Yoga – Karen's New York Love Affair

Yoga & Nature: The Four Directions—2013

2013 Dates TBD – Vancouver

Yoga is…

… union or communion. B.K.S. Iyengar

… a poise of the soul which enables one to look at life in all its aspects evenly. Mahadev Desai

… a way of remembering our true nature, which is essentially joyful and peaceful. Donna Farhi

… an act of kindness toward oneself. Judith Hanson Lasater

Spend a summer morning in the North Shore mountains, just 20 minutes from downtown Vancouver and 10 minutes from the Commercial Drive area, exploring your yoga practice in nature. We will spend the morning in an idyllic sandy spot in nature.

You will learn the nature psychology of the four directions, an ancient-modern model of understanding the psyche of humans and nature. Each cardinal direction has its own colours, textures, seasons, stages of life, and qualities of true nature. We will explore the qualities embodied by the directions through yoga poses that connect these elemental energies with your own physicality. This is an opportunity to deepen into your connection to yourself and the natural world.

Enjoy the carefree feeling of being a child outdoors, the vivid colours of summer, and the beauty of our westcoast rainforest with a small group of people like you who are interested in exploring the depths of nature.

Location TBD, North Vancouver

Date & Time Saturday, Date TBD, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm

Cost $69

Carpooling We will meet at 9:40 am at a location on Commercial Drive to carpool to the location.

To register Click the Registration tab and complete the form.

Questions Contact Karen at 604.251.6337 or email info@klove.nyc.

About the teacher

Karen Rempel is a certified and registered yoga instructor, and spent a year as a volunteer teaching yoga to youth in prison. She’s also taught yoga to seniors in Merritt, and developed a Yoga for the Office program that she teaches in Vancouver. She is certified and registered through Yoga Alliance and YogaBC. She is also a trained wilderness guide.

Spinal exploration: a yoga myth and healthy discs

A while ago I mentioned attending a Judith Lasater workshop on the sacroiliac joint. I promised to tell you some of the interesting things I learned at the workshop, and now I’d like to do that. I’ve followed up what I learned in the workshop with additional research about the spine, to share with you how yoga can help you can nourish your spine and prevent back pain.

Judith’s focus was on the natural curves of the spine. When each of the curves is allowed to be in natural alignment, the spine becomes a very stable structure that supports our bowling-ball head and what’s known as the axial load—the downward weight of the body when we are vertical (sitting or standing). It might seem counter-intuitive, but it is the balance of the curves that creates the stability. The diagram to the left shows a side view of the curves of the spine. The person is facing to the right.

There are five sections or groupings of vertebrae in the spine, with the curves reversing direction from one section to the next, from anterior (frontwards at the neck) to posterior (upper back) to anterior (lower back) to posterior (butt), and finally anterior and posterior again in the sacrum and coccyx. The five vertebrae in the sacrum fuse together between the ages of 16-18 and 25-26. This fusing is one of the factors that causes us to lose flexibility with age. Also notice how the natural curve of the spine situates the sacrum at almost a 45-degree angle from vertical. The 3 to 5 coccygeal vertebrae form the coccyx, which usually fuses into a single bone, but not always. As you can see in the diagram, the coccyx forms an extension of the curve of the sacrum and it tilts backwards. The coccyx is commonly known as the tailbone.

Tailbone tucked, or let the lordosis sway?

Any of you who have been in a yoga class, whatever the style, have probably been told to keep your tailbone tucked in mountain pose. I know I’ve heard it a hundred times, and learned to instruct students to do this in multiple teacher training courses. But what does tucking the tailbone do to the natural curve of the spine? Tucking the tailbone means drawing the coccyx forward, which causes the lower back to flatten, and then causes flattening up the whole length of the spine. This movement totally abolishes the natural curve of the spine, messing with the stability and the load-bearing capability that the spine has with the natural curves.

