Photo Credit: evanbdudley

By Jason Wachob

I’m not a yoga pro or a yogi. In fact, I’m not even your typical yoga person. First of all, I’m a dude. I’m tall – 6′7″ to be exact. Yes, is the answer to your next question: I played basketball. I played for four years in college at Columbia, in New York City. I also was a trader on Wall Street for years. But enough about me, you can read more about my yoga journey here.

However, I do practice yoga, and since I returned to the mat three months ago, I credit yoga for healing the derailed discs in my lower back, and getting me into the best shape I’ve ever been in. As founder and curator of MindBodyGreen.com, I get to interview, meet and even practice with a number of professionals in the yoga world. Here are five things I’ve learned from these amazing people:

1. I learned from Tara Stiles that yoga is for everyone. It’s not just for people in New York or California, or for people who are young, healthy or conscious. Yoga is for everyone. Yoga is for Tara’s Uncle Norm who lives on a farm in Illinois. Yoga is for my 90-year-old grandma (who just began her practice last week!). Yoga is for everyone and anyone who’s looking to connect with their intuition to find their own best health and spirituality.

2. I learned from Kathryn Budig that it’s OK to fall flat on your face – in fact, it’s probably a good thing. Facing our fears by attempting new yoga poses helps us grow both on and off the mat. As Kathryn said, “The ego bruises much worse than the body, but the beating helps to quiet it. The funny thing is, once you believe in yourself and begin to loosen the grip on the fear, you actually enjoy the challenge.”

3. I learned from Mariel Hemingway that you don’t need to look to others in your yoga practice for answers. Mariel has been practicing for 25 years, and about 20 years ago her perspective changed: “I went from following what other people thought was best, or what was right for me and became more connected to my inside – and looked for answers within me.”

4. I learned from Elena Brower that even though it might take a while, it’s important to shop around until you find the instructor that resonates with you. “The underlying method is the same, but each teacher has a distinct voice and brings other understandings to the instruction.” This holds so true. Finding the right instructor and the right practice makes all the difference in the world. It’s this reason why so many people either go to one class and never come back – or become hooked for life!

5. I learned from Michael Taylor that we don’t need to speed up our yoga, we need to slow it down. We’re already good at doing things fast – in fact, we’re all probably too good at this. However, it’s slowing down (especially when it comes to our yoga practice) that might have the real benefits. When we slow down, we become more mindful of our bodies, more in tune with what our bodies are telling us – what our bodies really need, in terms of what we eat, how we practice and how we live our everyday lives.

Jason Wachob’s goal is to promote the idea that wellness is for everyone – and that it can be fun, fulfilling and non-restrictive. He is the founder and curator of MindBodyGreen – a website that provides tips, news and inspiring interviews for better, healthy, green living. After years of successfully trading equities on Wall Street, Jason decided to make a lifestyle change – focusing on wellness and building companies that promote it.

Photo Credit: Lee Jordon

Recently, I was asked if I felt that yoga was actually (perhaps) an imposition on natural, organic movement. I think it depends. For those super-attuned people who are aware of what feels healing for them based on previous experience or understanding, maybe yoga is an imposition creating boundaries that actually stifle free movement and flow. Maybe.

In my humble experience, the boundaries offered by yoga, specifically the technology of Anusara® yoga, gave me my first taste of freedom and the most interior expansion I’ve ever known. To that point, dear friend and colleague Christina Sell points out, “…when I use the word ‘practice,’ I am not referring only to asana. For me, practice involves an approach to life that is anchored in a commitment to see clearly and to act from that vision. Practice, for me, includes but is not limited to, asana, pranayama, meditation, what I eat, how I eat, why I eat, observing myself, my thoughts, my actions, my reactions, my responses, the cultivation of compassion for myself and others, study, serving, being a friend, a mate, a daughter, a sister and so on.”

All of the aforementioned “practices” are boundaries of a sort. All require observation, a crucial boundary. We must be watching if we are to make progress in our process. We have to be able to SEE what it is that isn’t serving us. When we think we will fail, we do. And to change that pattern, we must first observe that our thoughts are leaning toward failure. Then we can create the conditions for a shift from doubt to gratitude.

