with a little assistance, but I wasn’t going to push it; one yoga victory for the day was enough to put a smile on my face. I even got a few high fives from other class members. I’ll keep practicing the base tripod pose; my goal is to get those legs up in the air before the month is out for tripod headstand!
Thanks, Deirdre, for giving me the push I needed and doing it in such an encouraging way! I really appreciate everything you have taught me about yoga and myself.
At the end of class, when we got into savasana, the instructor repeated the request to plug in again. I always thought savasana was the time to unplug and check out, but really focusing on how my body felt and sealing in my practice brought a whole new meaning to savasana.
