Natasha Rizopoulos Photographed at her home in Brookline, Massachusetes by Tricia Gahagan. Natasha is wearing top by Hard Tail and pants by Jala Clothing

From Beachwood Canyon to Brookline, Massachusetts

In 1996, while hiking the northern section of the Hollywood Hills, Natasha Rizopoulos had a “moment.” In that reflection, in the balm of Beachwood Canyon, she experienced a bit of a homecoming. After years of professional roaming, the moment was a bow to the ever-present voice that had been long dimmed by the “shoulds” that can mute a life.

In chapter nine of the classic Great Expectations, Pip counsels, “Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.” You might say, in her flash Ms. Rizopoulos was channeling some Dickens. Inquiring in, staring down the truth of the matter and hushing, “Ahhh… yoga.” In that brush with clarity, there was a merger of her inner and outer selves.

Natasha Rizopoulos is beloved by students on both coasts for her strong command of asana and dedication to proper alignment; she is a respected educator of thousands of yoga instructors, former Director of Content of the YogaWorks teacher training curriculum, Yoga Journal cover model and contributor, star of Yoga Journal’s Yoga Step-by-Step video series, creator of the Align Your Flow™ system, Yoga U presenter, and more … The earnest maestro sports a resume with which many in the yoga world are well versed.

Yet there is a story to the origins of these great expectations Natasha Rizopoulos holds of herself and her students. Just how does an East Coast bred, Ivy League educated daughter of two academics with years of training as a ballet dancer wind up with a 2X6 mat as her office?

Yoga was not necessarily in her early plan. “With Natasha, since she was a little girl, it’s been, ‘I’m here. I’m going to do my best. I’m going to get myself organized, and I expect everyone else to do their best too’,” recalls her mother Diana de Vegh. Growing up among books (many books) in New Haven, Connecticut and New York City, Rizopoulos’ strong will and seriousness of purpose surfaced early on in her childhood.

These “all in” characteristics spilled over to many of her youthful pursuits from paper dolls and make believe to her intense study of ballet. In dance and movement she found an early vessel for self-expression, a vessel in which she abided well into her high school years. Although dance’s punitive nature eventually quelled a bit of her spirit for it, it was an early link nonetheless.

After four years in Cambridge, graduating Magna Cum Laude from Harvard, she returned to her beloved Gotham City to work first as a civil servant in city government, then to enroll in a graduate program at Columbia (a Master’s Degree in Social Work and Public Policy). In her first year, she worked as a counselor in a hospital in the South Bronx, then partway through her second year of study, she realized that her passion was in a different path so she parted ways with the program to follow a long-simmering ambition to pursue a life on-stage as an actress.

An unwavering determination and the sense of purpose that came with self-expression led to her accepting a number of smaller stage roles as well as a coveted invitation to summer with Shakespeare and Company. “In some ways, the acting was wonderful in that it filled that void for self expression that was left when I gave up dance. I also loved the community – being part of a production was so seductive for me. So thrilling.”

The logical next stop for an emerging actress in the prime of her life would be Hollywood. Once there she worked both in front of and behind the camera, juggling odd jobs and odd hours and growing increasingly disenchanted with both. Along the way she began to dabble in yoga and adopted a regular (Ashtanga slanted) practice.

In this chapter, and by chance, she found herself in class with Saul David Raye as he was serving as a substitute for the scheduled instructor. She was struck by his knowledge and teaching style that soared above and beyond the simple recitation of poses; through him she found her way to YogaWorks where she continued to be drawn in by the practice’s physical aspects and the experience of being completely present in her actions on the mat.

“I had a brain that was going all of the time. There was for me just something so absorbing with the physical practice.” Then there is that Beachwood Canyon pause in which she takes stock and recalls a dance experience during a role in the Shakespeare and Company production, that sheer joy of expressing herself through her body and the happiness in her work. She says, “The memory of that time made me realize that I could do this with yoga – to be in the world and take this practice I was falling in love with and do something useful with it.”

Natasha Rizopoulos photographed by Tricia Gahagan. Clothing by Hard Tail. Yoga Mat by Manduka

“Finding yoga was the big shift for me. On the surface I always seemed to have it together, but all the while I was truly quaking inside – perfectionism, a certain self-consciousness… When I started teaching yoga I had found my voice. And finally, it was an authentic voice.” The following week she committed fully and enrolled in a teacher training program at YogaWorks – a leap from which she has never looked back. “Ahhh… yoga.”

Invoking a young King Arthur and the building wisdom he earned through wearing varied hats in the story The Sword in the Stone, de Vegh, a therapist in private practice in New York, summarized her daughter’s professional trajectory, “With Natasha, the things that she learned as an actor and as a dancer are very apropos for yoga. She learned how to work with herself. How to work with her breath. How to use breath to sustain her. How to use breath to give her energy and when to preserve it. She learned how to work with her body – when is the time to stretch and push and when is the time to cherish and protect. She learned about listening to the music and getting that internal beat, and of course as an actor listening to other actors. Her training in these areas fed into her work as a yoga teacher, and I think her natural generosity and kindness probably helps a bit as a yoga instructor as well.”

Rizopoulos brought to her (Iyengar and Ashtanga) yogic studies a complete attention and that signature strong constitution. Beginning in 1996, she completed two successive 200 hour teacher training programs under the tutelage of Lisa Walford and Maty Ezraty, the first as an avid civilian and the second just as she was added to their teaching roster. As soon as YogaWorks’ Advanced Teacher Training program was developed, she completed that as well.

With a wealth of training under her belt and hesitating less, she launched herself fiercely into her teaching, from the start teasing out the promise of the willing. “I was fortunate to have begun teaching so quickly because that accelerated path just ramped up my desire to know more and more. I did not want to just be teaching gymnastics.”

Ms. Rizopoulos educates in lyrics all her own—a fact to which anyone who has spent time in her company can attest. “Spinning inner thighs”, “pinning elbows”, and “rebounding the spine” are just a swatch of the currency she trades in her precise guidance.

Clothing by Hard Tail. Photo by Tricia Gahagan

In the practice of asana she sees a window with dual opportunities: to reveal vulnerabilities and also to correct them. A big part of seizing these opportunities involves listening—a dying art for which she displays ongoing mastery. “If you are really looking at your students, you can see the piece that isn’t working. Whether it’s a part of the body that is weak, dull, tight, whether it is a quality of mind that is not allowing the person to be present – skillful teaching is about helping the person turn into the skid which is often an area that they’re trying to avoid… but doing it gently and mindfully and with support.”

It bears mentioning that her mother, Ms. de Vegh, was for years a teacher in Reevaluation Counseling (RC). This process of uninterrupted, attentive listening is said to naturally facilitate best conclusions from within. These teachings drifted into the family home for a time impressing Rizopoulos deeply. Perhaps in homage to this concept of listening fully, she has little use for the sensory overload which has become so accepted in contemporary yoga. “I want people to be listening to my instructions or their own breath. Why do we need something else?”

After a storied career in the Southern California YogaWorks family, Rizopoulos was tasked with the export of the program’s teacher trainings to Boston when her personal life spurred a cross-country relocation. She continued to share that curriculum, one which she had personally refined over time, in her role as a senior teacher at Down Under Yoga (Newton and Brookline) until 2015 when she elected to devote her full attention to creating and sharing her own teacher training programs in collaboration with Down Under.

A trusted mentor to many, these days in addition to her concurrent 200 and 300 hour teacher training programs, she also leads four public classes each week in the Boston area as well a number of Align Your Flow™ master classes in and around the city. Although the teaching commitments do at times compete with her own personal time on the mat, it is on these smaller stages that she sees her tomorrows. She does not rule out a writing project at some point, but resisting impulse she insists that such a venture must be predicated by her uncovering something distinct to relay.

Brookline, Massachusetts sits some 3,000 miles east of Los Angeles. A hamlet just outside of Boston, the town is home to stellar public schools as well as choice shopping and dining. Founded in 1705, Brookline is perhaps best known for its proximity to Fenway Park and also its discerning inhabitants. Rizopoulos traded 15 years of Southern California perpetual sunshine to be here.

Tucked gently in among towering pines, an accent of white checkering the grounds… her home and its setting are enchanting. I arrive for tea in the early afternoon on a chilly Friday. More than just a dwelling, it’s a refuge she has peacefully occupied for the past four years with her husband, the Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Michael Kirk. Dressed casually, she and her “lassies,” rescue dogs who answer to Alice and Zucchini, welcome me with a steadied cheer. As in the studio, her voice breezes seamlessly with conviction from one topic to the next, her volume perpetually dialed to about 3.5, obliging the listener to lean in.

Natasha and Zucchini. Natasha is wearing clothing by Hard Tail. Yoga Mat by Manduka.

In just a few hours she will kick-off a 300 hour teacher training program, a program in its third sell-out year. Yet her manner is so at ease. It is perhaps under this roof that she hears best; her free time is spent reading fiction, wandering out in nature, following her tennis hero Roger Federer, and meditating in her home studio. When we approach the topic of her husband, she gushes sweetly beaming gratitude for their union. She and Kirk met in 2003 while filming Yoga Journal’s Yoga Step-by-Step video series. From their working relationship, in time, a deeper partnership unfolded eventually prompting her shift in coasts.

Their life together is intentionally quiet, and although in June 2016, Rizopoulos presented at Yoga Journal’s San Diego conference, she goes to great lengths to preserve that order, cutting back on her travel and making any other necessary edits to suit their life together. These include embracing a smaller, more local career and being at much peace with that decision. Despite her resistance to the siren calls of social media and things viral, she has found in her practice channel with Yoga U a means of skillfully bending technology to honor her preferences yet remain connected remotely with her swelling audiences. In this expanding series of online classes sporting titles such as “The Art of Building Core Stability” and “Harnessing the Transformative Power of Inversions”, students find Rizopoulos continuing to disrupt myths, herald key actions, and highlight the use of oppositional actions in poses such as salamba sarvangasana (supported shoulderstand). Regardless of your viewing zip code, expect to be tasked with her signature homework poses or “daily vitamin regimens” at the finish of each class.

Grateful to be back to a pretty well-rounded practice herself after navigating some injuries and the limits of a hyper-mobile body in its late forties, Rizopoulos feels strongly that “teachers have teachers.” Still curious and forever foraging for novel content to share with her students, Patrica Walden, whom she views as a significant mentor, continues to guide her as she deepens her personal Iyengar studies. “Natasha is a teacher committed to growing, not that she needs to. Yet she sets the bar very high for herself. As a result she has so much to contribute to her students,” shared Walden. “When she teaches asana, it is not just physical. With great humility Natasha also honors pranayama and shares yoga’s rich philosophy. And, I would underline humility.”

Natasha is wearing tank by Hard Tail. Pants by Jala Clothing. Photo by Tricia Gahagan

Thirty-five of us have just wrapped up a master class which plumbed the depths of the all-important backbend. Over the course of two hours the tenor swirling around Ms. Rizopoulos morphs rather organically from all business to the charm of a doctor in the house. Under her careful guidance in breath and motion, collectively we’ve journeyed from an unpacking of tadasana (mountain pose) straight through to three variations on urdhva dhanurasana (upward facing bow), our peak pose for the morning. At the finish of our travel there is a genuine experience of having covered terrain, physical and intellectual, with many small epiphanies along the way. Despite the fatigue, I’m struck by the audience (mostly comprised of yoga instructors) lingering, continuing to hang on the instructor’s every word as she elaborates whole-heartedly on “pairing actions to find your neutral, your zero” in these poses.

Longtime Natasha student, teaching assistant and Boston area studio owner Kristin Olson summed up her personal experience in Natasha’s company, “Natasha’s intelligence pervades her teaching. She creates a more cerebral asana experience and through her choice of words and sequencing she forces students to not only stay present but to also notice their own personality through the practice. Every single pose and every single cue is thoughtfully chosen to create a profound and enriching asana. She has an extraordinary ability to translate asana and yoga philosophy so that they resonate with people in a way that we can actually live by the ideals of yoga.”

In her company, as I witness her extending time and rich imagery to advance excellence among her students, I get the sense that there is no place else that she needs to be. There is no rush. The movement is ever deliberate. The scholar, the dancer, the actor, the Virgo and yes the teacher… all serve in the stewardship of her beloved yoga. Long ago she made peace with the swerves and in doing so she has arrived at her precise place of shelter.

“The universe does take care of us… You do end up where you are supposed to end up… eventually. I was meant to teach yoga. I know that I was.”

For more information on Natasha, visit: natasharizopoulos.com

For more information on YogaWorks, visit: yogaworks.com

For more information on Down Under Yoga, visit: downunderyoga.com

Photo shoot assistants: Tamara Hickey and Siobhan Beasley (siobhanbeasleyphotography.com)
Hair and Makeup by Erica Morales of ENNIS Inc

Clothing by Hard Tail Forever (hardtailforever.com) and Jala Yoga (jalaclothing.com)

Yoga Mat by Manduka: manduka.com

Susan Currie

Susan Currie is a Boston-based photographer, writer, and yoga instructor and Managing Editor at Boston Yoga Magazine. Her new collection of poetic verse and images, Once Divided (Shanti Arts), is now available in wide release.

http://www.susancurriecreative.com

The post Great Expectations with Natasha Rizopoulos appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Photo by Molly + Co Photography

Sitting with Kelsey Patel in her penthouse loft in downtown Los Angeles, it is easy to see why this teacher, coach, and businesswoman is sought out by CEOs, entrepreneurs, artists, and celebrities for private sessions that include Reiki, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT or tapping), meditation, and other modalities. With an approachable manner, ability to translate spiritual principles, and a willingness to explore the full spectrum of love and pain, Kelsey bridges the divide between being your best friend and your spiritual sensei. Kelsey has the transcendental ability to master cleanse your life, love, and career, and send you on your way with a renewed manifesto. As she says, “You are matter, value, and worth.”

Kelsey Patel by Molly + Co Photography

Growing up in North Dakota, Kelsey experienced her share of challenges including witnessing her mother’s struggles with depression. She also had to learn how to navigate her own innate ability for empathy and ability to feel people’s energies and emotions. Years later, through her own journey and formal training, Kelsey integrates this empathy in her work with groups and individuals.

As an adult, Kelsey’s professional life saw her working in a significantly stressful environments, as she served in a number of high pressure roles from legislative correspondent to deputy press secretary to state liaison and scheduler for events in a United State senator’s office in Washington DC. At the same time, Kelsey was processing her mom’s trips in and out of treatment for depression and dealing with her own experience of significant back pain. “I hadn’t been exposed to how your physical being can relate to your mental and spiritual being.”

During some of the toughest times, “I was constantly not relaxed, not in the present moment,” Kelsey recalls. “It was always do more, be more, be more successful.” She found herself taking Advil all the time to try to quiet the back pain. While she was at work one day, her mom called from the psychiatric ward, and as Kelsey says, “I had to pretend like shit wasn’t falling apart around me.”

“My mother was in treatment three different times when I was in my twenties. She is thriving now, and has even learned Reiki and is practicing it in North Dakota, where she still works and lives with my father. Depression is real, and I can only hope that we as a society start to talk about it and allow people the space and opportunity to receive the help they need. It was tough at times, but my supportive family was able to get through it together. I don’t know where I would be without my entire family’s love, dedication and support.”

In retrospect, Kelsey feels that her chronic pain was a conduit for her own transformation. “My back pain was right behind my heart,” she reflects. “That pain was where my journey to self-love and exploration started.” Kelsey was teaching dance and dancing in a company in DC, working as a bartender, and babysitting, all while juggling the long hours and stress of working in the Capitol. “I don’t know how I slept,” she admits. At the same time, she was in a toxic relationship with a boyfriend. As Kelsey describes the situation, “He didn’t value me because at the time I didn’t value myself.” As she sat on her couch crying from yet another fight with her then-boyfriend, one of Kelsey’s friends invited her to join her on a cross-country sojourn to Los Angeles. “That was when I said, ‘Fuck it’, and said yes,” remembers Kelsey.

