Category Archives: Mind

“take the practice seriously but don’t take yourself too seriously”…

Posted on by

So, it’s been a few weeks since the Ashtanga Confluence and some of you have been wanting to know… pretty much wondering if it was as awesome as we thought it would be…

M O S T  definitely.

I have to be honest and tell you the whole story and a little bit more of my impressions.. But that will take several post and most important, several days more for me to process. Some things you have to only experience in the moment to take in fully.

In the meantime I can tell you many of my reflections after the Confluence have been around the phrase: “take the practice seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously”. The texts says it, the teachers says it… but it was over the past few years of actually SHARING the practice that I have been able to appreciate more deeply one of the best lessons life keeps teaching me over and over again, starting with my parents encouraging me to take my own decisions and stand HAPPY by them since I can remember… like allowing me to cut my own hair since I was 6 -have the pictures to prove it, or take as completely normal my princess outfit for going to school any random Tuesday…-unfortunately also have the pictures to prove it. But it was with the same spirit that they encouraged me to be myself and face the world just like that.

The thing is, nowadays it seems harder and harder to remember: it is our RESPONSIBILITY to find JOY in life. For the very simple reason that in joy, you experience life, you are feeling and not thinking. Joy allows you to open your eyes, to wake up, and still find magic in every moment of your life. Think about a two year old laughing uncontrollably about everything around him. Except a few decades later the same two year old has to pay rent, to wear a tie in the office, so many roles to follow, so many standards to live up to, can’t afford the risk of not living up to other’s standards. And now all this responsibilities, expectation, fears and protocols take so much space, there is no room for simple  j o y .

Life is not about being happy every day, we all know that. But taking ourselves lightly allow us to keep ourselves light. The big important things in life are there, happening everyday and I bet you, in your list of important things, you are counting a lot of extremely unimportant stuff and most likely leaving out some big ones. Shake it out!

Teaching yoga has made me think about this many, many times. I have been so fortunate to be able to make a living through yoga and natural medicine the last few years and there has been numerous moments when I have worried about money, image, reputation, quality, expectations, and the list continues. Not only about myself but all of these applied also for the yoga studio that has acquired a life of it’s own; but then there are this moments, such magical moments! when in the middle of the class I look around and see all this ashtangis with their legs wide open in the air, sweating, breathing, rolling from side to side… and I can’t help but finding it ridiculously funny. Ashtanga is powerful, everyone in the room knows that. You have to take it seriously. You HAVE to do it! do it everyday -or at least few times a week, do it when you feel happy and specially when you feel not so happy. You have to be on time for class, have to figure out what to do with your hair (don’t you love that? how ‘important’ your hairstyle becomes during your practice?), when to eat your meals, which clothes to wear… and all of this is just for your practice, now if you worry about others opinion oh boy! you might have to figure out your hair again at the very least!

 

Well, the practice is very much like life. We have to figure out so much. All of the sudden there are all this things, issues, stuff that has become important. You have become important. And of course you are. But none of all this has to be a serious matter. We can still take a moment, look around and realize how ridiculously funny all is. How funny WE are… and stop taking it so seriously. Taking US so seriously.

I always feel amazed when I manage to stop worrying (many days I need a lot of vinyasas to achieve this :P ) and can actually enJOY what I do. When I manage to focus enough my mind to stop interfering with the rest of me, with this moment and I can just be. Doesn’t matters what I am actually doing; can be teaching a class, doing my practice, washing dishes or kissing my boyfriend, as long as I am present in this moment and enjoying it, magic happens. Nothing is more important at this moment, than THIS moment. If I am enjoying teaching for example, then the class is good, students are happy, they go deeper in their practice, money flows, people talk about it positively, etc. The same applies for everything else…

In the end, ‘importance’ is a matter of the mind. Our head needs to organize, prioritize, classify. That’s it. Let’s practice then. Let’s bring our legs wide open in the air and laugh about it. Have fun. Let’s stop taking ourselves too seriously.

Ashtanga, ashtangi, ashtangueando…

Posted on by

Escribir un blog está resultando una tarea mas difícil de lo que pensaba. Chris me insiste todo el tiempo en que comparta en escrito lo que tan fácilmente fluye durante nuestras conversaciones… pero, una conversación es personal. No necesariamente secreta ni privada -al menos no siempre- pero personal porque somos personas compartiendo. Conversar con el teclado es otra cosa.

Este fin de semana estuvimos en San Diego en el Ashtanga Confluence, donde tuve la oportunidad de convivir, en un mismo lugar y tiempo, con mucha gente que me ha acompañado durante mi práctica a traves de los años. Como un reencuentro con esta parte de mi vida, la parte ashtangi, que desde Pedaling for Peace ha entrado en un proceso de transformación intensa.

El año pasado, cuando surgió la idea del evento en el estudio de Tim Miller, mi maestro desde hace más de doce años, en mi estudio estaba ocurriendo el primer entrenamiento para maestros. Para mí era simultáneamente, un nuevo capítulo no solo para el estudio, sino en mi práctica personal y en mi vida.

