Articles & PodCasts

Yogi of the Month (s)

Get to know Katrina Sarson, the Yogi of the Month(s):

Ali: What originally brought you to practice Yoga? Where was it? What style was it?

Katrina: I started studying yoga more than a decade ago in Boulder, Colorado because I wanted to become more flexible. It was Ashtanga yoga at Richard Freeman's studio. I would drop in for classes because I loved the workout, even though I couldn't understand most of the poses. I kept going back and picking up small tidbits of one pose, then we'd flow into the next one and I'd be completely lost again. Finally I signed up for an ongoing class and started learning the basics. I was hooked.

Ali: Complete the following phrase: "Yoga is_______"

Katrina: Yoga is a reminder of the importance of quiet listening and self-awareness. The practice for me is to let go of my desire to do it "right," and instead practice being present for what my body needs that day.

Ali: What are your favorite asanas/types of asanas?

Katrina: I love all the Warrior poses because of the flow of energy outward. I like movement and transitions and flow. I also love shivansana.

Ali: What challenges you/is there something you're working on?

Katrina: The biggest challenge for me is just making time for yoga. After almost every class and yoga workout, I feel happy and relaxed and vow I'll do it every day. The next morning I've forgotten how good it felt and I won't make time for a workout. My current practice is to make time for just five minutes of yoga a day. Usually once I do that, I make more time. But the first five minutes is the hardest!

Ali: What do you do when you're not practicing Yoga?

Katrina: When I'm not doing yoga, I love to walk my dog, hang out with my family, swim, and bake bread.

Shoulder Opening Practice

Full hour-long practice with savasana included! You will need a pillow/blanket for this - enjoy!

Yes.

As I become still and silent, I can feel a shiftiness within. Something or someone trying to get my attention. As if I’m walking through the thickness of a forest, through clusters of shrubs and trees, I hear a faint “psst” but I cannot tell where the sound is coming from. I begin to doubt, believing it to be the rustling of the wind or the scurry of a mouse.

“psst. Over here.”

I become even more still. More silent. To listen.

The sound is within.

“it is me. It is YOU.”

I begin to challenge, but to each question I ask, the answer is a quick YES.

Have you been here the whole time?

YES

Will you always be here?
YES

It’s been a long time.

YES.

The noise returns. The movement returns. The rustle of the leaves and trees grows louder and louder. But within, I hear a resounding YES.

How will we know?

How will we know what feels right until we know what feels wrong.

How will we know the outline of the path until we know the boundaries of the trail.

How will we know what is safe until we have been hurt.

How will we know absolute until we have felt the shakiness of indifference.

How will we know the heart is full until we have felt it emptied.

How will we know breath until we have experienced collapsing.

How will we know the end until we have witnessed a beginning.

How will we know knowing until the mind has run itself in circles.

I am.

The leaves fall without want.

Spending most of the year attached until they finally release their grip of the branches.

Trusting the wind to carry them.

Fall where they may.

Crumbling beneath the feet of children, becoming earth. Becoming a tree. Becoming a leaf.

The river flows without want.

Encased in the banks of rocks and sand.

Trusting the force of the current.

Flowing here and there.

Joining other waters, becoming a waterfall, becoming a stream, becoming a river.

I live without want.

I love. I let go.

Trusting my path to unfold.

I am the tree. I am the falling of the leaf.

I am the river. I am the force of the current.

I am love. I am trust.

I am the path.

Yoga practice podcast

Happy holidays everyone! Please enjoy this practice of simple sun salutations, hip openers, twists...and of course, savasana :)

Giving Thanks

This Thanksgiving, let us give thanks not only for what pleases us, but for what has challenged us. Here I offer my list of thanks, feel free to create your own!

Gratitude for all the moments leading up to this one. The difficult steps. The beautiful steps. The entire journey.
Gratitude that I am experiencing life, that I am part of this moment.
Gratitude for the things that come easy to me. Gratitude for my challenges.
Gratitude for those in my heart. Gratitude for those who have hurt me and strengthened my heart. Gratitude for my sense of sight to see them. Gratitude for my sense of hearing to listen to them.
Gratitude for my sense of touch and for my body - all the parts that move when I ask them to; let them teach me about letting go. Gratitude to the places of tension in my body; let them teach me about holding on.
Gratitude for my sense of smell and my sense of taste as I enjoy each bite of food. Let this food nourish me and bring good health to my body.
Gratitude for the thoughts created in my mind. Gratitude for the rare and fleeting spaces between the thoughts.
Gratitude for each cycle of breath for therein lies a complete cycle of life.

Thoughts are just movement

Thoughts are simply the movement of the mind. Thoughts are not who WE are.

Yoga is the mastery of this movement in the mind. Learning it. Exploring it. Seeing it for what it is, malleable. Fickle. Open to suggestion.

Notice that you can create any thought you want. Right now, you can say to yourself, “I am completely at peace.” And you may even start to believe it. You can bring the awareness to your left big toe and create the thought that it’s on fire. And it will feel warm. Or, you can even begin to think of the color blue and you may even see blue behind the eyelids.

