The Art and Heart of Self Care

"Adding self-care into one’s daily routine reduces stress, decreases the chance of mental and physical ailment, increases productivity, and inspires feelings of happiness. By giving ourselves a daily dose of compassion, we’re able to approach our work and relationships with a clear, happy mind, thus allowing the cycle of positivity to continue." 

Prioritizing self care rituals will leave you feeling deeply cared for and you deserve that. Keep it simple and consider anchoring your day (am or pm routines) with some small but important ways to nourish your mind, body and spirit. Here are a few our our favorites!

1. tea, solo or with a friend sans the digital devices
2. morning water with lemon or apple cider vinegar
3. bookend your days with a 5 minute seated meditation or journalling
4. Abhyanga daily oil massage
5. Imagine you’re your best friend. If you were, what would you tell yourself right now? Look in the mirror and say it.
6. add pure essential oils to a diffuser to enhance your mood and wellbeing. 

Let us know how it goes!

warm regards,

Debra

"The Times They are A Changin"

Maggie Grant is an Ayurvedic Consultant in the DMV area. Her website is filled with tips and information on how to incorporate Ayurveda into your life for health & wellbeing.

 The leaves are changing… The temperature is changing…The election has brought change…

Change means impermanence…transient.  Change also means metamorphosis…refinement…development.

Your sleep may be interrupted or restless and your digestive fire may be sluggish.

So what can you do to strengthen and protect yourself during this season of change?

✔︎ Eat seasonal foods such as root vegetables.  Soups and stews are sublime.  Avoid dry foods like popcorn

✔︎ Watch your caffeine intake.  Try herbal teas with coriander, cumin and fennel or clove or ginger

✔︎ Commit to a routine for sleep and meals.  Get predictable for the next few months  

  ✔︎ Sleep by 10pm or at least wind down and unplug by 10pm 

✔︎ Rise by 6am and avoid midday naps, they aren’t your friend in the end

✔︎ Exercise to ground yourself.  Standing poses, forward folds, sit in each pose longer and connect to your breath.  Extend your exhale and pause at the bottom of a breath

✔︎ And saving the best for last…self body massage with sesame oil.  Lube up and drop in 

In this season of movement and as the winds of change blow, DARE to put the pieces of a healthy and hopeful life together. 

“Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson

I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself, and then make a change

#realpeopleofashtanga

Meghan Powell Photography

Lately I have been struck by the redundancy of my Instagram feed – and feeling a little uninspired by it. I hardly bother to scroll through it anymore because I already know most of what I am going to see.

I’m not the most interesting person – I follow primarily yoga teachers, practitioners, studios, clothing brands, and magazines. And you know what I have noticed – none of the pictures look real to me – or at least they aren’t anything near my reality.

I’m tired of seeing highly curated yoga photos, featuring a narrow range of body types, taken in exotic locations, wearing expensive fitness clothing, and showcasing largely advanced asana that might make Ashtanga specifically, and yoga in general, seem unapproachable.

Aside from the fact that it totally makes me jealous, I’m also worried that the culture of yoga is changing and that we are perpetuating it with all of our likes and follows. And I fear that some people are missing the point – I mean entirely missing it. Like they are too scared to even try because they don’t look like the people on their social media feeds.

I can’t even count how many times I have had someone tell me about how they can’t do Ashtanga yoga.

Does any of this sound familiar? Maybe you’ve said it before – in your head our out loud. I’m too fat. I’m too tired. I’m too weak. I’m too busy. I’m not a morning person. My arms are short.  My butt is big. I’m too stiff. Blah, blah, BLAH.

I have to wonder – are the pictures of beautiful people doing beautiful poses sending the wrong message to students and potential students?

Personally I’m not impressed with the perfect bodies doing insane asana. Sure – I can appreciate the beauty of it. And I am happy that yoga is reaching more people than ever before. But what really impresses me is what I see in my Mysore room every single day.

I see real people making the best of it. 

I see the struggle of waking up early and getting to demanding jobs. I see the students who support me and the community by assisting or volunteering to open up the studio and get it warm for everyone else. I see the parents who have little kids at home and had to negotiate with their spouses to make it to practice. I’m in awe of these people who are juggling so much, and won’t give up their time on the mat.

I see people who have body images issues, who have struggled with addiction, who have been injured, who have had surgery and who have healed with the help of this practice. I see the stiff people, the big people, the stressed people coming in and working out their troubles in their asana. I see people who bathe in the sink at the studio, carry their breakfast in their backpack and hightail it to work after savasana. And I am humbled by them because I know that life is full of trade-offs, and that something had to give for them to be here with me in the mornings.

I see people who gave up a night out for an early morning practice. I see my friend fighting cancer and still making it onto her mat. I see the same student struggling through half primary after years of practice. This inspires me. This makes me want to be a better student and a better teacher. Because if I couldn’t bind Marichyasana A after 2 years, I probably would have quit.

I know for a fact that real yoga isn’t very glamorous. It’s not sexy and it doesn’t smell good.

But it is for everyone. You don’t have to be physically gifted or gorgeous. Just get on your mat and breathe. This practice will work for everyone, it will heal you, it will serve you – but you have to show up.

I challenge you to post your #realpeopleofashtanga story – and I encourage you to read what others have posted the next time you need a little inspiration.