With a U-Haul full of belongings and uncertain employment prospects, Kelsey landed in LA. She reached out to a contact from her DC life and landed a position in communications and PR at a Fortune 500 company. Even though she traded the Beltway political 24/7 pressure cooker for the promise of LA, she merely swapped one stressful situation for another. Kelsey continued to not feel well in her body, experiencing chronic back pain and discomfort while traveling for work and feeling the increasing buildup of the negative effects of stress.

Kelsey Patel Photo by Molly + Co Photography

A friend recommended yoga. After her first class, Kelsey felt significantly different. She describes the experience, “I could feel like my heart was being shaken awake.” Yoga began to help her back pain. Then, Kelsey found Pure Barre and fell in love; as a former dancer, the movement and technique made her body feel good again.

Eventually, Kelsey began teaching and, encouraged by her husband, Kelsey started her own Pure Barre studio. Opening a brick and mortar business came with its own set of demands, and she again found herself experiencing back pain. “My back pain was bad, and my yoga was off and on. I still wasn’t valuing myself. At this time, I met a woman who practiced Reiki.” Kelsey had a session. “I couldn’t understand what was happening. I just knew that I felt better.”

Inspired by her experience, Kelsey immersed herself, earning her certification as a Reiki Master. In addition, she completed the teacher training at Liberation Yoga and pursued other trainings, including Shiva Rea’s Trance Dance Teacher Training. Kelsey began a private practice and taught workshops that combined Reiki with the process of acknowledging each person as a valued and valuable human being full of life, purpose, and potential. “That’s when everything changed.”

Kelsey Patel by Molly + Co Photography

Today, Kelsey has a thriving private practice and teaches workshops and weekly classes, including at her Pure Barre Beverly Hills Studio and a weekly Reiki Healing Circle Class at the Den Meditation in Hollywood (Mondays 11:45am-12:30pm). “All of my experiences make sense to me: why I worked in public service, why I worked in the private sector, and why I was an entrepreneur. Everything has led to this place where I can relate to people in all stages of life, with different types of jobs and stresses and families.”

Her own back pain has subsided, without surgery or medication, but with continual practice and commitment. In moments when her pain does return, Kelsey has learned, as she says, “There can be love behind it and awareness and opportunity for me to grow.”

Kelsey believes the heart has an immeasurable capacity for love and allows herself to feel all the feelings, honor herself, and be in relationship with others. She emphasizes that feelings are the conduit to the wealth of your own heart. “Feelings don’t define you,” says Kelsey, “they guide you.”

When I spent time with Kelsey, I observed that she is a living manifesto of what she teaches. You could say she walks the talk—and you could also say that she feels her feelings and then uses her gifts of empathy and understanding to encourage others. “Everything is waiting for you to tap into it, to explore it, to connect to it from a place of love and humility and appreciation for the journey,” she says.

Kelsey Patel by Molly + Co Photography

Her purpose is to inspire people to find their magic and their life-given value and worth. Kelsey’s coaching practice draws upon her multi-faceted range of experience, including her work as a public servant, a corporate professional, a dance teacher, a barre teacher, a multi-unit entrepreneur, a boss, a Reiki master, a yoga instructor, a meditation teacher, a wife, a step-mom, and a human.

In our final moments together, Kelsey touched me when she said, “The rain is beautiful. The darkness is beautiful. I believe that there is beauty in the wholeness of the journey. It isn’t always fun to be in the dark, but we wouldn’t have it if it wasn’t intended to be explored.” Our hope is built in a willingness to participate in it all. Kelsey is living proof that, from heartbreak and back pain, love will meet you. Keep doing the work. Love is always on the other side.

Learn more about Kelsey Patel, her coaching, her teaching and her work as the co-founder of iamVibes (an activewear/yoga apparel brand focused on empowering, uplifting, and honoring the divine feminine energy)at: kelseyjpatel.com (Instagram @kelseyjpatel)

Molly + Co Photography can be found on Instagram at @mollycophoto

Marja Lankinen

Marja Lankinen is a full-time yoga instructor in Los Angeles. She is the founder and CEO of Yoga for Dancers and teaches yoga and therapeutics for professional dancers and athletes around the globe: marjayoga.com.
Facebook: Marja Lankinen Yoga
Instagram: @marjayoga and @yogafordancers

http://www.marjayoga.com

The post Kelsey Patel on the Heart’s Capacity for Love appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Hilaria Baldwin demonstrating balance in life. Photo by Jeff Skeirk/Rawtographer on location at the Beverly Wilshire.

Hilaria Baldwin knows something about the wobbly art of balance. She grew up between Boston and Spain, enjoying the physicality of gymnastics, flamenco, and Latin ballroom dance; she later danced professionally and taught the art form. Hilaria first discovered yoga while in college at NYU and found it to be a way to reconnect to the ability to listen to herself. Yoga was an antidote to her highly competitive life as a professional dancer and teacher. She dedicated herself to yoga and then became a teacher, focusing on cueing people through a sensation based-practice. In her book, The Living Clearly Method, Hilaria says, “We would use yoga poses to get into the feeling of being in the body, and from that place, to find more awareness, compassion, and room for change. We explored how a physical practice could be a way of feeling into our lives from the inside out and a key to reclaiming our power so we were not ruled by our thoughts, fears, and stories.”

Even with this compassionate, body-centered focus, Hilaria still had some of her own lessons to live and learn. A long struggle with perfectionism and an eating disorder that included anorexia, bulimia, and being 20 pounds underweight, combined with a grueling personal schedule and a nagging hip injury, all led to a broken hip merely weeks before she and her business partner opened their studio, Yoga Vida. Hilaria taught from a wheelchair when the studio opened. This led to her embarking on a process of recovery—physically, mentally, and emotionally. Once her health was stabilized, she clearly proclaimed to the universe and her friends that she was ready to fall in love, find a partner, and start a family. Which she did.

People may know Hilaria Baldwin as the co-founder of NYC studio Yoga Vida (opened in 2009, where she still teaches), from her playful Instagram account, her celeb husband (actor Alec Baldwin) and their three kids, and/or now her new book from Rodale —The Living Clearly Method: 5 Principles for a Fit Body, Healthy Mind & Joyful Life. Yet as her story suggests, there is more to her lifestyle method than the playful inversions and stilettos in her posts. Since she is someone who has had to learn for herself about the wobbly art of balance, she is gracious and generous when it comes to sharing the practice with others. As Hilaria says in the The Living Clearly Method, “My journey of living the questions has convinced me that even if we can’t improve every part of our lives, we can become more present to them.” She says this method “starts with listening to yourself and creating a connection through yoga, but that’s just the beginning.”

Her book describes her personal story and then takes the reader through a journey via The Living Clearly Method. The five principles she outlines for the method are: Perspective, Breathing, Grounding, Balance, and Letting Go. When you read the pages, you feel as though you are receiving advice from a wise sister, someone who knows what it is like to stare both joy and heartbreak in the face and then find a way to thrive.

When Hilaria and her family were on a recent trip to Los Angeles, she took some time to talk about balance and to play around with poses and the practice.

Hilaria Baldwin photographed by Jeff Skeirik/Rawtographer at the Beverly Wilshire, Beverly Hills (A Four Seasons Hotel).

LA YOGA: What was meaningful for you about taking up the practice of yoga?
HB: I danced my entire life and I practiced gymnastics. These activities were always things that I was expected to be good at. You had to perform your best, you didn’t just do it for fun or to goof around. This is not to say it wasn’t fun, but there was a purpose of pursuing excellence.

When I started practicing yoga, I was very nervous, just like most people are in their first yoga class. I talk about this a lot with students when they first start. As I continued, I realized there was no expectation of me being particularly good at this. There’s no reason that this has to look a certain way.

It was so liberating, to feel that I could just enjoy myself. Yoga practice is not to impress other people. It was a contrast with dance; yoga is about feeling from the inside out to create the form. It is the feeling that creates the posture, the purpose is the feeling. Yoga is a practice where it’s all about how it feels and not so much about how it looks, but if you abide by the principles and you practice the yoga, the side effect is that it can be very pretty as well!

In dance, it’s not to say that I didn’t feel great when I danced or got a thrill or a high from performing—that definitely was there too—that was just not the only purpose. I danced through a lot of injuries and it got to the point that I broke my hip, but in yoga that’s a silly thing to do—if you’re injured, you take care of your injury. That was a liberating experience for me.

LA YOGA: What keeps you practicing yoga?

HB: The understanding that I’ll feel really good doing it. I dedicated my life to yoga as a profession because I found it to be brilliant. As much as I like to run and take barre class and do all these things, the brilliance is the yoga postures and the ability to connect body, mind, breath, and movement together—I haven’t found that in any other discipline. It keeps me centered. I can play around and do all sorts of other activities but yoga is what keeps my body healthy and allows me to do other things. Yoga for me needs to be the thing that happens all the time.

LA YOGA: You’re a busy mom and a business woman; how do you continue to maintain your commitment to your practice? What advice would you give to people who are also juggling life and practice?

HB: There are many different kinds of yoga practice. The yoga that I teach and the yoga that I do works well for that Type A personality, the person with that go go go, hectic life. Yoga is finding the calm amidst the storm.

I’m going to pay attention to my children and be the best mom that I can be. I am going to be a good partner for my husband that’s a given. I am going to do my job and take care of my students and work and feel like a powerful woman in this age where we are able to be powerful women. I realize that if I don’t do yoga I am not going to be as strong for my children, my husband, or my job. Part of what keeps me going and allows me to tumble on the floor with my kids, or teach my students by practicing what I preach, or be there for my husband and be able to stay centered when things feel overwhelming for him IS my yoga practice.

Now how do I do it in terms of the time frame? I focus on doing yoga as I’m going throughout my day. This is something I talk about in my book, The Living Clearly Method. It is a practice to learn to be so present in your daily life that is is like you’re constantly doing yoga—not just the postures, but the teachings, breathing, awareness—all of these can be practiced in every single moment. Living your life in this way, aware of what’s happening as it’s happening, that’s my yoga practice. If that means I get to do an hour on the mat a day—great. If that means I only get five minutes—that’s ok too. I feel that I am successful as long as I’m trying to be present and centered and connected in the way that I have learned from my yoga practice. Throughout the rest of the time I feel like I’m doing right by myself and therefore being able to do right by all the people who rely on me.

L A YOGA: That’s great advice. What other advice would you give other working parents (or anyone) who are trying to negotiate these same challenges?

HB: A little goes a long way. Don’t expect perfection from yourself. Sometimes you’re expecting too much—to expect an hour when you’ve got little kids and you’re working and you’re doing all these things—that’s a lot. Say, “Okay I’m going to look at my day, and I’m going to do five minutes in this hour, then I’m going to do five minutes at this time and five minutes at that time,” that can be more manageable. Plan your time, even in small segments.

Practice staying connected to your yoga practice throughout the day. Too often we see people get up from savasana or final relaxation and they leave the room and all of a sudden they re-enter back into madness and disconnection.

The ability to check in multiple times a day can be powerful and can keep you more centered and grounded than practicing for an hour and having the rest of the day be like a complete madhouse.

Hilara Baldwin and her kids photographed by Jeff Skeirk/Rawtographer at the Beverly Wilshire, Beverly Hills (A Four Seasons Hotel).

I have three kids and there are moments when all my kids are screaming at the same time, or I just can’t hold all three of them at once. When I feel so much tension that I feel like I’m going to explode, well, how can I become calm? How can I understand? At this point, it goes back to my method of gaining perspective. I might ask what’s going on for each one of them right now and have compassion for that. I would ask myself, “Where’s my breath? Am I tightening my breath?” The more you tighten the breath, chances are you’re going to flip out. I’ll ask, “Where are my feet?” If I find my feet, if I find my grounding and then I know that I’m present, and I’m not going to explode from being overwhelmed and disconnected from my body. I’ll ask “Where’s my balance? Where’s my center? Where’s my core? Where is me?” Everything has to come from me, from my strength. I’ll check in to see if I can release some physical tension. Then I can be more present for my children. Doing that self-care when things get tough, this is when it is most important.

LA YOGA: How do you model this with your kids? Do you encourage them to do yoga with you? What advice would you give to other parents?

HB: Kids become aware of what their parents do. For a while when they would see me standing on my head and practice, they wanted to do it as well. One time, I was trying to explain to my daughter Carmen that people have jobs and I said, “I’m a yoga teacher.” She said, “No, you’re a mommy.” At that time, she didn’t understand that a world outside our relationship exists. Then she got to the point where she wants to be a yoga teacher when she grows up. She has also gone through phases when I’m practicing in the house, like doing a headstand on a table, and she says, “Mommy get down that’s dangerous.” My son Rafa [Rafael] has a completely different personality and he’ll try to get up there and do it as well.

Hilaria Baldwin and Carmen photographed by Jeff Skeirik/Rawtographer at the Beverly Wilshire, Beverly Hills (A Four Seasons Hotel). Carmen is wearing mala and bracelet by Five Star Hippie and kids’ leggings by K-Deer.

I hope that they learn to deal with stressful situations through being grounded and centered as I try to teach them. Of course I’m not perfect. If they’re flipping out about something, I’ll say, “I need you to breathe, just breathe.” We’ll do exercises and sometimes they’ll totally go for it and other times Carmen will say, “I don’t like breathing! I’m never going to breathe again!” I say, “Okay, well let me know how that works for you!” Little by little they start to get it and are able to grasp it. I hope! This is my first time being a parent and I only have three-and-half years experience doing it. I hope that it’s going to serve them well.

Hillaria Baldwin and her daughter Carmen photographed by Jeff Skeirik/Rawtographer at Beverly Wilshire, Beverly Hills (A Four Seasons Hotel). Carmen is wearing bracelet and mala by Five Star Hippie and kids’ leggings by K-Deer.

LA YOGA: Balance means different things to different people. What does it means to you to live a life of balance, or is that something you even strive for?

HB: For me one part of balance is knowing how to find my center and how everything is related to that center. If we’re doing dancer’s pose, one foot is on the ground. I can ask, “Where is my center relating to my foot? How is the rest of my body pulling and stretching and positioned so that I will not fall over?” If you’re tilted a little bit further forward you have to pull a little bit back and kick a little bit more with the back arm and hand. How are all these different details and needs in our lives, how are they balanced over our personal center point?

One of the reasons that I love yoga is that these words stem from movement. When I was dealing with my eating disorder and over-exercising and being unhappy, like most people I was capable of saying, “I know it doesn’t make sense that I’m bulimic.” The question was, “Why did I continue to do it?” and the answer was that I was disconnected from my body and my body didn’t physically understand balance.

Hilaria Baldwin in handstand variation. Photo by Jeff Skeirik/Rawtographer. Shot on location at the Beverly Wilshire, Beverly Hills (A Four Seasons Hotel).

How do I manage my three children? How do I balance my work and being a strong woman and example of helping people and being able to show that to my children? How do I do that while I meet their needs? Balance can be all these different things. It could be purely the physical yoga practice. It could be individual things like eating, showering, exercising. It could be dynamic with family, it could be work.

For me, it comes back to understanding my personal center point and how all the things around it are relating to the center. That’s why the more you feel your center the more you’re going to be able to find your balance.

One of the most amazing things about yoga is that we balance so often. There are a ton of variations of balancing poses in yoga. My advice to my students is to “Go and be in your body.”

LA YOGA: It’s important to have that connection to the body because that’s what makes the difference between repeating patterns that are not healthy and patterns that are healthy. What have you found to be successful in shifting patterns for students?

HB: Practice is necessary, of course. In addition to practice, we also need curiosity and desire. It is helpful for us to be curious about what else we can experience and harness that drive to learn more. Sometimes people are in savasana and thinking, “Okay I’m done, I’m laying on the floor, I’m in savasana, this is good.” And I say, “Okay if you lay here for five minutes and you focus on all the parts of your body that are touching the floor, with every single inhalation and exhalation they will deepen and increase in number. I promise you are still holding onto things, I promise you are still holding onto tension.” That’s part of it, seeing how far you can go not just in your physical practice but how that relates to the outside world.

The other thing is desire. When I was in the midst of my eating disorder, in order to address it, I had to want it to be different. I’m sure everyone reading this will know someone in their lives that you wish you could help. That’s not ours to be able to fix someone else, a person has to want to do it. We can be there, we can try to give support, we can show by example, we can give options, and we can go with them, but for change to occur there has to be a moment when they say, “I want to be better.” Whether it’s a big thing like an eating disorder or something like time management, you have to have the desire to make the change. In addition to practice, curiosity and definitely desire are very important.