Having been taught by Dr. Douglas Brooks that boundaries can be exquisite pathways to a greater freedom, I’ve been looking at what behaviors aren’t working. The highest on my list: rushing. Haste. I’ve been looking at how a boundary refinement of my own needs to happen. And there’s only one that I want to mention here. It helps us all move from haste–in our bodies, minds, and hearts–to a place of much more presence.

It’s called pacing: pacing of my breathing; pacing of the intervals between my thoughts; pacing of my words, my gestures; pacing of the way I stir the agave into my tea. I recently read that to shift a negative state of any kind, we must strive to significantly reduce the speed of whatever it is we’re doing. At this particular moment, I want to be a more patient mama. We can all learn to pace ourselves around our kids and set examples of patience. After seeing time and time again how some ridiculous agenda to do something perfectly is preventing me from listening to my child’s musings on the world, I know this is where I want to improve. I want to  s-l-o-w   d-o-w-n.

The boundary of pacing is key when I’m teaching, listening, spending time with family, friends, students and teachers, traveling or writing. It’s helping me to smooth out the features of my face as well as my gestures. It’s teaching me how to eat more respectfully and receive more nourishment from my food. It’s keeping me healthy by reminding me to go to sleep by 11:00 p.m. instead of 1:00 a.m. It’s making my son so happy to look into my eyes and be heard. It’s bringing me deeper into my backbend practice than ever before and helping me appreciate the significance of simple foundational awareness in all the wildest yoga poses. Because I’m applying this boundary, this awareness of pacing, things are shifting, slowly, organically.

What’s your boundary, and how is it helping you?

Photo Credit: Hillary Harvey

By Jeffrey Davis

I don’t have time to feel ill. At least, that used to be my attitude. I didn’t ignore a head cold or sinus infection. I just had my acupuncturist wife pin me down to perk me up, practiced a few key yoga postures, and moved on. Dis-ease desisted. But then a tick bit me in the gut and kicked my attitude in the butt.

That was in June 2008. A bullring mark and three weeks of antibiotics later, lightning struck our farmhouse, triggering a fire that seared my library and files and left us without a home for fifteen months. In October, while living in a rental, we got pregnant. From October to March, I fought like a lawyer with the home insurance company. In May 2009, another tick bit me. Test results said I was positively positive for Lyme—again. In July, our daughter arrived. And in October 2009, we returned home.

During that time, I awoke each morning feeling old. My arms tingled. My head felt as if I had chugged a pint of Southern Comfort the night before, even though my most toxic beverage was white tea. Even worse, muscular aches pulsed in ever-moving spots—from my neck to my right forearm to my left thumb pad. When I’d press on the ache, I’d release a belch like Pavarotti with gas. Gas seemed to lodge in my hamstrings, my trapezius, my pinkie finger. (I’m not exaggerating). My morning yoga sessions would have been comical if they didn’t seem so pathetic. By mid-morning I could function, but my body moved as if driving 55 mph in second gear.

Even once we moved home, my energy was sapped. Yet I was 44 years old, gray-haired, and holding a baby girl in my arms who would graduate from high school with a belching 62-year-old father. I needed help.

Do you remember that baby bird searching for its mother in the Dr. Seuss book asking “Are you my mommy?” That was me as I traveled around last winter asking one healer after another, “Are you my healer?” My wife stuck me with needles, fed me nasty bitter teas, and said to cut out dairy, wheat, and sugar. My doctor shook his head and said, “You might be one of those few people who has residual symptoms of Lyme even after you’ve been properly treated. Be patient. It’ll pass. And your wife’s right about the diet.” “And the belching?” I asked. He shrugged his shoulders. A chiropractor told me to stay away from wheat and gave me a supplement called Miracle Mineral Supplement. (“I didn’t name it,” he apologized when my eyebrows rose. “But it works.”) An energy healer told me to daydream more.

I followed everyone’s advice, and all of it helped. Among other distresses, the antibiotics might have triggered four decades of toxic accumulation of dairy, wheat, and sugar. After two months with a newly purified diet, I started to get my chi back.