Judith encourages her students to experiment with not tucking the tailbone. In fact, to fully allow the natural curve of the spine, you might need to slightly exaggerate the curve in your lower back, especially if you have worked for years to flatten the curve. It seems like a very radical idea, because most of us have been so indoctrinated to tuck the tailbone. Judith demonstrated on three different students how the natural curve of the spine means our butts and chest are sticking out. Too sexy for this party! Many of the students had been told they had lordosis (an exaggerated curve in the lower back) and that they needed to straighten it. The pain these women have suffered as a result is shocking. Some of us postulated that the reason we are taught to keep our tailbones tucked is to keep women down! My mom and sister didn’t agree with this theory when I shared it with them. Hmm, bummer.

Another theory occurred to me when Judith demonstrated on the single man in the class that his hip bones were much higher than a woman’s, and his pelvis was a rectangular shape rather than curved like a woman’s hips. I think most of the lineage of yoga teachers in India, dating back thousands of years, were men. Krishnamacharya, born in 1888 and teacher to many of the teachers who brought yoga to the west, including Indra Devi (often called the First Lady of Yoga), B. K. S. Iyengar, T. K. V. Desikachar, Gerard Blitz, and Jean Klein, traced his lineage of male yoga teachers back to the ninth century. That’s centuries of practicing and perfecting on the male body. Perhaps the instruction to tuck the tailbone makes sense for the male body in a way that doesn’t hold true for the female one with its radically different pelvic anatomy.

I would love to hear from any of you out there, male and female alike, about your thoughts on this. Personally, I have been experimenting with the non-tailbone-tucked, natural spinal curve in mountain pose and all the other poses that move from this standing position. I must say I have experienced less pain in my sacroiliac joint—the pain that motivated me to attend Judith’s workshop in the first place. So I think there might be something enlightening and world-view shattering (on a smallish scale) about this idea of letting the spine be in its natural curve. I invite those of you with a regular yoga practice to try it for yourselves and see what you think. I also introduced this idea in a class I taught recently for the Society for Technical Communication. I will explore this further in another posting.

The discs between the vertebrae

Another fact that Judith mentioned about the spine was that the discs between the vertebrae are avascular. This means they don’t receive a direct blood supply to bring them the vital water needed for hydration, food in the form of glucose, building material in the form of amino acids, and oxygen. I was curious about this, and decided to do a bit of research to find out how the discs do receive their nourishment.

I found what I was looking for at Chirogeek.com. The discs are situated between the vertebrae, and are composed of a high percentage of water in a closed hydraulic system that is able to withstand a great deal of pressure. A well-hydrated disc is even stronger than the vertebrae themselves. Interestingly, the compression on the discs when we are standing causes us to shrink in height. The height of the disc increases as much as 20% overnight when we are lying down and the discs have the opportunity to re-hydrate.

The discs contain sponge-like molecules that hold 500 times their weight in water! The health of the cells within the discs affects their capacity for holding this water, which is what gives the discs a very high hydrostatic pressure and therefore their incredible strength to support the axial load of being upright. From the time we begin to spend most of our time upright, at about age two, until about age 10, there is a diminishment in the nutrient-providing capillary beds that supply the discs and take away the waste products of cell activity. It seems that the pressure of standing causes this diminishment. Therefore, after the age of 10, the supply of nutrients to the discs occurs through diffusion from tiny capillary beds in the subchondral bone above the end-plates of the vertebrae, and through diffusion from capillaries in the outer layers of the anulus, or outer edge, of the discs.

This diagram from Chirogeek.com illustrates the process of diffusion. The pink balls are nutrients. The mauve plates are the subchondral bones containing capillary beds. As shown here, the capillaries don’t go directly into the disc from the top and bottom after the age of 10, though there are still some capillaries that enter the outer edges of the disc.

It seems a miracle that this diffusion can occur. The better hydrated the discs, the more easily that nutrients can diffuse into them. It is easier to travel through water than through dense matter. And this is where yoga can help to improve nutrition to the discs. The movements of yoga in flexing, extending, and twisting the spine cause gentle pressure on the discs. Imagine squeezing a sponge and then putting it in a bowl of water. When you release the squeeze, the sponge soaks up the water. This is what happens to the discs when they are gently squeezed and released through the movements of yoga. The release creates a bit of a vacuum, into which water-bearing nutrients can flow. Obviously, staying well hydrated is important too.

