Competition Time!

Oh man - the countdown is on. The annual New England Regional Yoga Asana Championship is only a week away!

For those who are not familiar with this event, the regional yoga championships are held every year all around the country as qualifiers for the national USA Yoga event. The national event is the qualifier for the international event, and the international champions get the privilege of acting as yoga ambassadors for the year - touring yoga studios, visiting schools, giving demonstrations, teaching classes, and so on.

The mission behind USA Yoga is to bring the spirit of healthy competition to the United States, inspire yogis to improve their practice, and inspire more folks to take up yoga. I think Joseph Enicinia (last year's champion) explains this mission beautifully. He says that yoga sport will not "change" the yoga and make it more competitive - instead, the goal is to change sports into something more yogic. I love this. Instead of all the little girls wanting to be ballerinas and all the little boys wanting to be football stars, we're inspiring a generation of kids who want to grow up and be yogis!

The New England Event is being held at the Natick Mall, which I think is fricking brilliant, doing it in the middle of the mall. It makes the event more of a legit demonstration. Instead of a bunch of yogis sitting around in a closed room critiquing each other's leg position in standing head to knee, we're going to have a bunch of yogis getting up on stage and demonstrating their postures to people who are barely even aware of yoga. People will just be wandering around kids, going into Macy's to buy gloves or whatever, and then will be like, "Oh, Susie, what's that? Let's go see what they're doing!" Genius.

The organizers put it very nicely this year:

The more people who practice yoga the healthier our nation will be. We can reduce the rates of heart disease, diabetes, childhood and adult obesity, depression and so much more. By holding these friendly “competitions” or demonstrations in public places like malls, we can reach people who normally might not be aware of yoga and the many health benefits it offers. Those who are aware can be re-inspired to stay involved and to stay healthy.  

 There are some who feel competition seems contradictory to the philosophy of yoga. However, it is important to note that this is not battle to win a medal but instead a personal display for each athlete of what they have accomplished through their yoga practice. Many have come from places of injury or despair and put themselves back together with their yoga. To get up on stage and balance without wavering, to show how they have transformed body and mind is an act of self-realization and of personal fulfillment. This ability to maintain one’s peace in the midst of a challenge epitomizes the philosophy of yoga and is a shining moment in the life of the yogi. It is a beautiful thing to witness.

So that's all going down next Sunday, January 27th, at the Natick Mall, starting at 12:30pm. And it's free! So if you're in the area, you should come check it out! We'll be on the first floor near Macy's.

Logistically, the event is pretty straightforward. Each competitor has three minutes (maximum) to demonstrate his or her routine. The routine is made up of 7 postures. The first 5 postures are compulsory for everyone: standing head to knee pose, standing bow pulling pose, bow pose, rabbit pose, and stretching pose. The final 2 postures are the "optionals," which are the contestant's choice. These can be any 2 postures for the beginning or advanced classes - ideally postures which together demonstrate a combination of strength, flexibility, and balance. Each posture is scored out of a maximum of 10 points, with deductions for technical errors or incompleteness. (There is always room for improvement!) There is also a 10 point allocation for "grace," which includes breathing, composure, and stillness.

I've competed off and on since 2007, and my first competition was actually in New England, when I was practicing at Bikram Yoga Boston. That was the year that got me hooked on Bikram yoga! Since then, I've been all over the place and competed for various states. This year will be my return to the New England competition, and I'm psyched about it. No offense to the wonderful yogis anywhere else, but this is where I got started and these are my hometown peeps. It's gonna feel so good to be up on the New England stage again, for my brief 3 minutes of fame!

This has already been my favorite (and busiest) year of competition prep, because I've had the chance to coach a whole group of first-time competitors at the studio here in Rhode Island. Last year, there was only one person competing for Rhode Island. (She won. She's amazing, actually.) This year, we have seven competitors registered, just from our studio. Rhode Island is stepping it up! So I've been working with all these lovely and talented students on the weekends, plus a couple of folks who have been coming to work with us from Massachusetts. It's been so inspiring. With one exception (the amazing Dale K. who appeared from out of the mists to show us her stunning routine), none of these yogis have competed before. Our first meeting was like Competition 101 - this is the routine, these are the postures. Everyone was so nervous to get started. When we practiced this afternoon, we just flew through the routines at the end and everybody looked so good! Still some nerves, which is normal - but I'm so proud of all my students (and fellow teachers) for stepping up to the plate and doing this big scary thing. They are seriously bonding as a group, they are all getting more confident in their practice, and they are going to inspire so many people!

I've also been working with a group of kids on Sunday afternoons. They are all "pre-competitive," too young for the youth division (which is ages 11-17). Instead, they are going to give a little demonstration as a group, with music and everything. I've got two girls and two boys. They've been practicing very seriously. One of the girls, Emma, asked if she could take notes. She spells scorpion like this: "sqorpion." She and Athena can both do a killer scorpion in locust. It's been such a hoot. They're gonna steal the show, I can see it already.

It's kind of magical how everything is starting to come together. Even if my students forget the names of all their postures and fall off the stage, I'm still going to be proud of them. (Actually I have promised Mo that we'll bring her some cue cards for "standing separate leg stretching pose" in case she forgets the words.) I'm so excited to show the community what we've all been working on down here.

I think my own routine is coming along pretty well. I've been running through it every day. The coaching I've been doing really helps, because it makes me focus on all the little details. When it comes to doing it on stage... only time will tell! People always like to say that you're only competing against yourself, and this year I finally understand 100% what that means. If I miss one of my postures, it'll be because of my own tricky subconscious.The only person I need to watch out for is me! But I think this will be a good year. It will be so much fun to do the routine in front of all my friends, teachers, and students.

