Book Review: Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee

Establishing a home practice is one of the most important things a new yogi can do for themselves. Yes, studio classes are great and important, but most of us can't afford to go to a studio class every single day. My situation is definitely not the norm: not only is there an amazing yoga studio with an amazing teacher just 15 minutes from my house, but it's unbelievably affordable.

But probably one of the most important things that someone can learn from yoga is that you MUST take the time for yourself every day to practice, even if it's just for fifteen minutes. And if you're like me, you've discovered that developing and maintaining a home practice can be really, really hard.

So, I was thrilled to bits to get a wonderful surprise in the mail a couple of weeks ago from a friend in Arizona - a copy of Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I opened this book, but I was pleasantly surprised. When I first started practicing yoga, it was at home, from videos. Two of the original three yoga videos I started with were by Rodney Yee, so in a way, it felt like I was coming full circle in my yoga practice.

What you can expect from this book is a clearly outlined, illustrated, and photographed program for anyone to create their own home practice. For yogis of all levels, there are three variations on all the poses, along with detailed information about the anatomy of each pose: which muscle groups are being used, which muscle groups are relaxing, and where your breath should be in each pose.

There are eight weeks of unique daily practices (five per week, plus one day of meditation/breath awareness practice), all clearly photographed and laid out in two pages so that you can lay the book flat in front of you and practice from it. (It would have been nicer if the book had been a spiral-bound, like my Ashtanga practice manual, but, okay, I just use a weight to keep it flat while I practice.)

More than just the practices, this book is full of essential information like how to get started with a home practice, equipment and props, methods for motivation, and my favorite chapter, Creating a Personal Practice.

For complete beginners, this is an easy way to start developing your own home yoga practice. For more advanced yogis or for those of us who have no idea what to do when we roll out the mat at home, this book is not just a fabulous refresher course, but also a guide for moving your practice forward when you can't be at the studio every day.

The bottom line: I love this book. If you're a beginner, this is the perfect guide for you to get started in your poses and practice. For more advanced practitioners, read it with an open mind and see what else you can learn about anatomy and flow.

And make sure you check out the blog of my wonderful friend, SaraBeth Cullinan, who sent me this book! Namaste.

Yoga Teacher Training

Some of you know that for a while now, I've been interested in pursuing a yoga teacher training course. Not because I want to quit my job and become a full-time yoga teacher, but because I'm interested in learning more about my practice, more about yoga, and more about myself. A bead artist friend of mine recently completed her yoga teacher training and inspired me to do the same.

Now, there are a few things you should know about yoga teacher training programs. Yoga Alliance (YA), a non-profit organization that represents yoga teachers, studios, and schools throughout the United States, has created a set of minimum standards for educating yoga teachers. Pretty much every yoga teacher training program you'll find in the U.S. mentions Yoga Alliance and this set of standards.

Of course, once you finish your YA-approved teacher training program, you can register as a certified yoga teacher with Yoga Alliance for a $25 application fee, and a $55 annual registration fee. To maintain your credentials, you need to complete 45 hours of teaching and 30 hours of continuing education (CE) every year, just like any professional organization.

A general search of yoga teacher training programs reveals that most of them are prohibitive to everyone except Trust Fund Kids: they require on-site attendance of classes for up to 6 weeks, plus housing fees, hanging out in the $4,000-6,000 range.

For those of us with budgets and jobs and families, it may sound nice to take off a whole month of your life to do nothing but immerse yourself in yoga, but, really - is that practical? Plus, the cost. Yeesh. Short of taking out a second mortgage, I have no idea how long it would take me to save up $4,000 (plus living expenses for a month) to pay for this kind of program.

A little more digging around revealed some do-it-at-home teacher training programs, and a couple of yoga teacher training-in-a-box programs, but neither of them were recognized by YA. Not that recognition by YA is the be all and end all for yoga teachers: I'm sure there are many, many talented yoga teachers out there who are NOT registered with YA.

While I've always considered myself a do-it-yourselfer and pretty good at the whole distance education thing (I did complete half a Master's degree through distance education at University of Colorado before I decided that I hated my chosen field), there's something about yoga that just tells me I need to learn from someone else. From someone REAL. My experiences with Robin and my first yoga teacher, Emily, have taught me that.

I remembered something my son's preschool teacher said to me about starting in your own backyard. So, okay, Vermont - there must be some kind of teacher training in Vermont, right? I found a few, mostly in Burlington, a couple further south down near Stowe, and they are weekend programs, but again - the traveling time and the cost of staying overnight and leaving my husband alone with our five-year old every weekend just seemed wrong for me.

