Book Report: enLIGHTened

As the summer starts drawing to a close and the reopening of Karma Kids starts peeking around the corner, I've been craving a slight change in reading material.  It's been a fabulous summer for reading - I've read many of my old Stephen King favorites, a few new King gems, Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho (which...good LORD), John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath....lots of great fiction.

However, fall means the beginning of a busy semester of work and getting back into the full swing of things as a yoga teacher as well as a student.  My summer of 30 Day Challenges and Bikram were great, but I wasn't spending my summer reading the Yoga Sutras or the Bhagavad Gita or anything.  I felt I needed something more yoga-esque to help get my head in the game.  I also wanted something a little lighter than King, Steinbeck, and Ellis for the train ride to Boston last week!

Appropriately enough, the first book on my random list of yoga-esque books was enLIGHTened:  How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer by Jessica Berger Gross.  I've been wanting to read this book for awhile.  Jessica Berger Gross also writes the Enlightened Motherhood blog for Yoga Journal.com, and her simple, clear writing style is often a huge help and inspiration to me when I'm feeling like I need to turn a blog entry into a novel.

Gross uses the yogic yamas and niyamas (kind of the yogi's 10 Commandments) to illustrate different steps in her weight-loss and "enlightenment" journey.  She doesn't pretend to be a perfect, superhuman, all knowing all meditating yogi, but her life was dramatically changed by yoga and she doesn't shy away from the lessons she learned from it.  One thing I liked about this book is that the philosophy of yoga is treated as the utmost important thing - important over the yoga poses themselves (the asana practice).  The asana serves the philosophy.

I think because I knew a lot of these yogic principles and factoids and Sanskrit terms, I felt this book was a lot more about weight loss than I was expecting.  Yes, obviously, it's right there in the subtitle - the story is "How I lost 40 Pounds."  But after doing so much reading from different places about everything in moderation, it was occasionally jarring to read some of the food philosophies she adheres to.  The most notable is the chapter on fasting/cleansing, and we all know my opinion on that.  I personally don't think it's safe and would never advocate it, but she has the right to her opinion and I realize that people do it all the time without serious incident.  It was interesting to read such a detailed account from someone with a different perspective on it.

Although I'm not on a weight loss journey right now, per se, I have lost a lot of weight and changed my body over the years.  My fitness level and size when I was 19 and 20, for instance, were lightyears behind where I am now.  I do absolutely credit yoga for helping me make better choices and for inspiring me to educate myself about my own health and eating habits.  It was really moving to read someone else's journey with it, and it helped me reacquaint myself with the importance of eating mindfully.  Even though I'm at a healthy size and weight, I do still hold onto some unhealthy habits that have been with me since a kid.  The way this book links a lot of basic yogic principles - truth, purity/cleanliness, and moderation - and links them to the everyday decisions you make in the kitchen, the restaurant, or on any single street in NYC with endless access to all kinds of food, was very thought-provoking and, at times, profound.

She also touches on vegetarianism as a way of exploring ahimsa, or non-violence.  That's a very common interpretation for yogi vegetarians and/or vegans, and I like that she didn't apologize for her views.  She didn't judge meat-eaters, but she makes a compelling case for cutting out (or at least down on) meat consumption.

I'd recommend this book for either a seasoned yogi or even a total yoga newbie - anyone who would be interested in an Eat, Pray, Love-esqe memoir about weight loss and spiritual gain.  It's funny, touching, insightful, and given that I devoured the whole thing in a 4 hour train ride, it's good light reading.

"Sleep is the best meditation."

I'm alive!

Appropriately, this unusual night-time entry is to share an article I really enjoyed on YogaJournal.com today...

Sweet Slumber.

Good night, all!

Meditation Station

 "Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity."

-Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You-

I could probably ramble and write non-linear-ly about meditation for a million and one pages.  It's an equally inspiring and infuriating topic for me, and probably for everyone who's ever tried it.

An interesting article in the New York times came out last week on how meditation may change your brain.  It seems like every few weeks one of these articles comes out, but they still say the science is very young.

What I always find interesting about these scientific articles about meditation is how they focus on the positive sides - of which there are many, granted - but they tend not to mention how, at a certain point in a meditation practice, it can bring things up that make us feel more agitated and irritable instead of less.  More on that later!

I've always been intrigued by meditation.  It sounds nice - quiet time to yourself, it's supposed to lead to reduced stress and increased clarity, and may eventually lead you to the ultimate:  enlightened bliss.  Who wouldn't want that?
I started a practice on my own without any instruction or mentors to help me and I just sat.  It was the spring of 2009 - I decided that I would celebrate Lent for the first time ever not by giving something up, but by adding to my life.  I called it "devotional practice," and it consisted of getting up at least a half hour early every day and taking my pick of reading, writing, going for a run, doing some yoga, or meditating.  Regardless of my practice, I always tried to tack on at least a little bit of meditation every morning.

It was not what I expected.  For some reason, I think I expected it to be a lot easier to find a quiet mind than it turned out to be.  It was sometimes interesting, often frustrating, and there were many times where it took awhile to get up due to one leg or both having fallen asleep!