I'm still not sure which day I'm more excited for: January 27th, when this all goes down, or January 28th, when I will get to sleep in! It's coming soon. I will have to post an update at the end of the month and let you all know how it goes...

Clear Your Mind

Last week I was sitting at the front desk with one of our new teachers, waiting for our students to come in, and she said, "Oh my god, look at this." It was a picture of crying children from the school shooting in Connecticut. She was looking at the news reports online. She started to tell me about what was happening. Meanwhile, our students started to come in. Without even thinking about it, I told her, "Don't look at it right now and don't tell me about it." I didn't look at the news reports until the end of the day, after all our classes were finished. Then I went home, had dinner, and sat at my kitchen table in shock.

I was glad that I waited until I got home.

The great thing about the yoga studio is that it's a sanctuary, a place where you can go to escape, at least for 90 minutes. We don't need to talk about the news there. Anytime a horrible tragedy happens, the news media is saturated with information. It's all over the TV, the papers, Facebook, the radio - you can't get away from it! But at yoga, you can breathe and clear your mind.

As yoga teachers, sometimes we feel like it's part of our job to "say something" during tough times. We want to find the magic words, we want to help our students. It's a strong instinct. But the beauty of the Bikram class is its simplicity. We don't need to say anything - except the dialogue. We just need to take the class through the postures and allow the students to meditate, so that they can find clarity in their own way, in their own time.

Back in 2010, there was a memorial service for Jason Winn just outside the city where I was teaching. Jason was an amazing yoga teacher and a huge presence in the yoga community. (I only had the chance to take his class once, but I'm glad I met him.) Because of the memorial, there were lots of yoga teachers coming into town. I had been out of teacher training for exactly one week - I think I had taught seven classes at that point - and on the morning of the service, a couple of senior studio owners showed up in my class.

I thought, "Oh god, what do I say for them?" because obviously this was a really sad day for these people - they were mourning their friend. And then I thought, "Don't be crazy, Juliana, just teach the class." And that is what I did. Just the dialogue and nothing else, because hey, it was my eighth class, that was all I knew anyway.

Afterwards they both thanked me, and they specifically thanked me for giving them such a clean and simple class. They were so relieved that they didn't get some kind of hokey spiritual "woo-woo" class. A simple dialogue class was "just what they needed," because it allowed them to meditate and relax.

This really proved a point to me, and years later, I still think of it often. When students are going through a tough time - whether it's a personal tragedy or a national one - they're not in class to hear my opinion. They're not like, "My god, I just buried my mother, I'd better go take Juliana's class so that she can say something profound to make me feel better." Absolutely not! And it's a good thing, because I'm not really good at that stuff! I'm not a therapist. I just know yoga. The students come to the yoga studio for the yoga. They have other people who they will talk to for reassurance and sympathy. I will certainly give as much sympathy and support as possible, if I'm given the opportunity, but I will not make the mistake of thinking that it's my job.

Simplicity is amazing. For me, the Bikram class is a powerful form of meditation, especially when the teacher sticks close to Bikram's words. I've been taking classes from our new teachers lately, who both teach wonderful clean dialogue because it's so fresh for them, and it's amazing how much it sharpens my focus. It helps me forget about the outside world for a while. Sometimes the key to solving a problem or healing a wound is to stop thinking about it. When you have a problem, and you keep thinking and thinking and thinking about it, you just dig yourself into a deeper and deeper hole. You're picking at the wound, so it never has a chance to heal. But when you go to class, and focus on moving your body for 90 minutes, you come out feeling better - less angry, less hurt. Sometimes the solution to your problem just pops into your mind. That is the power of the meditation.

It's easy to invent new and complicated ways of describing the postures; it's a challenge to keep the class simple and clean. That's why I always come back to the dialogue. It's simple and it works.

The world is a crazy place. Sometimes it's wonderful and sometimes it's terrible. But at least we have yoga, this beautiful gift, that allows us to find clarity, time after time. As Bikram says - "When nothing else works - come to me, let me see what I can do." So simple. Just do yoga, and breathe. If more people could learn this, I think it would make the world better.

Cycling the Gunas (Not Quite a Book Review)

Last month I learned a new word: guna.

According to old-school Indian philosophy, there are three major gunas that twine together to make up all the qualities of nature. (I apologize if I butcher this explanation a little bit - I'm pulling it together from my memory and the internet.) All three gunas are present all the time, but their balance is always shifting. The gunas, in the order that I learned them, are:

- Sattva - Harmony. In a sattvic state, you feel calm and steady and you can see things clearly.

- Rajas - Activity. Associated with movement. In a rajasic state, you get a lot done. Too much rajas is associated with agitation, hyperactivity, over-stimulation.

- Tamas - Sloth. Inertia. Also a necessary quality of life (everyone needs sleep), but too much tamas is associated with lethargy, gluttony, dullness.

You will never find yourself 100% in one guna or another. Sattva is considered the most desirable state, but the literature tends to describe "seventy percent" sattva as ideal - you can't be purely sattvic all the time. To me, this is the interesting part. What happens in practice is a cycle - you cycle through the different gunas. My teacher described the cycle starting from tamas. In a tamasic state, you are lethargic. You're sitting at home, watching too much reality TV, eating too much processed food, drinking too much, sleeping too much. Depressed. From there, really the only way to go is into rajas, activity. You have to get up and do something! Go to the store, go to the bank, clean all the things!! Go and do some really strenuous, sweaty yoga practice. Go for broke. And then, from there, you can move into sattva, clarity. You don't want to do 5 hours of yoga practice anymore; you just want to sit. You find your balance, your harmony.

