Cultivating Gratitude - A Source for Inspiration

This morning I got an email from Yoga Thailand, the place I went last summer for a week of yoga on the island of Ko Samui. They have recently opened an new retreat center so I was browsing around their website to check it out. While I was there last summer, we got a preview of the new place while it was being built and it's pretty swanky! The photos on the website are very impressive and make me want to go back.

While I was browsing around, I ran across this article from one of the founders of Yoga Thailand, Paul Dallaghan, entitled "Gratitute is Key", and it reminded me of a guided imagery exercise I did a few years ago that focused on gratitude and had a profound impact on my thinking. Here is just a taste of what he writes. I'd highly recommend reading the whole thing.

"Do we see the thorns or the flowers? Is the glass half empty or half full? How we look at everything in life is indicative of what is going on in our system, energetically speaking. Try to observe your response and actions to all situations in your life. How negative or not are they? You can cultivate positivity right at the start of your day. The beginning of any activity is crucial and thus this day even more so. Genuinely feel it, make time for it, sit and offer thanks. Already energetically the positive current starts to flow and affects the rest of your day."

"If we have really acknowledged all we have and feel genuine appreciation we are directly in a position to feel the plight of others. In other words compassion will more naturally flow from us. To put yourself in another's shoes, to do unto others as you would want done to yourself is a key principle of life and inherent in all yoga. From a real place of gratitude your heart is opening to feel others, offer love to others and to help others. What more is there to life?"

Want to feel blessed? Cultivate gratitude. Want to relieve depression? Cultivate gratitude. Feeling sorry for yourself? Cultivate gratitude. Next time you find yourself in one of life's challenging situations, think of all of the things you are thankful for. You'll notice a difference in how you handle the situation.

Thank you!

Becoming a Yoga Teacher

I'm back from Acapulco and Yoga Teacher's Training, and all I can say is "wow!" It was just a great experience and I'm so happy I went. Many thanks to my brother, George, who came to take over for me so that I could go.

Yoga Teacher's Training in the Integrative Yoga Therapy philosophy of Yoga was just exactly what I needed. No strict religion about a specific style, but a blend of many styles of Hatha Yoga, combined with a variety of other approaches to yoga. So much more than just Hatha Yoga, we learned about Kundalini yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Karma Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Mantra Yoga, Tantra Yoga, and Raja Yoga (aka, The Wheel of Yoga). These various yogas focus on specific parts of the mind, body and spirit. For example, Kundalini Yoga focuses on the energy body while Mantra Yoga is the yoga of sacred sound, and of course Hatha Yoga focuses on the physical body. I hadn't really expected to explore yoga this broadly, but am really glad we did. In learning about these different types of yoga, we learned about chakras or energy centers withing the body, Ayurveda and it's relation to yoga, and Pranayama or "channeling of the life force" among other things. While we were given "permission" to miss a day of class for whatever reason, none of us wanted to miss a word! Over the course of 2 1/2 weeks, we all had at least one day where we didn't feel too good, but none of us missed class.

And to top it all off, we had a great group of women together in one place. I enjoyed every one of them, all with different stories and circumstances, but with a lot of similarity too. We all got along well.

Now to complete my certification, I have to teach 4 classes and send in my class notes to my teachers. I enlisted the help of some of my Dad's friends, a group they call "The Mondays" because they have cocktails every Monday afternoon. I've developed a series called "Yoga for Balance & Mobility" which is yoga done in a chair. This group of 6-7 southern bred ladies, all of whom are over the age of 80 had asked me to teach them yoga when I returned, so we started today with Class #1. This class focused on Body Awareness, a foundational concept for yoga. The idea is to tune into what's going on in your body, learn to listen to it, and adjust accordingly. Sounds so basic, but many times we think our bodies will just keep on going whether we pay attention or not. But when I hear them say they have problems feeling their feet or finger tips, I know that they can benefit from improved body awareness and some proprioception retraining. They loved it and say they are looking forward to next week.

Class #2 will focus on breath awareness, another foundational concept. Class #3 will focus on balance, and Class #4 will focus on flexibility. Won't be long now before I'll be officially certified!