Yoga U The College Student’s Tools for Balanced Living
Written by Shira Engel Illustrated by Julia Drachman
Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Foreword Introduction WTF is Yoga? And What Does It Have to do with U? Yoga for College Students: A Revolution of Radical Proportions The College Yogi Behind the Page Structure: Exploring the Architecture of this Book Part I – Karmic Campus Chapter 1 – Turn Your Dorm Room into a Yoga Studio Packing List Sacred Space Create an Altar: Worship Beyonce Be Fierce, Be Kali: Goddess of Time & Space Chapter 2 – Take It to the Stacks: Yoga in the Library Get in the Zone Finals Week as a College Yogi Headstand in the Stacks Poses to Reenergize Ganesh: Remover of Obstacles Chapter 3 – Lecture Hall: How to Practice Yoga in Class Focus!/Find Your Drishdi Professor/Guru Bathrooms Are Sacred Sarasvati: Goddess of Learning Chapter 4 – Dining Hall Yoga + Food: Is that a Thing? The Yoga of Eating Agni: God of Fire
Chapter 5 – Field/Hill Salute the Sun (Literally) Spread the Practice Throw a Yoga Dance Party Hanuman: Monkey God of Play Chapter 6 – Partaay Sthira & Sukha: Work Hard, Party Hard Lila: Play Pregame with Yoga Yoga Party Tricks Nataraja: God of Dance Part 2 – Patanjali’s Eight-Limbed Path Chapter 7 – Who’s this Dude Patanjali? Yoga Philosophy 101: Be a Nice Person Take it Off the Mat Chapter 8 – Yamas: What Not to Do Ahimsa: Stop the Violence! Satya: Let’s Get Real Asteya: Don’t Cheat Brahmacharya: Be Mindful Aparigraha: If You’re Gonna Take, Ya Gotta Give Chapter 9 – Niyamas: Be Awesome Saucha: Cleanliness Santosha: Contentment Tapah: Discipline Svadhyaya: Self-Study Isvarapranidhana: Surrender Chapter 10 – Asana: It All Starts on the Mat Create a Passionate Home Practice! Go With the Flow: Find Your Vinyasa Krama Components of a Home Practice Mix ’n Match Asana Personalize Your Practice Chapter 11 – Pranayama: Just Breathe! The Revolution Lies in the Breath
Inhale, Exhale, & Everything In Between Mix ’n Match Pranayama Chapter 12 – Pratayahara: Let Go Cleanse: Shedding Energy Letting Go Chapter 13 – Dharana: Concentrate! Find Your Purpose Set Your Intention Chapter 14 – Dhyana: Meditation Get Quiet Metta: Lovingkindness Meditation Chapter 15 – Samadhi: Blissful Union Get Your Ass to the Beach Get Connected Part 3 – cOMmunity Chapter 16 – Create a Campus Yoga Community So Many Words for Community Create a Campus Yoga Community Part 4 – Student Planner: Yoga for Days of the Week Sunday: Restorative Monday: Vinyasa Tuesday: Ashtanga Wednesday: Partner Yoga Thursday: The Kaivalya Method Friday: Shake It Out Saturday: Lotus Flow Part 5 – Yoga Valedictorians
Shira Atkins Amanda White-Graff Katherine McComic Leigh Stewart Glossary Resource Guide Gratitude About the Author About the Illustrator
Yoga U The College Student’s Tools for Balanced Living
Written by Shira Engel Illustrated by Julia Drachman
© 2012 by Shira Engel All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means or in any form whatsoever without written permission from the publisher. Illustrations, cover design, and book design by Julia Drachman ISBN
This book is dedicated to the amazing souls I met through Three Sisters Yoga, the teachers who teach me how to teach, and the people who inspire me to live life to the fullest (and to do so mindfully!). This is for all the students I have had at Wesleyan University who are my teachers as well. This is dedicated to yogis who I love deeply and the friends who keep me grounded in the journey.
Foreword I have been practicing and teaching yoga for over a decade now. When I started, I was a college student at the University of Denver pursuing a degree in Physics. Taking a yoga class was so far from my set of interests that it took a dare from a friend to finally get me to class. When I went, it changed my life. Suddenly, I’d found something that boosted my confidence, alleviated the pain in my back and shoulders and gave me a brighter outlook on life. Another interesting side effect was that it made managing my college experience far easier. My study time was more effective and my papers contained an air of positivity that had previously been lacking in my over-analytical science brain. As soon as I graduated college, I took a hard left turn and became a yoga instructor. It has been my profession ever since and I have travelled the world, written a book, been featured in magazines, and taught conferences and teacher trainings. As a resident of New York City, my wellestablished practice continues to keep me sane, productive and optimistic about all of life’s ups and downs. Oh, how I had wished that someone had been thoughtful enough to write the book Ms. Engel is writing for you all now! My college yoga experience was a pivotal point in my life that obviously altered the direction of my future, but I came to it with such low expectations because at that time, no one had yet paved the way for young people to do yoga. Though I was taking class at my college gym, I was the youngest person in the room! Nowadays, it seems the popularity of yoga has not only made it more widespread, but has also broadened the age range of the beginner yogi, and I’m thrilled to be seeing more college-age students in yoga classes. At one of my local yoga studios in Manhattan, the population is primarily NYU students and every time I have the chance to teach there, I can’t help but think what a gift this is for the minds of these students. They will have the optimism, openness and courage to go from their studies to life, the workplace and the families they build after their college career. They’ll enter into their professions (which, in New York can mean 80 hour work weeks!) with the fortitude and gratitude that yoga teaches. It’s exciting and I can’t thank Shira enough for offering the tools of yoga so wisely to her community with this exciting book. Trust me, she’s done the work that she’s offering you - I’ve seen her do it because she came to me as a yoga student several years ago while still in high school. As a bright light in my classes then, she continues to shine with her writings, and now she’s taking them from blog to book to offer you the best of the tools she’s cultivated over her many years of practice as both a yogi and a student. What you’re about to find in these pages are not just tools that will get you through the next four years, but tools that will create the foundational experiences to pave the way for all your endeavors. I don’t say that lightly. Eventually this yoga stuff permeates your grey matter in such a way that it becomes not just a lifestyle, but your life. There is goodness and joy to be found within these pages, and I hope that these blessings stay with you for the rest of your term... in college and in life. With great love, Alanna Kaivalya
Introduction
WTF IS YOGA? AND WHAT DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH U? WHAT I SAY The word “Yoga” comes from the Sanskrit root “yuj,” which means to yoke or unite. This term is complex because it can mean something different for everyone. There are as many “Yogas” as there are people. That said, let’s go with this interpretation of Yoga as “union.” College students tend to fall into states of disconnect; students view body and mind as separate, when they are inherently inseparable. Yoga is anything that brings these two entities into one. This means that Yoga can be a class you take at the gym, meditation, deep breathing, or a combination of all these practices. A yoga practice has the potential to serve as a barometer, to assess how you are doing. A yoga practice asks, “How willing you are to take care of yourself in the midst of a stressful environment?” It is dependable and constantly malleable. In order to use yoga as an effective barometer, however, we have to be unafraid to make it mean something to us, as the unique individuals we are. Yoga is revolutionary because we interpret it for ourselves. What I offer in this book is an interpretation of ancient yoga philosophy, poses and sequences that teach us how to embody that philosophy, and a wide variety of ways to have it all make sense in your bodies, minds, and hearts. It is crucial to note that I am offering an interpretation of an interpretation of an interpretation and so on. Yoga itself is interpretation because it is customizable. Make this practice work for you, not the other way around. If you try to shift yourself to fit the practice, you are going to get bored or sick of it. Instead, make the practice fit who you are because who you are is AWESOME. This is radical. This is taking tradition, turning it on its head, and making it work for us so we do not lose it. Many people shirk away from modifying and reforming tradition because they think it is disrespectful. But honestly, if we do not do that, it will die out, which is terrifying because this is a tradition that makes people happy and happiness should never die out.
WHAT TRADITION SAYS The above is what I say Yoga is. This dude Patanjali has a whole lot more to say on the subject. ATHA YOGANUSASANAM ATHA = now YOGA = yoga
NOW THE TEACHINGS OF YOGA CAN BEGIN
ANUSASANAM = teachings
Sounds simple, right? Yes and no. This makes so much sense and when we’re on our mats, don’t we already know that? Why do we need a whole commentary on it? We don’t live in a society of Now. We live in a society of if, when, could’ve, should’ve, and but. Now is weaning its way out of the vocabulary of day-to-day living. Now is actually the antithesis of the college student’s crappiest friend: procrastination. First, we will put off writing the paper until the library is absolutely silent. Then, we’ll say that we can’t do our asana practice until we write the paper. Not living in the now perpetuates a vicious cycle of neglecting the self. To say, “Now the yoga begins” is revolutionary when we create conditions for ourselves to be our best instead of trying to best ourselves. All yoga asks of us is to stay present. It is one of the highest commands and one of the most important. Yoga can be an amazing check-in point to see what else is going on in our lives. Have I neglected my practice because I thought the yoga should begin another day? What’s happening that’s making me do that? Can I do the practice anyway and see how I feel afterwards? These are all questions that, when asked, can help us use this practice of staying present, this practice of yoga, as a tool for life not once we graduate, but now. YOGASH CHITTA VRITTI NIRODHAH YOGASH = Yoga -('(' #"&#' ! "
YOGA IS THE CESSATION OF THE FLUCTUATIONS OF THE MIND
NIRODHAH = restraint So what are chitta vrittis for the college yogi? Visualize yourself in yoga class or sitting in the library trying to crank out a paper. Your mind goes to: Is last night’s hookup going to text me? Should I not have given out my number? What is wrong with me? Oh no, I made a mistake! Or, I have so much to do in so little time. I have this paper and that paper and that problem set and that write-up and how am I going to do it all at once? What did I get myself into? Or, What’s for
dinner? I hate the new dining hall. Who am I going to go with? Is the vegan option going to be good enough? Have a headache yet? Does any of this sound familiar? These are all aspects of chitta vrittis, otherwise known as the fluctuations of the mind. These various questions and analyses we pose to ourselves on a daily basis share some commonalities: they project into either the future or the past, and they are entirely unnecessary in the present. They are distractions. They modify what is going on in the moment so it makes it more difficult to focus. In many ways, they are jailers - they bind us to thoughts that are not facts. Now, we’re human so we get them all the time. I know I do and a huge reason why I now do yoga is to quiet that chitta and to simply observe them. That last part of the sutra, nirodhah (restraint) allows me to be gentle when I see the chitta pass by and the way I interpret it is that I restrain myself from judging these modifications and acting on them inappropriately.
YOGA FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS: A REVOLUTION OF RADICAL PROPORTIONS If you are reading this book, chances are, you have experienced the daily stresses of college life and that hour-long release yoga can offer from that inner turmoil. Maybe you know what it is like to pull an all-nighter and stare in bathroom mirrors peering at gray skin. Maybe you know what it is like to be faced with the daunting social pressures of constantly being surrounded by new people, new situations, and a new lifestyle. Maybe you are searching for a lifestyle that does not solely consist of beer, tests, and random hookups. And maybe, just maybe, you have found some time to explore yoga. Maybe your roommate swears by it. Maybe you’re even a trained yoga teacher. Maybe you just stare at mat-toting happy-looking people and think, “If only I were flexible...” Perhaps you yourself have taken a yoga class during a particularly stressful day and, for ninety minutes, all your worries and that everything-is-a-big deal attitude you carry around melted away as you held weird poses and felt strength emerge from your spine. Before you left for school, middle-aged relatives probably crowded around you at family functions to inform you that you were about to enter “the best four years of your life.” Then, you get to school, experience the sheer awkwardness of freshman orientation, and are suddenly so busy and overwhelmed with classes, extracurriculars, and new friends that you begin to forget to breathe and take it all in. So let me ask you: how are you supposed to experience the best four years of your life if you can’t even appreciate the present moment? Yoga is revolutionary because Yoga IS the present moment. It teaches us and gives us the tools to tap into the now so that we can better appreciate our experiences, from the daily to the evolutionary to the revolutionary. Through practices that are both challenging and simple, we learn to face life’s obstacles head-on. College is intended to harness our tremendous potential to change the world. It encourages us to be selfish in the best of ways - to focus on what we want to learn, broaden our horizons, burst bubbles, and cultivate new understandings. The point of college as both an institution and time of life is to train us to engage with the world as people who know their purpose and have the power to fulfill it. In yoga, this purpose is called dharma and the point of yoga is actually the same as the point of college when it comes to fulfilling your dharma: the practice gives you the tools to engage with the world with impact.
But how on earth are we supposed to change the world if we are so worried, preoccupied, and lost? We are a generation in desperate need of a practice that gets us out of our heads so that when we return to them we can start using those noggins of ours more efficiently. We are a generation that forgets we have a body as we mindlessly munch, hunched over in the library. That body is constantly deprived of sleep, and forgets to breathe all too often. College, a stage of life that is intended for personal and collective growth, becomes akin to a pressure cooker... and we are water that is about to boil over unless we turn down the heat. Yoga turns down the heat. So maybe you practice yoga already or have tried a class in town and experienced the pressure being turned down, like a lid being removed from a pot of overflowing oatmeal. Then, you emerge from savasana, head to dinner with your friends, get caught up in someone else’s drama and proceed to freak out. This is what happens when we access only one dimension (the physical) of a multidimensional practice. We deprive ourselves of letting that feeling last. It’s not like we can just take savasana all the time. If we did, of what use would we be to the world? That would just be yoga, but what we need for a revolution to take place is Yoga. The capitalization is a subtle, but remarkable difference because it shows us that Yoga is not just the physical - it has the potency to address all areas of life and it can be accessed wherever, whenever so that we can approach each situation, from an exam to a frat party, with greater love, compassion, equanimity, and calm.
YOGA, SLAM POETRY, & ACTIVISM Where I go to school, slam poetry is the new football. At the start of every slam, the MC will remind the audience, “The point is not the point. The point is the poetry!” This is true for Yoga as well…but we’ll use different terms to coin our metaphor. In Yoga, the point is not the pose; the point is what that pose can do for you, how it can allow you to carry yourself off the mat and into the world. If the pose exists exclusively on the mat, it does not matter. At all. “But it gets me a tight ass,” I hear the whines. Okay, maybe those surya namaskars are working your toosh, but what exactly are you going to do with that tight ass? Where is it going to go? What meaning can you cultivate for yourself on the mat that you can take out into the world?
THE COLLEGE YOGI BEHIND THE PAGE Yoga teaches me that stability in life comes through stability with breath. I always thought that stability meant being static, unmoving, but when I started college, I discovered just how wrong I was. When I got to my small liberal arts college in middle-of-nowhere Connecticut, I was filled with
fear mingled with excitement. I had spent the better part of my adolescence establishing a routine for wellness (I was lucky – I started early) and that was about to be shaken up…or so I thought. In my senior year of high school, I worked for a yoga studio and began practicing five days a week. I fell in love with Jivamukti and Anusara and hot power yoga and so, so much more. I was getting an education in a spiritual and physical discipline. I became attached to the very practice that teaches detachment. I tried out one yoga class in a studio in that very small town and did not feel challenged. I grew disappointed and, for two weeks, complacent. I let my practice go for a little while and realized just how much it meant to me in the first place. I became overwhelmed by schoolwork and spent hours in the library, my body hunched over books, always leaning forwards or reclining backward. At a campus Buddhist meditation event, I remembered a very wise yoga teacher telling me that when our spine leans forward, we are projecting into the future and when our spine leans back, we are dwelling in the past. When our spine is aligned and erect (as is the posture of yogis), we are content in the present. With that memory, my yoga practice returned. I began a home practice. They say that necessity is the mother of invention and I say that college is the instigator of creativity. There wasn’t much creativity involved when I lived in a city filled to the brim with yoga studios. I did not have to work for my practice when I could rely on external forces. In going to college, I learned that enlightenment takes work. Here are some lessons I’ve learned: 1. You can practice anywhere. If any college practitioner has a right to this claim, it’s me. I was assigned to a forced triple (three full sets of furniture squeezed into a room designed for two). There was literally no floor space. My mat had nowhere to go. In the beginning, this seemed ironic because double the roommates, double the stress, double the need for yoga to chill me out, but it turns out that this could be relabeled as an opportunity for me to explore the nooks and crannies of campus. I have practiced yoga in underground graffitied tunnels (where I struck my most badass Warrior Two yet), student lounges with people running through during my practice (see lesson 2), friends’ rooms (see lesson 3), and in the beautiful grass when the weather has been especially nice. When there is willingness, there is a way. 2. Breathe through the distractions. Face it: there will be distractions. It’s about creating a practice strong enough to withstand distractions. Breath is key. During my third week at school, I was in Bird of Paradise in the lounge. Already a tough balancing pose, I began to wobble as I heard a flock (pun intended) of students rushing through in between classes. I did not respond. I did not have to explain myself; the lounge is a communal space – I had just as much a right there practicing yoga as they had using it as a shortcut. Instead, I breathed deeply and guess what? I held the pose! I learned how to maintain my practice in the face of
distractions. That will serve me wherever this practice takes me. 3. Bond with like-minded people. Yoga has a way of sneaking its way into dining hall conversations. I began to share that I practiced and you know what I found out? I am not alone. Others were working just as hard as I was to maintain their regular practice at school so why not lighten the load by working together? I began to set up “yoga play dates” with these new friends. We would reserve dance rooms and take turns teaching each other. This became an excellent way to practice teaching and learning simultaneously. 4. You are your own best teacher. Before college, I relied heavily on my teachers’ guidance. I allowed them to tell me where my body should go instead of trusting myself. It was too easy not to. Necessity allowed me to establish a home practice. Spontaneously, I began getting on my mat and seeing where my body would take me. I didn’t have to do anything. My breath guides me through transitions and creates more space in my body. I know my body best and I needed to practice on my own in order to learn that. 5. Take it off the mat. College is stressful. Life is stressful. But it does not have to be all the time. The Buddha says, “Suffering is optional.” A regular yoga practice reinforces this. When I can get present with the breath and create space in my life through creating space in my body, day-to-day tasks lose their intimidation. During midterm week, I walked into the student-run café after practicing and the barista asked me how I was doing. “I’m doing really well,” I emphasized. He looked at me, shocked, and asked, “Shira, have you forgotten about midterms?” “Oh, no,” I responded. “I’m just following my post-yoga bliss right now and I’m ready to get some work done.” “You do that,” he laughed. Seeing as I am writing this book and dedicating a large part of my young life to the practice, I clearly love yoga. I can give you a gazillion and one reasons for why a yoga practice can change your life, and another zillion reasons for why a yoga practice can transform the whole “college is the best four years of your life” adage from myth into reality. But none of those reasons matter. What matters is why you, as the unique, vibrant, awesome individual you are, want to practice yoga. And guess what? This is not a multiple-choice test. There are no bubbles you have to fill in. Every answer is completely valid. That’s right – there are no wrong answers so dive in.
STRUCTURE: EXPLORING THE ARCHITECTURE OF THIS BOOK Let’s begin with the title: This title has two meanings. One is Yoga University; emblazoned on the cover that this is a book on practicing yoga for college students anywhere, really, but specifically on campus. The second meaning is a bit more text-speak if you will. Yoga + U = yoga for you, as an individual, allowing you to create an authentic, meaningful practice that is deeply personal, as well as physical and spiritual, addressing what yoga does and can mean to you. We begin our journey together virtually. This book began online in the form of my blog on Tumblr, Story of a College Yogi and it was only fitting to have it continue using a similar medium (it makes it all the easier to give you resources!). If I had to give my blog a shorter title, it would be called, “Yoga Me.” It is a virtual expression of my experiences practicing, teaching, and learning about Yoga. Through consistent self-exploration, I learned that it is impossible to focus solely on myself when engaging in spiritual pursuits. To focus solely on the self goes
against the philosophy of yoga. I wanted to know about other people. I wanted to know the stories of other college yogis and pluralize the title of my blog. You might be coming to this book with a story as a college yogi. You might also be approaching this with a desire to write one, meaning that you want a consistent yoga practice, but do not already have one. Both are phenomenal reasons for reading! Like the stages of practicing headstand, there is something here for everyone! We start off with a college tour. Through words and illustrations created by my studio art major of a friend, we go through each part of campus and see how we can be “yogic” (practice the principles of Yoga) in each physical space. What we learn on the mat enters the realm of daily life as we approach campus with fresh post-savasana eyes! You will also find adorable Hindu deities on your Karmic Campus college tour. The deities provide the myths behind the poses we do (that’s right: we put our legs behind our head for a good reason). College yogi Hannah studied abroad in India and did a homestay with a Hindu family. After many conversations with her host father on the subject of the deities, she feels qualified to say: We don’t need to learn all about the Hindu gods. The reason why there are so many and they’re all so different and misbehaved is so we can recognize qualities of ourselves in a few of them and really identify with them to realize that we are gods too. Their purpose it to show us that we’re all holy. It’s all an effort to make us realize that each one of us is important.
After our college tour, we delve straight into the heart of the Yoga practice: Patanjali’s EightLimbed Path. If you haven’t guessed already, this is not a book strictly about the physical practice. If you want to learn how to practice yoga poses, you will get that information here, but your time would be better spent getting on a mat with other practitioners at a class. If you are downloading this book, I am assuming that you already know there is something to read about Yoga, that you know there are philosophical words associated with a practice that is only one part physical. This is where the Eight Limbs come in: they break down all the parts of Yoga (and don’t worry – the physical practice gets plenty of attention) so that you can create a personal practice that benefits mind, body, and spirit. Following is the Student Planner, which gives you full yoga practices in a wide variety of styles that put all the yogic philosophy into practice. We close the guide with a section on cOMmunity because do not forget – this is a book on Yoga for college students. I want to leave you with the biggest takeaway of all: this practice is no good unless you are using it to benefit your relationships with others! To say that you practice yoga means that you are doing something practical. The practicality of anything lies in how we apply it to our day-to-day lives. Creating (or joining) a community rooted in Yoga practices enables us, as college students, to gain group support for a lifestyle that is both individual and communal. We move from theory into practice in our final section: Yoga Valedictorians. The idea for this book began with Story of a College Yogi. It seems only fitting that it ends with the stories of college yogis from a wide variety of universities. Having a life-changing practice at such a young age means that you are being given the tools for living – poses for doing and breathing for being. Discovering yoga in college can mean only one thing: we have been given the Fast Pass at the Six Flags of Life. It means that we are des-
tined for greatness. YOGI’S CHOICE: HOW TO READ THIS BOOK Now that you know the architecture, you get to figure out which stairwell to take! There are numerous ways to approach the content to come and, just like taking a variation of tree pose in yoga class, you get to choose how you take this journey. Here are some ideas: START TO FINISH: You can read this book from start to finish and let the text wash over you like a blissful ocean wave. If you are doing this, don’t annotate – just absorb. Then, go back through individual sections that strike a chord and search for more meaning. 5 BOOKS: Break down this e-book into five separate ones: Karmic Campus, Patanjali’s Eight Limbs, Student Planner, cOMmunity, and Yoga Valedictorians. Read them each separately as books in and of themselves. Maybe you are about to enter college so you begin with Karmic Campus to get a feel for what campus has the potential to do for your yoga practice. Then, a year later, you pick up the Patanjali’s Eight Limbs. Maybe it only takes a week for you to move from book to book. Like an open-level vinyasa class, feel free to move at your own pace! GET PHYSICAL: Even though this book is about more than just the physical practice, feel free to use this book as a manual for what to do with the body by scanning it for the pose illustrations and using those as a two-dimensional yoga class on the go. WORKBOOK: Do every single exercise in this book. Annotate the shit out of it using cool annotating tools for e-books. Practice the poses. Write out your reflections. Be explicit about how each and every part applies to your life.
