rocky by adam dougherty

if you’ve visited our union square location in the last month, you’ve had the pleasure of viewing artist and shala student adam dougherty’s intricate, exuberant, and reverent animal portraits. shortly after the show went up, fellow shala students jonathan and alene herman reached out to adam to commission a piece honoring their beloved cockatiel, rocky. jonathan shares rocky’s story here.

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virasana: the unsensational hero

a dharma talk by Braeden Lentz

Our focus for the month of February at The Shala is Virasana. The two Sanskrit components are “vira,” often translated as hero, and “asana,” which yogis know well to mean seat, shape, pose, or the way we arrange our body building up from the ground. The names of poses evoke imagery to consider as we make our shape.

The first things that come to mind when I consider the term “hero” are superhuman qualities. I think of someone who engages in unusually daring but necessary actions. A hero might be a charismatic, especially self sacrificing, or visionary person. There might only be a few in my lifetime.

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newsletter archive: february 2019: practice in community

Dear Shala students,
We hope you are staying warm!
This January 26 marked 1 year since moving to the other side of Broadway. Thank you for breathing life into this space—we are so happy to share it with you.
Here is a selection of Shala news and events happening over the next month or so. We’d love to see you at one (or every one!) of these gatherings, workshops, or classes.
With love,
Barbara + Kristin

a statement on our commitment to building a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable Shala community.

We are in the process of developing a clear, comprehensive mission statement addressing our commitment to diversity and inclusion at the Shala. It is a work in progress, and we thank our diversity committee—Sasha, Shevy, and Megna—for their help.

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New Basics Class in Fort Greene with Deidra Demens. Saturdays 3:15 to 4:15. Starting March 9th. Also check out fresh wisdom: an interview with deidra.

How would you describe Iyengar Yoga?

When I started the Iyengar teacher training, I felt like I needed a foundation as a teacher. I had that as a student, because that’s what I was practicing. So many schools of yoga say different things about the different poses. I expected to go into the Iyengar teacher training and they would tell me, this is how you do it. We asked them, In Urdhva Hastasana, should the fingers be spread wide or should they be together? They said, Both. There are times when you spread the fingers wide, there are times when you bring them together. They told us that you are going to have to do both again and again and again and again until you understand what’s happening when you do it this way versus when you do it that way. When you teach class, you’re going to know when to tell the students to spread the fingers wide and when to tell them to bring them together.

What I learned in the teacher training is that it was all about experience. That’s where the props come in. That’s where the different ways to do the poses come in. There’s no one way. When you practice asana, you’re finding yourself. You’re finding yourself in the classic shape, and then you change that up a little bit. It’s finding yourself in this pose but then there’s kind of looking back to, what does that tell you about who you are as a person, or where you are right now in your life, or where you want to be, what this whole thing is to you?

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