In yogic view, shakti is the energy essence of the phenomenal world, the purely active force in the manifestation of the universe. Shakti is seen as the divine Mother, the essence of the feminine principle, because she brings the world into being. She is also energy, the primordial power that is always at play, creating, preserving, destroying, the world of form. There is no object or event that doesn’t disclose the presence of her power. But the body of a yoga adept is a particularly open channel for the play of pure energy.

The thing is though, that you can’t really understand the action of Shakti in the world without understanding Shiva, Shakti’s consort. Shiva is the masculine principle in creation. He is the pure witness consciousness, the archetypal seer. He is the formless brahman, pure spirit, transcendent, without any attributes. You might think of Shiva as the still point, the absolute subject, the One. And Shakti is the dance. It’s like T.S. Eliot said “Without the still point, there would be no dance.” In the yogic view, the entire universe moves between these two poles – shiva and shakti. Pure consciousness and pure power. Pure being and pure becoming. The still point and the dance. Always arcing toward one another.

Here’s the really cool thing, In hatha yoga-the practice of postures and yogic breathing-the whole drama of the universe gets acted out right within this very earthly body. In this drama all the condensed powers of shakti lie coiled at the base of the spine. This is what we know as kundalini, the essence of divine goddess energy. The kundalini shakti rises up to meet her consort shiva, pure witness consciousness, who resides in an energy center at the energy center at the crown of the head, the so-called crown chakra. The union of shiva and shakti, which is the goal of hatha yoga, is accomplished when shakti moves up through the central energy column in the area of the spine-called the shushumna-and arrives at the crown. On its trip to meet shiva, this highly condensed energy of kundalini shakti awakens all the latent energy centers in the body, and as this happens, the body moves spontaneously into hundreds of postures. The dance that results is the interplay of energy and consciousness, or what yogis call lila-the divine play.

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An argument for radical truthfulness goes deep: Lying takes you out of alignment with reality. This was Gandhi’s position, based on the insight that truth lies at the very heart of existence, of reality. A yogic text, the Taittiriya Upanishad, says that God is truth itself, while a Kabbalistic text, the Zohar, calls truth “the signet ring of God.” In psychological terms, lying disconnects us from reality and it always makes us a little bit crazy. Anyone who grew up in a family that kept secrets will recognize the eerie feeling of cognitive dissonance that arises when facts are concealed. That dissonance currently rages through the bloodstream of society; lies and secrets having become so embedded in our corporate, governmental, and personal lives that most of us assume that the president, the media, and our religious institutions are continually lying to us.

When the consequences of lying are so spiritually and socially destructive, why would an ethical person ever choose to tell an untruth? First, an ethical person might decide to lie if telling the factual truth would compromise other, equally important values. In the Mahabharata, the great ethical treatise of the Indian tradition, there is a famous moment involving a lie. Krishna is guiding the righteous Pandavas in a pivotal battle against the forces of evil. Krishna, who is considered by orthodox Hindus to embody divine truth in human form, orders the righteous king Yudhisthira to tell a lie in order to demoralize the enemy general. Yudhisthira agrees to tell the first lie of his life—that the general’s son, Aswatthama, has been killed in battle. Krishna’s position is that in a battle against terrible evil, one does what one must to win. (The position is similar to the Allied disinformation tactic in World War II, which misled the Nazi intelligence about the real target of D-day.) In short, Krishna makes the decision to lie because it serves what he perceives as higher values: those of justice and, ultimately, peace.

My college philosophy teacher used to make this point with a personal example. As a Jewish child living in Germany, she was saved from being captured by the Nazis because a Catholic family lied to the Gestapo about her presence in their back bedroom. For the family to have told the truth would have brought about her death. It was a small lie for a larger truth.

Another situation in which lying might be ethical is when the truth is simply too harsh for the person who is receiving it. A friend of mine, when diagnosed with breast cancer, told her 90-year-old mother that everything was fine, because she recognized that telling the truth about her condition would create too much anxiety for her already-fragile mother.

