Last week I went to San Francisco to visit some good friends. It was a working vacation, I was helping one friend redesign his website, but the primary purpose was definitely to vacate New York for a bit. My friend had a comfy couch, my frequent flier miles were overflowing, I’m still full-time freelance = SOLD.

I got quite a few recommendations for yoga studios to check out. I didn’t go to any of them. I took my friend to a random Iyengar studio around the corner from his apartment; the other days I woke up with the late morning sun and practiced in his front rooms. A light-filled apartment was inspiring; a fight with SF’s minimal public transportation was not. A few poses we consistently practice at Abhaya sprung to mind, and I practiced on the hardwood floor, without even grabbing my travel mat. Brief meditations sealed in the morning’s quiet, and that was enough. It was a travel-sized practice, just like the little shampoo bottles; bring only what you need.

BUT there are many secrets to be learned in San Francisco, I am sure; an easier time sorting through class schedules, Google maps, and transit routes would have helped. (Yogoer SF to come!) If you stay in the Mission, you’ll have a bunch of highly recommended studios within walking distance. (I was at the top of Nob Hill, where not even the cyclists will roam.) So, here’s a short list of San Francisco studios, for traveling souls:

Yoga Tree — mentioned by EVERYONE. Multiple locations, each one with a different style. The Hayes location is more Anusara; the Valencia one has more Hatha and Yin.

Yogakula — Anusara classes, some Pilates.

Laughing Lotus — the West Coast version of New York’s most colorful studio; Dana Flynn and Jasmine Tarkeshi returned to their SF roots.

Bernal Yoga — tons of pre- and post-natal, but their Vinyasa yoga was highly recommended, too.

It’s good to be back.

Aw, cute! The energetic and inspiring Christa Avampato, who has blogged here on Yogoer on occasion, was kind enough to include me in her new book, Hope in Progress: 27 Entrepreneurs Who Inspired Me During the Great Recession.

If you’re looking for a little inspiration, it’s a great book. I loved the stories of other entrepreneurs (it’s definitely a new label for me), and Christa has pulled together some great advice from admirable New Yorkers like Michael Dorf of City Winery, Jerri Chou of All Day Buffet, and Scott Belsky of Behance. It’s amazing to think about all the paths you can take with your life.

Hope in Progress is available as a Kindle download or a free pdf download on Christa’s blog. Enjoy!

“When we are not sure, we are alive.” — Graham Greene

Fascinating article in Scientific American Mind this month: The Willpower Paradox. Turns out that resolving to do something is not nearly as effective as wondering if you will do it.

…Those primed with the interrogative phrase “Will I?” expressed a much greater commitment to exercise regularly than did those primed with the declarative phrase “I will.”

What’s more, when the volunteers were questioned about why they felt they would be newly motivated to get to the gym more often, those primed with the question said things like: “Because I want to take more responsibility for my own health.” Those primed with “I will” offered strikingly different explanations, such as: “Because I would feel guilty or ashamed of myself if I did not.”

This last finding is crucial. It indicates that those with questioning minds were more intrinsically motivated to change. They were looking for a positive inspiration from within, rather than attempting to hold themselves to a rigid standard. Those asserting will lacked this internal inspiration, which explains in part their weak commitment to future change. Put in terms of addiction recovery and self-improvement in general, those who were asserting their willpower were in effect closing their minds and narrowing their view of their future. Those who were questioning and wondering were open-minded—and therefore willing to see new possibilities for the days ahead.

I’ve always wondered why my softer declarations were more effective than my stricter ones. I wonder if I’ll remember this article in the future?

Two free classes next week with the fascinating Amy Matthews. If you like the details of anatomy, you’ll love her. She co-authored Yoga Anatomy with Leslie Kaminoff; they describe their partnership something like “Leslie is the forest. Amy is the speck on the lichen on the bark on the trees.” Highly recommended!

FREE movement clinics with Amy Matthews
August 10 & August 12

Next week I’ll be offering two free movement clinics as part of a week-long workshop at The Breathing Project.
The workshop is focused on ways to re-organize patterns in the nervous system and muscles using an approach called “proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation”.

These clinics are open to anyone with movement questions, injuries or issues, and will be a chance for participants in the workshop to observe how I integrate the PNF approach with the Bartenieff Fundamentals and Body-Mind Centering to work with people. You are welcome to come with any kind of question or issue, or just to see what I do — I begin by asking what kinds of questions are in the room, and then choose a few ideas with which to work. No guarantee that everyone’s questions will be addressed, but I do my best!