Several months later, when I began my teacher training at Sonic Yoga, it was actually required of me by the program to meditate every day.  I was very excited by this outside push and motivation, not to mention the incredible community of people who were going through the exact same baffling journey I was.  It was so helpful to have a community of people to ponder the endless questions for beginning mediators.  How should we sit?  What technique works best?  Should we just pick one and stick with it, or try a different one each time?  Should we just sit without any visualization or mantra and see what happens?  If we think about our boyfriend or dinner or work or sleeping the whole time, does it still count as a meditation?

I still haven't entirely answered these questions.  I really enjoyed my consistent meditation with Sonic, but once Marc and I got together, I fell very hard off the meditation wagon and into the complete and utter distraction of true love.  We've been trying to help each other back on it, to varying degrees of success over the past year.

Most recently, as I wrote about in New Year, I decided to kick off 2011 with a dedicated mantra practice.  My number one new year's resolution was to get serious about my daily meditation practice - once and for all.  It's important to me and I can't let myself and my overflowing abundance of excuses get in my own way of my spiritual practice.

Today marks Day 37 of my practice, and it's interesting.  The agitation and irritability I referred to earlier?  I'm right in the thick of that!  My japa mala practice has been specifically about the obstacles in my life - to oversimplify it, I've been praying for the destruction of the obstacles in my life and/or the ability to overcome them.

Lord Ganesh himself.

Now, I didn't literally think that by doing a 40 day meditation practice that the Obstacle Fairy (aka Ganesh) was going to come and fix all my problems for me.  Not in my conscious, rational, adult brain.  But I did think - I'm sending lots of stuff out into the universe, it's not so crazy to expect a little positivity as a result.  To expect something to come of my efforts.

I think I have gotten something - just not necessarily in the form I hoped for.  The year has been good, but busy and stressful (but then, what else is new?) and I haven't necessarily been dealing with it as well as I've wanted all the time.  I'm working hard on accomplishing all my goals and keeping up with my resolutions, but I've found myself just a little more emotional and a little more cranky these days.

What my meditation is doing is what both Sally Kempton, a renowned meditation teacher, and Pema Chodron, an American Buddhist nun, have written about in passages I've been fortunate enough to read lately.

Sally Kempton writes in an article in February's Yoga Journal, "[The mind isn't] getting more restless, of course.  It's just that when [we] sit down to meditate, [we] notice how restless it really is.  Normally, we aren't aware of the intensity of our inner dialogue.  Our attention is focused on what is going on around us, so unless we are unusually introverted or introspective, the wild and crazy scenarios running through the mind generally escape our notice.  But when we sit for meditation - ah, then we see them."

It's no wonder so many people have such a hard time being consistent with a meditation practice when it can bring up such intensity and seem as though it's not helping.  Not to mention, in this insanely busy world, it can seem like a waste of time.  I know I always like to make sure I'm making the most of my time, and it was a bit of a battle for me to fully appreciate the value of just sitting.  Not reading, writing, emailing, working, working out...just sitting.

Kempton also writes about the unavoidable presence of thoughts during meditation.  They not only create frustration in those of us a bit impatient to get on with the enlightenment already, but force you to deal with issues you might not think about when caught up in the hustle and bustle of the everyday.  When you meditate, it's just you and your mind.  There's no escaping what it has to say except through consistent practice.  As they say: the only way out is through.

I've been wondering where I'm going to go with my daily practice once the 40 days is up on Saturday.  I haven't been sure whether to continue on with that current practice or to switch it up - and if I switch it, then to what?  And for how long?

For all this talk about the difficulties and frustration and occasional madness of meditation, it actually has burned through a lot of my resistance and found a piece of clarity.  The last several days have revealed to me what my next steps should be, and because of that I think my practice has done its job.  Ganesh hasn't magically gotten rid of my obstacles - but I have been shown which ones are most deserving and in need of my own energy to fight.  These things require physical action in the outside world as well as a meditation, but one thing is clear:  we cannot forget the fact that meditation is action.


If you're interested in starting up a meditation practice, there are a myriad of places you can go, websites you can check out, books you can read, etc.  Like anything else these days, it's all just a Google search away.  I did come across an interesting article in The Huffington Post today, though - meditation leader Sharon Salzberg is hosting a 28-day Meditation Challenge for the month of February, though you can join anytime.  The article is worth checking out - it's interesting and at the bottom she has some quotes from some of her participants, including an NYC firefighter and NYC police officer.

Take it Easy

Today, on this beautiful lazy Sunday (a phrase I can never, ever say again without calling to mind that dang SNL sketch), I'd like to write an entry in praise of rest, relaxation, and one of my favorite ways in which to experience those things - Restorative Yoga!

I've loved restorative yoga since the first time I tried it a few years ago, but I never practiced it or went to restorative classes regularly.  I shared the mentality of most of us in the US, namely:  if I'm going to take the time to go to a yoga class, I'd like it to make me sweat.  We're so pressed for time that often workout time becomes very precious and very tight, and the idea of taking a class just to relax can seem to some people like a bit of a waste of both time and money.

