Yoga

There is a quote that sums up my experience heretofore with yoga better than anything else I’ve ever read. I don’t know from whom or where the quote came, or I would totally give the person mega props and a huge, bear-like, electronic hug. The quote goes a little something like this:

“My practice is no longer the battlefield of a long-waged self-improvement project by an overachieving person. It has become what I always hoped it would be — a place for love and acceptance.”

I think this quote embraces the yoga journey for many of us, because let’s be real here: How many of us started yoga because we wanted a thinner waist and perky yoga butt? How many of us, in the beginning, saw yoga as something we would conquer rather than embrace? How many of us saw someone in Crow Pose and said to ourselves, “I can do that shit.”

Over time, however, as we dove deeper into our practice — no doubt bumbling, grunting and falling along the way — our hardened layers begin to peel away, and we were left with the lingering feeling that yoga is something more than a way for us to gain strength, flexibility and balance. As we emerged from Savasana, time and time again, we began to realize that something else — something besides exercise — is going on here.

We all need it, we all have it, we all draw from it, we all seek it, and without it there is nothing left: hope.

The ability to persevere comes from inside — it is a part of you. When life throws you a curveball, when your path becomes a grinding mountain instead of a downhill glide, when there seems there is no way out, you must draw from your inner well of hope.

Whether to fulfill our goals or to fight to survive, we all draw from our same inner supply of hope. It is the first thing we should teach our children. Hope is a necessary component of survival and as sweet as hoping for a shiny red bicycle for Christmas.

If hope were a season, it would be Spring. Flowers are budding, bees are buzzing, trees are leafing and birds are building nests. Life picks up its paintbrush and makes a splash across Nature’s canvas. Its message:

“No matter where you are today,

Something new is on its way.”

While Spring gives evidence in the world around us, life flows just as hopefully within us. We usually relate to our physical world as solid and fixed. But it is not — it is alive, active and changing at every level, seen and unseen. Science now demonstrates that everything is energy, particles dancing with each other all the time. And I have learned this lesson in my bones.

One afternoon three years ago, in the fullness of Spring, I went out to buy groceries, stepped up onto a sidewalk and fell. I did not take another step for four months. Unable to stand, as I waited on the curb for the ambulance, I kept my mind focused on the desirable outcome. But I knew the truth. Even in those first five minutes, something in me responded, “Okay. If this is what’s next, let’s go.”

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”~Lao Tzu

Although all mothers know this, no one can truly warn you before it happens: Your body is never the same after you have a baby as it was before you got pregnant.

Sure, we see images of movie stars who bounce back from having babies more toned and fit than they were before pregnancy, but the reality for most women is much less seamless. Having a baby affects you inside and out: You stretch and move differently, and your anatomy changes — permanently — from that growing being inside your body. That pair of skinny jeans, your high school dress and your once stretch-mark-free body often become just a distant memory. This change can make women feel imperfect or less attractive than they remember themselves to be.

When I walked into the room for my first “official yoga class” (read: not with a DVD at home, which had been my practice for years) I felt weak. I was mom to a two-year-old and a four-year-old and I was out of shape. My stomach was flabby from cesarean sections, my leg muscles shaky and my self-image less than ideal. Feeling neither powerful nor like a rock star, I just hoped that yoga would help me get back the body I once had.

It wasn’t until the day that I held Plank Pose in yoga class that I finally got it: I still had an amazing body.

This June, dust off your travel yoga mat and head to beautiful Boulder, Colo., for the second annual Hanuman Festival! More than your typical yoga retreat, Hanuman combines yoga, music and community, all for some great causes.

When: June 8-10, 2012

Where: Boulder, Colorado, near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains

The yoga: The all-star instructor lineup includes classes with Kathryn Budig, Tommy Rosen, Kia Miller, Amy Ippoliti and many more.

