Talking About The Heart Of An Athlete In Every Body When Matthew Sanford was an athletic thirteen-year-old, one devastating moment when his family’s car slipped off an overpass changed everything. His father and sister died in the car accident that left him paralyzed from the chest down. At the age of thirteen he lost the [...]
My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat I’ve always been kind of embarrassed by how much I need my yoga teachers to tell me what a great job I’m doing. It’s not a job after all, it’s yoga. Not that I don’t love to be challenged, corrected, adjusted, egged on, pushed or even [...]
A few days before my first yoga New Year, my teacher asked us to make yoga New Year’s resolutions. Instantly, and uncharacteristically not even taking the three dark days till New Year’s to mull it over, I resolved to get good at jump ups. And I have been resolving to get good at jump ups [...]
The Sport of Yoga On power yoga teacher Mark Blanchard’s website, Cincinnati Bengals player TJ Houshmandzadeh describes his yoga practice, “It’s like lifting weights and stretching at the same time.” When in LA, Houshmandzadeh trains with Blanchard and the football star appears in Blanchard’s newest DVD series. These types of testimonials may well inspire a [...]
Sitting In The Fire Of Our Experience A fire ignited near our Rustic Canyon retreat, and the racket, smoke and ashes floating through the window reflected the scattered states of our consciousness. It seemed fitting that helicopters and sirens would interrupt our meditation, since even the most disciplined meditators are experiencing some fear about the [...]
Core transformation: What better way to get motivated and conquer that last set of sit-ups, than in a full room where competition bares its fangs setting aside the humility needed to stop while others persist? This was my inner monologue accompanying my 6:30 A.M. arrival at the first session of Psalm Isadora’s three-week intensive dedicated [...]
I was settling into my end-of-class lotus, feeling so grateful for my yoga practice, ready for a little oming. But no. The teacher asked us to mentally list three things we were grateful for. And I panicked. Because I’ve quit gratitude lists. It's not that I’m an ingrate. I thank people all the [...]
I was used to having the most advanced practice in the room. I rocked difficult arm balances, twisted myself into complicated knots and bent myself into stunning scorpions with little effort. Thirteen years as a competitive gymnast had rendered me strong and flexible, which made for easy asana assimilation. I found my way to Ashtanga [...]
The first time I saw Andrew Harvey speak, during one of Shiva Rea’s teacher trainings, he delivered his appeal for listeners – for all of us – to engage in activism from a grounded place of sacred passion with such fire that I thought he would combust right in front of our eyes. He has [...]
Luxuriating yoga sessions while at home can offer some of the richest experiences of centering that you may ever have. To achieve this, you’ll need to face the demons of procrastination and laziness as well as doubt about whether you’ll know what to do without a teacher instructing. We have a tendency to slide into [...]