newsletter archive: june 2019: late spring, early summer

Happy June!
As summer approaches and the days become longer and brighter, we begin to shed the many layers that kept us warm and dry throughout a long winter and a very wet spring.
Yoga philosophy regards the physical body as a big coat enveloping the subtler bodies, and as the vehicle of the soul on its way to enlightenment. We’ll spend these last weeks of spring and first bits of summer exploring how yoga helps us tap into the subtle bodies and sheaths that live beneath and beyond this big coat.

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Carlota Portella is a holistic nutritionist, health coach, and student at the Shala. Last month she hosted a cooking class at our Union Square location, and was kind enough to share some of the recipes used in her workshop. You can learn more about Carlota’s services here; read below to learn how to prepare delicious, wholesome snacks. 

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newsletter archive: april 2019

Happy Spring!
We are excited for a very energetic season of goings-on at the Shala! This past weekend we began our 6th 200-hour teacher training with a fresh group of students, which means you can look out for TT workshops open to all.
Some happenings in Union Square (details below):
  • An advanced anatomy and sequencing workshop with Annie Piper, Joe Miller, and Maria Cutrona
  • An Ashtanga Yoga intensive with Tim Feldmann
  • An Ayurveda intensive with Maria Rubinate
  • A meditation series with Jocelyne Stern
  • A new art show by our dear friend, Sheila Anozier
In Fort Greene, we are super excited about hosting free yoga classes in the park every Saturday from May 18 until late October, made possible by our partnership with the Fort Greene Park Conservancy.
Whether you’re practicing in the city or Brooklyn, this month we’ll focus on arm balances and the fifth yama, aparigraha.
As always, we look forward to seeing you at the Shala.
Much love,
Kristin + Barbara

newsletter archive: march 2019: learning, growth, and transformation

Dear Shala students,
Sharon Salzberg, our teacher of 20 years, is experiencing health issues. She is reported to be recovering well from a recent hospitalization, and is taking time off to rest. Please keep her in your lovingkindness meditations. With gratitude for her life and work, this month we’ll focus on her teachings—come to class to hear her wisdom!
Happy Women’s History Month. We are fortunate to live in a time and place where the paths of yoga and meditation are shared by so many empowered women.
With love,
Barbara + Kristin

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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newsletter archive: january 2019: peace peace peace

Dear Shala students,
We wish you and your loved ones peace and joy in the new year. May we each take a little time to consider what we found to be helpful, skillful, and grounding in 2018, as well as who and what brought out the best in us, and made us feel good and connected. May we resolve to keep those things close to our hearts, and integrate them into our days as we move into another cycle.
May we also acknowledge what was not helpful, skillful, or grounding, and let it pass. May our practice help us reflect on the direction we want to head in and the goals we’d like to set for ourselves. As Yogi Berra once said, if you don’t know where you’re going, you will end up someplace else.
We look forward to going deeper into our lives and practices with you in 2019.
With love,
Barbara + Kristin

Going Yinward

by Alana Kessler

 

It was 2010. I was in Nicaragua with my friend, Janine, celebrating my 30th birthday. Being a yoga practitioner for over a decade, and relatively new Ashtangi of a little over a year, I was diligent about my early morning practice. The routine was this: We would get coffee delivered to the door, drink it leisurely on the balcony, watch the waves, and then practice.

I remember breaking my drishti and watching Janine with curiosity. While I was jumping back and jumping through, she was holding postures for minutes at a time in what appeared to be mini-naps. I judged it. It was a challenge to wrap my mind around this being a practice that supports the seriousness and attention that I identified my practice with.

Cut to five years later: I found myself in San Francisco eyeball deep in a 10-day Yin Yoga Intensive and Buddhist psychology training with Sarah Powers, and loving every second of it.  How did I end up here, you ask? You see, somewhere along the way the yang element of Ashtanga Yoga opened me up to a deeper layer of interest. I began to listen to meditation teachers’ talks while doing my Mysore practice at home. I got quieter. I took notice of when I was pushing too hard. I asked myself if my motivations and actions were aligned with my higher intention. Did I even know what that was?

