Category Archives: Yoga

this week in yoga: chakras and mantras

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NKO’s recent mural features the crown chakra

Last week I taught four yoga classes in the Puget Sound area. One in the Tashiro Kaplan Community Room in Pioneer Square, one at Laughing Buddha in Mill Creek, one impromtu private lesson with a good friend, and one at the MAHA farm and forest on Whidbey Island where Nko (aka Groucho) and I work-for-stay several days a week.

I’ve been teaching weekly for about 2 months, using the sequences we learned in our teacher training as a framework, incorporating new areas of focus each week learned from other yoga teachers, online articles, spiritual lessons, and sequencing videos. This week I decided to return to my roots. Well… my root chakra, that is.

The vinyasa class we learned to teach at the Mystical Yoga Farm in Guatemala closed with a special focus on the chakras. This sequence activates and “tunes” the seven main chakras in the body with poses and bija (seed) mantras to chant aloud as you inhabit each pose.

Why do mantras with yoga? A few words from mindbodygreen.com:

In Vedic healing and spiritual traditions, specific mono syllable seed sounds or “Bija Mantras” were developed to create balance and harmony in the human body, mind and soul. Each and every part of our body functions at a specific rhythm and pulse and when all our systems are balanced and tuned with each other we experience perfect harmony and health.

So here’s a vinyasa sequence I worked from this week that closes with a kick-ass Chakra alignment that I learned from School Yoga Institute as part of their amazing training:

FINDING BREATH
Finding a comfortable seat, tune into breath, encourage belly breathing, 3-part yogic breathing, kapalabhati (breath of fire), kumbhaka (breath retention), and other breathing exercises as desired.

CONNECTING BREATH AND MOVEMENT
Any sequence that begins to gently stretch the body, tune with the breath, and build heat. I did:

  • Seated (cross legged): forward fold, back bend, side bends, side twists
  • Cat/Cow
  • Table top: lift opposing arm front and leg behind, and switch
  • Downdog (pedal it out), 3-legged dog, Scorpion dog
  • Low lunge with back knee down, prayer twist hooking opposing elbow over front leg
  • Half Hanumanasana (half split)
  • Pyramid (or modified pyramid with back heel popped up)

HEAT
Build some heat with 3 or more repetitions of a sun salutation! I enjoy a fairly classic sequence, moving very slow the first time to find alignment and give beginner cues, and speeding up each consecutive time.

FIRE
I like to throw in something that kind of burns. My first teacher Jamie often invigorates us with a fierce Uttkatasana sequence featuring prayer twists, and heat-releasing “fists of fire”.  After some rigorous sun salutations, this really makes you sweat.

CORE
All of yoga is good for your core, but for this week, I threw in a sequence of plank variations – working on both the front and back muscles of the abdominal corset. (I.e. plank, 3 legged dog, knee to nose, 3 legged dog, knee to right elbow, 3 legged dog, knee to left elbow, etc.)

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Nko crescent lunges to the rising sun (Mystical Yoga Farm in Guatemala)

CLASSIC POSES
I moved through some Classic Poses in the middle of class, i.e. Crescent Lunge (or instead do Warrior 1), Warrior 2, Reverse (Peaceful) Warrior, Extended Side Angle Pose. Triangle. You can do these hatha-style (10 breaths per pose), but a couple of my classes were advertised as vinyasa, so I made this sequence flow by returning to warrior 2 between each pose on the inhale, and exhaling to the next pose, and repeating the whole sequence 2 or 3 times on each side.

Then if time allowed, I added half moon and/or standing split to the end of this sequence for the follow up rounds.

CHAKRA SEQUENCE
wiki_chakrasAfter that rigorous middle section, it’s was time to play!! I invited the class into each of the poses listed below, and invited each person to attempt to make floor contact with the chakra as we chanted that chakra’s Bija Mantra three times together (slowly… one one long breath per chant.) The “a” sounds are pronounced as soft a’s, like the “A” in Awesome.