I really lucked out, however, when I started as a Karma Yogi for The Giving Tree - working two shifts at the desk a week in exchange for unlimited free yoga.  My assigned shifts were Friday and Saturday evening, and one of the Saturday evening classes is Hatha Restorative, taught by the wonderful Dhyani.  Nearly every Saturday for several months, now, I look forward to Hatha Restorative as one of the highlights of my week.

I lovingly call it Naptime Yoga, but it's so much more than that.  This specific class offers about 45 minutes of gentle Hatha flow - yoga poses that never get quite so sweaty, intense, or quickly paced as Vinyasa tend to - and 45 minutes of restorative.

So what on earth is this Restorative Yoga?  It's a slow, gentle practice focusing on relaxation.  There are usually lots of props involved (blankets, blocks, straps, bolsters, glorious eye pillows - or maybe cucumber slices, if you're feeling extra indulgent) to completely support your body and deliver you into a state of complete comfort and stillness.  Poses are usually held a lot longer than regular asanas - anywhere from 3 to 15 minutes depending on what you desire.

Here are a couple of my favorite restorative poses, with suggestions on how to get into them with as few props as possible, as I know very few people who own tons of yoga props.  (You can also always substitute any folded blanket or pillow - no need to spend $30 on a special "yoga blanket" just to make yourself comfortable!)


Supported Supta Baddha Konasana (bound angle pose)
A more prop heavy version of this pose is pictured at the beginning of this post, but here's a simpler version if you don't have a million props laying around.  Sitting with your feet together in front of you, place a block under each of your knees and lay back, dropping your knees open so that the knees/thighs are supported by the blocks.  You can lay down on a bolster, pillow, or blanket situated any way that makes you feel supported and comfortable.  You shouldn't feel any straining or too much stretching in your hip flexors, but feeling an opening sensation is normal - and should feel good.  The hip flexors get a lot of abuse in our culture of sitting-at-a-desk-for-8-hours-a-day and should be gently opened up as often as possible to counter that tightness that develops as a result of prolonged sitting.

Supported Matsyasana (fish pose)
This is another laying-down pose.  Place a yoga block (or bolster, foam roller, or very firm pillow with a folded blanket on top) under your back so that when you lay down, the block is on its lowest level running lengthwise along the base of your shoulder blades.  The easiest way for most teachers to cue this is so that it hits right where your bra clasp would be.  (Sorry, guys)  Adjust as needed - and perhaps cover with a blanket if the block feels too hard - until you're able to lay down and feel a gentle expansion in the chest, collarbones, and shoulders.  If the neck is in any pain, you can always place another block or a pillow under the head for support.

Supported Setu Bhandasana (bridge pose)
This is very similar to support matsyasana except we're now raising up the lower part of the back instead of the upper back.  Move the block to your sacrum, that flat triangle-shaped bone between the tailbone and the lower back (if you practice yoga regularly, I'm sure you've heard the sacrum mentioned by your yoga teacher at least a half dozen times per class).  It should be on the lowest level.  This pose is beneficial in relieving digestive problems and can greatly reduce menstrual discomfort.

Supported Paschimottanasana (seated forward fold)
Sit on the floor with your legs stretched out in front of you. Place a rolled up blanket or pillow under your knees to bend them, relieving any potential strain on the low back or hamstrings.  Next, place a bolster, several pillows, or stack several folded blankets on top of your thighs.  You could even place a block or two covered in blankets.  Fold forward and adjust your props as needed so that you are resting your forehead on a soft surface and feeling a very mild stretch in the hamstrings.  Make sure your props are stacked high enough and that you have enough support under the knees so that you can completely relax and sink your upper body onto your props without any strain or holding.

Finally, my favorite restorative pose as of late:  Viparita Karani.  


This one deserves a picture.  Viparita means "inverted" and karani means "action," but its English name is Legs Up the Wall.  And that's literally what it is.

There's not really a graceful way to get into this pose, so you just kind of have to go for it.  There's plenty of grace to be found once you've gotten yourself there.

Sit down close to a wall - turn to the side so that one hip is right up against the wall.  Then - well, put your legs up the wall.  You'll find yourself laying down.  Place a rolled up blanket, pillow, bolster - whatever makes you feel the best - under your low back so that your sit bones pour off it.  You're basically supporting the natural curve of your lumbar spine.

Arms can go over the head, as pictured, for a nice shoulder opening.  You can also place them on your belly, by your sides, supported by pillows or blankets - truly, it's all about your pleasure.  I've recently discovered the joys of putting slices of cucumbers on my eyes in this pose in lieu of an eye pillow.  (It's a cliche, but it really does help puffiness!)


There's a great article on viparita karani online at YogaJournal.com written by Claudia Cummins; another appeared in the most recent issue but isn't online yet.  I'll definitely provide the link when it is!

To learn more about the practice of Restorative Yoga, YogaJournal has a great informational article on it, as does WikiHealth.

So the next time you come home feeling exhausted and in need of relaxation, resist the urge to sit on the couch in front of the TV or computer to attempt to relax.  Truly let yourself go and free yourself from any outside stimulation by luxuriating in some restorative yoga.  Your body, mind, and stress-level will thank you.