Archive for the ‘running’ Tag
what is yoga ?
Filed under: diary, religion, teaching, yoga | Tags: exercise, running, sivananda yoga, yoga
Leave a Comment When I hear a teachers who talk about the importance of keeping up the yoga tradition I react with mixed emotions. First of all Yoga was mentioned the first time roughly 2500 years ago. In the Katha Upanishad it refers to a state where you gain control over the senses and the mental activity stops. This leads to a supreme state. In the old texts there is no reference on how this is done practically and this is where the confusion starts. A marathon runner can gain control over the senses and by that his mental activity stops. There are many roads leading to yoga. Yoga has come to describe the travel when in fact it was first used to describe the goal/final state. Ha-tha yoga describes union of polarities and this has come to mean a series of physical postures. There is no way with higher value than the other and that is where some “yoga traditions” get into problems. You see ha-tha yoga school who claim that they have secret initiations from the original tradition. In my opinion there is something suspicious about secrecy and I want to practice something that has been proved by scientists. There is nothing secret about ha-tha yoga and it is a tradition in constant change . When you see thin male yogis in India wearing a loincloth and a smiling women in leotards they both claim to follow the original tradition. 200 years ago practically no women did ha-tha yoga at all. Traditionally only men were initiated into this kind of training and Sivananda (roughly 100 years ago) described how he introduced ha-tha yoga to women in India, they had great difficulty doing it in their Sari and some other outfit had to be worn. In India ha-tha Yoga was only taught to a selected few in and this was controlled partly by the caste system. Yoga for women has developed through trial and error in the last 100 years. Here is where my concern about secrecy come to mind again. We must let doctors, physiotherapists and scientists look at Ha-tha Yoga and evaluate it and be open to their findings.
Since most of the ha-tha yoga tradition is based on an oral tradition and it was written down not so long time ago there is big room for change and adaptation.
Ha-tha Yoga spread out of the small circles and became a mainstream activity. Ha-tha Yoga became something that is available through CD, DVD, internet, training in group, personal training etc.
crying like a baby in the arms of the lord
Filed under: christianity, diary, teaching, yoga | Tags: love, running, teacher training, TTC
Leave a Comment After a late run on the beach this night I feel at peace today. I felt a lot of sadness the last few days since my loved one is back in her home town and I am here and whatever I look at I see her in front of me but I can not physically touch her. I am participating in yoga teaching training in Austria next month and after that it is white space. It feels like a very big step to start to teach in a foreign language, German, right now and maybe this will change during the course. The biggest group I have taught in yoga was 8 people in India and the next step is to teach for a full class of 25-50 people. I know I should start this step by step but right now I cannot think about this as a compromise. I want to become a full time yoga teacher. There is no other option. Like a candle flame of concentrated light I am focusing on this. My whole body is trembling with the thought of throwing myself into this. Will I die ? Do I have to live in celibacy ? Up to now I have done yoga teaching on a voluntary basis. To live I need money to pay the bills and it feels natural to take this step. I do not know why it is such a big step to charge for a lesson. Maybe it is putting pressure on me to be professional in my teaching. To strictly divide up my private life and the yoga. It feels more like the yoga have been growing in me for years and now it wants to get out of my body and it want me to work as a transmitter. It feels like an explosion from within and I have no other option. I cannot explain in a logical way and it feels like a very lonely road since my old friends are not so interested in this. Yoga feels like something I have been hiding and now all of sudden I want to show the world. I am grateful for all the people who support me in this and you mean a lot to me !
The only way to success
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: exercise, gratitude, running, self help
Leave a Comment Are you like me and have a some scars from when you tried to master the art of skiing and skating when you where a kid. How did we finally manage to get down the slope in one piece ? We tried and fell and tried again. We saw some older guy who really could skate well and we wanted to be like him. Then we get older and we start to think like “I could never write a book “. But how did the now famous writers start their career ? More than one of them talk about how they sent their material to a publisher who politely said it was not good enough. Did they give up ? No they tried again. Like a child who learns to walk they tried and tried again. Every “mistake” is a step in the right direction. With every mistake we also get to learn a tiny bit more of how it is to actually walk successfully. We set out to run because we know it is healthy. It is raining outside and it is cold. We get a pain in a knee after 2 kilometers and we are really disappointed that we cannot run as fast as the guy we saw in the commercial for running shoes. We are also disappointed because we wanted to run for 5 kilometers. What about if we are grateful for the 2 kilometers we ran ? Will that not change the whole scenario ?
Exercise at home
Filed under: diary, exercise, yoga | Tags: exercise, jogging, running, thai boxing, yoga
Leave a Comment I started with 1 hours and 10 minutes of running . it is like an Obstacle course with all the people who are out walking and I tried to be as close to the beach as possible. Sometimes the sand is wet and at other times it is more dry. Sometimes I need to jump up on stones and almost all the time there is an inclination combined with small stones in random patterns. The fresh air from the sea and the sound of waves hitting the beach is really calming for the mind. In general jogging have a tendency to become a bit boring and there are some ways to avoid that. Challenge yourself ! jump up on that low concrete wall and try to get as much variation in as possible. For inspiration watch this video Strength training for Parkour .
After the run I tried to do my whole yoga routine in the bathroom just to challenge myself in the limited space there is in there. I find that when I do yoga in different places and with different people I do it differently and I remember poses I have not been doing for a long time.
I also did a few clap push ups today inspired from the book ” train a quarter of an hour a day” with Paulo Roberto. Even if you can find a lot of training videos on youtube and on podcasts for example I recommend one book that gives you some exercise patterns, how to eat and how to put together routines.
Earlier today I was watching “Scooby’s Home Workouts” and he have done a series of videos about training at home and I really recomend them. There is no advertisments on the page and if you like it you have the possibility to donate money. he gives a lot of useful information on how to use a back pack when you do pushups to intense the training for example.
In general I am amazed how many different training exercises you can find on youtube. Today I was watching a special variation of pushups that thai boxers do as well as some guy doing push ups with his whole body in the air.
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 ?
