They say follow your bliss but I say follow your pain. Because I’m starting to notice that when I follow my pain, then my bliss follows me. This happened recently with my arm pain. The pain had become so bad that at the end of class, sitting in final cross-legged position, instead of [...]
Spiritual Haiku Eradicating Fear fails. Substituting love for fear is lovely. Tech support. Household help. Roadside assistance. Life – don’t try it alone. Fear keeps me awake. Gratitude puts me to sleep. Love says good morning. I'm a spiral girl living in a linear world. Sometimes passing. Haikus by Beth Lapides, from [...]
Community : Seen & Heard Cha-Ching: Swapping The Mind For A Song Wednesdays Through December 15! Having been hit hard on the head by the Woo Woo Fairy’s weighty wand early on (at birth), I’m already a member of the striving-towards-awakening choir to which Beth Lapides is not really ever preachin’ in her frolicking [...]
My teacher, Erich Schiffmann, said it best, “If you want to push yourself in Yoga, push yourself to show up often.” With a chuckle, he would add “Once you’re there, there’s no need to push yourself. If you do, you get hurt. Then you get mad at Yoga, and it’s not Yoga’s fault. [...]
One of my teachers describes the ultimate expression of a pose to his mostly beginning students with the phrase: In a perfect Yoga world. For instance he might say: In a perfect Yoga world, your head would meet your foot. On good days In a perfect Yoga world helps me see how even [...]
Practice Pages : My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat I was lying in final twist, pulling my hip away from my ribs like a good little yogi, when the teacher, who didn’t know my practice that well, came over and gave me an adjustment. My back cracked. His eyes lit up; I could tell he [...]
Practice Pages : My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat I’m so excited! I’ve made a huge breakthrough in my practice. After only twelve years of determined effort, I have moved on from the first sutra to the second! At this rate I will get through all 195 of Pantanjali’s Sutras by the time I’m 2,340 years [...]
I HAVE A MILLION WAYS to avoid a pose: thinking about something else while I’m in it, slipping out of class to pee or judging everyone else’s poses. My favorite way to avoid a pose has always been to slink off my mat for a sip of water. But lately, I’m having a [...]
A Family Photo Album Sometimes you're born into a family, sometimes you marry into one and sometimes you find your family in a room filled with sweaty headstanders. But whether you are bound by blood, love or belief, family means family photos. Usually the family comes first. But recently I discovered a part [...]
One day I walked into class and noticed that since I had seen my teacher last, like two days ago, he’d changed. Good-bye robust athletic yogi, hello rock star. Not the junkie kind either. The thin, trim, spry, stage-roaming, glowing kind. After class, when I asked him what his secret was, he revealed [...]