My Yoga Sanctum

My smartphone and my wine glass aren’t invited to my yoga practice.

When I was in India I went kayaking in its most holy river - the Ganges. My kayak guide was from the Brahman or priestly caste – how fitting - and his father basically gave him permission to postpone a serious career to sow his river oats. Brahmans are well-versed in Hindu scriptures and as a result they speak and read Sanskrit, but my guide is definitely a modern Brahman. He kayaks, has a smartphone, and talked about green living practices. On our way up the river he complained about how people were ignorant of the importance of Gaṅgā, a river that is considered to be a living goddess. It irritated him that people would throw beer cans into the goddess. As we kayaked through amazing rapids and I reveled in the crystal northern waters and …

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OM Is Where The Breath Is

Yoga: Clearing the Mind is the Point of the Exercise

Here we go - debunking another common yoga myth.

People flock to studios and gyms to practice spiritual gymnastics, yet yoga ultimately has little to do with exercise. That’s a western adaptation. And of course it’s popular because westerners like to be in shape, which is not news to most Indians.  Not about exercise?  Yoga is about concentration, separation, isolation and not union. It's not about joining the mind-body, but about transcending the mind-body problem.  The yoga text that’s most widely read in the west is the Yoga Surtras of Patañjali. The most quoted sutra in this text is the second sutra, which says that “yoga is the cessation of the modifications of the mind-stuff”. Prepare Yourself! For meditation... Yoga is meant to be read as “concentration”, not “union”. The …

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OM Is Where The Breath Is

Training the Drooling Yoga Dog

What's more annoying than an untrained dog? Try an untrained mind.

I’ve been to plenty of yoga classes where the teacher wants me to focus on one thing: breath. Ha! My mind is like a big, drooling, untrained pitbull. In order to get my mind to stop chewing on the fence, furniture, shoes, and yes, underwear – don’t judge me - I need more than one chew toy. Or I’ll get easily distracted. And go back to chewing on everything I’m not supposed to chew on. These days I’ve adopted two new chew toys. Yum. Look! Over There! The really cool Sanskrit word for “gaze”, “point of view” or “mind’s eye” is dṛṣṭi (pronounced “DRISH-tee”). Often when I’m in a yoga class, especially in balance poses, I’ll hear the teacher instruct the class to stare at a spot on the floor “six feet in front of you”. Well, that’s nice, but …

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OM Is Where The Breath Is

Does Yoga Make You Skinny?

Dispelling some of the myths about yoga.

I get emails, phone calls and Tweets constantly from people who want to begin a yoga practice because they want to lose weight. Maybe they see my silly, skinny ass and think that because I practice yoga that’s how I maintain my weight. Well, not exactly. Some of it is because I've never had children. It's also because I hike and paddleboard. But there are also yoga reasons. Ha! What Yoga Isn’t Aerobic. What a crock... unless you do laps around your yoga mat, and even then, you’ll probably just look really silly. There are plenty of yoga classes out there – particularly vinyasa classes – that might appear aerobic, but truth be told, it’s a veritable impossibility to get your heart rate high enough during any yoga class for it to be called …

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Mel Johnson

4:28 pm on Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Hey Sophie, Thanks for the comment. Funny how we can turn a yoga class into a gymnastics class, eh? ;) Cheers, Mel   more ›

OM Is Where The Breath Is

A 'Centered Being' in Lorton Town Center

An interview with local yoga teacher Suzie Carmack.

Lorton's Suzie Carmack was easy to spot. She was the yogi with the fiery red hair eating healthy Indian food in the Johnson Center at George Mason University. She's currently getting her doctorate in health communication, and as the owner of Lorton's "Centered Being" yoga practice, it wasn't long before she spilled her yoga beans to me. Suzie, who began teaching from her own home studio in Lorton, teaches weekly at the Lorton Town Center. Crossfit Liberation sponsors her teaching and allows Suzie to bring yoga to Lorton at 7:00 a.m. on Wednesdays and 9:30 a.m. on Thursdays. "I've been drawing many people in Lorton who were just hungry for yoga and I'm all about whoever can be here, let's be here," Suzie said. "Yoga can be a recovery …

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OM Is Where The Breath Is

Mind Thy Yoga

It’s important to reevaluate practice. Maintain humility, and listen to the educated.

Two weeks ago I wrote an article featuring me in a weak version of a difficult pose: handstand scorpion. In the same article I hailed the research of a real live PhD from Berkeley who discovered that part of what makes yoga awesome is that I become more aware of my body. I say that part of what makes yoga terrible is that I can get really arrogant and competitive. Notice I’m the problem. Not yoga. Not So Sexy Last week I was in the chiropractor’s office and complained to him that I was feeling weak and having shortness of breath. It turns out that attempting that sexy scorpion pose might have been causing problems in my spine, which in turn was causing problems in my organs. Adrenals – my kidney hats – when not functioning properly can …

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