This morning, after discovering yet another North Country yoga studio up in Malone around the corner from one of our favorite clothing stores, I decided to look at the website of True North Yoga down in Schroon Lake. Schroon Lake is only about 90 minutes from here, and I've been meaning to check it out.

And what do you know? They have a 200 hour yoga teacher training program.

It seems perfect for me, for my lifestyle: very affordable (payments spread out over the 6 months of the course), one weekend a month, plus one weekend workshop/class per month, and the next program starts in October.

So, I don't have to wait a year to get in on the next program. It's a style of yoga that I love. It's affordable. And since it's so close to home, there are no overnight stays required.

Mailed off my registration form. We'll see what happens next!

Ebb and Flow

Just like anything else in life, your yoga practice will ebb and flow.

For the last two weeks, my practice has been in sort of an ebb - we had a sick doggie to deal with one week, and then I spent three days last week traveling to and from Ohio where I taped a couple of segments for the PBS jewelry-making show Beads, Baubles, and Jewels. (Of course, I took my yoga mat with me, but more on that, later.)

And even though my practice took a little break from me, I am happy to say that I stepped back on the mat last night for the Sunday afternoon community class at Yoga Tree, and it felt like I had never left.

My practice is most definitely evolving - I can feel it every day. Things are changing.

On that note, my trip to Kripalu this weekend fell through, due to a lack of affordable accommodations. Robin said, and I agreed, that it just wasn't meant to be, and now I know better for next time I want to register for a retreat there.

Meanwhile, lots of things going on, and things I want to share with you all about yoga and life in general. Namaste!

Practice Log: Just Where Is This Practice Going, Anyway?

I went to my Monday night Hour Of Power class (Lawd, I hope she doesn't axe that class for the summer schedule, I LOVE it!), feeling a little different. And not just because for some reason, my allergies decided to act up today and I was walking around with a sinus full of stuff all day.

I wobbled a little in class, I was tired, I even yawned a little bit at the beginning, but I got into it. I felt strong again.

We practiced Surya Namaskara A and B, and I felt good. More confident.

We tried a new variation of king dancer, and I didn't like it, but I got it.

I felt a little different in class, because I made a big decision today. I decided to go down to Kripalu in the Berkshires for a weekend retreat, Deepen Your Practice: A Weekend Yoga Retreat. The idea of the retreat is to explore your practice in a supportive and creative environment.

Because, really, I'm starting to feel like after six months of pretty regular yoga practice, I'm trying to figure out where this will all fit in with my life. Sometimes, I get home from yoga, and it feels like everybody around me is stressed out and miserable, and what's the point of doing yoga, anyway? So, for me, this will be a weekend to just be with my practice, stay with it, like Robin says, and see just where it's going.

There were a million reasons why I thought I couldn't go. It's the weekend after I get back from my whirlwind trip to Cleveland for work. It's expensive. Tom doesn't have any more vacation time to watch Colden while I'm gone. I might have an anxiety attack while I'm there, or on the way down. It's too far away.

So, I looked into it a little more, and was surprised to find that it was actually quite doable. Since Kripalu is only about a 3 hour drive from here, I can leave at 11 a.m. and be down there in plenty of time for check-in at 2:15. The program is over on Sunday at lunchtime, so I should be home well before dinner on Sunday night. Tom's not working that weekend, either. The program fees and accommodations were surprisingly affordable.

As for the anxiety attack, my attitude now is just sort of, so what? It's not like I've never had an anxiety attack in public before. I've had them in the car. I've had them in restaurants. I've had them at my acupuncture appointments. And if I have one at Kripalu, it'll pass, just like all the rest.

Am I little nervous about this? Yeah. Am I excited to go and see just where this practice is going? Oh, hell, yeah.

Ashtanga

The very first time I took an Ashtanga-inspired yoga class, I was slightly freaked out. Ashtanga is also known as "Power Yoga", done with vinyasa, or connecting your movement to your breath. It's one of the more athletic types of yoga, where your focus is mainly on your breath and how you transition from one pose to the next, instead of focusing solely on alignment like in the Hatha and Iyengar styles of yoga.

Ashtanga yoga was developed by a yogi named K. Pattabhi Jois, who learned this style of yoga from his teacher, Krishnamacharya. Jois now runs the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore, India, and has passed down the teachings of Ashtanga to thousands of other teachers throughout the world.