Then you fall asleep and the cycle starts all over again! Hee.


You know that feeling you get when you've spent ages trying to think of the perfect word, and then it finally comes to you? That's how I felt when I learned the gunas. This ties straight back into the post that I wrote last month - "Extreme" Yoga - which struck a hell of a chord with a lot of my fellow Bikram yogis. My "big idea" was that, even though Bikram yoga seems super hardcore and intense, it ought to have a calming effect in the long run. Bikram yoga attracts a lot of crazy people, but when done properly, when taught compassionately, it should help those people to become a bit less crazy.

Now I have the precise vocabulary. Bikram yoga is rajasic, especially from the perspective of a new student. But you are not meant to stay in rajas. At some point, you should continue the cycle and move from rajas (activity-movement-agitation) into sattva (clarity-harmony).

But I suspect that a lot of people move from tamas into rajas and then get stuck there for a while. And that is where things get a little bit weird.


Here is a hasty sketch that I drew of this cycle. Sorry about the crappy cell-phone camera quality. There's supposed to be an arrow going from sattva back to tamas but it's very faint.

Yep - some of my readers know exactly where I am going with this.

Now I can talk about Hell-Bent.

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Hell-Bent is a book that was published just a few weeks ago by fellow yogi Benjamin Lorr. It is a very honest inside account of Bikram yoga, including many of its weirdest aspects - teacher training, competition training. Ben Lorr starts off his journey as an overweight (or in his words, "fat fat") couch potato looking to get back in shape. He struggles through his first Bikram yoga class, goes home, passes out, and goes back to yoga as soon as possible. A familiar story! He gets hooked. He loses the weight. Then he goes to one of Esak's backbending clinics for further training. (Back then they called it backbending - these days it's known as "Jedi fight club." I have never been.) Then he goes to teacher training, nine weeks with Bikram. Then he performs onstage in the national yoga championship, totally transformed.

Does he drink the kool-aid? Eh... sometimes. But he's a writer. He's a researcher. So he researches, he takes notes, and he writes about all of it.

This is not really a book review. It's just some thoughts I had after reading the book, which I've now done twice. The first time I read the book, it took me a couple of beers to get through the last couple of chapters and I complained vocally to my roommates the whole time. But there were parts that I really liked and parts that made me laugh out loud. I went through the book again tonight (this time taking a pen to the margins and scribbling things like "thumbs up!" "OR NOT," "classic HAHAHA," and "tsk tsk") and now I feel like I have a better handle on it.

It was hard for me to read this book, even though it's well-written, because I couldn't read about Ben's experience without reflecting back onto my own experience. And our experiences have been radically different.

Gotta talk about myself for a second here. When I started practicing Bikram yoga in earnest, I had just abandoned a rather miserable attempt at a professional ballet career. (I had also left behind the hardcore academic world of engineer to pursue said career.) I felt like shit, but I was supposedly at my physical peak. I was already a bendy, skinny little thing. I was used to practicing for hours a day and beating up my body. I dove into a daily yoga practice as soon as I quit ballet because I needed something to fill up those hours. Bikram yoga appealed to me partly because of the intensity, but mostly because of something else - the clarity, the lack of judgment.

At one point in his book, Ben write that "during class, internally, there is a perfectionism, a demand for an almost hostile conformity that works like metallurgy on the human form." This is where I wrote "OR NOT" in the margin. For me, it was the opposite. I was registering that "if you try the right way, you get 100% benefits." When I practiced yoga, I was able to focus on myself without judgment. It totally changed my relationship with myself. I killed my perfectionist self and figured out how to be okay with who I was.

In terms of the gunas, everything is perfectly clear. Ben was moving into the rajasic state, and I was moving out of it. And we both did a pretty good job!

So that's how I look at this book. There's a lot of truth, but it's only one person's truth. For instance, Ben's stories about teacher training are largely about breakdowns, stress, and one unfortunately hot class. If you've read my blog from a couple years ago, you'll know that I went to teacher training and basically had the time of my life.

It's all good. Both version are true. And actually, I have to give Ben a lot of credit for being clear about the purpose of his book. In his notes at the end, he writes, "I want to reiterate the obvious, and make clear that this is just the record of one person's experience, not a bead on the Truth of Bikram (whatever that may be), or an attempt at a statement on the beautiful, chaotic, confounding community that has grown up around him." I also have to say that I really like Ben, largely because he emailed me before his book was released. He reads my blog! Awesome! We've had a nice chat via email and he's promised me that we will get together for beer/tea/juice and hash things out if I am ever in NYC. (Ben, I am holding you to that!)

I promised that this was not a book review, but I want to run through a couple of points about the book.

First, there's a fair amount of dirty laundry on Bikram in there, which kind of sucks to read. It's not like any of it is secret. Bikram has never been Mr. Appropriate, and he's pretty brazen with his girlfriends. So like, we (the Bikram teachers) all know this stuff. We know that he's pretty crazy and not always in a nice way. And most of us love him anyway, or at least love his yoga, or at least have the good sense to keep Bikram in one mental compartment and his yoga in a different one. But yeah, seeing it in print - it's the difference between knowing that your uncle is a drunk and seeing his picture plastered on the front page of the daily paper for drunk driving. Every family has its issues, but they don't necessarily want to see those issues out in public. So there's that.

