Last week I decided to reinvigorate my meditation practice with a group class. Shambhala Meditation Center, on 22nd Street, offers a one-hour “learn to meditate” class each Wednesday, no experience required. It’s $10 (suggested donation).

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Do you remember your first yoga class? The questions, the perceptions, the expectations (or lack thereof)? Yesterday’s Times had a nice first-time-to-yoga narrative:

Ignoring the warning bells deep inside my brain, I grabbed a book, thinking that if the class got too long for my limited physical capacity, I would just slip outside and read.

Not so much. Turns out that the whole yoga thing is about staying in the moment, searching within yourself, absorbing the energy of the people in the room.

Just one class, and a few days later she was already “jones-ing for yoga.” :)

From At Risk: Of Resembling a Pretzel

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.]

I was thinking the other day about what I wanted to be in the future. When I grow up. I want be someone who practices yoga and meditation every day.

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.

What are you looking at?

Ahoy people! Someone nice has gone and interviewed me. What are the hidden gems of the NYC yoga scene? What’s the best music for yoga practice? How awesome is the Yogoer iPhone app? I know these are the questions keeping you up at night. So go ahead and read the full interview on MindBodyGreen!

Q & A with Erica Heinz of Yogoer: Hidden Gems of NYC Yoga, Her Favorite Yoga Music, iPhone App, and More!

You can spend quite a while there, reading inspiring interviews and illuminating overviews. MindBodyGreen is a great new digest of healthy living content. I just learned The 7 P’s of Goal Setting! Plus, you can vote up any news article, or submit one yourself. Enjoy!

How do you keep your practice schedule organized? For me, pen and paper never gets old. And this week I made it into full color:

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…

Yesterday I taught a workshop for Internet Week NY. I’d randomly decided their schedule of events needed “yoga and teatime” in addition to the lectures and cocktail parties. I set up an RSVP form, so I could gauge interest and experience levels, and had 40 people “interested”, and 14 people RSVP. Nearly all marked their experience level as “0–10 classes”; none marked “over 100″. So I got to thinking about what I wanted to teach in a true beginners’ class — the last time I taught beginners, I was still teaching the Atmananda Sequence verbatim.

I knew that Sun Salutations were a good place to start; they supposedly contain every essential alignment, and since students are forced to do them all the time in classes, they would be valuable topics to cover.

I was also thinking about the specific audience: Internet Week participants, i.e. people who sit in Computer Pose 40 hours a week. So I thought some wrist, shoulder, neck, and back movements might be good: Table Top, Locust, Rabbit, Seated Crescent, Spinal Twist, Bow. Also some stretches for the hip flexors, which sit in 90º forward bends all day: Lunges, Hero, Camel.

And I was chewing on something Leslie said last week: “the PRINCIPLE of Chaturanga is learning to hold the body all in one piece.” (Quote is approximate.) It was so interesting to think about a single lesson we can learn in each pose. And then I thought, well, this is a good thing to work on in ALL poses: finding the unity and integration of the body. On a practical level, it teaches us to avoid injury by using our whole body to lift boxes, get out of bed, stand on our heads, etc. On a mental/emotional level, it reduces the hierarchical war of head, heart, gut, and hips; we want them ALL to be happy and acknowledged. And it’s a good metaphor for the Internet: bringing vast and varied communities together in one piece. It’s kind of the whole point of yoga: union, coming together.

Finally, I was feeling like challenging Down Dog. Ever since my shoulder injury, I have been realizing how complex this pose actually is. There are a thousand ways you can arrange the shoulders in this pose, and a thousand points of emphasis. It’s a subtle balancing act of how much to widen the shoulders (or not), externally rotate the upper arms, internally rotate the forearms, straighten the arms (or not), send the sitbones or the tail to the sky, lengthen the spine or relax the neck… and that’s not even getting into the unique upper body strength one must build. (Practicing Half Down Dog standing at the wall is a great start, but still we need something to fill the vinyasa.) So, all I needed was another relevant aside from Leslie (“Down Dog, for all its ubiquity, is not really a beginner’s pose…”) to have the validation I needed to try something new. (Leslie, here’s a prime cut of someone taking your ideas and bastardizing them straight into yoga class ;) Child’s Pose is the usual substitution, but I didn’t want to lose the upper body strengthening entirely, so I played around with Dolphin, the forearm stand version of Down Dog, where I could focus on the shoulders and upper arms more clearly.

