Consistency in Yoga

Consistency in Yoga: Does it exist?

Well, yes and no. A great lesson I have learned from yoga is that my body is different every day. This is shown in my yoga practice and my yoga teaching.  There will be days when my body wants to do strength building, focused poses and there will be days when my body wants to stretch and be still. There are also inconsistencies between different sides of my body. This is normal. I've come to expect the differences each time I step onto my mat and I worry less about being even amd just let my body speak to me.

So say you start to notice inconsistencies in your yoga, and you start to get discouraged,  thinking you're not improving. Guess what?  It is perfectly okay! I promise!  Having inconsistencies in your practice does not mean that you aren't progressing and improving.  It actually means you are finely tuning your ability to recognize and listen to your body's needs, which is what yoga is all about. Hearing a body's needs and heeding them will give you a symbiotic relationship with your body that will serve you well in the  long run. So don't fret, every time you get on the mat- listen and  tell yourself you are becoming a better yogi.

Also on the lines of consistency,  yoga practiced for 3 days a week (even as little as 15 min) will benefit you and your body greatly. The consistency of your days including yoga will calm your mind and soothe your body and give you that wonderful symbiotic relationship we all want.

Have fun listening to your body and experimenting with what it needs in your practice. 

Namaste,
Camille

P.S. I received my yoga training @ www.gobodhiyoga.com

Teaching Children

As part of my wonderful training a www.gobodhiyoga.com I am trained to teach yoga for children if I so choose. 

I have experience teaching young children dance and what I have learned is that the format is very similar. 

A kids yoga class should be structured according to the child's age & attention span. A class for a 3 year old would be different than a class for an 8 year old. : )

I have wondered whether I should offer kids yoga classes in my yoga business.  For a while,  I thought it wasn't my cup of tea. Then when I realized that I already know how to structure a kids class it dawned on me- maybe I should consider it! 

If it is anything like teaching dance to children,  I think it could be very rewarding.  My students exhaust me, but they also inspire me.

Isn't it funny how dance & yoga seem to intertwine in my life? I can't get rid of them. They're too much a part of my heart. Teaching children could be a part of them both for me.

Well, back to the meditation pillow, and of course back to work.

Till next time. 
-Camille

Going with the flow

Life never seems to go according to plan does it? 

We can control our thoughts, our choices, and our actions.  We can work hard to achieve change within ourselves.  We really are so powerful.  We have great evident abilities and we even have latent abilities, waiting to grow.

We can not however,  control the decisions of others.  Decisions can be made that you had no control over and yet they still affect you. This can range from minor inconveniences to tragedies.  Unfortunately this is one of the sad laws of mortality. There are things we can control and things we can not. 

Does this fact make life harder? Yes, it can. Does this fact leave us helpless,  being subject to someone else's whims? No. We always have a choice when it comes to our thoughts and our actions.  (With the exception of slavery.)

The choice is ours to let inconveniences become real frustrations,  or to let them pass by us, not touching us. Even in a tragedy we have the choice of how we respond to the event. 

I think it is very tempting to want someone to blame when life doesn't go according to plan.  Be it God, be it a group of people or one specific person,  we want someone to direct our anger at. I'm not saying there aren't guilty people in the world.  There are, there are plenty. 

But focusing on the blame and only the blame does not give us our power.  It takes away from it. There is a difference between acknowledging a wrong and obsessing over the wrong.

We get the power by not wavering in our integrity and by learning from every situation.  (It is difficult,  but so important. )

Find ways you can learn and move on from things in your life right now. 

Have faith in yourself,  with some reflection, meditation and good work you can get there. 

-Camille

P.S.  I received my yoga training @ www.gobodhiyoga.com

Reinventing The Wheel

Does every Yoga class or session have to be Uniquely different? 

What a tricky question. This is the question that I gave myself when I started teaching yoga. There are just SO MANY COOL THINGS IN YOGA  that I want to show my students! 

I just got so excited to share my knowledge that I wanted every class I taught to change my student's lives. I know that sounds crazy, but if you know me I tend to get over excited easily. Woops. :) 

Though I do believe that yoga can change your life, I had to learn that something that significant can't happen in one yoga class. (Thank goodness I have a husband who not only supports me but knows when to talk me off of my over-excited mountain.) What I learned was that every person who enters my class will be different and their personal yogic journey will be different. Honestly, can you imagine tailor-making a class that will give every person exactly what they need so they can progress on their journey perfectly?

 I can't imagine it either. That is the pressure I was putting on myself when I first began teaching.