Part I
Karmic Campus
Let’s go on a college tour! Let’s take a tour through your typical college campus, shall we? Yoga is not meant to be isolated and confined to a yoga mat. It is meant to be used as a way to optimize and create intention in our lives off the mat. What would happen if you made your entire campus your own personal yoga studio?
Chapter 1 Turn Your Dorm Room into a Yoga Studio
PACKING LIST We are grounded in the material world. It is what we first see and what we have access to the second we wake up in the morning. Yoga studios, centers, and schools (ideally) provide a sacred space in which people are encouraged to embrace their bodies, be themselves, and practice yoga. All it takes is mindfulness and careful placement of objects imbued with meaning. In this chapter, I encourage you to cultivate a space that has meaning for YOU and that will encourage the advancement of your yoga practice. As we move into a new journey, we have to pack our U-Haul and make sure it is full of goodness — the stuff we want to keep, not the clutter we let go and give away. Further on in this book, you will encounter some emotional, spiritual, and mental packing lists, but for now, let’s delve into the physical and tangible, that old-school packing list so that you are well-prepared for this journey through your own delicious practice. Note: For information on the best of the best of these yoga essentials, check out the Resource Guide, which includes tips and tricks so that you’re not breaking the bank or creating unnecessary chaos in your teensy tiny living space. ON THE MAT yoga mat (duh) 2 blocks (2 textbooks piled on top of one another = 1 block) blanket (or towel) pillow strap (or scarf) glitter lots and lots of music empty wall for inversions
YOGA HELP dry erase board books on yoga (check out your college’s library catalog)
yoga DVDs podcasts yoga magazines (Yoga Journal or Yoga International)
CLOTHES A note about clothes: You do NOT have to get fancy here. Yoga clothes can be freaking expensive (and, admittedly, adorable), but that is only because fancy shmancy corporate people got wind of the fact that lots of people are into yoga so they jumped on the bandwagon and started making designer labels. But we, the people, were there first. In the privacy of your dorm room, I would even encourage you to be super-radical and do yoga naked. Not only is this nonconformist of you in the face of yoga fashion labels, but it can also be incredibly liberating to feel your body move without anything confining or pressing against it. It can pave the way for new discoveries and maybe even greater acceptance, which is the path of Yoga. For those times when clothes are the appropriate avenue to peruse, here are some ideas:
stretchy pants hair ties/headband shirt sports bra for the ladies T-shirts light sweater (stay warm during savasana) CREATING A SACRED SPACE
photos of loved ones photos of beloved places that inspire you magazine clippings of anything that inspires you nightstand (or shelves covered with a sarong or colorful scarves) pictures/figurines/artwork battery-powered lighting (do NOT get fire safety mad at you for doing candlelit yoga). other forms of non-fluorescent lighting (i.e. do not leave your lighting situation up to your
school. Most schools use fluorescent lights for their residences because it is cheap and wide-reaching. It is artificially bright and therefore not conducive to happiness so you are encouraged to get creative with other forms of lighting and invest in your habitual happiness.) something that represents what hOMe means to you (a teddy bear or letter from your mom or friendship bracelet made for you by your kindergarten BFF)
CREATE AN ALTAR: WORSHIP BEYONCÉ Dorm rooms have the opportunity to be sacred spaces. They are all created the same so it is our job to make them sacred and devotional, in ways that have meaning to us. What do I mean by devotional? I mean that we can dedicate space to remind us of something larger than ourselves. This can be a plan we have for our futures, our dharmas or unique purposes, a deity, or an attitude we want to embody. Sera Beak writes in The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark
(required reading on the imaginary college yogi syllabus), “Altars are personal, concentrated energy centers, places to visit when you’re craving an energetic buzz, when you need a space to vent, or when you’re just seeking some peace of mind.” An altar is a physical representation of our intentions. It is a reminder that should be clearly visible to you and that holds objects you find inspiring. These objects should serve as reminders of your best yogi self, tattoos inked into the skin of your dorm. It should look like yours and no one else’s. Make your altar authentic and beautiful. By authentic, I mean don’t put statues of Hindu deities just because you think that’s what you should do. In fact, don’t do anything because you think it’s what you should do. Random Hindu deities might not have meaning for you, but maybe Beyoncé does… so above the surface of your altar, you put the fiercest “Single Ladies” poster you can find on eBay. Maybe you are yearning for a sexual awakening, so you discreetly put a packet of lube on your altar. Maybe you want to become a better writer, so you include a beautiful pen. Maybe you want to add pizzazz and sparkle into your life so you add a bottle of gold body glitter. Maybe you want better luck so you throw a penny, heads up, onto it. And maybe you do actually connect with a Hindu deity so you head over to a Tibetan goods store and pick up a lil Ganesh or Sarasvati or Kali, daily reminders of the little deities in each of us. This book is about becoming a sustainable person in college. We can use yoga to help us rely on things other than outside circumstances for our sense of self. An altar enables us to create a home wherever we are, showing us that our sense of self does not have to be generic like dorm room walls and it certainly doesn’t have to be erased just because we are in a new location. We are constantly changing. Our outside circumstances are constantly changing. We engage in a perpetual dance with the exterior, material world, but bottom line: it works for us when we create gorgeous altars that are expressions of who we are; we do not work for it.
BE FIERCE, BE KALI: GODDESS OF TIME & SPACE Kali is the most badass goddess out there. Why is she so badass? She makes a way out of no way. She sees a problem and she’s like, “F that.” She finds a means to her end because she has her priorities straight. She is powerful and wears weapons as jewelry. Your yoga practice is like a weapon. It’s not a weapon to be used for violence, of course, but a weapon to cut through challenges, to fight what does not serve you until it no longer bears an effect. Kali is naked except for her weapon jewelry and, like Simba says in The Lion King, she “laughs in the face of danger.” Her job is to use those mighty weapons of hers to cut through illusion. Bottom line: Kali doesn’t take crap from anybody. All deities deal with realms of the human experience. Because Hinduism is not monotheistic, no one deity is in charge of every element of what keeps us alive and happy. Think of these deities as boutiques or specialty stores rather than the mall: you find good quality stuff, but you can’t get it all in one place. Kali is the controller of time and space. We shop in the Kali boutique when we feel deprived of personal space or the time to do what we need for our sanity. Clearly, Kali is who we go to when we need to carve out time and space for a yoga practice.
KALI POSE # Lotus Flow, (i.e. a style that makes up their own poses to add meaning and you " moves Shakti" $ " we stick out tongues out, widen our legs into a large squat, and get down with eagle arms and a breath that sounds like a scream. With this pose, we take up space as we create space, proving to our mats and whomever we are ! ! ! "
Chapter 2 Take it to the Stacks: Yoga in the Library
GET IN THE ZONE Libraries are wonderful. But for college students, they can also be sites of extreme disconnect. Disconnect is the Yoga Superhero’s arch nemesis. Disconnect is the evil villain. Disconnect is following blindly, reading without knowing why, writing without a clear intention or purpose, hunching over and not realizing your vertebrae are out of alignment, sitting for hours and hours only to realize that your leg has fallen asleep. Disconnect is forgetting that minds do not exist without bodies, that we would not have books if there weren’t hands to write them with, that we are whole only when all parts of us (hands, feet, eyes, ears, mouths, arms, legs, lungs, necks, spines) feel heard, witnessed, and loved. We have already established that yoga holds within its depths radical and revolutionary powers. Let us use these powers to revolutionize the library for college students. Go to the library and test this out for yourself. See if these tips and tricks make your experience a bit more pleasant. Okay, it’s time for a field trip! BEFORE YOU GO: !"# Be prepared! Grab one or two items off your altar and take them with you to the library so you can set up an impermanent residence for you to do your work that allows you to feel at home and inspired. You can even bring Ganesh to the library and set the icon next to your computer. Ganesh, that adorable elephant, is a great conversation starter so you can be social during your study break later. $"# Pack a snack or two. Pack protein and complex carbohydrates for the library. The nutrition you need to get in the zone should give you long-lasting energy. Pack snacks that boost brainpower like almonds and blueberries. %"# Fill up your water bottle and thermos. Bring tea to the library or stop by the student-run cafe on your way to stock up on what keeps you warm and hydrated. Libraries can be cold so warm yourself from the inside out. &"# Speaking of warmth, make sure you layer up. Discomfort = distraction. Comfort = focus. This is a mantra.
'"# Wear comfy clothes! Or, shall I say, wear yoga clothes, seeing as the two are often synonymous. That way, you’re just as prepared for some quick asana practices as you are for your work. ("# Text some friends to see who will be in the library with you so you know who to go to when you need a study break massage. UPON ARRIVAL: !"# Survey the space. Channel the fierce mama goddess Kali. Be honest with yourself. Choose a space where you can focus, but where you also won’t feel isolated. $"# Be deliberate with your time. Make every single action - both on and off the mat - a yoga practice, a meditation. So set your intention! Write it down on a hot pink Post-it you slap onto your computer as a steady reminder and drishdi (point of focus) that you can return to throughout your study time. On this Post-it, write in one to two sentences: )"# what you want to accomplish *"# how you want to accomplish it and +"# why you are doing all this in the first place For example: “During this trip to the library, I want to outline my research paper on Obama’s plan for Israel by writing out bullet points of the key information from each source. I am writing this paper because I believe that, with a degree in political science, I can be a more effective and change-making citizen of my own country.” %"# Now that you set an intention, create a mantra that reflects it. A mantra is super-important for the library. The Sanskrit word mantra comes from the word manas, which means mind and tra, which means tool. A mantra is a mind tool! A mantra is a mind tool because it quiets the chatter in the mind so you can better focus on the task at hand. It can be as simple as, “I have all the answers,” “Just breathe,” or “I am a smart and capable student.” I know — easier said than done, but that’s the point! You don’t have to believe these words you create for yourself. You just have to repeat them so that the mantra can do its work. &"# Find a comfortable seat. Asana means seat. So do some asana in the library by getting comfy while you do your work. Remember, forgetting about our bodies is never a good idea! Here are some tips for finding a comfortable seat: )"# Elevate the hips above the knees. Sit on a pillow or fold up your yoga mat beneath you. You can also sit on the shins if that’s comfortable. You want to allow the blood to flow like a steady stream so your legs don’t fall asleep. Comfort encourages productivity! *"# Find a chair that allows you to cross your legs. Go on a little scavenger hunt to find one that is conducive to half or full lotus. +"# Do a vinyasa in the stacks so that the blood gets pumping and regulates itself when you are no longer moving. A great teaching of the asana practice is that movement helps us to become still. ,"# Once you’re seated, lift the arms up like you intend to reach that high library ceiling and then twist, bringing the opposite hand to the opposite knee. Repeat on the other side, inhaling as you lengthen and exhaling as you twist (five breaths on
each side). Wring out the spine because the straighter you sit, the more room you create in the body for the information to flow. Cleanse the body so you can prepare for a fresh and rejuvenated start to your studying. '"# Shut off your phone! I know you don’t want to, but do it! We have to disconnect in order to connect. ("# What are you waiting for? Do your work! STUDY (SANITY) BREAK: Breaks are mini savasanas that you take throughout your studying practice. They are essential to your sanity! 1. Do some more vinyasas. Find somewhere - maybe in the stacks - where you can spread out and stretch! The focus here is on lengthening through the spine. Check out the end of this chapter for simple and important sequences. 2. Invert! Get the blood flowing with yoga’s caffeine. Full diagrams are also at the end of this chapter. 3. Refill your water bottle (hydration is hugely important). 4. Get social and out of that pretty little head of yours. Go to the main hall and see some friends. 5. Get and give a massage. These breaks are all about reminding ourselves of all the care and attention we need to give to our bodies so they continue to serve us and so that we can continue to serve others. 6. Stay fueled. Eat one of those snacks you brought and eat it mindfully so you realize you are eating and not just doing studying’s side job. 7. Rinse and repeat. Do some breath of fire to get the fuel burning again and the inspiration flowing.
FINALS WEEK AS A COLLEGE YOGI It’s that time of year. People are in the library until dawn, hunching over books and papers, and walking around in a sleep-deprived haze. It is possible, however, to create a wellness-focused finals week. Here are some tips and tricks. BUDDY UP: Go to the library with another yogi. My study buddy is usually another yoga teacher. We spend hours in the stacks, writing papers, but we know that our priorities, like our spines when we sit on the swivel chairs we snag for better back health, are aligned. Periodically, we take breaks and go to a spot that is not lined with bookshelves to do some inversions, a sun salutation, and some forward bending. Bottom line: We do not ignore our bodies. Make going to the library a practice in and of itself that, like yoga, includes asana.
MIX IT UP: Finals can feel unproductive even though we are meant to produce. Finals are not over until they are turned in so it is easy to spend every waking hour focusing on them. That is why it’s important to make plans during finals week. If you’re a yoga teacher, it’s not a bad idea to teach more classes during finals week. It gets you the F out of your own head. Make plans with friends you maybe don’t see so often. Introduce the new. TEA: Kombucha is the shit. Bring a bottle to the library and feel simultaneously energized and focused. Another more traditional tea recommendation for extended focused is Yogi Tea Perfect Energy (the title doesn’t lie - it does give you perfect energy!). SLEEP: It actually helps you get your work done better. BRING GANESH: He’s a remover of obstacles, and a nice reminder that can put things into perspective. GET GRADED ON YOGA: No joke, I have managed to write two final papers on yoga. It keeps me interested, engaged, and constantly reminds me to check in with my body, to integrate the practice into the paper on the practice (is that meta enough for you?). Another college yogi has written her creative nonfiction final on music and yoga. In the social sciences especially, most prompts for finals are open-ended. Boundaries and limits provide freedom for expansion so make it easy on yourself and choose a topic you are already interested in. The possibilities are endless!
HEADSTAND IN THE STACKS Consider an inversion practice the cheaper version of a coffee run. For free, we can turn ourselves upside down and receive lasting energy straight from the naturally caffeinated wells of our bodies. Inversions also remind us to breathe because the breath is how we can hold ourselves up in the center of the room - with the inhale we lengthen and with the exhale we tuck our tailbones in and create a stronger core through the central line of the body. There comes a time during every trip to the library when we stare at a computer and our eyes start to blink-blink-open, blink-blink-close-open. Suddenly, we long for the sweet comfort of our beds. Our beds begin to seem like sheer heaven and we long to get under the covers and stay there. The five hundred more words for that paper suddenly seems like pulling teeth. We even go to the bathroom to rest our heads in our hands and take mini, but sadly ineffective naps. Headstand takes only a minute and this king pose of yoga reverses the blood flow just enough so that proper work-enhancing energy starts to course through your veins again. It can seem daunting at first, but there is a version of this inversion for everybody. Below are some steps to take to get into headstand. Feel free to stop anywhere along these diagrams. Make sure you stop at a point where you feel stable. Headstand against the wall is fine, but it is a different pose because a classical headstand should ideally have zero qualities of a backbend (i.e. the tailbone should be tucked neatly in). Plus, if you’re doing it in the stacks, you do not want one of the college yogi’s greatest fears coming true: toppling over dozens of books, making a loud crash, and having everyone else look over at you from their books and computers, turning you into some kind of yoga cray.
SIRSASANA: HEADSTAND Come into child’s pose. Extend the arms out in front of you, grab opposite elbows. Then, extend the hands out in front, interlace them to create a basket for the head
Tuck toes, extend legs into downward dog with the crown of the head on floor
Shorten your down dog by walking the feet in, still keeping the legs straight.
Bring one knee into chest, place it back down. Then, try bringing the other knee to the chest. If this feels easy, bring both knees to chest and stick out the booty so that you are balancing on your head in this egg shape.
Without hopping, extend both legs up at the ceiling at the same time. Take 5-10 breaths (think of each breath you take in headstand as an ounce of coffee in terms of the energy it will give you). Return to child’s pose as gracefully as possible and give yourself a neck and shoulder massage.
POSES TO REENERGIZE cow face pose (gomukhasana)
neck rolls
standing side bends
forward fold (uttanasana)
seated forward fold (paschimotanasana)
wheel pose (urdhva dhanurasana)
GANESH: REMOVER OF OBSTACLES He is adorable. He wants to take away all your problems (and take you out for ice cream). He’s rich and owns a lot of jewels. He’s protective. Sounds like the perfect guy, right? Well, he’s a god and has an elephant head on a human body so perfect might be an overstatement, but he is pretty great. Ganesh is the Hindu god who removes obstacles. Got writer’s block? Ganesh will find a way around it. Feel a lack of energy to pull through on that problem set coming on? Ganesh will give you some of his energy to compensate. Ganesh sees a limitation and views it as an opportunity. Why? Ganesh’s whole life and being was created out of limitations. His own father cut his head off! The son of Shiva (steadiness) and Parvati (dynamic energy), he’s the perfect little guy to bring to the library with you because he gives you the energy to persevere and the simultaneous steadiness to sit comfortably for long periods of time. We need both in order to work effectively and stay focused.
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Chapter 3 Lecture Hall: How to Practice Yoga in Class
FOCUS!/FIND YOUR DRISHDI A drishdi is a point of focus outside of oneself. The mat is truly a microcosm for life when we look for this stable point of concentration to help us balance in a challenging asana. Take tree pose, for instance. Standing on one leg, we want to find something else to gaze at. Funny enough, most yogis, when they first embody this balance, look to the person on the mat next to them, another person who is also seeking balance in this inherently imbalanced pose. We are all searching for balance. It is through balance that we find focus and dharana, this sense of unbreakable conquer-the-world concentration. It is human nature to look to another person to find balance - it’s what we do when we’re little and dependent on our parents or caregivers. It is what we do when we realize we don’t know how to use the washing machine in our new dorms. We want someone else to help us, hold us up, be our other foot when one is lifted precariously up off the ground.
PROFESSOR/GURU The yoga tradition recognizes and validates the importance of the teacher. In this tradition, to be a teacher is one of the best positions one can attain in life. Unfortunately, our society does not place the same value on teachers and as a result, when we get to college, some of us forget to respect the wealth of knowledge we are being offered by those who attained it before us. The term “guru” in yoga means to bring from darkness into light. The role of the guru is no more and no less than that. Master teacher and founder of The Kaivalya Yoga Method, Alanna Kaivalya is known for saying, “The guru is no more than a friend and no less than a friend.” This means that not only must we not take advantage of the guru’s knowledge, we must also find the guru approachable so that we too can attain the most knowledge possible in our areas of interest.
The most academically successful college students befriend their teachers. Their learning does not end in the classroom. In a lecture hall, the teacher is literally put on a pedestal, which serves a temporary purpose: to show us that we do not have all the answers so sometimes we have to listen to those who already have them. But the most crucial aspect of your education and lifelong journey of learning is that it should be about you. Yes, you heard me. You! College is your time to be selfish in the best possible way. When else are you going to have all this time and space to explore your passions with boundless energy? Take advantage of what you are offered along the way to carve out a path for yourself. Here are some off-the-mat tools to help you make the most out of every class. DARE TO DISTURB THE UNIVERSE: Many of my teachers are writers who I have not even met, but long to one day. In The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark, Sera Beak loves to say that we should all “dare to disturb the universe.” In class, this means that we have to move through the fear of challenging opinions and institutions. Learning opens up realms of darkness so that we can use the darkness to find the light. This means that we are hopefully learning some disturbing shit about the world we live in. We need to learn this in order to create positive and meaningful change. Furthermore, challenge your teachers and your peers! Does someone say something that you disagree with? Respectfully say so by participating and offering your own take on the material. Notice a bias? Say so. Speak your truth and… ASK QUESTIONS: This is fairly self-explanatory, but do not forget to question the material you are reading in the form of annotations and pose those questions in class in the form of participation. After class, aim to ask at least one question. Either approach the professor or the person sitting next to you. Not only is this a great way to make friends, but it provides a bridge and the meaning of Yoga – union – to connect your learning experiences everywhere. GO TO OFFICE HOURS: Befriend your professors. Have one-on-one conversations with them. This is crucial to your academic experience because only then can it be for you, about you, and by you. In a lecture hall or even a ten-person discussion-based class, it is impossible for a professor to tailor the learning experience toward you as the gorgeously unique individual you are. It is imperative that you create that experience by learning outside the classroom and doing the above two tips in a one-on-one setting.
BATHROOMS ARE SACRED We’ve all been there. The professor is talking and it sounds like a lullaby. All we want to do is sink into the comfort of our beds. Maybe we were in the library late last night…or having sex…or maybe we just ate lunch and that post-eating lethargy is starting to kick in. Whatever the reason, we just can’t keep our eyes open. We can’t focus yet what we keep thinking is how badly we need to know the material so that we can write our papers or pass the final. It’s utter agony – this feeling of wasting time, practically sleeping in a classroom. It is time to take a break. But where are you going to do that when you are crammed between other students who also seem to be drifting off into dreamland?
