dharma mittra and other yoga finds

Last night I went to a three hour Maha Sadhana with Dharma Mittra at his studio, which was suggested by my friend Nicole, a most awesome yogini who is doing her advanced teacher training there. It was so amazing and inspiring, I felt like a different person walking out of that space from who I was when I went in. It was better than a massage and a facial combined!

Going to Caravan of Dreams tonight for dinner–went on their website this morning and found that they offer yoga about four days a week for a $5 donation! Who knew?! Have a crazy week ahead full of papers and quizzes, but so far feeling pretty calm about it. 🙂

Namaste!

OMG!!!

OK, so I totally just did a headstand in the middle of my livingroom!!!!! I was doing a Kundalini practice on YogaToday, which was making me a little naush and dizzy so I stopped about halfway through. I got the urge to go up into headstand–and I did it!! That was amazing! Next step–holding headstand for more than 5 breaths…

Other good news, Charlie hasn’t peed on the yoga mat since that first day…although my ponytail is apparently fair game. Can’t win ’em all! 🙂

Fun Creating a Mobile Site

Tonight in class we learned how to create a mobile site from a blog–check it out:

winksite.mobi/danalcarey/danasblog

My practice is coming along nicely. After a frustrating week or so of being extremely busy, life has calmed down somewhat again and my practice is coming back too! It has been hard dealing with the pain in my wrists–I spoke to my yoga teacher and she reminded me of some exercises we did in Iron Yoga to strengthen my forearms. Also, in an Anusara DVD with John Friend that I watched last weekend, he had some great advice about bringing awareness into your fingers and front of the palm of your hand to make sure that you aren’t sinking into the backs of your hands and putting pressure on your wrists. Ahh! Sweet pain-free Downward Dog! Although back at the yoga studio on Saturday my wrists were not happy. They have carpeting and the heel of my wrists sink immediately down and my wrists yell at me. But I found a yoga studio that I absolutely LOVE!! It’s an Anusara yoga studio in Soho called Virayoga. I heart it.

Headstand inspiration

School has caught up with me, so I’m practicing mental yoga today…but checking out YouTube for inspiration, I found this video that has well over a million hits?!

Slacker!

I feel like the white rabbit today–“No time to say ‘hello’ ‘goodbye’ . . .” although thankfully not late. So far. Between walking the dog this morning, working on a budget, paying my bills, going to an appointment, and whatever else is on the endless list of little things to do…I’m pooped! And I still have to walk the dog (yes AGAIN…and thanks, Charlie, for peeing on the rug while I was talking to a potential dog walker for the days I’m at an internship. Talking on the phone and cleaning up pee is apparently part of my multitasking repitoire.) and put the final touches on a paper.

Bottom line, yoga is not happening today, which makes me very sad. There are at least two yoga studios in my new neighborhood:

www.bikrambayridge.com, which I’ve been to once before. I’m not particularly a “Bikram person” but it was OK. (Bikram is the “hot yoga”…you sweat. A lot. A lot-a lot.) I’m too old for the student discount?!! What?!!

www.dahnyoga.com–I’m a pretty liberal and accepting person…but not sure how I feel about a tagline that reads, “tap into the infinite potential of your brain through brain wave vibration.” Oh, Dahn. Maybe if you offered a student discount I’d let you mess with my brain waves.

Another site

So last night I also did some research on YouTube for yoga classes and found MyYogaOnline.com. It has a very attractive website and looks like they have a nice variety of classes for about the same price as YogaToday.com. May have to check this one out.

Yogadownload.com, pretty good

So I just finished a 20-minute class from yogadownload.com. Figuring out how to actually download a class was a little tricky at first–I tried putting one class in my cart and updating it, but nothing happened. Perhaps I should register for the class in order to download it (duh)…success! They should have some sort of announcement though for first-time users that you have to register first. They are mostly audio downloads or audio downloads with slides, which is something I’m not really used to, but it wasn’t hard to follow along if you have an established yoga practice and are familiar with the basic poses and Sun Salutations. I liked that they had a brief Savasana at the end. My only criticism was that at several points the teacher would say what was coming next (“coming up Chaturanga”). This goes completely against all other yoga teachings that I’ve heard where you are supposed to stay in the moment and stay in the pose and not think to the past or think ahead and anticipate the next move. But for busy days where I want to fit in a quick practice, this was pretty good.

And a big thank you to Charlie, who peed on my yoga mat while I was figuring out how to download the class. Good one, bud.

Free/cheap yoga sources

I was talking to a friend from another class about yoga and she gave me two great suggestions for free or cheap yoga! Thanks, Mari!

One is www.yogadownload.com, which offers a mix of free and paid classes depending on the length of the video you download. The free classes seem to all be 20 minutes long. The paid classes range from 30 to a max of 60 or 75 minutes. There doesn’t seem to be a lot to choose from but I’ll try it during this coming week and blog about what it’s like.

The other is a place in Manhattan where you can attend 60 minute classes on a donation basis! The suggested price is $10 per class, which is pretty cheap and would definitely help this poor grad student. Yoga to the People is in the East Village. Definitely going to check it out, maybe before class, one day next week.

Day 2–Ouch.

I woke up at 7am today. It’s Saturday. I woke up at 7am on a Saturday to get to the yoga studio by my parents’ house. (And Charlie visited the family too, to the unbelievable delight and joy of mom, dad, and brother. Seriously, I’m nothing when he’s around. It’s understandable. He’s pretty cute.) It was nice and comfortable to be back and catch up with people I haven’t seen for about a month…ok, more like two months. The vinyasa actually felt really good. (Vinyasa is when you flow continuously from pose to pose for my nonyogi readers. Think Sun Saluatations.) When we got to inversions, I was pretty happy I was able to hold headstand (against the wall) for 2 1/2 minutes. It’s a good place to start. I already feel sore in my shoulders, upper arms, and back of my legs. My neck isn’t particularly pleased with me either.

My wrists are seriously weak. I’m going to have to ask around and read up on how to strengthen them. Whenever I try to do side plank, I can’t hold it for anything. If a magic genie said he’d grant me three wishes if I could hold side plank for a minute, I’d say sorry, dude, not gonna happen. Check out this funny photo I found on Flickr:

side plank pose (Vasisthasana)

Originally uploaded by Talkingsun

Gumby School O’ Yoga

Gumby School O’ Yoga

Originally uploaded by sdpalladio

I love people. Gumby, you are so flexible. You too, Poky.