LA YOGA: What are some things that you find most meaningful about teaching yoga?

HB: I learn just as much from my students as I feel like I teach them. I’m constantly learning, I teach a yoga class and I watch. I find that watching my yoga class as they’re doing it is so important to practice my teaching and to see how they’re getting it. I used to plan my yoga classes and write them down but now it’s like a play that I do with the students. Of course I have certain things that I do, a formula to my class, but then within it I’m watching and seeing what people need.

LA YOGA: In the world that we live in today, people’s stress levels seem to be increasing. What do you find in terms of coming back to the teachings of yoga that is meaningful for you to remedy this?

HB: Learning to stick with your practice in order to feel yourself and the connection that you can have with your physical self is important. We have to be IN ourselves in order to be strong to make a difference. Being connected can also help us practice kindness. I think the world right now needs a lot of kindness and strength. Hate speech has been given a very big microphone and that’s sad. So stay connected to yourself to create strength, bond with other people, be kind. “Us versus them” is not going to fix anything—these are not sports teams. I think it is a combination of hope, strength, our connection to ourselves, and our practice of kindness that will propel us into a better place.
Credits

Photos shot on location at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel: fourseasons.com/beverlywilshire

Photo shoot assistant: Jeannie Jeffries.

Jeff Skeirik can be found at: rawtographer.com

Carmen is wearing mala by fivestarhippie and kids’ leggings by K-Deer.

For more information about Hilaria Baldwin, visit her studio: YogaVida.com or follow her on social media via Twitter and Instagram@hilariabaldwin

Felicia M. Tomasko

Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.

http://www.blissnetwork.com

The post Hilaria Baldwin on Living Clearly and Staying Balanced appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Photo of Rina Jakubowicz by David Young-Wolff. Rina is wearing leggings by Liquido Active.

Rina Jakubowicz is a powerhouse of a teacher. She leads ongoing classes at Electric Soul Yoga in Studio City, facilitates teacher training programs for people who want to teach yoga in Spanish at Wanderlust Hollywood, and travels the world to share her practice. She took a break from her busy schedule to share her practice on the beach in Malibu and talk to us about some of her inspirations in Los Angeles and beyond.

What do you remember about your first yoga class?

So much! I took my first yoga class in 1999 with Swami Bua—who was 108 at the time. Two people were by his side holding him up to help him walk into the room. He sat down on a chair and started drill-sergeanting us (if that’s a word.) He did none of the poses but he taught. This was also my mom’s first yoga class and we were both in awe of what these people were doing. I couldn’t do anything. I was challenged more than anything I had ever tried in my life.

Why did you go into the room?

There was a newspaper article written about him coming into town and my mom asked me if I wanted to go with her. I said yes.

What made you come back to your next class?

I saw it as the ultimate challenge. I knew that although I couldn’t do anything; one day, I would. So I immediately was hooked. I went back the next day for another class with Swami Bua.

You’ve been teaching teacher trainings focused on teaching yoga in Spanish. What are your greatest challenges teaching people to teach in Spanish? 

The first challenge is the language barrier of all the different Hispanic countries. Every country has its own version of Spanish so sometimes some explanations get lost in translation.

Plus, explaining one thing in English with several words can sometimes take twice or three times as many words to explain the same in Spanish. Culturally, there also as not as much receptivity to yoga as there is in English-speaking areas—yet! But it’s building!

What is something meaningful that happened while you were training teachers to teach in Spanish?

I am so inspired by the feeling of unity I see with groups of people from all of the Latin countries coming together and embracing each other as one. Seeing a cleaning lady commit to and thrive in her yoga training and end up becoming certified as a yoga teacher when she never thought she could be anything else was one of the most fulfilling results of the training.

Rina Jakubowicz photographed by David Young-Wolff. Leggings by Liquido Active.

Living in LA, what are some of your favorite places to go to decompress and unwind?

I love the Lake Shrine (Self-Realization Fellowship). It’s always so peaceful and beautiful. The essentials always show themselves there. I’ve also created my own little nook in my home from my new favorite store World Market. It’s so homey that I unwind every time I walk into it.

What are some of the yoga classes you love to go to and who are some of your favorite teachers?

In LA, I like to go to Yancy Schwartz’s Rocket Yoga classes at Create Yoga. I love Rocket Yoga and he challenges me just enough. When I’m looking for a quick class that’s convenient, I’ll go to my studio Electric Soul Yoga and take classes from our crew there. Whether it’s Eric Paskel (the owner and my husband), Kimberly, Sarah, Emily, Tim, Nisa or Rachel – it’s always a happy mood. Otherwise, I have a self-practice at home.

What are some of the songs on your current playlist that get you fired up in the morning?

It depends on my mood. If I’m looking to be more reflective then a little Krishna Das or traditional yoga music with repetitive chants could be my choice. If I’m looking to be more inspired and excited then I go to my happy jams like Bob Marley, Carlos Vives or I choose my own curated happy playlist on Spotify, which may include some Disney songs.

When you read at night before you go to sleep and what are three books that are on your nightstand?

I actually study and read when I wake up in the morning instead of when I go to bed. And I focus on only one book at a time right now. I’m reading The Vedanta Treaties by A. Parthasarathy.

What keeps you inspired when it comes to your personal yoga practice?

Knowing that I don’t know anything. My personal yoga practice starts with studying philosophy every morning and reflecting. Knowing that there’s so much more to learn inspires me to keep growing and practicing.

Learn more about Rina Jakubowicz, her ongoing classes at Electric Soul Yoga,  her Spanish-language teacher training intensives at Wanderlust Hollywood (her next Spanish Teacher Training is in LA at Wanderlust Hollywood starting in July), and more at Rina Yoga.

Felicia M. Tomasko

Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.

http://www.blissnetwork.com

The post Yoga Teacher Rina Jakubowicz appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Ashley Shubert photographed by David Young-Wolff. Clothing by K-Deer

Yoga Teacher Ashley Shubert shares her inspiration and a motivational playlist.

Why did you attend your first yoga class?

My mom was really connecting in her yoga practice and wanted to share it with me. At the time, I was 12 and didn’t really understand the concept nor could I keep my mind or body still enough to finish a full class but I definitely wanted to make her happy. Boy, was I in for a ride!

Who are some of your mentors? 

Kumi Yogini was a huge inspiration into developing my practice and I was lucky enough to have her guide my first 200 hour teacher training. She has so much knowledge and is an incredible leader in the Krshna Community.

Govind Das of Bhakti Yoga Shala was a great mentor of mine. He is always very calm and collected and has such a divine grace about him. He comes from pure light, pure heart in a way that leaves you always wanting to learn more about yourself and your devotion to this practice.
Who or what are some of your influences when teaching?

I am huge on energy. I believe that I can feel the tone when I walk into the room and as a teacher I think it’s essential to gauge what is in front of me. For years, I walked in with a plan and sometimes it’s better to open my eyes and just serve my students.

I honor traditional practices, language, and technique of the ancient teachings, and I focus on making it modern and applicable to what is affecting people here and now. I try to bring timeless pieces of wisdom into the space in a way that makes sense with our current states, psyches, trials, and tribulations.

Will you share a playlist that inspires you?

Yearning – DJ Drez
Kabir 2 – Trevor Hall
Painting Greys – Emmit Fenn
Swarm – Boogrov
Lonely Lullabies – Kweku Collins
tbh ily – Chet Porter
Blue Willow Beats
Realla – Tokimonsta
Fall Underneath – Snakadaktal
Closer – Majik
You – Kyson
Any Other Name – Thomas Newman

Ashley Shubert Photographed by David Young-Wolff wearing clothing by K-Deer.

What keeps you interested in teaching yoga?

It fills me up. I never know what I’m going to walk into when teaching a class, it’s the most rewarding experience time and time again. Yes, sometimes it can be challenging, but there is often just that one person in the room that I am showing up for.

What is your current go-to practice? 

Although I have many different places I go, CorePower Yoga has been my love since I began a disciplined practice. The combination of the heat and the environment has always brought me back home.

Ashley Shubert is wearing clothing by K-Deer. Photographs by David Young-Wolff.

Ashley teaches at Equinox Westwood Tue/Thu 6am, CorePower Yoga Brentwood Mon 6am, Mon/Tue 7:15pm, Sun 9am, Playlist West Hollywood Wed/Fri 6am and 7:15am, and at Kinetic Body in Brentwood Tue/Thu 7:30am. View her schedule online and learn more at: ashleyshubert.com.

Felicia M. Tomasko

Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.

http://www.blissnetwork.com

The post Yoga Teacher Ashley Shubert and Her Inspiration appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

While many of us may be tracking the progress of the Golden State Warriors on the court, Yoga Teacher Dana Kraft is also tracking the players’ process on the yoga mat. Dana has been teaching yoga to members of the Golden State Warriors since the Summer of 2015. She moved out to California from New York to work with the team. Colleagues recommended her and she was hired because she studied the team roster to make suggestions for practices that addressed each player individually and as a group.

Dana currently lives, teaches, and leads yoga teacher training programs in Los Angeles, she travels to the Warriors home of Oakland (depending on the team’s schedule) throughout the Summer, Fall, and Winter where she is one of the few women in the training facility. She combines her background in education (before she made the full-time commitment to yoga, Dana was a high school teacher) with an intensive study of anatomy and a willingness to meet the players on their own court. After all, training elite athletes gives new meaning to thinking outside the box—well, the mat—since the basketball players are taller than the average yogi and since many of them may be sporting injuries, Dana is frequently reaching into her own playbook to modify poses.

Some of the players were a bit shy about taking up the practice, while others were eager to roll out a mat. Yet Dana comments on the fantastic growth in the players’ practice. In sessions, she develops something specific for each student. “It’s not just vinyasa or power flow,” she says as she remembers leading a sequence completely on the floor for a player with an ankle injury. Dana incorporates creative sequencing and that relies on props such as Yoga Tune Up balls.

Dana Kraft training Golden State Warriors Player Festus Ezeli

Training the Warriors has affected her own practice. Yoga teacher Dana Kraft says she has experienced a level of humility working with elite athletes whose job is to work out, who go from trainer to coach to court and who are constantly being watched, scouted, or even traded. Dana has also noted her students’ ability to have the heightened awareness and physical proprioception needed to compete at that level and to be an advanced practitioner of yoga. As a result, she says, “The ability to have awareness and proprioception has become my advanced practice.”

For more information about Dana Kraft, visit www.danakraftyoga.com

Felicia M. Tomasko

Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.

http://www.blissnetwork.com

The post Yoga Teacher Dana Kraft helps train the Golden State Warriors appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Portrait of Yoga Teacher and Bhakti Musician Raghunath by Susan Currie

I’m on the road to an afternoon of bhakti (the yoga of devotion) with the former punk rocker and once celibate monk known these days simply as Raghunath. He traverses the world as a yoga teacher and musician spreading his message of love and service. There is no corner of the globe to which he will not trek. It’s a full house at Repose Yoga and in the few minutes of prelude, I can already sense an approaching climate shift… the sun-filled studio pulses with a hushed anticipation as Raghunath quietly unpacks his harmonium.

“When love is behind the current, it’s bhakti.” So begins our immersion into a workshop that combines the devotional practices of singing and chanting with asana, breath, and meditation. I’m not surprised by Raghunath’s big personality given his storied background as a performer, but I was surprised by how he employs it to softly command the room. His direction is precise and his message unwavering, prompting at times a blend of fatigue, fear and, of course, reflection. Under his guidance, I felt held throughout.

Gin Evans, owner of Repose Yoga in Newburyport, Massachusetts (where the workshop I took was held) explains, “There’s something about when you bring a roomful of people together for a class or a workshop… any personal or social differences no longer matter, and there’s this coming together or union that magically occurs simply from either the opening ‘Om,’ or the chanting, or from the physical energy created by all the bodies in one room. Raghunath has an ability to make students feel happy, empowered, and positive about themselves. What better way to feel a sense of community than to leave a two hour workshop feeling blissful from the energy of others!”

Raghunath photographed by Tricia Gahagan

From Joshua Tree to Brooklyn to the banks of the Ganges, on any given day you might find Raghunath (often called Raghu) sharing the wisdom he has earned through the arc of his life. Whether on tour supporting his debut CD (Krishna Kirtan: Music as Meditation), leading his popular bhakti immersions, or traveling with students through the holy cities of India, his work is rooted in universal love.

Raghu enjoyed early commercial success as a professional musician, yet the pitfalls of that fame remain tattooed to his heart and soul. Popularity is not what fuels his present-day life on the road. Rather, bhakti guides his generosity of time and spirit. Bhakti, the Sanskrit term derived from the root “bhaj” which means to “divide, share, partake”, is often translated in our modern world as “devotion” or “love.” First introduced to the concept during in his teenage years, it is now the guiding principle of Raghu’s life. “A living tunnel to an ancient world” is one of the many ways in which he unpacks the term bhakti in conversation.

His story begins in the 1970s outside of New York City in the quiet suburb of Danbury, Connecticut. Growing up Ray Cappo as the sixth of seven children in an Italian American (and Catholic) home, from his early childhood Raghunath felt a deep longing for something that fueled his homegrown and evolving spiritual path. Seeking more than the mainstream music coming through on FM radio and answers to the deeper questions, he made his way to New York City as a young teen. In Manhattan’s Lower East Side (known at that time for its excess), a new world was revealed. Insane, reckless and crazy are just a handful of the adjectives Raghu uses to detail the scene as it unfolded in his eighth-grade eyes. The punk rock movement was driven by a culture of drugs and hardcore living. Despite his emergence as the lead singer and songwriter of the punk band Youth of Today, he rejected that pervasive culture. While he embraced his contemporaries’ leaning away from mainstream music, he could not embrace the decadence of their lifestyle. “It was heartbreaking. I saw a bunch of kids addicted to heroin, huffing glue, committing suicide, smoking angel dust. In the name of being alternative, they were going down a dead-end street. I feel blessed to have had the good insight or karma to not follow.”

Raghunath when he was in his Youth of Today/Straight Edge Movement days. Photo by Ian Harper.

He attributes that pivot to an inner compass for clean living (organic threads which pulsed since childhood). Raghu was also getting a taste of what he now knows as bhakti through observing the rituals and offerings shared publicly by the Krishna devotees in and around Thompson Square Park. Although yoga had not yet exploded onto the scene in New York City, he was introduced to the practice through the (now defunct) Ahimsa Cafe, a health restaurant at the corner of East 9th Street, where he worked at the time. He was swiftly consumed by the ancient eight-limbed tradition.

Buoyed by spiritual influences and his inner compass, these formative years found Raghunath championing alternatives through song. He discovered the Bhagavad Gita; taking inspiration from the Gita’s call for selfless action he began to pen words and music. As Straight Edge’s star rose they used fame to spearhead movements including vegetarianism and animal rights while denouncing intoxication. Peter Singer’s 1975 classic Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals inspired Raghu’s call to vegetarianism.

Youth of Today’s words and music struck a chord and delivered them to a level of success they had not envisioned. As the story often goes, that elevation came with a price. Raghunath became restless and disillusioned as he paused to consider his deeper intentions and question this life of fame. Greed, competition, striving and envy began to school Raghu in what he refers to as “material cynicism.” He set out on a path of deeper inquiry – exploring best practices for channeling his artistic talents, what he refers to as shakti. Again, he turned to the Vedic literature and sacred teachings.

Bhakti Guide, Musician and Yoga Teacher Raghunath photographed by Tricia Gahagan

In this introspection Raghunath came to the understandings that now deeply fuel his teachings. He refers to it as a dawn. “I came to the realization that our shakti is on loan to us. You take what you’ve got in terms of your gifts and you give it back in service—in a spiritual way. Yoga, music or otherwise … it’s not about being the object of praise. The sharing of our individual gifts should be pushed by a genuine concern for others. Otherwise, it’s all just a performance. In everything we do, love should be the current.” There was no looking back.