This is not to say we should ignore or dismiss our thoughts. They can be there to help us: trying to please us, organizing our memories and our desires into images and colors and words. But they are not us. They are not even our experiences or our emotions. They are merely movement in the mind. Just as we learn to master the movement of our breathing or as we learn to slow down our physical movement in our vinyasas, we can learn to master the movement of the mind.

To test this theory, complete the following statement: “I can’t ____” OR “I’m not _________ enough.”

Spend some time allowing these words to really soak in. Notice what happens physically. How does your energy level change?

Now, find the opposite of that statement. For example, if your statement was “I’m not strong enough.” Your opposite might be “I am very strong.” Repeat this statement to yourself as a mantra. Embrace the new sensations in the body as you feel the words.

Notice this all came from thought. A thought you created.

Experiment with this in your Yoga practice. Anytime you notice a thought pass through like: “I hate this posture…I’m tired…I should’ve skipped Yoga and taken a nap” play with creating the opposite thought. Good, bad, positive, negative...it's all just movement in the mind.

How You Feel

Many times in Yoga we ask, am I doing this right? We’ll look around at our neighbors and at our teachers and try to make the external posture look like we think it SHOULD look…the way it looks when others practice it. In the Yoga Sutras, it says that correct knowledge or right knowledge is found three ways: the first is direct perception (in asana, how you perceive/feel in the posture), the second is deductive reasoning (so, if we work with relaxing our shoulders in Tadasana, we can deduce that in most postures we can work towards relaxing the shoulders), and lastly, we learn from authority (from sacred texts, from a teacher, etc).

But the sutras say that the last two mean nothing if the first, direct perception, is not there. For example, if someone in class is doing downward dog with her heels on the ground and the teacher is saying “your heels must be on the ground” but your heels don’t reach the ground and it causes you pain to push the heels down, then in that case, what your neighbor is doing, and what your teacher is saying is not correct for YOU. It is not your truth. Direct perception/pratyaksa is most important. Things must resonate with YOU to become part of your practice.

Think of this in every posture. We use alignment as a guide, a way to increase the flow of energy/prana, but it is only a guide. How you FEEL is most important.

pratyaksa anumana agamah pramanani - Sutra 1.7

Facing challenges and spiders :)

I went outside during the sunny part of the day to practice Yoga in the grass – the first time all year. I laid out my mat and began my practice, which found me seated at one point and I looked down into the grass below me. I had originally intended to do a challenging practice of asanas, finding postures that are more difficult for me. Challenge was my theme. But as I sat there, seeing the grass, I felt motionless. Completely still. I just wanted to watch. Then I saw a huge black spider, crawling from blade to blade. Very near my mat. My immediate reaction was to jump. What if he crawls on my mat? Or worse: on me? But I thought to myself, it is just one spider. It is what challenges you more than the challenging asanas you had planned. Simply observe the spider and observe your reactions. I felt like such a good Yogini, taking this and making it into a meditation. One spider, I can do this. But then, the more I looked, I realized there were many, many spiders. All the same kind: big black, fast, spiders. They were all of a sudden everywhere. Again, I wanted to jump. I wanted to run back inside and practice Yoga in my apartment. One spider, One challenge, I can do. Twenty – seemed impossible. There was no way to keep my eyes on all of them at all times. What if one, or more crawled on me? It seemed the more I looked, the more I found.

I sat there a while longer, trying to observe. Trying to be with the fear. To be with the challenge. After a while, it began to rain, and I rolled up my mat and went inside.

The challenge itself is not the obstacle. It is the way we approach the challenge. And just like the spiders, many times, the more layers we peel away of ourselves, the more we find. The goal is to learn to live with the challenges. To practice with the spiders. And also to have a plan for when they crawl onto your mat.

Why we practice Yoga

This beautiful practice. Yoga.

Each day I practice Yoga. I practice and practice. As if someday there will be an exam. As if there will be a test in which I must prove that I’ve been studying, long and hard. I’ve been learning my Sanskrit and breathing deeply and expanding my Prana and opening my heart. Recently, I’ve asked – what am I practicing for?

The student in me wants to be tested, maybe. But what is the test? What is the final point we are practicing for? Is it life? Is it death?

Yes, this practice is preparing us for something as vast as life and death. But, more importantly, the practice is preparing us for moments. Tiny fragments of time that can change our lives forever. Moments that decide whether or not things stick. Moments where someone cuts us off on the highway and we breathe through it just like we practiced breathing through the most intense of our warrior postures. Moments where the computer breaks and we lose our most important documents but we let go just like we have practiced letting go in savasana. Moments where our loved one smiles ever so sweetly and we can acknowledge the beauty just as we practiced acknowledging the beauty within. Moments where someone needs to feel heard and we can listen and be present the way we have practiced listening and being present for our own bodies. Moments where you make a decision based on knowing yourself, because you have practiced learning yourself.

Taking your Yoga with you to face these moments. That’s the practice.

Namaste and many blessings,
Alison Wesley

Podcast - Nidra

A 10 minute relaxation similar to a shortened version of Nidra. Pull up some cozy pillows and blankets and prepare to restore any lost energy! Namaste, Alison

Yoga for Xmas

Thirty-minute Yoga sequence with breathwork, sun salutes, gentle twists and backbends. Done on a snow day, so if you listen closely, you may even hear snow plows driving by outside my window! Thanks for practicing with me! Namaste, Alison

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