a yoga mala

Warm Oil is Nectar for the Body

2011-01-12T15:30:00.000-08:00

If you are stiff or have pain in your body there is a simple and easy method to improve your condition. It also has the benefit of grounding you, and helps you feel more centered. (There is an earlier post on this blog from Kimberly Flynn that is the more traditional approach to this treatment.) But it is a rather simple thing to warm coconut or sesame oil up, stand on a towel and oil your whole body. When it is time to wash your hair, maybe twice a week, oil that too. Start with your hair and go all the way down to your feet. You may want to do it before you bathe or after. I like to then lay down and take a restorative pose for a few minutes and let the oil penetrate my pores and sink in. It actually lubricates the ligaments of the knee for example, according to Monju Jois. Try it and see if it does not make you feel softer, warmer, calmer and more focused and flexible.

Sri Ram Orphanage

2011-01-10T12:50:00.000-08:00

Spent New's Eve with the Hanuman Fellowship. They have a newish Hanuman Temple that is soo inspiring. With Arthi every am and pm during the retreat. Sitting under the canapy at 6a the first day of 2011, is an auspicious way to start the new year! On New Year's Eve we watched a brand new release of a documentary called "Lifting Dreams". Baba Hari Dass dreamed of helping the destitute children of India have decent, adequate food, housing, clothing, education, celebration and community. And they created a family for these children. A way of life for them that I think we can all learn from. I think he is changing the demographics of a nation, and showing us how Lift our own Dreams by living a certain way. http://sriramfoundation.org/ Some of the excerpts from the film are: "Don't bother dreaming, unless you are willing to work hard." and "There is always fear in everything. We have to face the fear, fight it and finish it." It gave me, personally, hope and faith in service. That I can be serviceful (something I often resisted) and still dream, be creative, and live a balanced life. It is the spirit of giving back that moves our mountains, and gives us wings to fly.

The Reluctant Ashtanga Yoga Teacher

2011-01-10T12:34:00.000-08:00

One of the things the East has to offer us Americans is that they don't disclude death. It is a part of their culture. Everything that is born dies. Here we avoid aging, and the natural cycles of life. And I think this avoidance is connected to our avoidance of pain; the pain that is also inherent in life.
My favorite yoga practice, one that works well for me-- when I practice-- is breathing into my pain with acceptance. This was driven home for me in the past few days as my neck went out as a result of pushing myself too hard once again. It was really pulsing with pain, like a burning pinched nerve. Everytime I had a negative, painful thought, it throbbed and the pain intensified. My friend pointed out that it was showing me where I held on and seized up. At times I was able to put my hand on the pain and watch it. One time I spent a half an hour watching the pain move around my body. One of the things I learned from this experience was that it is subtle. If I try to change it, even while I am breathing into it, it does not subside. But if I breathe into it with loving acceptance, if I honor my pain with detached awareness it goes away!
Its like what my yoga eskimo told me years ago, "That which you resist persists, and that which you love (accept) you gain mastery over."

Extracts from: "Guruji - A Portrait of Sri K Pattabhi Jois Through the Eyes of His Students"

2010-07-11T11:04:00.001-07:00

Extracts from: "Guruji - A Portrait of Sri K Pattabhi Jois Through the Eyes of His Students"

Thursday, 29 April 2010

For more info on this book please click here: http://www.aysnyc.org/

Guruji is tremendous, he is amazing at getting people to go beyond

where they think their limits are. It’s a little scary sometimes. I’ve seen
looks of panic and complete terror on people’s faces and also tremendous
breakthroughs. As a teacher—I’ve been teaching for thirteen years—
watching Guruji is amazing. I don’t feel confident to do the same thing
that he does. He’s got sixty years of experience teaching—he’s seen a lot
of bodies, he’s put a lot of bodies through this practice—and I feel like I
need to be much more conservative than him. I’ve seen him put people
in full lotus, and get them into garbha pindasana, kukkutasana that I
would have never believed possible. And what it gives them is tremendous
and you can take that and from that develop the discipline and love
for doing the practice, which is something that does happen through that
sense of accomplishment. - Chuck Miller
www.chuckandmaty.com

