RESOLUTIONS- BY CALEY YAVORSKY

Most of us set them, but how many of us actually accomplish them? We've all been there. We set a goal to lose weight, do more yoga or quit your job and do something that inspires you. Our new year begins with clear intentions, but slowly fades away as our "to do" lists grow longer and our "want to do" lists become more unattainable. Why is it so hard to stick to those New Year's resolutions?

Here are some easy ways to set clear intentions and to make them a reality:

1. Write your intentions down and keep them somewhere you can see them, like on your office wall, taped to your bedroom mirror or the dashboard of your car.

2. Try and acknowledge things and/or people that are holding you back from accomplishing your goals. Are you in a stressful relationship that causes you to eat a pint of Ben & Jerry's every night? Are you stressed at your job and feel too tired to practice yoga after work?  If you don't get to the root of the behavior, it will be much harder to accomplish your goal.

3. Visualize what your life will be like once you accomplish your goals. If you resolve to go to the gym more, how will this benefit you? Get connected to the result of your action, and you will be more likely to stick with your plan.

4. Discuss your resolutions with loved ones, friends and your Health Coach! Hold each other accountable for achieving your goals. If you want to go to yoga more, have a friend call you two or three times a week to check on you or invite them to join you. Or, call your health coach! If you could benefit from having a motivating and compassionate influence in your daily life, this yogi/health coach is in your corner and am just waiting to help you accomplish your goals!

5. Don't forgot to reward yourself with each accomplishment, no matter how small. If your intention is to lose weight and you lose 1 pound a week, pamper yourself with a massage...get a facial...you deserve it.

Could you use some support in accomplishing your goals for the new year?
Contact Caley for your Holistic Health Breakthrough Session today!

www.CaleyAlyssa.com

The Invitation of Yoga by Megan Windeler

In my practice and teaching Hatha Yoga – the physical asanas (poses) and pranayama (breathing) – are an invitation to explore your phyiscal body in space and time. And from this experience to be invited to be present to all that is outside ourselves. The more aware and at home we become in our own bodies the more compassionate we can be towards ourselves and that just grows outwards towards all beings. The work of Yoga on the mat is a profound practice of presence.

One of the teachers who has inspired both my practice and my teaching is Don Stapleton. He has a practice called Self-Awakening Yoga. His approach is an organic and somatic invitation into YOUR body and spirit. It is beautiful.

Many wisdom traditions throughout history consider the body to be a temple for the spirit. In order to create a conscious and functional relationship with the body, I prefer to begin with an image that is less grandiose than a temple. A temple is an awesome destination. Going to a temple requires that I leave my home and my everyday life to seek contact with the divine. There are times and places for this journey, moments in life when pilgrimage to a place beyond home is desirable and appropriate exactly for the separation from everyday life that it affords. But, I choose not to approach the body in this manner.

Rather than a temple of magnificent marble columns and lofty spires, I am inviting you into an image of your body that is more personal, more like a cozy seat in front of a hearth shared with your most trusted friend. This trusted friend beside you is yourself – not the icon of a supreme being, not an authority on mystical transcendence, but your own inner advisor. – Don Stapleton, Ph.D

Yoga is a profound and practical practice of becoming more present in this physical life we have been gifted. And, the more present we are the more responsible we are for a our actions in this life. And, the hope is then – that the more apt we are to choose love as our response.

yoga: why? because!

Yoga for me is not just a physical or spiritual practice limited to a certain square of time in my schedule. It may have begun that way, but now yoga infiltrates every aspect of my life. I have been practicing yoga for 8 years and teaching for almost 3, but I still consider myself a beginner. It is much more interesting to approach the practice with beginners eyes, and ask "what can I learn today?" rather than exercise my already "mastered" poses. When we feel we know it all, we become jaded, and tend to go on auto-pilot. Yoga is not meant to be another thing on our to do list, it is a practice that we carry off our mats with us into our days. Yoga reminds me to be more aware of my breath, and my overall being, as I go about talking, walking, eating, working, etc.  When i approach my practice in an open way, I find that yoga continuously surprises me with its lessons and gifts. Just when I think I have it figured out, I realize I know nothing, and I begin again. Its beautiful!

