Today, I was overcome with a fierce desire for diplomas, for certificates, for material legitimacy. I wanted to hold in my hand knowledge that I learned something, meta-knowledge, perhaps. I wanted to get all kinds of certifications - vinyasa, prenatal yoga, kids yoga, Jivamukti, Anusara, you name it - and hang them on my dorm room walls. I wanted tangible knowledge that I am learning, something I can touch because right now, bits and pieces of life-altering knowledge are being sewn together in my head. 

But then, sitting in my YTT, I realized that knowledge that I have learned is not tangible, but it can be measured. It is measured through teaching.

What good is an education if you don’t do anything with it? Off The Mat And Into The World is both a name of an organization that I love and it happens to conveniently sum up all of yoga philosophy. What good is a pose if it is not an embodiment of something larger? What good is the yoga on the mat if it does not serve you and others when the 90 minutes are up? 

Master teacher Michael Hewett says his reason for creating the Sarva Yoga Academy is because too often, he sees artists go on to become yoga teachers initially as a way to finance their passions for art while doing something that can enhance their art on a spiritual level. Then, once they “officially” become teachers, they switch hats with an either/or mentality, that dualism, the extremes, that yoga warns us against. They abandon their art for this spiritual practice, devoting all their time to yoga. They miss the point. The point of all this svadyaya (self-study) and spiritualism is not a life in its own right. It is a practice to enhance life. Yoga itself is an education in life. It is every practitioners dharma - their duty - to go out and live it, off the mat and in the world. 

I am undertaking many a spiritual journey this summer and one of these is a creative one. I love to write. I write Young Adult fiction and poetry. I need yoga to keep my mind clear so the creative bursts may emerge. Yoga is not a copout for creativity and I am grateful there are teachers who do both/and instead of either/or to show me the way. 

This is the issue with “professional,” “full-time” students. You know the type - the 40-year-olds roaming campus who are not your professors. I am of the school of thought that with extensive education, with intensive learning, there is an obligation to teach. Those students have a duty, a dharma, to teach and pass on what they are learning.

If everyone is a student - and everyone is - they everyone is also a teacher. We have everything within to succeed. To not use it is a waste. Through learning, we teach and eventually, through teaching, we learn. We teach to preserve what we have learned. 

I became a Spanish tutor when my high school had to cut out its foreign language department due to budget cuts. I wanted to continue learning Spanish so badly. In order to progress, I had to practice it and in order to get to the more advanced vocabulary and grammar, I had to go over my basics. So what did I do? I started teaching it to someone else. Now, doing this YTT, I am doing the same thing. I am learning what a carefully-aligned tadasana can do for my spine through breaking it down for beginners. Then, in my own practice, I am able to go further because I have cleared that mental space for the new to come in.

The more I shed what I do not need and give it to others, the more space I get in my own life. That space is not vacant and certainly does not lie dormant. No, that space is intended for the new to come in. Without room in our minds, bodies, hearts, there is no space for the new to enter. That is why we practice vinyasa. In training tonight, I was told that vinyasa means “to place in a special way.” That special way invites a sequence which is intended to create space in the poses so that we may gain new - otherwise known as deeper - expressions in future poses. Every pose is part of a greater process for which there is no end result. It can’t, therefore, be about just one pose, a statement the director of my training cannot emphasize enough for students engaged in a tug-of-war of body and mind. 

And so it is with teaching. We must create space to make way for the new, for larger and more expansive knowledge and for the subsequent, larger, and more expansive life. Teaching is the most direct form of giving, of recycling the old for the new so that others may do the same. 

I am learning how to let the waves of the teachings that have come before me wash over, hydrating my body so that I may store that potential energy so that it can kinesthetize later in my own teaching.

Much of Yoga is about challenge, about dancing on the edge of what we are capable of as bodies, as minds, as jivas (souls). Challenge is a good thing when it is honored in the form of practice. My yoga practice has been challenging me for around five years now. I remember when I was a junior in high school and I took a teen ashtanga class at the 92nd St Y. I couldn’t get into up dog from chataranga. It became my challenge, first by straightening my right arm and then my left, to flow through that transition. Then, I discovered hot yoga and my challenge became early morning classes with regularity, adding consistency to my practice. A few months later, I discovered Jivamukti and my challenge became standing on my head. Last year, I went to college and my challenge became cultivating a sustainable home practice outside of the yoga haven on NYC. Now, I am faced with yet another challenge.