In the Room with Guruji

I remember writing in my diary, sitting on the bench in front of the
Lakshmipuram police station waiting for class. He had told me to come
at 6 a.m. I wrote, “This man, he is going to kill me, he is adjusting me so
strongly.” I was afraid I was going to be broken from his strong adjustments.
He was on top of me in every asana and I was feeling, “Oh my
God, he’s going to kill me,” but instead of that he was healing me. His
adjustments were very good. He treated me with such love and care on
that first trip. It was superb.

When I went to India, I had fear of getting sick again. India felt very
big and I felt very small. I had fear of food, fear of touching anything,
everything was dirty, India was just huge. And when I came out after
those first two months with Guruji, I had the feeling that I was huge and
India was small. I had the feeling that the prana was huge and I was not
afraid of getting sick again. - Tomas Zorzo
http://www.yogashtanga.com/

Ashtanga Yoga Method

Yoga is a scientifically based technology that gives us certain techniques
by which we can awaken or uncover our inherent spirituality. The idea is
that we are inherently spiritual but that there are perceptual blocks to
our realization of that. I look at yoga as a way of removing the obstacles
to a perception of our true essence.

It’s what Patanjali talks about in The Yoga Sutras: yoga, chitta vritti
nirodhah—yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of consciousness.
When that happens then: Tada drashthu svarupe avasthanam—then the
true nature of the seer, the inner being is revealed. So yoga is all about
techniques for removing the blocks to our true perception of ourselves.
It’s a scientific method for the realization of the fact that we are spiritual
beings. In that sense it’s obviously a spiritual practice.

For me it’s been a long process of recognizing the value of the yamas
and the niyamas, the process of making yoga real in my life, how it affects
my relationships with other people, my relationship with myself.
You’re only on the mat for, at best, a couple of hours a day. What are you
doing the rest of the time? You can’t practice yoga for two hours and then
go out and act like a jerk the rest of the time. I mean, I suppose you
could and people do, but I can’t see the point in that. Ultimately, one
needs to—especially if one’s a teacher—one needs to set some sort of
example. - Tim Miiiler
http://www.ashtangayogacenter.com/

2010-04-10T17:07:00.000-07:00

Article on cleansing to Relieve Aches, Pains and Stiffness with Oil Bath

By Kimberly Flynn

Oil bath is a traditional, weekly Ayurvedic home remedy still practiced widely in South India. Sri K. Pattabhi Jois routinely recommends oil bath to his yoga students especially for the relief of back and knee pain as well as stiffness. Weekly oil bath reduces excess internal heat (pitta in Ayurvedic) particularly in the joints, liver, and skin. This heat is generated by poor lifestyle, including consumption of oily, processed, and difficult to digest foods, alcohol and tobacco, in addition to stress, air pollution and inadequate sleep. This imbalance increases with the heat generated by yoga practice and hot climate. Eating an over sufficiency of healthy foods that are deemed "heating" in Ayurvedic terms, also adds to this imbalance. Excess heat can be felt in the joints as pain and stiffness and in the back, often in the lower right-hand side and hip, as a nearly debilitating pain. This heat also contributes to a short temper, burning anger, red skin, pinkish acne and redness in the eyes. When a daily ashtanga yoga practitioner still carries extra weight, especially around the middle, has difficulty with weight loss or with digestion, and has a regularly sluggish bowel, these are all signs of surplus heat.

In India, oil bath is customarily taken with castor oil which is later removed from the skin and hair with a special paste made of equal parts soap nut and green powders mixed with water. Castor oil delivers the best results but is nearly impossible to remove without these powders. Guruji suggests that, after leaving India, the yoga student can replace castor oil with almond oil, which easily washes off with bath soap.