Meghan Powell Photography

For Our Mothers, Sisters, Daughters

For Our Mothers, Sisters, Daughters

Dear friends ::

I've read just a few the more than one million stories that have emerged through writer Kelly Oxford's invitation to share accounts of sexual assault, and I feel moved within this space we are collectively holding for each other. David Whyte's "Mid Life Woman" came to mind. It's really a poem about all of us -- it's for any moment when bearing witness to another human being can bring us to a more exalted state of humanity within ourselves.

Let's become the antidote to what we observe on the global stage. Let's exalt each other. Let's grow in our care of each other. Listen more closely. Respond more kindly. When we experience dissonance, let's bring reconciliation. When we feel unseen, let's seek a friend's affirming gaze. When our bodies suffer injustice or fundamental misunderstanding -- let's grow our voices and strengthen the inner call to dignity and love. 

Shawn


"Mid life woman you are not invisible to me,
in you I see a young girl, lifting her face to the sky,
I see the young woman in haloed light, full and strong,
standing before the altar of time, waiting for her chosen.
I see the mother in you, in your past or in some yet
to be understood future, I see you adoring and
I see you adored, and now, when I call your name
I want to see day by day, the woman you will become with me. 
Mid-life woman come to me now, I see you more clearly
than all the airbrushed girls of the world.
I became a warrior only to earn your present mature affection,
I bear my scars to you, my eyes are lined to smile with you
and I come to you uncultivated and unshaven walking rough
and wild through rain and wind and I pace the mountain all night
in my happy, magnificence at finding you."

- Mid Life Woman, David Whyte

The Art of Awakening

Join Shawn Friday October 14th at Flow. This class will fluidly weave together meditation, mantra, and multidimensional wave sequencing to journey into the harvest of peak asana and finally into deep stillness for integration and restoration.

When the Learning Starts

I’m not sure exactly when I stopped obsessing over asana. There’s been a gradual shift over the past couple of years, as I’ve become less hungry for the next pose and more hungry for how to become a better teacher, a more devoted practitioner, a better person. This year has been full of unexpected challenges which have shifted my perspective. I went to India to practice and was stopped there by life circumstances. I went to Encinitas to see my teacher to help me through an injury when I was too scared to practice, and now I’m working on new techniques and at a different pace.

I’m here in Boulder almost 3/4 of the way through Richard Freeman’s month-long teacher intensive. This has been on my Ashtanga bucket list for years, and it has absolutely been worth the wait. The practice is slow and deliberate, led mostly by Richard. Confession: we haven’t done full primary yet! It’s a different thing for me, to take a month off from teaching and not bust out my practice. I teach all year, and when I go away I really like to focus on my asana practice because I so often just don’t have the energy or focus to invest into my own asana.

But this year, it seems, is different.

It’s a new thing for me to take time off to practice and to realize that I’m not that interested in practicing asana. Don’t get me wrong – I love asana! But in not focusing specifically on asana work, I’ve been able to focus on being a better teacher, a more devoted practitioner, and a better person. I’ve been able to shift toward serving my students better, and I’ve had this modeled to me so well by my own teachers.

You know what? It’s just as exciting and just as rewarding as any study or practice I’ve ever done.

Over the years, I’ve started to realize what it means to be a teacher. A teacher performs a function to a student, projects possibilities for growth to the student, and is representative of the path – this is no joke! Students are vulnerable to teachers, and that’s a delicate relationship that needs to be honored.

A teacher nurtures the journey of the student while not interfering with their path. Teachers work with all the hopes and fears of their students. A teacher should never hold on too tightly, but instead foster a love for the practice and empower students to be their best selves.

As a teacher, I try to create a warm and supportive environment for my students. A place where everyone feels welcome, safe, and supported. A place where growth and transformation are not only possible, but happen every day. I believe that a teacher should empower students, not hold them back or tell them how to feel. My goal as a teacher is for students to surpass me and eventually to find teachers who know more than me.

I’ve only learned all this because I have been blessed with amazing teachers. Teachers who have given to me generously, who hold me up, who humble me, who give me confidence and tell me I can. My teachers encourage me to study with other people and continue to learn.

What I value most in a teacher now is someone who supports not only my practice but my teaching, and gives me something to model myself after. The way I see it, great teachers are those who want to be surpassed by their students.

As a student I have gotten to the point where I no longer want to be taught about technique. And maybe this is where the learning starts. My growth now is to try to grow into my role as a teacher. And this is why the student-teacher relationship is so important to me. This is why I prioritize spending my time and my money to go learn from teachers who I hope to someday be like. Because I’m no longer looking only to learn the next pose – what I want now is someone who can teach me how to be a better person.

A teacher has to be a leader for their students, but also a follower of the lineage. There needs to be a willingness to lead, and to sacrifice. A teacher has to come from a place of love and willingness to lift others.

And when this happens it is truly is a beautiful thing.

Think of the fullness of possibility! A teacher raises a sangha, a community, to go forth and multiply and build their own communities and support all beings.

So you see, the point of building community isn’t to patrol – it’s to raise them up. And as a teacher, I am at the center not because I want to be the boss but because I want to serve other beings. The energy, power, and love doesn’t flow outwards from the center – it comes inwards.

The most important thing that I have learned from my most important teacher is that a teacher doesn’t hold the student back and the teacher always has the student’s back.