I am doing a yoga teacher training and as a result, I am practicing a lot. Yoga too often gets mislabeled as “self-care.” Yes, when I am doing yoga, I am caring for myself, but in practicing self-care, I am also caring for others because I am able to show up in the world in a way that makes me of maximum service. That latter part is the true challenge of yoga - that is what involves the effort, the edge - the doing of service. In the Rockies video I posted, there is a teacher who says, “Yoga is not yoga unless it is brought into your life.” 

That is where Peace by Peace comes in. At the beginning of class, I dedicate my practice to something greater than me. For the month of June, as I practice daily, the fruits of my asanas will be dedicated and devoted to Sanctuary for Families, a NY nonprofit that serves domestic violence and sex trafficking victims and their families. 

To keep my yoga authentic, I want to keep it far away from being self-indulgent. I want to keep it as a vital force by giving its fruits away. Please sponsor me because, as with every single challenge I embark on, I need support. And it’s simple - there’s a button at the top of this blog!

Shanti Shanti Shanti.

Namaste. 

Sunday was the last day of my yoga teacher training. There is so much I have learned, concentrated so heavily in these last two intense and beautiful months, but what I carry with me on a day-to-day basis is not necessarily the Bhagavad Gita or the Yoga Sutras (although those are incredibly important in my study and practice). I carry with me what I have learned from my sangha, my community of yogis who have taught me so much.

We are all innate teachers as we walk, breathe, talk, and perform life’s simplest actions. We area ll teachers because we are all informants of how the world works. So here, on this public forum, I would like to share some of the yogic life lessons (some sutras - threads - you might say) that I have learned from the people I share this path with.

• Love life. Cry as a way of being in the present body. Be open, honest, and unashamed of vulnerabilities. Be an absolute child with the heart of a grandmother and the large, wondering eyes of a toddler.
• It is possible to travel all over the world, to roam naked on beaches, to call exes “past loves,” and boyfriends “partners.”
• Be a spiritual intellectual rather than an intellectual spiritual by using intellect to further spirituality rather than have it be harmful in trying to think out everything.
• Use energy as service by being boundlessly joyful, putting the oxygen mask on yourself first in order to put it on others afterwards, using a sense of true purpose and dharma while being a soul of love, light, family, and nonjudgment.
• We are all perfectly imperfect. No one is as they seem.
• Simple sound can give people who are otherwise silenced a voice.
• It’s awesome to be young, totally light-hearted, absolutely hilarious, finding humor in the mundane, and not taking myself so seriously. 
• To be driven in one’s dharma is to channel service and a deep-seated need for it productively.
• Be true to your nature and use it to be of service in a population that can use your own uniqueness.
• A yoga practice is sustainable and life is not about either/or; it is about both/and.
• Give without expectations.
• Show up even when it is hard and I may not want to. Soften by finding lightness in the dark.
• Make life bigger in the small ways.
• It’s okay to be a seeming contradiction as long as you embody those contradictions in such a way that makes them a unifying wholeness instead of split parts going in opposite directions.

So while I carry translations and interpretations of these beautiful philosophical texts with me on the subway, I think first of the people in whom this philosophy is embodied, and I am humbly grateful for these living, breathing, walking examples in my life.

Originally, I thought I would relocate this blog to my new website, but then I realized something: this blog is not about me. This blog is about yoga in college and while I am the demographic that I am writing about and to, yoga for college students is a cause and topic so much larger than just me.

And Tumblr is the venue where I want to write about it because Tumblr is social and interactive and allows me to connect with likeminded people through seeking out inspiration from them.

That said, I want to introduce the future of this blog:

Sunday Routine ~ I have a slight obsession with how people spend their time because what we do says a lot about who we are. Thus, I will be modeling this series off the NYT’s Sunday Routine column in the Metropolitan section. But there’s a twist! The routines I will profile will be those of yoga teachers! Clearly, they’re not in class or teaching 24/7. They have lives outside of the yoga room and it is using these lives that we see how the practice can be embodied off the mat.

Meditation Mondays ~ My own meditation practice currently consists of ten minutes in the morning of Metta, or Lovingkindness meditation. It is something I have not explored super in depth and yet the purpose of yoga is simply to get a better seat for meditation so I will embark on this journey through this blog, by featuring different styles of meditation every Monday.

Dharma Talk Tuesdays ~ Pretty self-explanatory - I’ll post a dharma class from one of my classes that week, now that I’m teaching!

