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March 2008 Newsletter

Hello Lifefit Students and Friends,

Time is MARCHing on and I am trying to make the most of our class time left together until the end of May when the CUMC classes have Summer break (we begin again in Sept, just after Labor Day). This Summer we will have four workshops and kids classes. We are at the beginning of ironing out dates/themes. I do keep half of my teaching load in the summer for my "corporate classes" and private work. Those of you missing class may want to get together with a few friends and come over to my Yoga Wall studio for a semiprivate class. Anyone interested in learning more or introducing a friend to the practice of yoga, please consider the Summer Workshops. They are a great way to really learn when one is a novice student, so then joining an ongoing class won't seem so intimidating. The themes, back care, shoulder and hip openers,...are another way for people to focus on how to borrow from the practice for attention to special issues/needs.

The biggest change to the Yoga Wall studio is the new MIGUN bed. If you do not know what that is...A massage bed with deep infra-red heat, designed by a Korean doctor. There is a franchise in Greensboro - on Battleground, in the same shopping center as EarthFare - you can go check it out there if you wish....or come see me for a session. The bed works like a chiropractic adjustment and has 6 settings, some are specialized (hips, shoulders,...). There is a setting that works like acupressure. This special kind of heat does not make you prespire or feel like you are having a hot flash. The (real) jade balls roll under you from the back of your head to your heels and realign you (this will serve as a great help to those with slight scoliosis or any vertebral issues). If you want to go to the MIGUN store, you must first listen to an informational session (not a pushy sales pitch at all) and then you are given a card to come in for 20 sessions free ...to use within a 2 month period. Take a yoga mat to put under your hips/ back as otherwise the massage is too deep and you will want something to buffer the fact that many other people have been on these beds - a room of 10 beds is always open. On Saturdays, you may have to wait for a bed. Double fold the mat at your sacrum - just my opinion. Each massage lasts 25 to 35 minutes so carve out the time. Please tell them I sent you - they will write your name down on a card for me and even though I already bought a bed, they have other items and when they do a promotional, maybe I will have enough names to affect another purchase - maybe something we can all use in class. As soon as possible, I will have pictures taken and adjusted to the website. All REGULAR Lifefit students are invited to come have one free private session on the Migun bed here. As private yoga sessions are $65/hour, adding a MIGUN session afterwards will become $80 and coming in just for the MIGUN will be $30. Gift certificates are available. This idea makes for a great "splurge/treat."

This Spring/Summer I will get to study with Judith Lasater, from the Iyengar Institute in San Fransisco (she is coming to this side of the USA) - we will study/practice using yoga to treat shoulder issues, specifically the rotator cuff. The following weekend I will get to study with Bryan Legere, the Yoga Wall inventor (in this country) who works with my teacher Aadil Palkhivala (who studied with Mr. Iyengar) and the workshop will focus on backbends/preparations using the wall. In June, I get to have more study time with my immediate teacher, Lillah Schwartz on treating specific back issues - she is such an intelligent woman and we, as her students, really come to have this as our strength as teachers too. That is how yoga works - handed down from guru to student,...though there are more and more books written, most of the knowledge has to be handed down with experience/presence in practicing together. She and Elise Browning Miller, the "queen" of yoga for scoliosis in the US, collaborate together and I have had the chance to study with Elise twice now. Lillah brings in patients and we learn from watching her work with people with specific issues, though there is lecture, book work, much homework, leading each other through "scenarios",...some of you have asked about, this so I am sharing. If you know folks with any of these issues, encourage them to use yoga as an alternative therapy, and to consider coming to see me!

Lastly, I have been asked by Sportime, now known as "The Club," to lead a workshop on "Yoga to Open and Balance the Shoulders." The cost for nonmembers is $25 and the workshop is Sat March 15 from 1 - 3. There will be lecture, handouts, and a great practice. I am in the middle of teaching a 6 week Pilates Reformer class on Saturday mornings at the Oak Branch location of The Club at 8:30 am. There are 4 more weeks, we do have a few spots still left and these classes are also open to non-members. They will pro - rate at this point if anyone is interested. In the long-run, I will also add a Pilates Reformer bed to my home studio. I really thought that would come first but...the MIGUN bed won :)

Words from Aadil and Mirra:

Asana and Pranayama

The Difference Between Yoga and Excercise

What happens when you are practicing yoga and only concerned with "getting the poses"? What happens when you cultivate alignment in your body without a corresponding alignment with your soul? The result is that you align your body with your ego, but not your body with your soul. When you focus only on physical alignment, you are actually helping your ego to grow. Then when you try to go inward to a truer reality, the ego becomes afraid. Such a fear indicates that you never really did yoga in the first place-you never united with your soul. Though you may have become accomplished, fit, and firm, you have not done yoga, but just exercises.

-Mirra

Meditation

The Power of Breath

If you are reading this, you are alive, and if you are alive, you are breathing. No matter how busy you are, you somehow always manage to find time to breathe. So if you learn to use your breath to meditate, you will always have time to connect with your true self! When breathing, make a conscious choice to connect with Light. Connect with a higher vibration, a higher energy, and that will energize your body to become more of what it is meant to be. We are like instruments that are meant to run on a higher voltage, but we are now plugged into a common current that is of lower voltage. As a result, we are sluggish, and not living up to our full potential. Our potential is so much more. Plug yourself into the Light.

-Mirra

Applied Philosophy

The Gift of Duality

In the performance of asana, we can create unity only by first creating duality. It is only when we have two movements, one movement opposing another, that we can create a synergistic third that unites the two in a whole that is far greater than the sum of the parts. A rubber band, like a muscle, does not stretch when we push both its ends in the same direction simultaneously, yet it does when we pull the two ends away from each other. Similarly, when two ends of the body move in the same direction, there is no stretching, only collapse. However, when they move in opposite directions there is a sense of expanding and lifting. Opposition is required to create expansion.

Whenever we create space and expansion with opposing movements, we also will create mindfulness because our consciousness must be fully in the present. Indeed, it is only the duality of action that can bring us to such a singular state of mind-we are forced to be focused, unified, creative, moving in ways we have never moved before. As we work, there is a sense, "If I do this, I cannot do that simultaneously, yet I must!"

-Aadil

Nutrition and Lifestyle

Eyesight