It is often said that a flexible spine is a healthy spine, and a healthy spine is what keeps us young. With the understanding of the physiology of the discs, it is easy to see how doing yoga, drinking enough water, and getting enough sleep (which gives the discs time to re-hydrate in a non-weight-bearing position) all contribute to keeping us healthy and pain-free. Dried out discs don’t receive as much nourishment. This can lead to chronic lower back pain and possible disc degeneration—conditions that often occur as we age.

I am grateful to Judith Lasater for pointing me in the direction of better understanding why yoga is so beneficial for a healthy spine.

As a common-sense caution, yoga might not be appropriate if you already have a problem with your spine or discs. Seek professional advice if this is the case for you, before beginning to add yoga to your life.

P.S. If you’d like to read about the sacroiliac joint and how to prevent pain there, here is an excellent article by Judith Lasater.

Touchiness – in more ways than one

To touch or not to touch

I recently had the great good fortune to attend a Judith Hanson Lasater workshop on the sacroiliac joint. Judith is a world-renowned yoga teacher and author of numerous books, including one of my faves, Yoga Abs: Moving from Your Core. I was surprised to arrive at the training site and discover more than 50 teacher-students in the room. I shouldn’t have been surprised, as Judith is a wonderful teacher and obviously many of the yoga teachers and serious yoga students in Vancouver would want to come to learn from her.

I learned some fascinating information about our natural spinal alignment and how that impacts the most basic poses such as Mountain pose. I will write about that later. What I would like to discuss today is the respect with which Judith created a safe space for her students. Although we were all experienced yoga practitioners, and many of us were teachers, Judith did not make any assumptions about touching each other. She created a ground rule about asking for permission to touch, and she followed this rule herself every time she demonstrated a principle of alignment or subtle adjustment on a student. Similarly, she coached us to ask for permission to touch our partner when we worked in pairs. It seems very obvious to me that this is a foundation for creating safety in a classroom. I was very happy to see that one of the foremost teachers in the North American yoga community promotes this basic courtesy.

In several recent Yoga Outreach trainings that I attended, including their foundational teacher training and a course on teaching trauma-sensitive yoga, the YO teachers explained that when working with students in the populations that Yoga Outreach teaches, touch is rarely appropriate. Many of the students in Yoga Outreach classes in prisons, mental health facilities, women’s shelters, addiction treatment centres, and so on, have experienced physical trauma in their lives, such as physical or sexual abuse. When someone’s boundaries have been trespassed in this way, it can be difficult to say no to touch, even when gently asked by a caring yoga teacher. This is one of the reasons that touch is not advised. Another reason is that any kind of touch can inadvertently re-traumatize a student. Even a word or tone of voice can be re-traumatizing to someone who has experienced abuse or other forms of trauma.

Even in a mainstream yoga class, it is usual, though not universal, for teachers to request permission to touch before they make an adjustment. Often they will make a statement at the beginning of class about the possibility of touching, and ask students to indicate if they are not comfortable with this.

I must be like one of those people who are allergic to cats, whom the cats love to come and rub up against. I don’t feel comfortable receiving physical adjustments in a yoga class. If the teacher is moving around the classroom and making adjustments it makes me feel wary and on edge. I like the teacher to stay at the front of the room where I can keep an eye or her or him! Even if the teacher is someone I know well and have had many classes with, I still feel uncomfortable about being touched. I am very sensitive both physically and energetically, and others’ touch leaves an imprint that I continue to feel long after the touch has occurred. I don’t like it.

So you would think I would have learned by now that for some reason my discomfort with touch seems to call out like a beacon for teachers to come and touch me! Yes, I finally have learned that this is likely to occur, and I’ve thought of a strategy to deal with it. But the learning didn’t come easy.

In January I attended a class at a location I was thinking of teaching at. I was there to participate as a student while getting a feel for the location, which was in the Downtown Eastside in the back room of an organization that offers yoga classes to DTES residents as an adjunct to health services that they provide. I’d never been there before, and I’d never met the yoga teacher. I have to admit I wasn’t 100% comfortable with this scene. Being in the DTES is a bit challenging for me, and attending a class with DTES residents was scary. Although I must say, the women who attended the class seemed like ordinary, high-functioning individuals and not at all different from students in other classes I’ve attended, except that they were a bit older than the average student in a yoga studio.