Teacher Thursdays ~ Expect a video of an awesome and inspiring yoga teacher!

Sutra Saturdays ~ The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are, more or less, the yogi’s handbook to life. There are many translations out there, but on this blog, I want to synthesize the translations I’m reading and translate them into the language the college student speaks - that of hookups, midterms, dorms, roommates, frat parties, libraries, and campus life.

Oh, and in case you can’t tell, I’m a sucker for alliteration!

I’m excited to embark on this journey with you.

VRTTI SARUPYAM ITARATRA

VRTTI = fluctuations of the mind

SARUPYAM = takes shape

ITARATRA = at other times

The translation that I have for this sutra from Sri Swami Satchidananda seems particularly appropriate for this new school year. It reads, “At other times the Self appears to assume the forms of the mental modifications.” We are not our chitta vrttis. We are something far greater, something far more authentic and with much more potentiality.

I have been thinking, as I head back to school, what it means to be truly authentic. I go to a school where a lot of the students are similar on the outside - interested in similar social issues, wearing similar clothes, eating similar food. But when you go deeper, you realize that each person has an essential Self (a sva rupe, if you will) that makes them authentic. There is no need for doubles in this world. We are each here to serve a unique purpose, a unique dharma, but within the context of a larger commonality that deconstructs any hierarchy the vrtti sets up. 

Has anyone ever asked you what you wanted to be when you grow up? That what is the result of the fluctuations of the mind; it is not who we are at our core - that is a who. I might want to be a teacher/doctor/mechanic/whatever when I “grow up,” but the real question - the one that the Self answers - is who do we want to be? Because in the end it doesn’t matter if I am a teacher/doctor/mechanic; it only matters if I am a kind, loving, healing, receptive teacher/doctor/mechanic. The what always changes - that is why vrtti means “fluctuation.” They are simply shapes (sarupyam) that are constantly shifting. What we hold onto is the constants of being we create for ourselves when we, quite simply, create ourselves.

Maxine is a yoga teacher for kids, adults, and families, and it is abundantly clear why when you see how she values family and service and living life in the same breath. She is also the head of PR for Melissa & Doug, the educational toy company, as well as the creator of GaGa for Yoga and LAMPA, an inspirational website for life and yoga. Double life? I think not! Instead, Maxine is the perfect example of how to weave yogic principles into every act and role because let’s face it - yoga is meant to provide us with fun and abundance and love off the mat. Oh, and disclosure: her “routine” isn’t so much a routine due to the hurricane and having to go with the flow of east coast weather and of life so let this be an example of detachment to the specificities of routine.

COSTA RICA On vacation with my husdand Andrew, son Jeremy (age 10) and nephew Bradley (age 11) in Costa Rica.  Staying an extra day since we can’t get home due to Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene. Very fancy problem to have to stay at a resort in Costa Rica for an extra day of sun & play.

GRATITUDE Start my day out grateful for my husband, family and still being on vacation.

INTENTION & ACCEPTANCE Fill out my Tibetan 6x book for the 8am hour to set my intention and thoughts for the day. Watch the news to check on the storm in NYC and make sure that all our friends and family are ok.  Everyone is ok.  Tell myself it is OK to go back to sleep. Motivate myself and the boys to get out of the room and enjoy every bit of this beautiful ‘green’ country.

PLAY Play with our amazing new friends Stell (age 6) and Chloe (age 10) and their amazing mom Dr. Roma Franzia a magical pediatrian. Friends we were destined to meet.  Dr. Roma’s motto… “We encourage boredom” because this is where creativity comes from. This is what we believe too!

TEACH Teach some yoga to the woman who run the kids’ center and start to write out a kids yoga manual for them. Talk to the head of the kids program about sending her DVDs to teach the kids yoga. Note to self, shoot a series of kids yoga DVDs as soon as I get back home.

ATTENTION TO INTENTION Continue to fill out my Tibetan 6x book.  Keeping my intention and tracking my own mind.  Staying grateful for all.

TEACH SOME MORE At my husband’s encouragement, he watches all the kids while I give Roma a private yoga session. There is something very special to me to take care of those who take care of children. Hurt my knee in private session but choose not to let Roma know.  Eventually tell my husband, but have faith that if I stretch and have belief that I can’t really get hurt doing service I will be fine in the morning. 

