Yoga, On and Off the Mat
Yoga On & Off the Mat
Lessons from Lino
Last weekend I had the absolute pleasure of meeting Rome’s Lino Miele at a workshop in Bozeman, Montana. Lino is a senior Ashtanga yoga teacher who has been studying the practice for more than 20 years—yet you wouldn’t know it at first glance. He’s as humble as a novice and as excited about the practice as if it were a recent discovery.
The following highlights, based around his teaching of the Full Vinyasa System, can inform and lend context to all students of yoga, Ashtanga or otherwise.
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Yoga On & Off the Mat
Setting the Stage for a Home PracticeConsidering last week’s “Inspiring Reasons to Practice Yoga at Home,” it’s fair to say that a personal practice is worth exploring. Rolling out your mat at home, on your own schedule and in a way that supports your body/mind, bolsters all aspects of your yoga practice.
Now, it’s just a matter of preparing a place.
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Yoga On & Off the Mat
Inspiring Reasons to Practice Yoga at HomeI cherish my home practice. My body, my energy, my wall clock call the shots. Also, at home the teacher-student ratio shifts, and my monkey mind and body become my primary instructors. Sure, it shouldn’t take a home practice to fully focus on how I feel, but in a studio—where collective energy is paramount and wonderfully powerful—breath and body may move in ways other than what comes most naturally. Other than what flows when I’m flying solo.
With that, I deem a home practice a good, no great, idea because...
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Yoga On & Off the Mat
Guru Guidance: Teaching is a Fundamental Aspect of YogaYoga has always has been a student-teacher affair. And though many modern yogis practice at home sans guidance, they have likely gleaned some part of their practice, at some point in their life, from a mentor.
This week I consider the role of guru in yoga under the tutelage of modern scholars and modern mother/teacher/fashionista extraordinaire Tane Talalotou.
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Yoga On & Off the Mat
Yoga, Sleep and Attachment: Part IILast time I shared my sleep ritual—attachment, ear plugs and all. This week I consider sleep and yoga under the tutelage of Ann Dyer, a yoga teacher in Oakland, California, who Yoga Journal calls the “near-perfect sleep guru.”
Ann hosts as many as 10 “snor-a-thons” a year, during which she uses asana, chanting, and meditation to help people fall asleep. She is a senior faculty member and teaching associate of Rodney Yee at The Piedmont Yoga Studio. Ann's training is rooted in the Iyengar tradition, complemented by 10 years studying Nada Brahma, yoga of sound, with Mukesh Desai.
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Yoga On & Off the Mat
Yoga, Sleep and Attachment: Part IOh, sleep. For some blessed souls, slumber comes quickly each night. Tired bodies and minds fall into bed and sleep naturally. For some, like me, it takes teas, tinctures, visualizations—it takes the dependability of ritual. And over the years, as my ritual has gained steam, attachment has snuck into my transition to shut eye.
This week I share my sleep ritual—what helps and what hurts. Next time I'll post an interview with Ann Dyer, sleep guru and my new hero.
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yoga on and off the mat
Studio Spotlight: Bikram Yoga with Lora Gustafson26 postures. 105 degrees. 90 minutes. Oh, and it just might “change your life.”
These are some of the trademarks of the L.A.-based Bikram Yoga. Life changing or not, few can argue against the practice’s intensity. Intense heat, intense stretching, intense instruction. (The teacher speaks throughout most of the hour and a half class.) And Lora Gustafson, the new owner of Bikram Missoula, would add that the practice is also intensely purifying.
In our interview, Lora chats about her recent move from Phoenix, this Saturday’s Open House and other aspects of the unique brand of yoga that has garnered her attention for the last eight years.
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Yoga On & Off the Mat
Saluting the Sun 108 Auspicious TimesCelebrating the comings and goings of the seasons (the sun, after all) with sun salutes makes sense. But 108 times? Excessive, perhaps… Auspicious, that’s what they say… But why? And are the fruits of such labor worth repeating despite tired muscles tugging your mind away from the otherwise meditative ritual?
Yes.
But don’t just take my word for it. Read on…
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Yoga On & Off the Mat
The Yoga Fitness CenterThe New Year, replete with its resolutions and resolves, is an excellent time to begin, resume or continue an asana (posture) practice. And in Missoula, there are few places better than 123 West Alder Street.
The Yoga Fitness Center sits at the far end of downtown Missoula, just before the town’s main north-south street dead ends into railroad tracks. If you face your mat north, you can just barely see the tips of the tall grass that blankets Waterworks Hill while standing in tadasana, mountain pose.
Inside, the practice space is clean and simple. Fresh flowers and a few pieces of framed art provide the only contrasts against light blue walls. Katie Heath has owned the studio for five years, and like the space, she maintains a simple attitude about her yoga practice.
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Yoga On & Off the Mat
What Would Pooh Do?Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood lives a little round bear named Pooh. Pooh is a simple-minded bear who enjoys honey, a cozy spot by the fire and being in the company of good friends.
Without knowing it and certainly without much effort, Pooh is compassionate. Pooh is humble. Pooh is, by all accounts, a yogic bear — so much so that he inspired Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh, a small book with big implications about how humans could benefit from being a bit more Pooh-like. And with the holidays upon us, I also wonder: if I were more Pooh than person, what would I offer family, friends, and colleagues this holiday season?
So it is in this spirit—in the spirit of Pooh—that I offer a simple gift guide that is both gentle on the earth and the wallet.
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