Earth Hour 2009 at Home

They said it was lights out only for Earth Hour. But here at home, we shut off major appliances as well, including our computers/modem. For an hour, the house was pitch dark save for lights around the house perimeter for safety. Only candles served as our source of light while having dinner.
Yes, we had a [...] yoga therapy; Self Improvement;

Being Mindful with Consumption for a Greener Planet

Sometimes it can be difficult to relay to people just how much we consume; particularly those of us in developed countries. While purchasing green this and eco-friendly that are all well and good; one of the root causes of our environmental problems is hyperconsumption. We simply buy too much of what we do not need and often even what we do not really want. yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

Jesuit Online Retreat 2009

You can be online, at work, at home, abroad and still be able to do a personal Lenten retreat at any time, at your convenience. Fr. Johnny Go, SJ, in his spiritual blog, Pins of Light, has given a heads-up on another online Jesuit retreat (The Silences of Lent) that anyone can do for Holy Week. [...] yoga therapy; Self Improvement;

New Yoga Videos on My Yoga Online

Explore the integration of balancing exercises with classical Hatha Yoga poses in this new online yoga video. From standing to lying, your yoga poses will be challenged with an exercise ball to enhance body awareness, proprioceptive skills, and core conditioning. yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

iBlog5 Coming Up in May

Just a quick heads-up for bloggers in the Philippines.
The 5th blogging summit will be on May 9, 2009 (9AM-5PM) at Malcolm Theater, UP College of Law, UP Diliman campus.
If you still have not joined any of the past 4 blogging summits, this is your chance. This will be my 3rd summit and I have to [...] yoga therapy; Self Improvement;

Shoppers Guide to Pesticides

Check out this great free download that you can take with you while shopping to help you avoid unwanted pesticides in your food. Get the guide so when you are shopping you will know which produce to buy organic, and which conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables are okay if organic is not available or if you are working through a tight budget. yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

Playboy Philippines Hosts Bloggers’ Night Out

So what is Playboy doing in my wholesome blog? Good question…
When I first read the invite of Azrael to a bloggers’ night out hosted by Playboy Philippines, I thought several times before signing up. My blog is for people of all ages and I wanted to keep to things I would not hesitate to show [...] yoga therapy; Self Improvement;

Back to business

I want to take my knees in this photo and puuuuush them toward my chest...and make my chest go splat against the wall.

Not gonna happen today, I guess.

But this is at least the closest I have ever gotten my feet to my hands in a full wheel.

My backbend must be fairly open today or something...my shoulders...my hip flexors...my chest...dunno..because I got my right hand to my right toes easily in Kapotasana today. Not even close on the left.

Oh, and depressingly, I am losing the abilityto bind by myself in Supta Kurmasana. But maybe my stomach is kind of bloated right now from all the antibiotics I've been on (tooth infection/root canal yesterday)? That seems to be what happens when I go on antibiotics. Or maybe I need to take off a couple? Eek. No. I reject that.

YC

yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

You Are Beautiful Despite Your Flaws

Look into the mirror. What do you notice first? Do you immediately notice your flaws — that big nose, crooked teeth, a birthmark, freckles, wrinkles or lines?
In our society, beautiful women are those who are considered flawless. Beauty products are geared towards eliminating such flaws or at the very least, concealing these. The beauty standards [...] yoga therapy; Self Improvement;

Earth Hour 2009 (with continuing updates of Philippine participation)

MARCH 28, 2009 — SATURDAY — 8:30 PM — ONE HOUR — LIGHTS OUT!!! Over 930 cities and towns in 80 countries, across 25 time zones are expected to power down for Earth Hour 2009.
This year, it is being taken to another level. The Earth Hour website describes how it has evolved since it first [...] yoga therapy; Self Improvement;

