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An in-depth look into practice

Full Frog, or Mandukāsana, is an intense pose of external rotation in your hips. The intensity of this posture provides an opportunity to sit where you are – as you are.

So often we move to control our experience. For instance, if you are in an uncomfortable situation, our natural instinct is to remove ourselves rather than sit through the discomfort. However, in avoiding the discomfort we rob ourselves of the insights that experience had to offer – we short changed ourselves in a way.

This is a practice, everything you find on your mat relates to life off of you mat and at a greater sense, your infinite self. If you can sit with the an unfamiliar feeling in your body you begin to understand it. If you can sit with confusion in your mind, you begin to understand that too. 

We are beings of limitless potential and to confine our potential to only what feels good, happy or comfortable is not to honor the entire spectrum of feeling and experience available to us.

Tap into all parts of who you are – physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally. Only then can you release the need to control your experience and rest in the understanding that it is all as it should be and you are exactly where you should be.

If we take this understanding onto our mat it becomes clear that it does not matter what the posture ultimately looks like, for in the philosophy of yoga our eyes do nothing but keep us in illusion. It only matters what the posture feels like – and your capacity to sit with that feeling.

This pose may feel amazing, it may feel uncomfortable, or it may not matter what it feels like, because your only calling is to experience it as it is. Release the urge to control it and turn it into what you think it should be – and just sit with what is.

Forever seated,

An in-depth look into practice

Grab your weights and head to your mat for a 40 minute total body workout. In this class we will target all of the muscles to give your entire system healthy stress in order to promote growth and release.

We often talk about healthy stress on The Source Yoga + Wellness. Healthy stress is when your muscle gets activated to the point where it pulls or tugs on the bone. The bone, when it senses this added stress, knows it needs to support the load your muscles are trying to bear – so it throws down more bone mass. Bones, contrary to the popular skeleton look, look more like sponges than solid rock – they are porous. When the pores become too wide or large, the skeletal structure becomes brittle in a state of osteoporosis. However, through a constant regimen of healthy stress (such as in yoga, body weight or light weighted workouts) our bones continually throw down more and more mass to stay strong and supportive.

The beauty of this is the more mass and density our bones have, the more calcium they can store – and calcium is what our muscles use to work. So this symbiotic relationship of muscles tugging on bones to get more dense and store more calcium to supply more muscle activation to tug on more bones goes round and round indefinitely.

This is health.

It does not mean you will come out of this practice looking like a body builder – that is not the point. The benefit it through this constant regimen of healthy stress, you bones are denser and store enough calcium to contract your muscles and do the work our bodies ask of them.

So, lets get to work. I’ll see you in Child’s Pose.

An in-depth look into practice

In this practice we will continue to challenge you to find peace, not in the absence of chaos, but amongst it.

Let’s put our cards on the table – high intensity workouts are chaos. Our blood is pumping, our hearts are beating as sweat is seeping out of every pore in our body. It is one of the terrains least conducive to tread on the way to peace.

But if we can find peace here, we can find it anywhere.

Working out in a way is analogous to life. It is hard – I am not sure anyone can deny that. Even the physically strongest amongst humanity will attest to the difficulty that is working out. The very nature of working out is to be hard. Many times in life we are greeted with chaos – our fears are pumping, our anxiety is beating and doubt is seeping out of every cell in our body. However, if we take what we learn from working out we will be familiar with this sensation of chaos. If we know that we conquered a chaotic workout than maybe the chaos of life can be surmounted as well. And the beauty is the more times we conquer the chaos of a workout, the stronger our spiritual will becomes. With a strong spiritual will you can stand firm in the middle of an emotional, energetic, or even mental tornado and still be still in your conviction.

That is the power of working out.

I always say that we work out not to gain strength but to show ourselves how strong we already are.

Go forth and be strong.

An in-depth look into practice

To the Hatha yogis (pronounce hot-ha) tension in the body is nothing more that stagnant energy – or energy that has been welled up in one spot for far too long. This practice is the practice of moving that energy to energize the body as a whole. 

Everything in the body is connected. The body is a perfect symbol of unison and a reflection of the ultimate goal of yoga – to unite your individual self with the eternal self. In order to do this, you must first be willing to release the blockages, to let go of what keeps you from the flow.

Hatha Yoga is a system of yoga that uses the body to first find unison physically and then move into the vaster plane of mental union. If you imagine the flow of energy in the body as water, than the points of tension are like dams – holding that water in one place while the rest of the body gets less. Over time, the more dams we create, the less water actually flows in our body and we get held in energetic stagnancy. 

This practice today is geared towards moving that energy through you in a common area of blockage – you iliotibial bands, more commonly referred to as you IT bands.

This muscle runs from the outside of your knee cap region to the outside of your hip. When is gets shortened or ‘tightened’ it becomes difficult to fully extend your leg straight. If this is a common problem in your life or someone you know, this is the region of your body you would benefit from working on. However, even if it is relatively loose, you will find at some level there is tension. This is because we use our legs to walk day after day and because of this there is a constant load placed upon our leg muscles. This system of removing blockages is undoing the load, or more eloquently, returning our body to homeostasis.

Our body wants to be free. Nobody enjoys not being able to stand up easily due to back pain or not being able to pick a dustpan off the floor due to leg pain. Our body wants to be free – this practice is simply giving your body what it longs for.

Our mind is no different. Our mind becomes blocked when we choose not to see things as they are. Perhaps when we choose to avoid sadness and cling to happiness. When we displace fault on to other people for an action that was entirely ours, or even when we narrow our mind to one belief system and the inevitable hierarchy of superiority that stems from this.

Just as we move to release blockages in our body, we must do the same with our mind.

Let go of limiting beliefs, unneeded expectations and unwanted judgements. Clear your mind and let presence flow. 

This is the true purpose behind the physical practice – so as the blockages clear from your body today, let the same be true for the holding patterns of your mind.

There’s no need to think too much about it – feel it, move with it and let it move you.

Freedom awaits,