Still, I sensed I needed to go more deeply into healing. I kept asking myself, “Just how good can you feel? Can you really dedicate your life to feeling so optimal that you can be of even more service to your loved ones and the world? Just how good can you feel?”

The big shift came this past December. I had let myself be ill for a year and a half. With the new year approaching and my baby growing, one morning I asked myself: “What’s my dharma for 2010? What quality of body do I need to manifest that dharma?”

Dharma is a lofty word sometimes translated as “wisdom,” “the Buddha’s collected wisdom,” or “duty” (in the sense of your unique duty, not your obligations). But in this context, I translate it as “that which calls you to act well in the world.” So sometimes I rephrased it, “What is calling me to act well in the world in 2010?”

I’d see images of my daughter and wife, and of myself flowing with the students I teach at retreats and workshops and with my writing clients. I saw myself flowing at the desk as a writer. Put simply, I had work to do in 2010. Crazy, sexy work involving living creatively, tracking wonder, and being available—and helping thousands of others do the same.

Dharma is not just mind work. My body played (and plays) a seminal role in dharma becoming manifest. So what quality of body did my dharma need? “Vitality,” I heard over and over. Every morning since then, I have sat, moved, and breathed with those questions. They led me to develop a new sequence of yoga postures and, especially, breathing tools designed to open specific blocked parts of my body and invigorate my limbs.

This yoga-meditation stuff works. My true self wants to reside and be comfortable in this house of a body. Yoga-meditation practice makes this house of a body a sanctuary for the self to reside, replenish, and ultimately express itself. The house is less crowded. A life force moves through it more effortlessly than it has in years. Less belching. More space and spaciousness.

I try to be more patient now with my body, its quirks, and inevitable change. I try to take my time with and learn from illness and dis-ease. And woe to glutens, dairy, and sugar—I thank the ticks for that enlightenment!

I also received the gift of a new mantra: Inspired action. Surrendered outcome. Harnessed breath work reminds me of this mantra throughout the day: Inhale inspired action. Exhale surrendered outcome. The self and body tell me: Give every action everything you have. And then let go. Teach with gusto. Write with verve. Papa with heart.

And let go. Students move on. Words vanish. And that little girl, well, she will leave one day.

Yoga continues to be my muse. I show up for her, and each morning she’s always there, on the mat or in the crib, waiting for me.

Jeffrey Davis teaches Yoga as Muse workshops, retreats, and facilitator training throughout North America. He serves as a creativity consultant and writing coach for clients around the world through his organization Center to Page, LLC, is author of The Journey from the Center to the Page: Yoga Philosophies and Practices as Muse for Authentic Writing, and blogs about wonder and living creatively for PsychologyToday.com.

By Jennifer Garam

Two and a half years ago, I tried Bikram yoga and I hated it. As I was lying on my back in a pool of my own sweat in Savasana at the end of class, the teacher urged new students to come back the next day because it “gets better,” and my internal dialogue screamed, “NO FREAKIN’ WAY!” Then, as I burst out the front door and into the cool fall air gasping for breath, my inner voice continued, “See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya!” As a loyal Vinyasa yoga practitioner, I had given Bikram a shot, felt like I had been beaten up by the class, and never intended on setting foot in a 110 degree Bikram studio again. That is, until a few weeks ago, when I decided to give it a second chance.

There were several reasons why I went crawling back. This winter in New York was exceedingly long, cold, and gray, and I was craving heat to boost me out of my achy lethargy and self-diagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder, which was exacerbated by four straight days of pouring rain and gale force winds. Also, I hurt my hamstring during my foray into pole dancing class two years ago, and ever since then it seizes up when I do Triangle Pose in Vinyasa yoga, and I was hoping that the heat of Bikram might help stretch it out in a non-spasmodic way. But my strongest motivation to go back to Bikram was that I had recently checked my ex’s Twitter which (a) never makes me feel good about myself and (b) always results in a depressive downward spiral. Vinyasa classes were just not working to shake the thoughts of him out of my brain, and I remembered a friend saying years ago, “Bikram yoga is the only thing that turns off my thoughts.” I needed to take drastic yogic measures to elevate my self-esteem and quiet my mind STAT… before I checked his Twitter again!