The bathroom! Long gone are the days of bathroom passes. Swept under the bridge is the embarrassment of asking the teacher if we can leave class. As an independent college student, you can simply do it and return to your seat refreshed and renewed with an illuminated sense of focus and ease. Once in the bathroom, do some breath work to focus the mind and send prana (life force) back into the body. Turn on the ujayi (victorious) breath by inhaling and exhaling deeply through the nose, constricting the back of the throat. Then, try nadi shodana, alternate nostril breathing, by bringing the index and middle fingers to the Third Eye. Then, close off the right nostril with the thumb. Breathe in through the left. Close off both nostrils. Retain. Then, exhale through the left nostril, releasing the ring finger. Repeat for three rounds. This should not take more than one minute and its effects are deeply renewing. After doing some breath work, wake up the body by extending the arms to the ceiling and interlacing the hands. Flexion in the joints and spine is the most energizing thing you can do in a small space. Take advantage of the body’s natural wells of metaphorical caffeine. Wring out the wrists and shake anything you need to shake in order to get the blood pumping again. If you have enough space, do a headstand or a backbend. If not, work with what you’ve got and do some chair yoga. Spend no more than five minutes in the bathroom – set a timer if you need to! – so that you can return to class ready to learn! Sarasvati is the studio art major whose inspiration is always flowing, who finds her meditative stance while at the easel well past midnight, not paying attention to time or anything but her art. Sarasvati is the girl in long, flowing, floral skirts who brings her guitar to the hill and plays folk music that lights up everyone’s day. She is the attentive student sitting in the front of the lecture hall, the one with her pen poised like a musical instrument, attentively in tune and present, processing whatever new knowledge comes her way.
SARASVATI: GODDESS OF LEARNING Sarasvati knows that art does not have to be explicit to be…art. Art means living life creatively, from what clothes one wears to class to how one writes a paper that can wake a professor up out of their bored reverie of reading essay after essay. She knows that academic success means to employ what celeb yoga teacher Elena Brower calls “the art of attention” She is the mama goddess to musicians, students, artists, and writers, a guru and muse for all their creative day-to-day endeavors. Unlike Kali, whose weapons are fierce and sharp, Sarasvati’s weapons are her library card and guitar.
Chapter 4 Dining Hall
YOGA + FOOD: IS THAT A THING? College provides a lot of firsts. For many of us, it is the first time we are totally in charge of what, when, and how much we eat. This can feel extremely liberating and/or totally daunting. Yoga teaches us that freedom exists within boundaries. We can find freedom in our yoga practice by setting a timer for one hour and creating a sacred space just like we can find freedom in our eating habits by setting boundaries around them. But how does one do that in an all-you-can-eat dining hall? To navigate our way through styles of Yoga means to navigate our way through a whole lot of dogma. You might be told that veganism is essential to the yogic principle of nonviolence… that is, until you try to be vegan and discover that you are actually doing violence to yourself if you’re not getting enough protein. Other people might tell you to eat only raw food or drink a bottle of kombucha a day or go on a cleanse. Be skeptical! Exercise the yogic task of discernment! If anyone tells you to do something, question it and ask yourself if it’s right for you. Raise your eyebrows whenever anyone says that you have to do something because nothing is that serious. We are not on this earth to be ordered around. We are on this earth to figure out what works for us. We can exercise all these tools in order to have a greater sense of purpose. That said, a yoga practice is about cultivating more energy. Prana means energy, or life force. If we break this small Sanskrit word down to its root, we get ana, which is Sanskrit for food. Our body metabolizes food to create more prana so that we can be more efficient college yogis. Sluggishness does not serve us. Yoga teaches us to be mindful even when eating Oreos and to practice non-judgment so that we do not harm ourselves with judging what food we are eating. Food is fuel. It is what we run on and what we need in order to have energy to do our yoga
practice, to do our homework, and to dance our butts off at concerts. There’s no way around it and while yoga does not tell us what to eat, it can provide us with a scientific framework through which to view our food choices. In doing so, we can maximize our energy and continue to refuel our prana. It is imperative for various styles to not dogmatically force anything in terms of food. This western culture has too many problems with shit like that. That said, suggestions are always lovely and I find Well & Good’s Refrigerator Look Book fascinating to see what yoga teachers are keeping in their fridges. Yoga is about discovering your own Truth and the beauty of that is that everyone’s truth can be different.
THE YOGA OF EATING There is a restaurant chain in the Bay Area called Café Gratitude. Its mission is simple: to imbue food with meaning so that every action, including eating dinner, becomes a special reminder of the wonder in our lives. We have talked about how it is never the thing itself that is the point in yoga; the purpose of all we do runs much deeper than any “thing” that is easily defined or manifested. Just as we do not practice asana for the sake of practicing asana, we do not eat for the sake of eating. But this is not always the case in college. We start eating for the sake of eating (instead of, for instance, the divine purpose we use food to fuel us in fulfilling) when we forget our bodies. We eat for the sake of eating when our dining halls serve icky greasy foods and we are so hungry we don’t care. We eat for the sake of eating when we go too long without eating, when we are stressed out, when we seek comfort in food, when we deal with eating disorders. We forget parts of ourselves when we check out, but what daily rituals like eating offer is the opportunity to check in. Café Gratitude has the right idea. They serve simple, beautiful, delicious food, but that is not all they offer. They explicitly imbue everything about the space with meaning. The waiter comes and offers up a question to ponder as you eat such as, “What is good about your life?” Upon entering, there is a sign that asks that you do not use your cell phone in the space. The to-go bags say, “I am fulfilled. I am generous. I am love. I am humble. I am celebrating. We are one. I am beautiful.” On the table are affirmation cards. The whole space, from the food served to the wait staff to the encouragement of conversation amongst the people you dine with, promotes health, wellness, and the deepest integration of body, mind, and spirit. It is that integration that makes the Yoga of eating possible. It is a permeating feeling of nourishment that comes from the people and atmosphere just as much as the food. So check in. Create a ritual out of going to the dining hall. Before entering, set an intention. Here are some ideas: !"# I intend to nourish myself mind, body, and spirit. $"# I intend to take deep breaths between bites. %"# I intend to have a wonderful conversation with my friend. &"# I intend to be in tune with flavor and texture. '"# I intend to fuel myself for a night of studying. ("# I intend to lighten the mood. You may have a more creative intention that is more personal to you so use that instead.
When picking your food out of the seemingly endless array of options, quickly ask yourself if the choice will serve your intention. Also, remember the key facts about your dosha and ask if the choice will serve your overall effort to find balance. Sit down at the table with friends. Make this meal a time of reunion and ritual. Have a meaningful conversation. Check in about your life, encouraging your friends to check in about theirs. Most importantly, LAUGH. Laughter is a key form of nourishment and words cannot even describe how crucial it is in any experience you would like to make meaningful. For the days when the dining hall is your main option, take a breath, relax, and turn it into your own special Café Gratitude.
AGNI: GOD OF FIRE We have a fire in each of us. When we roast marshmallows, for example, the gelatin becomes softer and parts turn to ash. The substance decomposes. The fires within us decompose and break down what we put inside of us. In Ayurveda, we are not what we eat; we are what we digest. Agni, the god of fire, likes food to be offered to him, meaning food should be eaten in reverence to a divine spirit, in whatever way has meaning to you. This can mean that the food you consume is eaten as fuel so you can go win your soccer game or what you eat will give you the energy to tutor at the local middle school. Whatever it is, feeding yourself can be yet another form of selfless self-care. Agni warms us, speeds up our circulation, and makes us healthy, dynamic, and energetic beings that can get up and go save the world at a moment’s notice without having to worry about compromising our health. Remember when I said that yoga is a superpower? Consider Agni the fire that shoots out of your feet as you fly to the sky. As long as we eat foods that are appropriate for our bodies, Agni has the room to do his divine work in lighting us up, from the inside out, giving us that post-yoga-class glow all the time. BHASTRIKA: BREATH OF FIRE This breath work requires immense trust that the inhale will come even as we do not actively employ it. Start by sitting comfortably or in your favorite stable yoga pose (bridge pose or hero’s pose works for this). Exhale fast through both nostrils, keeping the mouth closed. Keep a box of tissues nearby because snot will probably emerge as you immerse yourself in this cleansing breath of rapid exhales, stoking your inner fire.
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Chapter 5 Field/Hill
SALUTE THE SUN (LITERALLY) Your school’s field or hill is the perfect place to salute the sun, to give thanks with the exaltation of our bodies for this hopefully peaceful time of life and for the green that surrounds us. It is a great time to do some energizing practices so that we may better experience the deep bliss we can feel in our bodies. Sun Salutations are core to the vinyasa yoga practice. They warm up the body and provide a path for fun, exciting, and challenging poses. They are typically done in sets of three and five and can even be done on their own as a mini yoga practice during any time of day when the body needs some waking up. Let’s begin, shall we?
Photo taken by college yogini Emily Klein – Foss Hill, Wesleyan University
SUN SALUTATION A
Mountain Pose (Tadasana) Tuck the tailbone under, let the arms fall to the side
Inhale and send the arms up in a prayer above the heart.
1 2 5
Inhale and come to a flat back.
6
Yogi Pushup (Chataranga Danadasana). On an exhale step to plank, lower down (for more information on how to lower down, check out the section on a Vinyasa Krama) or jump back to a yogi pushup.
8
Standing Forward Fold: Exhale and let the prayer wash over you so that hands touch the earth.
3
4
7
Upward Facing Dog (Urdhva Mukha Svanasana). Inhale, uncurl toes, raise chest and look up
Downward Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana). Exhale and curl toes under. Extend booty up, pressing chest towards thighs. Take five deep ujayi breaths
9
Standing Forward Fold, inhale and step or jump forward, feet between hands. Come to flat back, exhale and fold.
Inhale and reverse swan dive the arms up, hands to prayer above the heart.
Exhale, hands to prayer at the heart. 10
11
SUN SALUTATION SALUTATION BB SUN Chair Pose (Uttkatasana), inhale, send arms up in prayer, lower seat and hips, like you’re sitting on a chair with a straight spine.
Mountain Pose, tuck the tailbone under, let the arms fall to the side
3
Standing Forward Fold: Exhale, let your hands touch the earth.
1 2 5
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Upward Facing Dog: Inhale, uncurl toes as you riase chest and look up
Yogi Pushup: Step to plank, lower down or jump back
Inhale and come to a flat back. 8
7
Warrior 1 (Virabhadrasana 1), inhale, step right foot forward. Exhale, spiral back heel down at 45 degree angle. Send arms up to prayer above head
Downward Dog, exhale and curl the toes under. Extend booty up, pressing chest towards thighs. Take five deep ujayi breaths
Exhale, step back and take a vinyasa. Repeat on the other side, ending in down dog. 11
9
Standing Forward Fold: Inhale, step or jump forward, feet between the hands. Exhale and fold. Inhale and come to a flat back. Exhale and fold.
10
Chair Pose, Inhale the hips back and arms up.
Exhale come to stand.
SPREAD THE PRACTICE The field – an inherently common space – is a great place for you to be an example of the yogic lifestyle and practice. Go the extra level by using this to bond with likeminded people. It is an opportunity for you to spread this practice that has helped you, in the hope that it will also be of service to others. Remember kindergarten? When making friends was as easy as giving that girl next to you a lick of your strawberry popsicle? It can still be that easy! But instead of a popsicle, you now have this awesome practice of yoga to share, one that is endless, boundless, and full of tips and tricks. If doing those sun salutations weren’t enough to a) have people ask you what the heck you are doing jumping around like that or b) get people to join in because they saw what a fun devotional time you are having, there are other ways to get people to join in. Here are some ideas: CONVERSE: Ask people if they practice yoga. If they have, ask if they want to practice with you. If they haven’t, ask them if they want to try. If yoga is a passion of yours, you have an easy way out of awkward conversations and small talk because you can invite others to join in on your excitement by telling them why you love what you love. BUDDY UP: Do partner or acrobatic yoga! At my school, every Friday at 2:30pm, students get together at the bottom of the hill to be yogi exhibitionists in the best possible sense. We balance, we tumble, we fly and see the sky. So grab a friend and balance them. Or do some fun and simple partner yoga stretching (see the Student Planner for specific stretches and the Resource Guide for a plethora of books and videos of sequences). DO YOUR PRACTICE: It’s simple. Just take it outdoors. Feel the grass beneath your feet. Do those sun salutations and whatever add-ons to a home practice that benefits you. Chances are, you’ll spark curiosity and make friends in the process.
Photo taken by Em Trambert featuring me as flyer, Morgan Hill as base – Foss Hill, Wesleyan University
THROW A YOGA DANCE PARTY Yoga Valedictorian Leigh and I threw a yoga dance party on the hill one gorgeous April Saturday. The hill is otherwise known as the outdoor party zone, which is also known as the place where students go to retreat from the trials of academic life. HOW TO THROW A YOGA DANCE PARTY A step-by-step guide: !"# Buddy up. This is a constant tip throughout this book. Don’t go at something that could be daunting alone. A friend not only makes everything more fun – they also make it easier to manage. So, find another college yogi who’s just as excited about the idea of a yoga dance party and go for it! $"# Make a kickasana flyer and hang it around campus. Make it badass. Go out at night and plaster campus with these flyers. Do what Leigh and I did and spell out yoga in the library using oodles of flyers (ecofriendly suggestion: print them out on recyclable paper and then, once the event is over, recycle those papers again in the spirit of ahimsa, nonharming). %"# Create a Facebook event. Make it so that everyone you invite can also invite their friends. Visuals are key here. Make the description come from your heart. &"# Make a killer playlist. Use the music you would dance to at a party. Include lots of Top 40s. Ask people in the Facebook event for suggestions as a way to create dialogue. '"# Find ways to turn your favorite yoga poses into dance moves by putting them in your own body and seeing where the music takes you. ("# Practice, practice, practice. Blast the music and practice the party (I know it sounds funny, but trust me). -"# Intersperse traditional yoga poses with flowing freestyle bust-a-move dance. ."# Obtain speakers. /"# Get out on the hill or field and DANCE!
HANUMAN: MONKEY GOD OF PLAY Hanuman is this adorable lil monkey god of play. He loves being outside and when he goes to a college campus, he’s the first one to suggest a game of ultimate frisbee. He loves jumping around a field doing sun salutations and is a fast little guy. But what is his deific power? What makes him a god? He has the most important power of all: he is a great friend! He is shown in the above photo as flying in the air, balancing a mountain on his fingertips, because his BFF Rama was in a fight with a dude named Lord Ravana, as told in the mythological yogic epic Ramayana. Ravana hurt Rama’s little brother on the battlefield so Hanuman ran to the mountains to retrieve some herbs, but instead of just bringing the herbs to Rama and his bro, he brought the whole mountain (can we say overachiever?!). He went above and beyond for his friend, jumping across mountains by doing a split just to get to his friend even faster. HANUMANASANA: SPLITS POSE Inhale, lift right leg up. Exhale, bend the knee, open out through the right hip.
Come into downward dog.
1
3
2 Sweep right foot between hands. Exhale to lower down the back knee.
Inhale, extend arms above head, allow knee to move past ankle for crescent lunge (anjaneyasana). You can chill out here or proceed.
4
Flex right foot as you straighten the right leg, coming into a half-splits (ardha hanumansana). You can stay here and still receive the benefits of the pose.
5
6 Slide right foot all the way forward until the left leg also straightens, coming into a full split, hanumanasana (option to place a block underneath the right thigh to elevate the seat).
WARNING
Repeat on the left side.
hips and eviously opened pr es ir qu re se plete opener; this po orough and com th a of d en This is not a hip or dle towards the mid up. should be done hen not warmed w is th do T O N O yoga practice. D
Chapter 6 Partaay
STHIRA AND SUKHA: WORK HARD, PARTY HARD In all aspects of yoga, we balance two types of energies: sthira and sukha, steadiness and ease. We are steady when we hold Warrior 2 for eight breaths. We sweat. We may even groan. Then, after a practice filled with the steadiness of chatarangas, arm balances, and sun salutations, we find the graceful ease of savasana. The grace of savasana is created out of the fierceness of the vigorous asana practice that precedes it. Savasana alone is not a resting pose - what would you be resting from? We need both ends of the energetic spectrum to embrace bliss. The concept of sthira and sukha is a variation on the functions of the deities Shiva and Shakti (can you tell how popular that “s” sound is in Sanskrit?). Shiva is the male energy. He’s that guy who’s in the library for hours on end and doesn’t seem to have any problem pumping out a paper. Shakti, however, can’t sit still for her life! She’s constantly running, continually dancing, always engaging in fluid and crazy-looking cosmic movement. Shiva and Shakti are lovers. Each time they have sex, they bring the world into balance by combining their energies, fusing masculine and feminine into one being. Their energies, when they orgasmically combine, produce both steady and graceful people. They are capable of making the world a better place through being balanced themselves. We all have some Shiva and Shakti in us. If we possessed only Shiva energy, we would be couch potatoes, unable to get up and, well, put all this learning into action. If we were all Shakti, we would be unable to focus and process our lives in self-reflexive practices. To have aspects of both Shiva and Shakti in us means doing a fierce asana practice followed by a gorgeous savasana, made that much sweeter by the preceding rigor. To embody the energies of this god and goddess means to exercise both sthira and sukha. And in college terms, it means to work hard and party hard. Yes, that’s right. The yoga practice ENCOURAGES partying! Yoga wants you to shake your butt on the dance floor. During the week, we practice sthira and use our Shiva energy to hunker down and hit the books. Then Friday (or Thursday if you’re lucky enough to not have Friday classes) comes around and Shakti is all, “I’m on top now, Shiva!” She’s ready to rock with some sukha energy, letting the ease of the weekend rip through her.
The key here is balance. We become more efficient and energized if we set aside time to let loose, be with those we love, and meet new souls on the way. The trick is that we do our work so we actually have something to unwind from. Otherwise, it’s like taking savasana without warming the body beforehand: it just isn’t as sweet. In college, we have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get this blissed out sukha feeling of ease and grace every Friday and Saturday night. Pleasantly worn out by a Monday-through-Friday’s worth of hard, honest work, we are given the opportunity to relax. In an embodied way. With friends. We are given the opportunity to PARTY!
LILA: PLAY Too many times, when we are introduced to yoga, it is in a serious context. When this happens, we lose a core yogic principle, one that is part of every single myth. This is the concept of lila, Sanskrit for play. When we are little, we don’t think twice of hopping around and blowing kisses on playgrounds. We grow up and something pretty sad happens: we begin to feel guilty for exercising the basic right of playing, of being without doing, of flowing with grace. Lila implies a basic sense of fluidity and dynamism. Play is inherently embodied. It is an ecstatic expression of joy. It is celebration without a specific holiday. Lila is shimmying on the dance floor and laughing uncontrollably. As we begin, we are faced with a critical question: how do we begin to play when our heads are in the books? Here are some ways to start: — Blow bubbles. That’s right. Go to the student grocery store and get a bottle of bubbles. Each bubble can represent something you’d like to let go of. Simply blow your troubles away. — Get DOWN. Shake it on the dance floor. — Throw your own party. Invite those you feel comfortable with and those you’d like to know better. Set the stage for a play of fun.
PREGAME WITH YOGA Side note: Yoga itself has nothing against alcohol unless it is harming your body, which unfortunately is the case for many college students. The ancient Sufi poets Rumi and Hafiz, some of the original yogis, wrote their best poetry when tipsy. Yoga encourages mindfulness of all actions, which means knowing what we are doing, making sure we are doing the right thing for ourselves, and not judging it or anyone else. Now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk about a different kind of pre-gaming: pre-gaming with yoga! It all starts on the mat, so if you want to be more playful when you’re out with friends, try being more playful in your asana practice. Here’s how: 1. DANCE: Shake it on your mat. Come to stand in tadasana, mountain pose, turn up some
crazy hip-hop, and then shake it to the music. Here is the place to abandon any ideas of what you think yoga is or should be. Let loose and let go. Then, begin your yoga practice. 2. TURN IT UP: Blast fun, ridiculous music and see what your body moves to. 3. TAKE A RISK: Put yourself out there! It’s just like at a party when you find that cute guy or girl and want to talk to them but you are so afraid of what might happen when you do. Pick a pose that you have been dying to try, but are too afraid to. Headstand? Handstand? Side crow? Moving through fear starts on the mat. Then, you can emulate it at that house party you go to.
YOGA PARTY TRICKS In yoga, we learn to do ridiculous shenanigans with our bodies. It’s pretty fun. Plus, it’s tempting to show a group of people all the cool things you’re learning how to do, to share that part of your life with them, in a fun and chill setting. There are some poses that look like breakdancing or flying or are just cray flexy. Show ’em off (if you’re in a very, very safe environment and not too inebriated).
SIDE CROW From standing, lower hips to chair pose. Bring hands to prayer at heart and twist to right, with left elbow resting outside the right knee.
1
2
Twist so deeply that you can place both hands on the floor. Make chataranga arms so that as you lower the face closer to the ground, the legs lift up.
4 3
Option to extend the legs in either direction – now you’re breakdancing!
TRIPOD HEADSTAND TO CHATARANGA Come into tripod headstand through crow or a widelegged forward fold, bringing arms to chataranga height and head to floor so that the legs feel weightless and extend upward.
Because arms are already in a chataranga shape, trust that the ground beneath you is going to be there when you drop your legs straight down into chataranaga dandasana.
3 1
2
FIREFLY Sit in a squat with feet wide.
Place hands behind the feet so that the thumbs and index fingers form an L-shape around your heels.
Make chataranga arms and extend legs straight to either side to come to balance on your hands.
NATARAJA: GOD OF DANCE Nataraja is a manifestation of sitting Shiva energy. When Shiva, who is usually good at spending lots of time sitting in the library, gets with Shakti, all of a sudden he wants to dance. This is where Nataraja, king of the dancers, comes in. To match Shakti’s fire, he knows how to bust a move on the dance floor. Nataraja holds a drum because he believes in the power of music. The hand next to the drum (the one that makes it look like he is telling someone to stop doing something) is in the abhaya mudra, a yogic gesture of fearlessness. In Yoga, fearlessness does not mean utter courage no matter what. Actually, it means quite the opposite. Fearlessness means feeling the fear and then moving through it anyways because sometimes (like when there’s the scary possibility of romantic flirtation) saying, “Hi fear, nice to meet you. I’m now going to ignore you” is just what our self-esteem needs.
NATARAJASANA - DANCER’S POSE
In dancer’s pose, we invoke grace as we balance on one foot. Extend the left arm up into chin mudra as you bend the right knee back behind you and kick it into the right hand to extend outward. Even out the body by repeating on the other side and awaken the graceful dancer within. Don’t forget that falling is a marker of grace as well!