 

Headstand (or Rabbit for people not yet in headstand)
Crown Chakra: Spirituality
Where is it: Tip top of head
Imagine the color: White/Rainbow
Chant: AUM (Om)

Child’s Pose
3rd Eye Chakra – Intuition/Wisdom
Where is it: Middle of Forehead
Imagine the color: Indigo
Chant: Ksham (pronounced kah-shahm) or AUM.

Shoulder Stand and/or Plow
Throat Chakra – Communication
Where is it: Behind your Adam’s Apple
Imagine the color: Blue
Chant: Ham

Bridge, Wheel or Fish
Heart Chakra – Love
Where is it: Heart Center
Imagine the color: Green or Magenta
Chant: Yam

Happy Baby
Solar Plexis Chakra – Intelligence/Power Center/Self
Where is it: Bottom of Sternum
Imagine the color: Yellow
Chant: Ram

Supine spinal twists
Sacral Chakra – Sensuality/Emotion
Where is it: Belly Buttonish
Imagine the color: Orange
Chant: Vam

Supine (reclining) butterfly
Root Chakra
Where is it: In the space between your hips/groin/pelvis
Imagine the color: Red
Chant: Lam

*SAVASANA*
For a 75 minute class I left 10 minutes for participants to remain in Corpse Pose, allowing all the benefits of the practice (the physical, the emotional, the breath, the chakra work, and any spiritual realizations) to integrate and then float away. Imagining the body sinking into the earth and the thoughts of the mind floating by in the sky, allows freedom from one’s chattering mind and physical sensation. The full relaxation of a body that having worked, and now emerges as a flexible, strong and balanced open vessel. In this space, we more easily shed our attachments, our to-do lists, our stresses and worries, our aches and pains, which provides the opportunity for our souls of pure light and love emerge in freedom, without judgement or worry. This is the real benefit of yoga.

CLOSE CLASS WITH AUM
Before we Aum-ed it out, I asked class to bring their hands in prayer position, to their heart chakra, bowing their third eye toward their hearts, aspiring to find balance between the two.

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Nko's mural at the Mystical Yoga Farm includes a rainbow of the chakra symbols/colors on the right hand side. These are the traditional colors associated with the chakras.

 

No Return, No Regrets

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When I returned from the Appalachian trail it was easy to feel. My emotions, like my body and breath, ran strong and deep. Emotions surfaced suddenly and ran their course like summer storms. I was an empty vessel, quickly filled with feelings without notice; and just as quickly they poured out…

“I am large; I contain multitudes.” – Walt Whitman

The meditation of thru hiking stripped away patterns of normalized anxiety. I had constructed my behavior, and my emotional self, on my ability to engage with work, email, social media and to-do lists. Outside these dominant forms I found myself rich in emotion – overcome by abundant wonder, fear, sadness, humility, excitement, laughter, gratitude and love. I realized I had been using the crutch of anxiety, the “glorification of busy” to define my whole identity. Busy-ness had overridden the diversity of my person – my body, emotion, and intellect. I had allowed my mind, and my wandering thoughts to take over completely.

The meditation of walking allowed me to release myself from this egoistic pattern, and experience again the full spectrum of human emotion in an immediate way, becoming emotionally available to myself and those around me.

Being back in the city now I’m trying not to fall into the trap of wandering stress, aimless anxiety and endless to-do lists. I fought so hard to free myself of this anxiety on my first thru hike, and again on our trip to Guatemala, but it’s not unlike depression or addiction, where the pain itself is known, and it’s familiarity has become comforting.

And here it is. Returning to the city I return temporarily to the shackles of perceived productivity, busy-ness, email chains and social obligations. I am awake now to the trap of these samskaras (negative patterns of thinking) and know they don’t define me. Yet I am still temporarily enthralled by their siren’s song… fooled into thinking they are important somehow.

I hike, meditate, practice yoga – I do all these things to preserve the purity of what I accidentally experienced on my first thru hike; a true unmediated vision of myself. A comfort in a mind that has burned out all thoughts. An experience of joy in my body, my breath and movement. Mind, body and emotion inextricably connected.