The next 10 years were marked by discovery and ongoing explorations, Ayurveda, yoga and a vegetarian lifestyle. He spent much of his late twenties and early thirties living the life of a celibate monk traveling back and forth to ashrams in India and the US. While these contemplative years were marked by intensive study, they also included music. With newfound intention to spread the good word of the Gita, Raghu patched together a band comprised of fellow monks who engaged audiences far and wide. Practicing yoga, leading kirtan, immersed in bhakti and living clean … this life agreed with him.

Raghunath photographed by Tricia Gahagan

His story then entered another chapter. Heeding the unsolicited advice of an older monk he met, Raghunath found himself in a time of deep introspection, considering how his present reality of a strict ashram existence would eliminate marriage and a family. In his mid-thirties, he made a choice to include a partner and family while maintaining his passion for teaching — a passion not just for leading asana, but for spreading bhakti.

Motion is a word that comes to mind as I reflect on my personal experience in Raghu’s workshop. Dialogue is flowing, music and chanting is weaved in. Raghunath himself is perpetually drifting the sea of mats connecting seamlessly. As our practice unfolds I am struck by the quick and easy manner of his greeting—as though we have of course met somewhere before and are now all simply reacquainting. At one point after pitching us a particularly clever sequence he asks, “Are you ready to accept this mission?” Despite some chuckling, his plans clearly do not include the use of the word “no.” Another Raghu student, yoga instructor Sandy Snyder, summed it up rather perfectly, “Each time I take a class with Raghunath I either want to burst out in tears, confront something, or laugh my butt off. He has a way of provoking very strong shifts.”

Raghunath photographed by Tricia Gahagan

One of his favorite avenues for sharing bhakti is through his ongoing pilgrimages to India. His prerequisite for travel is that participants tour like pilgrims in a “spirit of humility.” Raghu’s own early expeditions through India were humble and with an air of “prospectors seeking to uncover the bounty of hidden gems.” It’s an intention he found powerful and one to which he continues to cling as he now wears the cap of leader. A typical Raghu pilgrimage consists of a party of 14 – 30 kindred spirits seeking transformation on some level. Over a two week stay each day is spent in asana practice, in meditation, and in song. A bhakti narrative is peppered throughout.

As we bid farewell I am curious to know what’s next for Raghu. It’s a 120 or so mile drive back to his home in upstate New York where he resides with his wife of 13 years Brij – a partner with whom he shares a deep yogic and spiritual sensibility. Together they have created five children and also the Supersoul Farm in Albany, which is in the midst of hosting its inaugural 200-hour teacher training program and will also sponsor 500-hour teacher trainings in India. Under this roof, Raghunath is “Dad.” It is in this setting that he refuels. Most mornings find him ferrying his young children to the local Waldorf School on a 400 acre farm where they share the campus with sheep and chickens. Raghunath recalls how he was fortunate to enjoy a healthy dose of nature growing up. He speaks of a love of Thoreau and Emerson and how nature has been “calling him back loudly” these days.

Ever seeking, he also keeps current under the guidance of his longtime spiritual teacher Radhanath Swami – he is never without his 2010 book The Journey Home. Turning up the volume for one last lesson, he signs off with, “I am convinced the best thing you can do for your health is take off your shoes and walk in the forest and breathe. Before you start shoving a bunch of herbs in your mouth, take off your shoes and walk in the forest.” While he continues to enjoy the platform of the big stages, it’s his family that now takes priority. It’s a long way from the club scene of the East Village and the solemnity of life in an ashram, but it is home, where love is forever feeding the current.

For more information about Raghunath, his pilgrimages and teacher trainings visit: raghunath.org or supersoulyoga.com.

For more information about Repose Yoga visit: reposeyogastudio.com

Tricia Gahagan is a fine art photographer whose work can be found at triciagahagan.com.

Susan Currie

Susan Currie is a Boston-based photographer, writer, and yoga instructor and Managing Editor at Boston Yoga Magazine. Her new collection of poetic verse and images, Once Divided (Shanti Arts), is now available in wide release.

http://www.susancurriecreative.com

The post On the Road with Raghunath appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

A playlist that includes Rage Against the Machine isn’t necessarily the type of music you expect to hear in a yoga studio, but at Electric Soul Yoga in Studio City, it isn’t at all unusual.  Owner Eric Paskel likes his yoga to rock, and he attracts a group of students who clearly love it loud.

The students in the studio aren’t the only fans.  In 2014, Paskel brought his Yoga Rocks Bootcamp to Ford Field in Detroit, for an event that broke records for the largest-ever indoor yoga class.  And at BhaktiFest Midwest, the infectious energy of his teaching and music brought in hundreds of happy yogis, “The class just kept growing!” laughed Paskel.

Eric grew up in Detroit, Michigan.  He was always curious, a self proclaimed “escape artist.” In his teens, he became addicted to drugs, and then found sobriety just shy of his 18th birthday.  Rock-star handsome, he was encouraged to move to California to try his hand at acting but his heart just wasn’t in it, particular when it came to the endless audition process that seemed like such a waste of precious time.  Eric was always searching and he needed an outlet for all of his boundless energy, so he tried yoga.  At that time, the fit wasn’t there.  He enrolled in college and earned a degree as a marriage and family counselor, still going on auditions and continuing to feel restless and unsatisfied.

Photo by Jeff Skeirik. Mat by Manduka

In 1998, Eric returned to Michigan, where he gave yoga another chance.  Always a zealot in his approach to life, he committed to attending 90 classes in 90 days.  This time the practice fit.  Eric says, “I learned 12 years into my sobriety that yoga was going to be essential in my ongoing recovery.  As soon as I stepped onto the mat, I couldn’t hide from myself anymore.  Yoga and recovery are spiritual kin.  It is all of the practices: Karma Yoga is the action of selfless service, Bhakti Yoga is the acute awareness of the infinite blessings that surround you, and Jnana Yoga is the study of the universal principles of living — these yogic traditions are the heart of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Steps.”

In 2001, Eric started his first “official” Yoga Rocks class after teaching different variations of the class for three years.  To his surprise, 135 people showed up, and Eric knew he was on to something.  His playful classes added some high-energy fun to the practice.  Three years later, Eric opened the doors of his first Yoga Shelter Studio in West Bloomfield, Michigan.  There are now seven in Michigan, and one in Studio City.

Traveling around the globe teaching, lecturing, and leading retreats and trainings is a large part of Paskel’s passion. On his blog, he shared his thoughts on an inspiring trip to Africa: “I have literally lived in palaces, tends and today, I sat in a prison in Zanzibar.  I have reflected.  I have learned. I have witnessed the ‘quit’ in me, the desperation to avoid discomfort in so many ways.  I have witnessed the strength in me to keep going; the power to carry on; to journey forth and to keep moving forward.”

Each year, Eric travels to India to spend time with his teacher/guru Swami A. Parthasarathy.  Swami Parthasarathy is an acclaimed expert in Vedanta, one of the ancient philosophies of India and his life is spent in dedication to the study, research, and propagation of this philosophy.  Yoga Shelter operates by all the principles of the Vedanta philosophy.  Vedanta points out that “all sorrow and misery you experience in a life belongs to your egoistic self.”  Paskel adds, “Let us drop that little “I”, the “me”, and the “my.”  Yoga Shelter was founded and is run with a “we” attitude.

Often, Eric will quote his teacher, “To be sorrowful is a social, moral, and religious crime.  You do not spread the disease of melancholy to your fellow men.  Your highest duty, your religious duty in the world, therefore, is to keep yourself peaceful and joyful.  This is the duty demanded of you by your nation, society, family and yourself.”

Rina Jakubowicz and Eric Paskel photographed by Jeff Skeirik/Rawtographer

Eric had just returned from a recent trip to India when we met for tea in Studio City.  This journey was special, he said, because he was accompanied by his love, Rina Jakubowicz, and his sister Caren, who is a teacher and a leader at Yoga Shelter in Michigan.  Rina and Eric met at a Yoga Journal conference in October, 2013, and the two are devoted to each other.  “Living at such a distance is no obstacle,” says Eric, smiling.  “Moderation and regulation of contact is imperative to keeping any relationship healthy.  Most relationships fade because we indulge, we smother each other and the enjoyment disappears.”

Paskel plans to take Yoga Shelter to new heights this year.  His new company will franchise Yoga Shelter studios, and a repeat performance at Ford Field is on the books.  There are also plans to add some new classes and new training formats, including a 500-hour program.  Eric is also a featured teacher at upcoming Yoga Journal Live, Wanderlust, and Kripalu events.

Eric offers some simple advice when asked for any last words of wisdom.  He says, “Yoga is not about standing on your head or hands, it’s about learning how to stay on your feet and being able to stand for yourself.”

Read more about Eric and Electric Soul Yoga: Electric Soul.Yoga

HAIR, MAKEUP AND STYLING BY Dawn Sorenson

MATS BY LULULEMON AND MANDUKA

ALL PHOTOS BY Jeff Skeirik, Rawtographer

Jayne McKay

The post Yoga Rocks: The Driving Beat of Yoga Teacher Eric Paskel appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Bizzie Gold: A leap of faith inspires an empowered tribe

BUTI Yoga

“The cure to something hidden or kept secret,” is the translation of the Marathi word “Buti.” This is the name dynamic trainer, fitness maven, and mother of two Bizzie Gold has given to her creative brainchild, Buti Yoga, the invigorating style she and her family practice and share with the world.

Buti takes yoga to another level—a bit of a leap into the air—where Gold embraces yoga as a personal practice and adds a twist that involves integrating tribal dancing and plyometrics into the practice for a fun, invigorating, and empowering take on the yoga we know and love. Gold’s feet are firmly planted in the foundation of yoga: her background is in Anusara, she’s been a student since 2001, and has been a certified yoga teacher now for over 14 years.

Gold knows something about the need to find a cure and the journey of healing. She initially found yoga at a time in her life when she was, as she said, burning the candle at both ends then leaping into a dark abyss, a feeling that may be familiar to many of us. Gold’s career began as a PR exec, founding a company in LA meant she was working around the clock. Yoga became both escape and release. Yet, while bogged down by the stress of an intense professional career, she was diagnosed with lupus, a chronic, autoimmune systemic disease that can damage any part of the body (including the skin, joints, and/or internal organs).

Receiving this diagnosis led to a time of soul-searching and the realization that something needed to change. Her next move was to regroup and retreat on the Hawaiian islands where she immersed herself in teaching yoga and in the practice of healing herself physically and emotionally. She became pregnant, but on day that in many women’s lives is the most joyful—birth—Gold experienced heartache. During a complicated homebirth, Gold’s midwife delivered what Gold refers to as “her dead baby” and placed it on Gold’s lap. Seeing the shock and trauma Gold had endured from the delivery, her then husband began to administer CPR to their baby girl, while Gold was being tended to by a friend. Gold recalls, “After 20 minutes (which seemed like a lifetime) of my baby receiving CPR, she let out a cry and began breathing. Our baby had come back.”

Gold’s infant Sarai was airlifted to a Honolulu hospital, rushed into emergency care, and was later diagnosed with cerebral palsy. She knew that she must take her life back and heal from the inside out—so through a combination of energy work in conjunction with yoga, she found spiritual, emotional, and physical healing, the ability to shed the past in order to be present in the present.

While in Hawaii, Gold taught yoga at Ginger Hill Farm and Yoga Hale in Kailua Kona. It was there that Buti was born. While her students were in malasana (squat) pose, Gold had a revelation, took a leap of faith, and added free-spirited elements of tribal movement to the practice. The students joined in and left wanting more.

What began in a moment has become a movement. Currently, there are over 1,300 certified BUTI yoga teachers worldwide, in 15 countries and 45 states. Gold spent the first three years of the brand criss-crossing the world training all the teachers herself, now she leads 25% of the trainings and has has a group of master teachers certified in the Buti technique teach on her behalf. They teach the trademark methodology of the spiral structure technique (SST), toning the core using a spiral instead of linear movement to address both the large outer muscles that move the body as well as the inner stabilizing muscles. This is combined with strength-building plyometrics and uplifting tribal dance moves. It’s a recipe that encourages students to take a leap of faith and commit to their own empowerment. As Gold describes, “This movement methodology taps into a person’s deep-rooted confidence, allowing for better decision-making, in life,  in relationships, and in nutrition.

Gold has often been coined a hybrid of Jane Fonda meets Chelsea Handler, a crusader with a sense of humor.  She fondly refers to her growing fanfare as her “tribe of women who support each other on their journey of health and happiness.” When considering why the tribe is growing, Gold reflects, “When in the Buti setting, it’s the first time many women look at themselves not from a place of ego but from a place of beauty and confidence. They are surround themselves by other beautiful women, and they all uplift and motivate one another to want to strive for greatness and achieve it. Connecting with other women and allows everyone to elevate each other by boosting each others’ confidence and achieving results collectively.”

While Gold is the go-to trainer for women around the world that she has trained directly, indirectly through her certified teachers, or through her DVD series, close to home, Gold is a celeb trainer known for transforming the bodies of A-list celebs including Julia Roberts and Jennifer Love Hewitt, with whom Gold has used a combination of her signature spiral structure technique and a series of nutritional guidelines to support long, lean muscle.

It’s also a family practice. Gold along with her husband and two children, are committed to an active and healthy lifestyle that includes the practice of Buti Yoga along with an emphasis on nutrition. The family is dairy-free and grain-free; this led to a development and launch of the supplement line, The Golden Ratio, a protein blend consisting of grass-fed collagen, amino acids, organic pea protein, and  sweetened with coconut sugar. Gold is also working on a clothing line as well as a 7,000 square foot fitness women’s social club in Scottdale aptly named the B-Tribe.

As Gold has experienced in her own life and shares with her tribe, “When doing Buti, everything comes into alignment and everything has intention. It’s an experience for the mind, body, and soul.

For more information about Bizzie Gold and Buti Yoga, visit: butiyoga.com; bizziegold.com.

Bizzie is wearing shorts and white and blue long-sleeved shirts by Queen of Hearts Clothing: queenofheartsclothing.com; tops are Bizzie’s own.

Jeff Skeirik’s photography can be found at: rawtographer.com

Mito Aviles

Mito Aviles is a seasoned designer based in West Hollywood with over a decade of design/styling experience. He considers himself an artistic entrepreneur lending his talents to different publications. Instagram: @mistertreat 

The post Teacher Profile: Bizzie Gold appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Kathleen Ross-Allee provides yoga therapy for the recovery and healing process of cancer patients.

Photos by David Young-Wolff

Before she became a yoga therapist or even a fitness and wellness professional, a friend asked Kathleen Ross-Allee to substitute teach for her aerobics class, even though at the time, Kathleen was a fitness enthusiast with no experience actually teaching fitness. Her argument, “You’re an actress right?  Pretend it is a role you are playing,” convinced Kathleen to just do it.

What began with a spontaneous “yes” revealed Kathleen’s passion for helping people regain their health and fitness commitments—and led to a subsequent change in career path. Kathleen began training people and became an ACE certified personal fitness trainer. She started studying yoga in the 1990s, first with Jasmine Lieb and Erich Schiffmann; yoga influenced both her personal practice as well as the way she worked with individuals in her fitness business, Leen Bodies. Words from Kathleen’s late father, a university professor who would read Greek mythology in the evenings, “Once you stop learning, you stop living,” influenced her passion for education.

She enrolled in the 200 hour teacher training program at the Center for Yoga on Larchmont and in 2001, she completed the training, joined the center’s staff, and interned with her mentor, Fred Miller. When Liberation Yoga opened, they asked her to join the staff. There she taught Gentle Yoga and developed and continues to teach a free Yoga for Parkinson’s class in the garden studio, supported by the studio’s owners Christine Burke and Gary McCleery, along with generous donations from her network of friends, family, and students.