Conversely, there are times when telling a factual truth can be an act of disguised or overt aggression. When Fran tells her friend Allison that she saw Allison’s husband with another woman, Fran may be speaking out of concern for her friend, but she may also be expressing a hidden hostility or envy. Most of us can remember less dramatic but equally painful examples of bitter truth telling: disclosures made in anger, hurtful comments about a friend’s or partner’s secret vulnerabilities, revelations that destroy trust. In the past 30 years, especially in certain spiritual communities, there’s been a prevailing ethic that privileges full disclosure, public confession, and extreme transparency in relationships. The results have been liberating in some respects, destructive in others. So it seems vital that we each find our own way of balancing truthfulness with other values. One great yardstick to use is called “the four gates of speech,” which include the following questions: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? and Is this the right moment to say it? When we feel caught between speaking a bitter truth and keeping quiet, these questions help us sort out the priorities.

As I’ve said, balancing the relative value of, say, truth and kindness, is not always easy, and it requires a high degree of honesty—especially about your own deep inner motives. If the compulsion to be relentlessly honest sometimes conceals aggression, the decision to hide the truth because of kindness, or because the time is wrong, can be a cover for your fears or for the desire to stay inside of your comfort zone. Radical truth telling is simple. You just plunge in and do it, regardless of the effect it has on others. Discriminating truth telling demands far more attentiveness, emotional intelligence, and self-understanding.

As you begin to look at how you lie, it becomes possible to find out why you lie. My friend Alice is getting divorced and is facing a child-custody battle. Her lawyer suggested that she write a description of all the incidents in which her ex-husband had failed as a father and husband. She wrote a series of “He said, then I said” dialogues, highlighting the ways in which her husband had hurt her and their daughter. When Alice reread the document, she realized that she hadn’t included her own hurtful words and actions. Part of the reason she hadn’t was tactical: She wanted sole custody of their child. But another part of it was her need to feel justified about leaving her marriage. “Once I started to look deeper at these conversations, I could see that both of us were at fault. In fact, there were times I acted like a total bitch. I so much didn’t want to see myself that way that my memory would literally distort what happened.”

Alice was confronting what most of us would recognize as a particularly insidious form of untruth: the justifications, excuses, and blaming strategies that we use to avoid facing the gap between how we want to act and how we actually behave. For the postmodern, psychologically informed yogi, Patanjali’s vow to unconditional truth demands much more than a commitment to factual accuracy. It asks you to become transparent to yourself, to be willing to gaze unflinchingly, yet without bitterness or self-blame, at the parts of yourself that you are afraid to expose to scrutiny. Only when you’re willing to look at your areas of falseness can you discover the deepest possibilities of the practice of truth.

Here are the basics in the practice of truthfulness: Pay attention to factual truth. Notice and make a point of calling yourself on the urge to conceal embarrassing facts, make yourself look better, justify mistakes, or run away from confrontation. When you notice yourself telling an untruth, acknowledge that you did it. As much as possible, make a point of not saying anything you know to be untrue.

As you learn how to catch your own characteristic patterns of untruth—both inner and outer—you will also begin to notice that sometimes truths need to be spoken, and other times remaining silent is an acceptable alternative. In other words, your commitment to truthfulness comes to include an authentic and trustworthy capacity for discriminating speech. Truth is a genuine teacher. When you decide to follow where it leads—constantly asking questions such as, What is my motive for speaking? Is it kind and necessary to say this? If not now, how will I know that it’s right to say this?—the power of truth will show its subtleties as well as teach its wisdom. Patanjali says that through truthfulness we gain such a power that all our words turn out to be true. I don’t believe that he means we become alchemists, able to turn the base metal of lies into the gold of reality just through our words. Instead, I believe that he is actually talking about the power to speak from inspiration—to hold firmly to the truth that is not only factual, but that illuminates, that can be received, and that reflects the deeper state within the heart.

