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Greetings!
"Hot, that room is too hot and too wet and I just don't want to...". These are the words we sometimes hear as people emerge from the hot room, even our most advanced practitioners. Sometimes the words are different but the sentiment is the same. It is negativity.
The hot room is a microcosm of life. It evokes feelings. Feelings are sometimes hard to navigate. It is a good lesson and a integral part of Yoga to notice your feelings. Notice what they are saying to you.
The same thing happens when people see that the teacher that they don't like is teaching. They all of a sudden don't want to take class. How silly that we could be so easily influenced, so easily moved away from that which we formerly wanted.
Instead learn to be your own master, in charge of your emotions, in charge of your life, your destiny. Notice what the Universe is mirroring to you and about you in others - some of it is good, some of it needs work. And on your path, respect those around you who may also be struggling on their path.
See you in the hot room!
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 Student of the Month - Jay C.
I turned to yoga a few months after my wife died from a long and debilitating illness. I had put everything into keeping her going, and had left little for myself. No exercise in years, stiff joints and muscles, overweight and tired all the time. I started on January 2, 2012. No New Year's Resolution, just that I had to do something more than the nothing I had.
This was not your father's yoga. This was hot, humid and one and a half hours of bending, pulling, twisting, and some actual corkscrewing. But I stayed in the room, and stayed in the room the next day, and wound up going 127 days straight, until shortly before I had to go out of town. There were good and bad days, some where I had to sit through most of the postures, others where I felt numbness and tingling in my arms and legs. But there were also good and then better days when I improved the posture, the stretching, the breathing. I lost weight, got off of the blood pressure medication, and started being able to move my body as I hadn't in years.
The people were friendly and Taz was wonderful, always encouraging, offering helpful advice, and motivating me more when she would tell the class how far I had gone in my Challenge. I met others who had lost those precious to them, including mothers who had lost children. I can't speak for them, but I know that the commitment to yoga everyday was the only constant in the emotional roller coaster I was going through. I held onto it, and just believed that if I could get my body in better shape, then my mind would follow. It worked. I feel better physically and mentally than I have in years. I started other exercise practices, eating better, and meditating daily, all of which have helped, but the yoga and the Challenge were the foundation for what I started.
I truly believe that we all have problems and difficult situations in our lives. No one escapes from this truth, but I know that there are things we can do to make our lives and our selves stronger and better. The practice of Bikram Yoga has been a blessing for me, and I hope it is for you.
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Posture of the Month - Savasana 
Posture # 13, Dead Body Pose
As quoted from Bikram Yoga, by Bikram Choudhury
Savasana seems ridiculously simple: Relax and breathe, breathe and relax, while maintaining total stillness. Teaching it takes all of ten seconds. When properly performed, Savasana is the most important posture in Hatha Yoga. Its name translates as "corpse pose" or "dead body pose", due to the complete stillness required during its proper execution (no pun intended). But Savasana is actually a powerful way to breathe life into the body. For many people, this is also the most difficult asana.
On the physical level, using Savasana after certain postures finishes and accelerates the compression and release cycle in which internal organs are first deprived of blood, then flooded with it. Remember our friend Mr. Pancreas? I told you how in certain asanas he gets compressed and the blood builds up around him, and then we release the pose and the Hoover Dam breaks - all the oxygenated blood pours in. When this pose is immediately followed by Savasana, the circulatory flow is increased to nearly twice its normal speed. The high-speed cleansing flushes our accumulated toxins, free radicals and other debris in its powerful current. The natural irrigation and internal cleansing that occurs after the compression of the postures is how we gain energy through yoga practice. In this way, my class becomes an environmentally friendly gas station for the human body, enabling you to leave more energized and revitalized than when you came in. Without Savasana, we discard less waste and receive fewer benefits.
Lying on your back between brief intervals of exercise is a foreign concept to those who exercise by running, jumping, or hitting. How many times have you seen someone run a half a block, stop, and lie down on the sidewalk for a few moments so their body can adequately absorb the benefits of the exercise? Not many, I'm sure. Forget sports- you don't see this in 99.9 percent of the yoga classes in this country, either. In these diluted styles of Hatha Yoga the students jump around to loud music instead, like an aerobics class. From a true yogic perspective, this is a crime.