Becoming a student in the Yoga Therapy RX Program on campus at Loyola Marymount University (LMU), under the direction of Larry Payne, felt like a natural progression and being on a college campus felt like home for her. There, Kathleen’s fellow student, kindred spirit, and business partner Alison Crowley were inspired to find their own niche to implement yoga therapy in the community. In 2007, they launched The Yoga Prescription with a focus on supporting people through the recovery and healing process in dealing with cancer, even after treatments have concluded or after the medical establishment has seen evidence of remission. Kathleen and Alison believe that healing continues long after treatment is over. Through The Yoga Prescription, the duo and their trained yoga therapists and assistants teach a total of 42 monthly classes throughout Los Angeles. While many of these specifically address the concerns of cancer patients and survivors, they also offer classes for people with Parkinson’s disease and other conditions. Their vision is to see these programs “become permanently placed in these wellness centers and hospitals side by side with Western medicine as a viable source of recovery.” Their model is influenced by their certification in the Yoga Therapy RX program which trains students in the practice of integrating yoga therapy with modern medicine; as well as their continuing study with Jnani Chapman, RN, in Chapman’s Yoga Therapy in Cancer and Chronic Illness Training (YCat).

No matter the title of what she is teaching, Kathleen says, “I design each class to meet the needs of my students. I am able to do that no matter what the situation is.” She does this by choosing sequences based on what is presented to her in the room. Kathleen holds the following intention for working with her students, “In the time they spend with me, something can happen that will allow them to have a different perspective on their day.”

As a teacher, there are times when she draws on lessons from her acting background. She is comfortable presenting in crowds, groups, or at the front of the room. And she prepares for her classes with the same attention she would dedicate to script analysis as an actor. She combines this preparation with the ability to both be spontaneous with and to pay close attention to her students, as though they are her scene partners. In class, “It’s constant improvisation, she says.” In addition, Kathleen believes being a teacher and a yoga therapist also includes a commitment to ongoing education. She lives the advice given by her father that guides her: keep learning to keep living.

Between teaching private clients, daily classes, volunteering whenever she can, and serving as the Managing Director of the Yoga Therapy RX Program at Loyola Marymount University, Kathleen is a heartfelt workaholic. She even admits to it, “I am officially a workaholic, but I insist that it’s only in the best sense. I love and am passionate about all of the work I do.” Kathleen even enjoys the driving which is a necessary part of the life of a nomadic yoga therapist in Los Angeles. “The drive home at night allows me to decompress before I see my husband. And I just sing Broadway songs all day long!” She finds time for balance with a membership at Burke Williams, a standing Saturday morning Fryman Canyon hiking date with friends, and a husband who keeps her accountable to personal and social commitments. Somehow she also fits in cuddle time with her friends’ pups.

When this show tune singing compassionate yoga therapist is asked for the advice she would give potential students of yoga therapy, she offers, “To learn and absorb from those who have preceded you. To ask questions. To embrace what comes your way. When you are open to what comes your way, then you will serve the needs of the people who are seeking you. And in this way, you will have found your authentic voice.”

It sounds like advice that Kathleen could have given her younger self, the one who was acting and working at the Gaucho Grill on Ventura when she said yes to a random request from a friend asking if she could sub her class. Kathleen was open to what came her way.

For more information on Kathleen Ross-Allee and The Yoga Prescription, visit: theyogaprescription.com

For more information about Yoga Therapy RX, visit: http://academics.lmu.edu/extension/programs/yogatherapy/

Jessica Malloy is a freelance writer torn between the California Coast and Kentucky Countryside. Aside from Yoga, she spends as much time as she can in the sunshine rock climbing, water skiing, and traveling. Check out her newest adventure on narrowhips.com

Jessica Malloy

By Jessica Malloy, an Orange County-based writer and avid climber with a B.A. in English and emphasis in creative writing and journalism.

The post Teacher Profile: Kathleen Ross-Allee appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Parashakti Sigalit Bat-Haim talks about finding freedom through the Dance of Liberation

“For the Kabalah, the Jewish mystics, dance is the deepest expression of joy. Where silence and music meet is in the field of the body.”

These thoughts are shared by Rabbi David Ingber, founder of the Jewish community Romemu (whose mission is to integrate body, mind, and soul in Jewish practice) in the documentary feature film Dance of Liberation. Rabbi Ingber spoke about shamanic practitioner, mystic, teacher, dancer, yogini and subject of the film Parashakti Sigalit Bat-Haim. Parashakti Sigalit lives dance as her deepest expression of joy. Dance is her spiritual practice. Teaching dance is her calling, particularly the ritual Dance of Liberation she has developed from decades of immersion into traditions from around the world.

During a Dance of Liberation session, people tie on blindfolds (all the better with which to see the inner world) and then dance accompanied by music with trained facilitators holding the space and making sure everyone is safe. The dance is not about outer performance but expression of the inner heart. When it comes to musical accompaniment, Parashakti favors world music with trance-inducing beats and without English lyrics that initiate a story in our thinking brains. Even better: live drums to connect bodies to earth-based medicine.

Dance of Liberation is far more than a blindfolded rave. There is a deep reverence to it. And the practice spills over into life beyond the blindfolded movement. Parashakti identifies what she calls the Seven Foundations of the Dance of Liberation. They are: Sacred Space/Discovering Your Ground; the Power of Intention; Embodied Breath; the Blindfold/Inner Vision; Therapeutic Rhythm—Music/Sound Healing; Dance; and the seventh foundation which includes Returning Home/Retrieving Your Soul/ and Service. Anchored in these, Parashakti has trained teachers around the world.

Dance of Liberation is the movement-based manifestation of the cross-cultural shamanic journey that is her life. She is an embodied example of the student as teacher, a guide who shares, with great joy, the feeling of liberation through dance. Teacher, workshop leader, shamanic practitioner and lifelong student, on screen in Dance of Liberation, in person in a class or workshop, or one-on-one in a healing session, Parashakti is a bright light transmitting wisdom.  And transmitting encouragement for the dancer to find their own wisdom within. It is a quality obvious to me when I first met her; I noted the deep ease, grace, and vibrancy with which Parashakti inhabits her body. She lives up to all of her names, both Sanskrit and Hebrew, respectively: Parashakti (goddess of life), Sigalit (a bright violet flower), and Bat-Haim (daughter of life).

Parashakti’s immersion into dance began during her childhood in Jerusalem. Dance became both refuge and a means of interacting with the world. She used dance to negotiate the challenges of learning disabilities and feeling lost in a classroom as well as a strained relationship with a father who divorced her mother to pursue a spiritual immersion in Jewish Orthodoxy and start a new family. From the age of four, Parashakti dance was her vehicle for learning and for communicating with spirit. Her time in the Israeli military was even spent in the entertainment corps, serving through dance.

After completing military service, Parashakti pursued dance at Santa Monica College with a goal of becoming a dance therapist. In her life, the medicine was also poison; a serious and seemingly career-ending injury left Parashakti thinking she might never dance again. It was a heartbreaking crisis of identity. A dark night of the soul.

Then she was invited to yoga. There she found other ways to express her beloved physicality and unite body, mind, spirit, and health and well-being.

Yoga practice led to a two-year stay in an ashram and the completion of yoga teacher training in Integral Yoga founded by Swami Satchidananda. She was given the Sanskrit name Parashakti. Next she was led to more teachers, one of whom, trance dance facilitator Wilbert Alix, introduced her to dancing blindfolded. Wilbert was not the only teacher to tie a blindfold on; Native American teachers shared this technique. During more more than a decade of study with elders, Parashakti continued a powerful inner journey. She was able to enter what she identified as different states of consciousness through yoga, meditation, dance, spirit guides, and medicine helpers. One of her teachers, Wakia Un Manee, speaks of this dance in the doc Dance of Liberation. He says the blindfold “allows a person to see back at themselves.” He says, “This is a strong Native American teaching, to see beyond seeing, to see with not just the physical eyes, but to look with the heart and see what is inside.”

Seeing what is inside and expressing it through movement allows Parashakti to find the medicine within the movement. In addition to facilitating experience groups at festivals, retreats, and in workshops, she is currently the spiritual director at Breathe Life Healing Center, a treatment center for addictions. Her work includes guiding people to listen to the voice of the inner heart, one that may be all-to-quiet, one that we may not know how to hear. She also offers spiritual counseling and facilitated holistic experiences for individuals and groups. An adapted version of Dance of Liberation for people in recovery is in the planning stages.

For Parashakti, personal practice is paramount. On the mat (she cites Kundalini classes with Tej as a part of her routine), the meditation cushion, and especially, on the dance floor on a regular basis. She says that one of the benefits of LA is that there are ecstatic dance experiences available daily. When she doesn’t venture out, she dances alone. Dance, and her prayers, have also been invaluable for her ability to reconnect with her Orthodox father, to find the common ground of spirit, prayer, love, and family. It’s a touching story told in the film. And is a story that illustrates how Parashakti connects to her identity, hard-won, as an embodied universal being who continues to find her own way to pray. And to teach.

For more information on Dance of Liberation, visit: parashakti.org.

Participate in a Dance of Liberation workshop and film screening on August 22 from 7:00 – 11:00 PM at NAAM Yoga in Santa Monica.  parashakti.org.

Felicia M. Tomasko

Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.

http://www.blissnetwork.com

The post Teacher Profile: Parashakti Sigalit Bat-Haim appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Seda Aksut shares her story of personal healing through the practice of Kundalini yoga

Seda Aksut suggests we meet at a small Italian restaurant near the Hermosa Pier. It turned out to be a delightful choice, wood-lined and uncrowded on a Wednesday afternoon,  but a slight surprise — a deviation from my expectation of meeting in a cold-pressed juice bar or organic tea shop. I had the lasagna.

This experience feels in line with my experience of Seda as a Kundalini teacher. With her glossy blonde good looks and effortlessly chic presentation, she passes as a typical fit Southern Californian. Yet, after attending her classes for over a year, some differences began to register on my radar: a touch formal, and, at times, a voice in a slightly different register. Was that an accent?

Her nearly undetectable accent is more pronounced when she’s under stress or fatigued, she admits. Seda grew up in Istanbul, her family long-established in the area. “We go back 500 years. We were a secular family — spiritual, but not religious in a country that is 90% Muslim.” Poised between Europe and the Middle East, Turkey has a unique vantage point on the world, and her roots there may explain her perspective as a Kundalini yoga teacher in the South Bay.

When speaking with Seda, it becomes obvious that her father has been a strong influence in her life. Although he died over a decade ago, he seems to be the strand that unites her past, present, and future. Her father, a successful businessman with his own construction firm, insisted she pursue a practical course of study. She showed an aptitude for numbers, so it was decided she would study math and economics at Bogazici University. A full scholarship and teaching stipend for graduate school at the University of Washington in 1997 offered her a chance to move to the United Sates, a country she had visited throughout her childhood and a place she dreamed of living. Her studies in Social Psychology were a compromise between her father’s strong business ethic and her pull toward a more humanistic understanding of the world.

She graduated with a master’s degree and moved to Los Angeles with her then-boyfriend, a software engineer. Here, she embraced the corporate lifestyle, working the standard 40+ hour week as an executive search consultant, with a 90 minute commute from the South Bay to Century City. “I’d be driving to work, thinking, ‘What is the point? I’m making plenty of money, but something is missing’.”

Into this overloaded but not atypical Angeleno existence came a bombshell: her father was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He moved in with Seda and her by-then-husband into their Redondo Beach home and began radiation therapy at USC. At the end of the course of radiation, his tumor was deemed untreatable, and he returned home to Istanbul with a year to live.

Her father’s sudden plunge into mortality (he was a 53-year-old in seemingly excellent health, an exercise enthusiast, and body builder) that sent Seda into a state of crisis—and into therapy for herself and a search for alternative treatments for her father. Even though he succumbed to brain cancer within the predicted year, the effects of her search transformed her life.

Yoga became her major solace. “I would take yoga classes almost every day. The peace yoga instilled in me, along with its amazing effect of putting everything in perspective, made me a more centered, balanced person over time.”

“During the difficult times, when I was losing my balance, I used to wake up and practice only balance poses for the first 15 minutes of waking.”

Her wish to assist her father through his illness led her to study Reiki, a pivotal moment in her personal transformation. “I wanted to learn a technique that combined meditation and healing, to work on him, myself, and the whole family to ease the process.” Reiki offered healing benefits for the entire family, so much so that Seda remarked on how the healing energetic work continued after his return to Istanbul and even after his death. Reiki continues to be an important personal practice for her, and she incorporates that same concentrated energy and attention into her group work as a yoga teacher.

She had already completed a 200-hour Hatha training in Bali through YogaWorks when she found her way to a Kundalini class in 2003. The combination of meditation, chant, and physical exercise had a strong appeal. “The breath, the postures, the meditations, the chants, all the elevating qualities made sense.” In her continuing interest in psychology and the scientific method, Seda emphasizes the depth of the practice. “Yoga in the West has often been streamlined to just mean the physical. Kundalini is not streamlined.” Recent studies at UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania suggest powerful healing happens along that mind-body continuum, pointing to Kundalini as a useful therapy for both Alzheimer’s and depression. Seda makes a point of quoting these studies in class. At a recent workshop, she casually quoted Nobel-Prize-winning scientist Roger Wolcott Sperry on the link between a healthy brain and a supple spine.

Many healers find their way to Seda’s class. I talked to Elizabeth Cartabiano, a massage therapist and Ayurvedic practitioner about what brings her to Seda’s class at LYFE Yoga in Hermosa Beach. “Seda brings lots of tools to class,” she enthuses. “Psychotherapy, a strong physical practice, pranayama and positive affirmations. It is powerful therapy — for therapists as well.” Vanessa King, a local marriage and family therapist, finds the meditative aspects of Kundalini “opens a lot of space for healing,” especially useful in her couples work.

In my own experience as a PhD, writer, and perennial bookworm, Kundalini provides a precious opportunity to turn off the incessant internal commentary. When I describe the combination of elements used in Kundalini–the rapid, forceful breathing combined with extended chanting — to my father, a psychiatrist of 30 years, he explains that Kundalini students are putting ourselves into a light trance. Seda uses her Reiki and psychology training to maintain eye contact and speak soothingly for extended periods, enhancing that trance effect.

The chants vary from Gurmukhi syllables to English affirmations like “I am the light of my soul.” The mantras contain an energy of peace and connection. What they have in common is the ability to hold your attention just enough to provide relief from the constant stream of ego talk.

For the musically susceptible like me, the wash of melody offer a final experience of bliss. “I choose music and mantra for each class deliberately so that they are the right vibrational match for the breath and meditation we practice that day. They are designed to uplift and elevate.” Aksut explains.

For Seda, leaving the corporate path meant also shedding many aspects of her life. “Universe first pulled everything apart, then Reiki, Yoga, Meditation and Breath acted as miracles to bring forth a blessed life. Creating the life I envisioned required immense faith and daily practice… since then I have been on a journey to share what has healed me and to raise others as I continue to raise myself.”

Her desire to become a channel through which other lives can be positively touched has evolved over the years. “It’s not possible to heal someone who is not ready… all I can do is hold space for synchronizations so those who are ready to receive, show up.” One of the recipients was Kiya Knight, a motivational coach and fitness instructor. “When I hit my upper limit, I didn’t have the tools to break free from anxiety. Deep depression started to settle over me. Simply put, working with Seda has changed my life and put me into a higher state of consciousness than I thought was possible.”

“Above all,” Seda says, “ I feel this immense gratitude that I get to teach. Teaching is the most powerful daily practice, a prayer, a privilege and a responsibility all at once.”

Seda Aksut regularly teaches at LYFE Yoga in Hermosa Beach and offers workshops & trainings in various studios in LA. Her home studio in Redondo Beach is the base for Private Spiritual Counseling Sessions, Reiki Certification Trainings, and 20/30hr Kundalini Intensives on Mantra, Breath, Movement and Meditation.

Connect with her on Facebook: Facebook.com/sedaaksutkundalini. Upcoming Workshops: September 20th and October 27th 3:00-5:30pm at LYFE Yoga in Hermosa Beach: lyfeyoga.com

Grace Lovelace is a South Bay resident and longtime kundalini practitioner. She writes about movies at Lovelace Redux (lovelaceredux.blogspot.com)

Grace Lovelace

The post Teacher Profile: Seda Aksut appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

From Action Hero to Promoter of Accessibility

photos by David Young-Wolff

“Choose your own adventure,” Jay Co tells the class as his silent footfalls cover the perimeter of the main studio at yogaraj, the studio he has helmed for over a year now. He has the voice you would order if you were selecting your ideal yoga teacher: simultaneously resonant—it fills the room—yet with a soft soothing cadence. It’s a voice you might expect to hear from a monk in a cave or a modern-day version of a martial arts master leading kids through their first practice. Patient, kind, yet firm. His kind approach to the practice is evident as he teaches.