“In the world of yoga, you must remember that there are hell realms and heavenly realms and animal realms and other realms where souls abide. But the human realms are the most precious. Here in the human realms we suffer, but we also have the tools to wake up. And unlike the heavenly realms of the devas and brahmas, celestial beings, we have the desire to wake up. The human realms have just the right mixture of pleasure and pain to produ us toward taking the path of liberation.”

“You have come to live in the gurus house, now. This is a very auspicious time, you know. Maybe thousands of lifetimes you wait for this. You must be very careful not to waste it.” Amrit talked about the preciousness of taking a period of time to live quietly, deliberately, away from the restlessness of our culture. “There must be movement back and forth from the mountaintop to the marketplace, but just now is a moment for the mountaintop. How will you use it, I wonder?” He talked about how yogis discovered the amazing potentioals present in the “seed of the self” and challenged us to be yogic scientists, to experiment while we were at Kripalu with those ways of living that helped us to be fully alive. He urged us to tune in carefully to our energy, to listen to it, not to abuse it. “A conscious use of energy is the hallmark of the yogic lifestyle.”

Yoga practice is meant to teach us how to untangle inner knots. Often, you don’t realize how much difference your practice has made until the day that you find yourself dealing with a crisis without going into an absolute meltdown.

Tapas literally means “heat” the inner heat created as we undergo discipline or hardship for the sake of change. When we understand tapas, any hardship can be seen as a purifying fire, removing veils from our awareness. Laura’s intense, painstaking effort to rehabilitate her brain was a tapas that actually purified her mind. In fact, for a yogi, any effort can be reframed as tapas. My friend Scott kept it together through years of working with a difficult boss by telling himself that he was doing tapas. He figured that each moment of forbearance was helping purify and dissolve his tendencies toward impatience and anger. Understanding the concept of tapas as purification has taken many a worldly yogi through challenging situations that can be as mundane as surviving a 14-hour plane ride or as primal as a serious illness or the death of a parent.

Asana practice offers basic training in tapas: You are emotionally strengthened each time you make the physical effort to stay in a pose while your legs burn. Meditation and mindfulness practice teach us to sit through boredom, mental restlessness, and emotional upheavals. Another form of tapas is the effort we make to practice kindness and nonviolence and to tell the truth. But during hard times, tapas often means pure endurance hanging tight when fear, sadness, and frustration threaten to send us into a tailspin. Doing this kind of tapas, we actually become heirs to the great spiritual practitioners who experienced long periods of difficulty, doubt, and darkness, figures like St. John of the Cross, Ramakrishna, and Bodhidharma especially if, like them, we also remember to practice self-study and surrender.

It’s important to have a daily meditation practice, to have a developing ability to see thoughts clearly, and to reside in our bodily experience. But having deep experiences during meditation is not enough. If we want to know how we’re doing in our practice, we have to examine our life. Unless we begin to connect it with the rest of our life, our practice—however strong, calm, or enjoyable—ultimately will not be satisfying.

The real measure of practice is whether, little by little, we can find our edge, that place where we’re closed down in fear, and allow ourselves to experience it. This takes courage, but courage isn’t about becoming fearless. Courage is the willingness to experience our fears. And as we experience our fears, courage grows. Noticing our edge and trying to meet it also allows us to develop compassion, not just for ourselves but for the whole human drama. Then, with an increasing sense of lightness and curiosity, we can keep moving toward a more open and genuine life.

Click here for the whole article.

Recommended by Sean Corn. I am intrigued by the Chakra System in Yoga, which is a series of 7 energy centers that run along our spine which each have specific psychological, emotional, and physical attributes. This is a thick book, it’s going to take me a while, but it’s really interesting so far. “Seamlessly blending psychology and spirituality the book creates a compelling interpretation of the chakra system and its relevance for Westerners today.”