And then I took some of my favorite poses and glued everything together in an order that flowed. Here it is. It went well enough that I got a round of applause at the end of the class :) :) :) For those of you that attended the class, I hope you enjoyed it and find a way to make it your own!

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Sangha Yoga Shala

Sangha Yoga Shala, a new studio in Williamsburg, opened its doors yesterday. They stopped by to announce an open house this Sunday, May 3rd:

FREE Yoga classes, food, demonstrations, and Bob Marley? Swing by to celebrate the opening of Sangha Yoga Shala!

All events are free.  We highly recommend that you call (7183842097)  and email info@sanghayoganyc.com to pre-register for the yoga classes as they will fill up!

10–11:30am  Free Vinyasa Class with Sara Little
12–1:15pm  Free Basics Class with Cory Washburn
1:30–3pm  Yoga Jam, accupuncture demos, reflexology demos, and much more…
3:15–4:30pm  Free Open Vinyasa Class with Malissa Larson
4:45–  Music Jam

If you’re around, check them out! 107 North 3rd Street (between Berry and Wythe), #2H.

“The whole system that we live in drills into us that we’re powerless, that we’re weak, that our society is evil, that it’s fraudulent, and so forth. It’s all a big fat lie. We are powerful, beautiful, extraordinary. There is no reason why we cannot understand who we truly are, where we are going. There is no reason why the average individual cannot be fully empowered. We are incredibly powerful beings.”

“I think I spent thirty years of my life trying to become something, I wanted to become good at things. I wanted to become good at tennis, I wanted to become good at school, and grades, and everything I kind of viewed in that perspective: I’m not okay the way I am, but if I got good at things… I realized I had the game wrong — the game was to find out what I already was.”

“Now, in our culture we’ve been trained for individual differences to stand out, so you look at each person and the immediate hit is brighter, dumber, older, younger, richer, poorer, and we make all of these dimensional distinctions, put them in categories and treat them that way. And we get so that we only see others as separate from ourselves, in the ways in which they’re separate, and one of the dramatic characteristics of experience is being with another person and suddenly seeing the ways in which they are like you, not different from you. And experiencing the fact that which is essence in you, and which is essence in me, is indeed ONE, the understanding that there is no other, it is all one.”

— Zeitgeist, The Movie

Sri Dharma Mittra

Dharma Mittra, the inimitable (or eminently imitable) senior teacher, just emailed these tips for the new year:

1. Spend time Meditating. Meditation is unbroken concentration and the most effective type is self-reflection. Spend at least 15 minutes meditating every morning.
2. Get serious about your practice! One must get serious and simply attending class is not enough. Spend at least 15 minutes each morning doing Asana and focus on the main ones: Headstand, Shoulderstand, Plow, Fish and Cobra.
3. Drink lots of green juices and remember the first Yama, Ahimsa. As long as you are involved with violence, your meditation will go nowhere.
4. Understand the five subtle bodies or sheathes so that you can commence negating them at once.
5. How you begin something is of great significance. If you begin the New Year with a big mug of coffee, it sets the wrong tone for the entire year to come. Begin 2009 committed to the attainment of Self-Knowledge.
6. Outside of the three main texts, The Bhagavad Gita, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and Yoga Padipika, read and study Swami Sivananda’s Self-Knowledge as it contains all the answers.
7. Dedicate the fruit of all action and be nice to everyone. OM Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.

I found them inspiring and hope you do too. Lots of good ways to start the new year here. I did my 15 minutes of meditation and asana this morning; it was great to be reminded that it’s not how much you practice, but how regularly, and that the basic principles are the most important achievements.

If you’re ever in New York for New Year’s, I highly recommend Dharma’s New Year’s Eve classes. The vibe is intense and uplifting. He did not do the midnight celebration last night, but taught his regular 6pm Asana and 7:30pm Meditation/Psychic Development. The former is an open-level vinyasa class, the latter is chants and breathing exercises to purify and strengthen the mind. Both began with Dharma talks that really cleared my mind. (And then my evening was free to see Blonde Redhead at Terminal 5!) The center is chanting 108 Hanuman Chalisas all day today, so if you’re near 23rd and 3rd drop by for a little spiritual high.

PS — You can download Swami Sivananda’s book, and others, for free at The Divine Life Society.