Nonetheless, I felt a bit on the hyper-vigilant side as students came in. The teacher turned off the light in the room, so there was only dim light coming down a hallway from the front room. This made me feel uncomfortable, but it seemed to be what the other students were used to. The teacher began the class late, and did not remark on this with an apology, but perhaps not being too vigilant about time was intended to make students who were late feel okay about attending. This was another difference from what I’m accustomed to, because usually being punctual about time is a way of respecting students’ schedules and setting clear boundaries for the class. I didn’t mind it beginning late, but the teacher also ended the class quite late, and to me that is disrepectful of the students’ time.

I don’t know, I suppose all these things were the conventions the teacher had established after founding the class there and teaching it for 3 years. But to me it was as if I had entered some weird Twilight Zone where all expectations are blown away. I was doing my best to deal with the norms of the class, and when the teacher began teaching, I was very impressed with her skill as a teacher. She had prepared a lesson about cleansing out the digestive system after over-indulging on the holidays, and had a second theme about protecting the joints when extending limbs. Wow! I was impressed.

So I was participating in the class, and exploring the subtleties of inner perception that the teacher drew my attention to. I was really getting a lot out of the class, and it seemed like the other students were too. Then we were all in child’s pose, and the teacher began moving around the room. Uh-oh. I noticed she was approaching various students, but couldn’t really see what was going on since my face was on the mat. And, in case you are not familiar with child’s pose, my ass was in the air. It is a very vulnerable pose. In the trauma-sensitive training they advised to use extreme caution about putting students into this pose, because it can trigger trauma. Think about it! Yet here the teacher was, going around the room and approaching students from the rear while they were in this extremely vulnerable pose.

Still, I didn’t dream that she was going to touch me. We had never met before. I had not granted her permission to touch me. She hadn’t said anything about touch at the beginning of the class. I felt uneasy as I sensed her approaching my mat. Then she did it–she bent over and placed her hands on my kidneys–one on either side of my waist. I turned towards her to say don’t do that, and she removed her hands and moved away before I had the chance to say anything. But the imprint of her hands remained for the rest of the class. I felt violated, and this incident did retraumatize me.

At the time, I was trying to cope, and mindful of the fact that I was supposed to be teaching there soon. I felt I had to get along with the teacher, and go along with what was happening. Big mistake. I over-rode my own instincts in order to be nice and go along, instead of shifting out of the pose and looking after myself. I wanted to deal with this maturely!

At the end of the class I waited for an opportunity to speak privately with the teacher. After complimenting her on the class, I explained to her that I hadn’t wanted her to touch me and that in trauma-sensitive yoga trainings that I have attended they teach that touching students is not appropriate. She did not apologize for touching me or express any concern about how her touch had impacted me. I guess this was new information to her and she didn’t understand how what was obviously a good intention could leave a bad impression.

Unfortunately for me, I learned the hard way that I have to set clear and definite boundaries even if there is no easy opportunity to do so. From now on, if I ever attend a yoga class again, I will be sure to speak to the teacher before the class begins to make it clear I don’t want to be touched. Yoga is supposed to be healing, not harmful, yet this incident was very distressing to me. I later experienced a panic attack when I was out for a run and remembering the class, and I ended up having to go to a trauma therapist to de-activate the triggered event of being held around the waist and physically beaten.

I have been reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s new novel, The Novice. He writes about a woman who responded to extreme injustice and physical violence with equanimity and magnanimity towards her aggressors. Clearly, I have a long way to go towards healing and being a spiritually enlightened being. Even now, I feel resentful towards the yoga teacher, and even towards my trauma therapist, who was supposed to have helped me deal with this trauma already! Although I am sure the yoga teacher meant no harm, I am still angry. And underneath the anger, I am hurt that she did not care how I felt, or admit she had done anything wrong. As always with events that impact us strongly, there is still more for me to understand about what happened that day.