Ahora, un año después, celebramos esa magia de compartir, de transmitir la práctica formando parte de una cadena mágica que sigue transformando vidas. Durante el evento un punto clave que tuvimos todos muy presentes es precisamente la relación maestro-alumno, que lejos de ser cuestión de autoridad, es el flujo natural de esta práctica. Uno aprende, practica y comparte enseñando. Punto.

Despues de estar enseñando yoga durante doce años, con los siete últimos en mi propio estudio Ashtanga Yoga de Ensenada (AYE), está siendo un proceso personal intenso integrarme a Pedaling for Peace. Muy afortunadamente entraron inmediatamente en acción algunos de mis alumnos, particularmente Oscar Olivares que se queda ahora dirigiendo el AYE. Asi me quedo tranquila en ese aspecto sabiendo que sigue fluyendo el ashtanga en Ensenada. Que sigue habiendo un lugar enfocado seriamente a la tradición de esta práctica, con instructores bien preparados y cuya motivación real es la pasión por el ashtanga.
Y mientras de mi lado, que sea entonces este blog una herramienta para seguir compartiendo, no importa donde esté, con mi familia ashtangi.

Super Simple Guide to being healthy – Basic fundamentals.

Posted on by

1.  You ARE what YOU EAT!  Try to eat only the healthiest foods you can find, try to have the foods be whole and organic.  If you feel the need to eat and have meat, allow it to be one of the smallest parts of your diet, again, ensuring it is from the best place possible, as good as can be when the place is made for slaughtering a live animal and then cutting it into smaller parts.  Organic and local is a key!

2.  In general, cow milk in whatever form is best when avoided as it really has no upside where the human body is concerned, you can get more readily absorbent calcium in many other forms.  What other animal in nature drinks milk after its formative years?  (You’re an animal, I promise, the rules apply to YOU!)

3.  Go barefoot whenever you can and wherever you can as often as you can.

4.  Drink more water than you currently do (for average person who does not drink nearly enough water), you want at least 4 litres per day.  It is best if this water comes direct from the earth to you, the more man messes with it, the worse off it usually is.

5.  The things that cause you stress should be dealt with immediately.  Try to grow to the point where nothing causes you stress.  This may mean letting go of things, do not confuse this with running away from things, which will only increase stress in the long run.

To react in the same manner towards an unpaid bill as you would to the gravity of a wild animal attack is not helpful and unhealthy.  Place your world in perspective and re-establish a baseline for stress in your world.  Killing all the wild animals that can attack is not the answer.

6.  Take care of your teeth everyday.  This will of course include floss and brushing the back of your front teeth…. I always get that one wrong when I see the dentist….

7.  Spend more time outdoors than indoors, unless you live in an inhospitable climate…. and then, ask yourself why you live there if you do not like being outside, and then move (animals do this, they call it – migration, you’re still an animal=).

8.  Grow a plant.  It does wonders for your inner workings and your view on the world.  You’d be amazed to learn the journey of most of the things you use come from and how they live before you use them (your food, many of your clothes – cotton, the wood for the roof over your head etc.!).  Perspective changing to say the very least.

9.  Exercise regularly.  This means accelerating your heart rate for a length of time in a way that has positive long term impact on your body.  Master Bruce Lee trained with the intention of being/doing more than the day before.  You were MADE to move, and fast in all environments on this planet, the more natural the better.  Start is a gym and a pool, graduate to the Ocean and Wilderness.  Tarzan trained in a Jungle and he is rad.

10.  Meditate regularly, this can be in whatever form you like, it is just like working out the body, except you focus on the mind and not holding onto, or following thoughts, instead, your goal is to merely be the vessel for the cascade of thoughts, never the thoughts themselves. Let them come and go like clouds in the sky, be the sky, not the clouds.

11.  Be ever willing to try something new.  Evolution is the constant push of living creatures (plants, animals-which you still are, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria…etc?) boundaries.  Once you stop pushing your boundaries, you are no longer serving an evolutionary purpose and will begin, by simply not doing, to write yourself out of the flow of life as the rest of the living world continue to push theirs.  It truly is never too late to re-join the evolutionary process.  You need only start doing things that are good for you or bad for you, using your common sense of course and you are back in the process!  From switching to organic veggies instead of McDonalds, or riding your bicycle blindfolded in rush hour traffic, you are back in the great process of the planet – EVOLUTION!  Welcome back to LIFE!

12.  No matter what you choose to do, always make room to love another LIVING entity.  No matter how annoying the pet or the person, you will miss them when they are gone…  everything living thing is unique and if take a moment to get to “know” any living thing, it really changes you profoundly, try it, regularly in your search for love.  Say Aloha, Hello, Good Day, Hola – nearly complete list here, to all whom you should be so fortunate as to have cross your path!

13.  Try your best to ditch your T.V., if you have trouble doing this, even for a day or a week, then, well, you know=]