Organize Your Home for Healthier Living

Have you ever heard this phrase or perhaps you have said it yourself, “I really have to get organized, one of these days”. One of these days may never come. As with everything else in our lives our power is in this present moment. The ancient Chinese proverb, "A cluttered space equals a cluttered mind" rings true for many of us. It has been said that the majority of us lose at least one hour a day looking for the things we need and spend 20 percent of our annual budget buying things we need to replace things we lost. yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

Hot as hell and happy

Yoga tourist that I am becoming, I took a Bikram class today in Norwalk, and it was heavenly. Sure, I tuned out the teacher, who rambled incoherently as Bikram teachers tend to do,, saying at one moment, "Look in the mirror at your leg and make sure it is straight, like a lamppost, you have no knee" and following it minutes later with "The way your pose looks on the outside is not important". But, oh, the heat. The heat....

It was delicious.

Within minutes, my flesh was melting off the bone. Sweat was dripping from the cuffs of my yoga pants as if I had just emerged from the bathtub fully clothed.

Funny thing about all that sweating though: it doesn't make it easier to get into certain poses, and in particular, it can make binding incredibly unwieldy. When my fingers get all pruney, it's hard to get a grip in Supta Kurmasana. And yeah, I went there after "Shavasana", as they call the resting pose in Bikram. And although I got my bind easily in Marichyasana A, which I also did after "Shavasana", I felt like my shin was sliding down away from my armpit, messing up my "alignment", if such a thing actually exists (and arguably, it does, in the sense that the pose is a lot more useful in terms of opening the chest and in softening the front hip joint if your shin bone is tucked neatly behind your armpit, as opposed to sliding down your bicep).

If you don't practice these poses - Supta Kurmasana and Marichyasana A - then you have no idea what I'm talking about right about now, if you're still here at all. But you should. Because they feel so damn good.

Since I was too pruney and spent to do any backbending immediately after class, I went home and did my backbends. I got so enthusiastic that I took some photos to see my progress. Alas, there was none. At least none that I could see. But here, for posterity's sake, are two photos from today...the first inside, the second outside (obviously). Looking forward to more al fresco yoga soon!

YC

yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

The love continues...

I had to leave a hot vinyasa yoga class yesterday because it was neither hot, nor vinyasa. As far as the yoga goes, I suppose that was my responsibility, and although I could have yoga-ed it up by letting feelings of equanimity flood over me in place of the annoyance and rage I was feeling, I did not. I chose, instead, to leave after 60 minutes, 30 to go. I just rolled up my mat and said, "I gotta go. Thanks."

I would have hated it if someone left my class in the middle, when I was teaching. I thought about that and debated what to do, pretty much from the first time the teacher came over to me and lifted my thigh away from parallel to the ground in one of the Warrior poses ("Too deep! Think of your knees!" she admonished me...as if she knows my knees.) And that was within the first 10 minutes of class. After 50 minutes of arguing with myself and not knowing whose side to take, I decided that it would be better and kinder to myself to simply put myself out of my misery and leave.

And so I did.

Here is what bugged be about the class though, what made it intolerable for me. And I point this out only because it makes me realize how totally awesome Ashtanga really is, even if only as a jumping off point for a well-thought-out self-practice to last a lifetime:

1. All that talking.

All that incessant talking. "Blah blah blah, I am so spiritually aware, let me tell you how much I know about spirituality. Sure, I am just a housewife living in Northern Westchester, just like you. But I am OH SO enlightened. And you are my captive audience. So listen up."

Well...maybe I am not there to get spiritually incentivized by you. Maybe I am there to practice asana and go into my own head. Or out of my own head. Whichever it needs to be for me to go to that peaceful place that asana (or gardening, or running, for that matter) can get me to. But either way, listening to you blathering on is certainly not helping.

Ashtanga gets it right. It is either totally silent, except for the murmers of the teacher talking one-on-one to students in the room, or it is simply the sound of the vinyasas being counted out in Sanksrit.

Oh, how I cherish the silence of Asthanga practice.