Embrace the aliveness of fall with 30 days of yoga

Has working full-time got you feeling like a zombie? Are you turning into your computer? Have you noticed that the year has turned once again, the trees are turning yellow and red, and the air is getting crisp and fresh?

Align with the season and come back to life with the Reach Out Challenge for Yoga Outreach! Starting October 10, do 30 minutes of yoga a day for 30 days to come alive and to support Yoga Outreach programs.

You can do yoga at home on your own, grab a yoga video from your library, or go to a class at your local community centre or yoga studio. Do it for you! To help others too, get pledges from your friends for each day that you meet the challenge.

Take the 30-day Yoga Outreach challenge and help Yoga Outreach raise funds and friends. Their mission is to identify, develop, and deliver healing and life-affirming yoga programs to people who can not directly access these resources. Yoga Outreach is a Vancouver-based registered charity. Yoga Outreach partners with volunteer teachers and facilities and organizations to provide free yoga.

Support me by pledging 50¢ or $1 a day for 30 days

If you don’t want to take the challenge yourself, I hope you will support me by pledging an amount per day or a set dollar amount. Click here to make a pledge online. Or, call me at 604.251.6337 to make a pledge on my form. Receipts will be issued for pledges over $25. My goal is to raise $300 for Yoga Outreach. Thanks for your support!

Your pledge will support me to do 30 minutes of yoga a day, and it will help bring yoga to people who normally wouldn’t have access to it—people in prison, people with addictions, people with mental health challenges, and so on. Thank you!

ChiRunning and Yoga at BC Wilderness Visions

July 16-17, 2011 – CANCELLED

$349 includes teaching fees and delicious organic vegetarian lunch, snacks, and tea

Location: Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve, North Vancouver

9:30 – 4:30, Saturday & Sunday

Guides: Angela and Karen are teaming up for the second year in a row. For a glimpse into the awesome time had by all at last year’s ChiRunning and yoga retreat, see here.

Learn to run free of injury!
Learn to run effortlessly!
Learn to be energy efficient!
Learn how to create Chi Energy Flow!

Angela no longer has Achilles tendonitis since using the ChiRunning form, which combines the inner focus and flow of T’ai Chi with the power and energy of running to create a revolutionary running form and philosophy that takes the pounding, pain, and potential damage out of the sport of running. The ChiRunning program increases mental clarity and focus, enhances the joy of running, and turns running into a safe and effective life-long program for health, fitness, and well-being. Angela has run 20 marathons and completed Iron Man Canada in 2008.

Karen has developed a yoga practice that supports long distance running. Combining yoga with running helped her overcome knee pain and IT band problems, to cross the threshold from the 10K distance to the half-marathon! Her most adventurous race was the Klondike Road Relay from Skagway, Alaska to Whitehorse, Yukon. Yoga is a millenia-old discipline that provides the perfect complement to your running practice. It brings suppleness to the entire body, builds core strength, and safely releases the lactic acid that builds up in the muscles during a run. The relaxation that yoga brings allows your body to run for longer distances with ease.

This 2-day non-residential retreat in the beautiful North Shore mountains will teach you the fundamentals of the ChiRunning form as well as a post-run yoga practice that is more fun than the old stretches you learned in gym class!

Mornings will begin with a group check-in in the crystal-clear mountain air, followed by running and yoga. In the afternoon we’ll teach you methods for connecting with the Chi energy in nature, and then give you a chance to practice what you’ve learned with more ChiRunning. The days will end with a final yoga session to send you home feeling relaxed and connected with nature and yourself.

This weekend retreat will give you time and space to connect with your body and with nature, and you’ll return to the city feeling refreshed and enlivened.

Optional reading: ChiRunning: A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless, Injury-Free Running, by Danny Dreyer and Katherine Dreyer

To register, please fill in the online Registration Form. For payment information, see Fees. We’ll send you directions and a suggested gear list when you register.

Guides

Karen Rempel is the director of Monkey Valley Retreat Centre. She leads retreats at the centre, and also apprentices on vision fasts in Colorado and California. She teaches tools to help people find healing and guidance in nature, including the medicine walk, medicine wheel, four shields of (human) nature, other ecopsychology methods, and yoga and meditation, as well as guiding questers on vision fasts.

