“Maybe I’m having a stroke,” I thought, “or an aneurism. Did I eat something funny? Can the cold actually freeze someone’s brain?” These are the thoughts that cross the mind of someone who is usually clear-headed and at the moment can’t seem to string 5 words together to make a coherent thought.

I’m pleased to report that I wasn’t having a stroke and there appears to be not sign of aneurism. I was just tired – that kind of tired where the mind just goes completely numb. the kind of tired brought on by too much thinking, questioning, and planning. Your body wants to move, though your brain can’t seem to tell it where to go. So I hopped off the roller coaster of life for a day to just be out in the world with no plans, no to-do list, and no direction. I needed to unplug. I needed yoga to quiet my mind.

On my yoga mat, I had no choice but to clear my mind. It’s one of the greatest gifts of a practice – it recharges our internal batteries. It clears away mental clutter to leave us open to new possibilities. It gives us the kind of deep rest that we need much more often than we ever allow ourselves to have.

At the suggestion of a friend, I’ve been reading a lot of Joseph Campbell lately. I recently watched his DVD interviews with Bill Moyers around the idea of myth and the hero’s journey. A piece of the interviews that really caught my attention is their discussion about the importance of having a sacred place in our lives.

For some, a sacred place is a building of worship, a labyrinth, or a natural setting that has a holy feeling. I sometimes experience the sacred at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, a church in my neighborhood. There’s a stretch of Riverside Park that’s canopied by trees many generations older than me. Most often, I find my sacred place on my yoga mat, in my small apartment, at sunset.

A sacred place takes us away from it all. When I step onto my mat, I let go of any expectations and responsibilities. It’s my time to just be with myself, which helps me to connect and build a very deep sense of spirituality. While a yoga practice is comprised of asanas (poses) and the breath associated with each, these are just the keys to a much wider kingdom. Through our movements, we are able to access a higher sense of self, our very best selves, the divinity and light that lives within each of us at our core.

Before yoga, I understood that there was a holiness in the world, that it existed somewhere out there. Yoga taught me that yes, holiness is out there, but it’s also in here, within my own heart. It is a perfect example of learning by doing. If we practice, if we come to the mat with an honest, good intention to find something sacred, we discover that the sacred is always with us.

I’ve given a donation and set up a page on my website that lists resources of how people can learn more about the situation and offer help in a number of ways. I have also alerted several organizations that whenever they need volunteers on the ground, I am willing to go and serve. Offering up my yoga practice is just as important. It is the deepest kind of prayer I know.

As I move between asanas, I breathe for the people of Haiti. I imagine that my movements are moving the rubble, clearing the path for continued rescue operations. When I rise up from the mat, I wish to take their spirits and their faith with me, lifting them up to the sky. As my strength builds, I give them my strength. And as the energy of my practice flows through my body, I give that energy to the aid workers frantically working to get water, food, and supplies flowing to every corner of the country.

Yoga taught me to believe so deeply in the power of intention to generate miracles. And that’s what Haiti needs right now – miracles. They need you and me. They need all of us, donations of our money, time, effort, and spirit. We can’t let them down.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on clearing my mind more often during the day. The natural tendency for a busy mind is to work ever-harder to crack a problem or find an innovative solution. The yogic belief is that a clear, unburdened, relaxed mind is actually a more creative, efficient problem solver. And now that belief has a boost from hardcore science.

In September, David Rock wrote about the precious gift of a rested mind. When rested, the mind is able to make associations and connections between seemingly disparate pieces of information that a busy mind cannot discern. A break from our work, particularly if that break involves an activity that has nothing to do with the problem we are trying to solve, can be extraordinarily beneficial. A busy mind will run in a closed circuit, making it difficult to develop a break out idea or solution. A rested mind that gets off-track for a bit gives us a better shot at finding the “aha!” we’re looking for.

This same logic holds true for the need to physically rest the mind more than most of us do. Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post is waging a public sleep challenge over at Huffingtonpost.com. (You can view her latest progress report here.) For the New Year, her resolution is to sleep 8 hours per night.

In the New Year, my goal is to be in my bed, lights out, for a minimum of 7 hours. So far, I’ve been able to hold myself to that. If something I wanted to have done before midnight isn’t done, it just has to wait for tomorrow. I also let myself wake up slowly, giving myself a full 30 minutes to just enjoy the feeling of being fully refreshed in my warm, cozy bed. This little trick has allowed me to feel much more aware as I head out the door and into the world.

For freelance writers with a computer-focused day job, it can be tough to break away from the screen. Yet, I find that I need, and even crave, that time away. My eyes need the rest and my writing is of a much higher quality after a break. Practicing yoga is a perfect way to “get away” from it all as a daily ritual. When I step onto my yoga mat, I force myself to let go of any thoughts about work, writing, relationships, and my person to-do list. I just focus on my breath and body; everything else has to wait. That mat is like an oasis for me, a respite from the busy world where I live most of my waking hours.

This idea of an oasis on my yoga mat got me even more excited about my yoga training. For 200 hours over the course of 3 months, my mind will be at rest; it will stop running in circles and I will focus only on my own body and the principles of living a yogic life. Come May, when the training concludes, I expect to wake up feeling more rested and at ease than I ever have in my life. What a gift!