2. The talking, part deux: the contents of the talk is inevitably inane.

OK, so, first you blather on about how the yoga poses don't matter. Then you proceed to tell us exactly how to get into them and how doing the poses properly is going to massage our thyroid glands or get our digestion going. Then you act like a cheerleader when you see someone trying to do an arm balance. But I thought it doesn't matter? Then you try to stop the more advanced students from going deeper into the poses because that is not what YOU are teaching today...but if the poses don't matter, then why do you care?

Silence is golden in yoga. The Ashtanga practice teaches you to teach yourself. It is the most awesome gift a yogi can give to him or herself.

3. The inconsistency of the sequencing...or, you win some you lose some.

Sometimes, and particularly when a teacher has been taught by Baron Baptiste or Jivamukti, or is an Ashtangi in her own practice, the sequencing of poses makes beautiful sense. It starts with warming up, it moves through various permutations of standing poses, gradually adding twists and hip openers and moving through to backbends, then forward bends then a finishing sequence.

But sometimes, the teacher's "creativity" gets in the way. And that's when it all goes to shit.

Take yesterday's class, for example. It started off fine, if a bit slow, but then the sequence seemed to focus almost exclusively on standing balances. And standing balances are nice, but they should not be the meat and potatoes of a practice because they focus too much on strength and not enough on flexibility. Too many balancing poses lead to an unbalanced practice, as I see it. Besides, ALL standing poses require balance anyway. So, why keep repeating Warrior III ad nauseum? At some point, I think it was a Warrior III that was the final straw for me. I just didn't want to spend my precious yoga time standing on one leg anymore.

It wasn't funny. It didn't feel good. It left me cold. Literally. Which brings me to...

4. If you call it a Hot Yoga class, then keep the heat on.

There shouldn't be cool breezes in the classroom. I shouldn't sweat my way through the first 10 minutes of Sun Salutations only to start shivering as the sequence gets slower and the heat starts to go down. It is uncomfortable and disconcerting. At least with Asthanga, there is no outside source of heat, generally speaking. You're expected to bring the tapas with you, and you're expected to really bring it. And when I say tapas, I don't mean small dishes of Spanish food.

5. The Control-Freaking Buzz-Killing Assists

There is one thing that NEVER happens in an Ashtanga class, never ever ever, and that is a teacher communicating to a student that she should pull back and not go as deep. It is absolutely unheard of in Ashtanga, where alignment takes a back seat to "completion" of the "energy circle" that is the pose. LET your knee come out in front of your ankle in Warrior II. Let your thigh sink beyond parallel in Extended Side Angle. Twist your spine until you're all Linda-Blair-Excorsist-esque. Bind at the forearm, if the wrist isn't enough for you!

But outside of the Ashtanga world, it's all about the buzz kill. Where did this notion come from that we shouldn't go as deep as we can into a pose? And even if it's somehow "wrong" to do so, if you don't KNOW me and my body and its strengths and weaknesses, then how can you know if it is wrong for me? For example, when I go deeply into a lunging pose like Warrior II, my knee is not an issue at all. What IS an issue is my hips, which feel fairly tight, and deepening the lunge relieves the tightness. My knee? Not even part of the equation.

6. All the pauses, the resting, the breathing while doing NOTHING.

In Ashtanga, the breaths are counted out. Inhale and bring your arms up, exhale and fold over. In this class I took yesterday, you know what the teacher counted out? The breaths. Just standing there and breathing. After we finished standing and balancing on one leg, this is what we were told to do: "Stand and inhale. Exhale. Okay, inhale. Okay, exhale. Third one, inhale, exhale."

REALLY? I need instructions on standing and breathing???

In Ashtanga, every inhale and every exhale are tied to a movement except when you are holding a pose. Standing is not a pose. OK, it technically IS a pose, but in this class, it wasn't. She just had us standing and breathing.

