Category: Abhyasa

Daily Rhythm

Dinacharya is a Sanskrit word that means, “Following the rhythm of the day.” Like a metronome, what we do consistently every day sets the rhythm for our life, whether we are conscious of it or not. I started studying Ayurveda many years after I completed my first yoga teacher training. I was looking for something that would help me find peace of mind and bring some semblance of balance into my life. That’s when Ayurveda found me. Ayurveda means, “The science of living,” which is a 5,000-year-old science that comes from India and takes its cues from Great Nature. What I discovered was that “balance” looks more like wobbling back and forth and all around rather than poise, or serenity, a fixed point on a spectrum.

What I continue to learn about my own organic nature in relationship to the Universal Nature, is that what I do every day matters. Not the grand gestures but the little things like brushing my teeth twice a day, hydrating first thing in the morning and eliminating my bowels fully (so that I’m not walking around full of sh** all day) meditating for 22 minutes, doing a 10-minute yoga asana practice, journaling for 10 solid minutes every day, and consistently eating three meals a day between the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM and not snacking. We’re talking the brick-and-mortar of “yoga,” of life, of every single day no matter where I am on planet earth.   I follow the rhythm of the day, for example, I go to bed when the sun goes down (more or less) and I eat warm foods in Winter, and my whole body becomes more intuitive, resilient, and intelligent. I become more natural. It may seem so simple, but when I fight the urge to go to bed when I feel tired, I create dis-ease in my body, mind, and spirit.

Ayurveda tells us that diseases are generated at the junctions of the season, the moments when one season changes into another. –Dr. Robert Svoboda, Ayurveda for Women: a guide to vitality and health

The teachings of Ayurveda remind us that it is better to engage in daily activities which prevent illness before it occurs. As practitioners of yoga and students of life we are encouraged to live in a way that allows optimum flow of energy/prana/life force.

The Three Pillars of Dinacharya: 

  1. Body—a healthy flow of energy in the body, mind, and spirit allows each human time and space to rest, digest, and reset/rebalance. Drink plenty of water first thing in the morning to have a complete elimination, eat your food in a relaxed manner, with gratitude, sitting down, aim to be in bed before 10 PM to give the digestive system a chance to detox naturally. (Read Dr. Claudia Welch’s book Balance Your Hormones for more on this topic.)
  2. Mind—as the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali states, Yoga Chitta Vrtti Nirodha, “Yoga is the cessation of all self-limiting thoughts, patterns and tendencies within our personal energy field,” Bhavani Silvia Maki.
  3. Spirit—”A living human being is a body-mind-spirit complex. Each part of you—organs, tissues, skeleton, nervous system, emotions, mind and others—possesses its own form of awareness, and each of these awarenesses relates together,” writes Dr. Svoboda in his book, Ayurveda for Woman, (p. 15). When start to pay attention to our bodies a whole world of awareness opens up. When we start to heed the signs that our bodies give us, we start to trust our own Great Nature.

As with any path of yoga, it’s life-long. Be gentle, go slow, and have faith. Thank you for sharing this journey with me.

If you’re curious about how you might align more fully with nature’s rhythms these are my own favorite resources. Find out more with Banyan Botanicals, Dr. Claudia Welch, and Dr. Robert Svoboda.

The Necessity of Formal Practice and Studentship

Practice implies repetition and consistency over a long period of time. 

Yesterday, I said to my 9 AM yoga students, while they held a long  Down Dog,  “This might sound heretical and this is my opinion only but here’s the thing: Do you want to learn from a teacher who doesn’t have time for their own yoga practice?” Now, these guys are dedicated to their practice and we have a lot of trust between us, so I felt comfortable saying this to them. Often I say things out loud that really ought to be kept to myself, but this morning I opened my mouth and spoke. Today I’m still sitting with what I said because I feel that it could be widely misunderstood. I’ll do by best to shed a little more light on what I meant:

I completed my first yoga teacher training in 2012. I initially did yoga teacher training to further my own studies and delve deeper into the traditional teachings and practices of yoga.  I never wanted to become a yoga teacher. That was not my idea of a “good time” (or my “dream job”). Standing in front of any number of people wearing stretch pants reciting Sanskrit is not within my natural comfort zone. I’m intrinsically a very shy person. I’ve learned to be outgoing, outspoken, and personable. 