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newsletter archive: november 2018

Dear Shala students,
In the month of November we will focus on building a healthy, comfortable Padmasana (Lotus). This sacred seat shows up in asana practice as well as pranayama and meditation.
Our complementary philosophical focus is the Buddhist concept of skillful action, or how to apply contemplative work to ethical conduct.
Sitting and moving well, developing open communication with our minds, and deliberately reflecting on how we think, feel, relate, act, and react in an increasingly complicated and challenging world—these are practices that reach out in all directions and touch every aspect of our lives.
We are grateful to be members of a community that stands up for love, respect, kindness, and nonviolence on and off the mat. Thank you for everything you do to make the Shala and the world a more compassionate place.
ox Barbara and Kristin

Padmasana

Padmasana. The word itself is beautiful, especially when you pronounce it as they do in India: with a softness around the ‘d’ so that it sounds like ‘padth’ rather than ‘pad’. Padma is the Sanskrit word for lotus, a flower that grows in the marshes and swamps of India. The Buddha spoke of the lotus as an allegory for enlightenment: “As a lotus flower is born in water, grows in water and rises out of water to stand above it unsoiled, so I, born in the world, raised in the world having overcome the world, live unsoiled by the world.”

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newsletter archive: august 2018

August 2018

Dear Shala students,

We hope you are having a great summer and that you are able to lighten up your schedule in favor of taking slow walks in the city or elsewhere, and spending more time with family and friends.

This month we’ll focus on handstands and—important for handstands!—abhaya, or freedom from fear, so we hope you’re able to carve out some space and energy for practice, too. Be on the lookout for some upcoming schedule changes, including classes that focus more on strengthening, alignment, meditation, yin, and more.

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the wisdom series, part 1: an interview with genny kapuler

Tapas is not just on the mat. It’s how we live our life: An Interview with Genny Kapuler 

http://www.gennykapuler.com/

photo: the all watch

How are you inspired in your practice at this point in your life?

Genny Kapuler: It’s like the siren song. It calls me. It is my inspiration. I get up and practice. On the weekends I just practice in the morning. During the week I don’t have enough time in the morning to also do the inversions, because morning class starts early. The older I get the longer it takes me to do everything. I need more time to practice. During the week I separate the inversions in the afternoon, and the inversions energize me for the evening classes.

What do you think are the most important elements of practice?

GK: Commitment. Over and over, every day, day in and day out. Then it creates a path.

How do you understand yoga as a method for transforming the body and the mind?

GK: It is very mysterious, the way the threading of the mind and the weaving of our own experience into the body creates so much resonance with our world. Even now when we are living in such a difficult time politically and environmentally, I find that yoga supports my trust in life and people. Continue reading →

bodhichitta

The following is an excerpt from a longer passage from Pema Chodron’s The Places That Scare You. Ashley Dorr shared these words in a recent dharma talk.

“Chitta means ‘mind’ and also ‘heart’ or ‘attitude.’ Bodhi means ‘awake,’ ‘enlightened,’ or ‘completely open.’ Sometimes the completely open heart and mind of bodhichitta is called the soft spot, a place as vulnerable and tender as an open wound. It is equated, in part, with our ability to love…Bodhichitta is also equated, in part, with compassion—our ability to feel the pain that we share with others. Without realizing it we continually shield ourselves from this pain because it scares us. We put up protective walls made of opinions, prejudices, and strategies, barriers that are built on a deep fear of being hurt…But fortunately for us, the soft spot—our innate ability to love and care about things—is like a crack in these walls we erect…With practice we can learn to find this opening. We can learn to seize that vulnerable moment—love, gratitude, loneliness, embarrassment, inadequacy—to awaken bodhichitta.”

 

radical radiance, part 1

a series by Maria Margolies

Autumn is a beautiful time of year, characterized by vibrant colors, blue skies, and crisp air. According to Ayurverda, it’s also Vata season. Other qualities of Vata are windy, erratic, and dry. Although these can be wonderful qualities that shape the landscape dramatically, they can bring challenges and imbalances for our inner and outer bodies. Our skin especially has a tendency to become dry, dull, and crocodile-like. In order to maintain balance and transition into the new season with radiance, it is important to adapt our daily rituals accordingly. 

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Lisa Schrempp’s Kitchari Recipe

Summer is changing into Fall, and Ayurveda suggests that we should change, too. This 5,000-year-old science of health and healing makes lifestyle and dietary recommendations according to the season. Each season has particular qualities, and the way these qualities are combined and balanced define that season’s dosha. There are three doshas: vata (air, movement), pitta (fire, heat, transformation), and kapha (structure, density, cohesion). It is recommended that we eat foods that have the opposite qualities of the dominant seasonal dosha.

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