MIA

I haven’t been posting much at all for several months now, not due to neglect, but due to yet another injury. This time, I re-injured my left shoulder and am having a terrible time recovering. Today I found out the results of an MRI–no tears in my shoulder, but some wear is visible in my [...] yoga therapy; Self Improvement;

Asana, your first spiritual responsibility and the Eros of God.

The soul’s relationship to God is described in religious traditions as an erotic play between male and female divine personalities. There are many examples. Sita and Ram, Radha and Krishna, Shiva and Shakti. These human stories do not by pass the extreme sensual pleasure of a love relationship. The ‘erotic’ quality is of course in [...] yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

Core Fusion Body Sculpt

My Yoga Online has added a new core strengthening Pilates fusion video featuring Fred DeVito and Elisabeth Halfpapp, Core Fusion Body Sculpt.  Using body weight as resistance and small hand weights for a challenge, this workout targets the whole body, from arms and shoulders to glutes, hips, thighs, and abs.

What members have already said about Core Fusion Body Sculpt:

"Its incredible, I need to have my muscles more in shape. Fantastic! More, more, more!!!!"

"This workout is the perfect combination of strengthening and stretching. I can feel my muscles developing!"

About Fred DeVito and Elisabeth Halfpapp:

Core Fusion creators Fred DeVito and Elisabeth Halfpapp have over 50 years of a combined experience teaching Pilates, Lotte Berk Method, yoga, dance and Tai Chi - disciplines that comprise the Core Fusion workouts. They are founding team members of Exhale, a leading mind/body spa with locations around the United States.

As a member of the founding team and co-founder of the company's highly publicized Core Fusion® program, Mr. DeVito is responsible for recruiting and training the teachers for the proprietary Core Fusion® related programs. In addition to directing exhale's Core Fusion teacher training curriculum, the program quality and safety, Fred is a highly visible nationally acclaimed star teacher and presenter. He has presented Core Fusion® workshops and programs with his wife and partner, Elisabeth Halfpapp, at Yoga Journal, Kripalu and ECA World Fitness Conferences.

A featured fitness celebrity, he has been highlighted in numerous national health and fitness publications and has made television appearances on several dozen national venues such as ABC News, Extra, Fox 5, The NBC Today Show and others. He oversees the company's nutrition program along with their signature Thai Massage Therapy called Body Enlightening. He also serves on the board of exhalesoul, exhale's not for profit charity organization.

yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

Words From Our Members

We sincerely enjoy hearing from our members and this latest My Yoga Online testimonial was so inspiring that we wanted to share this story with all of our members and viewers.

In early 2003, I was diagnosed with Pulmonary Fibrosis (PF)...caused by chemical poisoning....through an open lung biopsy.  I was given only 6 months to live. When, against the odds, I survived this period, I was told that I would need two things if I wanted any  quality of life: pranayama and lean muscle.  Although I had never done yoga before this, I now began doing breathing exercises using Sandra Sabatini's book, BREATH, the essence of yoga.  This precipitated my journey with yoga.  However, since my lungs had to be re-taught how to expand and contract, and, since scar tissue (from the fibrosis and open lung biospy) made breathing with movement extremely difficulty, yoga asanas were anything but easy and vinyasa flows generated significant C02 build-up in my lungs.  I resigned myself to doing only yin yoga and very simple yoga programs while learning a form of qigong in which one breaths while moving  with the speed 'of a shifting sand
dune' (Flying Phoenix Celestial Healing Qigong).  I also learned zen breathing (counting as I observed the breath). 

During all this time, I read every book and watched every conceivable kind of yoga dvd in an attempt to find a way to personalize yoga to meet my peculiar needs. Finally, just when I was ready to give up on yoga, I was invited to join 'my yoga online'.  This was about 10 years after I had begun my journey with PF and yoga.  This was in early 2010.  At the time I joined 'my yoga online', I had almost replaced yoga with qigong and zen breathing since I was unable to ever get past all the asanas that required upper body strength and balance.  

About 2 years previously, I had transitioned from a normal (carb-based) healthy diet to the ketogenic diet (KD) to minimize the build-up of C02 in my lungs.  (The metabolism of carbs generates significant C02 which my lungs could not efficiently release!) However, on KD, it is not possible to do any form of traditional muscle strength training.  On KD, all forms of exercise must be kept short as the only form of fuel which can be utilized is ketones.  However, after watching some of Kreg Weiss' video clips as well as the anatomy clips, I decided to give yoga another try.  Using Kreg Weiss' short sequence videos (to develop a specific strength/skill), I discovered that I could do short (1 min.) strength vinyasas (ie  child's pose to plank to chaturanga to cobra to child's pose) with success!  Over several months, my core and upper body strength increased to the point that I could do hold chaturanga for 2 breaths! 