The universe exists only through a constant dance of consistency and change. Through consistency, consciousness finds meaning; through change it finds stimulation and expansion. To find consistency within change is to embrace the unfolding flow.

Second Chakra – Reclaiming the Shadow
In the second chakra, our work is to reclaim the shadow. The shadow represents repressed instinctual energies that are locked away in the realm of the unconscious. They do not die or cease to function, but they are no longer part of conscious awareness, no longer directly expressed through our conscious activity. Consequently, they are enacted unconsciously, sometimes with great force. We may think we never get angry but enact a passive stubbornness that infuriates others. We may deny our own neediness, but subtly manipulated ourselves into the center of attention.
Keeping the shadow in chains requires a great deal of energy and robs the whole of its grace and power. Furthermore, it doesn’t work. The shadow chases us in our dreams. It sabotages our work and relationships. It energizes compulisive activities. When the shadow is repressed we are cut of from our wholeness and from our ground.

Second Chakra – Either-or Thinking
Feelings are usually ambiguous. To fully embrace our feelings is to embrace that ambiguity. Black-and-white choices are seldom acceptable. Unacceptable choices keep us from making decisions and trap us in paralysis. When we can’t move forward movement is thwarted. When you feel trapped in either-or thinking, take a moment to ask yourself what you feel guilty about. Fuzzy logic is being introduced to the binary logic of computers as these states are usually more accurate and enable better decisions.
We have to develop our ability to feel in order to discern the subtle nuances between polarities. When feelings are numb, we can only discern the obvious differences, the more black and white choices. When there is guilt, we think we have to make clear decisions and are uncomfortable with approximations. As a result, it may be harder to get to the truth, harder to communicate that truth to others, and harder to work through it to a sound decision.
There is, of course, a healthy place for guilt….it is a teacher when it guides us, but a demon when it binds us.

Second Chakra Excess
The person with second chakra excess has an intense need to be connected at all times. There may be an addiction to people and partying, with an inability to be alone, form boundaries, or say no. Being stuck in this chakra keeps us in a state that is trying to find completion through others.
There is a difficulty separating one’s own feelings from those of others (clairsentience).
This may result in social, sexual, and emotional dependencies.
Often this social dependency results from an attempt to block out the intensity of one’s deeper emotions. When we are with others, busily interacting and attending to their needs, we are distracted from our own fears and sadness.
Stimulation of the senses is craved by a system that is excessive in this chakra. In contrast to the deficient who might prefer bland colors, foods, or uniformity in surroundings, the excessive wants constant stimulation, change, excitement. These people have a highly dramatic sense of being alive, which may initially appear as a kind of thriving, yet their stimulation seldom gets channeled into real output, and the person may feel lost or alone when they try to be in a quieter state.
Sexually, the excessive second chakra seems to lead the rest of the system around by its gonads (ha). Often wonderful lovers, they are responsive to the instinctual energy of Eros, and thrive on intimacy, connection, and ego validation they feel in sexual situations. While there is nothing wrong with this in and of itself, it becomes a problem when it wins out over good discrimination in the choice of lovers, creates sexual addiction to the point of neglecting other elements of life, or results in a conquest of lovers rather than real intimacy.
In terms of the pleasure principle, the excessive second chakra may be so oriented toward pleasure that it prevents anything else from being accomplished. When faced with difficulty, the pleasure addict says simply, “It’s too hard. I want to go out and have fun and feel better.” An excessive chakra grabs energy and doesn’t let it pass on to the other chakras. Therefore the energy needed to fuel the will gets grabbed by the need for immediate gratification. If that gratification could eventually be satisfied, it would be fine, but when the cycle becomes addictive, it is never satisfied and always dominates any other urges.