Second - and this is more of a concern for the "uninitiated" who may read this book and get a wrong idea - Bikram yoga is not just about pain. For me, it's always been about feeling better. The teachers who I look up to the most are the ones who teach Bikram yoga as a healing tool, not as a weapon. That's how I try to teach it, too. I wrote "tsk tsk" in the margins where Ben wrote about showing his teachers his aches and bruises and they told him it was a natural part of the process. If I had a student who was showing up with black-and-blue bruises from pushing too hard in the postures, I would tell that student to back the fuck off. It's not necessary! All these people going to great lengths to change their bodies fast - what's the big rush? It's a lifetime practice, baby. Just take it little by little.

Third, teacher training! Okay, there's some pretty funny stuff in that teacher training chapter, but there's a huge puzzle piece missing, and it's so glaringly obvious that it took me a week to notice. (Hah.) After the chapter on training, the book goes straight on to an analysis of Bikram's personality flaws, and from there goes back to the subject of competition training.

What about teaching??

If Ben has taught any classes, he didn't mention them in his book. I shall have to ask him about this when I finally meet him for drinks - I know there are plenty of stories that he didn't include. But here's the thing about teacher training - none of it makes any sense until you start teaching. You have to "close the circle," as they say. Without teaching the class, it's all just theory mixed with nonsense. You don't understand the power of the dialogue until you use it in your classes and see its effect. You don't understand why you put up with three hours of sweating every day at training until you realize that, to make it as a teacher, you'll need to spend even more time than that in the hot room and you'd better know how to take care of yourself. Even those crazy hot classes serve a purpose - they remind you of what your poor "fat fat," out-of-shape students will feel like when the room is set at a measly 105 degrees. So even though the book gives a good insider account of the competition training business, it's still - in some big ways - an outsider account of teacher training. Because there's nothing about the actual teaching! And the teaching is the good part!

Fourth, one last thing (I promise). I have to say, on the record, that Bikram himself has always been very, very sweet to me. Maybe it's because I first met him as a regular student in Los Angeles, and not as a teacher trainee, but it's a long time since I've been intimidated by him. He does shitty things sometimes, but in my interactions with Bikram so far, I've found the guy to be lovely and helpful. He's given me good corrections in class, along with occasional compliments. I worked really hard in training, and for that, he always remembers my face and gives me a big hug when he sees me. He's hard on people in class sometimes, but usually - like it says in the book - he knows exactly where to push and he gets good results.

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Now I'm just trying like hell to wrap up this blog post! 

I've tossed out some big criticisms, but much of this book is fantastic. From the first chapter, which describes yoga competition as "this weird collection of antagonism and love," I was hooked. Parts are educational, parts are inspirational, and parts are laugh-out-loud funny. ("I nod silently and note that he poses this as a question.") There are some fabulous people profiled in the book - Emmy and Joseph are stand-outs for me - and I'm psyched for more people to know about them. The bit towards the very end about the "yoga effect," which I don't want to spoil here, is actually brilliant (especially from a Law of Attraction point of view).

I was worried that all the "dirty laundry" would scare people off, but based on the reviews I see online, a lot of the folks who read this book have been inspired to start yoga. Great success?! 

Anybody else who has read the book, I am interested to hear your thoughts. Please comment.... :)

From Bikram, With Love

I have just returned from my annual teacher training visit - and it was great!

I was there for the 5th week of training, from Monday morning until Friday midnight. (That red-eye flight always seems like a great idea at the time.) It was such a good visit that I'm having a hard time writing about it because I don't know where to start! I tried to write a blog entry last night, and after 2 hours I had only written a few mediocre paragraphs, so now I'm starting all over from scratch. Ha! This may get terribly long, so bear with me.

First of all, the trainees are doing amazing. They are on the ball this year. On Monday they were working on delivering triangle pose, and they were strong. I sat in a clinic room with Johnny Salvatore that afternoon (yay!), and he did a great job of putting them at ease. I asked them, "Did all of you learn this before you got here?!" and they were like "Noooooo!" (Although some of them did actually learn the whole dialogue before training - you can always tell.) Lots of people with a good attitude, lots of people willing to embrace "the process." I saw plenty of familiar faces, including my two rock star students from Rhode Island, Briana and Stephanie. I met quite a few blog readers, which was super cool - you guys are always too sweet, making me feel like a celebrity. And I was totally bowled over when I reintroduced myself to a guy named Jason from Kentucky - apparently I taught him just once, in his first yoga class ever, back in June 2011 when I was visiting the Lexington studio, and now he is in the middle of teacher training! Small world, right?! I love the yoga family.

The beginning of the week was all posture clinic - double clinic Monday, double clinic Tuesday, and afternoon clinic on Wednesday. They started from triangle pose on Monday, and on Wednesday we got  almost halfway through cobra - fast! Bikram kept telling them, "oooh, you are behind the schedule," which I thought was pretty funny since they are way faster than any class I have seen.

On Monday I didn't contribute much to clinic since I was pretty dead from travelling, but on Tuesday and Wednesday I was able to lead or at least co-lead, so I really got involved. I feel like posture clinic management gets exponentially easier every time I go back to training - when I first started visiting, it was so weird and awkward, but now it's mostly comfortable and fun. (Still exhausting, though.)