Jay had been teaching at the Hub since it opened in 2009. So, when Hub owner Lauri Ashworth wanted to sell, he was ready to manifest his studio ideal in the same space. His vision included a commitment to making sure yoga was accessible to everyone who wanted to try out the practice and that included implementing a different business plan than the typical membership or class series model or the donation-based option.

The studio’s investors were businesspeople who were already practicing regularly at the Hub and value the service-based ethos of yoga, so they were willing to give it a go. After an all-night session running numbers and just eight weeks after the management team met, yogaraj opened in the space that had Lauri’s design aesthetic had created for the Hub. If you’ve practiced in that space before, you’ll notice that many of the former studio’s elements are intact, such as the pebbled stone floors, airy spacious feel and even the wood carving in the second intimate studio. The changes yogaraj made to make the space their own include a chalkboard wall that invites students to write messages and affirmations—and most noticeably, the removal of the front desk in the sunny greeting area.

The open space without a front desk—or the staff—is one of the things that makes the model of $10-flat-rate classes work. Jay says the arrangement serves in part to increase the accessibility of the teachers, who hang out on the bench in the front room greeting students as they drop their payments in a basket or swipe their cards. Even though there are no membership packages, there are incentives; the studio is a member of the Belly reward network and seasonal incentives encourage students to commit to studio classes.

Yogaraj’s model is influenced by the legacy of donation-based classes shared by Bryan Kest and a number of his proteges, which makes sense since Kest’s donation-based Power Yoga is where Jay Co began his personal practice. Jay took his first class in 1998, a year after he graduated with a degree in biology from Georgetown. Growing up in Jersey and spending his childhood seriously training in karate and competing in the martial arts, his next step post-degree was to move to LA and try his hand in front of the camera acting in action flicks and doing stunt and commercial work. Since the body takes a beating in those arenas, a friend suggested yoga. “I don’t want to stretch for an hour and a half,” he thought. Yoga sounded weird until he finally gave in. “I was hooked immediately; it felt like martial arts—with the same mindset, but a different expression.” For four years, Jay was an avid regular in Kest’s classes above Radio Shack on Santa Monica Boulevard. “I didn’t even realize there was other yoga.”

In his mid-twenties, Jay’s attendance at Power Yoga was interrupted by a tour through Asia. He lived in Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines, acting, modeling, doing action movies and some stunt work. He studied himself in the martial arts of whatever country he was in at the time. In Hong Kong, for example, he found a guy who was teaching Kung Fu on the third floor of an abandoned school building with broken windows. “Ten guys who just got off work would take off their ties, roll up their shirt sleeves, and push the desks aside. No one spoke English. It was a cool experience.”

On his return to LA, Bryan Kest gave Jay Co his first yoga teaching job when Power Yoga’s West Studio opened. Jay loved joining a community of supportive teachers, including Govind Das, Anuswara, Ashley Turner, and Rudy Mettia. Martial arts were still a part of his life (as they remain today), and Asia called again. Beginning in 2007, Jay Co spent another year and a half in Thailand, writing action movies for a studio there. While he recalls his fondly, another cool experience, he missed teaching yoga so when he returned to LA, he taught a lot and realized that teaching yoga is something he wants to do forever.

Jay had more than once contemplated opening a studio before everything aligned for yogaraj. Running a studio with a renegade model hasn’t been Jay’s only foray into business. Four years ago, an idea for a piece of software led him to work with engineers and immerse himself in the tech world for what he describes as a shotgun education in business principles. He said that working in this volatile world is one of the hardest things he’s ever done: “One day you feel you’re going to rule the world; another day you feel, ‘We’re all going to die’.” The benefit? According to Jay, “It prepared me for this.”

“This” is yogaraj. What’s behind the name? It was chosen to be easy to remember, while at the same time evoking the notion of yoga being so widespread that it encompasses a kingdom or empire. (The word “raj” in Sanskrit means kingdom.) Jay affirms, “The more people who do yoga, the better the world is.” Jay’s contribution to this global empire is running studio that offers an affordable pricing structure at $10 per class. It’s part of his commitment to providing a means for more people to try out the practice; accessibility and affordability are two of his core values.

While pursuing his passion for teaching, running a studio with a community of supportive and innovative teachers, and working in tech, he has maintained immersion in the martial arts community, finding camaraderie in neighborhood studios near yogaraj. He still writes action movies. And, he encourages his students to choose their own adventures.

For more information about Jay Co and yogaraj, visit: jaycoyoga.com or yogaraj.org.

Felicia M. Tomasko

Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.

http://www.blissnetwork.com

The post Teacher Profile Jay Co appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Big fish in a small pond? LA based Yoga teacher Matt Hodges would rather be a shark in the ocean.

Matt Hodges says he want to be a shark in an ocean. It’s a desire that fits his driven nature and one he’s applied to in a variety of ways in his life including keeping his cool with a deck of cards in a sea of sharks while playing tournament poker. With the same dedication and focus Matt left Phoenix and dove into the LA yoga scene in 2014.

When asked why LA and what he likes about it, Matt responds, “I love everything about this place. The weather. The beach. The yoga scene. The small businesses. The people. The opportunities. The big yoga teachers are out here.” Matt adds, “Some people want to be a big fish in a small pond. I’d rather be a shark in an ocean.” That statement sums up how Matt lives his life – large and in charge.

Photo by Amy Goalen Photography

Matt was 14 when he took his first yoga class; a friend suggested that it would be a fun workout. The teacher—Ian Lopatin, at At One Yoga Studio in Scottsdale—delivered and Matt was hooked. The combination of Ian’s lively contemporary music and laid back nature made a fast connection with Matt. Matt pursued practicing yoga with such tenacity that he began teaching in high school with an eye on continuing to grow and learn. After completing his teacher training at At One Yoga, Matt was hired to start teaching at the studio by two of his mentors, Ian and Ian’s wife Vanessa Lee. Matt taught at At One Yoga for eight years.

Teaching yoga in high school was only one part of his passion for physical fitness. He was already an accomplished athlete at a young age in football and golf. An ongoing pursuit of golf led to collage scholarships for the sport due to his mastery of the game (a four-under-par player at his peak). In his hometown of Scottsdale, Matt’s faves are the Jack Nicklaus Signature courses at Dessert Mountain and when he’s not on the mat, here in Los Angeles, he finds time to play at the Trump National Golf Club in Ranch Palos Verdes.

As if teaching yoga and playing golf weren’t enough in terms of extracurricular activities, Matt also earned his real estate license from the Arizona School of Real Estate and Business and segued from playing chess as a kid to playing poker with friends before he could drive. The same year he was eligible for a driver’s license he started entering tournaments. The thrill of poker and desire to swim with the sharks in many bodies of water has brought Matt to play poker at the Venetian, Rio and Wynn casinos. Matt still makes the occasional foray entering a World Series of Poker Tournament. This thrill-seeking nature plays out in Matt’s yoga practice often taking him to locations such as the tops of lifeguard towers or precarious ledges to hover in a balance pose.

Knowing all of this about Matt, don’t let the tattoos, Louis Vuitton sneakers, and alpha shark countenance distract you from the friendly, playful, and compassionate sides that he reveals in the yoga room. Wearing a warm smile, he begins practice with the statement “Welcome to yoga class,” and invites students of all levels to have fun and explore their practice. A commitment to selfless service in and out of the yoga room is his inspiration and his personal therapy. He continues to teach golf and finds fulfillment in helping lift up the people around him.

Photo by Amy Goalen Photography

Matt’s signature style includes creative sequencing and amazing adjustments. Each session on the mat feels like you’ve been dealt a new hand at the poker table (with some similarities—think about selecting the familiar hearts, clubs, spades, and diamonds) rather than a predictable pattern of sun salutations. Matt offers two to four variations per pose for everyone to follow depending on their level of practice. Lively, contemporary music from the likes of Bob Marley, TuPac, MC Yogi, Jack Johnson, or Ben Harper play as an accompanying undercurrent during class. The result is a relaxed and fun environment where you have the permission to enjoy yourself even while you’re sweating.

He acknowledges his teachers Steve Ross, Vanessa Lee, Dharma Mittra, Aaron King, and Ian Lopatin. On one end of the teaching spectrum, Matt admires Steve Ross’ ability to make the practice fun. In contrast, Dharma Mittra knows how to get students into places you wouldn’t normally get into yourself. In his class, all of these influences shine through. Matt confesses Krista Cahill always teaches him something new whenever he takes her class. On the philosophical side, Matt resonates with Steve Ross’ teachings on meditation.

Matt distinguishes his athletic background and body type from teachers who are naturally bendy. He has combined a passion for studying human anatomy with developing his own strength and practice.

Matt’s latest passion and pursuit? AcroYoga. Living on the Santa Monica beach, Matt frequently saw members of the AcroYoga community in action along the boardwalk and decided to join the team. Matt loves the challenge and the shapes, describing it as a combination of yoga, Thai massage, balance, and teamwork. If you stroll down the boardwalk on the Santa Monica/Venice border, you just might see Matt flying a friend in a dramatic pose. If you’re lucky, you might also get a chance to hang out with Matt’s lovable tank of a bulldog, Rocco.

What does the future hold for Matt? He imagines his image on the cover of Sports Illustrated to explain the importance of yoga and sports. Matt regularly plays soccer, volleyball, basketball and rock climbs. Based on his track record, wide range of athletic pursuits and his single-minded focus, I have no doubt this could happen.

Matt Hodges can be found at Maha Yoga (mahayoga.com) Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Monday and Thursday evenings Matt teaches the employees at Snapchat. Find him at: hagiyoga2@gmail.com or 480-251-3702 matthodgesyoga.com Instagram @matthodges_yoga

Amy Goalen is a photographer who is launching the Yoga Men calendar. She has been photographing men absorbed in their yoga practice. amygoalen.com

Suzy Shelton

Suzy Shelton is Southern California born and raised freelance business consultant and Francophile. She spends her time in the yoga studio, traveling, playing tennis, reading Thich Nhat Hahn, and finding adventures with her two rambunctious pups.

The post Teacher Profile Matt Hodges appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Using the connection with music to enhance yoga practice sequence

I remember the first time I stepped into Whitney Allen’s class in Los Angeles 14 years ago. I was a relatively new yoga teacher from NY, an actor and a journalist; little did I know that Whitney was also a new teacher, as well as an actor and a singer. She had the air of a master with years of teaching under her mat. Perhaps it’s the fact that she had a performance background with the ability to command a packed room, or the warmth of her welcoming smile. Maybe it was the ease in which she communicated the flow of postures with a killer soundtrack that effortlessly matched the flow of her words and pacing of her class.

Today, I scroll through myriad Instagram photos of beautiful, bikini-wearing women doing postures I still can’t do after 20 years of practice, and I almost always settle on the photos of yogis I identify with, like Whitney – smiling broadly, doubled over in laughter, hair whipping around her face or streaks of sun enveloping her as she smooches her pup, Bowie, or hugs a friend. Her photos, like her teaching, are always in flow. They’re real, accessible, authentic, and… musical.

It makes sense that Whitney would take on the new title of Music Supervisor at Wanderlust Hollywood, the yoga studio inspired by the festival of the same name and steeped in a mission that fosters creativity, community, connection, and most of all, music. Music taking center stage is a way to deepen the yoga experience, which is what Whitney Allen is committed to in the yoga room.  

“It makes a difference when the music is supporting what’s happening on the mat.  Besides safe alignment and postures, it’s part of the spirit of what’s coming through you while practicing,” Whitney says.

She says, “One of the most exciting things I can do as a teacher is put together a playlist followed by postures. When I hear it all come together, I think, ‘Ooooh they are going to be moving to this song and they are transitioning to this pose when that song comes on.’ It’s inspiring to take staple yoga poses and make them a new discovery for a seasoned practitioner or exciting for a new student who thinks yoga is only about touching their toes.  Even the pauses between songs are conscious – creating a feeling when we balance or hold. That is yoga.”

Yoga wasn’t something that Allen necessarily chose but rather, it chose her.

She was born and raised in Chicago, the older of two kids who caught the acting and singing bug at the age of seven.

“I was never the girl who could do cartwheels. I was a voluptuous early bloomer at 10 and it was hard for me to accept. I never felt comfortable in my body but I could embody a character.”

Whitney majored in musical theatre at the University of Michigan before moving to NYC to pursue big Broadway dreams.  She achieved them swiftly in Manhattan, performing eight shows a week and joining the cast of major productions like Jekyll and Hyde on Broadway and The Full Monty—in which she was an original cast member on the first national tour.

Her eventual draw to yoga was much like how many people came to yoga.  “I got into some abusive behaviors of not eating and taking diet pills. The acting world is fierce and life always felt like an audition of who looks the best, who IS the best.  I’d audition during the day or go to the gym before a show and one day I just happened to take a yoga class and liked it.”

“Yoga got me out of my head and into my body.  It’s the only body we have; when you are on the mat, you can’t escape it.”

Allen started practicing daily as both a means of stress relief and as a workout. When on tour, she would practice in her hotel room or sign up for a yoga studio package. “I would practice with these amazing teachers who were experts in their home towns and take it with me where ever I went.”

In 1998 she found Bhava Yoga in NYC, one of her teacher Schuyler Grant’s first studios in the city. That’s where she truly fell in love with yoga.

“I never felt graceful, not in yoga or life.  But when I took Schuyler’s class, I thought – now THIS is what I love about yoga. The way she used music and flow together felt so innovative. She woke up my brain and that was it; I was hooked.”

After a tour that brought her to LA and a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat, she knew teaching yoga was the next step in her life. She signed up for the teacher training at Center for Yoga in Larchmont in 2002 and continued to teach there when YogaWorks took over the Center in 2004.

“I felt open to any possibility. I couldn’t believe there was something in my life I could love other than theatre.  It was a scary decision to move in that direction and it took me about seven years to step fully into teaching and let go of any other pursuits.”

And the moment came. In 2009 she had a single performance as an understudy of the role Gertrude in God Save Gertrude in Pasadena where she performed in front of all of her friends, singing punk rock and playing a bass guitar as her character lost her mind.  “That final bow and performance was one of my favorite moments, and I made the decision.”  

That decision allowed Allen to shift into a place where she couldn’t hide behind insecurities or another persona. Her experience gave her something to say and she wasn’t afraid to share it. “It gave me so much peace. Teaching is my best practice. As a teacher you have to be your highest self every time. It’s in your own self-acceptance that you can be compassionate with everyone in the room. I feel good when I practice but healed when I teach.”

“Yoga has given me access to my emotions and a purity of music I never felt with performing. Instead of being technical and result-oriented with hitting a high note, music became more about freedom and letting go.”

Whether singing in class or kirtan, or playing the harmonium that her yogi brother gave her, music became a form of creative expression and feeling. Her current musical resources are KCRW, Spotify, and a variety of blogs. Her musical influences include David Bowie, Van Morrison,  Peter Gabriel, Bon Iver, Stephen Sondheim, Patti Smith, R.E.M., and Queen.

Soundscaping yoga practice

In September 2015, she joined Schuyler Grant at Grant’s latest studio, Wanderlust Hollywood, to oversee the quality of music in classes at the studio, and to mentor the teachers and teacher trainees that want to develop the skill of using music to enhance their sequencing. She teaches a module in the teacher training program focused on how to use music effectively in class. “There is a hole in teacher training when it comes to using music.  It’s the soundscape to an unfolding practice.”  

Allen also collaborates with her boyfriend, Josh Andrews, who produces remixes and mashups, to put together the set playlists for The Fixx classes at Wanderlust. “It’s a 45 minute full body, mind, and spirit class. We breathe together and build energy together. The playlists are set to BPM (beats per minute). It’s challenging and meditative. The teacher creates the sequence based on the soundtrack we provide.”

The discipline of putting together a creative and innovative program with such a thoughtful process behind the intention of what is being created definitely can be drawn from her years on the road and on the stage.  