So from here on in the Sequence, we will be performing Savasana for a minimum of 20 seconds after each set of every posture. It goes like this: First Set (which usually means practicing the posture twice; first on one side, then on the other); Savasana; Second Set; Savasana.
To begin: Lie flat on your back, keeping your limbs straight. Bring your heels together and your arms close enough to almost touch the sides of your body. Turn your palms upward towards the ceiling to release pressure in the shoulder joints, and keep your eyes open to remain present and awake. Relax your whole body as one unit. Let the floor support your whole weight.
Concentrate on your breath, inhaling deeply through your nose to the depths of your abdomen up through your chest, and exhaling fully (again, through the nose) from chest to abdomen. Keep the mouth closed. Softly fix your gaze on a single point on the ceiling or an arbitrary point in space. Continue for two minutes.
How hard is that; how complicated can it be? Very and very, because now you are dealing with the untrained mind. The mind is rebellious and disobedient. Tell it to do something, and watch it throw a tantrum. When I call for a Savasana during my classes, I can see the minds of my students begin to mutiny after just 5 or 10 seconds. Toes wiggle, fingers tap, fists and jaws clench, eyes squint, muscles tense, teeth grind and breathing stops. How's that for relaxation? The same things happen when unprepared people attempt sitting mediation. The mind has an agenda of its own, and is terrified of relinquishing control. Submitting to peaceful relaxation will take power away from the ego and its manipulative tools, fear and desire. (I'll explain this dynamic completely in the next section, "Living Yoga".)
But within a few seconds of yoga practice, all the wriggling, fidgeting, clenching, tapping, squinting, waving, holding, locking and grinding in Savasana slowly gives way to a peaceful and relaxed stillness. When you are able to make your mind your best friend, you have the power, and you achieve a gradual healing and integration of both body and mind.
Bikram's Key
Savasana itself is the only key here, my friend. Go back and read my instructions and relax for 2 full minutes. Enjoy. You can also use this posture at any point in the day or night when you want to relax.
Benefits
Savasana facilitates powerful blood flow, then lets circulation return to normal, creating internal cleansing and greatly magnifying the benefits of the postures that precede it. And in Savasana we begin to learn complete relaxation.
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Sunrider Testimonial 
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Note from Taz
When I was a new practitioner, I recall very clearly being in class on a day when I was working very hard on my postures. I was used to being very good at my sport of choice, marathoning, having run all of my life. Bikram was new. The teacher called me out, correcting my postures. I got really angry, and remember thinking that I didn't want them to correct me. I now realize that it was a gift to be corrected even though, at the time, I really resented it. And that is the way it has always been, the master teaches the student, and sometimes the teacher is also the student. All things have a learning curve. We are so blessed at our studio to have a number of not only new students but also new teachers. I have noticed that with all the new faces on our scene there are things that are being overlooked. It is natural. New students have so much to absorb in learning how to practice and new teachers have so much to focus on with the dialog, names, temperature, individual corrections. It is a lot to focus on for everyone. I want to call to everyone's attention to be mindful of the atmosphere that is appropriate in a Bikram Studio. This has been ordained by Bikram himself, as well as countless master yogis throughout time. So, please pay attention and then apply these concepts to your practice or time in the hot room, whether you are new or not. When you enter the hot room enter with a mindfulness that in that room, we are One. We share energy and we share space. To that end, respect for self and others is paramount. As just the word Yoga implies, stillness and silence are cornerstones of the art. It is a time for contemplation, a space and time to turn inwards, to listen to the voice that comes from deep within your soul. If you and/or the people around you are moving, pacing, crawling, showering in their drinking water, wiping with towels, laughing, talking, fidgeting, panicking, sloshing their drinks, breathing feverishly through their mouths and generally being unaware of those around them then how can any of us focus on the voice that is speaking to us from our soul? And if not that, what is the purpose for practicing Yoga? Live life awake. Many Blessings, Taz |
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5 Classes for $39.00
May purchase one(1) for yourself and one(1) as a gift Must be purchased and started in August 2012 Available to new and existing students
| Offer Expires: 8/31/12
ALL SALES FINAL. NO REFUNDS, EXTENSIONS* OR TRANSFERS - NO EXCEPTIONS *extensions allowed with a doctor's note within 14 days only. |
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