Please pass the word on to anyone who might be interested – no reservations are needed.

Dates: Tuesday & Thursday, August 10 & 12, 2010
Times: 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Cost: FREE
Location: The Breathing Project, 15 W 26 St, 10th Floor, NYC
Questions: spiralamy [at] gmail.com

about Amy Matthews:
Amy has been teaching somatically oriented classes and workshops in dance and yoga since 1994. She is a Certified Laban Movement Analyst, a Body-Mind Centering® Practitioner, and an Infant Developmental Movement Educator. She co-teaches with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen on the Embodied Developmental Movement and Yoga and the Embodied Anatomy and Yoga program in Berkeley, CA and NYC for the School for Body-Mind Centering®, and was on the faculty of the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies for 10 years. She has taught embodied anatomy and movement workshops for programs in New York, Philadelphia, Berkeley, and Nebraska, and internationally in Canada, Switzerland, Ireland, England, Israel, Slovakia and Japan.

Amy co-authored with Leslie Kaminoff the best-selling Yoga Anatomy, and together Amy and Leslie lead The Breathing Project’s Advanced Studies Program. Amy also works privately as a movement therapist and yoga teacher, integrating Laban Movement Analysis, Bartenieff Fundamentals, yoga, Body-Mind Centering and Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF).

Amy has studied with a range of inspiring teachers: dissection workshops with Gil Hedley, neuro-muscular reeducation with Irene Dowd, Body-Mind Centering with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, full-contact karate with Michelle Gay, and yoga with Alison West, Mark Whitwell, Genny Kapular and Kevin Gardiner.

Best profile pic ever

If you’re free this Saturday night, come out for fun times at YogaWorks Soho. Anya Porter is doing another Yoga Spanda — her mashup class teaching both yoga and breakdancing.

I went last month, to the inaugural event at Mark Morris Dance Studios, and had a super great time. We spent the first hour doing slow Vinyasa yoga, with a focus on drawing everything up towards the core. This prepped our minds, and protected our lower backs, when we moved to the floor. (The action of tucking the tail, finding a “cat spine” in each pose, was a really helpful tip for days to come.)

The second hour was breakdance: uprock, a six step, and a freeze. Don’t worry about looking like a complete idiot; the class was very beginner-friendly. I am the gangliest, slowest breakdancer in the world, and I had tons of fun.

The class has live music; funk and soul provided by DJ Scribe. “Spanda” is the pulse of life, the ebb and flow of each pose, and part of the exercise is feeling the beat, exploring yoga plus music.

Here’s the video:

This month’s class is at YogaWorks Soho, so you can decompress in the sauna afterward. Details:

Yoga Spanda at YogaWorks Soho
Saturday, August 7th, 2010
7 pm – 10 pm

This event is bound to be an amazing one…  We have landed the fabulous YogaWorks Soho equipped with a beautiful studio, showers and SAUNAS!!!!  Also featuring refreshments and bites following class from Sattvic Succulents!!! And last but not least, FREE GOODIE BAGS AND SAMPLES from Khushi Spa in Tribeca!!!  We also have some collaborations in the working for an amazing event at Le Poisson Rouge that evening…  breathe, break it down…  spa and sip…  then walk over to LPR to work it out for the rest of the evening!!!

Register at http://bhaktiandbreakdance.tumblr.com/yogaspanda
$25 pre-reg, $30 day-of
Pre-register and get a free week of classes at YogaWorks Soho!

See you there?

Are You Game?

Lots of sponsored classes at this event next month on Pier 46… Pilates, Martial Arts, Surfboarding, 80′s Dance, Hologram Yoga [?], Boxing, and Burlesque! Thanks to our friends at Flywheel for the heads up!

ARE YOU GAME for an unforgettable day of fun, complete with inventive workout classes, eat smart demos, workout-to-knockout makeovers, live DJ and more? Of course you are! So plan to grab your girlfriends and get in on the fun! If you don’t live in NYC, you can enter a chance to win a trip to the event.

Saturday 9/18/2010
Women’s Health ARE YOU GAME? Event!

Pier 46 Hudson River Bank
Charles Street and West Street
New York, NY

Registration Cabana is open from 10:00AM–4:00PM

Get a free tote bag when you register. Be one of the first 1,300 girls on site and receive a free Kulae yoga mat! ($40 value)

http://www.areyougame2010.com/

New York Yoga and New York Yoga Hot, located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, are seeking to add to their current teaching staff.