Daily baths in India are taken by pouring water over the head from a bucket while standing in the bath, a river, or other body of water. It is in reference to this bath that oil bath is so termed. In other words, the student is not soaking in a tub of oil; rather he or she is using oil first on the head. Oil is rubbed into the scalp drawing the heat upward through the body, where it finally exits through the crown of the head.

Pattabhi Jois recommends that a student takes oil bath every Saturday, on his or her day of rest. Oil bath should be taken once a week, at the start of the morning. After oil bath, one should rest for the day and avoid the following: strong sun, cold water, yoga or heavy work of any kind. For men, tradition prescribes that oil bath be taken on Monday, Wednesday or Saturday. For women oil bath is prescribed on Tuesday or Friday; Guruji provides that his female students can take oil bath on the day off, Saturday. A woman should never take oil bath during menstruation rather she should take it on the fourth day (following the first three days of menses, during which time she has abstained from yoga practice). If one is not able to take oil bath on a given Saturday, he or she may take it on one of the above appropriately listed days.

Directions for Oil Bath

1. Apply ample amount of oil to your head, rubbing into the scalp and through to the ends of your hair. When using castor oil, first place the bottle in warm water to thin out the oil for easier application.

2. Leave oil on the head for the allotted time. For your first oil bath leave the oil on your head for only five minutes and the following week increase the time to ten minutes. Continue increasing weekly by five minute increments until the oil is left on the head for a full two hours (a 6 month process); this is the maximum recommendation. At this juncture, you should practice two hours weekly, not exceeding this time.

Years of accumulated heat should safely be relieved in stages therefore it is essential to carefully follow the time recommendation. Inappropriately increasing the prescribed minutes may lead to a cold, vomiting, chills or diarrhea, all of which are symptoms of too much heat rising too soon.

3. Having completed your allotted time for oil on the head, now generously apply oil to the whole body. As you rub oil over your body, take time to rub and massage elbow, knee and shoulder joints, along the spine and into any areas that are chronically sore. You need not apply oil to the face. This step should take an additional five to ten minutes.

4. Take a very hot shower, or bucket bath. Let the hot water run over the scalp as you massage the existing oil deeper into the crown. Continue to rub the oily skin particularly the joints and spine. This is an important step as the hot water opens pores and draws internal heat from the skin and joints. This shower may last five to fifteen minutes.

5. Apply soap and shampoo, or soap nut and green powder mixture to remove oil. After turning off the shower, lather up with soap on the skin and shampoo in the hair to remove almond oil. If castor oil is used, then apply soap nut and green powder mixture rubbing the paste over the whole body and through the hair and scalp. Be careful and avoid getting soap nut powder, dry or wet, in the eyes or nose, as it will cause a burning sensation. As you rub the paste over the skin, it will turn from dark to light green which indicates that the oil is being absorbed.

To make the paste, in a large bowl mix equal parts soap nut powder and green powder with enough water to create a paste with a honey-like consistency. Soap nut is active in absorbing the castor oil and can make the skin feel very dry. Green powder leaves the skin and hair feeling soft and smooth.

6. Take a second shower or bucket bath to remove oil and lather or special paste. Take this shower at a warm, comfortable temperature and use enough soap and shampoo to remove the almond oil. If you are washing off soap nut paste and castor oil, be sure to close your eyes when rinsing your hair; you'll probably want to follow up with shampoo. This shower lasts up to ten minutes.

You have successfully completed oil bath.

7. Wash the shower/bath area. The shower floor will be very slippery and the drain may be clogged a bit. Scrub the shower area well to avoid slipping and pour a kettle of boiling water down the drain to keep it open. If you have used soap nut paste, you may be faced with a muddy mess. Clean all surfaces and be sure to pour boiling water down the drain.

8. Rest over the next few hours, avoiding hard work, strong sun and swimming in or drinking cold water. For the daily ashtanga practitioner it is important to take a full day off, allowing the body and mind to rest and rejuvenate for the coming week of practice, study, work and family life.

If the desired results of oil bath are not felt at first, don't give up. Continue to include this time-honored treatment in your weekly schedule and be confident in the radiant health benefits it bestows.