FEATURED TRAINING:

NEW YORK CITY 

Aug 3-5, 2012  

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Meet the Trainer: 

Street Yoga founder and president, Mark Lilly is a mindfulness and communication trainer who has taught workshops all over North America to widely diverse audiences including physicians, nurses, social workers, police officers, therapists, mental health workers, justice workers and countless others.   

For Mark, yoga is an everyday survival skill and a practice which he, and Street Yoga, have shared with thousands of youth, their families and professional caregivers. Personally, he still lives with the tremors of traumas past and realizes the delicate line between suffering and awakening. His teaching emphasizes cultivation of the best within each of us by using the authentic stories and experiences that illuminate our being and drive our teaching to places of deep truthfulness. Through it all, he brings a lightness and love to his teaching that is rooted in humility, grace and joy.  

We are delighted to share with you an article from Peg Oliveira, founder and director of

-- Kenji Yoshino in Covering: The Hidden Assault on American Civil Rights

Some 2,000 juvenile offenders serving life sentences without parole were recently given hope of eventual release by the Supreme Court. [source] The Court ruled that laws requiring youths convicted of murder to be sentenced to die in prison violate the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. (http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-9646g2i8.pdf)   

In other words, the Supreme Court calls it unconstitutionally cruel to abolish hope.

One line of evidence the court based this decision on was research on neuroplasticity, or the brain's ability to continue to grow and change.  The modern understanding of the brain is that rather than being a done deal (diminished with every beer, or so I was told in college), this organ is alive and kicking and constantly changing.

Importantly, the Court recognized the even greater malleability of the young brain.  It accepted the view of the American Psychological Association, that neuroscientists have now proven the basis for our intuitive understanding that young offenders have greater potential for rehabilitation [source].

Repeated thoughts and actions can rewire your brain. The more you do something, the stronger those new neural networks become; the more neural real estate the thoughts or behaviors take up. In yoga we call the brain's wiring samskaras.  Samskaras are the habits of action and thought.

The more you take that same path, the more pronounced the path and the more automatic the act of taking the path becomes.  Every time we do or think something, we increase the likelihood that we will do it or think it again.

The brain can be re-wired and that yoga improves the brains ability to rewire; to delete old and create new samskaras.  Such that if one day you decide to forge a new path, and commit to using that new path, the old one will quickly grow green with grass and the new one deep with wear.

How does it work?  Yoga has been shown to trigger brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a marker for neuroplasticity. BDNF is essential to helping our brains find a role for new brain cells-instead of automatically sending them down the same old paths. In other words, BDNF appears to be the key to actually learning and growing from new experiences.  The very newest research that yoga's movement-based practices improve our brains' neuroplasticity, at any age.

What this means is that no matter how long we've been who we are, we can change if we put our minds to it.  An individual's history need not repeat itself. But consciously trying to overcome strong impulses to take the same old numbing path of addiction or self-destruction is tough work. A yoga practice can make it more possible to get in a new groove of thought and action.

Peg Oliveira is a yoga teacher in New Haven (www.pegsyoga.com), a PhD in Developmental Psychology, and t  he founder of 108 Monkeys, a nonprofit yoga outreach organization changing what people mean when they say "I Practice Yoga" (www.facebook.com/108monkeys). Peg's essay "Mind over multitasking: What would Buddha do?" was published in The Culture of Efficiency.

You know that yoga in schools is proven to be an effective way to increase emotional intelligence, cultivate a cooperative classroom and build community.   

Help spread the word about resources for teaching students simple exercises to cope with stress and develop mindfulness 

Parents and teachers attest to the profound and positive impact on their children's focus, fitness, behavior and academics.

I feel blessed to share a particularly touching passage from:  

The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, by Thich Nhat Hanh

"The fourth element of our body is air. The best way to experience the air element is the practice of mindful breathing.

After saying these sentences we can abbreviate them by saying "In" as we breath in and "Out" as we breath out. We don't try to control our breathing. Whether our in-breath is long or short, deep or shallow, we just breath naturally and shine the light of mindfulness on it.  

When we do this we notice that, in fact, our breathing does become slower and deeper naturally. "Breathing in, my in-breath has become deep. Breathing out, my out-breath has become slow." Now we can practice, "Deep/slow". We don't have to make an extra effort. It just becomes deeper and slower by itself, and we recognize that.

We are able to smile to ourselves and release all our worries.

We smile and are able to release all our feelings and emotions. The last practice is, "Breathing in, I dwell deeply in the present moment. Breathing out, I know this is a wonderful moment. Present moment/wonderful moment." Nothing is more precious than being in the present moment fully alive and aware.

Thank you all,

Alice 

Contact Us:

www.streetyoga.org

503-232-0362