I want to make this my new normal. I want to return to the state – where through physical exhaustion, the magnitude of nature, or the quiet of purpose – I understand that everything I need is inside of me. Where I can finally release my addiction to the stresses of civilization, realizing they are just my ego distracting me. My truest purpose; just being. Myself!

Floating Castles

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Work-for-stay agreements honor basic needs for shelter and food in exchange for  contributions of energy and time. At the finca this meant spending 25-60 hours a week cooking, cleaning, teaching yoga, office working, accounting, amateur religious counseling, spiritual space-holding, singing, and/or painting in exchange for 3-meals a day, saunas, lake jumps, ceremonies, singing, yoga, chosen community, and room for two.

Our room happened to be a converted pleasure craft – a house boat.

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The house boat’s humble facade belied the internal character of the space… cozy wall panels of plywood held proud graffiti-style inspirational phrases scrawled haphazardly in crayon or colored pencil. Two short shelves on either side of the bow created a temporary aisle and a surface for our altar. Under the shelves were two mysterious gaps leading to the internal hull of the ship -an abyss availalble only to the farm cats and probably some of our socks. A long and even row of nails made a make-do closet.

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Half the boat was dedicated to a full bed where one could gaze out the windows, seeing the farm dock and two looming volcanos. The volcanoes waited, shrouded in darkness, arising resplendent each sunrise from the mist rolling across the glassy morning waters of Lake Atitlan. Other than the view, the interior of the boat was as plain as a nun^s habit, which was maybe apropriate given the context.

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We learned how to balance our entries into the boat by positioning ourselves on opposite sides, so as one person see-sawed the boat starboard the other entered down a steep ramp on the other side. We took comfort learning these quirks, even as the water of the lake dropped several inches each week, and our little door sunk lower and lower until we were doing a kind of limbo down the narrow plank entrance.
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Each morning we awoke to a light grey sky behind the dark blue volcanos, and each evening the waves of Atitlan would lull us to sleep once again.

While loving the space, I awoke some mornings feeling heavy, like dreams had been dark, weird and cloudy. I began to blame the visual environment. Eventually we took a hard look at the makeshift collage right next to the bed, and wondered if we could use that precious wall real estate for our own creative expression, at least while we were here. Something that would feel familiar, inspiring or something that could remind us less of other people{s time here, but more a reminder of the ever-present.
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After a few days scheming, we decided to continue the houseboat tradition of using magazine clippings and found objects to create art representing not only our sacred journies, but  the mythic and mystical that belongs to all of us through sacred geometries.
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We spent many hours finding and clipping circles from a collection of old Yoga Magazine and Self and National Geographics. We made wheatpaste in a big pot in the kitchen on the gas burner, and NKO drew circle after circle on all the wood panels. Arranging the circles chromatically, we pasted up sacred geometries which NKO then embellished further with paint and his research into chakras, platonic solids, and sacred numbers.

We finished the piece over the last few days at the farm, NKO doing the lions share of the work once the circle cutting was complete. The last few nights in the houseboat were restful and my dreams were vivid, deep and present.
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We left behind a more elaborate piece than we had intended, but on our shuttle away from the farm, our friend Kali commented on the mural, letting us know that people who stare and a sacred geometric symbol or mandala before bed claim to have better success at interpreting dreams and lucid dreaming. Success!

Landscapes of San Marcos

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Unicorn Tile Murals at the Unicorno Hostel

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Sage and Candles

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5am from the deck of my room at Ananda Healing Center

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And sunset…

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What $7 a night pays for in San Marcos

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More Unicorn Art

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Crazy yogi’s raiding the 2nd hand clothing pile at the sushi restaurant

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A glimpse into what 2 weeks of Thai Body Work/Massage Training in Guatemala looks like…

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A room with a view – Hotel Quetzal

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Learning curve. This photos was back when I didn’t know that the last boat left for San Marcos at 5:00, and arrived at the dock at 5:15 and was suckered into paying 150 Quetzals for a private boat. The equivalent of $20. Less than a cab fare in Seattle, but it should’ve cost more like $3-5 max… I was “Had”.