 One day when I was so nervous about my yoga lesson plan that I was crying on my stairs asking my husband if I'm a fraud, something dawned on me. Should something I love be this anxiety causing? (A little nervousness yes, but feeling incompetent, no.) Husband's response to me helped me to understand. He said you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you teach. Meaning, that I don't have to make every class unique and life-changing. 

I took Husband's advice along with the instruction of my yoga mentor (at Bodhi yoga www.gobodhiyoga.com) that I can open the yoga gates for my students and then they can choose where they want to go from there. What happened was I began teaching my classes in this way-beginning with breath work, warming up the tissues, then movement through poses. That was my outline or structure for the class. As I did this I noticed that my classes became unique on their own. Having the structure of the class so that I (really the yoga) can be free to adapt within the structure makes each class a unique blend of what our bodies wanted that day. 

I don't have to reinvent the wheel, in fact I can use the already invented wheel to take me where I want to go.

As an instructor I really do want to give your body what it needs and I do want you to go on your yoga journey. I just can't force it, and I think it is better that way. Yoga will be your teacher and I will just be the person adjusting you and guiding you. The nice thing about each class being unique is that occasionally opportunities arise for new things to be taught, and I try to use those opportunities to guide you and challenge you as your journey (and your spirit) grow. 

Namaste'

Camille

Courage to Respect Your Needs

I recently read a young adult novel about a teenage girl figuring out life. This particular novel stood out to me because the main character Kat walks to the beat of her own drum, the publisher illustrates that by saying "Kat does yoga down the halls of her high school. "

I thought well, let me see where they are going with that.

I read the book and actually really enjoyed it.  It wasn't cheesy or preachy, it just talked about life.  I found that refreshing.  The yoga part was mentioned here and there but not really focused on.  What I appreciated is that in one of the brief mentions of yoga Kat says "I didn't know what else to do in the situation,  so I started my 3 part breath. "

It takes a lot of courage to take care of yourself,  no matter what others around you think.  I don't mean that the world is full of people who don't want you to take care of yourself and you have to fight the power- I truly don't believe that. I mean,  it takes courage to tune in to your self in the midst of an uncomfortable (or just new) situation and acknowledge then honor what you are feeling.

I had a misconception for a long time that you can't let your true feelings show (in an uncomfortable/scary situation) until afterwards, when you are alone and you can process them.

What I understand now is I can acknowledge uncomfortable feelings and accept them when I feel them. What this means is saying to myself "It's okay that these feelings are coming to the surface, this is a healthy emotional response. What is my body telling me here & how can I take care of it?"

The answer to my question usually is inner relief that I'm not trying to fight the feeling,  and then permission to come back to it when I am ready.

Obviously,  I have not mastered this process yet, in fact this is a relatively new approach to emotional stress for me.

I have noticed that my body and my mind are a partnership and like any great partnership when they respect each other,  things just go smoothly. 

I actually think I learned a lot about all the relationships I am a part of with this experience.  Respect and appreciation can really go far.

-Camille

P.S.  I received my yoga training @ www.gobodhiyoga.com

A Yoga Article That Speaks to me.

While reading articles online to pass the time while I'm sick, I found a beautiful article about yoga & relationships.

Enjoy.

http://yoganonymous.com/what-7-yoga-poses-will-teach-you-about-your-relationship/

-Camille

I received my yoga training @ www.gobodhiyoga.com

Yoga when Sick

These past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind; travel, family emergencies, broken air conditioner, more travel and reunions.  I've been running full blast throughout all of these,(even if my AC wasn't) and a whole range of emotions from very happy to somber have been present. As per usual with my body, it waited until the whirlwind was over to fully express it's symptoms of unease.

So here I am in a stomach specific episode.  Bleh. This particular episode means resting and babying my stomach until it decides to start working again. 

For those of you who know me, you know that I don't wait very well.  Well it seems that I need to get over that.  : / Anyway, I digress. What does yoga have to do with this?

Well, how do I aid my discomfort and take care of my body without forcing it to do things it isn't willing to do right now?  I experiment with some yoga.  I obviously don't do a full 90 minute sequence, but yoga comes in many forms.  What I do is start with child's pose and focus on my breathing,  trying to let the prana move through me, and not forcing things to come faster. Then when my body feels ready I move slowly to something else.  It is easier to take my time when my body is in pain, so my yoga practice may look like me sitting still for a long time.

It varies day to day what I need, but if a pose creates more intense pain or increases my naseau then I come out of it and sit on my knees and breathe. For me, this is my home base. This helps my body get out of bed and reminds it that it is alive. Even if I am just breathing. 