Healing the Second Chakra
There is so much amiss in our cultural attitudes about emotions and sexuality that healing this chakra becomes a monumental task that extends beyond our personal selves. Who has the final word on what healthy sexuality looks like? What is an appropriate level of emotional response? When have we ever completed our emotional work? How do we fully open our sensate channels in a world that is full of assaulting sounds and images? How do we hold healthy and potent sexuality that by nature involves others, when others are wounded in their own sexuality? If there were a touchstone for a healthy second chakra it would be to embrace change without losing one’s core stability.
Healing the second chakra is largely a matter of encouraging the excess (or deficiency) to move toward the center. The basic premise is simple: Where movement is excessive, learn to contain, either by releasing emotions so the pressure is lessened or by learning to tolerate increased sensation and excitement. This requires learning to pay attention to the subtle currents and impulses that flow through the body.
Reinstate the Natural Healing Process
We are biologically equipped with innate instincts for healing and self preservation, and when these instincts get interrupted by trauma or ongoing stress, then our whole foundation is upset, and with it the free flow of energy.
The streaming of energy through the body is the body’s way of restoring balance. Freeing this stream while simultaneously providing a safe container will promote much of the healing. This reestablishes the flow of liberation that allows us to leave constricting patterns and expand. As the liberating flow rises into consciousness, its meaning is integrated into a larger context. This helps bring the manifesting current downward, channeling the emotional energy toward constructive ends.
In healing the second chakra, we always act on behalf of the body’s natural healing process, where movement and emotion are essential. When that movement is restricted, so too is the healing process. If one’s innate reaction to a given situation has been thwarted, then there is a constant tendency to recreate similar situations so as to complete the initial pattern. If the block is severe, similar situations may not allow completion, leaving us in a hopeless cycle of repeating negative traumas without being able to resolve them and move on.

I really like his yogic philosophy. I’m not really looking to give myself a 40 day revolution, but I enjoy what he has to say about life. Some good meditations in here as well. I really want to learn to meditate.

The Twelve Laws of Transformation (The list itself doesn’t grab me, it’s his explanation of each one that meant something to me)
1 – Seek the Truth
2 – Be Willing to Come Apart
3 – Step out of Your Comfort Zone
4 – Commit to Growth
5 – Shift Your Vision
6 – Drop What You Know
7 – Relax with What Is
8 – Remove the Rocks
9 – Don’t Rush the Process
10 – Be True to Yourself
11 – Be Still and Know
12 – Understand That the Whole Is the Goal

Step out of Your Comfort Zone
The comfort zone may feel cozy and familiar, but it is like sweet poison, silently killing off our childlike spontaneity and our vitality. When we choose our comfort zone over growth we get stuck or worse, because ultimately we are either awakening and growing or numbing out and spiraling downward. Life is never static-we either grow or we die.

Commit to Growth
Never making a decision is making a decision unto itself. It is a decision to stay in a personal fog, we never have to face the mundane that comes with committing to a path.
Very few of us would ever find ourselves in a situation that doesn’t have at least one secret little exit door, a place where we can sneak through and out if we have to.
In our spiritual practice, we learn that even if every inch of our being wants to run in the opposite direction, we stay.

Equanimity
It is so easy to get reactive when we feel like we aren’t in control. In happens every day, in a thousand small ways (and sometimes big ones). We spill coffee on ourselves on our way to work, we react. We hit a traffic jam, we react. The boss takes his or her mood out on us, we react. Our kids act out, we react. Again and again we get caught in the endless cycle of stress, reactivity, blame.
Equanimity is the art of meeting life as it meets you – calmly, without drama or fuss. This is the way out of frustration. Living this way there is a brightness and a creativity very much like that of a child. It’s our naturalness. You don’t get there by fighting or wrestling for control.
An inner revolution is not about taking control. Control has no real healthy place in our lives, and only robs us of our serenity. We think we change things by taking the bull by the horns. But if you think about it, grabbing the bull by the horns would be a crazy thing to do. We change by finding equanimity and learning to relax right in the middle of conflict-filled moments.
Buddha taught that throughout our lives, we should expect to encounter four specific joys and their opposites: pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute. The world conditions us to seek unchanging pleasure, gain, praise, and fame. The problem is that things don’t always work out that way. When we experience pain, loss, blame, and disrepute, we take it personally as if something is deeply wrong with us. Equanimity releases us from unrealistic expectations about what life should be and allows us to stay centered amid the inevitable highs and lows.
When you want to come out of a pose is the moment you come face-to-face with your psychology. When you hit a threshold – and we all have thresholds – it is an opportunity to see yourself clearly and ask the winds of grace to carry you. Remember, they are always there, willing and ready to carry you if you just raise your sails.

