Tuesday evening teaching yoga in Milan : voice assists

Last week on tuesday I taught in english italian a full vinyasa class in Milan. It was a great experience. But I asked to my colleghes do you think it is right to change language during a yoga teaching? In a nutshell, many of them told me not to answer because they never had to. A few of them told me not to feel like teaching in another language. My friend and colleghe Belinda said to me it is right to be understood by students.

My personal feeling is not to touch too much students (verbal guidance) so if I need to express in a few seconds to change a foot position to improve the posture, I need to say it as quick as possible. And possible means if I communicate a first assist and the student does not understand, I will change my teaching language for him or her at the next one. The best book I red about assisting is Yoga assists of Sharon Gannon. In this book it is suggested to teachers to know how to adjust but to decide if to do it or not. I guess thatmis the point. Freedom of speech, to get a result. Action on the contrary.

Yoga, love and miracle for a good health

Yoga can heal? After 15 years of yoga teaching to thousands of persons and following them face to face and with social networks, I wanted to give an answer to this question. My answer comes from somewhere into my mind but not from brain, it is a vertical thinking, nothing to explain, nothing to plan. Half of who is reading now could prefer bill Tara' horizontal words (see below), for the others, the vertical thinking is a feeling, the truth you get in a look, the very first thinking before thinking (which has happened in a before space). What happen before thinking? A simple exercize to understand: breathing check up.

Mukund Bhole (www.yogabhole.com) has set a vertical system from an indian medical 50 years' experience. I would sum it up in "feel instead of think" your yoga practice. Slow your breathe, feel your inspire, extend and relax, then expire.

Use your hands like ears, to feel, experience, perceive the peel contact. Check up your bandhas specially uddiyana bandha on the inspire relax your pelvic area like a lotus flower opening, and on the expire stress a little your pelvic area (scrotum for men). Check up your  breathe IN relax and extend, EX stress and contract. Mindfulness is coming back to correct breathe (possibly ujjayi), to your focus (mindfulness and drishti), to right movement (as far as you know them banda and asana). Use compassion it does not matter if you loose the rythm as a student of viola please come back to the starting point for a new play.

The words from the students I listened to at the end of the check up were close to my intent, almost intuitive or not rational. It is so different from what this society used to ask for that I consider a success the affirmation of the rightness to use sound during the asana practice, the right observation that there is nothing to understand but only to feel, and the curiosity around mindfulness as I made it works. In a few words of mine mindfulness applicated to yoga (meditation in movement) is: find your first thinkings, find them right, give them importance.

Before the yoga sequence practice, I guided a moment of mindfulness in order to choose a focus for anybody. The focus helps, as the breathe while someone loose the sense of this work to come back to a starting point. The lost of concentration is not important but the find again of mindfulness practice is mindfulness. Sometimes I say to my students who are disturbed by the external sound of a car in the street or a plane over the city, "if you get disturbed and have many thoughts please put them on the next car/plane which is passing now and let them go. Come back to your breathe. Come back to your focus."

During the asana practice, we are getting slowly in. Building a vinyasa, and mindfuling an asana. For exemple, while practicing crocodile pose, I ask for laying down on the mat, feeling the breathe into the belly, and upward body. Reconnecting to the mindful practice of bandhas. The vinyasa therapy sequence is mostly based on feet standing postures. Getting faster the practice is combined with bija mantra (small primordial sounds).
See min. 4:15 the Shiva rea video click here
Or copy and paste later http://youtu.be/6x1kt6A0o9s

After the one hour dynamic practice, I suggest the candel or the bridge posture but done in a slow motion version, specially while getting out of the posture. 

During the relaxation I create positive thinking based on a book or on some reactions at what I have caught from the collective practice. In case I taught to ashtangi, I insist on the necessity to balance the strenght with flexibility (mentally and physically) for exemple. The sense to have practice in slow motion at the begining and at the end. The technics to find when you loose them bandhas, ujjayi and focus. A book I used in the past is Natural mind, natural body of Bill Tara, specially the parts called Wellness tips and The authentic Self. Create manageable goals, make your goals actable and act them. "Goals without actions are wishes. Action without a plan is often chaos and feeds the monkeys. If we do not make plans and commitments to ourselves, our failures can easily disempower us. If we let our vision fuel our desire, we need to let our plans be the engine that moves us forward." (bill Tara).

In a nutshell, yoga is life and lifestyle. To be alive while practicing you need to improve your presence and to be a real person (as you practice yoga) you need to put into practice your self.

Save the children, save the queen or simply practice yoga and love to change your life?!

