Yoga Community in Sonoma

Our free talk on the Fall Cleanse with Yoga and Ayurveda is Thursday evening,
September 18. Feel free to come, whether you’re signing up for the three week cleanse and yoga/meditation program, or or just curious about ayurveda, and the traditional Fall Cleanse.
We’ll have a special Blog page set up for those participating, but feel free to also read about what’s happening there!

It has little, if anything, to do with your hamstrings relaxing, or perfecting an arm balance.

Last night I was standing on my balcony, talking to very dear friend on the phone. As I began to tell him about the Perseid meteor showers that happen around August 12 every year…
I looked up at the sky, gesturing toward the stars (I always gesture, even when my yoga students eyes are closed in savasana!), and..Lo, and Behold!
It was as if my fingertip traced a falling star across the sky!

I spoke, and the very thing I was speaking of manifested before my eyes…

My teacher Rod Stryker says (from Swami Rama), you know your practice is working when your life becomes more joyful, more fearless, and the time it takes from when you set your intention and it manifesting gets shorter and shorter.

I believe my practice is working just fine!

Pay attention (if you have to pay something, pay attention!). When you notice this happening for you…comment, please!
Babs

Yoga-size that is!

I’m a bike geek as surely as I am a yogi. While I’ve been a “cyclist” for only four years, I bought my first bike as an adult about 16 years ago. Steady and steel, and heavy, my now old hybrid Diamondback has served me well for years. First, as my only bike, when I fancied I was actually touring (half hour rides!), and then as my commuter–basket, fenders, and all, when I brought home a Bianchi in 2004.

I was completely in love with the new, zippy, fancy, higher-end cross bike. I trained on it in the summer of 2004 for a fall tour in France, and have loved it daily since.

True bike geek that I am, my eyes began to rove to other two-wheeled wonders about two years ago, when my friend Jeff Fleury turned me on to old school bikes. With lugs. And made of (now lighter) steel.
You know, the kind you envision people touring around the European countryside. I started looking for one just my size on Craigslist, and happened to bump into one at a Bike Swap in Santa Rosa in late spring. Just my size! And metallic green! And lugs! And woman-specific! And a steal! I couldn’t ride it on the spot, as it had a flat, and with an odd-sized front wheel, no spare tubes to be found…

When I finally rode the new bike (the one I couldn’t stop going outside to stare at I was so in love), my heart sank. It felt way, way too small for me. I could not even balance on it. I was going to put it on Craigslist and re-sell it, but it was such a beauty, I kept it around just to look at it–like art.
I went back to riding my old Diamondback workhorse for my daily commute, and my little, lithe, Bianci for weekend rides through the vineyards. They felt fine.

My friend and Yoga Community student, Sherry Adams, encouraged me to just start riding the new green Terry bike, that it might just be a matter of adjusting to a new feel. So I did. And Sherry was right! I began to love the feel of riding on this new (to me) bike that at first felt so awkward and wrong, I had almost decided to never try it again.

Three bikes not being enough for a geek, I found another vintage-style, older, lugged steel bike at a garage sale in Missoula, Montana, last month while on vacation. It practically sang my name out from across a crowded garage sale lot. And it’s a mixte (the cool name for what most of us call a “women’s frame), and red! And it was only $7.50! It’s still in Montana at the moment, but that’s of no concern, I rode it for a week around town, and loved it. It felt like it was made for my frame.

So, I came home, and was drawn to use bike number three, the green Terry I had thought was too small, for my daily commute. After having ridden bike number four, also small, it felt much better. A better fit.

Yes, I am talking about yoga. Here goes:
I got on the Diamondback, my original bike, the one I’ve ridden for 16 years, and held on to because I loved the way it felt, and it felt like just my size…
Guess what? The Terry was not too small, the Diamondback is too big!
And surely has been all along, I just didn’t know it, because I had either not tried anything else, or when I did, I thought that it (the green Terry bike) was too small.

It was not too small, it turns out to be exactly my right size, it was just unfamiliar.
The old bike was simply a habit. A habit that never fit.

And so it goes with yoga poses, or anything for that matter.
Sometimes we keep doing the same thing, going through the same routine, or feeling like something new “doesn’t fit,” when in fact, if we just try it on for size with a new perspective, it may be better for us than anything we’ve tried before.

Sometimes what is going to be the “perfect fit” is avoided just because it is unfamiliar.
And what really doesn’t fit us at all is held on to just because it, however ill-fitting, is familiar.

So. Be willing to ride to learn a bike–or try a familiar asana on it a new way– all over again!

Babs

Sunday August 17, 9:30-1:00
Love new (to you) yoga clothes? Stretch your yoga wardrobe budget at our first Yoga Clothes Swap!
Bring in with your yoga togs, music, books, props and other yoga/relaxation/mediation-esque goodies for exhange and munch on goodies and hang out with your yoga pals. Then go hang up the goods in your newly replenished closet!
Drop off your gently used items and add to our pile any time between now and then.

Motivating ourselves for a daily practice can sometimes be a bigger challenge than Bhujangasana with a backache.
There’s Sanctuary in Numbers, and inspiration is exponential when your yoga classmates can support you by blog as well as when mat-to-mat.

Yoga Community Yogis, This is your place to Gather, Share, and Grow anytime, anywhere, from your keyboard to your friends, teachers, and fellow students.

Come on.
Gather. Share. Grow.

I’ll go first:

While watching Wimbledon on Sunday, I heard a comment about one of Roger Federer’s motivations when he is dead tired and needs a carrot on a stick. One of his supporters told him to keep this in mind:
“Remember who you are.”

A wonderful reminder. And to me, that is exactly what yoga does. Brings you back to a place where you remember who you really are. Purusha, that is.

Barbra (Babs)

The loveliest surprise this morning! Kathy Grunigen stepped foot into Yoga Community in Sonoma. Kathy spends much of her time back East, but when she returns to Sonoma (really a second home more than a vacation), she always returns to classes at Yoga Community…Kathy finds the classes to be a breath of fresh air, and at least of the caliber she finds back on the other coast…