So why do we intelligent humans still consume lifeless fast-food cheeseburgers and fries and pour soda down our throats and those of our children? The answer is easy. We are living out of our legacy of distraction. It is easier to distract ourselves and go along with the status quo than to feel the discomfort of growth and change.
We may not realize it, but we are literally involved in biological warfare with ourselves. We use what I call “biological grenades” – drugs, sex, sugar, food – to continually alter our chemistry to avoid coming to peace with ourselves. We shift our moods to create a wall of separation between reality and ourselves, then blame these biological grenades as the problem…

The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.

The Daily Practices
Preparation – Have a good set of habits as a foundation in your life, for when the difficult moments arise.
Compassion
Being Spontaneous
Intimacy
Being Nonreactive
Being Honest with Yourself
Equanimity – Practice this when the winds of obsessive, compulsive, and addictive reactions and behaviors come knocking on your door.
Not Resisting Change
Relationship
Slowing Down
Forgiveness
Coming Clean

Yoga is truly a mind/body experience of exercise. The mind focuses on the body, the body responds to the mind and the breath bridges the two. Through this conscious process, your whole being becomes integrated.

Joy, bliss, ecstasy – whatever you want to call it – is yoga’s big payoff. No matter who you are, no matter what has happened to you in your life, you have the capacity for joy. Deep inside you, bliss waits for you to find it. With relentless persistence, yoga can help you find that joy and release it.

But make no mistake: It isn’t easy to release your inner delight. A body that is undisciplined and weak saps all your inner energy just to keep it maintained. A mind fraught with chaotic thought is too absorbed on the surface level to delve deep enough to find inner joy. But with a persistent yoga practice, the body becomes strong, controlled, flexible and disciplined. The mind becomes quiet, calm and tranquil. In time, a restless body that once struggled and a mind that regularly wandered without purpose, now both respond with focus and commitment.

I took a private yoga session with Rochelle Sheik at Bikram SLO and it was amazing. Here are the notes she gave me.

Breathing Exercise: Set your mental focus and concentration for class by
listening to your breathing vs. listening to internal dialogue. Like a
light switch, turn the thinking/analyzing frontal lobe part of your brain
off and travel into the back of the brain which is sensing and feeling.
Physically in this pose, good job with a long spine now “tuck your pelvis
under so the tailbone is pointing down and push your hips more forward so
you have a perfectly straight spine.”

Half Moon: same thing with the hips, tuck your pelvis under and suck your
stomach in, practicing 80/20 breathing. You are doing a great job with
alignment and stretching this pose. Final adjustments, squeeze your palms
as much as possible, suck your stomach in and energize your pose.

Backward Bending: Be brave and be smart by supporting yourself and squeezing

your legs, pushing your hips MORE forward while arching your whole spine
back. BREATHE! Coordinate breath and movement for example- inhale chest up

exhale arch back inhale push hips forward exhale look back more.

PadaHastasana Hands to Feet pose: Beautiful! Final adjustments- hips more
forward to the mirron and stretch your spine down, sliding your face down
your shins and getting your top of the head closer and closer to the top of
the feet

Awkward: More belly in on the 1st one-practice seeing your abdominal muscles

contracting while still breathing more into the lungs. 2nd part- Tuck your
pelvis under, suck your stomach in very tight, 3rd part- straight spine like

you are leaning against a supporting back wall, pelvis under and belly in!
This is great for building muscular strength and mental strength
(concentration).

