Category: Yoga

Beginning the year, being a beginner this year … and it feels good. Actually returning to being a beginner makes you feel vibrant and alive! 1-2 times a year, for continuing education, I usually try to take workshops or intensives because, always a student at heart, I find it inspiring to be in that positive environment where I might be paired up with a yogini with 20+ years teaching experience, still furiously taking notes:) It’s that REFRESH button for me:) Everyone wants an expert or want to be the expert but I don’t at the expense of losing students – I want to stay a beginner with that Zen mindset …to stay curious and genuinely interested so that I can serve. To borrow her words,

“Practicing yoga is a privilege. And with this privilege comes a duty to be kind, to share a smile, and to offer the yoga from the mat into the rest of your life.”

Spent 5 hours on “blueprint” poses yesterday …it’s all a review…but… Another 5 hours tomorrow – and repeat – intense. She’s tough but nurturing. Different kind of toughness but reminds me of Judith Lasater – even though their styles are diametrically opposite.

Maty calls out to check in – “tired? “(we want to scream “YES!” but too tired to) “EASY?” (all students are looking like – are you kidding?!) Reading our facial expressions, “but you are all young!” – ? – “I work much harder and I am so much older!” she exclaims but slow holds are burning and repetitions are over and over – drilled in – perspiration are dripping even though we’ve only gotten through few sun salutations… the room got hot like a hot yoga studio all the sudden – the heat zoomed up naturally… I guess I had been doing – la la la ~ sun salutations (not incorrect but) mindlessly all these years – She combines the flow with Iyengar alignment precision. Then forced to look straight into the mirror – to a reflection which I had been avoiding – self-analysis took place…in a tree:)

Not the usual self-judgement but rather a feeling of gratitude came over me for the body & mind that allows learning to take place and for this truly authentic wise teacher. In the old days in Japanese learning system, you could not study with whoever Master you wanted to study under since the teacher “selected” and had to accept his students – or else students had to go beg to be taken as an apprentice … but thank goodness for this democratic modern system where one can actually take a class from one of the most respected expert (and here I use the word “expert” in the true sense of the word) in the field of yoga today:) Gratitude that she’s returned to the teaching scene after a looong break – like a decade maybe!!!??? seems everybody needs time off to regenerate in order to shine brighter. It’s an honor to learn from someone who personifies a living legend…feeling so privileged.
H A P P Y !

Richard Rosen on his humble and humorous beginning…

I taught the first class on Monday, March 15, 1987. I had two students, which was double the number I had for the second class. Since then by my rough estimate I’ve taught over 6500 public classes at PYS.

When we started the school back in 1987, none of us really thought we could make a living teaching yoga. But we agreed that we would do everything we could to make yoga enjoyable and accessible to as many people as possible.

We’ve always prided ourselves on being a little bit different than other yoga schools,… over the years we’ve hosted classes for disabled students, cancer survivors, people with Parkinson’s, seniors, toddlers, and teens, for people with back problems. We’ve supported low fee community classes, a training program for disabled students to become teachers themselves, and of course our own teacher training program has launched the careers of any number of current teachers here and around the country.

Richard Rosen on his favorite pose:

“Many years ago when I first began yoga practice in the early 1980s, my least favorite yoga pose was shavasana, usually interpreted as the Corpse Pose. I couldn’t see the point of lying around and doing nothing, it seemed a huge waste of time. But I think now the real reason I objected to it ​was that it made me feel very nervous, vulnerable, after a vigorous asana practice my inner life was too exposed and I wasn’t ready to look at it that closely. But now, that’s all changed and shava is by far my favorite pose. Shava is a retreat and a refuge, an essential daily “time out,” when I give myself the permission to “do nothing,” figuratively and literally, which is of course the ultimate yoga practice.”

Lump in the throat – Just sheer respect.