My favorite clinic was the one that my friend Ignacio and I ran together on Wednesday afternoon. (Ignacio was lead, but he was nice enough to let me basically co-lead, hehe.) We've both been trained by a lot of the same people (in particular Diane and Teri), and we share the same philosophy for posture clinics. First of all (for me), you have to create a safe and friendly environment. If you stress people out, they have a very hard time performing well. (They're gonna be nervous already anyways, no need to torture the poor children.) Second of all, we made it clear that while the trainees have to learn the dialogue, we're not expecting them to be perfect. Dialogue study is a lifetime practice, and they absolutely have to keep studying and learn it as well as possible... but when they get up to deliver, they need to forget about perfection and just teach! And then we were able to give them quick but (hopefully) helpful feedback on their dialogue and/or their delivery. It was awfully fun. A lot of people who had been scared to go up because they didn't feel "ready" ended up jumping up there and delivering very respectable dialogue for cobra.

Bikram taught three nights that week (score!) and lectured on Wednesday and Thursday. I stayed for the whole Wednesday night lecture and said "hi" to Bikram at midnight during the break. I'm never totally sure that he will recognize me, but he always does - he looked at me for a couple seconds, and then it was, "Oooooh myyy God!" and a big hug. :-) He made a big fuss and told the room that I was "the best dialogue in 20 years of teacher trainings!", which is ridiculous (he also says, "Quincy Jones, my best friend!" almost every day), but terribly sweet. A few minutes later, I figured this would be the right time to put on my big girl pants and volunteer myself to teach a class at training... and to make a long story short, it worked out! I got myself on the schedule to teach the Friday morning class!

Now this is the part that I really want to talk about.

I've taught the big class once before, last year. And it was great, but it was terrifying. There's just no getting around that. It is overwhelming to teach a class of 400+ people who are all studying to be yoga teachers. When I look back on my post from last year, I can see that I was totally thrilled, but I didn't know what to make of the whole experience. I hoped that one day I would get another shot at it.

This year I felt so. Much. Better. I still got the nerves and butterflies, but it was a very small fraction of the terror that I felt the first time!

I also went through this interesting process on Thursday afternoon, since I had the whole day to think about Friday morning's class. At first I was thinking, "What do I want to tell them?" Because there's so much that I wish I could tell them. There are just a million things that I'd love to help them understand. So I spent a while tossing ideas around, trying to think of a few things to say. And then I read Bikram's letter. They've got a note printed out, from Bikram, that the staff gave me before the class. (I hope I'm not giving away any big secrets here - if I need to take this part out, I expect that someone will let me know. I also don't know when this procedure started - for all I know, no one has gotten this note except me!) Anyway, it's no big deal - all this note says is, "Please just say the dialogue." Obviously we are teaching corrections and stories and philosophy at our own schools, because the students are coming in so well prepared. But for training, Bikram is teaching the philosophy and corrections himself. (In the three classes of his that I took, I'd say at least 75% of the classes were devoted to individual corrections.) So he just needs the visiting teachers to say the dialogue - with energy, and crystal clear.

I read this, and thought about it, and it made so much sense. And it really took the pressure off. Just say the dialogue - well that's easy! I teach a dialogue class. I've been studying the dialogue continuously for the better part of three years. I know how to do that.

And then I realized - wow, it was so much my ego that wanted to add something "special." Pure and total ego. And I think a lot of teachers fall into that trap, especially at training. They want to make the class better by adding something special of their own. But what the trainees really need is the purest, simplest class possible. Just Bikram's words, Bikram's dialogue, that they are working so hard to cram into their brains in a very short period of time. They don't need a show. They don't need to hear what I, Juliana, think about the yoga or the training process. They just need dialogue, energy, and love.

Just say the dialogue. Show, don't tell.

I realized that I had been talking a pretty good talk in posture clinics, so now I needed to follow my own advice. The biggest piece of that was realizing (or remembering) that my class is not about me, it's about the needs of the students. And the other piece - also kind of difficult! - was remembering that it's not supposed to be perfect. I was tempted to pull out my dialogue and hide in my room to review, but I didn't! I'm so proud of that. I didn't open the dialogue once before the class, although I did carry it around for good luck. I told all the trainees "You're more ready than you think, just do the best you can." So for the Big Class, I had to follow my own advice or I would know I was a hypocrite. I had to just... trust myself.

And I did exactly that.

What can I say about the class? I did exactly what I intended to do, and I'm really, really happy with it. It was still a little disorienting being up on that big podium, with all the mirrors and speakers and people, and it was very fucking hot and hard to breathe up there, but I did exactly the job that I set out to do. And my god, but the trainees rose to the occasion!! Trainees, you rock my world. We were all on the same team that day, one hundred and ten percent. Bikram's words, my voice, your bodies. The trainees were so tired, so beat up, so exhausted, but I looked around the room during triangle pose and it looked like almost everyone was in the posture. And I didn't see anyone come out early. It was insane - I'm a little emotional just thinking of it. That wasn't me, that was us - all of us together. Dialogue, energy, and love, love, love.

I had to go out very quickly and sit down after the class! But then all day long, people came up to me and said, thank you for giving us exactly the class that we needed. Whew. It was very powerful, and actually very humbling, too. They were all very sweet to me, but even more interesting, a lot of them understood exactly what I did, and said, thank you for not adding any extra stuff and just teaching the class the way that we are studying it. So perhaps by sticking to the dialogue, I have made myself memorable?! There are worse things, I guess.

I also have to say that all the other visiting teachers and staff were very kind to me. I didn't get any catty or weird attitudes, and a lot of certified teachers turned up for the class. The staff members gave me kudos, the New England folks gave me shit-eating grins from the back row, and Nicole Duke and Cynthia Wehr (who both taught the Big Class that week) gave me some much-appreciated pre- and post-class support. Yoga family at its best!