After a decade of working as a technical writer, she earned a master’s degree in ecopsychology from Naropa University, and trained as a vision fast guide at the School of Lost Borders. She has studied the medicine wheel since 2003 and has been a student of the Diamond Approach for many years. She is a registered yoga teacher and Reiki master, committed to providing a safe environment for self exploration and growth. She is a member of the Wilderness Guides Council.

Munro Sickafoose is a vision quest guide, an initiated man, whitewater river guide, and ceremonial leader. He has been deeply involved with indigenous earth–based ceremonies for many years. He trained as a vision quest guide at the School of Lost Borders, and has been leading groups and individuals in the wild since 1996. He has also trained at the Ojai Foundation as a facilitator in the Way of Council. He is currently Netkeeper of the Wilderness Guides Council, and is working towards a Masters of Divinity degree.

He guides at Monkey Valley and in Oregon and Washington. He also guides through the School of Lost Borders, teaching a program on the four shields of leadership with his wife, Susanna Maida. Visit his web site for details of other guiding trips he has planned.

Angela James has run 18 marathons and completed Iron Man Canada in August 2008. Angela has been a Team in Training marathon coach with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) groundbreaking charity sports training program since 2004. She no longer has Achilles tendonitis since using the ChiRunning form. Now Vancouver’s only certified ChiRunning instructor, she plans to give workshops all over the world teaching others this revolutionary technique. Her shining spirit uplifts and motivates everyone she teaches.

Angela incorporates ChiLiving as a practice along with her tea business. “Chi Tea” is her catch phrase, because she believes so strongly in the benefits of both ChiRunning and health-promoting, organic Rooibos tea. Angela is also an accomplished cello player. Visit her web site to learn about Angela’s upcoming ChiRunning workshops in Vancouver.

Kim Ashley guides vision fasts at Monkey Valley and is a life coach. She is the founder of Transformational Learning and Coaching. She is a PhD candidate in East-West Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, is a certified life coach through NLP and Coaching Institute of California, and is a member of the International Coach Federation.

She trained as a vision fast guide at the School of Lost Borders. Her background and education blend the ancient wisdom traditions of the East with contemporary success principles of the West, resulting in a step-by-step coaching approach to living with greater courage, balance, abundance, and happiness. She loves walking in the wilderness with her dog, Chai.

Prison guard blues

I taught walking meditation to my two classes at the youth correctional institute on Monday night. The first class consisted of three young men. A male guard was in the room, the library, for the first part of the class, working on the computer. So I introduced the meditation, and as we began slowly walking around the room in a circle, we heard the magical sound of Windows starting.

But actually, this shows me how accustomed I have become to the prison environment. For while this new sound (of Windows starting) seemed intrusive, I didn’t even notice the enormous clanging sound of the heavy prison doors in the hallway outside the room slamming shut repeatedly throughout the class, which had seemed like a shock to my soul-body when I first started teaching there.

We made it one and a half times around the room in the five minutes, and the young men seemed to be in a calm, quiet space after the meditation. The guard left, and the rest of the class was tranquil and flowing. I explained that they could use the walking meditation when they are feeling upset. The focus on the feet, which usually are not upset (unless they happen to be sore or injured), helps the meditator to shift into a more positive state. At least, that’s the theory!

The next class was the young women. This time a female guard came to the class and participated in it too. This is a wonderful development, which, as teachers with Yoga Outreach, we are encouraged to promote. For the guards no doubt can benefit from the yoga as much as the students.

But this time, the presence of the guard presented a new challenge, which I had never encountered before. For she had done yoga before (from a video) and thought it was appropriate to offer corrections to the students during the poses, as well as to give orders to maintain discipline in the class! So during the silent walking meditation she gave orders to the students to be quiet when they were giggling. And it went downhill from there. I totally lost control of the class, and it was a complete disaster! A new learning for me.

A few days after the fact, I can feel some appreciation for the universe bringing me this opportunity to learn new skills as a teacher. I now know that if a guard joins the class, I need to take her aside and lay down the ground rules; she is there as a student only, and must leave the class control to me!