This time around, the sparks flew right away, and I fell in love with Bikram yoga. At the beginning of class during a Pranayama breathing exercise the teacher said, “Breathe out all your thoughts and worries,” and I eagerly complied, exhaling enthusiastically. Like the last time, I was again dripping in sweat, wheezing for air, and fighting frequent waves of nausea, but looking at my reflection in the mirror during class and seeing my rosy (okay, bright red) cheeks and muscular sweaty body contorting into challenging poses, I felt strong, vital, and powerful, and my self-confidence soared. I had to focus so hard on breathing and not throwing up that my thoughts hardly uttered a peep from the moment I stepped into the sweltering room until the second I left the studio. And when those thoughts eventually did return, they were more languid, sedated, and blissful, instead of racing, anxious, and agonizing about my ex-boyfriend.

After my last attempt at Bikram, I had dragged myself home and passed out for the rest of the day, but after this class, detoxified and energized, I bounded through the streets, walking/dancing home blasting “Carry Out” by Timbaland and Justin Timberlake on my iPod, feeling like one badass hot (and sweaty) yogini. My friend and newly designated Bikram mentor Bridgette, who is known for having converted at least eight people to this style of yoga, texted me multiple times after class with advice and encouragement. She instructed me to drink coconut water to restore my electrolytes, and told me that a consistent Bikram yoga practice would make me calmer and increase my focus and mental clarity. Brain fog is my arch-nemesis, and I often feel like if I just had more mental clarity my life would dramatically improve. That alone was reason enough to return for another Bikram class. And, although not specifically touted as a benefit of Bikram on either the yoga studio’s website or by my friend Bridgette, if the sweaty, vigorous 90 minute classes manage to take my thoughts off my ex, then that’s a worthy bonus.

So this time, when the teacher said at the end of class, “You should come back tomorrow,” my internal dialogue piped in with, “Hell, yeah!” The third time’s a charm, and if it can get me over my ex-boyfriend, Bikram yoga and I just might be soul mates after all.

“We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.” -Tao Te Ching

One of the rituals my young family has embraced is the last-minute search for something essential before leaving the house to do anything. Our initial rituals involved “the finding of the socks.” There were only three pairs of socks my daughter would wear to pre-K, and they never seemed to be where we put them the night before. Today, several years later, we have a far more sophisticated system involving the needs of all four family members.

This Saturday was the first day of a new swim season, so we celebrated with the losing of the goggles. My wife acts in an administrative capacity during these rituals focusing her efforts at finding the essential object while my daughter acts as a sort of Greek chorus that chants, “are we going to be late?” I perform a consulting role assigning blame and suggesting various means for the avoidance of loss in the future. And so it was while assigning blame concerning the goggles that I arrived at something worth parenting over.

My angst was not so much over being late, as I have learned to get my family moving fifteen minutes before they would reasonably need to be moving which seems to do the trick. Rather a clear image came to me: the reverence I had as a child for objects like my baseball glove, my bat, and my hockey stick. I was not a particularly wise kid like my son and daughter seem to be. But I understood that these seemingly worthless objects were the means to priceless experiences. As I accepted the need to buy another set of goggles, I understood the need to talk to my daughter about what has worth and what does not.

Later that day I sat down with my daughter and presented her with two objects that had no market value. One was a yoga mat I have had for the last eight years and the other was the key to her grandmother’s house. We discussed the fact that in and of themselves these objects had no value at all, but each in its own way delivered priceless experiences. My yoga mat is my means for serving both my family and my community. The key is really a key to a grandmother’s unconditional love. We also discussed the idea that what we put into something is what we get out of it. As a young person I treated my wrestling shoes as sacred objects, like a warrior’s sword and shield. And in those shoes I was able to experience a true hero’s journey.

Everything in our lives is essentially empty. Our marriages, our families, our friendships, our careers are all empty of any objective meaning. What we experience, then, in our marriages, families, friendships, and careers is what we put into them.