So, this whole time, I've been going to yoga class and thinking in the back of my head, boy, I don't know if I'd ever be able to do Ashtanga. I'm not powerful enough. I don't have enough muscles. I'm not strong enough.

Then, Robin made the mistake of showing me her textbook: Ashtanga Yoga, The Practice Manual: An Illustrated Guide to Personal Practice by David Swenson, who happens to be HER teacher.

One of the things that I've noticed about the anxiety is that when I feel it creeping up on me, it always helps to drop and do a number of Sun Salutations, or Surya Namaskara. The flow, the breath, the movement - they all seem to stop the anxiety dead in its tracks (most of the time), and when I'm feeling a little sluggish, boy is that ever a way to energize.

So, I order a copy of this book, and BAM!, right in front, the whole sequence of Surya Namaskara B, fully illustrated with detailed written directions.

The first night I had the book, I tried to get through 15 of them during my home practice. Of course, I felt my mind wandering during this particular part of the practice, but I muscled through them. When I finished, my heart was pounding like I'd just run a marathon.

So, here I am this whole time thinking, man, there's no way I could do Ashtanga, I'd better stick to Iyengar with it's focus on alignment and the yin (holding still) of poses, or Hatha, because Ashtanga - just the name - scares the pants off of me.

And what do you know?

I've actually been doing Ashtanga this whole time!

Even in my home practice, I try to be fluid between the poses. I try to include a vinyasa (sun salutation) during transitions from floor to standing to sitting.

Now, of course, this isn't true Ashtanga. To be true Ashtanga, I would need to be mentored by someone who was mentored by someone else, etc. And true, I still can't do all of the poses perfectly all of the time. I still need to do my modifications. (Thankfully, there are many modifications illustrated in Swenson's book, which makes me feel more comfortable when I need to do them.)

Ashtanga sort of snuck up on me, I think. I may not look terribly graceful some days on the mat, and I may not have quite the physical endurance that I need to get through all of the poses in the Primary and Intermediary Ashtanga series, but...I think I'm off to a pretty good start.

Practice Log: Community Yoga Class

Sunday afternoons from 4 to 5 is the community yoga class at Yoga Tree. This is the class that I first started going to back in November when I hurt my back and wanted to try to do something to strengthen my core and try to relieve some of the leftover pain from the injury.

Since it's a wonderful mixed-level-everyone-is-welcome kind of class, there are always a few giggles and some lovely conversation afterwards. Today, the next-door neighbor decided to start running his lawnmower just as we pushed back into our first downward dog. Robin laughed and said that this was good practice for us in keeping our focus, and I bust out laughing at that one. How true! Instead of an annoyance, look at it from the perspective of what we can learn from it!

One of the things I love about this class is that I'm at the point now with my own practice that I can do just about the entire class with my eyes closed. And I like it that way.

I noticed a couple of things in class tonight: for starters, when we began, my heart was pounding rapidly in my chest. Almost like I was about to have an anxiety attack. It very often feels that way at the beginning of class - my heart pounds, I feel weak, my breathing is shallow, and maybe I'm even a little dizzy - but then once we're into it, those feelings go away, and my heart starts pounding because I'm making demands on my muscles to move into and out of the poses gracefully.

Next, I noticed that when I'm at home, there are certain poses that I can do with no problems, but that I struggle with in class. This doesn't always happen - obviously, every day on the mat is different. But I've noticed with consistency that there are just some poses that I shake and struggle with in class at the studio, but at home, I can glide through them with ease. What's up with THAT?

Finally, at the end of tonight's class, instead of laying down in savasana, I sat up and did a little bit of meditation. It was lovely, and I felt a pleasant vibration in my forehead. It wasn't until I heard Robin's voice gently bringing me back did I realize just how deep into meditation I had gone.

After class, I also talked to Robin a bit about some of the things I'm practicing at home - Surya Namaskara B, in particular. It's still a bit of a challenge for me...but that's a blog for another day. Namaste.

Practice Log: Home Practice

My local yoga studio, The Yoga Tree, offers yoga classes five days a week, from Sunday through Thursday, with up to 3 classes per day. So on Fridays and Saturdays, I either take a rest from yoga, or I do a home practice session of about 45-60 minutes.

Practicing at home is way different than practicing in a studio, for many reasons, and it takes a little extra effort to develop a home practice.

First of all, we live in a tiny house. I mean, tiny. Five rooms plus a small bathroom, all in about 1,000 square feet. The ceilings are low, too, which is great in the winter when we have to heat the place, but it's a far cry from the high, airy ceilings at the studio.