Part 2 Patanjali’s Eight-Limbed Path What would it be like to have eight arms? Maybe it would be something like being told on the first day of freshman orientation by your dean to not spread yourself too thin, followed by going to the student activities fair, and then being an active member of eight different clubs, trying to find some way for all these interests to somehow connect. As college students, we are Generation Busy. We are also more interdisciplinary than ever before, double and triple majoring in Chemistry and Classics or Math, Marine Biology, and East Asian Studies. We find connections – common threads – that weave together the most beautiful tapestries of learning out of seemingly unrelated areas of study. Yoga does this too. Yoga is the original interdisciplinary area of study. In this section, I encourage you to think of each chapter as a syllabus for each one of the eight courses you take in a year: courses funnily titled Yamas, Niyamas, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi. Together, they metaphorically form one academic year, an opportunity to put it all together. By examining and taking each course individually, you offer yourself the opportunities for different teachers in each discipline, in-depth study, and more intrinsic knowledge as to how each of the eight limbs can function in your day-to-day life. Think of what happens at the end of a school year. You get the summer off to process all the mass learning you did. Hopefully, you make manifest that learning and do something with it. Suddenly, you realize that each course you take contributes to a greater whole, a greater whole YOU. Each course, each of the Eight Limbs, becomes a tool that you can use to carve out your own unique and dharmatastic life!
Chapter 7 Who’s This Dude Patanjali?
YOGA PHILOSOPHY 101: BE A NICE PERSON There is a kids yoga teacher Maxi, who lists on her Facebook profile under “Religion,” “Be a nice person.” When we distill each bit of scripture, each Sanskrit word that documents the process and practice of Yoga, this is the beautiful simplicity we receive: “Be a nice person.” This is the one goal of every tenet of the yoga practice. We do not practice yoga to become better people; we practice yoga to embrace the better – the nice – already within us. The ancient texts of yoga are guidebooks that reveal how we can be nicer people so that we can be of service and engage with those in our lives. These texts do not require drastic changes; they only ask us to be a little nicer each day, to progress. Patanjali, like any awesome teacher, wanted his students of Yoga to understand the practice in a way that had meaning for them. He saw how daunted they were by all this material so he created a CliffsNotes version of all the teachings that came before him. These CliffsNotes on how to be a nice person are what we call the Yoga Sutras.
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Yoga is both an integrative and integral approach to healing and living. It has the power to prescribe a lifestyle for a population that is beginning to understand what the term “lifestyle” means: college students. If we focus exclusively on the physical, we are going to become frus-
trated. We are going to realize that it is not enough to have all the right clothes, to exercise for x number of hours each day, to have a certain amount of living space. Likewise, if we focus exclusively on the mental, we are going to become frustrated as well because there will always be that part of us that feels unfulfilled. It is dangerous to feel unfulfilled; we start questioning our sense of purpose just as we are learning enough about ourselves to have one in the first place. This is where this sutra comes in. Patanjali articulates an eight-limbed path and explicates these eight limbs in further sutras. He acknowledges a plethora of aspects of yoga so that the practice becomes more than what we do on our mats for a matter of minutes; it becomes a way of life that transports us into the realm of the everyday.
SatyaAparigraha
Brahmacharya Ahimsa Brahmacharya AparigrahaSatya Chapter 8 Yamas: What Not to Do
Ahimsa
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The yamas prescribe how we interact with both others and ourselves. The yamas are the five basic principles of how we show up in the world and interact with those in our lives. They are the first part of the yogi’s code of ethics. They tell us what not to do in life so that what we actually do can have greater positive impact. With their simplicity and ease of interpretability, they can provide a guide to ethics for the modern college yogi.
AHIMSA: STOP THE VIOLENCE! If you are reading this book, you are already practicing this first yama. Ahimsa means nonviolence to ourselves and others. When we are nonviolent to ourselves, we are more likely to treat others with kindness. This yama translates to “treat others the way you want to be treated.” This age-old adage your caregivers probably repeated to you at the playground presupposes that you are already treating yourself nicely and respectfully. In order to explore nonviolence, we must explore how we treat ourselves. When we stop violence towards ourselves, we stop the violence for those we surround ourselves with by being an example of a happy and joyous presence. We embody an energy that others can bask in. College is a place where harmful habits can be created, stopped, and transformed so that we can live healthy and happy lives, starting young on this path of selftransformation. Here are some simple ways to practice self-care: 1. NON-NEGOTIABLES: What are the things you must do every day to feel healthy and happy? Yoga? Shower? Brush your teeth? Write them down and do them.
2. SLEEP: According to Taylor Trudon, a UConn student, college students represent one of the most sleep-deprived populations in the country. Sleep deprivation can lead to depression and negative behavioral changes. It makes us way less productive so if you think you’re not getting enough sleep because you have too much work, think again. Turns out you’re just not getting enough sleep because you’re taking longer than necessary to get your work done. Pretty bad excuse, if you ask me. Find how how much sleep you need. Set a bare minimum (for most people this is 7 hours). Set a number of hours you need to be totally ON for the next day (8-9 hours maybe?) for those days when you have an exam, oral presentation, or interview. Then, make sure you shut your computer at least a half hour before bedtime (I know, super rough for us college kids, but the lack of screen light can help). If you have a roommate, make a bedtime routine with them. My sophomore year roommate and I discovered pillow talk midway through the year and it was transformative. It made bedtime something to look forward to and less of something to procrastinate. We would debrief our days from our beds, putting an emotional close on the past day and welcoming in the land of dreams in our uniquely fun and crazy ways. 3. YOGA U: It’s the title of this book for a reason: make your yoga practice work for you so you don’t end up a) harming yourself by not doing it at all or b) using poses that do not suit your body as a way to harm yourself. Need to leave out that extra vinyasa in favor of a child’s pose? There’s your ahimsa task for the day!
SATYA: LET’S GET REAL Practicing satya (truthfulness) on the mat is a continuation of practicing ahimsa on the mat. Invite integrity into your yoga practice. Integrity is internal honesty. Honesty and a sense of satya in our daily lives determine how we embody our truth and act it out in the asana practice. Satya means knowing what poses we truly can and cannot do, without the lies of the ego. Be honest with what you are capable of in your yoga practice and beyond. When creating a home yoga practice, what can you commit to? Is more than five minutes a day of asana unrealistic? Then just commit to those five minutes. That – those five minutes of yoga – is your truth. How can we practice this aspect of satya off the mat? I said earlier that we are Generation Busy. This means we have a tendency to overcommit, which is just another way of lying to ourselves about what we can handle. Get real with yourself: what can you handle so that you can be fully present in each commitment? Do you have to quit something? Do it with grace and integrity. Speaking and living your truth becomes a greater service to the world. It can help you distinguish your dharma, what you truly want to do in your time at college, and how you want to serve your peers, your campus, your community. Practice tuning in and listening to yourself needs, desires, wants, dreams, hopes - both on and off the mat.
ASTEYA: DON’T CHEAT Don’t cheat! College is for YOU. The whole purpose of it is to amass more knowledge so you can shine brighter in the world. Cheating is not equivalent to knowing the answer; it’s the op-
posite. If you don’t know something, the yogic thing to do is to say so (that’s what stay is the second yama and asteya is the third). We also cheat when we do not honor the roots of ideas. Give credit where credit is due! Be grateful for your teachers whether they are your professors or a study buddy by citing them in whatever you produce. A more direct translation of this yama is non-stealing. This means don’t deprive yourself. Don’t steal from yourself by depriving yourself of self-care and a yoga practice. Just ten minutes of yoga in between homework assignments is a practice of asteya.
BRAHMACHARYA: BE MINDFUL A reasonable interpretation of brahmacharya is non-excess (i.e. moderation). This yama is a hot button issue for modern yogis because the über traditional interpretation is sexual abstinence. Don’t worry - I will never tell you, at any point in this book, to not have sex. This is not a relevant interpretation for today’s population of college yogis. Here is a more realistic and hopefully helpful interpretation: Allow brahmacharya to mean mindfulness in sexual relationships. Don’t mislead anyone. This is where all the previous yamas come in: don’t harm a lover, crush, or someone interested in you by lying to them or disingenuously stealing their time and energy. Do this while honoring your sexual needs. Be mindful. Explore. Find what works for you. This is what college is for! Are D-Flo-Mo’s (dance floor make-outs, as translated to me by college yogi Maggie) no longer fulfilling for you? Do you feel crappy the day after a random hookup? Mindfulness asks that we make an effort to end meaningless habits. But if you want a random hookup because it would be a healthy transition if, getting out of a relationship, to not go from sexually active to inactive? Then honor that and go for it. It’s not about the what; it’s about the why. In the asana practice, it’s not about the pose, but what the pose does for you. What works for you? Random hookups? Devoted relationships? Somewhere in between? Choose, but don’t judge. Allow for fluidity. Embrace all dimensions of YOU.
APARIGRAHA: IF YOU’RE GONNA TAKE, YA GOTTA GIVE One day, I walked to my favorite yoga studio in the NYU area, Yoga Vida. I strode over to the front desk to pay for class. I handed the yogini checking me in $5 for class, she told me I already had three classes paid for. Impossible! I never bought a class card for Yoga Vida. I paid only for single classes and in cash so having classes on file was most definitely not my doing. Trying to practice satya and asteya, I argued, “But that can’t be right. I didn’t pay for extra classes.” The lovely front desk yogini proceeded to inform me that the system did not make mistakes and three classes were, indeed, paid for on my behalf, but by an unknown gifter. What else was I to do? I took that class, along with my next two at Yoga Vida, for free. My job was simply to receive. In my teacher training, I shared this instance when we studied the Yoga Sutras and it became abundantly clear to me that I had to reciprocate. But how when I did not know who gave me
the classes? The answer was to do the same for someone else. So I did, but I am not going to convey the details here because... The second part of aparigraha – non-greed – is giving selflessly by not giving yourself credit. Do it simply for the act, not for getting anything in return. It’s tempting to brag when we do something nice for someone else but aparigraha encourages us to do it for the sake of the action itself. This is a basic tenet of karma: get and it’s your job to give. Be karmic across your campus by doing what is done for you to someone else. Someone randomly smile at you on an otherwise gloomy day? Shoot a random person a smile yourself! Someone buy you a book? Buy one for someone else. Engaging in this give-and-receive is like a dynamic cosmic dance. Once you start, you just can’t stop.
Chapter 9 Niyamas: Be Awesome
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The niyamas have to do primarily with how we take care of ourselves. The niyamas are the yogi’s foundation for living. Think of these practices as the college yogi’s To Do list of awesome. Each niyama has transformative power available to us on a daily basis. By practicing them, we view life through an empowered, appreciative and mindful lens.
SAUCHA: CLEANLINESS In college it is easy to spend a life in sweatpants, treating our bodies like shadows that trail behind us, but in reality, we have to treat our bodies like the precious vessels they are. This can still mean wearing sweatpants (trust me - I can’t remember the last time I wore jeans and not jeggings). The trick is rocking the sweatpants, walking (or strutting down the dining hall) in a way that makes the sweatpants worthy of you! This does not mean you should go out and get a new wardrobe. On the contrary - clean the clothes you already have! Yoga is about attracting people to a practice intended to make you glow and radiate awesomeness. So make an effort to be and feel attractive (whatever that means to you!). People are not attracted to perpetually sweaty clothes. Practicing saucha adds mindfulness to daily acts, imbuing even showers with meaning. SIMPLE STEPS TO SAUCHA SHOWER THERAPY: It can be hard when sharing a bathroom with the number of people worthy of an extended family (i.e. a dorm room hall), but showering is a spiritual practice in that it affords you the opportunity to have alone time without question (unless you’re showering with someone, which can be a Tantric spiritual activity in and of itself). Your friends will
demand no explanation as to where you are. You can simply breathe and reconnect with the present moment as the water washes over you. It is a cleansing of energy and, when ritualized, can offer the ideal opening or close to a day. And if you need to start your day over at 4pm because you just got a paper back with a hideous grade, take a shower and I can almost guarantee you that it will seem like less of a big deal afterward. There’s something about the water... Note: Another shower practice that is absolutely awesome is “shower partying.” My sophomore year roommate and I showered at the same time so that, after not seeing each other all day, we could wind down from the library by taking separate showers and talking through the curtain about our days, issues we might be facing, and creative ideas we are cultivating. Bottom line: showers - or anything really - when transformed into a ritual offers the potent opportunity for decompression and greater meaning. DO YOUR LAUNDRY: Pretty self-explanatory, but very important - have and wear clean clothes. Make it something to look forward to. Do it on Fridays after your favorite yoga class, when you’re still in that recently blissed-out state, and bring a book. Better yet, move your home practice over to the laundry room if it’s an off hour and the 1:00 hour blazing on the washing machine serves as the perfect timer for a well-rounded asana practice. You can even use the time when putting your clothes in the dryer as set-aside journaling time. GET A PEDICURE: As yogis, we are on our feet a lot. They need some loving. Scheduling a monthly pedicure that won’t break the bank is a wonderful way to get off campus and engage with your college town and surroundings. Make it a sensual experience. Sure, you can bring some homework to do while your feet are receiving some lovin, but make sure to set aside time with the massage chair to close your eyes and focus on the sensation of your feet being rubbed, appreciating the prana circulating more freely through the body’s roots.
SANTOSHA: CONTENTMENT Contentment is not synonymous with happiness. Contentment can be an expression of happiness, but it is more subtle than that. It is the sensation deep down inside that all is right in the present moment. Santosha is found in the pose we are most comfortable with – a deep backbend perhaps – that makes us remember why we practice yoga in the first place. Contentment is hard to express verbally because it is a deeper knowing than literacy can afford, but it still can be conveyed, translated into a modern lexicon! How? Through gratitude! Gratitude is hugely empowering for us college yogis because it enables us to pause and realize the awesomeness in our lives. Through gratitude we appreciate the opportunities we are given and the people in our lives. We begin to interact with those people and opportunities differently when we consciously establish gratitude for them because gratitude does not let us take them for granted. Gratitude is the ability to recognize our own contentment. Writing a gratitude list is a hugely transformative daily practice. It’s super simple: take out a notebook or a post-it or a sticky on your computer or start an email to a friend. Bullet point! Just start listing, in a stream-ofconscious fashion, what you are grateful for. You may be surprised at what comes up. Bonus points if you do this while having an absolutely horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day (remember that children’s book?)!
TAPAH: DISCIPLINE Discipline can be a nasty word for free-flowing hippie college students, but is a prerequisite of a yoga practice. It boils down to transforming routine into ritual so that this tapah – discipline – becomes sacred. Tapah, in addition to discipline, means heat. Heat can transforms solid into liquid. It is what molds clay. It makes batter into cake. Heat TRANSFORMS. If you want to change, you need heat. According to Patanjali, this means we need discipline. CREATING ORDER OUT OF CHAOS – THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL IN THE COLLEGE YOGI’S LIFE “Creating Order Out of Chaos” is the name of my school’s campus knitting club. The club, started by two trendy sophomores, is revamping this seemingly grandmotherly hobby into something badass and slightly rebellious (they had to – we’re a small liberal arts school filled with hipsters!). Every Friday, after the week’s classes end, students gather in the yard of a program house and knit. They knit scarves, sweaters, and yarn bombs. But what is important is that they perform these acts on a specific day, at a specific time, with a specific intention. Can you guess the key word here? Specificity. Here are some ideas – take ‘em and run…or strip…or sing: NAKED TIME: Yes, you heard me – set aside time to be naked. My freshman year, I was part of this underground feminist circle where we talked about whatever was on our minds. The circle itself was a ritual, but one thing that came up was the importance of naked time, time with our bodies, time where we are not putting on clothes to assume a certain identity or trend, time with our most innate selves. I have a friend who lived in a triple and both her roommates had class on Tuesdays at 1:30. She did not so she would march back to her room from the dining hall, strip down, and savor her hour of pure solitude, with her lack of clothes as a marker of being absolutely alone. You might decide to turn off the lights, light a candle (but beware of Fire Safety), get a ’lil intimate with yourself. Go under the covers, read a book, meditate, nap, practice yoga, or do anything else that makes you feel special, just as you are. CLUBS: Regular gatherings of like-minded people expand our worlds and allow us to realize that there is more to life than that next paper/test/lecture. Figure out what you are interested in and see if there is already a club on your campus that is devoted to it. Don’t start something that already exists, please. Your presence can improve on it, but what crowded colleges definitely do not need is too much of the same thing. Create order, not chaos, with your rituals. If it doesn’t exist, then by all means, start it! Set a regular date and time and welcome those who wish to seek solace in the company of shared interests. BRUNCH: Every Saturday and Sunday, at 11am sharp, members of my hamily (my hall family) knock on my door for brunch. There is something special about debriefing with a group of loved ones and having that predictability after Friday and Saturday nights. Grab your omelet, toast your bagel, sip your coffee, and luxuriate in the company of others and the ushering in of a new day. MEDITATION: In the mornings, before I head to class, I set my iPhone timer for ten minutes, sit on a pillow so that my hips are elevated above my knees, close my eyes, and go inward.
Starting my days with meditation allows me to have that concentrated period of focus and order before my day starts going bonkers with appointments and studying and good old college drama. And you know what? It lessens any stress I may have around all of the above. RELIGIOUS SERVICES: Campuses offer religious and spiritual life services for a reason. Students need centering and these services provide built-in ritual to campus schedules. I took an Intro to the Study of Religion class my first semester and as part of it, we had to try out a religious ceremony not our own. I find that whatever it is, as long as it’s pretty liberal (meaning that it doesn’t tell me I have to prescribe to anything in particular), I leave in a better place than when I came. YOGA: You saw this coming. Yoga – more specifically, a home practice or a class – is a customizable ritual because you are always encouraged to cater to your own body, to connect to your breath, and to embrace the familiarity of the poses through japa (repetition). Yoga class after that straining chem test might be just what you are in desperate need of. MAGAZINES: I don’t know about you, but come Friday, I am spiritually, emotionally, and physically depleted. I honestly feel like I can’t do anything. And you know what? It’s Friday (cue Rebecca Black) and I don’t have to. When I recognized this pattern of wanting to just collapse after my last class of the week, I created the ritual of going to my university’s bookstore, buying a cup of tea from the café, and piling up every magazine that grabbed my interest (Yoga Journal, Glamour, Bust, Bitch, Elle, Real Simple, you name it). We spend so much time reading nonfiction or just reading for the sake of analyzing and producing that come Friday, we should liberate ourselves enough to take time to read just for us, without a goal in mind. Take what you like and leave the rest. Above is what has worked for me, but I deeply encourage you to find your own rituals that are authentic to you, your path to wellness, and your life as a busy college yogi. Create order out of the seeming chaos that comes from wanting to do everything at once. A wise yoga teacher once told me we are human beings, not human doings. Get quiet or loud or whatever the hell you want, but allow yourself to be so that when you do, you are more effective and productive.
SVADHYAYA: SELF-STUDY Svadhyaya is how we check in with ourselves. As the third niyama, it teaches us not to be self-destructive through examining what causes us harm. As college yogis, it encourages us to make the study of the self yet another class, just as or even more important than all the other academic classes we take. To begin to study the self is akin to beginning a new school year so before you start, head over to the campus bookstore of U and get your textbooks! Here are some ideas for supplies (and of course refer to the Resource Guide for a more complete list):
a journal you feel comfortable writing in, a journal you call hOMe. Maybe it’s a compo-
sition notebook you decorate with stickers of your favorite bands. Maybe it’s a hipster Moleskine or maybe your favorite stationery artist has made one you want to try out. Whatever it is, your journal holds tremendous power. a pen that flows like a fluid vinyasa. a book of poetry that inspires you and makes you feel a sense of connection and grace. The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark by Sera Beak The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
a translation that feels accessible to you of
both The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita. a place where you can be alone – the classroom for your self-study – a garden, a lake, a corner in your room, a stairwell in the library nobody knows about. JOURNALING: WHERE TO BEGIN FLOW: Take out a pen. Go to a clean page in your journal. Start writing. Go in without a plan. See what comes up. You might surprise yourself – sometimes a flowy pen knows us better than our filtered minds. QUOTE: Can’t focus enough to go with the stream-of-consciousness? Pick a quote, any quote, and write it at the top of the page. Then, start writing about what this quote means to you. This quote serves as your drishdi – your point of focus and balance – for written self-exploration. ARTSY FARTSY: Go to a museum. Pick a painting. Start writing, using the painting as your drishdi this time. What does it remind you of? DREAM: It is rare that we remember our dreams, but our best shot of remembering them is first thing in the morning. Keep your journal near your bed and write down what happened when you were sleeping. WARMUP: We are all, in some capacity, expected to write in college as part of our academic careers. One way in which we can take the pressure off ourselves is through allotting the time and space to let loose on the page and see what comes up. Say, for example, you are sitting down to write a response paper for your American Studies course. You are staring at the computer screen, constantly grabbing your chai latte, holding onto the yummy warmth for safety as if the letters on the keyboard have suddenly grown fangs and will bite. The yoga class equivalent of this is having a teacher begin class by telling the students to go into pinchamayurasana – forearm stand – no cat/cows, sun salutations, or backbends to precede it. Without warmup, the chances of injury triple. The same goes for writing a paper. Sitting down at the computer to write the Big Scary Draft – the academic version of an intimidating peak pose – should only happen after you properly warm up. So take out your journal and free write on the topic of the paper. Then, use what you like about your loose for-your-eyes-only free write to begin the draft. Once we warm up, we see that the end result isn’t so scary after all. The juice is in the process. Now begin to study yourself. Do it in whatever way has meaning for you. Are you a numbers person? Make an Excel sheet of your life, dreams, and passions! Are you a writer? Write about your own life. You can even make yourself into a character and write about you in the third person. Make it fun. Make it engaging. Make it U!
ISVARAPRANIDHANA: SURRENDER Living in faith is synonymous with living happily because it is the state of knowing you are exactly where you need to be, that everything is going to be alright. This state of surrender, of receptivity to all that comes your way, is what can make you that carefree go-with-the-flow person that is magnetic – that everyone is attracted to because they just make life easier. It’s funny because this can seem to go against tapah – discipline – but the two go hand in hand. Discipline means taking the action. Isvarapranidhana means letting go of the results, surrendering them to the greater flow of the Universe.