Gotta say one more thing here, mainly addressed to the trainees. A few people asked me, "Is that how you always teach your class?" The answer is "yes and no." The biggest difference is that in a normal class, I make lots of corrections, I give a few more explanations between the postures, and sometimes I explain a philosophical point or two. Another difference is that normal classes don't require the same level of energy - I would never drive a 20-person class with the same power that I used for a 500-person class, it would be like running over them with a steamroller! But as far as the dialogue is concerned, that was absolutely my normal class. I did not study beforehand at all. In the two-and-a-half years that I have been teaching, I have kept the dialogue as my closest friend, because it makes a beautiful foundation for the class. Start with dialogue, energy, and some love - and then when you throw in the corrections, the explanations, the occasional jokes and stories, then you will feel that you are really teaching a class. That's been my approach, and so far it seems to work great.

Now I think it's time to call it a night. I had an amazing time in LA, but wow does it feel good to be home. Tomorrow I have my first legit day off in two weeks, and I am heading up to Mount Monadnock for a day hike to enjoy the fresh air and fall colors. I just need to look up the directions before then and figure out where Monadnock is.... take care of yourselves, yogis, and I'll probably write more soon.

My Life as a GPS

I started this post months ago and somehow never got around to finishing it... until now! Never mind that 6:35am flight out of Boston tomorrow morning. My blog needs some love! (And if you can guess where I'm flying to at such an ungodly hour, you're probably right, but more on that next week.)

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Here's an interesting question: why do people sometimes hurt themselves in yoga class, and how can you prevent them from doing it? I'm not talking about students getting hurt in bad/weird yoga classes (which is a whole different subject) - I'm talking about times when the teacher does everything "right"
and somebody still manages to get hurt.

All of the teachers at my current studio - including myself - make a point of explaining that you need to listen to your body in class. One of my favorite reviews of the yoga studio (of course I stalk our reviews online) said something along the lines of: "All the teachers maintain the 'push yourself' attitude, but always with something about listening to your body." Perfect! You have to work hard in class, but you also have to take care of yourself. But in one of our staff meetings over the summer, our studio owner told us that she'd gotten complaints from students who said that they injured themselves in class because a teacher told them to "push through the pain"... which frankly just doesn't happen here. To quote my friend Brandi, we only use those words after the word "don't," as in, "DON'T push through the pain."

Now my immediate response to this problem is: "UGH!! Why doesn't anybody listen to me?!"

But the topic is totally worth discussing, so let's get into it a little bit. Because there are plenty of people in the world who legitimately have no idea how to "listen to their body." 

I'm going to operate under the assumption that the Bikram series is essentially safe and therapeutic, when executed properly. Or as Emmy likes to say: "The yoga is always innocent." Injuries tend to happen when a) the postures are done incorrectly - wrong alignment, misunderstanding of the posture, or b) the practitioner is over-aggressive, not fully in tune with his/her body. (There's also (c), the fluke accident, which can totally happen but is not terribly common in the beginner's series.)

It's the teacher's job to teach correct alignment and technique. Safest way for us to do that is by teaching with the dialogue - by using the words of the dialogue, and by understanding the words of the dialogue, so that we can correct the students and steer them in the right direction.

Let's assume that the teacher is doing all of that. (We are sure trying, anyway.) It is now your job, as a student, to follow along carefully and pay attention to your body as you do so.

My favorite analogy is that your teacher is your GPS - you know, that annoying gadget in your car that's always giving you directions. (For the sake of my analogy, you'll have to assume that the teacher is a pretty good and accurate GPS - not one a stupid one like mine that starts hollering "Perform U-turn immediately!" every time you turn it on. It's not a perfect analogy, but I like it.) Just like your GPS, the teacher has already calculated the route that will take you to your destination safely and efficiently.

But just because you are driving around with a GPS, that doesn't mean you can close your eyes and ignore the road. You still have to keep your eyes open to watch out for red lights, stop signs, potholes, pedestrians, and crazy people trying to cut you off. You don't want to end up like those Japanese tourists who were following their GPS when they drove straight into the Pacific a few months ago.

(True story! I am still laughing about it.)

Remember, the teacher is always giving instructions for the whole class, for the full posture. If you're going into a posture and you start to feel some pain, just back off a little bit. It doesn't mean the GPS is sending you the wrong way - it's just your body's equivalent of a red light. It means, "wait here for a little while." When the light turns green, then you can make your next move.

Unfortunately, it's not always easy for a person to distinguish between the red light and the green light. (Or the yellow light - slow down.) It gets complicated because some of the postures are super uncomfortable, so we do actually warn you that some of the postures are going to hurt - mainly so that the new students don't get scared when they do the postures for the first time. (Hell, that first backbend still hurts like a bitch some days, especially first thing in the morning.) But we also tell you, sometimes in the very next posture, "take it easy, you're not warmed up yet." So there is definitely a balancing act that happens in the class. You have to go to the point where you're uncomfortable - sometimes deeply uncomfortable! - but not causing pain. This takes practice!

And in practice, you make mistakes sometimes (because that's what practice means). That's part of why so many beginning students strain their hamstrings - little bit overaggressive, doing too much too fast, without quite understanding the technique.

So here's the million dollar question: how do you learn what's right?

Here's my very favorite answer: If it works, then it's right.

If the yoga is working, you might have some muscle soreness ("therapeutic discomfort") after class, but your body will generally feel better and better as you practice more. That means you're doing good. If you have an injury or problem that keeps getting worse and worse and worse the more you practice, that means you're driving right into the ocean. Get your foot off the gas and recalculate!