FILLING UP THE WELL Tell my husband I need to shower and rest.  He and everyone else is very disappointed that I am not going to hang out for our last night together.  I go t the room, shower and look for something to watch on TV and fall asleep. I realize I feel very empty without my family and new friends. I am a little refreshed, still tired and sore, but there is no way I can be without my loved ones. I get all dolled up and go to dinner. Have a lovely time with everyone and fall asleep on my husband’s lap.  Chloe calls me a ‘big baby’.  I say ‘yes I am.’

 a year ago today, i was in paris. my dear friend and i rented out a flat for a week and embarked on a trip filled with independence and svadyaya (self-discovery). there is nothing like being taken out of a familiar context to bring you inward.

well, we weren’t totally inward; our flat in montmartre had internet access. as i sat at a teensy fold-up table, i checked facebook, seeing what parties in new york i’d be missing in favor of a walk along the seine at midnight. as fate would have it, i came across laughing lotus’s apt facebook status: “in 2011, i intend to….” we were to complete the sentence.

at that point, i had gone to laughing lotus only a few times so it truly does seem like my yoga life is cyclic in that i am now enchanted by their style and pursuing a month unlimited. i suggested to my friend that we use their facebook status as a writing prompt. 

those intentions have been on the back of my mind, but i did not remember them specifically. they are tucked into one of my thickest moleskines, fattened by napkins from my favorite paris cafes and cutouts from museum brochures. 

but then, on wednesday, that friend i went to paris with came to visit. and while it wasn’t the same, we tried to emulate that journal writing session we had in our montmartre flat in the grey dog cafe in chelsea. we wrote out our intentions for each other for 2012 and then our own intentions for 2012. 

as i look into the future, i am prompted to reflect on the past. to see what has happened in my yoga life and in all the other aspects of my life that yoga makes possible. so today, the day before the new year, i look back at my intentions from this year and see what has become of a year of tremendous growth.

in 2011, i intend to be open to trying new things.

• this year, i have tried new yoga poses (headstand, side crow, forearm stand) that have mirrored all the new i have tried off the mat: teaching, jumping from a swinging rope into a pond (i’m a city girl, i know), and new relationships.

i intend to laugh uncontrollably.

• i have learned to value feeling deeply, feeling alive.

i intend to do my yoga teacher training over the summer.

• i did my RYT-200, with three sisters yoga at the yoga collective.

i intend to host a party.

• i hosted a yoga party when i finished my teacher training, by teaching a class in central park and then having a picnic on the hottest day of the year. 

i intend to read a lot. 

• just check out the post to come.

i intend to send handwritten letters to loved ones.

• me & that friend i went to paris with have been corresponding all year!

i intend to have intentions for every simple and complex act.

• sera beak writes in the red book that setting an intention is like applying moisturizer to your day.

i intend to journal in coffeeshops.

• so much journaling in cafe grumpy, brew bakers, & joe!

i intend to have long conversations and develop friendships with likeminded people.

• my teacher training rapidly transformed this intention into reality. by day one, i found myself in a room of twenty-three people who were interested in what i am interested in. we blossomed together with that shared interest. then, when i returned to school, that kula grew with the likeminded yoga teachers on campus i am privileged to share these practices with.

i intend to live a spiritual life. i intend to dream big.

• the ritual, the people, the singing, the Love in my life today are beyond my wildest dreams.

i intend to cry when i need to. i intend to be a being of light and hope for friends, family, and strangers.

• crying can be healing. but big lesson learned from 2011: try not to cry alone.

i intend to be a present sister.

• now, both my sisters do yoga with me!

i intend to keep in close touch with my mentors and to be unafraid to put myself out there, even when i seem intimidated.

• earlier this year, i reached out to a master teacher who transformed my practice. we now talk every week. i have been introduced to truly dedicated yogis through her. and i am learning. always learning.

in intend to be more of a minimalist. i intend to eat fresh foods and drink good coffee.

• i will always be learning what this means :)

i intend to smile a lot and to wholeheartedly embrace my quirks. 

• it is my vulnerability, my weirdness, that bonds me to others, and that gives me a unique offering and Dharma.

i intend to breathe. i intend to compliment other people and to have pow-wows. 

• i certainly breathe deeper now than i did a year ago. and it is through deep breaths that i am able to relate to others and it is through relating to others that i am able to remember to breathe in the first place.

i intend to have clarity and take steps toward a beautiful future.

• this was aided by my creation of a vision board.

i intend to study, to have fun, and to be fun by not taking myself so seriously.