It is difficult to see the tangible in this last niyama so here are some jumping off points: DEDICATION: Dedicate your yoga practice to something greater and outside your own head. Maybe your roommate is dealing with a life challenge. Dedicate your practice to her. Maybe you notice an overwhelming issue of homelessness in your small college town. Dedicate your practice to all the homeless people you have seen that week. Dedication plants the seeds for action and it all starts on the mat. As you stand in tadasana, ask yourself, Who am I doing this for? UNPLAN: Practice not planning. Wake up and ask yourself, “What do I want to do today?” Create space. Give yourself the chance to live in the day, to explore a larger vision for what you do with your life. This can enable you to go to yoga classes you never thought you’d go to, catch up on hours of sleep you never thought you’d get back, talk to old and new friends, to dance. Create out of that space. CHANT: Does your school host kirtans? If so, I highly encourage you go and get lost in the chanting of divine sounds. If not, make your own modern yogi kirtan by picking a song that has special meaning to you and singing it loud in the shower, repeatedly, until the lyrics get lost and all there is, is the feeling of the musical vibration, waking you up, making you fall in love with your life.
Chapter 10 Asana: It All Starts on the Mat
CREATE A PASSIONATE HOME PRACTICE! Your home practice should be an ecstatic expression of who you are, in the present moment. This means that it, like you, can and should change over time. Your yoga practice does not have to look like anyone else’s. Nor should it! It should be uniquely and divinely you. In this section on asana, you will learn how to create the bulk of your home practice, but do not stop there. To have a thorough and well-rounded home practice, add in all the other seven limbs. We just talked a lot about making your practice a unique expression of who you are. Get creative. I challenge you to get creative within some structure. A home practice is sustainable in that it has a set sequence, but also some things that can vary day-to-day. Okay, let’s make this into a multiple choice test:
The rest of this section is devoted to giving you the tools that you need to create a devotional practice that is ______________. (A) well-rounded and that works out all parts of the body (B) tailored to your body and your level of yoga practice in particular (C) catered to your lifestyle and time you can spare for your practice (D) variable for the day-to-day (E) ALL OF THE ABOVE A
B
C
D
ALL OF THE ABOVE
LIFE IS YOGA; YOGA IS NOT LIFE It is all too easy to try to cram for a yoga practice like we would cram for an exam: realize we
don’t have enough time and then study in a panic. A major problem with college is that we learn too much in too little time. Yoga should fit into your life, but your life should not fit into your yoga. So before you begin, answer some simple questions. This is not a test; this is an assessment, asking you what you need to create a sustainable home practice. Take out a journal (remember that niyama of svadhyaya?) and start writing answers, stream-of-consciousness, not letting your egos or the “shoulds” of your life get in the way.
1. Why would you like to practice yoga? To build strength? To get more flexible? To remember to breathe? To learn about philosophy? 2. What do you need for a practice to be sustainable? 3. How long would you like to practice each day? 10 minutes? An hour and a half? Somewhere in between? The power of yoga lies in its consistency, not in the individual duration of each practice. 4. What times of day are best for you to practice? (Let’s be real: If you have a tendency to roll out of bed and into 9am Spanish, a morning practice probably isn’t for you unless you are in some dire need of changing that habit. Are you exhausted by the time you’re off to the library? Maybe insert your yoga practice right beforehand. Work WITH yourself.) Where would you like to practice? What props might you need? 5. What pace would you like? Do you want to hold poses for a long or short time? Are you 6. a chataranga junkie or a restorative lounger? Can you use the pace to balance out your doshas (see chapter on the Dining Hall). What are the staples of your practice, the elements that you can come hOMe to? Chanting 7. Om before you begin? Cat/cows? What are your favorite parts of all the yoga classes you have taken, the things you’ve never gotten sick of? Write them down! What do you want your yoga practice to convey about you and your personality? Fierce? 8. Fun? Fabulous? Flowy? Restorative? Rejuvenating? Relaxed? Badass? Bold? Brave? (Can you tell I’m an English major with my love of alliteration?)
GO WITH THE FLOW: FIND YOUR VINYASA KRAMA If you can move, you can do yoga. Fanciness is overrated. We need to be babies in order to be kids and we need to be kids in order to be adults. In other words, we need to be really awkward freshmen in order to be fabulous seniors. As for a yoga practice, we need to go through all the stages and enjoy the journey along the way. Krama means “stage” in Sanskrit. If you’ve taken a vinyasa yoga class before, you’ve probably heard countless times: “Take a vinyasa” or “Exhale into chataranga” or “Lower down knees, chest, and chin.” Vinyasa means “to place in a special way.” In modern yogi times, it has come to mean “to move with breath.” A vinyasa, in terms of the asana practice, is the connection between poses, the linkage. If we all expect to go straight into chataranga (a yogi pushup) when we are first beginning a personal practice, we’re just setting ourselves up for disappointment and middle school gym class flashbacks. Let’s get something straight: your personal practice is not your
middle school gym class. Yoga should be challenging, but it should never be dreadful. If it is, chances are, you are missing a link in the chain and floundering like a pre-frosh at a seniors-only house party. Here are the three major vinyasa kramas, the links in a chain of poses:
ASHTANGA NAMASKAR: KNEES, CHEST, & CHIN For: Yoga Freshmen - you’ve been practicing for a few months or less; you’re a beginner. ARDHA CHATARANGA: HALF CHATARANGA For: Yoga Sophomores - ashtanga namaskar feels too easy and a full chataranga feels like you’re just gonna hit the floor. CHATARANGA DANDASANA: YOGA PUSHUP For: Yoga Juniors/Seniors - you’re feeling like you want more of an edge and you have an easy time holding your body in alignment in plank pose. ONE LEGGED VINYASA For: Yoga Seniors - you want more play in your practice/the ability to hop into an inversion all the time.
COMPONENTS OF A HOME PRACTICE WARM UP cat/cows
down dog to open out hips seated twists
child’s pose
thread the needle neck rolls
pranam variations (cobra to child’s pose)
CORE CULTIVATION
hand and knee balance down dog to plank
boat (navasana)
lunge twists
knee to outside of elbows
For SUN SALUTATIONS go to....
VINYASAS
triangle (trikonasana)
bound triangle warrior II (virabhadrasana II)
high lunge twists
extended side angle (parsvakonasana)
peaceful warrior
high lunge
STANDING POSES pyramid (parsvottanasana)
chair
goddess
twisted triangle (parivrtta trikonasana)
wide-legged forward fold (prasarita padottanasana) kali
chair twists
ARM BALANCE
crow (bakasana)
sage balance (eka pada koundinyasana)
side crow (parivrtta bakasana)
flying pidgeon (eka pada galavasana)
firefly (titibasana)
eight point pose (ashtavakrasana)
STANDING BALANCE bird of paradise (svarga dvidasana) warrior III (virabhadrasana III)
dancer (natarajasana)
tree (vrksasana) half moon (ardha chandrasana)
full moon (ardha chapasana)
eagle (garudasana)
INVERSION handstand (adho mukha vrksasana)
classical headstand (sirsasana)
scorpion (vrischika asana)
forearm stand (pincha mayurasana)
tripod headstand shoulderstand (salamba sarvangasana)
legs up the wall (viparita karani)
HIP OPENING supine pigeon (supta eka pada rajo kapotasana)
pigeon (eka pada rajo kapotasana)
happy baby (ananda balasana)
reclined goddess (supta baddho konasana)
diamond (tarasana)
splits (hanumanasana)
wide-legged forward fold
CORE CULTIVATION yogi push-up
boat
plank side plank (vasisthasana)
sinking boat (ardha navasana)
knee to outside of elbow
BACK BENDING bow (dhanurasana)
bridge (with or without block)
camel (ustrasana) locust (shalabhasana) supine hero (virasana) wheel (urdhva dhanurasana)
TWISTS/ FORWARD BENDS
one-legged forward fold (janu shirsasana) lunge twist seated spinal twist (ardha matseyendrasana)
eagle legs supine twist (supta matseyendrasana) forward fold (paschimotanasana)
HEADSTAND
child’s pose
egg shape
headstand (sirsasana)
dolphin
FINISHING SERIES
plow (halasana) fish pose (matsiyasana)
shoulderstand
MIX ‘N MATCH ASANA This section serves as a guide for creating your own home practice. If you try to do all these poses at once, chances are, you’re not being authentic and you will have an imbalanced practice. This is simply the order in which the practice goes, with some ideas for poses if you are seeking inspiration. The categories are in the correct order for a safe, successful, and sustainable practice. If you want sequences/feel like you need more detail in home practice instruction, check out the Student Planner, which provides sequences in the correct order for your personal enjoyment. YOUR PRACTICE: WAYS TO BEGIN THE MAT: Start on your mat. Stand in tadasana, mountain pose, and simply see what comes up. Let your body be your teacher. ONE OF EACH: Choose one of each pose in each pose category from above (except for HEADSTAND to SAVASANA, which are sequences in proper order). It’s like making yourself a mix tape with different asanas. PEAK POSE: Choose a pose from ARM BALANCE, STANDING BALANCE, or INVERSION. Make this the pose you build up to. It’s your job to sequence the practice so that the body is sufficiently prepared for what’s to come. Choosing crow? Warm up with hip openers and lots of core cultivation. Choosing eagle? Keep the hips closed and focus on chair pose and lunge sequences. Invite the eagle arms into the warrior sequences to spice things up. DRY ERASE BOARD: If you’re your own teacher, your classroom has to have the right supplies. Write out the sequence of a yoga practice in terms of categories on a dry erase board and place the board somewhere in your dorm room where you can see it as you practice. This way, you know what comes next. JOURNAL: In your journal, plan out a sequence for yourself. Put some thought into it. It’s like creating your own personal lesson plan. Founder of Ashtanga Yoga, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, is famous for saying, “Practice and all is coming.” Give yourself the gift of a portable, independent practice that you can do anywhere.
Now remember: Home is where the Om is.
PERSONALIZE YOUR PRACTICE How do you personalize your yoga practice? Let’s use the M’s. MUDRAS The heart expresses itself through the hands. The most animated – the most alive – people talk with their hands, flailing them about, because their hearts are so full of energy that their hands try to fling that energy out into the world. Our hands have their own language for when words are too limited to express what we feel. Mudras are energy seals that transmit feeling and intention into our practice. They also enable us to do the same poses, but add something physically different to them each time. You can add them to any pose that involves a stretch of the arms. Anjali Mudra This is the classic “Namaste” mudra (i.e. we bring our hands to prayer, traditionally used for setting and reminding of intentions). Lotus Mudra This mudra represents blossoming and personal growth. To embody it is to embody the essence of the lotus flower, which grows into a beautiful plant, but only in the murkiest of waters. Chin Mudra This mudra is an energy seal intended for those times when we need to conserve energy or harness it for a specific purpose. Dhyana Mudra This is the mudra of concentration. It draws the prana inward. MUSIC Music is an excellent motivator for a yoga practice. Mixing up the music is a way to not get bored, even when doing the same poses over and over again. It also makes a practice that can sometimes seem foreign to our bodies an integrated part of day-to-day life. Hearing a Top 40 song when in Warrior II just might make the difference between a serious frown and the joyful smile that is the goal of Yoga. Break down the parts of the practice and dissect what music is good for each part. Don’t start off doing cat/cows to Beyoncé, but “Countdown” is a helpful song later on in the practice when you are counting down the number of speedy sun salutations you have left. The practice can be broken down into two phases: solar and lunar. The solar part of the practice is from the beginning up until the first set of inversions (using the phases of the practice outlined in this book). The lunar practice begins with hip opening and ends with savasana.
There are some mornings when I feel fueled by blasting Ke$ha. “Wake up in the morning feeling like P-Diddy” makes me…wake up in the morning feeling like P-Diddy, or the yoga equivalent - maybe Dharma Mittra or Dana Flynn? Then, there are other mornings where if I did my sun salutes to Ke$ha, I would feel the polar opposite of centered, mornings where I need some peaceful Ani Difranco to revv me up. Maybe your Ke$ha is Eminem and your Ani, Beethoven, but your life, starting with what you listen to on your mat, is worth living with flair, as a moving, dynamic, musical celebration so allow the nada yoga – the yoga of sound – to reflect that. MANTRAS A mantra is what we tell ourselves over and over. It is also what we chant at the beginning of a practice. Chanting is a way to feel completely alive, to feel our sonic effect on the world around us, and to reaffirm why we are dedicating time in our busy days for a yoga practice to begin with. MIX ‘N MATCH There are plenty of styles of yoga out there, from Jivamukti to Iyengar. Your job as a divinely unique being, is not to choose between them. It is, rather, to use discernment in creating a practice all your own by combining them. That’s right – you, too, can create your own style of yoga! It will emerge from your personal practice. MAT There is a booth at the Wanderlust Festival where you can get a maticure. You tattoo your mat so that, while you stare down at it in a forward fold, you are reminded of why you are in a forward fold to begin with. Is there a deity in this book that stands out to you? Paint it on your mat! Is there a color that makes you happy? Get a mat in that color. Make your mat unmistakably your own, a true expression of who you are and what you want to convey. INTENTION Set an intention. What do you want your own practice to convey about you? This intention is not static; it can and will vary. When I first began practicing, my intention was to be present and while it was great for me at the time, it is not super unique or personal. I now go by the three F’s (yeah, I know I love alliteration) – fierce, fun, and flowing. That is what I want my practice to convey about me. My yoga practice on the mat should be reflective of who I want to be off the mat. Offer up home practices that are sustainable in that they have a set sequence, but also include some things that can vary day-to-day. Boredom is the enemy of any sustainable home practice. This is why we mix-and-match. Our practice should be fun and exciting, not dull and dreadful. We should not dread what is good for us. A practice is like gummy bear vitamins – they taste amazing and they have your dose of what’s good for you. Symptoms of a Boring Home Practice - It feels like a chore. - The second you get into a pose, you cannot wait to get out of it.
Side -
You are doing the same things over and over again, expecting different results. You are thinking about dinner while in savasana. The focus is on how you will feel afterwards; it is a means to an end. Effects of a Boring Home Practice You limit your own growth. It is not sustainable; you will burn out. There is no love. It is about product rather than process. It is just yoga, not Yoga.
Checklist for a Sustainable Home Practice - You look forward to the time you set aside. - You have a kickass playlist that is a reflection of how you want to move. - You try at least one new thing each time you come to the mat. - You forget about the readings you have to do later as you come into a particularly delicious pose. - As you chant Om or your mantra, you fall in love with life. Benefits of a Sustainable Home Practice - You smile as you move without being told. - You will be able to do cool shit without even trying. - Getting on your mat is effortless. - You grow in strength and flexibility. - You have an intelligence about the practice that grows as you amass more knowledge. And remember… If it doesn’t mean something to you, why do it?
Chapter 11 Pranayama: Just Breathe!
THE REVOLUTION LIES IN THE BREATH As college students, it is both easy and terrifying to forget to breathe on a daily basis. We get a test back and see a letter or number that we do not like and suddenly a movie of an imaginary future starts playing in our heads of making a living selling Big Macs. There is a sharp intake of breath and then…nothing. As we cry or yell or freak out, we find that we are literally gasping for air. Our bodies realize that we need to breathe, but our hyperactive minds are ignoring it. Now, imagine you are at the beach. You are lying on the sand, a book resting on your stomach, and all is well in the world. You breathe in deeply, savoring the salty smell of the ocean and you breathe out, letting the exhale merge with the world as you find you are one with your surroundings. Here, in this place of peacefulness and joy, where it seems like nothing can negatively effect you, you feel utterly connected and at peace. It becomes easy to not only breathe, but to breathe deeply and bask in the miracle of your prana having a conversation with the ocean’s. Clearly, environment effects how we breathe, which is why it is particularly salient that as college students we pay attention to the breath. I am suggesting that there is a happy medium – a place where we can access oceanic deep breathing even as we freak out over a bad grade. The breath offers the revolutionary opportunity of a pause, of space between thought and action, a time out for the mind so that it does not immediately go to freak out mode. Sounds pretty sweet, right?
INHALE, EXHALE, & EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN UJAYI PRANAYAM This is the simplest form of yogic breathing and the easiest to access in public without looking crazy. Ujayi means victorious because this deep breath provides freedom from the chitta vrittis, the fluctuations of the mind. Here’s how: Inhale deeply through the nose so that the breath reaches the bottoms of the lungs and expands the chest and belly outward. Exhale through
the nose, this time constricting the back of the throat so you make a bit of a Darth Vader/ oceanic (if you’re not a Star Wars fan) sound. Exhale fully so that the bellybutton moves inward to the spine. Begin the process again. Do in sets of threes and fives and throughout an entire asana practice. This is your default, go-to breath. It allows prana to hold the body upright for long periods of time in challenging poses. BREATH OF FIRE This is the pranayama exercise to do if you find yourself falling asleep in class or at the library and is perfect for that sacred bathroom break. This breath involves a lot of trust that the inhale will, in fact, come even as all it seems you are doing is exhaling. Here’s how: Generate fast and short exhales through both nostrils, keeping the mouth closed. Keep a box of tissues nearby because snot will probably emerge as you immerse yourself in this cleansing breath of rapid exhales, stoking your inner fire. Do in sets of 30 rapid breaths. NADI SHODANA Alternate nostril breathing is an excellent practice to do when really stressed out and at the end of a long day. It is a terrific energetic cleansing of the body. It is also an essential practice for focusing when the mind feels adrift. As the fingers rest on the Third Eye, it taps into the yogic seat of wisdom, the place where the answers lie. Here’s how: Rest the left palm face up on the left knee. Take the peace fingers of the right hand and place the finger tips on the space between the eyebrows. Breathe in through both nostrils. Breathe out fully. Then, place the thumb on the right nostril so that as you breathe in, you are only inhaling through the left. Then, press down on the left nostril with the right ring finger so that you retain the breath for a count of three. Finally, exhale through the right nostril. Inhale through the right nostril. Retain. Exhale through the left. Repeat at least three times, cleansing body and mind in harmony. LAUGHING These traditional pranayama exercises are important and aid the natural flow of the breath. They assist the flow of oxygen and prana - life force - throughout the body so that we can be more full of life and take greater advantage of the present moment. But there is an innate pranayama exercise that we must do every single day, an exercise that not only aids us in being more present, but is a sign that we are being more present. It’s called LAUGHING. Laughter can feel like coming up for a breath of fresh air. Maybe you were just sitting in the library for hours and suddenly, your friend comes up to you and wants to play hide and seek in the stacks. Laughter helps us to (en)lighten up, to stop taking ourselves so seriously. Its power is not to be underestimated. Deep belly laughter is a sign of victorious (ujayi) spaciousness in the body. It is a clearing out of negativity.
MIX ’N MATCH PRANAYAMA Integrate the breathing into the home practice you have created from the previous chapter. Ujayi breath should, of course, be done to go deeper in all asana. But I encourage you to be-
gin or end each yoga practice with these other variations. Pranayama is like putting delicious spices in a stew of the asana practice. It gives it flavor and pizazz. To do an asana practice without pranayama is like making curry without curry powder and expecting it to still taste like curry – it just isn’t Yoga. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you go to school in a seasonal climate, practice breath of fire to warm the body in the cold months and nadi shodana to cool the body down in the warm months. It’s all about balance, baby.
Chapter 12 Pratayahara: Let Go
CLEANSE: SHEDDING ENERGY To cleanse means to let go of what does not serve us. It’s what I like to call “yoga for a bad day.” Have you ever had one of those days that’s just really shitty? Where you first get a bad grade on a test, then find out your best friend made out with your ex, only to later discover that your hall mate threw a chair off your balcony while intoxicated? Yeah, it’s happened to all of us in some way, shape, or form. While yoga won’t magically change the grade you got or make your chem partner have a sudden change of heart, or voilá replace the chair on your balcony, it will help you act rather than react. Trust me - this lack of a prefix makes all the difference. Here’s how: At the end of a rough day, clean your room. This is a yoga practice in and of itself my roommate swore by for helping her get through sophomore slump. Then, once the covers are tucked in and the soot is off your desk, go to your altar and light a candle. I know, fire safety is probably really against this so you have two options here: a) be badass and careful or b) buy a battery-powered candle and fake-light it. Then, get out a block, meditation cushion, or a few books to elevate the seat, and stare at the light. That’s right, look right into it, LITERALLY bringing you from darkness into light seeing as the candlelight should, at this point, be the only light in your room on. Squint your eyes slightly, keeping them half-closed, and allow the light to burn away all the unnecessary toxins, helping you let go of all that is not serving you. Breathe deeply as you participate in this meditation and bask in the quiet that surrounds you. As you inhale, call to mind the word “Let” and as you exhale, bring to mind the word “Go.” When you finish, come into downward dog, take child’s pose, or do your whole practice.
LETTING GO If you are a college student or human being in general, chances are there is something you can let go of. We do not get bonus points in yoga or in life for pretending to be perfect. If anything, we get bonus points for showing up with all those pesky imperfections, daily, as we engage in the continuous and energizing process of letting go.
So let us start where we always start: on the mat. Come into child’s pose and turn the palms up in a simple gesture of receptivity. In order to be receptive, we must first let go of any barriers that prevent us from opening to grace. These barriers might be the days when you thought you were going to go pre-med and are now an English major. The barrier might take the form of an ex you can’t stop fantasizing about, the constant thoughts about all you have to do after yoga, or drama in your friend group. Whatever it is, on the inhale, bring it to mind and on the exhale, let it go! You’ll be surprised – you might not think about it the rest of your practice. Letting go is the antidote to freaking out. When we believe that everything occurs to serve a greater purpose, there is no reason to freak out. This requires us to practice faith. Living in faith is synonymous with living happily because it is the state of knowing you are exactly where you need to be.
Chapter 13 Dharana: Concentrate!
FIND YOUR PURPOSE It is much easier to concentrate when we have a clear purpose. Otherwise, we wonder why we are in the library until 2am to work on a macroeconomics paper. Nothing we do in college makes any sense unless there is a purpose behind it (and that purpose can be to find a greater purpose in the first place!). Your purpose can be as grand or seemingly insignificant as suits you, but a purpose adds a level of mindfulness to all we do, a mindfulness that is the byproduct of a consistent yoga practice. Concentration emerges when we realize we have a unique and specific dharma to fill. No longer are we relegated to the confusion of being wandering freshmen (note this: even if you are a freshman, you do not need to wander - from frat party to frat party or in academia!). The word “dharma” is tossed around A LOT in yoga. Chances are, you’ve heard it in the context of a class as a “dharma talk.” This is when the teacher provides a context for the asana practice. This context is a purpose for the class. It has to be established and provided before the actual class can take place. A dharma or purpose is a framework for the action, not the action itself.