There's a little bit of room in the living room for me to throw down my mat, and before I do, I always roll up the large braided rug and sweep the floor. (I think my husband is secretly most pleased about my yoga practice because the living room floor hasn't been this clean since we moved in 10 years ago.)

Our living room has a stone fireplace with a large mantel where I light a few candles and maybe a stick of incense on a day when I can open the windows and door.

But there's a ceiling fan right in the center of the ceiling - and if I'm directly under it, my fingertips brush the blades when I'm standing in mountain pose. (To get an idea of how low the ceilings are, I'm about 5' 3". So imagine a short person standing with her arms raised high above her head, and that's about where the blades of the ceiling fan come to. We tried putting a ceiling fan in our dining room once, with the same low ceilings, and it was a disaster. My husband, a sturdy 6' 3", nearly re-enacted the helicopter fight scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, so we decided to just buy a box fan to put in the dining room when it gets hot in the summer.)

In addition to the ceiling fan, we have a couch on one side of the room, and a large protective screen around the wood stove on the other. If I don't put my mat exactly in the center of the room, when I lay down and stretch my arms out, my fingers are either touching the screen around the wood stove or the bottom of the couch.

So, I don't exactly have the same space to spread out as I do in the studio. Even during a packed class - and I've seen that studio PACKED - I still feel like I have more space than in my itty bitty matchbox-sized living room.

Second, there are a lot more distractions at home than there are at the studio. Even when I'm surrounded by other students at the studio, I still feel like I can focus better at the studio than I can at home. At home, there are dishes to be washed, laundry to be washed and hung and folded, meals to be cooked, work to be done (my office is in one corner of our living room), dogs, kids, chickens, visitors, telephones... You get the idea.

I felt bad yesterday when Colden sat in my office chair to watch me practice, but he wouldn't stop asking me questions. He's five, after all, and he was on some kind of energy buzz yesterday. It was just question after question after question after question, until I finally told him that it was time to be quiet. He didn't want to be quiet, though, and he stomped off outside to wait with Daddy for the firewood delivery.

 One way that I try to re-create the ambiance of the studio is by lighting a stick of incense and dimming all the lights. (Which is another difference, since we have bright, open windows everywhere in this house, and since the studio is in a converted garage, the lighting is much more subdued.) My teacher was also kind enough to lend me her iPod so that I could buy my own copies of the music she has on there that she plays during class.

For me, that music is a big deal. I've always been a sensory kinda gal (I am a Taurus, after all), and having some of those same songs playing during my home practice sessions make a huge difference for me. When I hear those songs, I can travel in my mind back to the studio for a few seconds. It really helps me get into that yoga-inward-frame-of-mind that I need at the beginning of a practice.

Lastly, I always try to practice at around the same time of day - before dinner, or before bedtime. It sort of lets me know, okay, now's the time to slow everything down, relax, focus on my breath for a little while.

Other ways to improve your home yoga practice:

1. Try to practice at the same time, every day. Some days, I can get up before everyone else and do a few sun salutations on the back porch (if it's warm) or in front of the wood stove (if it's cold). Then I'll do a longer practice while dinner is cooking or just before bedtime, when everyone else in the house is quiet and asleep.

2. Try to re-create some of the same rituals that you do in the studio. Do the same warm-ups, lay down on your mat for a few minutes and practice pranayama, light some candles, and maybe burn a stick of incense. Music helps, too.

3. Try to practice in the same places consistently. Stick with the living room, or the back porch, or the den, or wherever you start. For me, anyway, consistency is key.

4. Turn off the phone, cell phone, doorbell, etc. Don't have the t.v. on, unless you're watching a yoga video to practice with.

5. And speaking of yoga videos... Sometimes it can be overwhelming to practice all on your own. At least, it is for me, unless I have a set plan of moves in mind that I want to do. This is where having a great yoga video at your disposal can come in handy. I like Tara Stiles' This Is Yoga series (even if she does move a little faster than I'm used to), anything by Sara Ivanhoe (Sara was the one who introduced me to yoga home practice 10+ years ago), or get a membership to My Yoga Online and browse hundreds of yoga videos in all levels, all styles, and numerous wonderful teachers to get you inspired! (I'll have a review of My Yoga Online in a few days, it's one of my favorite online resources for unlimited yoga videos.)

You don't necessarily have to have taken classes at a studio before you start up a home practice. Using a good yoga video (there are loads of free videos on places like YouTube and Hulu, too) can help you get started in practicing your yoga at home!

Do you have a tip for starting a home practice? How do you make a sacred space in your home for yoga or meditation?