GROOVING the YOGA WAVE

From Iyengar, Ashtanga, HOT yoga, Power Yoga and many others, I have been surfing the yoga wave for the past 10 years exploring and sampling the smorgasbord of Yoga methods. I have pushed, pulled, grunted, forced and coerced my body into positions no human should ever endure.

I learned a lot over the 10 years of explorating yoga.

First and foremost, "yoga" is not what you do on the mat...it’s what you do off the mat.  Yoga is  not just a series of poses, the REAL work comes from the practice of presence or becoming conscious, which is much more challenging then a pose or posture.

Yoga is a personal and private practice even if it’s done in a room full of people. Yoga is not the movements nor the postures nor your ability to twist and contort your body into a pretzel. I also had this strange unconscious thought that if I could perform these poses perfectly like standing on my head while doing the splits that would somehow make me a better person or “special” in some way. Oh, the joy and pain of ignorance! Then finally when I stopped judging myself and my body’s lack of ability to perform 90% of the poses perfectly, I started becoming more curious about just moving my body.

Yoga is the state of mind, the openness and curiosity of possibilities that will benefit you the most. Whether I was holding a warrior pose or rolling on the floor, as long as I was present with what I was doing, I was doing “yoga”… MY YOGA and that is the only yoga that matters… to me!

My yoga has jumped off the mat and onto the "dance floor".

When I shifted my approach towards my yoga class and started to "GROOVE" it, I officially beame the “crazy” lady in the back of the yoga class who looks like she should possibly be on medication. Five years ago, I would have been uncomfortable with being in the room with the “crazy lady” who wasn't moving like everyone else, the "crazy lady" who was completely entrawled by every movement of her body, the "crazy lady" who "played" with different options for every vinyasa... but now “crazy lady” is ME!

I love it when I get the opportunity to teach at Yoga studios like Yogi’s Anonymous in Los Angeles or YYoga in Vancouver, where I get to experience an entire room of  some of the world's best yoga teachers and coolest people who love to do yoga...but in these YogaGROOVE classes yogis enthusiastically move their mats out of the way and step onto the "yoga" dancefloor...bravely exploring the unlimited possibilities of movement while connecting to music (otherwise known as dancing)...but they are DANCING their YOGA...then all of a sudden this “crazy lady” fits right in!

I see yoga like life… it is not the destination (poses) it is how you get from one thing to the next (transition)....and we are all ALWAYS in transition. We will never arrive, we are already here!  So why not DANCE?

TRY a YOGAGROOVE with me TODAY!

Check out the video from my GROOVE class at Yogis Anonymous in Santa Monica, California.

CLICK HERE for FULL YOGIS ANONYMOUS GROOVE CLASS VIDEO

And of course...here is your FREE YOGIS ANONYMOUS GROOVE CLASS PLAYLIST from the class to inspire you to find your own GROOVE!