SET YOUR INTENTION You have clarified your purpose, but now what? A purpose has to undergo steps to being fulfilled. It is super easy to forget that we have a purpose or what it is in the first place. An intention is a daily (or more-than-daily) reminder of your purpose and HOW you are going to fulfill it. An intention is not something to get done, but how we do things. For example, I often make my intention for class “to be grateful.” The practice of setting intentions works. I would be in poses, forget that I set an intention (because I offered it up) and then be so grateful for how good my body felt, suddenly remembering that that feeling of gratitude was my intention in action.
HOW TO SET INTENTIONS: JOURNAL: Exercise that niyama of svadhyaya by journaling your intentions. Write them down to solidify them. ASANA: Set your intention at the beginning of your practice. Bring your hands to anjali – prayer – mudra at the heart. Think up your intention and then set it FREE as you offer your hands up to the sky/ceiling and begin your sun salutations, greeting a new day filled with purpose. TAKE IT TO BED: Get sexy with your intention! As you lie in bed in the morning, don’t let yourself get out until you’ve set your intention for the day. MEDITATE: In meditation, give your monkey mind something to focus on - a drishdi if you will by crafting an intention for the day. DRAW: More of a studio art yogi than a wordsmith? Draw out your intention or paint it or pastel it or tattoo it. SEMESTER BY SEMESTER: Each new semester, rip out a page of a magazine. Grab a silver sharpie and write on that fashionable page, dressing up your intentions. Begin simply by writing at the top, “This semester, I intend to...” Then, fill in the blanks and DO NOT CENSOR YOURSELF. You might be surprised at what emerges.
Chapter 14 Dhyana: Meditation
GET QUIET We have arrived at the final limb in Patanjali’s path of Yoga. We just talked a lot about purpose in the chapter on Dhyana, the preceding limb, and here we will immerse ourselves in the purpose of Yoga: meditation. If you’re anything like me when I first found out this seminal bit of information, you are probably thinking, “Say what now? You mean I am doing all this asana, breathing...breaking the bank at yoga classes...just to sit?!” Yes, yes you are...to an extent, at least. We move so that we can be still, but a divine trick of yoga is that we can do both at the same time. We can find stillness in the mind as we move through poses. There are as many ways to meditate as there are people in the world and there is no one right way. Many people shy away from meditation because they believe they cannot sit still. Guess what! You don’t have to sit still to meditate! You can meditate in whatever way feels authentic to you. My freshman year roommate and college yogi, Catherine, meditated daily, but she never sat on a cushion with her eyes closed. During finals week, I would come home from the studentrun cafe to find her spread out on our floor with crayons and coloring books. She was 19 at the time and a coloring book aficionado. She told me that when she colored, she was able to engage in a de-stressing mindlessness. She was able to not think so that when she did have to think, was more efficient and effective. Similarly, my friend Sonya goes on long runs to clear her head. My friend Matt dances. My friend Tobah wakes up every morning and reads cookbooks as she eats breakfast. Madison paints. Sarah sings. Morgan lies in parks and watches the clouds. Toni writes. Oliver watches birds. Get the picture? Meditation is intensely personal and intimate. We can take different paths to get to the same result. The phrase, “road not traveled” does not point to one specific road; it
points to several and we don’t want any one road to get so crowded that there’s a traffic jam. We seek to simply clear the mind through whatever road we take, so it can be occupied by the courage to change. So what IS meditation then? Meditation is anything that quiets the chitta vrittis – the fluctuations of the mind. You do not need to physically get quiet; you can find quiet within you and THAT is meditation. We have to break away from this one-size-fits-all definition of meditation because one size does NOT fit all! And thank Goddess for that! It is time for us to get creative so that we realize that what we already do IS meditation and we can do it more. Like medicine, we take it when we need it. We just need to know what it is, what we need in order for it to take place, and then we have to access it. Asana means seat. This means that we move so that it prepares the seat for meditation. Let’s be real - who wants to sit if the body is wide awake and needs to move? Meditation ideally comes after the asana practice, at a time when our limbs are tired and crave a seated position. Asana quiets the active body. Have you ever babysat rambunctious kids in the evening? Have you ever tried to tire them out? Have them run around in circles? Give them some kind of release so that your job of putting them to bed would be easier? If you did, you were a phenomenal babysitter because the kids were fast asleep by the time their parents got home. This is because their bodies were tired enough that the mind could still in preparation for sleep. In college and in the Yoga practice, we are our own babysitters. We have to make sure we run around enough, do enough vinyasas, and tire out the body just enough so that quiet is available to us. Once the mind is quiet, we can LISTEN. We can listen to what our dharma is. We can listen to the world around us. We can listen for the next action we need to take in a tricky situation or what decision is right for us. There is one big barrier to meditation and that is “monkey mind.” Think of your chitta vrittis - fluctuating thoughts - as trees that your monkey of a mind jumps to every two seconds. Sometimes, the mind just does not want to be still like a little kid who just does not want to go to bed. That is OKAY. Allow the thoughts to pass through you. Or, begin practicing a more accessible meditation, which allows the mind to focus and constantly move its attention and dharana - concentration - from person to person. Need to tame monkey mind? Check out the following practice of Metta…
METTA: LOVINGKINDNESS MEDITATION LOKAH SAMASTAH SUKHINO BHAVANTU , " )%,* % $$,"% My Metta teacher, an amazing yogini from my teacher training (hello, learning from your peers!), Steph Kirby Anderson, defines Metta meditation as, “Loving kindness. Sincerely wishing well for another. Sending positive energy out into the world.” Of her meditation practice, she says, Years ago I began a metta meditation practice. It affects me in ways I can’t put into words. A great
mentor once told me that love is one thing you can give away and never have less of. I try to remember that each day. This is the foundation of my yoga practice. I set an intention for each time I practice asana (the poses). I believe, “just give it away” because you get what you put out into the world.
Metta calms the chitta vrittis because it allows the mind to constantly shift its focus. Ideally, we begin by coming to a comfortable seat, but the beauty of Metta is that it is highly portable and can be done (and should be!) in even the most challenging locations (i.e. during rush hour on the subway if you happen to live in a city). It is phenomenal for college students because it proves to us that we can take care of ourselves without being self-absorbed. It helps us be better friends, students, partners, and collaborators. Close the eyes. Bring to mind a vision of you at your happiest – At the beach? Dancing at a party? With your family? Now, repeat in your head, “May I be safe. May I be healthy. May I be happy. May I live a life of ease.” Mentally say this three times and then say the same, replacing “I” with the name of someone you love dearly like a sister or best friend, as you visualize them. Repeat the process three more times, once for a neutral person (i.e. the person who swipes the cards at the dining hall), once for someone you really can’t stand or are angry at (i.e. your roommate on the day she left a wet towel on your bed). For the last Metta, repeat the phrases replacing “I” with “we” and envision a sea of people, swimming together. CREATE YOUR OWN A Metta practice only works if it allows us to lead a more happy, joyous, and free life. We don’t get happy, joyous, and free (words which are wonderful, but vague, and up to your own interpretation) by conforming to someone else’s definition of happiness, joy, and freedom. If we can personalize a yoga practice, why can’t we personalize a meditation practice too? We actually can. If the words that resonate with you most are, “May I be safe. May I be healthy. May I be happy. May I live a life of ease,” then keep them. But this practice only works if you get really real with what you want for yourself so that you can then articulately offer that up to others, even the people you are really pissed of at. However, if those words do not truly resonate with you, if they do not make your heart feel full of lovingkindness, then ditch them. What do these words mean for you? Does “safe” mean cuddly, warm, socially fluid, financially stable, protected? Does “healthy” mean glowing skin, vibrant, physically able, or flexible? And so on. Reformulate from there to create your own Metta.
Chapter 15 Samadhi: Blissful Union
GET YOUR ASS TO THE BEACH Samadhi is a feeling of connectedness that provides us with a deep inner knowing that all is right with the world. “Blissful union” is just a fancy way of saying that we have united mind and body, the true meaning of the Yoga, and we are fulfilling our purpose. We need daily reminders of this in our lives because it is part of the human condition to forget that this connection and union is possible. A beautiful reminder of this is to be presented with something larger and more powerful than you that you have absolutely zero control over. This is why I suggest the beach. Get your ass to the beach. If not literally, then metaphorically. Or look at pictures of the beach. Or play oceanic sounds on your iPhone. Or meditate and visualize yourself riding waves or scrunching the sand with your toes. The beach is an automatic reminder that we are small and insignificant. This feeling of smallness and of not mattering all that much in the grand scheme of things while still being able to make a difference is actually a way to feel samadhi, that unbounded feeling of joyfulness.
GET CONNECTED Think of getting connected as nature’s divine makeup. The only catch is you can’t buy it at Sephora; you have to brew it yourself. Through daily practices, us college yogis get this attractive, hot, sexy, glow about us. It lights us up…from the inside out. What we get at Sephora lights us up from the outside, but the yoga practice begins within. Start by asking yourself what the practices are that you need to do every day so that you feel whole, like nothing is missing, like you are complete and replenished with enough to give. Take into account all that you have learned through the other six chakras and through the eight limbs to ask: What are my needs? What do I need to do on a daily basis to make sure they are taken care of?
Freshman year, I had a hall mate who wouldn’t leave for class without applying eyeliner and mascara. It made her feel ready to take on the day. It was a daily routine, even a ritual, that offered her the peace of stability and feeling renewed. No matter what happened the day or night before, she would etch on that eyeliner and sweep that mascara underneath her eyelashes. As yogis, we have our own version of this makeup. And it’s unique to each and every one of us. Here are some examples of daily practices that help us to get connected to our dharma, to what we need to do to feel that sense of Wholeness: -
Showering Journaling Asana Meditation Time with friends
HOST A DINNER PARTY It’s one thing to get connected to a deity or to something way greater than you, but a wholly other thing to get connected to your fellow college students. We have to carve out time to build relationships. We must create our own practices that have spiritual significance. Hosting a dinner party is a spiritual practice because it connects us to our peers. I have a friend who cooks beautiful meals weekly. She invites her friends over to share them. College students who are normally stressed out and on the run gather to sit down at a meal for four hours. This is powerful. It is a way of stopping time, gathering around, and creating space. If that is not divine connection, I do not know what is!
Part 3
cOMmunity
Chapter 16 Create a Campus Yoga Community
SO MANY WORDS FOR COMMUNITY To have community means acceptance of the fact that each of us, while gorgeously unique, need each other. This concept of vulnerability is our most important human attribute. It is that which connects us to others, that which makes us porous and allows for that shell around us - our separating bodies - to majorly soften so that they can connect with others and we can all become a sort of combined liquid where we are each needed to exist as part of a greater whole. When it comes down to it, life is about the people we spend it with. Life coaches, therapists, data-driven experts on happiness, and even yoga teachers are known for saying that when it’s all over, we’re not going to be wishing we spent more time working or made more money or had more things. No, we are going to be thinking of all the time we spent with loved ones. Similarly, at the end of every year when we reflect, is our only wish going to be that we made it to more yoga classes? Hopefully not. We’re going to think of the time we spent with the people we love because in the end, that’s what it’s all about: love, giving and receiving more of it, and doing practices to better allow our words and actions to emerge straight from the heart. So at the end of the day - even if our motivation is getting a workout in - we practice yoga to cultivate more love. We practice yoga to better show up for the people in our lives. In that sense, getting on the mat becomes selfless self-care. In terms of yoga, there are many ways in which Sanskrit is simply better than English. It places value on certain aspects of life through giving them more names and means of expression when English may only have one. I believe it was Rumi who said, “There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” There are two aspects of life in particular, which Sanskrit attributes an abundance of names to. They are “liberation” and – you guessed it! – “community.” Yoga recognizes the interrelatedness of these two significant parts of life, and how the latter is a means to the former. Just as there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground, there are a thousand ways too of
expressing what it is like to feel part of something way bigger than ourselves. Who says devotion can’t have some flesh?
My story is one of creating community rather than searching for one. It can be your story as well. You do not even have to be a yoga teacher. All you need is a love of yoga and a love of people…and some concrete actions that will enable and empower you to combine the two. What are you waiting for? Create your community! CREATE A CAMPUS YOGA COMMUNITY Arrange a meeting with friends, over dinner or tea or after a yoga class, to discuss, collect ideas, and gain inspiration. We need as many heads to thoughtfully and mindfully come together as possible in order to get ideas through and show what this can mean to us. Nothing is fun when it feels selfish; everything is fun when it feels selfless. Benefit parties for college students give an added sense of purpose to dancing our asses off. And they are productive. Here is a 13-Step Plan for creating a community of college yogis: !"#Identify a need. Identify a community in which you can serve (and then use that to reach other communities). Shira did this with the Hillel and the Jewish community, using it as a platform to reach the whole campus and institutionalize yoga in a way that was meaningful for her. $"# Make an event. %"#Buddy up. Find a partner in (yoga) crime. &"#Offer it up to plant the seeds for something greater. '"#Gather a community of teachers. ("#Create a schedule. )"#Create a listserv. *"#Raise money. +"#Train teachers. !,"#Diversify types of classes. !!"#Bring in experts. !$"#Host satsangs. !%"#Have a party!
Part 4
Student Planner Yoga for Days of the Week
Sunday
Restorative
Hold Each Pose for 10 Minutes
child’s pose
legs up the wall
supine goddess
savasana
Monday
Vinyasa
child’s pose to cobra pranam
1 3 2
pelvic rotations in seated position
seated Twist
7 4
5
down dog
6
open out hips crescent lunge to open out hip
walk up to forward fold
roll to stand, mountain pose
11
8 12
10
ragdoll 9
twisted triangle
pyramid goddess
13
malasana twists
14 15
16
ankle to knee forward fold
squat 17
frog
Tuesday
Ashtanga
3 sun salutation A’s
4
2
1
3
5
6
7
3 sun salutation B’s 4
5
3 8
7 1 2
10
6 9
standing poses
gorilla triangle
revolved triangle
wide-legged forward fold
Wednesday
Partner Yoga
partner downward dog
partner twisted triangle
partner warrior III
partner dancing shiva partner seated twists
partner forward fold
Thursday
The Kaivalya Method
Repeat this flow five times, ending in downward dog.
4 2 1
3
5 Stay here for five breaths, then come into warrior I and downward dog. Repeat on the other side, ending in mountain pose.
6
7 Extend front leg and fold over, pyramid. 8
11
10
9
12
14 13
17
15 16 18 19
(for above sequence): Alanna Kaivalya is an artistic and inspiring teacher of yoga. Born with a hearing impairment, Alanna learned through the power of vibration at a young age, and was then naturally drawn to the harmonic practice of yoga. Listed as Yoga Journal’s top 21 Yoga Teachers Under 40 (March, 2008), and now with more than a decade of teaching experience, she has developed a teaching style that is a unique combination of her spirit, her knowledge, and of course the teachers who have influenced her along the path. She has a mission: to convey a sense of joy and freedom through harmony and synchronicity, which she does beautifully through her classes, workshops, writing and music. Alanna is known for her ability to translate the ancient practice of yoga into a modern day context.
Friday
Shake It Out
Start out with Freestyle Dance to Warmup
3 5
4
2
6
1
9 7 8
11 10
Sun Salutation B, opening up to Warrior II
12
Saturday
Lotus Flow
1 3 Cartwheel hands down, step back, vinyasa. Repeat Left side.
2 4 Repeat sequence and add in warrior I, then warrior II to the back of the room 6
7
5
8
9 10
11
Fall back into peaceful warrior. Cartwheel hands down, step back, Left hand, left foot, side plank. Step right foot behind left leg, press hips up, rock star! Repeat left side
15
13
12
14
17 16 19
18
20
21
22
24 23
25
Slide right foot up left leg, bird of paradise or tree pose.
28 26
27
29 30
34 31
32
33
37 36 35
Alison Cramer believes in the power of the Practice to transform, heal and guide us all towards living a life of freedom! Ali is honored to be one of the Co-Creative Directors of Laughing Lotus NYC, as well as teaching for both the Lotus 200 hour and 300 hour Teacher Training Programs. Her classes are inspired by her past life in dance and choreography, her passion for Ayurveda, the energy and community of New York City and the ever-unfolding creative pathless path that is Lotus Flow. Eternal gratitude to Dana, Jasmine and the whole Lotus family for their support, guidance and love! Y'all show up for REAL! "Now is the time to know that ALL we do is sacred."-Hafiz. Ali’s email:
[email protected]
38
Yoga Valedictorians
Shira Atkins
Brown University Yoga Teacher, Co-Leader of YAM, Yoga and Mindfulness Shira and I met during the summer of 2009, when we roomed together in Israel. Before this interview, we took a class together at Laughing Lotus San Francisco. The teacher asked if we were friends because we share a name and Shira aptly responded, “We are friends in spite of that.” That’s some serious satya. Shira is the kind of person who literally leads life from the heart. It is evident by the way she walks up to you - it is like she is guided by strings that pull in her chest and like the most yogic of marionettes, she follows where they drag. Her passion for yoga has a life and vibrancy to it that fuels her practice, teaching, and community-building prowess as she takes the Brown campus by storm with her organization - YAM - Yoga and Mindfulness. Tell me about the yoga community at Brown. About six or seven years ago, a Brown University student applied for a grant and said she wanted to bring mindfulness to the student body. She got certified and started teaching a weekly or bi-weekly class. Some students were beginners and some advanced. Because she wanted to have a little bit of money for supplies and props, she created a student group called Yoga And Mindfulness (YAM). People would come together for yoga classes. There was such a need for it.
I got to Brown in 2010 and I started teaching yoga because I was feeling a lack in the Jewish community. I wanted to figure out a way to get people to Hillel. I tried singing. I tried meditation. Nothing was working. I knew about YAM, at that point there was one class per week, and I knew how many Brown students loved yoga, so I figured I’d try to lure people in with some asana. Though I wasn’t yet trained, I had a pretty solid practice, and felt comfortable leading classes and giving basic assists. At the very first class, something like a hundred people came out! I couldn’t believe it. I started off the first class by reading a piece from Abraham Joshua Heschel’s The Sabbath, which talks about the beauty of creating a temple in space and time. I then taught a sweaty Vinyasa sequence, and closed by chanting a beautiful Jewish prayer for peace. At first I was teaching the class once every few weeks, but people would approach me and beg for more. So it became a weekly class, which I still teach today. I’d say that only about thirty percent of the people who come to Jewish Yoga identify themselves as Jewish. People come up to me after class and say, “That stuff was really weird” and others say, “Wow, Judaism is really cool. I’d like to know more about this...” On a personal level, it’s become an awesome way to bring a new type of mindfulness to my Shabbat practice, which has undergone some serious transformation in the past few years. At the same time as I was developing Jewish Yoga, I realized I also wanted to teach regular yoga. So second semester freshman year, another teacher and I - she was a senior at the time – sat down and created a schedule. At first there were three classes a week and it was totally disjointed. It was nothing extraordinary. We didn’t have a website. We didn’t have money. But we did have the demand. We started to plant the seeds for something larger. And somehow I transitioned from being this Hillel teacher with this Hillel program to being the head of the Yoga and Mindfulness community. By second semester of my freshman year, I was teaching two or three classes a week and I still wasn’t certified. I was really nervous about hurting people. Over the summer, I got my certification. I did a one-month residential at the Yandara Yoga School in Baja and when I came back in the fall, I felt energized to create something huge. I gathered together a community of teachers. At first there were six of us – only three of whom were certified – and we created a schedule. By the second week of the school year, our schedule was constructed, and we were offering a free yoga class every single day of the week. All of a sudden, my inbox was flooding with emails asking, “Can I join the yoga listserv,” and “Can you tell me this about meditation?” “What can you tell me about the third chakra?” “I did this thing in class and I hurt my hip and what can you tell me about that?” I became a resource for people. Over that first semester, we really started to build a community, and I focused my efforts on creating a professional environment where people could come and it would really feel like a yoga studio and a haven. By second semester, we were offering two free classes every single day of the week. That’s our main thing; we want free classes for everybody. We don’t believe that money should get in the way of your practice. We do, however, have a karma box that we leave outside of class and people are free to give what they can. We suggest $2, and sometimes we get that, but usually we don’t. We have a booming community in which each class averages 40 to 50 people. Last year, I taught an advanced yoga class on Tuesday nights that was Jivamukti-inspired with a lot of chanting and meditation and also this Jewish Yoga class, which continues to grow. I raised
a huge amount of money...around $7,000 this past semester. We got 50 Manduka mats and bolsters. We also raised money so we could train some of our teachers that had been teaching without certification. Not only do we have a beautiful space for people that want to come to do yoga for the first time, but we have a teachers’ community as well. There are 20 slots for people who teach regularly and then there are subs, too. We have monthly gatherings at peoples’ houses where we do some sort of practice (either asana or pranayam) followed by a yummy potluck and teaching-talk. I can’t believe that we have a real sangha of teachers that support each other. We also have monthly workshops that in the past have included Jivamukti, Anusara, and Ashtanga instructors. I’m just a kid and though I do know some things, I certainly don’t know everything; I like to bring in as much variety as possible so people can get a taste of all different kinds of teachers and styles out there. It is a true joy to watch people learn, grow, and deepen. To watch that growth on such a large scale—our listserv now has 800 people on it—is a real blessing.