With this encouragement, I began attempting other such short vinyasas throughout the day.  This caused me to view yoga from an entirely different perspective than how I had viewed from watching yoga DVDs and reading books on yoga in which the emphasis is on either a long vinyasa program or holding a pose for prolonged periods of time.  Both these approaches increase C02 in the body!).  

Finally, with great reservation, I watch Kreg Weiss's video "introduction to pranayama".  Although I had, unsuccessfully, tried kalabatti breathing before (with NO success) using audio CDs and videos, I finally was able to do it and feel great afterwards!

I have recommended 'MY Yoga Online' to all my friends.  I hope this website is around for many years to come.  If I could make one recommendation, it would be that someone research the use of yoga as a form of rehab for lung and cardio health problems.  Currently, the emphasis is on aerobic exercise.  Pranayama and Qigong are far more effective.  Of the two, pranayama combined with asanas combined into short vinyasa that move 'as slow as a shifting sand dune' is, IMHO, the most effective for lung diseases.

Mary
San Marcos, TX

yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

Interview with Yoga Expert Max Strom

My Yoga Online has had the recent pleasure of interviewing Yoga Expert, Max Strom.  Max has authored a new inspiring book, A Life Worth Breathing.  Enjoy this latest interview as Max offers wonderful insight and perspective about the integration of yoga in daily living.

What's the most important lesson you've learned from yoga?

That practicing yoga - physically, mentally, with self-enquiry, and with breath - can accelerate healing and spiritual transformation.  Profoundly.

What unexpected benefit has risen from your practice?  

Early on, the most unexpected benefit was the emotional healing that transpired.  I didn't know that breath, intention, and postures, would affect me inwardly to the degree that it did.  I didn't understand that the human body contains our past emotional experiences, and by manipulation our body we also affect our emotions and mind.

You travel and teach. Why do you think the world needs yoga?

Worldwide, nations are replicating America's system of modern consumerism as rapidly as possible. But what they are ignoring is the fact that as materially well off as we are here in the States, too many of us are also chronically living what Henry David Thoreau coined "a life of quiet desperation."  According to John M. Grohol, Psy.D. in the PsychCentral News, in America alone, over 10 percent of the population, (over 30 million people), rich by the rest of the world's standards, exist on antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs. And the ever-growing use of sleep-aid drugs has increased to over 56 million people, according to Denise Gellene with the Los Angeles Times.  And this is now happening across the industrial world.  The number one health complaint in Beijing now is sleep disorder.  Yoga is one of the only practices that help to get people out of pain on the mental and emotional levels, as well as the body.  So, everyone living in a city or under stress can get great benefit from yoga.

You're known for your ability to teach a multi-level, challenging yet accessible class, where everybody actually breathes. Can you share some of your techniques for achieving this?

First off, I explain in the beginning that yoga is a breathing system accompanied by postures.  I let them know that yoga is noncompetitive (and repeat this many times throughout the practice.)  I then explain the benefits of conscious breathing to motivate them.  I inform them that a deep conscious breath for 90 minutes can help give relief from depression, heal sleep issues, and calm the nervous system which can help greatly with anger issues.  This way they breathe deeply because it is in their self-interest, not simply because a teacher asks them to.  Regarding postures, I let them know that I usually offer more than one variation of the postures and to choose the variation that is best for them today.  For example I might ask level 2 students to hold plank pose, and level one students to hold downward dog.

What do you do if the class is resistant to breathing deeply?  

In urban cities there is so much frozen energy around the heart, so much stress, so much competitiveness that to breathe makes some feel like their lives may fall apart, that it would destroy their lives.  So, breathing is a real challenge.  Opening the chest is the hardest part because it is in the chest that we keep our old memories, our sadness, and to open the chest would mean dealing with a new personality - dealing with a new body.

This means that for whatever reason, i.e. astrological, collective unconsciousness, they are holding in stagnate energy, or anything else.  You can help them release by using this system of sequencing.

1] Work them hard through the standing/flow sequence so a lot of internal heat is produced.

2] Then after 30-40 minutes, move into standing balance postures for up to 7 minutes. (total)  This focuses the mind/nervous system/breath.

3] Then move into Backbends.  This will open up the chest, where we store grief.  Backbends also opens the spine to release our power.