The final straw was when the students and guard were lying in savasana (corpse pose), the final resting pose that is the traditional way to end a yoga class. The guard took a call on her radio headset (which she had been wearing throughout the class and which occasionally emitted noises), and started speaking into it, from her mat. (Rather than leaving the room so as not to disrupt the students who were in a quiet, resting state after being very rambunctious throughout the class.) Then she said to the students, “OK, time to go get your meds.”

At this point my strength arose, and I took back control of the class. I have a strong sense of ritual and there are certain things that MUST be observed, such as ending the class in the traditional way. I said “I am not finished. I am ending the class, and need one more minute.” I gently brought the students out of sivasana, and we closed with the traditional Namaste salutation (which means “the divine light in me greets the divine light in you”). After saying Namaste to the students and thanking them for sharing their practice with me, I turned to the guard (who left the circle and did not participate for the closing) and said Namaste to her. After they all left I put away the equipment and drove home, furious with the guard for undermining my authority in the class, and with myself for not knowing how to handle it.

I must say, I felt much more compassion and understanding for my Diamond Approach teachers, whose classes I have interrupted and disrupted many times. Now the shoe is on the other foot! And walking meditation did not help me to regain my ground. It took a strong talking-to to my superego, who was having a field day with me for not handling the situation well, before I started to calm down.

The joys of being a wild woman and putting myself in situations where the unpredictable can happen! Of course, this is where learning and growth can occur. Even though it didn’t help me right in the moment, I still recommend walking meditation, for it will help us all develop a connection with something that is deeper than our emotional state. And in spite of all the disruption in the class, it was beautiful to see how one of the young women in the class really connected with the earth energy through her feet from doing this meditation.

So keep practicing!

If you are interested in more information about the benefits of teaching yoga and meditation to people in prison, check out this link to the UK organization The Phoenix Prison Trust. Once you’re at the site, click Why we do it.

Winter in Vancouver: service not snowplowing

As I have mentioned before, I am spending this winter in Vancouver. I wanted to stay at Monkey Valley, to enjoy the incredible stillness that comes when the entire landscape is blanketed in white. But it was not to be; the snow plow company was unable to commit to plowing my roads to keep them open for the winter. I was unable to risk getting snowed in for several months, given my commitments to my people here in Vancouver; teaching yoga to the youths in prison in Burnaby, and assisting my chapter of the Society for Technical Communication as its president. Both of these require my presence in Vancouver occasionally, though ironically my technical writing work does not, as it is conducted entirely by phone and internet.

Yesterday morning I found a light dusting of snow in the backyard of my place in Vancouver, and at Christmas time there was actually over a foot of snow! Very unusual weather for Vancouver, but it was a nice compensation for missing out on the snow at Monkey Valley.

I didn’t give up easily on spending the winter in Monkey Valley. I looked into what would be involved in plowing the roads myself this winter, and came up with several options:

4-wheeler with blade attachment or blower attachment
hand-held and pushed/walked powered snow blower
custom-built blower attachment for my Tracker
tractor with blade or blower attachment

As well as costing anywhere from $1,000 to over $10,000, these options would also require me to do the work, which is to plow 7 KM of road. The time this takes varies depending on the type of equipment, but would be a minimum of 1-2 hours for that length of road each time a few inches of snow falls. Given the 8 inches of snow that fell in early December, I was glad I made the decision to leave when I did. I just did not want to spend my whole winter plowing the road, as much fun as that might be! Maybe next year.

Of the options I mentioned, I think mounting a snowblower on my Tracker would be the best way to go. It would involve permanently altering the vehicle’s front bumper, and attaching to a point higher on the front of the car as well, so it would definitely alter the appearance of the car. But why buy a 4-wheeler or tractor when the Tracker has more power and can do the job!? MORE POWER!!!! As Tim Allen used to say on Home Improvement.