You spoke about how there’s this booming need and desire from the larger college community. Why do you think there’s that need? College is stressful. It’s hard. We’re taking really rigorous classes. We’re exploring sexuality in a very intense way for the first time in our lives, in a mature environment. We’re creating friendships that can be very intense. We’re asking the big questions. We are finding ourselves outside of our comfort zone in a place away from our parents and hometown. There is a lot of stress, but there is also a lot of ENERGY. The answer for me to the question How am I going to clear my head? was always yoga, meditation, dance, and movement. Most college students, first come to yoga because they see it as just another form of physical exercise that can help clear the mind after a long day in the stacks. But Yoga has this added spiritual element. Even if people are just coming to get more flexible or tone their butt, I really believe that the poses themselves are so inherently holy and powerful, that the practitioner who came in looking for a beach bod, leaves with so much more than just that. Many students who have been practicing religion their whole lives tend to run away from the traditions in college because it’s their first time to be free individuals. Others don’t like the whole God thing, because it seems to get in the way of their devout universal humanism. That said, there is still an evident desire for people to come together and pronounce the Universal Sound or feel some sort of connectedness to their friends and communities. Another piece, is that Yoga creates community in a place where finding community is hard. If you want to write for your school paper, you have to work hard to submit lots of pieces, and then subject yourself and your writing to intense scrutiny. One school paper might have a nerdy reputation and another might have a hipster reputation. It’s hard to find your niche. The same is true of sports teams, mock trial, theatre, the photography club, a capella. But with yoga, you just show up to the mat, and you’re in. You all close your eyes, draw your spine tall, and send out love to the people around you. At the end of class, everyone feels good, not just the “good-looking kids” or the “smart kids”. Everyone. As a result, we’ve been able to create a community in which people don’t just practice together, but they go to dinner together after class, have study dates with yoga-breaks, and text each
other to make sure they’re coming to the mat today! The community thrives because it’s based upon concepts of non-judgment, non-harm, non-stealing. What do you think the spirituality aspect and yoga philosophy has to offer specifically for college students? At Brown, many students turn their heads against religion or talk of God. I’m sure a couple students even think I am a total freak when I talk about God or Kabbalah. But I believe that all people—mala-wearing and skeptical alike—have a spark inside of them that’s yearning to feel a part of something larger. Yoga is a beautiful avenue for understanding who you are, how to feel gratitude, and how to be mindful. College is a place where we get so busy and overwhelmed that it’s hard to feel mindful all the time. A yoga class is a haven and whether you call it spirituality or mindfulness or if you think it’s just doing pushups, it’s a thing to strive towards. I sometimes think, This whole world is crazy, but maybe by doing this every week, I’ll somehow create more beauty in the things that I do. Showing up to the mat is a fucking blessing. I used to judge people for coming to yoga just for the workout, but then I realized that wanting to take care of your body, is worthy of praise, too. And as I said before the poses and the yoga space are so inherently special, that even the ones who don’t bow to the altar or close their eyes, are gaining something just by their presence. I’d also add, that everyone has a different avenue for accessing the divine, and it’s not my place to judge my students. It’s all good. It’s all yoga. What do you mean when you say that everything is meditation? Everything CAN be a meditation. Meditation means focus. Sometimes it’s divinely directed, sometimes it’s counting breath, and sometimes it’s just “is-ing”. Realizing that every moment can be meditative has been a revelation for me. How do you personally de-stress with yoga? I’ve always been really attached to movement. I used to be a dancer and through dance I realized the paradox that through intense movement of the physical body, we actually transcend the flesh and become a sort of vehicle of passion. For me, Yoga is Dance with an articulated and emphasized intention. Also, unlike dance, yoga preaches self-love in every moment. Every body is a yoga body. How does it help me de-stress? Well it helps me clear the mind, if even for the 1.5 hours that I’m practicing. If you’re trying to get into some crazy bound position, all you are thinking about is, “Oh, my God, how am I going to reach my left wrist with my right hand?” Your muscles and your mind are moving together to achieve the pose. You want it so badly, how could you possibly be thinking about your boyfriend who just dumped you or the test that you have tomorrow? Moreover, as someone who’s been practicing a long time, I would say I am becoming an advanced asana practitioner. As a result, the mat has become a total sanctuary for me. I know I can show up and “succeed”. I know I can keep getting better.
How do you make Yoga part of your day-to-day life? Meditation and pranayama are quite easy to put into my day because you can do it when you’re walking to class. You can do it when you’re eating. You can do it when you’re having sex. I have tangible reminders on me at all times. I wear an Om. I sometimes wear my mala. There are things that I do and practices that I have every morning when I wake up that help set me on a yogic path. As a leading campus yoga teacher, what are some of the things you get asked? I get a lot of questions about yoga postures, injuries, healthy diets, and book suggestions. More recently though, I’ve been getting a lot of pleas for help from women dealing with anorexia or bulimia. I’ve become a bit of a counselor in a way that is sometimes uncomfortable, incredibly sad, beautiful, and painful, but still filled with potential. A positive way to think about this tragic plague is that people know to come to a yoga teacher with these issues. Presumably they see that yoga is a practice in which you can really love your body and see, first of all, that it’s a temporary, fleeting thing that’s so unimportant, but also a beautiful vessel no matter what shape or size. Also, a lot of sports players come to my classes. At the beginning, I sort of developed a following of water polo playersI. These beig beautiful men would even come to my Jewish Yoga class. One time I got an email from some gorgeous water polo guy saying, “I really loved what you said about the parsha” – now, this guy’s not Jewish – “but my hips are really sore and I think I need your magical yoga loving.” I get those kinds of questions a lot too. Though there’s certainly a perk of seeming like some “sexy yoga teacher” I try not to take (too much) advantage of this role! How can yoga help in relationships? A big part of a yoga practice is setting intentions and dedicating the practice to someone you love or someone you have a hard time sending love to. By sending out love or forgiveness, you make space in yourself to not judge. Take this off the mat. Compassion is huge. Also, having a healthy body image in romantic relationships is important. Working the Chakras, being honest with yourself, being honest with your partner all make for good relationships. And of course, Yoga creates flexibility—and you know what that means. What’s your favorite part of yoga philosophy? What’s so great about Yoga is that Yoga is everything and everything is Yoga. There is a universal idea that we all have a Divine Spark inside us. The basic business of saying “Namaste” and truly saluting this light in everyone is the most fundamental part of saying that everyone is Yoga.
I think a huge issue facing yoga for our generation is that there are some people who take it so freaking seriously when it’s not a serious thing at all. The point is to create a lightness of being and Namaste – to honor the LIGHT within you, not to honor the seriousness and rigidity within you. We have to accept the darkness and go from darkness to light, but we also have to create a sense of lila and playfulness. How do you do that? I have an awesome playlist, always. I do a combination of Kirtan, Beyoncé and the Rolling Stones. It’s not a workout class. It’s a dance. Let’s relax into the seriousness just as we embrace the transience of it all. How can we spread the yoga practice to other college students? The first step is good yoga teachers. We need to make college students who want to deepen their practice excited. It has to be accessible, but also rigorous. If we build it, they will come.
Amanda White-Graff
New York University Yoga Teacher When did you start practicing yoga? I officially started when I was 17 because the dance studio where I took classes in Wisconsin offered yoga once a week for dancers so they could gain flexibility. I officially started my daily practice in the spring of 2009 at Yoga to the People. I moved to New York in the fall of 2008 to go to NYU for acting so I was a full time student and doing yoga. How did you fit yoga into your day when you were in college? Did you do it with friends or on your own? How did that fit into your college life? I definitely went the first time because it was the cool thing to do. I went with a friend at prime time Yoga to the People and we were on the top floor in the back row. I was like, “This is really challenging – how is it an open level class? This is crazy!” I have been an athlete my whole life. I was a dancer and also played basketball and polo vaulted for track so when I went to Yoga to the People for the first time, I was like, “I’m in really good shape so it is crazy that this is so difficult.” I ran every day and at that point, I was probably running close to six miles a day and I found that within a week, I was cutting my time significantly just from doing yoga. I was running six miles a day and normally my time was roughly 58 minutes. After one week of doing yoga, I
was down to 55 minutes. I chopped off 3 minutes in one week just from breathing better! Every day in the summer of 2009, I would wake up, go for a run, and then go to Yoga to the People. The hardest part was just getting there. When I got to the studio I would lay down on the floor and think, “I don’t want to do this, but I’m here. It’s gonna happen.” At the beginning, I was against any spirituality about it. I just wanted the workout. When did the spirituality start coming in? In the summer of 2010, I did my first teacher training with Yoga to the People. Even after my first teacher training I wasn’t completely sold on the spirituality. Between winter and spring of 2011, I joined Pure Yoga on the Upper East Side. Through joining Pure I had a giant revelation of OMG, I was totally missing out on what Yoga really was! I thought it was just the one-hour classes at Yoga to the People, but there is so much more. At Pure, I went to a Bryan Kest workshop. He was one of the people who coined the term “Power Yoga,” but he said that he would rather call it “Empower Yoga.” Now, people interpret Power Yoga as strength whereas he meant it as empowering yourself to be a bigger and better person. Between fall and winter of 2010 and spring of 2011, I was in a giant state of depression. I was taking antidepressants and I was just trying to hang onto things. It was when I went to the workshop with Bryan Kest, and got my first taste of spirituality that didn’t scare me off. Bryan talked a lot about the mind, and how it likes to think all sorts of things; judgments of others and ourselves. He went on to talk about a study he read that says we only think about seven different thoughts a day... and if they are constantly “I suck. life is terrible. He’ll never love me. She’ll never love me. Blah blah blah,” then that is what you are. “I think, therefore I am.” Therefore, his point was, it is on us to change our thoughts, to be the person we want to be. It wasn’t until months later while reading the Yoga Sutras did I realize Bryan was talking about Yoga Sutra 2.33, “When thinking negative thoughts, think the opposite.” The Bryan Kest workshop was the end to my depression, and the beginning of what felt like my life. I’d like to say it was the beginning to my spiritual life, however I think that started when I started practicing asana, whether I wanted it to/knew it or not. Asana teaches basic yoga philosophy teaches, and as a teacher this is one of the reason I continue to teach asana; to teach philosophy without them actually even aware they are learning yoga philosophy. I like to call it, “sneak attack philosophy.” A few months after the Bryan Kest workshop I began to understand the spirituality at another level in Summer 2011. That summer I spent three months traveling in France. Up until this point I was practicing asana roughly 2-4 times a day, everyday. A day did not go by that did not involve asana practice; I was dependent on it, and addicted to it. However, over the course of those months in France I rarely did asana; I barely practiced once a week. I learned that I do not need asana to do yoga, yoga is a state of mind rather than a fancy pose. And then April 2012 I’d say I was totally sold on spirituality. I was in teacher training with Alanna Kaivalya, every morning we meditated for 20 minutes. I began to realize I could reach states of yoga in 5 minutes of meditation that would take me hours to recreate practicing asana. I remember coming home and telling my significant other at the time, “I don’t know what this means, and it feels weird to say something like this, but I love “god”... not God, but something
larger that gives everything meaning and existence.” What does Samadhi mean to you? It’s weird for me to use terms like Samadhi. In general I have a hard time labeling something that isn’t physically tangible. I don’t know what to call it when I meditate. It’s one of the most comforting moments of my life. I feel an overwhelming sense of ease and connectedness. What was it like doing a teacher training as a college student? I did it in the summer at YTTP, which is a popular place for young people. It was fun and cool to be a yoga teacher while I was in college. I wanted my friends to come take my classes. It was my side job. Did you find that the practice helped you with your schoolwork? Being an acting student, it 100 percent helped me with my schoolwork. Especially at YTTP, there are hahs and hmms and brrs. More than half the teachers there are either NYU acting students or grads of NYU’s acting program. I believe that YTTP is geared towards actors, dancers, and performers. On days where I was acting in a scene or play, I would always make sure to go to yoga first. Not only did it warm up my body; it warmed up my voice. It was a huge part of my schoolwork because the quality of my performance was affected by the quality of my yoga practice. On the flip side, occasionally I would skip academic classes to go to yoga. Do you think yoga is the rock n roll of our generation? It is astonishing how many people are into some aspect of yoga. If people start to realize that it is more than just a physical practice, it could totally change the world. If all the people who practiced asana started to realize there is more to it than some silly poses, serious things could happen. Rock n roll changed the music world because prior to rock n roll, it was still a music scene and the creativity behind the music was lacking. Today, there are so many styles of music that would not exist without rock n roll. If the yoga community keeps growing and is not just a thing that people do for the next few years and they start applying the spiritual and philosophical sides, I think that yoga could change the world as drastically as rock n roll. It has the potential. What advice do yoga have for either college students who practice yoga or college students who feel like they need yoga and have not started yet? When starting out, go to yoga four to seven days of the week for an entire month and then decide whether you like it or not. Doing it once or twice and saying, “Oh, I’m not good at that” or “It doesn’t work for me” is not a thing. The hardest part about yoga is getting on the mat. If
you’re there, you are going to do it and you are going to practice. If you’re not, it’s not going to happen. Part of the practice is just showing up. One of my favorite aspects of the practice is that there are things that you think you cannot do. A teacher will say, “Now we’re going to do this pose and we are going to sit in it for a half hour.” And then you’re like, “No way. That’s not going to happen.” There was a teacher at Pure Yoga who was trying to show me how to press up to handstand with straddled legs. I thought, “That looks so cool and I wonder what it would take for me to do it.” I literally went home and practiced one night and then could do it the next day. I get that I’m in good physical condition and I do have hyper-awareness of my body and the way that it works, but that shouldn’t happen. I shouldn’t be able to practice and then within 24 hours get it. And then I read the Yoga Sutras and it explains what I just did: Practice and have no attachment to what you’re practicing and that will create stillness and calmness of the mind. When people start practicing yoga, there is a tendency to think, “Oh, I can’t do this if I am not flexible enough. I can’t do this if I am not strong enough.” But that is why you go! You go to get stronger and more flexible, not to show off what you can already do. What inspires you? Possibility. Everything I have set out to do in my life, every goal I have ever had, has come my way. This involves a lot of hard work and dedication. I still can’t believe I am my age and teaching yoga for a living. There is a quote by Andrea Gibson that I love: “I refuse to believe in miracles because miracles are the impossible coming true and everything is possible.” I believe I can do anything I want to do if I work hard enough and I hope that other people can see that as well. Giving up is the only way you don’t accomplish something.
Leigh Stewart
Wesleyan University Yoga Teacher, WesBAM! Wesleyan Body and Mind I had this amazing conversation with Leigh at a “deli” in Marin that sells kombucha, coconut water, and our latest obsession: goldenberries. Leigh and I interned together at Mandala Publishing, which produces a host of yoga books. It is our lunch break during our first day back after a long weekend at the Wanderlust Festival where we volunteered as question mark girls (i.e. human info booths) at the concerts and took 7 yoga classes in 3 days. Leigh and I are yogi partners-in-crime. We teach together at Wesleyan University and throw yoga dance parties on Foss Hill. She is my most grounded friend – as eager to get down on the dance floor as she is to get into downward facing dog. How did you get into yoga? I took my first class in middle school with my parents, but it didn’t interest me. I knew it was out there, but I didn’t get interested in yoga until high school. It was a social thing to counterbalance the other athletic stuff I was doing.
What was the other athletic stuff you were doing? I was doing basketball at the time and weight training. I got into yoga, found a couple classes. I would go with different friends probably three or four times a week. It was senior year so things were winding down. It was different. It was noncompetitive. It was an excuse to hang out with friends during the week when we should all have been doing homework. What yoga did you do in high school? Where did you practice? In high school, I practiced at the local YMCA gym. They have a great yoga community there. And also at the Jewish Community Center, which is a community center but also workout facility. Didn’t you used to sneak into an amazing yoga class there? We would distract the woman in the front and then sneak in downstairs through the door. I love it. Yoga badass. The yoga teacher told us to sneak in. She just wanted more people in her class. It was definitely my favorite class. It was Vinyasa and that’s how that took direction and I realized that was what I wanted to do moreso than Hatha or Restorative. Can you describe your yoga practice your freshman year of college? It was based off a few podcasts that friends had given me as well as some things that I thought resembled yoga poses that I had done that involved more movement from basketball and speed and agility sort of work. In terms of practice, I would always carve out an hour and a half to do my practice three or four times a week. That was really manageable for me. If I got another person to do it with me, we would do a podcast and if it wad just me by myself, I decided I liked listening to music better than I liked listening to someone’s voice so I would do my own thing based on how I was feeling. It’s nice to be pushed, but it’s also nice to know that if your hamstrings are tight, you can hold a forward fold for five minutes if you want. So there was something refreshing about that, about not being told what to do, that I liked. What were the podcasts that you used or would recommend? I started out using my friend’s podcast from a hot studio she went to in Boston called Breath and Body Yoga. The woman’s name is Desiree Pierce and my friend had six of them so I would alternate. That was enough for a week! So when I started getting more into it and was like, “Okay, I need to do this every day not just three days a week,” I would just do a different one every day. Some were 60 minutes. Some were 90 minutes. It wasn’t until later that I was introduced to the Yoga to the People podcasts and my mom actually had some old yoga videos from the Rodney Yee era. Can you tell me what it was like doing yoga in the Bayit? My friend asked me if I wanted to do a yoga podcast with her one afternoon and there was a house of 24 people so out of those people, four of us ended up in one room mat to mat and started doing the podcast. It was a cool way to bring something into our friendship that we didn’t have in common during the first year at school, but that all of a sudden ten or twelve of us were doing together on a regular basis and that was really fun. It’s a good way to get to know people in a constructed form. What was it like practicing yoga as a college athlete? It’s like they say in P90X, “I hate it, but I love it.” There were parts that were challenging, but it was
also motivating. I’ve always been interested in the differences of the human body and it was interesting to me that with the years of weight training and squats and lunges with 200 pounds on your back, the minute you have to hold a lunge in yoga for two minutes, you could take a nap - it’s effortless, but the minute you have to balance on one leg and bend another leg, it’s unknown. The strength wasn’t a problem and it was fun to explore that aspect at first because it was something I could do and I could move up faster in that realm as opposed to the stretching and lengthening, which was hard for me at first because when you are doing weight training, the point is that you’re bulking up and tightening everything together. Strengthening involves tightening and that means everything gets short, but yoga is asking your body to lengthen beyond what it already is. I immediately felt a difference on the basketball court once I started doing yoga and I never had an injury. I did have an injury but it wasn’t related and not to the extent the other people on the team did where they had to take time out. I would say yoga is very complementary. How did you then decide to do your teacher training? Sophomore year was really difficult for me physically with some injury stuff with basketball and emotionally because my friend passed away. I was trying to really jump out of the job I had been working at the two summers before, but nothing was panning out and I didn’t really want to come home, but that was the reality of the situation so I knew I needed to do something to make the experience new or different because coming back to the same thing...it wouldn’t be the same because of the things that had happened. It would be too weird for me to come back and try to pretend things were going to be as they were. I didn’t have any money at this point so I was very limited. It wasn’t just like, “Oh, you can pick whatever style!” It was because I wanted to learn more about yoga. It would be a great way to continue to be active as I was thinking about quitting basketball. I needed something to keep me occupied while I was transitioning out of that. So I found Yoga to the People in San Francisco and it was really reasonable. The training weirdly fit hours-wise with my work hours and they didn’t make you pay the whole thing upfront. It was very bizarre how it worked out and I was just in time for the early registration date to save money so I decided in less than a week and I applied. It was an awesome experience and it made the summer completely worth it. What was it like balancing your outside life and your teacher training while you were in it? It was a mess! It was an absolute mess! I was working a 40-hour week at camp. At this point, I hadn’t told anyone I was quitting basketball so I still had to submit my workouts. And then I had teacher training Friday nights, going straight from work Friday to teacher training, going all day Saturday and all day Sunday. And the real killer was we had to put in 5 hours in the studio taking classes on top of the training on the weekends. And because of my work hours I had no way of getting to San Francisco or Berkeley during the week so I stayed for five extra hours every Saturday and Sunday to get the classes in so I’d do a full day of training and take two yoga classes each night and clean the studio. It was exhausting. Because I was lifting weights during the week for basketball, my body was whacked out. It was crazy, but it was a great…I knew that it was a lot, but it gave me a taste of the real world of what people deal with if they want to do anything on top of working a normal job. In that sense, it was nice to be like, “Okay, if I have to do this, I can do this.” It was fun to be doing it at the same time as working at a summer camp. When I was at work, I’d have to practice a sequence so I’d get the kids and create yoga as an activity. How was transitioning back to Wesleyan afterwards? My teacher training ended the day before school started. I had never been a real part of the yoga community at Wesleyan so I didn’t know how much that existed. I had been in contact with some people so I didn’t know if there was a yoga community or a more general fitness community of people who wanted to teach, but then when I got back and really sat down with people, the yoga community was
awesome. At first, I was sort of like, “This isn’t going to be teacher training. People are coming from all different backgrounds,” but I didn’t know we’d interact as much as we did and now, especially, I can say that without a doubt, I am so much closer to the people I taught with this year than anyone in my teacher training. That was really comforting. I remember telling you at one point, “I feel like I’m in teacher training all the time!” That was wonderful. It was a big added surprise because I thought that you had teacher training and then are off on your own, but I was really lucky to come into a community that allowed me to teach and have people that I was confident in as teachers and that were confident with me as teachers. And 200 hours isn’t that much time so it was huge. It was like continuing the training into the fall and I still feel like that. Once you understand how to learn something, what you need to learn is never final or a finished product. It’s always changing. What do you think is the importance of priorities? I’m glad this is coming off the Wanderlust experience because at the end of the day, what everything comes down to is the idea of what Seane Corn was talking about. I heard a lot of teachers this weekend talk about happiness and wanting to be happy and that’s always what I’ve thought: people just want to be happy and whatever will make people happy, but I think at the root of happiness is the idea of giving and accepting love. I think that’s what I mean by priorities. I mean that during finals, if I am personally going to sit in the library for 10 hours during the day, I am not going to love myself and I am not going to love other people, meaning I am not going to eat well. I am not going to be balanced. I am not going to be out in the sun. I am not going to be able to be active. I am not going to be able to do the things that I love to do and I am not going to be able to interact and do the things that I love in the best way that I can. What I mean by priorities is taking time for the people and the things that I love to do. If yoga is one of those things, I believe that if those are the priorities of life, then everything else will sort of fall into place and it will fall into place in a way that’s organic and in a way that is driven from a place of happiness rather than obligation Everything that needs to get done will get done and sometimes the fastest way isn’t the optimal way. That’s something I think a lot about in college where it seems that we’re all in a slaughterhouse. College is supposed to be run efficiently, which makes a lot of sense, but there has to be times where you press on the brakes and just say, “No, I need to take time in this place.” Whether that means I need to take time to read this in two weeks because it is so dense. Those are the things where in two years, it won’t matter when you did it. Something that I’m working on is the idea of being here now. Can you define burnout and how yoga can help with that? Burnout is getting to a place where everything becomes clouded because the mind has gone so onetrack and so narrow that it loses track of everything else because of one thing. Burnout happens when the mind is on one track and the thing … the end never gets accomplished. I think that burnout is a reminder that it’s not the product that matters; it’s the means to the end. So how can it be avoided? I think that abstractly, burnout can be avoided by constantly asking yourself, “Is this what I want and need to be doing?” And if it doesn’t fit into what I want to be doing right now, how is this helping or bettering something to come? But I think practically, burnout can be avoided by change. This year, I was in a rut in doing the same thing over and over again in the spring and burnout was avoided when my housemate asked me to take a 15-minute walk. It was a 15-minute walk – and I still remember the walk! When I think of junior spring, I think of this walk, which is so bizarre because I go on walks all the time, but that was something I severely lost sight of at Wesleyan. Burnout can be avoided, in a very structured sense, by making a list of things you like to do in different places at different times and just having that list with you in spaces where maybe the list doesn’t even match up. For instance, I might put on the list “going to the beach” and in Connecticut, that might not seem feasible, but in reality, there is a beach. It’s just different than the beach I might know and appreciate and maybe going to that other beach will create a renewed sense of something that I couldn’t even find at the first beach. I think that goes for not just experiences, but for people. I had a rule for myself that I would add on a new activity every semester, which turned into adding in three new activi-
ties, which turned into being really overwhelming, but aside from that, I think that doing new things in new areas and especially forcing yourself to go into situations where you literally know no one…you don’t know what is going to happen and your mind can’t think about what you are going to have to do cause it’s so busy taking in a new experience that you have no connection to potentially so I think that can be really helpful and I think the teacher training did that for me. I had no idea what I was walking into. Working through discomfort can bring you to a new area and allow you to walk into situations with a different mentality. Could you talk about your experience with mono and how it effected or changed your yoga practice? It did! It was so frustrating. First of all, I’ll never forget that I wanted to take Acro and Thai Massage so badly. We were doing Thai massage at the end of Acro and someone was massaging my neck and it was so painful and I was wondering if it was related to all these spine issues I had been having where my back was so sore, which can also be symptoms of mono. I couldn’t do a bridge. It was sort of frustrating leading up to it so when I was diagnosed with mono, I was like, “Oh, it’s good that I haven’t broken my whole spine!” But at the same time, the doctor that I was working with told me that I couldn’t do anything physical for six weeks and especially with yoga…I asked and the answer was, “Restorative.” You came to all my classes! The thing that was huge about mono was getting over the difficulty of doing something that wouldn’t be my first choice and learning to enjoy that because that was what was there and then also having the flexibility of people around me and just to speak in the yoga world, to be able to come to your classes and other instructors’ classes, informing them that I couldn’t really do anything, that I wasn’t trying to be rude and just having people be so open and so excited to continue to share community, I really think it was the community that made it feel like a big nap! And a good nap – I don’t like naps normally. I think that goes back to the square blocks with the rounded lines inside. Being able to have the shape of the yoga class and then being able to do what is best for you in that moment in the class.
