How do you know whether you are working too hard or not hard enough in yoga? How much should you push yourself when practicing yoga? What is the difference between intensity and pain? What is perfect intensity, anyway? And why does it matter? Most people who practice yoga have experienced creating too much intensity, at least occasionally. So how do you [...]
You have probably heard a yoga teacher say something like "come to your edge". Most often this place is defined as the place beyond which the risk of injury goes up dramatically. In the context of stretching, I define "the edge" as the point beyond which you can no longer savor your breath. To me, that is a definition more [...]
Yoga for most of us is a journey towards increased awareness and acceptance of the way things are. But letting go of our future-focused, goal-oriented mindset is a long journey. Experiencing a moment of full awareness in at least some yoga poses some of the time is a big step in the right direction. But when the poses themselves become mini-destinations [...]
I lived in Thailand for many years, and always marveled how well the traffic flows there—and how rarely you hear honking—despite the huge number of vehicles on the road, combined with the frequently creative interpretation of traffic rules. My visiting dad stated with conviction that if there were that many vehicles on the road in Germany (where he lives), the [...]
Make your practice smarter than your habits. What is your prevailing tendency? And here is the real question: What happens when you let go of your prevailing tendency and work with the opposite one for a while?
I do believe in the value of alignment, and thus I have actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about this question. The answer I have settled on is that the question itself is taking you off the path, is derailing the deepening of your practice. It is simply not a particularly helpful question. To ask if there is [...]
There really isn’t much more to say than the title: Do less, feel more. It’s not about the difficulty or impressiveness of the poses you do. Nor is it about how long you can hold them without hating them or collapsing into a heap of muscle spasms. It’s about how deeply you can get your whole being involved in each [...]
“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; or you can live as if everything is a miracle.” –Albert Einstein Making this distinction may seem at first like a contrived intellectual exercise. However, living life from the perspective that everything is a miracle can profoundly change your attitude. It can change your attitude [...]
Do you like speed bumps? (Or speed humps, judder bars, lomos de burro, or sleeping policemen, depending on where you are from.) I didn't think you did. Who does? I used to dislike them like everyone, but then I received a lesson from a 2-year-old: a lesson in acceptance. Not that my son is (or was) a buddha-like creature in [...]
Why practice difficult asanas, if the practice of yoga is to be something other than an ego-driven endeavor? Because in the act of doing something challenging, we are compelled to become more present in the moment. In doing something new, we gain an opportunity to break out of our habitual and unconscious patterns. We create an opportunity to learn how [...]