So I have been enjoying serving my people in Vancouver this winter. I recently taught a class I developed, called Yoga for the Office, at the STC’s January program meeting. It went really well. It was a thrill to teach to many people who had never tried yoga before, to help them feel the benefits of it for themselves. The treasurer of the chapter told me it made her headache go away, and the public relations person said her shoulder ache disappeared. Plus people had various interesting experiences of changed mental states due to the breathing we did. So I was very pleased with how the class turned out. I am considering offering this one-hour workshop to offices in the Lower Mainland. Please let me know if you’re interested!

Wild women teach yoga

Exploration of wildness

A lot has changed in my life since I started to explore what it means to be a wild woman. My work life usually involves cerebral pursuits, such as accounting and writing computer software manuals. The exploration of wildness brought my body, heart, and spirit into my work life in a more obvious way. One of the ways, which I want to talk about today, is that I volunteer teaching yoga—a body-based and spiritual practice—to young adults in prison.

The classes I’ve been teaching are at an “open” facility, a less restrictive facility that is for youth who are incarcerated for a short time, or who have already been in a more secure facility and have been promoted to the open facility on their way to full release. The class sizes are very small—a maximum of 6 students. Some weeks I have only had the young men’s class because there were few young women left in the open facility and none wanted to come. So the students in the class change every week. For example, last week I taught five young men, of whom three had been there before, and three young women, one of whom was a repeat student. The first time she’d been to class she was the only student!

Teaching yoga poses to youth

I have been teaching a “daily dozen” of basic poses, beginning with seated meditative time learning and practicing the Ujjayi (victorious) breath, and finishing with Savasana (corpse or resting pose). There usually isn’t time to do all 12 poses, and now that I’ve been doing it for a few months I vary around those ones in response to what’s happening in the class.

I’ve never taught youth before, but from what I’ve since learned talking to other teachers, it is not unusual for these students to need to chat almost constantly! This was a shock at first, as it is very different from adult classes. But I’ve gotten used to it. It helps to know it is not a sign of disrespect, and not to take it personally. Another thing is that many of the students have injuries, conditions such as ADD or ADHD that make it difficult for them to sustain focus, or chronic physical problems. So usually not everyone can do every pose.

What works is to be really flexible, keep it fun, not be too serious. For me having the frame of the daily dozen, which is my own daily practice, helps as a reference point. And from there I respond to what the students are interested in. For example, last week one student was resting and doing a twist lying down on her back, so I added that pose at the end. She said “I was just doing that!” and it tickled her to have the class do it.

So that’s some of what I’ve been discovering. The kids are great. They are very appreciative of the class, and notice the difference it makes in their state of being: how it calms them, makes them feel better. And I find that working with them makes a change in my state of being as well—opening my heart and also deepening me into a ground that is big enough to hold the space for the class.

A couple nights ago something happened in class that is still moving me when I think about it. One of the young men had been in a class where the teacher uses aromatherapy fragrances on the students’ faces during Savasana. He asked if I was going to do that. I didn’t have fragrance with me, but offered to massage their temples instead—something I have learned in teacher training and that one of my favourite teachers always does at the end of class. I asked each young man first if he wanted the massage, to make sure I wasn’t impinging on any body boundaries, and they each did. My heart usually opens towards the students during Savasana anyway, as the students I’ve been teaching for an hour each lay on their backs, covered by a blanket, quieter than they have been throughout the class. But this time, seeing how much each young man longed for a woman’s soothing touch, I felt a new sad tenderness arise.

Hungry ghost realm

When I ran by the river after class I thought about Gabor Maté’s In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, which I read recently, in which he describes how pre-natal and early childhood experiences affect the brain chemistry and lead to addiction. I felt a hopelessness for the young men in the class, in prison for choices they have made while still in their teens. What chance do they have, given the kinds of childhoods they have experienced? I felt hopelessness and also a love and acceptance that this is simply how it is.

I don’t know if attending one yoga class will make a difference in their lives. But maybe, for that one hour, it did. I know that that one hour made a bigger difference in my heart and life than an hour of writing computer software manuals. It is riskier. Wilder. Each time I’m a little afraid to go, not knowing what will happen. And each time, I am opened in an unexpected way. And somehow rise to the occasion, making mistakes and hopefully also facilitating what is needed as being moves through me.