Category: yoga

experience, yoga

Step 100: Open the Heart

Christa Avampato

“Enlightenment means opening the chest, and thereby opening the heart. That’s a worthy goal.” ~ Keith, my yoga teacher

Keith is my anatomy teacher for my yoga teacher training program. Despite his modesty, he has an insane amount of knowledge about the body, about moving someone else’s body, and about the body’s positioning to the world around it. He’s also a little sarcastic and contrarian so that makes me like him even more.

In our class today, he emphasized the need to focus on opening. “Forget about what a manual tells you to do or what a teacher tells you to do or what some guru tells you do. Just minimize pain,” he told us. “If your knee hurts when you have a certain alignment, then change the alignment or end up with bad knees.” Straight-forward. No nonsense. Exactly my kind of teacher.

Keith really made us get under the hood of our practice and consider what it is we’re all really trying to do. Put aside all those textbook answers of improve our health, increase flexibility, etc. “Enlightenment means opening the chest, and thereby opening the heart. That’s a worthy goal,” he told us.

So now imagine if every asana we ever took, every meditation practice we ever did, every breath we ever took had that same goal. Open the heart. What if that becomes the only thing we ever tell ourselves we have to do? What doors begin to open and what doors do we choose to close? What opportunities do w seek out and take and what opportunities do we just let pass on by? With that kind of clear direction, open the heart, we now have a lens to look through for our every action and every day. Open the heart, and that’s enough.

meditation, yoga

Step 98: 18 Minutes of Nothing

Christa Avampato

“Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.” ~ Orison Swett Marden, American author

Tracy is my favorite yoga teacher. She exudes this amazing feeling into every one of her students that lets us all know “I get you.” She’s undeniably, beautifully herself at every moment, and so she gives us the space to be who we are at our very core. She asked us how our training and teaching is going. One of my classmates mentioned that the meditation practice is a little rough. “Is it mind junk?” Tracy asked. “Yes,” said my friend. “Lots of mind junk.”

Tracy thought for a moment and then offered us all this advice. “Sit for 18 minutes a day.” Just sit there and tell yourself that there is no way you’re getting up until that 18 minutes is over. Your mind will reel for a bit. That’s okay. Let it reel. Let it tell you that this is a waste of time, that you have a million other things to do. And then just keep sitting there. The mind will think up excuse after excuse until it finally just calms down and accepts that it is going to have to wait.

Our greatest obstacles are not “out there.” They aren’t our jobs or our friends or family or relationships or neighbors or finances. Our greatest obstacles, the great big ones that get in the way and prevent us from radiating our beauty out into the world, are inside. We house those obstacles inside our own hearts. We can’t think our way out of them. The only way to remove them is to stare them down, and we stare them down by just getting quiet and sitting and being.

It will take some time. These obstacles have been a long time in the making. We have years of mind junk layered on top of them. We need to strip away that junk, let the obstacles lie bare in our hearts, pick them up, and move them out of the way. It’s a long haul. So just start. One layer at a time. One half of a layer at a time. Whatever you can do. Sit there for 18 minutes and just see what you find. It may turn out to be the 18 best minutes of your day.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

technology, tradition, yoga

Step 93: 6,000 years ago and decades down the line

Christa Avampato

I am currently studying for my yoga teacher certification, carrying on a tradition that is more than 6,000 years old. At the same time I started this certification process, I also took on a new job where I spend my days thinking about mobile technology and its useful application to everyday life now and in the years ahead. I have one foot in two very different worlds. The irony isn’t lost on me.

When I have tried to reconcile the paradox in my mind, I hit a dead-end. How do I stay true to an ancient practice and stay equally focused on the cutting edge of personal technology that is set to rival any science fiction model to-date? “Why do you have to?” Brian asked me. “Sounds perfectly balanced to me. Upper chakras. Lower chakras.” I think he really wanted to tell me, “Stop worrying about nothing and just accept that we spend our present living in both the future and the past. That’s life, sister.” But he didn’t – he’s too good a coach to say something like that.

I like this idea of innovative thinking coupled with ancient study. It helps me realize that we really are on a continuum, especially when we consider how the world around us is evolving and changing with our hearts and minds and bodies remain a blessed constant. Even 6,000 years ago in caves in India, where yoga began, people longed for peace and safety and love. They longed for belonging to an energy, a life-force, prana far more vast than they could be alone. They had a thirst for knowledge. They were curious. They were creative.

This constancy of spirit is a welcome thought to ponder when we consider how quickly everything around us is changing. We can feel overwhelmed by technology and communications and the great speed of life. We don’t have to be. In our hearts, we are all the same. We have been for thousands of years, and likely will be ages and ages hence.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

writing, yoga

Step 91: Finding the Words

Christa Avampato

In tonight’s yoga class, we practiced, taught, and learned the anatomy of back bends, the class of poses that ask us to open our hearts, to be vulnerable, to give, and to receive. They can be frightening poses for some and fully liberating for others. Thanks to my work with Brian and my desire to be open to possibility, back bends are a natural part of my practice and my life. I have worked hard to find comfort in discomfort, to feel at home far, far away.