Eagle: A great pose for stretching the joints. Think to yourself
Squeeze your legs and stretch your hips
Squeeze your abs and stretch your spine
Squeeze your arms and stretch your shoulders
More melting into the pose

Standing Head to Knee: Press your foot down into the floor to spread out the

weight evenly vs. pulling the foot up. Less squeezing your hips and MORE
squeezing your quadricep muscle as much as possible as hard as possible like

you are trying to create a cramp on the top of the thigh. GREAT alignment
as you kick out!

Standing Bow: Think directions. CHARGE your upper body FORWARD, KICK your
leg BACK, DROP your body DOWN, KICK your leg UP! Now all at the same time
while stretching your hips instead of clenching them and like I am pulling
your toes up and your fingertips foward. Take up as much space in the room
as possible and most of all BE VERY NICE TO YOURSELF. ENCOURAGING YOURSELF
LIKE A GOOD FRIEND. TELL YOURSELF YOU CAN DO IT. STRONG MIND WILL LEAD YOU

TO A STRONG BODY.

Balancing Stick: Wonderful alignment. Now energize more by stretching
foward and back as much as possible like a natural human tug of war and
BREATHE!

Standing Separate Leg Stretching: Every 1st set touch your forehead to the
floor by spreading your legs out more and more and more until it touches.
Hips more forward like PadaHastasana (4th part half moon) and hips relax and

stretch. Squeeze your quads, stretch your hamstrings, squeeze your biceps
as you pull, stretch your hips, squeeze your abs and stretch your spine!

Triangle: Good! Now master the pose by Everyday you have to TOUCH THE
TOES, TWIST YOUR SPINE AND BREATHE TWICE AS DEEP AND TWICE AS SLOW AS YOU
ARE WHEN YOU FIRST START THE POSE! Feel the opposites- for example: first
side bend your right knee and feel right elbow pressing right knee back,
right knee back and left hip forward, left hip forward and left shoulder
back, left shoulder back and right shoulder forward, right shoulder forward
and right knee back. Got it? Twist and stretch up!

Standing Separate Leg Forehead to Knee: Balance by pressing the metatarsals

(bones of your foot under the toes) DOWN, keep your throat choked the whole
pose (especially as you go into it) and energize by pressing your hands more

against the floor, pressing your forehead more against and knee and sucking
your stomach in very very tight!

Tree: Very good. On days when knee feels ok, slowly gently guide your knee

back to have two shoulders, two hips and two knees all in a straight line,
the same plane. Belly in and stretch up!

Toe Stand: You can do it! Don’t do this pose on days when the knee is
cranky. The key to the pose is focus and concentration. Focus one point
and don’t even blink your eyes as your practice.

Savasana: Inhale: Slow Down (physically and mentally) Exhale: Let go (of
physical tension of reoccuring thoughts)

Wind Removing: Practicing mind body connection, roll weight to opposite side

if right leg is up make sure left shoulder, hip and calf muscle are all on
the floor.

Cobra Series: 80/20 breathing. Keep practicing it! All the postures
themselves are very good. Now master the breathing and concentration (which

are the most important parts)

Fixed Firm: CHEST UP! ok to separate knees on cranky knees days, otherwise
keep them together.

Half Tortise: Never daydream this pose. Always 100% relax and listen to
your breathing. Try to feel your back muscles become as comfortable as
possible. Great job keeping your hips down!

Camel: Focus with your eyes and coordinate breath with movement like in
standing backward bending. Inhale Chest Up, Exhale push hips forward,
inhale chest up, exhale look back and arch back, etc. Beautiful pose.
Breathe!

Rabbit: PULL ON YOUR HEELS AND SUCK YOUR STOMACH IN AND STRETCH WITH LOTS OF

ENERGY! PULL ON YOUR HEELS, PULL YOUR BELLY IN AND STRETCH!