“In a class I am trying to set a tone, a meditative mood with temperature and lighting, so in a way the yoga room becomes like a set for the experience of the practice. Primarily, music is used to support the energies of my sequences, and I like playing with music to create an emotional tone. Sometimes in the flow the tracks I choose will be more reflective, or I’ll specifically choose a song with certain lyrics to bring the mood up. In a sense it does remind me of theatre, in that the students are soaking up the music the way audiences do during the performance of a song– a poignant connection to what they’re hearing. There’s a similar emotional resonance that I’m trying to bring in with the music I choose to play, so that the physical experience of practicing yoga taps directly into the feelings in the heart when the right track drops in. The walls come down.”

Perhaps that’s why someone with such a strong performance background was led to yoga and why someone like me, also a performer and creator, was led to Whitney’s teachings.

Like a bright theater filled with an excited audience, the studio fills with harried students settling into their spaces and letting go of the day. We all sit united in anticipation and wonder, open hearts and minds ready for the lights to dim and our souls and bodies to be moved.

For more information on Whitney Allen visit: whitneyallenyoga.com.

Laurie Searle is in international yoga teacher leading workshops and trainings with Yoga and Fitness to Go and the Sphota Yoga school.  She’s the creator of Lady Yoga, Superhero and F.E.D. Fight Eating Disorders, a 501(c)(3) in Los Angeles: YogaAndFitnessToGo.com.

Jeff Skeirik: rawtographer.com

Hair and Makeup by Dawn Sorenson: dawnsorenson.com

Clothing by Akrovita: akrovita.com

Turquoise mala by Silver and Sage Jewelry: silverandsagejewelry.com

Crystal necklace by Vega: vegajewelry.com

Rock mala by Mary Katherine openheartwarrior.com

Rubber B MAT yoga mat by B YOGA: byoganow.com

Photo shoot location Wanderlust Hollywood: wanderlusthollywood.com

Laurie Searle

Laurie Searle is an international yoga teacher leading workshops and trainings with Yoga and Fitness to Go and the Sphota Yoga school. She’s the creator of Lady Yoga, Superhero and F.E.D. Fight Eating Disorders, a 501(c)(3) in Los Angeles: YogaAndFitnessToGo.com.

Meet Lady Yoga and her Super Hero Wellness Team. Follow them on exciting adventures as they promote healthy living and well being. Learn fun easy ways to relax, stay fit and enjoy life. Watch out for their arch enemy Cookie Couch Man. The big meenie who tries to turn everyone into couch potatoes with his powers of persuasion.

The post A Musical Journey with Whitney Allen appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

This dynamic dancer and choreographer is starting a GROOV3MENT.

At one point in Ben Allen’s career, he was a back up dancer for drag queens. Now, he is the founder of one of the hottest movements (or as he calls it, a GROOV3MENT) in the dance and fitness communities: GROOV3.

According to dancer and choreographer Allen, “GROOV3 is a one hour, high-energy, dance ’til you drop, cardio funk class with a mission to inspire change and build a global community through the power of dance. Simple combinations accommodate all fitness levels, and classes are set to the beat of a live DJ or feature the hottest mixes around.” While an infectious beat gets most of us moving, following a routine can sometimes be intimidating and can be a barrier to walking into a studio space. This is where GROOV3 comes in. Ben’s mission, “I want to create an environment outside of the gym where anyone is welcome, that has affordable class prices and accessible choreography.” GROOV3 grooves at the intersection between professional dance and the dance fitness industry.

Why dance? While dance is fun and fitness, there is something more found in GROOV3. Ben sees movement literally as a movement. He says, “We are in a crucial time in our history and if more people don’t open up their hearts to care about one another and our planet, we’re going to be in big trouble. I hope, with GROOV3, to build a global community of dancers that will also inspire more consciousness to change the world. Drop beats not bombs. If everybody danced together, maybe we would live in a more peaceful place.”

Where does this begin? Ben says, “Find what inspires and moves you and put that action back in your life. Lead with that.”

When it comes to leading with passion, Ben’s own steps to founding GROOV3 reflect following your own passion in life. Ben fell in love with dance in college, specifically influenced by an instructor at the Arizona State University Rec Center who started a coalition for anybody who wanted to dance, preaching that dance was for body, mind, and soul. The soulful connection is evident in any GROOV3 class or event and is an essential part of the movement.

After graduating from ASU with a business degree, Ben moved to LA. He came to dance—and dance he did. While teaching at Gold’s Gym, he had the opportunity to see firsthand how much people are looking for an opportunity to just dance, not for any purpose, not to be a pro, or even to lose weight. “They just wanted to come for the social component, the wellness component, and the mind-body connection.”

Finding a way to connect fueled the creation of the GROOV3 community. Where did the name come from? Ben says, “When thinking about the style of the movement, the best way we could describe the movement was groovy! A little bit of pop, little bit of funk, little bit of soul, but in general feel good movement that anyone could do.  We knew we couldn’t just call it groove, the word is too generic. Then as we were brainstorming more about the class, three words kept popping up.” These three magic words were dance, sweat, live. They became the motto for the movement, and the inspiration to flip the “E” in the word “groove” for GROOV3.

“With GROOV3, you are learning and building, the movement is fun, yet effective, and you can take it outside of the classroom.” The majority of people at GROOV3 classes or events used to dance or want to learn how to dance. Ben said, “We are reigniting a passion that, for most, was lost in high school or college, and now they are getting that chance to get back on the dance floor.” This is meaningful practice that impacts the rest of a person’s day. “I think connecting to a passion like dance and making time for it translates to everything else that you do.”

Ben exemplifies the passion for dance and movement. One of the people he models his career after is Richard Simmons, whose infectious enthusiasm for having fun while keeping fit changed the way we work out. “When I first started this, I said – and I still do – that I want to be the next Richard Simmons. He played such an important role in so many people’s lives. He was a motivational coach, and he spread so much joy and love in everything that he did and affected so many people. Translating that to this decade and doing something similar would be such an honor.”

He maintains a commitment to personal practice and continues to take classes that expand his repertoire and move him out of his comfort zone. Ben finds himself drawn to teachers who have an obvious enthusiasm and passion for what they do—who love the opportunity to inspire. I’ve often seen Ben in my classes at Hot 8 Yoga. In addition to yoga in a studio, Ben appreciates trying new modalities like aerial yoga and indoor sandbox fitness classes. He says, “I want to keep expanding my vocabulary as a movement artist and professional because it helps me stay creative when I choreograph.”

Sitting with Ben at Earth Bar in West Hollywood, I see that he is on that path and can make it happen. Ben is a consummate dancer and business pro whose passion for dance and connecting people has led to collaborations with Robin Anton of the Pussycat Dolls, The Sweat Spot, Equinox, Weight Watchers, and Nike. GROOV3 collaborated with Yoga for Dancers and Yogazilla to host a rooftop dance party to celebrate Beyonce’s birthday at the Montalban Theater. Not only is he elevating the Los Angeles dance and fitness community to fit-excellence, but Ben has his sights on a worldwide movement of taking GROOV3 and this powerful, purposeful, fun, accessible, and inspiring GROOV3MENT to set the globe aflame.

Classes in Southern California with Benjamin Allen and other teachers are held at locations including Beat Box LA in Culver City, Your Neighborhood Studio in Culver City, Life Arts Los Angeles, Gateway to Health in Torrance, Blackbird Dance Company, Movement Lifestyle, Edge Performing Arts Center, Basement of Noho, Meraki Barre in Costa Mesa and other locations. Learn more at: GROOV3.com  

Marja Lankinen

Marja Lankinen, former professional dancer turned yoga therapist, is the founder and CEO of Yoga for Dancers. She teaches yoga, meditation, and injury prevention for professional dancers in Los Angeles and around the globe: marjayoga.com.
Instagram: @marjayoga and @yogafordancers

http://www.marjayoga.com

The post Teacher Profile: Benjamin Allen appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Kate Duyn Cariati shares a practice inspired by a lifetime of exploration and self expression.

A small girl sits on the floor, swirling in circles while watching Wonder Woman. Not a child of yogis, her body intuitively loves to make shapes and move. Today she still teaches this circling movement, but she calls it “Lucky Lakshmi,” named for the archetypal goddess of abundance.

Foundations

Her childhood days were spent outside, climbing trees, building forts, swimming and canoeing. At eight years old, she discovered ballet and a new world of movement. For Kate, ballet was the perfect marriage between strict discipline and technique, coupled with passionate self-expression and artistry.

Nama’stay in My Leggings All Day Tank by K-Deer  k-deer.com Chaos Leggings featuring the Sthenos Green Lady by Sthenos Active Wear  sthenos.com

Kate’s love of dance continued throughout her childhood and young adult years, and led to a choreography major at Mills College in the Bay Area. She was just finishing when her mother was diagnosed with a rare and incurable brain tumor. Her mother had been having migraines and personality shifts for several years, but by the time they finally gave her the MRI she’d been requesting, it was too late to operate. She fought cancer with grace and dignity, the same way she did everything else in her life. Kate describes her mother as “strong but goofy, elegant but fierce.” Her mother tried both Eastern and Western approaches to treatment and when seizures prevented her from driving, she asked Kate for what she called “movement therapy.” So there they were, bending their arms and legs this way and that, rolling around on the floor, her mother now in on the yoga antics, “tripping out on the experience of being a living, breathing human being.” After a two year battle, Kate’s mother died in the arms of her daughter and her own mother, Kate’s nana.

Hippie Girl Bra by Brooke Taylors Yoga http://www.brooke-taylors-yoga.myshopify.com Hippie Girl Leggings by Brooke Taylors Yoga Practice with Love Jogger Sweater Charcoal Ratmat Pro by Yoga Rat yogarat.com

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Prior to her passing, her mom encouraged Kate to travel the world. Kate listened, heading to Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, and much of Europe, eventually landing in New York City. The loss of her mother left Kate in a dark and despairing place and Kate credits her yoga practice with being the gift that brought her back to center. Though she was a professional modern dancer at the time, she found herself spending more and more of her free time on her mat. Drawn to strong women, Kate was inspired by Dana Trixie Flynn and Jasmine Tarkeshi, two teachers who gifted her with a practice that would change her life. Their inspiration eventually led her into the Laughing Lotus Teacher Training. Lotus Flow, their signature vinyasa style, empowered Kate to dive into her instinctual creative process, supported by the teachings of yoga tradition.

In class, Katie’s laughter and enthusiasm are unbridled and contagious, and the joy in the room is palpable.

The more she practiced, the more Kate found herself passing through the entryway to the more subtle realms. She says, “My personal practice is medicine for me in so many ways, a ritual that grounds and connects me to the world we inhabit, to the rhythms of nature, and my own inner-workings. The creation of intricate and customized practices feels like both an outlet and dharmic duty.” The devotion in Lotus Flow resonated with Kate from the beginning; she loves the layering of dharma, mantra, mudra and mythology. She loves Lotus Flow’s straight talk about how this practice applies to our lives, the repetition and chanting of words that evoke the Divine within us and around us, symbolic hand gestures that affect our energy, and the rich history and storytelling that give the practice context. This love is reflected in her dynamic, passionate, and creative classes, where your mat becomes your personal platform to make malas or sacred shapes and flows with your own body, heart, and soul. Wherever she goes, Kate brings her unique expression of Lotus Flow, making it accessible to all by bridging the gap between fitness-focused classes and traditional asana practices.

Kate went on to teach at Laughing Lotus in New York and later moved to San Francisco to help the team open the Bay Area center. In 2009, Kate headed south for love, and the man she was engaged to marry, glassblower Joe Cariati. Joe and Kate share a love of tapas—the practice of building the fire. Yoga asks practitioners to negotiate the workings of the inner fire, and as Kate says, in glassblowing, the repeated use of fire purifies and allows the glass to be supple enough to be shaped into a particular form.

High performance heather top in Royal by Luna Jai  lunajai.com High performance heather top in Royal by Luna Jai Studio Leggings in Fire by Luna Jai  Yoga Sling Sandals 2 by Sanuk in White  sanuk.com

A New Journey

In 2011, Kate began the journey of motherhood with the birth of her son, Vincent. She says she wanted to become a mother in part to honor her own mom and to become a loving mother herself. One of Kate’s favorite definitions of a yogi is, “One who leaves the world a better place.” To Kate, the spirit of service this evokes is the practice of performing love through action. Motherhood involves thinking about the world we’re leaving our children, and part of the growth when we practice yoga is about taking action where and when we can.

Sharing the Love

“More and more, my yoga practice is about sharing the love, the light, the energy, whatever you may have in abundance with those who have less. I happen to have a lot of enthusiasm and faith, and I think that might fill a need for people who may be lacking in that department.”

Through numerous 200 hour and advanced teachers trainings that she has taught and co-taught in New York and Los Angeles over the past five years, Kate has trained hundreds of yoga teachers in the Lotus Flow style. In recent years she has created a platform for giving back by hosting benefit classes at the end of her trainings. Graduates of the trainings co-teach these donation classes as part of their final. They have raised money for organizations including Yoga Gives Back and Green Tree Yoga (a donation-based studio in South LA). Inspired by an article she read in this very magazine, she began promoting and supporting Unlikely Heroes, a nonprofit that rescues and rehabilitates child victims of sex trafficking. “There are so many dire disparities, suffering populations, and environmental catastrophes, it can be overwhelming and difficult to decide what to get behind. I think the best way to figure out how and where to help is to listen to what speaks to you the loudest, what pulls most powerfully at your heartstrings. Stand behind that. There are so many ways in which we can get involved and contribute in some way to positive change.” In the spirit of devotion, “The practice of Isvara Pranidhana means to offer up your thoughts and actions to the greater good and to the Divine. These actions are just the beginning of something bigger I hope to do.”

Artista Hoodie by Sthenos Activewear www.sthenos.com  Chaos Sports Bra by Sthenos Active Wear Chaos Leggings featuring the Sthenos Green Lady by Sthenos Active Wear

In class, Katie’s laughter and enthusiasm are unbridled and contagious, and the joy in the room is palpable. It’s not just in the yoga room, though. Kate is a force, and her energy and her heart are big; they permeate everything she does. Whether she’s teaching her son to make shapes with his own body, grabbing a tea with a friend between classes, or taking a class herself, you just can’t miss it. You can see and feel both the little kid making those circles with her body back in Portland, and the grown woman who’s leaving the world a better place one yogi at a time, wherever she goes.

Read Laurie Searle’s story on Light on Lotus Here. 

You can join her in person at her local classes or online at YogisAnonymous.com, and you’ll be able to find her at LA’s home of Lotus Flow, Light on Lotus (lightonlotus.com).  

Kate Website: kateduyncariati.com IG: @flowwithkate  FB: Kate Duyn Cariati Yoga

All photos taken at Joe Cariati Glass studio in El Segundo:joecariati.com

Featured image: Kate wears white peacock harem pants by Bohemian Island

Photos by David Young-Wolff: davidyoung-wolff.com

Hair and makeup by: Jeannie Jeffries using Chantecaille Cosmetics and Schwarzkopf Hair: jeanniejeffries.com 

Ally Hamilton

Ally Hamilton is a Santa Monica based yoga teacher, author and life coach, who connects daily with yogis all around the world via her online yoga classes. She’s the co-creator of YogisAnonymous.com. She’s the mama of two amazing kids and one energetic Labradoodle. Her first book, Open Randomly: Fortune Cookies for the Soul is available on Amazon, and her next book, Yoga’s Healing Power: Looking Inward for Change, Growth and Peace is due from Llewellyn Worldwide in August 2016. yogisanonymous.com

http://blog.yogisanonymous.com

The post Love in Action: Kate Duyn Cariati appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Sharing Strength through Movement and Meditation

Mandy Ingber knows something about the experiences that break our hearts, how to find the inner strength that allows us to straddle the chasm of our challenges, and how to move in order to heal the body, the mind, and the emotions.

These are lessons she learned the hard way over a lifetime. Throughout much of her life, yoga has played a role in both the heartbreak and the healing. She says that yoga represented the breakdown of her family. It’s a story she tells in her latest book Yogalosophy for Inner Strength.