To help the class capture the essence of back bends, my teacher, Jeffrey, helped us make word banks for Purvottonasana, Upward Plank. Some to capture the feeling of the pose: a window opening, lifting, flying, rising, shining, offering, accepting, receiving, expanding, letting go, surrender, liberation, and grace. Beautiful, poetic words to match the poetry of our bodies.

On my way home, I thought about word banks that may apply in other areas of our lives to capture the essence of an activity, a moment, an event, a relationship. How often do we really consider the true essence, the intention, of our daily trials and triumphs? I don’t have this practice, though after tonight’s yoga class I see how powerful a practice it can be. The moments of our lives deserve description.

business, social media, yoga

Step 88: Let the Prana Flow

Christa Avampato

On Friday I was talking to Brian about what type of company I wanted to build with my yoga certification. I was trying to deduce from my other interests and goals how my yoga certification fit in to the master plan called my life. First I was going to complete my certification in May, take the summer off, explore a few ideas that had been kicking around in my head during the fall as I drafted up several different business plans and evaluated their financials, and on and on it went. Brian listened patiently, as usual, and that slight smile behind his eyes let me know that he was about to suggest something I already knew but hadn’t yet recognized. “You don’t need to work so hard, Christa,” he said. “Why don’t you just let the prana (the higher intelligence) guide how it wants you to use the yoga training?”

“Okay,” I said with a sigh, and got up to leave.

“Oh, and Christa,” Brian said. “You’ll be glad you took the summer off because come the fall you’re going to be very busy.” On top of his many other gifts, Brian has very keen intuition.

I thought about Brian’s comment all weekend. I like to feel that I’m actively crafting my future, that my efforts are what’s opening up doors for me. When I think back on my life, on the times when my life really took a decisive direction, I couldn’t have predicted the cause of that change. I met someone randomly. I mentioned off-hand about an interest I was pursuing that caused someone to connect me to someone who could help. I was just in the right place at the right time. What helped me was that I was always prepared to be lucky; in other words, prana took the reigns.

For many months now I’ve been thinking about how to gel my interest in yoga, product development, social media, writing, and education. Today an email arrived in my in-box that brought all of these things together for me and I have a meeting set for next Tuesday to explore the opportunity. I had reached out to someone on the recommendation of a good friend back in January. He was very kind and said he’d pass along my interest in the event that an opportunity arises down the line. I chalked it up to good experience and that old idea of “well if it’s meant to be…”

And prana, with a little room, surfaced today with a possible opportunity that would meld all of my interests in a better way than I ever imagined. All thanks to my friend who recommended me to a friend who recommended me to a friend months ago. No surprise, it would keep me very busy this fall. It remains to be seen if the opportunity with come to fruition. For now, I’m just going to let prana do what it does best – flow.

work, yoga

Step 87: Effort and Ease

Christa Avampato

“Yoga is a balance of effort and ease. ” ~ Stacey Sperling, my yoga teacher

“It takes 7 years to get to enlightenment. 9 if you really try.” ~ Will Duprey, my yoga teacher

3 weekends of yoga teacher training down, 4 to go. We’re now 1/3 of the way through the course. I can feel the change in my body and in my mind. I’m finding ease in my effort, and it seems that the more effort I place into my practice, the more ease I feel. On the mat and off the mat.

Yoga in the west is about asanas, poses. In the west, we are always running, striving, reaching. We are afraid of never having enough, of losing what we have, of what people will think if we can’t keep up. That’s a lot of effort, and there’s no ease anywhere in there.

I’m beginning to wonder if it’s possible to have fruitful effort without a sense of ease. Perhaps this is just another way of saying that we should be on the path of least resistance. It doesn’t mean that path is easy; on the contrary, a good deal of effort is required to get on and stay on the path we’re meant for, our dharma. I’m suggesting that if we find ourselves heading down a road where we find no ease, where it seems that no matter how hard we try, everything just gets harder, then maybe we need to go another way. Yoga’s teaching me that effort and ease are not opponents, but rather partners.

happiness, harmony, yoga

Step 83: More Right Moments

Christa Avampato

Tonight I spent 3 hours at Sonic Yoga – 1.5 hours practicing and 1.5 hours observing. At the start of my practice, my yoga teacher, Stacey, asked us to consider moments in our lives that were completely right, when we felt everything in our lives was working together in harmony. “I bet all your chakras were aligned and that you weren’t trying too hard. Right just happened,” she said.