After a few counter poses, I would end class as follows:

4] Final Relaxation while in a passive backbend.  For 7-12 minutes you can have them lie down with blankets or bolsters under the shoulders so they can rest in a chest/heart opener.  

This sequence melts the ice around the heart and then water comes out from the corners of the eyes.

I've heard you say you explain what you do is 'teach people to breathe.'  Why is the breath so important to you? And please feel free to correct my memory of how you explain what you do.

The breath so important to me because once I developed a conscious and meaningful breathing practice - as I practiced the postures - transformation and healing came quite rapidly.  I feel the breathing discipline was directly responsible for deep emotional healing that occurred in me.  As a teacher who now passes these techniques along in my workshops and in my breathing DVD, I have seen thousands of people benefit in the same way.  Once a person discovers the power of a conscious breathing practice, they undergo emotional healing. And this healing impacts all of their relationships.  Because people who lived in anger, became less angry.  People who were depressed, became inspired.  People who lived in fear became more courageous.  It is awe inspiring to witness.

Who will benefit from reading your new book?

I think the book will touch people who are already beginning to ask the questions: who am I? What am I?  What is this life? The book is geared towards that person who is already a bit of a seeker.  The purpose of the book is to help lead people within, where the answers to these questions already exist.

Click the following link to learn more about Max Strom and his new book, A Life Worth Breathing.  Click to read more about Max and to view more video interviews with Max Strom.

yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

Healing Injuries with Yoga

Enjoy our latest Yoga article by guest author and yoga expert, Kino MacGregor.  Kino addresses the concepts of pain, progression, ego, and observance in one's Yoga practice.  This article has great relevance for those exploring more advanced forms of Yoga.

It is not the physicality of hatha yoga that transforms, but the state of presence cultivated by a conscious effort to heal the body and train the mind that heals. It is actually higher awareness itself that brings about great changes in practitioners’ experience of reality.

One of the biggest challenges along the road to the discovery of presence is pain and injury. Paradoxically every yoga practitioner owes a debt of gratitude to each injured body part and all the accompanying emotions brought up. Most people, me included, have relatively strong egoic minds and need to be pushed to the precipice before they are ready to change. According to the Sanskrit “tapas” that defines accepting pain as help for purification, yoga defines pain as your teacher, but not in the most obvious way. It is not enough to feel pain and push through; actually pushing through some types of pain is pure insanity. Instead pain is your teacher on a much deeper level that forces you to dig deep into the heart of yoga.

Pain is your motivation to learn healthy alignment, better technique and more efficient movement patterns. If the way that you approach your physical body leads to injury and suffering it generally indicates that it is time to use that sensation to motivate yourself to try a new method of movement. Many people take their first experience of pain in yoga as a sign to change styles of yoga, but if the deeper question of technique and alignment is not addressed the same injury will just reappear later. If you can recognize pain as a signal to retrain your movement patterns to an empirically sound method then you will find a new freedom in your yoga practice. Rather than jumping ship from one style of yoga to another the best course of action is to use your rational mind to learn a new approach to the postures and movements that give you pain. Discovering a healthy use of the body and making small adjustments to your approach will alleviate pain caused by unhealthy movement patterns. If you listen and change your approach the pain eventually disappears. When yoga says that pain is your teacher it does not ask you to plow through blindly. Instead pain is your motivation to make the changes in your technical approach to movement in order to be healthier and ultimately free from the kind of pain that will injure you.

As a general rule yoga practitioners should never feel pain in the joints of the body. The joints are made for mobility and need spaciousness to bend and fold. If you feel sharp pinching sensations in your joints it is not an indication to keep going, instead it is an indication to stop and re-learn your technical approach to movement mechanics in your body.  Muscles are a different story. A little muscular soreness is an unavoidable sensation when you work your physical body. Doing deep work on an area of the body should produce a bit of soreness the next day. If you work your back muscles in backbending postures intensely with healthy alignment under the supervision of a qualified teacher you can expect that the muscles around your back will be a little sore. Wondering whether this is healthy is like doing bicep curls at the gym with a personal training and then questioning the health of having sore biceps the next day. But if your elbow joint started to hurt while attempting bicep curls at the gym your trainer would ask you to stop and readjust your technical approach. Similarly if you feel pain in your joints such the veterbrae, the shoulder joints or the sacro-iliac joints when trying a complex movement like backbending, your teacher would ideally ask you to modify your approach so that you will be pain-free in your joints and just a little sore in your muscles the next day.