Katherine McComic
Yale University Yoga Teacher and Vice President of Yogis at Yale Katherine comes to Yale from sunny San Diego, California. Katherine began practicing yoga in 2006, and has been teaching since May 2010. Her practice has seen her through difficult times and has shown her that when life gives you lemons, just breathe. Katherine’s classes place a large emphasis on meditative breathing, in both relaxing and energetic poses. She reminds her students to maintain an inner stillness of mind and heart throughout their practice. This inner calmness in conjunction with physical asanas allows for an active rejuvenation of the body and mind. Tell me a little about you, what got you into yoga and what got you teaching yoga. I started practicing yoga freshman year of high school. I had to do two PE credits. I did tennis for the first part of it and for the second, I was like “How about yoga?!” And so it began–I started taking classes at a local yoga studio in La Jolla, California. I’m really fortunate to have stumbled upon yoga at just the right time in my life. Yoga prevented me from stressing out over the miniscule tragedies of high school academics. I knew that I still had a body and I knew I could still move my body even when everything else seemed to be falling to pieces.
I stumbled into teaching through yet another happenstance: a new yoga studio was opening up in my town, and the owner gave me the opportunity to do a work-study exchange at that studio. I worked the front desk and took my teacher training course for free. Talk to me about Yogis at Yale. Yogis at Yale is a student-run, student-participating yoga organization with five yoga teachers. Two are grad students. Three of us are undergrads. We hold five free classes a week for all members of the Yale Community. I like to believe we have fluid, stress-free system. Come when you want. Leave when you want. Come as many times as you want or don’t come at all. Our goal, really, is just to get you to try yoga out, and if you like it, to enjoy it with us. During my first few semesters with Yogis at Yale, I taught a Power Vinyasa class and a Beginners Class. This past year, I did away with my power vinyasa class (there being several flow classes) because I thought we were saturating our schedule with too much aerobic yoga. In its place, I started teaching a candlelight class, which was held on Monday nights at 10 o’ clock. As its name suggests, we practiced, in the dark, by candle light. It was a very gentle, meditative class. We were not in high-risk injury poses. As opposed to a substituting a run on the treadmill, the focus was on finding one’s breath and creating a soft space in the body. My intention behind the class was to create a positive space where one could just let go and melt into one’s body. Let the day go, let work go in order to be present– present in your body, in the darkness, and in yourself. How might we find softness in a yoga practice? It means not taking the poses or the cardio aspect too seriously. Not looking around the room or searching for your flaws. In college, and especially at Yale, you don’t need an extra thing to worry about, even if it’s as silly as “That person over there has a great Warrior II, and I’m all over the place!” The softer practice comes from the heart. With busy college schedules, people think too much. Obviously, a university context is a hyper-intellectualized one. But a life of the mind must still correspond to life, to a living and breathing body. With a softer practice, I wanted to teach the thoughtfulness of the heart. Think with your body now and allow your heart to guide your body and don’t fucking over- -intellectualize it. It’s YOGA. It’s for YOU and it’s beautiful. No theory, nor anything to analyze. Just practice. Why do you think yoga is important for college students? I always feel more focused and more refreshed when I approach my work after I move my body. I need yoga to remind myself, “Oh, yeah, my hamstrings exist” or, “Oh, HELLO, that’s my back. I think it’s very important for college students to be reminded of their bodies, to be reminded that physical health is just as important - if not more important - than their intellectual and academic pursuits. On a different note, yoga is full of surprises, and is, therefore, a great way for college students, who might otherwise tire of their vicious routines, to reencounter wonder, and what’s more, wonder in themselves. Yoga, I think, is an exploration of What Is, as in, the wealth of all that is always immediately present in someone’s life: body, breath, and consciousness. By meditating on these fundamentals, students, especially young and anxious college students, can deepen their inner peace and enjoy who, what, and where they are.
I meet people at Yale who take their majors or extracurricular activities really seriously. Sometimes I’ll meet a fellow student and, during our introductions, all I can hear him or her say is, “I’m an Econ major so I’m an Econ major and I’m an Econ major.” And I think to myself, “Whoa. You’re also a human being.” I think doing yoga helps mitigate the pressure of trying to keep up or compete with other students. By maintaining a yoga practice based in the ideas of self-awareness and acceptance, I think students can better navigate their social relations. Instead of forming relationships with the intention of trying to reaffirm the identity that you’ve molded for yourself, you can just float. Yoga’s emphasis on the self has also, time after time, helped me in my search for direction, which, as anyone in the liberal arts would agree, is no small victory. I think when I dedicate time to my practice I dedicate time to sharpening my sense of intuition, my gut feelings. I love that my yoga practice asks me to listen and trust in my body and my mind. It’s refreshing to then bring this attitude elsewhere and chill out knowing that there is no formula by which to live your life. Nonetheless, I also think that yoga has been the key to my growth and personal development. Yoga has literally and figuratively opened me up to new things, new directions, and new places to put my foot. It has helped me think more creatively; even with respect to the most mundane projects, if I have an open heart, I can find another way to look at it positively. Opening your heart to the universe and bowing forward in humble warrior is the same gesture as opening and embracing whatever is in front of you. How is yoga an empowering practice? I feel like Superwoman when I practice yoga. Even though I am my own self, my same body that I had yesterday and the body that I’ll have tomorrow - it’s mine, completely mine! Through my practice, I acknowledge and accept what and where I am. I check in and find where I am today. And then some days, say my balance is really awesome, and I find myself in a beautiful expression, I think “I am on top of the world. The universe rests on my fingertips.” I think the empowerment comes from the fact that I constantly surprise myself. The empowerment comes from being able find yourself in a new pose, or in a deep expression of an old pose, and genuinely there feel amazed by yourself. With every practice, to find yourself more truly and more strange! How do you fit yoga into your day and make it a part of your day-to-day life in college? In the mornings, I like to check in. I try to meditate when I wake up. Sometimes In class when I feel myself spacing out, I employ a drishdi gaze. When I get discouraged by something that has happened, I step back and focus on my breathing. In class. In the dining hall. I check in and think, “Alright, the world may be spinning around me, but I am in me.” In terms of asana practice, last year I lived in my residential colleges and didn’t really have my own private space, so it was a little bit difficult to find a time of the day when I could flow
without people coming in and out of the room. Nonetheless, I tried to practice three or four times a week: at Yogis at Yale classes and at a studio called Breathing Room. How does your yoga practice help you with your schoolwork? The majority of my schoolwork consists of reading and writing papers, which are hard to do when I’m hyperventilating thinking about a thousand different things. Meditating or doing a practice is very cleansing and it helps put things into perspective. It allows me to think more clearly through a thesis or be more creative with my word choice. If I’m about to start a paper, my yoga practice helps me organize my thoughts and start writing. How do you de-stress? I do my practice. Sometimes I feel like I’m the textbook definition of an introvert. I regain my energy by being alone. Yoga helps me close my eyes to the bustle of the world around me so that I can be with really myself for an hour or so. De-stressing happens when I find my center and create softness in my heart. What does “Third Eye” mean to you? How do you incorporate that in the day to day? When I check into the Third Eye, it’s not just closing my eyes so I can be away from the world; it’s closing my eyes so I can be part of something that’s not visible. It’s like checking in and plugging into something that I believe is a transcendent quality of human beings, soul energy. The Third Eye is a connection and acknowledgment of that. We can create that in our practice, in our love for other people, in our relationships, and in our comportment. Do you think yoga can create a different kind of college lifestyle? Yoga can help realize what I think the liberal arts education is supposed to be, that meaning something much more than a “liberal arts” tagline on a college brochure. It helps you encounter liberty within yourself. Ideally, in yoga, you can free yourself from the pressures of conformity and indulge in your own curiosity and creativity. This attitude, I find, corresponds perfectly to how I understand and enjoy the liberal arts college system. Describe your personal practice and how you make it your own. I never had a teddy bear, nor did I ever have a blanket. I never had a childlike connection to an inanimate object. I got serious about my practice because in high school I felt like my home life was falling apart. When I was a Junior my parents moved to China and left me, unintentionally, in a really weird situation. Yoga became my teddy bear and security blanket. Yoga, the yoga community especially, became my parents. Yoga was my rock. I started my practice with a desperately personal need for it. My practice is personal, so when I speak to my students, I try to speak from a very intimate place. I try to say, “I want to share this time and this practice with you.” We’re young. We’re 20. We’re so young and we have so much time and potential to grow. I often think that the practice of yoga is symbolic of life, especially in the sense that for neither is there a final or correct answer. What matters is reconciling with where you are today.
Glossary SANSKRIT abhaya fearlessness ahimsa non-harming/nonviolence ana Sanskrit prefix meaning food/nourishment anjali prayer aparigraha non-greed asana the physical yoga poses; it literally means “seat,” but the point of all asanas is to prepare the seat for meditation. asteya non-cheating brahmacharya non-excess; sexual mindfulness chin [mudra] energy seal that stimulates concentration and balance chitta vritti chatter of the mind; mental barriers to peace dharana concentration dhyana meditation drishdi point of focus outside oneself; unmoving guru translates literally from “darkness to light;” a teacher who serves as a guide on the Yogic path Isvarapranidhana surrender japa repetition kirtans chanting that invokes divine names in groups of people and with beautiful sounds Krama stage kula community lila play mantra tool for the mind (comes from “manas,” which means “mind” and “tra,” which means “tool”); a phrase that is repeated over and over to bring peace of mind Metta lovingkindness meditation (Buddhist, not Sanskrit) mudra energy seal created by postures of the hands nadi shodana alternate nostril breathing meant to stimulate the energy channels (nadis) throughout the body that form the wheels of subtle body energie (chakras) Niyamas prescriptions of how to take care of ourselves; one of the eight limbs padas books (there are four of them) in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali prana life force; energy Pranayama a prescribed series of breathing exercises to stimulate, cultivate, and hone in energy; one of the eight limbs Pratyahara the inward pulling of the senses to prepare body and mind for meditation; one of the eight limbs saucha purity; cleanliness Samadhi total bliss sangha association; assembly; company; community gathering Santosha contentment satsang what happens when we unite with people who bring out our potential
satya truth savasana corpse pose, final resting pose in a yoga class/sequence surya namaskars a complete practice in and of themselves, Sun Salutations are the trademark of a vinyasa yoga practice. Sva Rupes Essential Selves; what we are when stripped of the materiality of our lives svadhyaya self-study sthira steady and stable practice and energy sukha spacious and happy practice and energy sutra Sanskrit for “thread;” shorthand notes Tantric the Yoga tradition that unites material and spiritual worlds tapah heat energy; discipline ujayi victorious breath cultivated by a deep inhale and exhale through the nose, closing off the back of the throat; creates a sound like that of Darth Vader vinyasa the linking of movement with breath; a style of yoga that has an emphasis on flow Yamas prescriptions of how to act with others; one of the eight limbs Yoga an interdisciplinary lifestyle that unites mind, body, and higher purpose yuj Sanskrit root meaning “to unite”
STYLES OF YOGA Anusara heart-opening yoga that uses its own principles of alignment; founded by John Friend Ashtanga style of yoga cultivated by Jois that originated in Mysore, India; combined with vinyasa to create contemporary Western flow practices Iyengar style of yoga that focuses on individual poses and that uses props for expert alignment Jivamukti translates to “liberation while living;” style of yoga created and rooted in NYC by Sharon Gannon and David Life
THE YOGIC TEXTS Bhagavad Gita a small section of the Mahabharata that tells the story of Krishna and Arjuna, as well as the contextual meaning of dharma Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras Foundational guidebook to life of yoga that consists of a series of short, philosophical notes Ramayana Hindu epic tale that tells the story of Hanuman, Rama, and Lord Ravana
IMPORTANT CHARACTERS (Gods, Teachers, Poets, Feminists) Agni god of fire and digestion Dharma Mittra an Indian yogi who practices and teaches in the heart of NYC; founder of Dharma Yoga
Gandhi leader of Indian nationalism in British-ruled India; peaceful warrior for freedom Ganesh elephant god, remover of obstacles, son of Shiva and Parvati Lord Ravana villain in the Ramayana Hafiz Sufi poet of love Hanuman monkey god; an incarnation of Shiva Kali fierce warrior goddess; badass destroyer of the ego Parvati (wo)manifestation of Shakti; famous for cultivating enough energy through seated meditation to lure back a lost Shiva Patanjali Ancient yogic sage thought to be the founder of Yoga Philosophy; compiler of the Yoga Sutras Rama Vishnu’s seventh incarnation; Sita’s hubby; responsible for destroying Ravana in the Ramayana Rumi Sufi poet and lover Sarasvati goddess of creativity Shakti feminine goddess of tantra, Shiva’s lover, responsible for dance, curly hair, and ecstatic expression Shiva god of destruction; lover of Shakti Sri K. Pattabhi Jois the man who put Ashtanga Yoga together as a method; disciple of Krishnamacharya Sufi the mystical dimension of Islam; brought about the world’s most spiritual poets like Rumi and Hafiz
ENGLISH UNDERSTANDINGS & INTERPRETATIONS Hinduism Yoga and Hinduism are like siblings - they grew up in the same family, but were different people. Hinduism is a religion, whereas Yoga is a practice influenced by its sibling. Hinduism is responsible for the gods and goddesses. It is a religion that comes from Ancient India. Kombucha fermented tea that has hit the shelves of all health food stores and hipster delis Third Eye the seat of intuition; the chakra that resides at the space between the eyebrows
WORDS I/AWESOME PEOPLE MADE UP FOR FUN D-Flo-Mo’s Dance Floor Makeouts dharmatastic how one feels, is, and acts when they are thriving on their life’s path! hamily short for “hall family” (i.e. your BFF’s from your freshman dorm) maticure decorating your yoga mat (hint: use glitter!); discovered term at Wanderlust Festival Kula Village roommateic the collegiate relationship one has with the person who shares their abode
Resource Guide I will have done my job in writing this e-book if…you stop reading this book. It’s funny to write a book on Yoga because Yoga is inherently not something you read; it is something you practice. The end goal of learning is to get us to stop reading and start embodying! What reading… and listening…and watching does is it gives us the aspects and characteristics to embody. The resources that I offer in this guide are like the asana practice. It is what you do on the mat, a microcosm and practice space for life. It is your job, your OmWork, if you will, to bring it into the rest of your world. IT ALL BEGINS ON THE MAT: PROPS THAT MAKE THE YOGA POSSIBLE — Manduka mats and props — Jade mats — YogiToes (for yoga on the go) — Gaiam (for legit all yoga needs) — Yoga Accessories (getting props in bulk for your whole campus yoga cOMmunity) BE PREPARED: CLOTHES TO PRACTICE IN (AND LOOK GREAT IN AFTER) — Zobha: Yoga, Pilates, and Workout Clothes and Activewear — Tanya-B: the design of quality and innovative apparel for an inspiring lifestyle — Lululemon: technical athletic apparrel for yoga, running, dancing, and most other sweaty pursuits — Aaluuka: Studio 2 Street — be present: clothing for the yoga lifestyle — Beyond Yoga: a luxury lifestyle clothing company focused on empowering women — Lucy: a pant for every. body. — Athleta: Power to the She. CHEAT SHEET: REQUIRED READING FOR LIFE You are not going to die if you do not read these books, but I can promise you this: they will help you live better! Why? A Yoga practice is like a pair of glasses that help us see the world with clearer, brighter, inspired, and more enthusiastic lenses. Books (knowledge is power!) are good indicators of what prescriptions we need. — The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark by Sera Beak o I mention this numerous times throughout Yoga U. This book is ideal for college students because Sera breaks shit down…with profanity, vivacity, and a deep reverence for the divine in all of us. — Tranquilista: The Art of Enlightened Work and Mindful Play by Kimberly Wilson o This book is phenomenal for college students because guess what? We work and play! So we might as well do it in enlightened and mindful ways.
— Living Your Yoga: Finding the Spirituality in Everyday Life by P.T. Judith Lasater, Ph. D. o It is one thing to have a great practice on the mat, but a wholly other thing to integrate what we learn on the mat into day-to-day life. This book ties together yoga philosophy so that you can apply it to the kindness you give to the stranger at the coffee stand. — The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali translated by Sri Swami Satchitandanda o These sheer pearls of wisdom are your way of getting real traditional and grounded in the fact that is old information is grounded in your life. This philosophy will make you nicer (even on the worst of days) - I promise!
Gratitude This guide is made possible by the people who guide me, on a daily basis, in the Yoga practice of life. I am abundantly grateful for the gigantic support network I have, both on and off the mat. Words cannot describe how much these people mean to me, but hey, I’m an English major so that won’t keep me from using those words anyway! Wesleyan University, I literally could not have written this book without your support. The Summer Experience Grant gave me the funds to spend a summer in San Francisco living life as a writer, interning at a publishing company, and teaching and practicing yoga. You have also given me a beautiful on-campus yoga community, a plethora of friends to share the practice with, and my first community of faithful students. Julia Drachman, you rock and are superbly talented! Thank you for making the practices in this book possible, for making it look utterly badass wonderful, and for using your creativity to propel and inspire mine. Insight Editions, thank you (especially Jan and Becky) for teaching me how to put a book together and the science behind my passion of writing. Thank you for teaching me how to edit and thank you for editing. Leigh Stewart, thank you for being my yogi partner-in-crime. Maxine Kozler Koven, thank you for paving a path for me to walk on, for doing your teacher training the year before I did mine, and for not holding back. Susan Engel, thank you for being a fantastic and supportive mother, reminding me of my own progress constantly. Brian Engel, thank you for always encouraging my love of writing (oh, and for being the best dad ever). Emily Klein, thank you for pillow talks, for roommate whispers, for being a constant form of support, for giving me honest feedback about my teaching, for coming to almost all my yoga classes, and for being the fantastic photographer that you are. Catherine MacLean, thank you for a great and welcoming freshman year room, for showing me how to meditate using coloring books, and for being a fantastic editor. Editorial Dream Team, you awesome people (friends from elementary through high school, teachers, mentors, and college pals), thanks for finding my typos, making invaluable sugges-
tions, and making Yoga U a work of respect! Alanna Kaivalya, the teacher who first showed me the inherently spiritual nature behind the yoga practice, thank you for inspiring me to write this book before the idea was even planted. Thank you for showing me what it takes to write a book by writing your own, for sharing your extensive and expert knowledge, and for being the best yoga teacher I know (and I know lots of fantastic yoga teachers so that says a lot). Laughing Lotus, thank you for both your centers – in New York and San Francisco – allowing me to find hOMe on another coast, and for inspiring me through a daily practice with your teachers, a job as a karmi cleaning the studio, and with the comforts of crying in pigeon pose. Laine Armstrong, thank you for being a badass lawyer, easing my fears over copyright law, providing a hilarious sarcastic edge to our teacher training, and for so many laughs. Hannah Cressy, you are the best guinea pig for crazy yoga sequences, asana model, and listener. Thank you for being there, my yoga pal in San Francisco, perpetual listener to my random musings and rants. Brew Bakers, thank you for being our café-office hybrid, and for all of the spinach and ricotta wraps that made the assembly of this book such a delight.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Shira Engel is a yoga practitioner and teacher from New York City. She loves to read things that make her laugh and she drinks coconut water like it’s going out of style. She is a junior at Wesleyan Unviersity where she met the extraordinarily talented Julia Drachman freshman year through the coincidental cosmic nature of housing placement. In her perfect world she would do teacher trainings back to back, pausing only for conversations with friends over a cup of coffee.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR Julia Drachman is an aspiring architect and designer from Seattle, Washington. She loves her cats and procrastinates doing work by doodling in Photoshop. She attends Wesleyan University, where she found an immediate friend, collaborator, travel buddy, and friendlationship partner in Shira Engel.