At home my father often quotes Adorno, Jung  but I found in Dostoyevsky the light about my Love focus of the day. I wrote "l'unico inferno è l'incapacità di amare", that I freely translate by the english words "Hell on earth is the incapability to love!". I believe that before to speak about Save the earth, the children or the whole humanity, one need some more love, the world needs spirituality! And this focus, begins now with you and me, choosing life, choosing to involve ourself in goodness, fairness, truth for truth, consistency... I love english language because it does not allow to interpretation like italian language. CONSISTENCY is my political programme. I guess I wrote too much  words, although I wanted to mean love, to mean respect. Life is a gift so what do you wait to put ourself on the job!

Yoga, life and death

https://www.facebook.com/benedetta.spada.yoga/posts/10153366449614546:0

My husband suggested that I write a post about death, inspired by this photo. This week, a farmer from Piemonte paid for a lesson of yoga therapy for his mother who is in very bad shape due to a life of lies and self-limiting convictions.
Yoga therapy aims to help the areas which hurt the most, without any movement, but by working with the breath. The therapist has to show no pity for the ego, the ultimate cause of sickness.
When we got home again, my love told me to look what was written on the side of the crate full of heirloom apples: “Rebirth”.

This is what I think of death: for those who live a good life it is merely the passage to something much larger - a better world with people you do not expect to meet but are so happy to see. To not be afraid of death I think is a good indication that I am doing the right thing, but there are many others ( eating and drinking with joy, having fun working and making your dreams come true, to love #kanasimi) and there are times when we meet others who comfort you and show you the way.
I don’t ask too many questions about death because I follow a saying of Jonathan Livingston “ here is the test to now if your mission on earth is finished: if you are alive it is not.”
What is your vision of death?

Some suggestions:
-from Jivamukti http://jivamuktiyoga.com/teachings/focus-of-the-month/p/halloween-and-all-saints-day

Global meditation as an experiment of peace

http://globalmeditation.chopra.com/

London with Tara Stiles...and Reebok...new yoga life

I had a diner with newspaper journalists from Europe and US. Anyone has his own personality, the german woman is nice, the French one not at all as Tara Stiles says anyone "make his own rules." I guess in this kind of meeting it is hard to find oneness.

The agent of Tara speaks italian and makes me feel home. I like to hear italian spoken by an american, he is lacking of only our gesture. Speaking with Tara means talking about life, lifestyle, work experiences... And yoga! I find easy to share my experience even in a such glamour environment. My toughts are it is possible to be yoga star, to have money, beautifulness, youth. It sounds crazy but in Italy I never met all these things all together.

Among our small community I notice only Tara and me are vegan. Hopefully the restaurant has great dishes vegan. As I feel hot, I eat mostly raw vegetables so to make smile my guests.

I ask for Tara some more about her way to teach yoga, and how she inserted herself in the yogi world. She answers, and ask me about my point of view. We feel closed, in our anticonventional way of teaching. At one point I say Bye to go to my yoga class.

...ieri sera ho cenato con circa 10 giornaliste provenienti da Francia, Germania, America...le tedesche sinceramente sono simpaticissime! Più delle francesi? ...non me ne voglia l'amata Francia...
Al mio tavolo sedeva Tara ed il suo entusiasmante agente! Un uomo che per un anno ha studiato in Italia e...si parla anche italiano...ma la cosa straordinaria e' sentire parlare un americano l'italiano con quelle movenze tutte nostre con cui siamo noti nel mondo...che sulla bocca di un americano o inglese divengono così cool! siamo noti per la nostra gestualità...bellissimo essere l'unica italiana!
Qui non si parla solo di yoga, si parla di vita, di esperienze, di condivisione! Parlando con Tara, mi pare quasi di ritrovare un'amica, la cosa entusiasmante secondo me degli insegnanti americani...e' che non si atteggiano a guru...ma soprattutto che sono giovani! Voglio dire...sono giovani, belli, simpaticissimi...e questo non li penalizza, ma anzi li valorizza...!
Tara ed io parliamo la stessa lingua e mi fa sorridere avere la consapevolezza che tra molti siamo le uniche vegane...e ceniamo mangiando tofu...e insalate...sorrido...tutti al nostro tavolo sorridono di questo!
Tara ed io ci scambiamo idee, esperienze...la cosa che mi piace di più e' che c'è allegria tra noi...ovvero non ci prendiamo troppo sul serio...siamo anticoncenzionali...tutti a questo tavolo!
Ora scappo alla mia lezione yoga...presto vi aggiornerò sui dettagli di questo viaggio alla scoperta di un nuovo yoga life style?
Love
Benedetta