Forehead to Knee: You got it! Next step forehead higher on your knee,
listening to your breathing and feeling your breath as it moves through your

body. With both legs: Pull on your toes and visualize creating more space
between each and every vertebrae in your spine from the coccyx to the neck.

Pull your toes and stretch!

Spine Twist: Imagine belly button to point to back or front wall depending
on leg and twist your spine without clenching hips and back too much.
Breathe and twist and breathe and twist. Good spine stretching up. Exhale
more at the end to deepen the twist.

Kapalbhati: 10x harder exhale and SNAP the belly in. Focus one point in the

mirror. COMPLETE concentration. Detox the lungs and mind completely so you

are fully cleansed for your final relaxation.

Savasana: When you feel like you are ready to go. Stay and take 10+ more
deep breaths. Always!

Hip Opening Series:
Lying on back hold all stretching minimum 30 seconds and up to a couple
minutes
1) Lift straight leg up and To go deeper, bend your elbows and relax your
hips and leg. Switch sides.
2) Wind Removing: Right leg, left leg and both
3) one leg down one leg over for twisting hip stretch. Both shoulders on
floor, look the opposite way your leg is going, and completely surrender
this pose. Stop trying to do it and let your body melt into it. switch
sides
4) Happy Baby Pose: relax your hips more, lengthen your hamstrings, gently
pull down, back flat on floor
5) Bridge: feet close the seat and feet parallel to each other, push your
hips up to the ceiling and feel a stretch on the front of the hips. Don’t
sink, squeeze your glutes and push your hips UP. To come down lift your
heels up and lower vertebrae by vertebrae from the neck down.
6) Place soles of the feet together and let your knees drop open.
Completely relax hip and knee joints as well as the lower back. Deep
breathing
7) Roll over and get into downward dog 1/2 pigeon- completely relax your hips and lower back. Stay for awhile
this one really melting into it and peeling away any resistance. Come up to

dog and switch sides
9) keep left leg bent and bring right leg on top trying to stack the knees
for cow face pose. With knees stacked, fold forward with a long spine
touching stomach to thighs, chest to knee and relax your neck with your head

heavy. Breath into your outer hips and completely relax. Come up slowly,
rock the baby and stretch with your shins stacked and come forward. Take a
couple breaths, go forward one more inch, etc. Switch legs and do cow face,

rock the baby and shins stacked go forward
10) straddle stretch with legs open, slowly fold forward completely relaxing

your leg muscles and hip joints (perfect TV pose)

Book Recommendation List:

Light on Yoga by Iyengar (great authentic description of yoga)
Sivananda Companion Book (great with pictures and descriptions of postures
as well as a good introduction to meditation, a yogic diet, history of yoga,

breathing, alignment, etc.)
Yoga and the Quest for the True Self by Stephen Cope (great for spiritual,
psychological awareness of what happens in a yoga practice and addresses
some of the road blocks people come across and talks about the importance of

balance)
Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga by Deepak Chopra (great book for going deep
into the symbolism of things we practice in yoga and how they relate to our
life/lifestyle- i think of this book a lot)
Journey into Power by Baron Baptiste – (highly recommended for you more than

any of the others so far because he does a great job explaining the do’s and

don’t of a yoga practice and making it very accessible for the curious yoga
student. great book text wise and all the postures from vinyasa are in
there, which I think would be a good supplement to your bikram book and
training).
Anusara Yoga- when you mentioned exploring more spiritual aspects of yoga,
this style came to mind for me to share with you if you haven’t already
heard of it. It’s a beautiful style talking about aligning the body,
aligning with your spirit and God and having a physical goal of softening
your heart in every posture. I believe they have a book out or at your next

yoga conference, check it out!

Blessings Roxy! You are so beautiful and sincere. I wish you all the best
on your yoga path. Please keep in touch!