Sometimes our heartache can span generations; this is certainly the case for Mandy. Her grandparents were Holocaust survivors whose parents and siblings were lost in the war. Mandy’s mother Chava Luba was born into a displaced children’s camp in Germany, and after emigrating to America, endured all the intricacies of a non-native speaker. Mandy’s father Lloyd was a renowned lawyer, whose interpersonal relationships were challenging and complex. As early as age 29, Lloyd’s back would go out, forcing him to lie still for a month at a time. At the urging of his friend and gym buddy Dirk Benedict (of Battlestar Galatica fame), Lloyd engaged in a disciplined Iyengar yoga practice, started cycling, and ate only macrobiotic food (prepared by Mandy’s mother).

Mandy recalls, “For me, my dad was sorta self-obsessed. I was always looking for ways to connect with him.  So, that’s how my practice started. I would practice on my own from the B.K.S.Iyengar Light on Yoga book from the time I was a kid.”

Lloyd’s fellow students included yogis like Erich Schiffmann, Ganga White, and Chuck and Maty Ezraty. He enrolled in teacher trainings, and the family had a yoga teacher, Keshava, throughout the 1970s. Mandy’s practice progressed privately with Keshava. The 80s brought her devotion to the gym, aerobics, and yoga. The first public class she enrolled in was around age 16 with the late Urban Yoga Institute co-owner Billy Porter. Soon thereafter, she continued classes with teachers including Alan Finger, Chad Hamrin, Baron Baptiste, and Bryan Kest. “I like the group energy of a class,” explains Mandy, “I love the feeling of being in a room full of people who are collectively bringing an energy. You might not even connect with a person, but you’re all breathing in and out with each other, so you become this one entity.”

During her parents’ tumultuous divorce, Mandy sought shelter in the safety of physical activity and the pursuit of a career on stage and screen. She starred in the original Broadway cast of Brighton Beach Memoirs, as Carla’s daughter-in-law on the long-running TV show Cheers, and sang the now infamous rap in the cult classic movie Teen Witch. When her friend and colleague (My Sister Sam star) Rebecca Schaeffer was brutally murdered by a stalker, Mandy’s relationship to the spotlight shifted. She jokes that she became her own sugar daddy, using the savings she accrued as an actress to change her life. “I learned a lot about trusting and not looking outside for approval, about finding my own inner strength essentially. That’s when I started teaching.” Mandy’s passion for both spinning and yoga inspired her to teach both disciplines. As she describes her spin classes, “I became a kind of motivational speaker on a bike.”

Mandy Ingber’s clients are “drawn to her honesty, encouragement, wisdom, and humor.”

Participants were drawn to her honesty, encouragement, wisdom, and humor. Not surprisingly, she acted as a spinning shepherd to seekers during turbulent times. “Many people, both celebrities and the average person, have come to my class during times of transition: break-ups, people that are going through radiation for cancer, divorces, moving, job changes. While I was teaching group classes, around me the whole music industry changed, the financial industry changed. People were going through transitions.”

The most famous transition was when Mandy publicly served as private confidante to Jennifer Aniston during one of the most sensationalized break-ups in pop culture history. The rest of her celebrity client roster rivals the Oscar nominee list and includes Aniston, as well as Jennifer Lawrence, Helen Hunt, Kate Beckinsale, and Brooke Shields.

Throughout her teaching, she says, “I just started writing down the things I was using.” That writing resulted in Mandy’s first book, New York Times bestseller Yogalosophy and her latest, Yogalosophy; 12 weeks to heal your heart and embrace joy. It is a workbook to guide readers through change and transition. Mandy says, “Yoga is not just about asana and the practice; it’s about bringing it into our full selves.” In her books, Mandy discusses the transformational potential found while moving the body in asana, and she also includes practices such as journaling, listening to inspirational and uplifting music, and choosing supportive and nourishing food. She shares her own journey in the pages, as she does when she teaches groups and individuals. Mandy says, “I’ve learned that sharing myself, my healing process, and my pain is helpful to people, and so I encourage others to share too.”

When asked about her non-negotiable practice, Mandy quickly mentions meditation. She reflects, “I can’t just isolate it to when I’m by myself, sitting in the perfect position, the incense is going, and the Guru Gita is on in the background. Everything in my life is a meditation. It’s like a muscle, it’s like going to the gym. When you go to the gym, you lift the weights everyday, you get stronger. It’s the same with sitting. Then that muscle becomes stronger and stronger, and then everything we do—even in this moment—there’s a meditation occurring. This is the integration of the practice that truly allows us to heal our heart. In every moment, even this moment.”

Join Mandy in LA Sunday, May 15 from 11:00 AM – 12 noon (class) 12 noon – 2:00 PM (book signing and reception) at Ron Robinson, 1327 5th St, Santa Monica: ronrobinson.com Class reservation $29 which includes book, class, and gift bag. Space is limited. RSVP to events@ronrobinson.com  

Learn more about Mandy and Yogalosophy at: mandyingber.com (Instagram @MandyIngber Twitter @msmandyingber)

Jeff Skeirik is a Los Angeles-based photographer: rawtographer.com

Hair and makeup by Jeannie Jeffries using Kevin Aucoin Cosmetics and Schwarzkopf Professional Hair: jeanniejeffries.com 

Amy V Dewhurst

Amy Dewhurst is the author of Heartbreak Yoga, a consulting producer for Bhakti Fest and the director of business development for ALOHA.

The post Teacher Profile: Mandy Ingber appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

How any place can become a spiritual place and the power of one-on-one practices.

If you have practiced any form of Ashtanga, Vinyasa, or Power Yoga, you have practiced the teachings of the late influential teacher Sri K Pattabhi Jois, who brought the Ashtanga Yoga tradition as we know it today to the West. As a devoted student in this lineage, I just ventured on my eighth trip to study Ashtanga yoga in Mysore, India, with his grandson, R. Sharath Jois. Back in 2005, I first studied with Sharath in his mother, Saraswati’s house across the street from the “main shala.” The living room had been repurposed into a shala and held a small number of students. Pattabhi Jois,had set the course of yoga’s direction and its future thirty years before. In preparation for Sharath’s U.S. tour I sat down with him and talked about yoga in Los Angeles and throughout the world.

Leslie: Many spiritual leaders built centers in Los Angeles to spread yoga. Do you think LA is a spiritual place?

Sharath: Only practices make it spiritual. If there are many spiritual people, it becomes a spiritual place. Why are the Himalayas spiritual? Because there are many spiritual people there who experience spirituality and who have spiritual experiences. That’s why many gurus went to Los Angeles because there were people interested in spirituality. When there are interested people who want to know [and develop] spirituality …it makes them spiritual. It becomes a spiritual place. So, maybe there is a connection there.

Leslie: Southern California was the first place your grandfather, Sri K Pattabhi, known as Guruji, visited in the United States.

Sharath: In 1975, Guruji went to Encinitas. That was the first place he went in the U.S. to teach Ashtanga yoga. Paramahansa Yogananda [also] set up his center there. People started thinking about spirituality and yoga. They wanted to learn about yoga and to discover what it is, so gurus started traveling.

Leslie: Now yoga has been re-interpreted many times. Do you see yoga as classical and modern?

Sharath: Definitely. Nowadays, it has become more physical, like how to do handstand. There is no spirituality in that. It’s just physical, how to bend your body and how to align your body, but classical yoga is about how to bring the discipline to your body and your mind, and how that discipline leads you towards spirituality. That is called yama and niyama. These are very important limbs in yoga practice. Not many people are putting attention to these. They are putting attention only to the physical aspect of yoga….there is no breathing, no vinyasa, no gazing. All these things, what we call tristana, are very important to our asana practice.

In [some forms of] modern yoga, it’s mostly acrobatics. No one knows where they are inhaling, where they are exhaling, how the posture helps our body and mind. They don’t know how our breathing helps our body, nervous system, and mind. But this is very important. Yoga is getting popular all over the world, but there are only few people who have understood yoga well, who have gone to the roots of yoga. Everything is all like a circus, just bending their bodies but that doesn’t mean that’s spirituality. I go to lots of places but there are only few people who really know what yoga is.

“Practices make [a place] spiritual. If there are many spiritual people, it becomes a spiritual place.”

Leslie: What is Mysore style?

Sharath: Let me explain a led class: where we call the asana names, count the vinyasas and every student is practicing the asana at the same time. This is to improve vinyasa and have proper understanding of the system: where to inhale and exhale, and to follow the vinyasa properly.

Mysore class is where we are not counting. We are [monitoring and] trying to help the student improve in different postures. It’s not Mysore style it’s like a one-on-one style. Students are doing it at their own pace. This is called Mysore style because it started in Mysore by Pattabhi Jois.

Leslie: Practicing at the shala in Mysore reminds me of the United Nations of Yoga. Students might not speak the same language but when we do our practice together it creates beautiful energy. What do you think about the growing global Ashtanga world?

Sharath: Yoga doesn’t have any language. When there are 60 students practicing in the shala, there is no common language but there is a common thing, which is yoga practice. They are all doing the same practice, the same asanas, and even they know which asana this is, how many vinyasas. They are all doing simultaneously the same asana, in the same sequence, and that is the language that brings so much peace. Your energy, their energy, everything is mixing up and generating this huge ball of energy in the shala. So, that is very important, and that is the only language.

When they are silently doing practice, it generates a certain energy, which makes the whole environment peaceful. Silence is the only method to bring peace. Once your mind is silent then everything becomes silent and serene. The whole concept, the purpose of doing yoga is to bring silence, to bring peace to your mind.

In Mysore there are different nationalities speaking different languages, but in the practice no language is used but the energy is so high. When the energy is so high, and no one is talking, you only see equality in each and every student. It’s not that you are American, Japanese, Korean, or Australian. When this equality happens, everything is one. Yoga is also one. SAMATVAM YOGAM UCYATE (Bhagavad Gita 2:48). Where there are no emotions, no happiness, no sadness, no caste, no creed, no nationality, no discriminations, that’s also called yoga. So, becoming one is called yoga.

“Silence is the only method to bring peace. Once your mind is silent then everything becomes silent and serene. The whole concept, the purpose of doing yoga is to bring silence, to bring peace to your mind.”

Leslie: What is s Sadakha?

Sharath: A Sadakha is a practitioner who dedicates himself to the practice and the lineage. Yoga isn’t that which can be practiced by watching videos or reading books. Yoga has to come from a parampara, from a lineage, and you have to devote to that lineage and try to learn yoga. That is how the yoga should come.

Leslie: The “one-on-one” approach, done with little talking, does it help us better learn our true nature?

Sharath: In our lineage, you can’t teach in masses. We can teach, but we can’t connect to many people. We can’t understand our students unless we are teaching one-on-one. When there are too many students, we can’t reach everyone. Your voice can reach, but you can’t give personal attention to each student. Everyone has different body structures, mindsets, and flexibilities. Only when you are one-on-one can you understand the students and give what they need.

Leslie: Does this help their spiritual path?

Sharath: Spiritual path is when you get connected with your guru. When you give personal attention to a student, there’s lots of energy that flows through your student. He can feel the energy. When people come to practice in Mysore, there is certain energy here. That energy is generated by a guru. When that energy is generated by a guru, everyone will follow him, everyone will connect to him, everyone can feel his energy and try to practice in that energy. In a mass, you can’t have that same energy. It’s like going to a rock concert, you are just hearing but you can’t get connected to the singer.

Leslie: How do you see Ashtanga yoga making an impact in the world?

Sharath: There is no particular place it will make an impact. There is no one place for yoga. Many places yoga has reached, many countries, many nationalities. Yoga doesn’t belong to one culture. Everyone should practice yoga for their own well-being. Once that happens, the whole planet becomes a spiritual place. The whole planet will become totally different. Everyone will realize their own responsibility in their life towards this planet, towards humanity, so that’s what we have to think about. Yoga will give you that kind of knowledge. It’s not just physical, it’s overall how to keep your own well-being, and keeping others’ well-being. So, that is called yoga.

For more information about R Sharath Jois’ teaching schedule in the US (May 22 – June 24) including his Los Angeles workshops (May 29 – June 3), visit sonima.com/sharath

Leslie Hendry

Leslie Hendry is an advanced Ashtanga Yoga practitioner who lives in Los Angeles and is also rooted in India and her native Texas. A former New York attorney, she designed the #3-ranked kids app “Everything Has a Home” and is working on her second book.

http://www.azawhistle.com

The post Sitting Down with R. Sharath Jois appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Josie Kramer is wearing tee by Tee Bra and Va Va Leggings by Revolucion. Photo by David Young-Wolff

Yoga Teacher Josie Kramer MA is also a meditation teacher, holistic health coach, mindfulness-based counselor, and massage therapist. She is the author of a guided meditation CD Body Love, Soul Purpose and the DVD The Yoga of Food: A Whole Person Approach to Eating. Josie teaches at Yogis Anonymous, LYFE Yoga Center, The Bay Club, and Life Lab: josieyoga.com

What does mindfulness mean to you?

To me, mindfulness means being fully engaged in the present moment with awareness, kindness, and non-judgment. It was extremely helpful for me to learn mindfulness from my own yoga and meditation practices and now I try to apply the skill to all aspects of my life!

How do you practice mindful eating in your own life?

In my own life, mindful eating is about slowing down and savoring the food I eat, honoring my body’s natural hunger cues, eating fresh foods that are nourishing for my body, and being conscious of the source of my food and it’s environmental impact.

What advice do you give people seeking to adjust their own eating habits?

I’ve found that people’s eating struggles are many and the root causes are complex and varied. For the most part, everyone knows to eat more vegetables and to eat less processed foods. The challenge is HOW to do this! Step by step, I help my clients become aware of and transcend the patterns that aren’t serving them. I teach them to listen to their bodies and to understand how their cravings, stress, and emotions impact their eating habits. Through meditation techniques, compassionate support, and intention setting, my clients move from an unconscious approach to eating to a more mindful, healthy, and balanced lifestyle.

What books or authors inspire you?

Pema Chodron is a constant source of inspiration for me. I just finished reading Eastern Body, Western Mind by Anodea Judith and can’t recommend it enough!

When did you know that you wanted to teach yoga?

I knew that I wanted to teach yoga only six months into my practice. The feeling was SO strong! The best way I can describe it is that I felt it in my bones…I just knew! I originally moved to LA to become an actress but found my true calling with teaching.

Where do you go in LA when you need to recharge?

I go to the beach, take a yoga class, or treat myself to a massage.

Where are some places that you practice?

I love practicing at the studios where I teach and I also love floating around, trying new studios and teachers. LA has so much to offer in terms of yoga! We are truly blessed! My favorite class right now is with Shelley Williams at YogaWorks.

What did you find meaningful about your first yoga class?

My first yoga class was the hardest thing I’d ever done physically. Honestly, I remember not liking it! It actually took going to many classes and trying different styles and teachers before I was hooked! What was most meaningful from the beginning though, was that yoga kept me coming back!

At the time, I was searching for deep healing in my life. I intuitively sensed that if I stuck with it, yoga would be a catalyst for positive change. What I didn’t know was just how positive that change would be! With continued practice, yoga became my medicine, my refuge, and my sanctuary. I experienced such a profound transformation in my body, mind, and spirit, that I felt genuinely called to share the magic of yoga with others.

Where did you study to become a yoga teacher?

I did my first 200 hour teacher training at Center for Yoga in Larchmont Village, which is now YogaWorks. I later completed a 1,000 hour teacher training at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.

Tell us where you teach now.

I teach at Yogis Anonymous, LYFE Yoga Center, Life Lab, and The Bay Club (Redondo Beach, South Bay, Howard Hughes).

For more information about Yoga Teacher Josie Kramer, visit her website at JosieYoga.

Yoga Teacher Josie Kramer is wearing jewelry by Laugh Live Love Jewelry (laughlivelovejewelry.com) top by Tee Bra (tee-bra.com) and VaVa Leggings by revolucion (revolucionla.com).
Photo at Tongva Park Santa Monica by David Young-Wolff: davidyoung-wolff.com

Felicia M. Tomasko

Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.

http://www.blissnetwork.com

The post Mindfulness, Food, and Massage with Yoga Teacher Josie Kramer appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.