Archive for May, 2009|Monthly archive page
recording of a short relaxation
Filed under: audio, exercise, relaxation, teaching, yoga | Tags: yoga
Leave a Comment yesterday I recorded a relaxation which takes roughly 13 minutes to do. You can listen before going to bed or when you need to relax during the day. You can either lay on the bed or lay on the floor. Make sure you have at least a blanket or yogamat underneath you and put a light blanket on top of you since your body temperature have a tendancy to drop a little bit when you relax deeply. It can also be used as a short relaxation during the day. It contains a short journey through the body and awareness about the breathing process.
my first yoga instruction video
Filed under: teaching, video, yoga | Tags: asana, exercise, pranayama, satyananda
Leave a Comment Most of us probably associate yoga with postures that takes years to master and you have to be born with a rubber body. Yoga is for everyone and this practice may look simple but it will take a long time to master. The most important thing is that you do it with awareness.
feedback is welcome
Guru Wanted
What a morning ! I woke up after 1,5 hours of sleep. I am staying in my girlfriends house and the bed is to soft for me and i could not sleep properly. Maybe it was more to it than that because initially I planned to go to Copenhagen today and it really felt very dramatic to leave Germany and my girlfriend today. To be honest i kept my girlfriend awake with all my complaining. After the morning yoga I had a lot of thoughts in my head and I started to cry. I was thinking about how much I missed her on my last visit to India and now I thinkabout the 4 months course with Bihar School of Yoga !
If you have a long way to walk , walk slowly ! I am very lucky to have such a suportive girlfriend and it felt great to cry on her shoulder today. I guess it was a relief after yesterday morning where I simply did not have any wish to live at all. I felt so strongly that I am stuck with my blog and in my career. I simply did not feel connected and aware. I was moving around in a fog and I did not have a clue where to place my foot. The whole situation is so new for me. All of a sudden I have a little girl to relate to and care for. Sometimes she calls me father but I guess it is rather confusing for her since I am not her real father. Her mothers new boyfriend ! So many situations that comes up that I have not encountered before. I tell her to switch of the TV and she shouts back NO ! It is both a test of my patience but also about my values and ideas about life. Eating at regular times, washing up after three people, listen to when she read her homework. I have been here for 2,5 weeks roughly but it feels much longer. I no longer feel bad about setting borders and rules that has to be observed. i realise a kids mind is jumping around like a crazy monkey and that conclusion I get after watching my own behavior. we all need structure ! Strangely enough I get reminded of my life in different yoga ashrams. Sure kids are different than adults in some way but at the same time they need relaxation before going to sleep and they need exercise to feel good about themselfes. I am a total beginner when it comes to having kids but I have some experience with meditation and yoga and maybe that can be of use right now ?
Back to the headline. I really need a Guru/Mentor and with guru I need a person with 10-20 years of experience of teaching yoga and who have the time and patience to guide at regular intervals. I have been to several courses but there was always a big group and I never felt that i really connected on a personal level to any of the teachers. I know that I can not choose my own guru in the way that I do not know about my dark sides and which areas i really need to work with. But how do you go about when you search for a guru when you do not live in India ? The guru phenomena is not so common in Europe ?
Teaching Yoga to Children
First I have to state that I have a very short experience in this subject and it is from teaching to one child at the age of 7.
First of all I think children are very open to new impressions and they do not have so many old habits in their back pack like we adults have. At the same time the drawback can be that their mind is jumping around even more than in an adult. They see something and they follow their impulses without thinking about it.
Like an adult a child needs balance in their body to feel good. We can not expect a child to sit down and work on a theoretical task for to long time. They need physical activity as well as mental challenges. maybe this sounds really obvious but at the same time I think it is easy to forget. The strongest memories I have from my own old childhood is when I learned how to skate with my father and other physical activities. When we are really young our parents are our teachers and they show us how to live a healthy life. We take for granted that we need to teach the child how to brush the teeth and how to use a fork and a knife at the table but do we take for granted that we have to teach the child about how to relax and train the concentration ?
Together with my girlfriend I have made a few discoveries regarding children and yoga. I think it is right to state that the education for children needs to be different than to adults because their attention span is shorter. The best way to start with a child is to do simple yoga practices that focus on one limb at the time. Like you start with neck rotation or shoulder rotation for example and you make the child focus on this part in the body.
Like an adult it is good to do sun salutation and similar exercises in the morning when you want to get the energy moving in the body for the day ahead. In the morning you prepare your body for movement and activity and in the evening you do a relaxing practice like yoga nidra or similar. before going to bed the child can lay down in shavasana and you do a short body awareness and a short breath awareness practice with him/her.
It is safe to start with the pawanmuktasana practices and those practices will gently bring the awareness of the child to different parts of the body.
At an early age I got interested in Buddhism and the prince who left his kingdom in the search for truth. How can I apply this story to my own life ? to be able to sit I took up the study of yoga. Is there a contradiction between yoga and science ? Sure we can get a theoretical understanding through books, but without the experience we are stuck. Why is it so hard to practice non-violence when the mosquito is landing on my neck ?
