If your legs start to fall asleep during meditation, switch to Baddha Konasana (Butterfly / Cobbler Pose) for a minute. Press the soles of the feet together. That should return some blood flow to the legs and wake them up.

Last night’s meditation built on Tara’s class about the three focal points: at the perineum, the heart, and the roof of the mouth. For each pose, the focal point is the one bearing most of the weight (usually lowest in space). So standing poses are focused on the pelvis, arm balances are focused on the heart, inversions are focused on the soft palette (generally). Tara had us imagine an egg at each one (as a symbol of rebirth, for Easter), drawing the muscular energy to this point and then opening away from it. Harshada had us silently repeat the syllable Ram at each one, slowly raising the vibration from the base of the spine into the skull. It was like sinking into a warm bath; super hypnotic.

A new leaf?

Super late on posting this, but I wanted to share some healthy New Year’s Eve options! I’ve done yoga on NYE for the past four years (at home, in the Bahamas, and here in NYC), and it leaves you WAY less broke and hungover than the typical celebration. And if your New Year’s resolution is to do yoga, you’ve started the very first minute on the right foot.

From sweaty vinyasa to silent meditation, here are some favorite activities for the night.

The round up for NYE 2010/2011:

Silent Meditation at Jivamukti — Wonderful event in the center of the city. Three-hour silent meditation, then chanting and talk with Sharon Gannon and David Life. I went to the meditation last year, the huge center was knee-to-knee cozy full. This year they’re doing a whole week of master classes for the week following.

5–7 pm Master Class with Sharon and David
7–8 pm Vegan Dinner in the Jivamuktea Café ($85 for class and dinner)
8–9 pm Kirtan with Sanga!
9–12am Silent Meditation (FREE)
12–12:30am Chanting & New Year’s Message from Sharon and David

PLUS master classes at the Prince George Ballroom January 1st–7th

Silent Meditation NYE details

AcroYoga at Om Factory — For a more lively vibe, head up to the Garment District for some partner vinyasa, partner acrobatics, and Thai massage. You don’t need to bring a friend; you’ll find plenty of them there. Come back the next afternoon for 108 Sun Salutations with Emilia Conradson!

8pm–12am
Champagne toast at midnight!
$40 pre-registered; $50 at the door

AcroYoga NYE details

Kundalini at Golden Bridge — You’ll have a whole new kind of buzz after three hours of kundalini yoga (including meditation, chanting, and trance dance). Great company, great space in Nolita.

9pm–1am

$60 advance ($68 day of) includes Indian food, sweets, and chai tea

Kundalini NYE details

Vinyasa Jam and/or Kirtan at Laughing Lotus — More fun, and serious rock stars, at Chelsea’s most colorful studio. Sweat and flow with the wonderful Mary Dana Abbott, and stick around to chant your head off with the legendary Bhagavan Das. Go ahead and register, it will fill up.

8–9:30pm — Class with Mary Dana Abbott
10–12am — Kirtan with Bhagavan Das

$20 for the yoga class
$50 for the kirtan (in advance, $60 at the door)

Vinyasa Jam NYE details

Prana Flow at Sonic Yoga — An amazing troupe of yoga people will be partying at the newly expanded Sonic Yoga (Shiva Rea’s NYC base camp) in Midtown West. Simon Park, Lori McAlister, Emiliya Zhivotovskaya, and more. Yummy food and raw chocolate drinks!

7pm — Prana Flow Yoga Classes
10pm — Abundance Meditation
10:30pm — Kirtan and Live Music
11:30pm — Midnight Yoga Trance Dance
Midnight — Champagne/sparkling cider toast

$40 advance / $50 at event
Proceeds go to: REBUILD GLOBALLY for Haiti Brock Cahill’s Environmental Project

Prana Flow NYE details

Guided Meditation at Vishwa Dharma Mandalam — Slow down and clear your mind with some mantras and meditation in the East Village.

8:30 pm — Recitation of the Shanti Mantras (“the sound vibrations of peace,” believed to remove all obstacles)
10 pm — Art Performance by Radha Devi
10:30 pm — Guided Meditation
11 pm — Live Kirtan (devotional chanting)

$21 suggested donation

Guided meditation NYE details

108 Sun Salutations at Integral — If you already have plans, prep for your evening with the yoga version of a marathon: 108 sun salutations. (It’s not as bad as it sounds, you really get into a zone after about 20.) Integral’s old-school West Village vibe is its own treat.

5:15–6:45pm

by donation

108 Sun Salutations NYE details

Quantum Mind Intensive at the New York Hilton — I have no idea what this is but it sounds awesome. I would like a quantum mind. It’s only $400…

Friday, 31 Dec 2010, 7:30 PM–12:30 AM
Saturday, 1 Jan 2011, 10 AM–5 PM

$200 for each day

Quantum mind NYE details

More? Jo Brill is leading a Sanskrit retreat upstate the following week.

Still more? Let us know in the comments.

Book 1, Sutra 30: Disease, dullness, doubt, carelessness, laziness, sensuality, false perception, failure to reach firm ground and slipping from the ground gained – these distractions of the mind-stuff are the obstacles.

I’ve been thinking about obstacles. New York is full of them. About a month ago I went to the kirtan at Sonic and one of the song we did was a chant to Ganesha. One of the cantors talked about Ganesha as the remover of obstacles, or the one who carefully places obstacles in our way when we need them. I didn’t understand this later explanation and it’s been nagging at the back of my mind.

In Book 1, Sutra 30, Patanjali talks about the nature of obstacles, and their residence in the mind. Despite that I consider my biggest obstacles to live outside of my own body, Patanjali reminds me that the true obstacles are within, in the mind. Linking this to Book 1, Sutra 4, I realized that the most effective way to remove obstacles, internal or external, is to change my mind about them.

