A curated collection of practices to keep your feet and legs vitalized, your shoulders open, and your awareness with the inner light.
little sādhanas
Yoga is not āsana. It isn’t a class. Yoga is about you, finding you, through you. One of the real beauties of yoga is its diversity of practices: there are practices for your mind, practices for your heart, and practices for your spirit. Many of the practices my mentors have given me are small little reflections I’m supposed to weave into my days for several months. They may be mantra, a journal prompt, an ongoing reflection or a thing to read or chant. They have often been assigned inquiries into breath patterns, habits of mind, and underlying mood. I take it and work with it for a month and then go back to my mentor. After several months, what I have accomplished and learned is profound. It blows yoga class out of the water.
Here are a couple of practices I have been given over the years. They invoke Santosha. I was taught that Santosha, which is one of Patanjali’s Yamas or ethics, and Bhramacharya which is one of the Niyamas or personal observances, are two sides of the same coin. They are related and in relationship with one another. Santosha is often left as ‘gratitude’. Gratitude is a deeply provocative spiritual practice, to be sure. The nuances of being content in an imperfect world are something we can and should investigate personally and in depth. But I think it’s also interesting to know that Santosha isn’t exactly ‘gratitude’ or ‘contentment’: the word santosha is a combination of sam (complete, perfected) and tosh (acceptance). I don’t know about you, but ‘complete acceptance’ means different things to me than ‘contentment’ does.
Further: we tend to internalize and abstract this practice, but in the context of the sūtras at least Santosha isn’t internal; it’s a relational practice. Which changes things. It isn’t so much “I’m content with my lot” as it is I accept this work, completely. I accept who I am. I accept you. I accept this world, and today as it is, and what we’ve got in front of us.
Also important to note, here: in the context of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, Santosha (indeed, any of the Yama-niyama or eight limbs) are not a good in and of themselves. Santosha is not an end but a means to greater balance and more skilled action in the world. Contentment isn’t ‘truth’. Contentment is a practice that keeps us in balance so that we can be more truthful. The real goal is to be more engaged and less attached in the world. Not contentment because this is as good as it gets or the way things are are fair: contentment because if we want to do anything about it, we’ll need discernment and clarity.
Brahmacharya is often translated as restraint, specifically sexual restraint. It means celibacy when we’re talking about monastic orders. Because none of us are monastics, the whole concept is often dismissed or is watered down to ‘moderation in all things’. Again, sure and pretty enough, but nothing I can really work with. But again, the etymology of the word can help us figure out what Brahmacharya means in its own right and for ourselves: brahma is the creative divine, the creative and generative and alive principle; Charya means to go with or be a devotee of. Our word car is related. Who is driving? my mentor Saraswati used to ask: you? or the divine? Just as Santosha takes on some spin when we realize it is intended to be a relational teaching, Brahmacharya gets interesting when we realize it has nothing to do with others, but is an internal question. A relationship we have with ourselves and creativity, will, self-esteem, spirit.
Give each one a whirl, no yoga mat required. Repeat 500 times. Take some notes, write down any questions or observations and bring them to a teacher. Develop an ongoing conversation and path with this stuff. Also note: yoga isn’t magic. This works because it gives you an assignment, some direction, but you have to hand the assignment in and get feedback, have a place to process.
do a morning practice based on 2 sun salutations + what your body mind needs today. The question here is not burpees or strength or 45 minutes of flow. It’s an invitation to figure out how to create space for you and the direction of your life, before the ‘day’ begins. It’s ceremony, not a workout. Aim for daily.
do an evening reflection practice: draw the eight limbs of yoga as a circle (if you’ve studied with me long enough, you’ve done this somewhere or other. Not a list, a circle: Yama relationship with others; niyama relationship with yourself; asana relationship with body; pranayama relationship with breath; pratyahara tuning the senses; dharana focused attention; dhyana sitting with what comes back to you, awareness of obstacles and gifts; samadhi integrity. use that as an evening journal or art prompt. How was your day?
Feet and legs
arches of the feet
a mostly laying down practice to orient you to the boney landmarks, three arches, and internal organization of the foot. Because they are so important to our being walkers, feet translate right on up the body. A little bit of attention there tends to feel good everywhere, and help us literally find support and ease in the design of being human.