"Listening to your body" means keeping your eyes on the road - at all times! Best way to catch problems early. This isn't just for beginners - in fact, the more often you practice, the more important it is! I had a funny tweak in my knee for over a month that I couldn't figure out until Diane told me I was sitting a little too low in the second part of awkward pose. I came up about one inch, and the knee stopped hurting after two days. Crazy! One of my really good students came to me a few days ago saying that she'd started having a little pain in her knee - she usually noticed it in fixed firm. That same day, she figured out that the pain was starting in bow pose (the one right before fixed firm). We did a little problem-solving, she eased up on that pose, and her knee felt better in two days. Trouble-shooting. It's part of the practice!

Slight digression: It always cracks me up when people come into class, start making up completely different postures, and say, "Oh, I'm just listening to my body!" Noooo no no no no no no. This is not an interpretive dance class. For our purposes, "listening to your body" is not an airy-fairy thing; it's tangible. If you go in the wrong direction, your body will give you pain. "Hey, I don't like that!" If you fix yourself, your body will give you a nicer response. "That feels much better, thank you!"That's how the body talks.

I could talk about this all night, but I really do have to pack!

At the end of the day, it's all a cooperative effort between the teacher and the student. The teacher has the directions, but the student is in the driver's seat. I may be a great backseat driver (just ask anyone who's ever been on a road trip with me), but I can only do so much.

So please, watch out for that Pacific Ocean. Apparently it can sneak up on you.

"EXTREME!!" Yoga

"Good morning everybody! Welcome to Bikram yoga torture chamber, to kill yourself for the next 90 minutes!"

Woohoo! That's great marketing. It's a hook. If you ever take class with Bikram, you can see that he is a born performer and he plays the cheerful sadist really well. "If you feel dizzy, nauseous, throw-up, you must be happy! Is a good news!"

But at the same time, Bikram understands his students. He is kind to the new ones. When I took his public classes in LA, the newbies were always like, "Wow, that guy was nice and really helpful." Even at teacher training, he always had an eye on the people who were struggling. In one minute, he'd be shouting at someone to push harder, but in the next minute, he'd be telling someone else, "Boss, take it easy. You don't look so good." I always remember the class in LA when he told a student to go into the hallway for 2 minutes, drink some Coca-Cola, and then come back. The student didn't want to leave the room, and Bikram was like, "No really, I am serious! Go out, just 2 minutes, then come back in."

My point is, Bikram yoga is not just about "killing yourself." It's also about moderation. Balance. You know.... yoga.

Bikram yoga attracts a lot of "type-a" people, a lot of fitness enthusiasts, and a decent number of masochists. It's easy to see why. The heat and the intensity are very appealing. Personally, I was totally crazy when I started Bikram yoga. I hadn't really figured out what I wanted to do with my life and I was going stir-crazy. I went to class as much as possible. I did a pretty solid 8 classes a week for months and months. I liked the busy, super hot classes. I left my water bottle in the locker room. At one point, the craziest teacher at the studio said, "And here's Juliana, who is crazy!" which she meant as a compliment.... and I was like, wow, if this person think I am nuts, I might need to take a look at my life.

Bikram yoga attracts a lot of crazy, hardcore people.... but when done properly, when taught compassionately, it should really help those people to become less crazy.

It took a few years, but after doing the yoga for a while, I started mellowing out. It seemed like the natural progression. I went to grad school, practiced at different studios, got a little perspective. I went to teacher training not because I wanted to get my ass kicked, but because I wanted to become a teacher. I was amazed to find people at training who were there specifically to get their asses kicked. I was alarmed to see that some people would even go and take classes on Sunday - our day off!! - in the name of some "yoga challenge." (Like teacher training is not a challenge by itself?) I was relieved to find that I was not one of those people. I'd go for broke in class for 90 minutes, but after that I'd rather go do things like eat, study, swim, eat more, or sleep.

Sometimes I hear people saying, "There's no such thing as too much yoga," and I'm just like, hmm. That's not how I remember it. I remember Bikram saying "Too good is no good!"

I've probably quoted this before, but here's a little piece from Bikram's book (the blue book, Bikram's Beginning Yoga Class, page 12):

"Anyone who tell you got to do Yoga every day for rest of life, or that they do full set of Yoga every day for years, he crazy or saint or both." [There are some saints among us....] "Regular people like us, we got to worry about the garbage disposal don't work, Tommy's scout troop has a picnic, there's a good movie on TV - important things like that.... Naturally, the more you do, the better health you gonna be in, mentally and physically. And if you go some medical problem like bad back or arthritis or old age that Yoga is keeping away, you got to do the Yoga fairly regularly, or you'll get it again. But the rest of us, once we got it.... we can relax a little bit - do it only two, three times a week."

There you go. If you've got a medical problem, you do the yoga as much as you can to take care of the problem. If you're a beginner, you go as much as you can. Once you've got everything opened up and you feel good, you don't need to bust your butt every day anymore.

I hear people talk about Bikram as "extreme yoga" sometimes, and it is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me, because it over-simplifies the whole thing and it scares the shit out of people. It's a marketing tactic that only works on a certain people. If you've got a friend who is a big fitness buff and who thinks yoga is for wimps, then yes, go ahead and tell him, "I challenge you to try this yoga class! It is XTREME yoga! It will kick your butt!" (Then he will come to class, and we teachers will spend the whole time trying to get him to breathe normal, haha.) Bring your friends into class any way you can, that's great.