I thought some more about the cantor’s description of Ganesha. The Prana has a sense of humor and a sense of deep compassion. There are obstacles within me that I have been turning away from for too long. I deal with them by avoiding them. So Ganesha, in his wisdom, forces me to deal with my obstacles by placing other obstacles in my way that I must respond to, ones that I cannot turn away from. And in dealing with those obstacles, I am being forced to deal with the bigger obstacles within.

I need to slow down, to learn how to make and stick to boundaries, to find my edge and live there – mentally and physically – so he handed me a yoga practice so intense that I have a sore bum and the need for far more sleep than usual. I have no choice but to slow down and consider what it is that I’m really trying to do with this life. For too long, I’ve been so worried that if I slow down, I’ll miss out. I’ll lose an opportunity or a lucky break.

Since I was a child, I have struggled with insomnia. My mind and my body literally couldn’t calm down and go to sleep. Now almost 2/3 of the way through this yoga teacher training, I am sleeping better than I ever have in my life. For 18 minutes a day, I think about these two Sutras. I think about changing my mind, and I wait. And the opportunities, better than ever, are showing up. I don’t need to keep looking around for a better life. The one I have is amazing; now’s the time to slow down and appreciate every moment.

An oldie but a goodie. We’ve all been here.

Cover illustration from The New Yorker: December 8, 2003. Illustrator unknown.

We all know that stress is killing us. Or at the very least, aging and annoying us. It’s wearing out our adrenal glands, graying our hair, lowering our immunity, disrupting our sleep, and building our bulges. But how can we battle a cultural cornerstone? What are we, if not busy?

If you reduce stress and restore your energy, you’ll be more productive while doing less.

Read more on the Huffington Post

Alan Finger

Yesterday morning I headed up to Union Square. Slushy weather and train delays didn’t help the trip, and I began my meditation practice a bit early as I tried to let the irritable thoughts float up and away.

9:35 was still a fine time to arrive, it turns out. I settled onto a bolster and blanket in the middle of the large, elegant room. Plain white walls and smooth dark floors led up to a colorfully preserved door frame, in front of which sat a beaming Alan Finger.

One of NYC / LA’s most well-known teachers, Alan is the co-founder of ISHTA here in New York. (ISHTA stands for Integrated Science of Hatha, Tantra, and Ayurveda.) He studied with Paramahansa Yogananda (author of the pivotal Autobiography of a Yogi), Swami Nishraisananda (a scientist turned yogi), Swami Venkatesananda (a student of Sivananda), and Shuddhanand Bharati (a Tantric master). He also founded/co-founded YogaZone, Be Yoga, and YogaWorks. I’d seen Alan on the screen, in the yoga documentary Enlighten Up! He’s just as funny and enjoyable in person.

Alan started off with a self-described “sales pitch” on the benefits of yoga, specifically the ISHTA sequence for meditation he was going to teach us. Yes, alternate nostril breathing seems simple and boring, but it really works! Yes, you have to practice every day. But if you do, this sequence will take you to transcendence in just about… 11 or 12 years. (You can practice every morning from 4–7am, like Alan did, if you want to shave a few years off.)

So. The ISHTA meditation sequence. The “Ishta Diksa.” It has five parts:

1. Pre-meditative Asana (to stretch out the stiffness, “instead of trying to OM it away”)
2. Nadi Shodhana Pranayama (alternate nostril breathing — just 4 rounds, eventually maybe 8)
3. Hum Sa Kriya (inhaling Hum up to the mid-brain, exhaling Sa down to the base of the spine, visualizing a white ball of light tracing the path)
4. Ajna Bedhana (lick your finger and wet the center of the forehead, to “pierce” the third eye… meditate there for 18 minutes)
5. Mantras (to ground the energy, a few repetitions of each of these mantras)

We were fairly close together in the large room, but it was fine for the simple warm up sequences of Cat-Cow, Cobra, Child’s Pose, etc. I managed the whole thing in cords and a sweater; you don’t really even need a mat. The breathing exercises, the kriya, and the meditation brought tingles up my spine. Alan walked around doing Shaktipat (raising kundalini energy, usually by holding a hand gesture near the student), and the tingles intensified like the teeth of a comb running up my scalp and flying out the crown of my head.

We grounded ourselves (brought the energy out of our heads, and back down towards the earth) with the mantras and a few more poses. The mantras were complicated — I was absorbed just trying to match the hand gestures — and I didn’t want to do any more asana, but I had to admit I felt more settled and less spacey afterwards. (He made us do wall sits! I haven’t done that since early morning crew practice.)

I was tickled and touched by the experience, and happy to have another spot of inspiration to support my meditation attempts. Thank you Alan!

“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.

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!

Like most public classes, Shambhala is breath-centered meditation. Like New York Insight, it’s mindfulness meditation in the Buddhist tradition. The difference between the two centers, the instructor answered, is that Shambhala includes mantra (a repeated phrase) or mudra (a hand gesture) meditations.

We started with a brief overview of technique, followed by a short sitting. There are big block cushions to sit on, or chairs for tight hips. I tried to focus my attention, and keep my gaze soft. Then, the instructor took questions and answers: What do I do if my back hurts? What does it mean when I get distracted? What’s the point? Finally, we did a brief walking meditation, which stretches out the stiffness of sitting, and provides a transition for taking the meditative mind out into the world.

If you’re looking for a New Year’s resolution, meditation practice is a great one. Drop into Shambhala any Wednesday at 6pm.