The music: Enjoy concerts featuring Desert Dwellers, Jim Beckwith, Ashlee K Thomas, David Newman (Durga Das), Vamadeva Jaya, DJ Drez, The Pushpams,  David “Duke Mushroom” Schommer and many more. Artists will perform during select yoga classes as well as at scheduled concerts.

The causes:

• Off the Mat and Into the World, a program that “uses the power of yoga to inspire conscious, sustainable activism and ignite grassroots social change.”
• The Wellness Initiative, which seeks to “improve the physical health, social and emotional development, and academic performance of low-income youth through yoga-based wellness programs.”
• Give Back Yoga Foundation supports and fund certified yoga teachers in all traditions to offer the teachings of yoga to under-served and under-resourced socio-economic segments of the community.

Gaiam is especially excited for this event because it’s one of the only yoga festivals to take place right in our own backyard — less than eight miles from our Louisville, Colorado headquarters! Gaiam and Gaiam TV will each have booths at the festival, where participants will be able to check out our newest yoga mats, DVDs and other gear, as well as meet some of your favorite yoga instructors who will be stopping by to say hello or help you perfect your poses.

We chatted with Cara Fogel Ferrick, Hanuman’s sales and marketing director, who gave us the scoop on what sets Hanuman apart (and where that name came from!).

If yoga is supposed to be all about connecting mind, body, and spirit, why is it that the first thing I think of at the start of every yoga class is how much I need a pedicure? This not-so-spiritual thought leads logically into looking around at everyone else’s feet, a bad idea in general and especially in yoga class.

Even Yoga Journal admits there is a problem — athlete’s foot running rampant through yoga studios. The symptoms are cracked, itchy, peeling and sometimes blistered skin. Mmmmm. Let athlete’s foot run its course, and pretty soon you’ll be the proud owner of even less attractive and harder to treat toenail fungus. Here’s how to avoid this yogi’s nightmare.

I don’t like being upside down and backwards. This makes Handstand a challenge for me. I don’t trust that my fellow students can hold me steady while I substitute my hands for feet. It’s a reflection of my own limited thinking, not an accurate assessment of their competence.

Still, I try. I go to class and work gradually. First, I achieved Headstand, which I couldn’t do a year ago. It’s a stepping-stone to the loftier goal of Handstand.

Yoga is always putting new challenges in our paths. Just when we think we have achieved a difficult asana, we discover that it was the modified version. It taught me to give up hope.

“Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.” ~George Iles

When you run a yoga studio, you hear it all. From the annoyingly trivial (“So and so was in my spot!”) to the enormously overwhelming (“I’ve been diagnosed with cancer.”). Some of the stories I’ve heard over the years are so powerful and transcendent, they’ve reached into my life and left an indelible imprint of hope. This is one of those stories:

Her limbs twisted by muscular dystrophy, she wandered in and unrolled her yoga mat. I was concerned — mine is a rigorous class, and I wanted to protect her without making a spectacle. It’s a line every teacher walks with any new student, but her circumstances had me feeling more conflicted about how hands on or off I should be than usual.

Hope is a feeling, an internal movement. If seen in its proper context, hope is part of the light of joy and love that is constantly shining through and illuminating the beauty of life — the awesome dance in which we take part. There is no need to feed it or hang on to it as a distraction or a promise. Instead, strive to see it in context with all of the present moment’s thoughts and sensations. It is but a broken branch floating in the middle of the river of the Tao that we can hang on to only momentarily; however, it must not become the totality of our reality.

Hope, expectation, anticipation, the desire for a certain outcome. Hope is what moves us forward, motivates us and keeps our faith strong during the hard times. Hope is essential for our existence; yet there are times — when the world seems to be in a state of chaos — when it is easy to wonder where hope is.

In thinking about hope and how to find it in our world, I realized that for me, hope comes from my yoga practice and my kids, as both remind me on a constant basis that hope dwells within us, not outside of ourselves, and that in order to tap into that wellspring of hope, it is essential to find the peace within to let hope blossom.