Simon Park for BE PRESENT in this month's Yoga Journal.

Learn more about Simon Park and his weekend intensive November 11-13 at Laughing River Yoga here.

Laughing River Yoga is excited to welcome Jill Satterfield, founder of Vajra Yoga and Meditation, for a weekend workshop October 1st and 2nd.  Jill has been teaching yoga for over twenty years.  She brings extensive knowledge and experience in both yoga and meditation practices as well as humor, kindness and the thought provoking presentations.

To learn more about Jill check out this yoga peeps interview: http://yogapeeps.com/main/2006/episode-25-jill-satterfield-vajra-yoga-2/168 .

If you are interested in learning more about her workshop at Laughing River click here.

Question: I hear teachers asking their students to “engage their bandhas” as if it’s as simple as making a fist. What is the advantage of engaging the bandhas?
—Anonymous

Yoga teacher Nicki Doane’s response:

Dear Anonymous,

The bandhas are an extremely important part of your asana practice. They relate to the subtle body: Mula Bandha (Root Lock), for example, is essentially the practice of containing your energy so that you don’t leak the subtle life force that you are so earnestly cultivating in your asana practice. Its physical counterpart is the perineum muscle, which is located between the anus and the genitals and moves in an upward direction.

The bandhas are actually very difficult actions to make; most people tend to do them from a misguided physical place at first. Clenching the buttocks and sucking the lower belly in are not the correct actions—they should be much more subtle. I must say that, after 20 years of practice, I am just now starting to get a grasp on them.

This question takes me back to my first few years of practicing Ashtanga vinyasa yoga specifically. The concept of the bandhas and my actual experience of them were two very different things. Luckily, I had a teacher who told me that they take about 20 years to cultivate—and he was right. So, since we should be prepared for a lifetime of yoga practice, just be patient and they will come!

Join Emily Sunday from 9 am-12 pm for her mini-retreat Breath and Bandhas and learn how to get started on the bandhas or how to refine your practice and experience bandhas in a more subtle way.

Joy and sorrow arise and pass away.  This is part of the journey.

Whether I understand it or not, things are unfolding according to a lawful nature.

Things are just as they are right now.

May I accept this just as it is.

May I accept/open to how it is right now.

No matter how I might wish things to be otherwise, things are as they are.

May my heart be at ease with the outer/inner changing conditions of life.

May my heart incline towards equanimity.

Restorative Yoga

April 10

6-8 pm

$20

Yin/Yang Yoga and Meditation Retreat

April 17

9 am-12 pm

$45

at Laughing River Yoga.

Email Emily to sign up.

April 17, 2011

9 am-12 pm

In this three hour retreat we will take our time to explore the rhythms of the body, mind and breath.  Beginning with an active (yang) yoga practice, we will move through yoga poses in timing with our breath.  The yang practice builds strength, focuses the mind, and uses flowing movements to express the inner rhythm of breath.  After a short savasana, we will resume with a slower (yin) practice during which we keep the body relatively still and examine the movement of breath, body, mind and emotions.  Both the yin and yang yoga practices prepare us to sit comfortably in stillness.  The class will culminate with sitting meditation practice. $45.

Contact Emily to register.

Join me this Sunday for a deeply relaxing Restorative Yoga practice, 6-8 pm, at our lovely yoga home Laughing River Yoga.

“Stillness is not the absence or negation of energy, life or movement.  Stillness is dynamic.  It is unconflicted movement, life in harmony with itself, skill in action.  It can be experienced whenever there is total, uninhibited, unconflicted participation in the moment you are in-when you are wholeheartedly present with whatever you are doing.”

I interpret his interpretation of stillness as a LACK OF STRUGGLE.  It’s worth investigating where there is struggle in your life and how much of it is necessary.  When is it appropriate and possible to let go?

LET GO.  FEEL THAT BELLY BREATHE.