But if you're trying to get your mom or your grandma into class, you can't tell her, "This is XTREME yoga!!" No! She will run in the other direction! You have to tell her, "This is heated, therapeutic yoga. It's ok if you only do a tiny bit - just stay in the room, breathe, do what you can, and rest whenever you need to." Remember Elaine, who everybody loves, who practices every day (to keep away old age)? That's what her daughter told her before her first class, and that's what she now tells all the other students. Just do what you can, don't try to do everything at once, don't be a hero.

Even the advanced practice and the "competition" postures (which look pretty scary at first glance) are all about patience. I've been practicing the advanced series for, er, longer than I like to admit, and it is totally humbling. There are postures in that class that I worked on for years before I saw any progress at all - and I still got a loooooong way to go. By now, I can do some wacky, contortionist-looking postures - but even that doesn't feel so "extreme" to me, because I've been working into the postures soooooo slooooooowly over such a long period of time.

When I do the competitions, I do put some extra time into my practice, but I try to spread it out. I see people doing these crazy hardcore weeklong training clinics and I'm like, hmmmmm. Very interesting, but not for me. (Plus, what's up with all the blatant disregard for the first rule of Fight Club?!) When I get on stage, I want to demonstrate the progress I've made over the course of years - not the amount of yoga I was able to cram into a couple of months or weeks. I'm sure I could "get there" faster if I practiced for 10 hours every day - but what's the big rush?

In advanced class yesterday, I was telling my teacher, "I think I need more determination to go along with my patience, I feel like I should be farther along," and she (who knows me pretty well) said, "No, not really, just keep being patient." And then I had a nice little breakthrough in a posture, which was encouraging, and I noticed that I already have come a long way. So there you go.

What I'm trying to say is, I don't see any extra benefit in being "hardcore." It's really fun sometimes to go crazy with the yoga and see how much you can accomplish. I have nothing against that - more power to you! I just don't see that as the final destination. The goal is not to touch your head on your butt (even though that would be really cool). The goal is to have a happy, healthy, balanced life.

In the beginning (of this horribly long-winded blog), I quoted Bikram as saying, "Kill yourself!" But I cheated. That's not the real quote. The real quote is, "Kill your self." Your "self," with a small "s." Your ego, your image, your ambition. That's how you reach your Self - your true Self. The goal is Self-realization.

Self-realization is even trickier than touching your head on your butt. I might get to the second one before I make it to the first.

But I am trying!

"NO Lions!"

Autumn has officially arrived in New England! We've got sunny days and chilly nights, perfect for outdoor activities like walks in the park, corn mazes, and apple picking. I have done all of those things in the past week, because I'm a little bit dorky like that. I even went to the zoo this morning, with my Mom, who was visiting from out of town.

Whenever I'm looking for someplace new to go, especially if I'm brining a guest along, I check out the online reviews to see which places are worth a look. Last weekend, I checked the Yelp page for the Roger Williams Zoo to see what to expect. All the positive reviews were pretty accurate - nice little zoo, well-maintained grounds, not huge, great giraffes. And then of course there were a few negative reviews, including one person who was really angry because there were NO LIONS. This person went to the zoo expecting lions and tigers and bears, and her expectations were not met.

Of course there are plenty of cool animals at this zoo. There are elephants, giraffes, penguins, dwarf goats, red pandas, wild dogs, moon bears, seals, emu, flamingo, and a baby anteater. So I can't help laughing at the image of this poor person walking around the zoo, looking at all these fun animals, and growing more and more irate because they are NOT LIONS.

I guess some people's days are easily ruined, right?

I once noticed a review that gave only one star to a Bed and Breakfast because their caesar salad was missing the salad dressing. (I can't make this stuff up.) The gist of the review was: "This place is immaculate, the grounds are stunning, the service was impeccable... At dinner, the salad I ordered had NO dressing. It was JUST LETTUCE!!" One star (out of five).

In Bikram yoga, almost every studio has a couple of negative reviews written by people who went into Bikram expecting something else. I've seen at least one review of Bikram yoga that said, "This is NOT real yoga. In the whole class, there was NO downward dog!!" Like, what is the big obsession with that posture? Some styles use it, and some styles don't. Try to concentrate on the postures that actually are in the class, not the ones that are not.

Many of you probably read this stunning little blog post a couple weeks ago, written by studio owner Nicole Deacon, titled "Your Focus Determines Your Reality." (If you haven't already read it, you should.) Nicole's article talks about a paraplegic student who made phenomenal improvements to his fitness and his life through Bikram yoga. And the key thing with this student was that he focused on what he could do, not what he couldn't do. I have to quote this bit directly:

Do everything you can to the best of your ability and you will receive the benefits of this yoga.  Maybe all you can do that day is get to class.  Maybe all you can do is breathe.  Maybe all you can do is 10% of the posture.  Great!  Do that!  Come back the next day and do that again! There is a universal law called the “Law of Praise and Increase”.  If you want a dollar and have a dime and you curse the 90 cents you don’t have, you won’t get it.  But if you praise the 10 cents you do have, more will come to you.

That pretty much sums it up.

There's no use getting all caught up in the things that are missing from your day - or the things that you think are missing - because a) it will make you unhappy and b) it's counterproductive. There's no lions, there's no downward dog, I didn't get my salad dressing, I can't touch my toes. "No, no, no..." "Can't, can't, can't..." Stop that! Talk about something good, instead. Appreciate the good things that you already have - right here, right now. Drop your expectations.

"We love the things we love for what they are." (Robert Frost)

Oh, and if you have a few minutes, give your local studio some love on its Yelp page. I guarantee that your teachers will appreciate it.

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Here it is, your moment of Zen: