Practicing All Eight Limbs...At the Same Time
Ashtanga Yoga is not an Indian form of calisthenics or gymnastics. It is an eight-limbed path. The word Ashtanga comes from a text dating somewhere between the 4th and 1st centuries,…
Earlier writing
Behind the Scenes at My Yoga Journal Photo Shoot
This summer, I was asked to model some basic asanas for the November 2011 Yoga Journal magazine: As someone who has been practicing Ashtanga for 20 years, I expected the shoot to be an…
The So-Called Tradition of Ashtanga
I have noticed that as the Mysore-style Ashtanga method becomes more popular over the years, the individual connection between teacher and student is disintegrating. The practice, which was…
Transforming the Sacred Wound Part 9: Integration
Once the pain of the emotion has passed, once we have completely and compassionately descended down to the bottom of the rock, we experience a sense of relief. We begin to widen, deepen,…
Transforming the Sacred Wound Part 8: Cultivating Compassion
The real gift we have to offer to others is our compassion. Likewise, the real gift we have to offer ourselves is compassion. The place we often go to when we feel the pain of our wound is…
Transforming the Sacred Wound Part 7: Practicing Presence
However unnerving the experience, we need to bring a moment-to-moment awareness to the wound. It’s important that we not get lured too much into the past or future storylines until we have…
Transforming the Sacred Wound Part 6: Descending into the Wound
The transformational shift that can occur around the sacred wound feels a whole lot like a descent. It has a downward quality to it. It often feels heavier, stickier, thicker, and more…
Transforming the Sacred Wound Part 10: The Genius
And so what emerges from the initial aversion, resistance, and pain of the wound is something generative creative, playful, and sometimes even luminous or numinous. Marianne Williamson…
Transforming the Sacred Wound Part 5: Handling Numbness
Oftentimes the starting point is just numbness, like there is nothing there to access. We can’t feel ANY emotion. We just sense a wall or a barrier. Instead of regarding numbness as bad or…
Transforming the Sacred Wound Part 4: Go to the Body
In order to identify the sacred wound, it helps to feel into the body for an emotional reaction. People often report a tightness in the chest, a nausea, a blockage in the throat. Our…
Transforming the Sacred Wound Part 3: Stop Scratching
Few of us relate to our wound like it’s a form of genius in any sense of the word. We relate to it like we have to get rid of it. I have a friend whose father left her mother, and sisters…
Transforming the Sacred Wound Part 2: Identifying the Wound
In my previous blog post, I began a discussion about the sacred wound . The essence of the message was that when we regard the wounding we experience in our lives as good news rather than…