I'm not saying that I will never go to a non-Ashtanga class again. But this experience made me realize that the best yoga that I do is the yoga that is the best yoga for me. A tautology? Perhaps. But it works for me.

YC

yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

Is Your Shampoo Toxic

Shampoos and other body care products often contain vast amounts of chemical agents, that, if were in higher quantities, would be highly toxic. No wonder why so people suffer from allergies and sensitivities. Know what you are putting in and on your body. There are alternatives to standard consumer products that offer the funnyction required without presenting harmful agents into the body and the environment. yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

You have a virus!

The attempt to change your self in terms of any social idealism, god realization, enlightenment, peace, love, whatever it is, invades the body like an intractable virus. It is an imposition of mind on this wonder full organism, this utterly perfect life that you are. There is truly nothing you can do about it except [...] yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

2009 Kuangchi Awardees

Every year, Xavier School selects the Xavier-Kuangchi awardees from among its alumni who exhibit outstanding achievements in their respective fields.
I am very happy to find out that I know 2 out of the 3 awardees for this year. Joaquin (or Jake, as we fondly call him) C. Yap, Jr. is someone we consider a relative. His family [...] yoga therapy; Self Improvement;

A Silver Lining to the Financial Crisis

It is all too obvious how difficult the financial crisis is for the average family. But the financial meltdown is an inevitable correction, which will result in a reality-based economic model and a return to healthier personal, family and social values. yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

Yoga Breathing for Health

Almost everyone including people with asthma or COPD (Chronic Pulmonary Obstructive Breathing) can benefit from breathing slowly and exhaling more completely. Benefits of slow breathing and longer exhalation are many. To wit: Greater control over breathing; reduction in shortness of breath and breathing discomfort; increase in physical and mental relaxation; relaxed breathing and more open airways which can transport air in and out more effectively. yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

Goodbye Francis M!

No words today. Just deep, deep sadness for the passing of a wonderful soul. Someone who crossed generations with his rap songs — the ultimate Pinoy rapper. An optimist in the midst of his cancer. God-loving. FRANCIS “KIKO” MAGALONA…
Kiko, I thought you finally won over the big C but God had a different purpose for [...] yoga therapy; Self Improvement;

Heartness makes the absence grow fonder...

Practiced today at the Purchase College gym. But FIRST, I did what I should have been doing all along: I took a sauna. Stayed in until my flesh was practically melting off the bone. I think that heat gives me a bit of a high...really gets those endorphins going. As a result, I had a lovely, lovely practice. Even the backbends. Especially the backbends. Practiced up to Kapotasana B and then straight to full wheel.

I also practiced yesterday, full Primary, but I didn't do any backbends. And that makes me kind of wonder...perhaps every day doing every THING is too much?

Perhaps if I did less, I would be more happy?

YC yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

Mercury Fillings-The Enemy Within

At some point in our lives, usually starting in childhood, many of us developed cavities in our teeth that needed to be filled. As children we naturally trusted that our parents knew best when they sent us to the dentist to have our cavities taken care of, and our parents in turn trusted that the dentist was doing what was right and necessary to maintain our dental health. The fact that the fillings, known as mercury amalgam, were comprised of 50% mercury, a potent neurotoxin, never seemed to be an issue. The fillings were safe, inquiring parents were told, in their amalgam state, that is combined with copper, tin and silver. Curiously, a poison when outside our mouths, so much so that the dentist would not even touch the amalgam with his or her own gloved hands and disposed of it as hazardous waste, yet completely safe and virtually inert when in our mouths. Or so we were told… yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

Detoxification-Modern Knowledge And Ancient Wisdom

My Yoga Online has posted a new healthy living article by Dr. Danny Jui, ND, Detoxification: Modern Knowledge and Ancient Wisdom. Dr. Jui presents the concept of detoxification from the viewpoint of Chinese medicine and philosophy.
Detoxification is any process that decreases the negative impact of chemicals or molecules on the body, involving biotransformation of [...] yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;