I thought about a few long walks in the park when I couldn’t help but smile at how lucky I am to have the life I have. I thought about how my body literally flew down the stairs to get me out of my apartment building during the fire so that I wouldn’t be harmed. When I ran the Chicago marathon and saw the finish line up ahead after 26.2 long miles, I could feel myself running outside of my own body, every cell working together in harmony. The first time I held my niece, Lorelei, or when I sat on the steps of my apartment building with our dog, Sebastian, both of us feeling the wind in our ears, everything felt like it was as it should be. Most recently, I thought about a few moments during my birthday party last weekend when I looked around and saw so many faces I love, all together.

“A yoga practice is about helping us to have more right moments in our lives,” Stacey said as she closed the class. Now isn’t that a beautiful goal for a practice?

The image above is not my own. I can be found here.

dreams, meditation, yoga

Step 81: The Hand You’re Dealt

Christa Avampato

“I never worry about the hand I’ve got because I know how lucky I am to have been dealt into the game at all.” ~ ME

Meditation is a fascinating thing. I’ve been trying to do a few minutes everyday, either right when I wake up or just before I go to bed. There are a few remarkable things that have been happening since I started this practice. I’m not sure that the correlation is 100%, but I have to think that the extra yoga and meditation has something to do with it.

First of all, I’m sleeping much better, perhaps better than I ever have. For a long time I’ve struggled with insomnia, and though it hasn’t effected my productivity or health, I have worried that it’s taking a toll on me without my knowing it. The fact that I can now sleep 7 hours at a clip is a miraculous thing.

My dreams are also unfolding in an interesting way – it’s as if I am being read a story in each one. These little pearls of wisdom like the one above are spoken to me in such a dramatic way that I remember them when I wake up. They are often embedded inside dreams where I am doing something that I think should scare me, but doesn’t. For example, last night I dreamed that I was back in my old apartment building where the fire happened. I ran into my old landlord who told me that there were some items in my old apartment that I should go get. So I walked up the stairs and found items for my altar – statues of Vishnu (the preserver), Ganesha (the remover of obstacles), and Shiva (the destroyer). Jewels, gold, and silver filled my old apartment. I collected them all, my arms overflowing, and walked out of the building into the sunlight.

It’s now been over 6 months since my fire, and I can’t help thinking that it was the very best and very worst thing that ever happened to me. To lose almost everything in one breath and to gain such an appreciation and gratitude for life in the next is a tough thing to reconcile in my conscious mind. In my subconscious, in the place of dreams, I clearly understand all of the gifts that the fire gave me. It was a bad hand to be dealt, but with a lot of help I made the most of it. In the end, I am really glad that I still get to be a part of the game.

The image above depicts Shiva, the Destroyer, dancing in a ring of fire, clearing away from our lives what does not serve.

music, yoga

Step 80: Kirtan

Christa Avampato

As part of my yoga teacher training, we attend Kirtans, a lovely, free-form mash-up of music, call and response, and chanting. There is an aspect of spirituality to a Kirtan, though the beauty of the spirituality is that it can be entwined with any other religious beliefs (or non-religious beliefs as the case may be.) Our voices and the music blended together, often in rounds, to the point that I could no longer distinguish my own voice from the collective. By the end of the two hours we were all in sync.

As I glanced around the room during the different chants, I could see people in many different emotional states. Some were swaying with their palms open to the sky, completely in the flow of the rhythm. Others were teary-eyed. And still others were just trying to keep up with the sanskrit. I was struck by all of the emotion in those chants, and I was amazed with how we could all come together with such spontaneity and make something so beautiful right there on the spot.

I left the Kirtan humming, thinking of the lessons of Hanuman and Shiva and Ganesha. Thinking about the unifying power of music. Most of all, I felt grateful, so so grateful, to receive and provide joy in equal amounts.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

nature, weather, yoga

Step 79: Dancing with Joy

Christa Avampato

To get my Spring started off right on its first day, I went to a Prana yoga class at Sonic with Jeffrey, one of my favorite yoga teachers. Just being in the presence of his free spirit makes me smile. He is unabashedly his wild and wonderful self, and he encourages his students to bring that same sense of freedom into our own lives, in our own way.

At the start of the class we moved through a vinyasa (flow of poses) that I had never tried before, poses I wouldn’t have thought to piece together. It was a glorious mash-up of strength and endurance and grace. And then, we danced. To welcome spring, we danced around the studio arms flailing, laughing, shouting, literally jumping for joy. No rules or guidelines. Just dance. We felt the tingle of life.

As I walked home, I reminded myself how important it is to let go, and to help others let go. I thought about the power of celebration and change and community. I smiled wide, turned my face to the sun that provided us with a 74 degree day in New York City, and whispered, “welcome.” A time of new beginnings has begun.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.