Looking back now, I remember that during my first yoga teacher training my teachers would use their lunch break to do their own asana practice. The training room was closed to students for an hour and a half so that our teachers could use the space for their own. We were not allowed back in the room until 30 minutes before class began. 

I remember thinking, “Wow, that’s kinf od a lot of yoga.” What I didn’t know then, but what I do know now, is that teaching yoga is really different than doing your own yoga asana practice. In the seven years I’ve been teaching yoga, I’ve gone from one end of the pectrum—taking weekly yoga classes as a student and substitute yoga teacher, to the other extreme—not practicing at all because I was teaching over 10 classes a week, to finding my way someplace in the middle where I now teach yoga six hours a week and practice at least my own meditation and yoga asana every day for at least 5 to 30 minutes (some days longer). I take Sundays off. 

From where I sit at 31-years-old with no children and no mortgage, and a hefty student loan debt plus a car payment, it’s my opinion that there’s hypocrisy in calling oneself a “yoga teacher” when one has no time for their own yoga. We all waste time in different ways. As teachers, how can we adequately offer space for other people to practice yoga and have no space or time for our own investigation of yoga? 

How am I supposed to offer intelligent instruction for engaging the process of yoga if I am not actively engaged in this same process? How am I to lead others if I am not navigating the same terrain? How? When does formal practice get put on the back burner? If you’re a mother? If you’re caring for your elderly parents? If your spouse is ill? If you are ill? These are not questions aimed at a final answer. This is my own on-going exploration of what it means to be a yoga student, what it means to be a yoga teacher, and the necessity of formalized spiritual practice. 

As a yoga student first and foremost I believe in formal practice. Sure, I could call a hike in nature my “yoga practice” for the day. I could use the sweet metaphor of washing dishes as my “yoga practice.”  I would even say that being with my darling niece and nephew is a sort of yoga. Yes, all of these forms of play and practice could be yoga when we view the picture from a much broader perspective. And yet… what about formal practice? Do we save our formal practice for when we have the time? For weekend workshops? For retreats? For when we feel like it? 

Ma Devaki, a Devotee and Attendant of Yoga Ramsuratkumar, an Indian Saint known to many as the God Child of Tiruvannamalai of South India said, “Being tired and being sick are not excuses not to practice.” Go figure. These are two prime examples of when I choose not to practice. And yet the invitation stands: how can I make formal practice of yoga a necessity and a priority? Something I can’t say “No” to. At some point, the necessity for formal practice far outweighs my excuses not to practice. When does one make the shift from wanting to create a formal practice, to actually doing it? How can I, as a yoga teacher, offer space for others to do the cultivate a formal practice? 

The only way I’ve seen that is remotely effective is 1. To keep showing up, and 2. “Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth,” as Rilke instructed Franz Kappus in his Letters to a Young Poet. It is my wish for all practitioners of yoga is that we are students first. Studentship is the foundation from which all good teaching arises. Yes? Studentship elicits humility, curiosity, and dedication.

Yoga is a life-long process that implies experiencing some discomfort. It’s a path of evolution, and on that path, we ask the question, “What remains consistent?” Like my friend, Rachel used to ask me every time we got together for tea, “What’s steady on consistent in your life, Shinay?” As a 20-something, the answer was always hard to come by and I believed that if my life was not always constantly changing and new with a great drama to play out that there was something wrong. As a 30-something, steady and consistent is a quality I’m learning to love and invite more of into my life. I’m slow learner in this department but there’s a texture to life that I enjoy when I slow down and really get down to the business of formal practice.

I still get itchy from time to time wishing things would constantly change form, and yet—the moments that I look forward to are the early morning hours, before the day begins that are all my own, that I get to practice sitting still and then going up-side-down in headstand and shoulderstand. This is my formal practice. It’s all a process. When I was a new yoga teacher I didn’t practice at home, I went to class. Seven years into teaching I start with small 5-30 minute incrimants every day. Let’s see what the next seven years brings, shall we?