When pain arises in the joints it is the body’s way of asking you to listen and if you refuse to heed its gentle call you will almost certainly experience an injury one day. In this sense tapas purifies you from the inside out. Sometimes we approach our bodies from a perspective of command and control where we dictate from above what we want from our bodies in the name of effort. However this approach that attempts to divide and conquer weakness with brute force leads to wrong type of pain sooner or later and is not actually tapas. Most often yoga practitioners decide to tune out joint pain because they do not want to modify the practice they have grown attached to. But the irony of the situation is such that if you ignore pain when it surfaces mildly it only gets worse until it is so severe that one day you will no choice but to listen.

If you find yourself faced with a debilitating injury one of the hardest things to face is your own ego. The egoic mind hates to feel like it is slipping from the front of the pack and will cringe and twist when you lighten your load to go easy on your body. Just let the ego bleed itself to death. This ample serving of humble pie will be just what you need to be free from that little whiny voice in your head that thinks your value is tied to your achievements. And this is the best type of pain to accept on the road to purification. If you find yourself caught in the quagmire of injury try to accept where you are and unroll your mat every day as a commitment to the devotional path of yoga while learning new techniques that keep your body healthy. As someone who has personally gone through a complete litany of painful injuries that have forced me to modify my practice for a period of time on the road to better alignment I really empathize with your ego’s pain. There is nothing funny about suddenly not being able to do what you could once do every day with ease and grace. It feels like a slap in the face and all sorts of nasty emotions arise. Everything including jealousy, anger, anxiety, depression and much more all arrive and try to knock the stuffing out of your yoga practice. But the only way out of the illusion of the ego is go straight through it. If you face a battle of ego when you modify your practice to be pain-free in your joints you can rest assured that you are absolutely doing the deep work of the spiritual path of yoga.

Injury demands that you ask what your every-moment priority really is and requires you to be totally present. The question you must ask is at the core of your dedication to yoga. When you can no longer do the “cool” moves you must determine whether your motivation is truly finding inner peace or just the advanced postures. The honesty that yoga demands forces you into an honest relationship with yourself. Only in the clear light of pure consciousness can you make peace with who you really are underneath your need for achievement and perfection. Only when you release the egoic mind can you actually practice yoga as a healing modality. For when you have passed ambition, goal-orientation, attachment to outcome and the need to achieve you can just be in a state of acceptance and listen to your body. Then you can make whatever modifications are needed and experience the free space of acceptance and non-attachment where all healing happens.

 

About Kino MacGregor Kino MacGregor is a small business owner (www.miamilifecenter.com), yoga teacher and freelance journalist who has produced two yoga DVDs and is currently working on her first book, Inner Peace, Irresistible Beauty to be released late April 2009. For complete details please see www.ashtanga-awareness.com.

yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

From Booty to Boobies...a new Huffpo

Read it here....YC

yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

My Yoga Online Celebrates 5000 Facebook Fans

My Yoga Online is excited to have reached 5000 Facebook fans.  We sincerely appreciate all the support from our Facebook followers.  To celebrate this milestone, we are providing all current and new Facebook Fans the opportunity to win a 1 YEAR MEMBERSHIP to My Yoga Online.  Read more to enter our 5000 Facebook Fan giveaway:

*go to My Yoga Online's Facebook page

*list yourself as a Fan (many thanks if you are a Fan already!)

*enter the following post on My Yoga Online's wall post:

I just entered the MyYogaOnline.com 1 Year Yoga Membership giveaway.  You can enter to win too!   Go to My Yoga Online to learn more: http://www.myyogaonline.com/community/blog/my-yoga-online-celebrates-5000-facebook-fans

*giveaway ends Saturday, June 12, 2010.  Three 1 Year memberships will be awarded to valid entries (valid entries must have the active post listed above and the entrees must also be listed as a MyYogaOnline Facebook Fan at the time of contest close).  Winners will be announced Monday, June 14, 2010.  Prizes are not redeemable for cash value.

Namaste from the My Yoga Online Team

yoga; Yoga Poses; Health and Wellness;

Sassa Introduces its Summer Swimwear 2010

A good number of my yoga outfits are by Sassa. They look good, feel good, and wear good. So when they invited me to take a look-see at their 2010 swimwear collection, I did not hesitate. I took videos of the fashion show thinking I’d put them here but a very strong spotlight that some [...] yoga therapy; Self Improvement;

Educating and Parenting the Net and Next Generation

Yesterday, I attended the annual parent orientation at Xavier School. Unlike past years, there was something different about this year, I realized. I would be attending activities in this school for only one boy (my other boy already graduated high school and is facing a new life as a college freshie). Ever since Fr. Johnny [...] yoga therapy; Self Improvement;