As we rush to attempt to make our baby’s first Christmas and New Year one to remember, we need to realize this is more for ourselves as the parents than it is for our baby. As far as our precious little one is concerned, it is just another day and moment in time. (more…)

As my practice progresses, my list of questions continue to increase.  Just when I was getting the flow right with my Sun Salutation commitment, I found that my spirit was asking for some clarification.

So, I kept that thought in mind, knowing that when I least expect it the answer will make itself present.  (more…)

When a “slightly overweight, curvaceous, rounded” woman or man first considers a yoga practice, they pause with concerns. Most are what every other new student asks, “How will I bend like that?” “Do I have to be in shape to take a class?” But what continues in their mind is the reality that their extra girth will be a challenge in even the simplest twist or bend. (more…)

Continuing with our resources for a lasting yoga practice, here are a couple of books considered to be staples for an advancing yoga practice.

In Ojai, California we find Suza Francina and her updated and upcoming release of her book entitled The New Yoga for People Over 50. As a certified Iyengar yoga instructor she has extensive experience working with senior communities as well as in home health care for convalescing people. With 30 years of practice and experience she has transferred that knowledge into several publications ranging from healthy aging to menopause. (more…)

Having just watched an very good public television special called Menopause and Beyond with Dr. Christiane Northrup made me reflect on one of the most common questions asked by female yoga students: can doing yoga help with menopause? (more…)

Since I had to return home before completing a full 10 days of Anusara thought I’d just complete my comments with some follow-up notes — about one of my favorite puzzles in yoga practice- the male authority body (as renown teacher “expert”) instructing female student bodies. (more…)

A yoga class can be a place where students, especially female students, may experience issues around authority, self-authority, and their bodies. Certainly I have, when stepping into a class and placing myself onto my yoga mat in front of a yoga teacher I do not know, whom, I hope, will know how to work with my limitations. (more…)

This week I am attending the national Amercan Academy of Religion (AAR) conference in Washingtion DC. I am swimming in a sea of religious studies scholars - what’s a yoga teacher like me doing in a place like this?

When I began teaching yoga immediately after completing my teacher’s training in 1990, I also began formulating many questions about what and how I was teaching that could not be answered within the yoga community. It required reading multiple translations and interpretations of sacred texts, commentaries, historical analysis and critiques - materials not usually offered in a yoga training program which focuses on the experience of the practice - usually as explained by one guru. (more…)

Today begins Navaratri, a nine day celebration dedicated to the female energies named Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati. In light of my last entry (”Considering Gender in Yoga”), I always welcome this chance to reclaim the feminine in spiritual practices. Navaratri is celebrated by men and women, young and old. (more…)

With all we know about how moving through life is different if you are a Male or a Female, how is it that in writings or studies about yoga- gender remains unmentioned.

Actually, let me reframe that: the yogic experience remains defined by the language of the male body, most frequently noted or recorded by a male author. This despite the obvious outnumbering of female yoga practitioners to male in just about all your yoga classes. (And I must point out the other gender imbalance-the “famous” yoga teachers are mostly male teaching predominantly female audiences.) (more…)