A round belly is a happy belly At the end of each yoga class, I guide students through a self-massage. These last five minutes are always quite special for me. Massage not only distributes the chi, or life energy evenly throughout the body, it also helps students to experience metta, or loving-kindness toward themselves and […]
“The best place to practice Zen is at a busy intersection” – Zen proverb Cultivating mindfulness requires nothing exotic. You don’t need any expensive gadgetry or accoutrements. All you need is to be in the here and now. Daily life – sitting, standing, working, resting – is an excellent ground for practice. Sure, from time […]
There is a power and beauty in silence. In the classical yoga tradition, the Sanskrit word Mauna means silence, and it’s said silence helps a yogi purify her mind; it clears the detritus floating on its surface. This is why many yogis take mauna-vrata, a vow of silence. A dedicated time of silence can offer […]
Breath is our most intimate connection with life. It enters us when we’re born and it leaves us when we die. It’s a constant exchange between the inner and outer spaces. It is a simple yet powerful demonstration of how deeply interdependent we are with our surroundings. Everything is interrelated, and nothing arises by itself. […]
Can a goal ever justify the means? Can striving to achieve a yoga pose, regardless of how you get there, lead to a nourishing and sustainable yoga practice? After almost two decades of practice, I can assure you that it cannot. Quite the opposite will happen, actually. The way we move into poses is the […]
Your most important teaching tool Being a yoga teacher means using our voice is an important part of our daily life. So much of what we want our students to learn from us is passed on by what we say. Having an authentic voice, being mindful of what, when and how much we speak, and […]
When it comes to the body, from early on we are bombarded with different, often quite confusing messages. We are cultured thought our schooling and media to judge our bodies according to some outer criteria: how it performs at given tasks, how it looks, how well it fulfills our expectations… If left unguarded, these requirements […]
Emotions in meditation, and in life, can be so overwhelming sometimes. Have you ever wished you had control over your feelings? So you can always be calm and happy? Most of us have wished that.. and realized that it does not work because everything changes. Happy moments come and go, as well as difficult ones. […]
Sometimes people think that the goal of meditation is to stop thinking. Even if that happens sometimes, that is not the point of meditation. The point of mindfulness meditation is to cultivate a friendly, non-aggressive attitude toward whatever is going on in your mind. Mindfulness cultivates a friendly, non-aggressive attitude toward whatever is going on […]
Do you like walking? Just walking around, without any particular purpose? Since I’ve settled in the retreat center here in Thailand, in between my teaching sessions, I’m re-discovering the joy of walking. Just walking. Not even noticing the walking itself. It does something to the mind. Suddenly, there is space for new ideas to arise. […]
W.A. Mozart John Cage Adrienne Rich Coco Chanel MOMA Berlin Philharmonic silk Japanese kimonos Jim Jarmush David Bowie BAUHAUS Marina Abramovic Jackson Pollock Jagoda Buic Marcel Proust kindness dancing nature silence
‘relaxing into everything that arises, without exceptions relaxing into what is, even if it’s not what I’d like it to be relaxing into sitting, into pain, into joy, into chatter relaxing into the method, over and over again relaxing into beauty, comedy, restlessness, tears, opening, breathing relaxing into the method, into the method-less method’ into […]
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