Personal yoga practice isn’t only self-serving – its positivity affects everyone
The Dalai Lama speaks of cultivating hopeful, appreciative, heartening thoughts and feelings and how the vibrations of these thoughts really, truly, exist and affect others. He gives talks on ‘Inner Peace/Outer Peace’ and suggests both are so closely interrelated as to be one. What we do to help ourselves - releasing our physical tension, soothing the nervous system, slowing down the breath and the activity level of the mind, calming our anxiety, fatigue and sadness, even for a moment - helps everyone: those we know, those we don’t know, those we have yet to meet, those we’ll never meet.
...A rose is a rose is a rose…like our yoga practice, this poem is repetitive, playful and profound
by Monica Voss
Roses have cheered our mental state, delighted our senses, soothed our nervous systems and stimulated memory and longing for over six thousand years. Their form, that leads us from outside to in, their colour, from the most delicate pinkish to 'flagrant crimson', their scent, delicious and otherworldly - all combine to stir joy, enchantment, even rapture. Roses play a role in our lives almost daily, certainly in summer. Various cultures eat the petals in jam and syrup, use rose water to refresh the skin, bathe with rose petals, and strew them on the path ...
Yoga is a vitalizing game for body and mind – make your own rules or have no rules at all
by Monica Voss
Young children learn to sort by colour and shape, later by action and meaning. Do you remember choosing which image didn't fit in? Or playing memory matching games? Finding the monkey in a complicated drawing? In the image above, what links the 4 animals? Making comparisons and noting contrasts, naming and repeating, form large parts of our learning strategies, our maturation and our ability to stay safe.
Use observation games, such as: I often walk down this street and always look forward to seeing...Or, I've walked so many times down this street and not noticed...until ...
Develop the skill – and art – of lazy gazing this summer with yoga and meditation
by Monica Voss
‘Drishti’ or gazing is a yogic meditation exercise during which one focuses eye attention on a person, an object or a scene, taking in all there is without judgement. In the summer or whenever our schedule is lighter or when we’re on holiday, gazing is easy-going and meandering and the colours and textures, shapes and movements and energy are acknowledged by the brain with direct and peripheral vision and enjoyed objectively. It's not about how much or how incisively we observe. We're not trying to learn or analyse or remember or even understand. There's often some stress ...
For respiratory health this winter, join Yoga for Anxiety and Breathing Meditation classes
by Monica Voss
In Chinese medicine, eating pears helps clear the thorax and lungs of heat and excess moisture. Many of us experience dryness and tightness as we endeavour to breathe deeply or slowly in a yoga class. The air in Canada in December is almost always cold. How do we mitigate the effects of these seasonal contrasts and the variable states of mind inhibited breathing creates?
Learning a little bit about the bio-dynamics of breathing will help us conceptualize, act and embody the realities within. For example, if we practise visualizing the diaphragm as a thin, stretchy ...
Remembering What the Body Knows
by Tama Soble
We begin moving from the spine in utero. Once born, we progress through a series of developmental movements that support our journey toward the complex act of walking.
During this period in our lives we utilize and perfect the four basic movements of the spine: flexion, extension, side bending and rotation. We practice rotation of the neck, turning the head because we are hungry, develop extension and strength in the neck as we lift the head to see the world around us or roll over and rotate the thoracic spine reaching for ...
Work, Play and a Certain Come – What – May
by Monica Voss
Getting into the body is exactly what Monica Voss intends to do. She does it deliberately, repetitively, as she chooses her words, observant of her students’ abilities, the tenor of the - room and the pacing of her exercises. But moreover, Monica’s class enables a deliberate blurring of the categories that we use to organize our everyday lives: she stirs up the concepts of work and play, drawing together physical structure, creative expression and a certain “come-what-may.”
In our conversation, she recounts not just the vivid, eccentric personalities of teachers whose lives ...
Love Where You Are
by Monica Voss
One question I have in this predicament called human life is how to thrive in the environment we find ourselves inhabiting. Some people struggle to feel any degree of peace within a "concrete and clay" world dominated by traffic, noise and news of violence. Some live in a quieter, more natural place, but feel isolated, lonely or bored.
For some of us, finding or creating beautiful surroundings is a priority. Daily, I am thankful for the garden I can get out into, rustle through, listen to, or at ...
Simple Solutions
by Tama Soble
I have been thinking about Francesca quite a bit lately. Francesca (not her real name) was a private student for about two years. I saw her twice a week for about an hour each session. I was part of a comprehensive health care team brought together to help her manage and recover from physical injuries and PTSD caused by a car accident. In addition to my sessions with Francesca, I was involved in many phone conversations and team meetings about her progress.
When we first met, Francesca was in a great deal ...
Lesson in Freedom
The teaching of Vanda Scaravelli, friend and pupil of Krishnamurti, Iyengar and Desikachar
by Emina Cevro Vukovic
If a film director wanted to make a historic film on the fascinating first steps of European yoga, I would suggest to tell the story of Vanda Scaravelli. The first scene would show Vanda, young and very beautiful, driving her Lancia Flaminia in the Tuscan hills around Florence next to the handsome J. K. Krishnamurti, an afficionado of automobiles. I imagine they do not talk much, rather, they surround themselves by the silence that unites two people in ...
Yoga for the Pregnant Woman with Monica Voss
“The pregnant body is changing if not daily, then sometimes weekly, and certainly monthly. Those changes can be profound, they can bring up structural stress or postural stress, and they can bring up a lot of strong emotion. And quiet time for processing those emotions and for releasing that postural stress is so important.” Monica Voss
Nine months might seem like a substantial chunk of time, but for a pregnant woman, they can fly by in a whoosh of excitement, anticipation, worry and joy. With everything from changing hormones to increased appetite, pregnancy incurs ...
Empowering Practices For Anxiety
by Tama Soble
We live in stressful times, and we literally embody the experience of our lives. This embodiment often manifests itself through habituated patterns of tension. These patterns become hardwired into our nervous systems after years of repetitive triggering of the startle reflex, also called the fight or flight response. When the startle reflex is triggered our systems are flooded with adrenalin. If this occurs too frequently, we can get into a cycle of over reacting physically, emotionally and psychologically to stressful situations.
There are many therapies available to manage chronic stress and anxiety ...
Follow your own lead
by Monica Voss
It seems these days in Toronto, and possibly elsewhere (although I have not heard it expressed when I teach in Canada, in the US or in the UK) that the study of Patanjali is being elevated and Hatha Yoga, unless accompanied by some recognition of the Yoga Sutras, denigrated. This hierarchical attitude was very much in evidence last year during the roundtable discussions at Yoga Festival Toronto in August, 2008, and again in May, 2009, during the "Yoga and Death" off-season roundtable.
The messages seem to be that:
- Hatha Yoga ...
Reforming – A woman overcomes chronic illness & heals her body with the sustaining power of yoga
by Monica Voss
Breathing, growing roots and letting go have sustained my body through physical life changes – pregnancy, childbirth, menopause – and my mind during parenting, working and being in relationships. Yoga fosters my imagination, offers me the opportunity to try to understand the mind, helps me to connect with the rhythms of nature. It brings me physical pleasure, comfort in my own skin, emotional security, and supports my hopes, goals and dreams.
My Hatha Yoga practice and teaching are based on three principles learned from Vanda Scaravelli, my teacher for twelve years, and ...