I wanted to write this post to illustrate how yoga can be tailored to your needs, and how there are many facets of yoga.  Yoga is yoking your mind, body & soul. Giving all three what they need at any given time. 

Well, there are my two cents on how to survive a Fibro episode.  Also, some chick flicks and baths couldn't hurt.

Till next time. 

-Camille

P.S. I got my yoga training at www.gobodhiyoga.com

Emotions During Yoga

I find it so fitting that today is the day that I allotted myself to write about emotions during yoga.

I thought I would be giving an objective point of view on the topic but my yoga experience this morning changed that idea. 

As you all know I received my yoga instructor training @ Bodhi yoga  www.gobodhiyoga.com. In my group of fellow trainees there were 7 other awesome women embarking on the same journey I was. We got to know each other as we dived into the Philosophy of yoga, the Anatomy of yoga and the Spirituality of yoga. Each training weekend brought new experiences that we shared together. We all have different yoga backgrounds and plan on taking our yoga in different directions. These group trainings were great because we really got to see how yoga can be great for everyone, no matter how you started and no matter where you take it. I was nervous at first to be learning such important things with complete strangers, but those complete strangers soon became my sisters in the yoga journey. 

One of those sisters is Amanda. Amanda is a Pitta. (See previous entry about Doshas to fully understand Pittas.) She likes to grip life by the horns. She is a no nonsense type of person with out being abrasive and harsh. She is comfortable in her honesty, so much so that she could be honest with her opinions with out having to qualify them. Amanda had some health issues (yoga attracts us folk), and she found yoga as a way to overcome them. 

To give you some examples of the type of person Amanda is I will describe some of the things she would do with out being asked. When the early morning trainings would start she would first pick up some coffee (fresh squeezed juice for us non coffee drinkers) and refuse to be paid for it. She would buy way too much food at our lunch breaks so that she could share it with the group. She would ask about an advanced version of a pose and then she would try it for herself without hesitation. She would offer encouragement and guidance to others when they were being hesitant about the intimidating poses. (To quote her: "Camille, you can do it, push into it and let go.") 

This sweet person, Amanda, like I said gripped her life by the horns. She loved to river raft and on her recent rafting trip this past weekend she went off the raft and went missing. This was Saturday June 28th, 2014. Today is Tuesday July 1st, 2014. I've been stalking her Facebook page to see if there any updates of her being found. No word yet. 

I dedicated my meditation and my chants to her yesterday. My thoughts and my prayers were with her and her family all day. 

I slept last night (really good, which is rare for me.) and I awoke this morning not thinking of Amanda. I went to a yoga class (sometimes it is nice to be the student instead of the instructor) and I focused on my practice. I let my body breathe and sweat and enjoy all aspects of the practice. It was time for Savasana and I laid my head on the ground and closed my eyes. My eyes popped open as I saw Amanda in my mind. I thought of her laugh, her smile, her contagious spirit. My heart swelled and she was all I could think of. 

The instructor pulled us out of Savasana and I knew it was time to say good-bye to my new sister in yoga. I was in a class full of strangers so I didn't want to let my emotions come spilling out, so I pulled myself together, thanked the instructor, grabbed my mat and walked to my car. I put the key in the door of the car and I let myself feel the sadness of good-bye. I cried and cried and cried and cried. I cried because it was such a short time I knew her, I cried because so many people love her, I cried because it was a gift to know her, I cried because my heart needed to show my appreciation for her through my sobs. Crying was my release of all the emotions I've felt about her since I met her. 

I messaged my instructor (my training instructor and mentor) saying "I felt her during Savansa today" and I had. I came home and allowed myself to say good-bye and I went straight upstairs and grabbed the bracelet that she had made me with my pink and red heart chakra beads on it. I held it close to my heart and I said Thank you. 

As you can tell this post, is a personal experience with emotions during yoga. Obviously, they won't always be this extreme or dramatic, but they can be. What yoga does is yokes your mind, body and spirit together as one and when that happens emotions can be expressed in healthy ways. Fears, insecurities, sadness, worry, and frustrations can come out in your yoga practice. Joy, peace, hope, confidence, and gratitude can come out too. It is important to note, that what your body needs to express your body will express, release and then rebalance. Allow your body to rebalance itself in your yoga practice, metaphorically and literally. 

I needed to feel Amanda, say good-bye to Amanda and show gratitude for Amanda today. That was my personal emotional rebalance. 

Namaste Amanda.

 Here she is doing a headstand outside a restaurant, look at that smile on her face. :)

-Camille