Kundalini Warmup (seated, all with Breath of Fire)

• Low Back Flexes (hands on knees)
• Mid Back Flexes (hands on ankles)
• Spinal Twists (hands on shoulders)
• Upper Back Flexes (hands on shoulders)
• Shoulder Shrugs (hands on thighs)
• Shoulder Seesaws (hands clasped)
• Shoulder Stretch (hands clasped in front of heart and pull, above head and pull)
• Neck Circles
• Eye Circles

Vinyasa Warmup

• Down Dog
• Down Dog Split (twisted)
• Crescent Lunge
• Forward Angle
• Handstand
• Lunge
• Down Dog Split (straight)
• repeat other side

Hatha Holds

• Camel
• Forearm Stand (2x, lead w/each leg)
• Headstand

Then run take a shower! (That was all I had time for.) 30 minutes total.

Gosha I borrowed your photo

Crazy week last week, but I kept up a daily practice, a MORNING practice no less, for the length of it. Why? I got off on a good foot last weekend (a blissful hiking/yoga retreat with some Russian friends)… and my morning practice is 15 minutes short!

3-5 sun salutations, left and right sides

100 breaths of fire (in Plank)

2 handstands

That’s it. It’s delicious and fun, I’m so stiff that I don’t try to stretch, I just step back all sloppy and sleepy. And it wakes me up and sets the tone for the day.

And, five minutes of meditation after I get off my computer each night has cleared my insomnia! Yoga EXPRESS, love it.

[I'm just writing this so I remember that daily practice doesn't have to be a big ordeal.]

Then I realized — I am that person, RIGHT NOW, if I practice yoga and meditate today. It’s not like “I want to be a world-famous photographer” where you have to build a portfolio and a reputation over years and years. All I have to do is practice yoga and meditate today. And tomorrow. And repeat. It’s an identity that’s defined by habits, not by goals. Verbs, not nouns.

I’m going to major in linguistics.

Mastery of Space and Time

That’s my newly-encircled calendar. It’s just an ugly wall calendar from the office supply store that I like because of the weird to-do forms at the top of each page. I was getting overwhelmed with the exercise/ice routine recommended by my PT, on top of my yoga practice, on top of trying to build a meditation practice. I am not a robot and it’s hard to remember to do six exercise routines a day. And floss my teeth.

So, my calendar sat there, and finally BEGGED for some doodling. Blue circles are for meditation. Yellow is for yoga. The black boxes are for icing and strengthening my knee (twice daily). Then I write everything else in red so it pops forward.

I figured I’d show this at the beginning of the month while it looks all perfect. Already the checking off of boxes is giving me great satisfaction and motivation. My inner six-year-old takes over scheduling from now on. Maybe I can get my sister the first grade teacher to give me some stickers…

“The eight limbs of yoga are: respect toward others, self-restraint, posture, breath control, detaching at will from the senses, concentration, meditation, and contemplation.”

[Bernard Bouanchaud's translation of Sutra II.29 in The Essence of Yoga]

That’s where you get the benefits beyond a gym workout. Postures are only step three. Do we want to be in third grade forever? Did we even DO first grade?

But still, once we study and (somewhat) understand these tips that Patanjali gives us, it’s really interesting to circle back around and apply each of these steps to our roots, for example our asana practice.

1. Are you respecting your teachers, fellow students, and studio staff?
2. Are you applying self-restraint in asana practice, or always going for the most advanced variation?
3. Do you understand the definition of a yoga pose — hard yet soft?
4. Are you breathing comfortably in your practice, or holding / controlling / ignoring the breath?
5. Are you able to detach from the sensations — or appearance — of your body?
6. Are you really concentrating on the present moment as you practice?
7. Are you able to prolong your focus and receive insight?
8. Are you able to leave “you” behind and become just insight?

I’ll be on retreat for the next 8 days, so think about these 8 limbs for now. We’ll have some special guest posts, too, so keep dropping in. Take a look at some of the archives. Or, you know, actually get off the computer and practice ;)

I hadn’t escaped the showmanship. I was very conscious of the shapes I could or wanted to make. The more flexible I got in my practice, the more I felt the temptation to show off how flexible I was. Yoga was still an achievement, a skill, a linear path. Challenging the body, pushing towards an idealized shape, gave me a goal on which to focus, and a feeling of actually DOING something. I only started breathing deeply in yoga a couple years ago.

I’m studying therapeutic yoga now, and anatomy, and it’s made me close my eyes to go for feeling instead of shape. “Ugly Yoga”, someone called it. Permission is granted to differ from the pictures on the posters. Deeper layers of muscles are being found. Practice feels like conversation with the body, not mastery. And old poses have acquired new energy.

But still, it’s hard to practice without performing. Our extroverted culture encourages beautiful entertainers, and we’re all social beings. (Shantitown has a good post about acknowledging the desire to be recognized.)

I try to remember that recognition, once received, is actually an obstacle, just like the Sutras say about siddhis. [III.37 — "These faculties are obstacles in contemplation, but powers in active life."] Recognition may serve me socially, but it’s one more thing I have to battle on my mat. Once I get it, I expect it again. If I don’t get it, I wonder “why not?” And there are much cooler things to focus on.