Bones of the foot: standing
50 minute accessible but hard working class exploring the feet in standing postures. I suggest having a wall/chair/table nearby, as well as several blocks, but as always do what you can with what ‘cha got.
A sādhana: winter hips
This is a 1 hr 45 minute tutorial to give lots of exploration around a bare bones practice (stick figures here) Having a backbone to practice with repetition might just be your best friend in the middle of the dark season. Feel free to utilize the tutorial once and repeat the sequence on your own. Something pretty powerful happens when you have a sequence memorized. It is yours. To do the sequence on it’s own will only take you 30 minutes, or less. Or use the video to learn and revisit stuff for all sorts of other practices.
Bones
Bones in a chair
Half hour somatic practice in a chair…looking for the sensation of bones, skeletal poise, and resting or listening to bone. This is something our nervous system (and muscles) can do, but isn’t terribly practiced at. We’re much more trained to look for effort and strain. Learn something about your spine and the bones of the axial skeleton, and then play with what you’ve learned in other practices on your own.
Bones of a warrior
moving from an awareness of bones can be a deeply settling AND a deeply powerful experience of internal stability, intelligence, support, and strength. Strength: when we move from our bones, just the right muscles figure out what to do in just the right amount. Your brain doesn’t recognize muscles by name, and doesn’t separate or value according to ‘poses’. This kind of a practice can help you feel you, as opposed to an external idea of working out, exercise, or conformity.
I recommend you practice 'bones in a chair’ at least once before exploring this one. You’ll take what you’ve learned about spinal integrity and spinal movement, a flexible rib cage, head and pelvis into various standing postures. This is a play shop: have a wall, chair, and any other things you like to practice with.
Jello Legs, Soft Heart
This is a big, unapologetically strong 90 minute practice. It touches on vasisthashana A and B, throws in a bunch of forearm planks, and invites some lotus into your pelvis in janusirsasana C. Optional urdvha dhanurasana and inversion. I trust you to make the right decisions for your body. The intent behind this practice is to help you feel the subtlety of internal support and strength, to help you attune to the freedom we can feel through engagement. wave your legs around and feel the breath. Close with a restorative posture (I do upavistha konasana after all of the adductor muscles I used in practice, choose your own adventure) and a self guided savasana.
With Heart
winter and dark can be hard seasons on all our levels. Hope, holy days, grief, and just plain old physical and emotional difficulties get thicker this time of year. As we’re still in pandemic, that is more true than ever before. These sādanas each work with gentle backbends, mantra (vagal tone anybody?), and prāṅāyama to keep your heart fire going.
Okay enough
a one hour sequence incorporating some of the ideas of santosha, being okay enough is good enough. Side bends and upavistha konasana.
Hṛdaya
“Spiritual heart"“. Hṛdaya is not necessarily a physical or even a subtle body ‘place’ so much as it is a connection or idea. It comes from three words ‘hṛd’ means to take, ‘da’ means to give, and ya or yam is a balance. Thus, much like the physical heart pulses a balance of blood pressure and blood chemistry throughout the body, the hrdaya is a kind of awareness of interdependence and our true nature in this life. This sādhana focuses on tuning to the subtle and unseen, including the courage required to go there.
Prāṇā
1 hour sequence touches on the concept of prana - that which infuses all, goes everywhere, sees everything, and brings light. We’ll look for it through sensations of breath, specifically in the upper back, neck, and chest. This sequence culminates in ustrasana, which can of course be swapped out for some other backbend.
Atma hṛdaye
Combine chant with movement. It’s like super-powering learning the chant. There is something to linking movement to the words that makes them stick; it’s a simple mnemonic truth but you can see children doing it.
This chant is part of a longer chant, the Laghunyāsaḥ of the Taittirīya Upanisad. The whole chant entreats the natural elements to sustain the functions of the human system, and is often used as medicine for the suffering.
The chant we pull out roughly says “My true nature is the spiritual heart, heart is my true nature. The spiritual heart is related to the spiritual nature of my being (anandamaya), and that spiritual nature is divine nectar as well as the creative power of the universe.”
Please note: toward the end I slowly increase 1.1.1.1 prāńāyama to include the whole chant: this is HARD. It only lasts one breath cycle and is supposed to be hard. It’s a bump. Do what you can with it or skip it.
Atma hṛdaye
hṛdayaṁ mayi
ahamamṛte
amṛtaṁ anadaṁ brahmaṇi