This continuous sense of wonder, discovery, and destruction & rebirth is what keeps life wonderful and fulfilling for me. Yoga has given me this gift. When I do not do my practice I start feeling stuck and disengaged from my own life and the actions I take in it. Being fully present and open for all of life's moments (the good, the bad, and the ugly!) this is what gives me incentive to return to my mat, again and again. As a yoga teacher I strive to share this gift with others. I hope that everyone may realize how amazing their lives already are! We just need to stop and remember to breathe and feel.
                                     

Uhhhh-huh!

Sometimes, I find that the smallest, unexpected thing can shift my outlook entirely.  Today I went to a yoga class at Darshana Yoga in Palo Alto (a gorgeous studio - highly recommended if you are ever on the peninsula!)  I was feeling quite gloomy, despite the gorgeous California sunshine beating down. A woman brought her 9 year son to the studio, prepared to sit and play on his Gameboy while she practiced.  Catherine, the studio owner and teacher, invited the boy to practice with us, as apparently he goes to the kids yoga class and is quite an accomplished yogi!  The boy accepted the invitation and dragged a mat over next to his mom, where he proceeded to move through the asanas with us with amazing grace. I could hear his breath, energized, and challenged, throughout the class.  He floated in and out of a balancing sequence like he was born to be on the mat. It was a real treat to see and to share the space with someone so young, the group of us spanning decades but connected by something much more powerful than age. Obviously, we live in a special place in the Bay Area, where yoga mats are dropped from helicopters and you can find babies, dogs, and houseplants doing yoga in parks around the city.  But the real delight came during shoulderstand. Catherine was reminding us of all the benefits of the pose, including shoulderstand keeping us healthy "so we can live longer and happier lives", at which point the boy broke the silence in the room, effusing "Uhhh-huh!"  

How uplifting to be reminded by someone less than 1/3 of my age of why I love yoga! The genuine enthusiasm and untarnished outlook on life of a child - something I think most of us could benefit from absorbing from time to time. Who knew my teacher today would be a 9 year old stranger with moppy hair and a Gameboy. Thank you, Luke!






Sally Clark

The good the bad and the ugly...

To be a yogi has many different interpretation. When I started my yoga path I was very young and gullible. I was 15 years old living in Hungary in the midst of communism. Yoga was unheard of at that time. To make a long story short, I got introduced to a secret yoga studio in the outskirts of Budapest.
 I knew nothing about Eastern philosophies, so when the book, Baghavad Gita was given to me I was pretty impressed with it's content. With my young mind I was surprised how fast I was able to relate to the teaching of this great book. As with everything you have to take it with a grain of salt. I quickly emerged in the lifestyle, learned to meditate and practice pranayama. Coming from extreme poverty and neglect at the time,  yoga became my sanctuary.  It was easier to deal with whatever was waiting for me at home. Asanas were not a big part of yoga practice at that time, so I was surprised what different approach to yoga I found when I arrived to San Francisco.  I have joined a yoga studio here in 1989 and begin my physical practice.

 I had a very strict teacher, who made me feel bad about pretty much everything that I did. My lifestyle, the food I ate, people I befriended and the list just went on and on... I felt confused. I missed the simpleness of yoga that I have practiced back home, the honesty of the people around me. However, I practiced every day and  learned some great yoga poses.  My teacher said I have a long way to enlightenment because I am still not able to control my emotions and my mind. (I was 21!)

I felt lonely and disconnected. I was craving a real conversation beside yoga and discipline. I wanted to enjoy music and art and beauty, everything that is created by the great human mind. How could that be wrong? Who is to say what is real and what is illusion? Who can define for sure what is it mean to be enlightened, or what will happen after we die?  How can anyone know the answers to this mystery when we put so much conditioning on everything?  It is different for all of us yet  we might all be heading the same place. To be a yogi does not mean that you have to love and hug everyone, be in a good mood all the time, be "green"( let's talk about that to the people in the housing projects next to our house), to have the perfect trikonasana and all the crazy arm balancing.  How about  when we recite sanskrit mantras which we really don't have any real idea or experience with(enlightenment, whatever that means comes in many forms)?

We are all yogis, living our lives the best we can (hopefully), excepting that we are humans with all sorts of feelings and emotions. To be a yogi is to be all that, the Good the Bad and the Ugly.

Love to all!