Yoga Immersion

I had the opportunity to spend some time with one of my childhood mentors during my mother’s funeral. This woman was a single mother with a young son whom I watched for many years after school and often overnight, for about seven years.

Not only did this woman provide me with my spending money as a teenager by allowing me to watch her son, but she also coached me in some of the ways of the world.

I also have her to thank for introducing me to Motown and, believe it or not, yoga.

She had an extensive record collection that I would peruse while my charge was asleep. She also had one thin little book about yoga in her library called The Sivananda Companion to Yoga, which I read over and over again. I not only enjoyed the beautiful color photos of incredibly flexible and strong people doing asanas, but I was also fascinated by the sections on kriyas, pranayama, and meditation, and by the possibilities that might arise from a full yoga practice.

Some of you know that I went on to take classes at the Sivananda Ashram, by coincidence (or was it?), when I studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1985.

I’ve been practicing yoga for a very long time. (You can do the math!) I can definitely credit this practice with helping me maintain a healthy body, stable energy, and perhaps a more expansive mind. But who really can tell what would have happened otherwise? I can only know where my mind started and where I recognize it is now.
After almost 40 years of practice, I feel like I have something to offer—and I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to do so each and every day. Never in my wildest imagination did I think I would teach yoga. I certainly never imagined I would be teaching at 60 years old. But here I am, and here you are.

I want to share with you what’s going to be happening in the upcoming Yoga Immersion and what I will be sharing from my almost 40-year journey.

We had a short meeting yesterday (which was recorded of course), and it comes in two parts. The first part is a guided experience into close self-observation, pranayama, and relaxation, designed to help you connect with your energetic body. All you need is someplace to sit and someplace to lie down if you are going to follow it—nothing fancy. Anyone is welcome to have a listen.

The second part of the recording is me explaining how this year’s immersion is going to work and what it’s going to focus on.

Truthfully, you can go to almost any yoga studio and learn more about asana and how to do the poses. However, it may not be with the same depth of information that might come from a yoga therapist who has been studying anatomy and physiology and studying bodies and how they work—or don’t work. (Thanks, Mom and Dad!)

If you are interested in knowing more about how your body works, this immersion will offer a little bit from a usual 200-hour training that teaches you where to put your foot, where to put your hand, and where to put your hip so the pose looks like it does in the books.

I may not know—or even want to know—what happens when I push the accelerator in my car and what makes it go. Many people do know that and understand it quite well. In the same way, some people don’t really care what is activated when you are in Triangle Pose, or how to say "triangle pose" in Sanskrit, or what the energetic components of the pose are.

Personally, I do, and that’s why I focus on these details in the ways that I do. Everybody has their interests, and this happens to be mine. And if it is yours, you are in the right place.

You may know that I still study with my teacher who I took my first teacher training with back in 1999. She has shifted pretty far from teaching asana. (In fact, now when she does an asana, she’ll say something like, “Huh. This feels good! Who knew?”) All those years of study with her, along with all my years of study with Mukunda, as well as my own practice and life experience have given me what I feel is a good insight into the energetics and the structures that underlie the physical and the mental.

I personally don’t feel yoga is practiced efficiently without understanding those structures. They are the forces that drive your experiences here in the waking, conscious state. So why not pay attention to them? A lot of benefits come from giving attention here, and a lot is missed when you don't.

If you’ve been to my classes, you’ve probably heard me say at some point that practicing an asana without awareness is the same as practicing aerobics or gymnastics. Not that there’s anything wrong with that—I love aerobics, and I enjoy watching good gymnastics. And I do believe that gymnasts are involved in the same process as yoga, but of most likely that aspect isn’t emphasized when you’re casually engaging in those activities.

Whereas in a yoga class, it is—or at least it should be.

Part of my desire to continue teaching is to help people get back to the roots of the yoga practice—without watering it down, without making it culturally palatable for the comfort of Westerners, but really putting it out there as authentically and completely as I know it to be.

It’s my intention to continue doing that in this next segment of the Yoga Immersion.

This segment will be about awareness of the physical, the energetic, and the mental.

Maybe you feel you’ve already gotten that in class or in an immersion. And maybe you have. But the truth is, as we mature and as we age, we hear things so much differently.

No material is ever really repeated.

I know I’m in a much different place now, so how the material comes out of my mouth is different. And you are in a different place too, as we all are, so how you receive that information is also much different.

We go through all of that in the recording, so I don’t need to repeat it here. If you’re interested in watching the recording, you’ll hear it for yourself.

If you’d like a copy of the recording, just email me and I’ll send you the links. It will be in two parts: the first part is the experience, and the second part is the information.

So, if yoga is calling you in some way, like it did me when I was 12 or 13 back in that apartment in the Bronx, just consider:
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When are you going to answer that call?