We are looking for talented and knowledgeable teachers with 4+ years teaching experience, teaching in the heat is a plus. Please list any additional certifications such as Restorative & Prenatal.

Please submit resume and headshot/website, along with compensation requirements to class@newyorkyoga.com.

I’m reading The Feminine Mystique right now, one of those books you always hear about but never get around to reading. A pithy quote from Betty Friedan finally got me to the library. It was written in 1963, but it’s kind of blowing my mind. I’m not much of a history buff, so to read her analysis of WHY these liberated career women of the 20′s and 30′s CHOSE to become the polished, yet depressed, housewives of the 50′s, is staggering. (Short answer: WWII veterans filling the media w/domestic nostalgia, Freud’s “penis envy” equating female achievement with sublimated jealousy, and the 50′s daughters rejecting their mothers as role models in the typical pendulum of generations.)

The book is especially interesting to read now, with all the Martha Stewart, Mad Men, and back-to-the-farm nostalgia going around. One passage in particular made me think:

The uncritical acceptance of Freudian doctrine in America was caused, at least in part, by the very relief it provided from uncomfortable questions about objective realities. After the depression, after the war, Freudian psychology became much more than a science of human behavior, a therapy for the suffering. It became an all-embracing American ideology, a new religion. It filled the vacuum of thought and purpose that existed for many for whom God, or flag, or bank account were no longer sufficient—and yet who were tired of feeling responsible for lynchings and concentration camps and the starving children of India and Africa. It provided a convenient escape from the atom bomb, McCarthy, all the disconcerting problems that might spoil the taste of steaks, and cars and color television and backyard swimming pools. It gave us permission to suppress the troubling questions of the larger world and pursue our own personal pleasures. And if the new psychological religion — which made a virtue of sex, removed all sin from private vice, and cast suspicion on high aspirations of the mind and spirit — had a more devastating personal effect on women than men, nobody planned it that way.

Wow. We’re in similar predicaments today, right? But we’re choosing other philosophies at the moment. So let’s play Madlibs and insert some more modern topics.

The uncritical acceptance of yoga in America was caused, at least in part, by the very relief it provided from uncomfortable questions about objective realities. After the recession, throughout the Iraq war, yoga became much more than a workout for hippies, a therapy for the suffering. It became an all-embracing American ideology, a new religion. It filled the vacuum of thought and purpose that existed for many for whom God, or job title, or bank account were no longer sufficient—and yet who were tired of feeling responsible for global warming and Guantánamo Bay and the military-industrial complex. It provided a convenient escape from the oil spill, Fox News, all the disconcerting problems that might spoil the taste of organic food and iPhones and HDTV and luxury travel. It gave us permission to suppress the troubling questions of the larger world and pursue our own personal pleasures. And if the new psychological religion — which made a virtue of physical fitness, removed all sin from self-absorption, and cast suspicion on material well-being — had a somewhat devastating personal effect on our joints, nobody planned it that way.

[Last bit referencing http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/24stretch/ and other updates on the increasing injuries due to yoga.]

What do you think? Am I off my rocker? There’s a bit of escapism needed right now, and I think that’s part of yoga’s popularity.

Tao Porchon-Lynch is teaching a workshop at Strala Yoga next Saturday. She’s 91, and teaches yoga every day. Inspiring!

Details:

Explore the Body as Energy
with Yoga Grand Master Tao Porchon-Lynch

Saturday, July 24th, 2010
1:00pm – 4:00pm

$25 on-line registration
$20 in person at Strala
$30 same day (if space is available)

In this workshop with Westchester’s matriarch of yoga, you will become aware of the energy that invigorates your life. Utilizing the various breathing techniques of Pranayama you will learn how to control vital energy. By using special hand positions know as Mudras, you will be able to channel the flow of energy throughout your being. Engaging the body’s Bhandas (also known as locks), you can focus and store your energy. Through an understanding of the Chakra system you will attain a working knowledge of your body’s vital energy centers. The workshop will end with a deeply absorbing meditation.

Register online at www.stralayoga.com

Jill Miller

Twice in my life have I wandered into a yoga class where I felt completely fascinated, connected, and at home. The first was with Jhon Tamayo at Atmananda, where I ended up doing my teacher training. The second was this past weekend with Jill Miller at Omega.

I’d heard about Jill from Brooke Siler, who runs Re:Ab Pilates here in New York. She said if I liked anatomy and alignment, I would like Jill. Then my friend T’ai Jamar, who runs T’ai Yoga Therapy, happened to link to Jill on Facebook. And she was leading a retreat upstate the following weekend. Perfect timing!

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