Tag: yoga asanas

Thursday Night Community Meditation

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blue!

drop in meditation at english yoga berlin

We’re excited to announce our newest community yoga initiative for the Berlin yoga community: a donation-based, rotating meditation class, every Thursday night at 20h15.

What?: Community Meditation

Where?:  Our Kreuzberg yoga studio, directions here.

When?: Every Thursday, 20h15 till 21h

How Much?:  Donation-based (between 5e and 10e recommended, no one turned away for lack of funds)

Each of the EYB teachers offers a specific style and knowledge–our collective specializes in hatha yoga, vinyasa yoga, classical yoga and restorative yoga, and, in addition, some of us offer acupressure, self-massage, thai yoga massage, tratak and other yogic techniques in our yoga classes. An integral part of our yoga classes in Kreuzberg, however, is the practice of yoga nidra and other forms of meditation. Western yoga is often dominated by yoga asanas (yoga poses), and we feel, as teachers, it is important to offer students a wider variety of yogic traditions. While movement is an amazing tool for calming and focusing the spirit, breathing techniques and meditation can offer unique yoga benefits for the body and mind. Meditation is one very important and simple way to integrate yoga in daily life.

We are hoping to share this diversity of yoga knowledge with the wider community through our new Community Meditation Class. Every week, this 45-minute session will be taught be an EYB teacher or a visiting teacher. The class will be offered on a donation-basis (between 5 and 10e recommended) and consists of a different style of meditation each week, depending on the teacher and their specialization. It may include some gentle yoga postures, depending on the teacher, but will be a primarily non-physical class.

English Yoga Berlin is a collective of teachers that specialize in offering community yoga in Berlin. We offer yoga for beginners through advanced. If you are searching for yoga in English in Berlin Kreuzberg, check out our schedule.

 

Yoga and Self-Acceptance

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iamtheseer

Some people think that yoga is about self-improvement. Although this is not an entirely crazy concept, it is essentially misguided, and also a rather dangerous attitude. The problem with self-improvement is that it follows the assumption that somehow, we are not good enough, or that constantly struggling to make ourselves better is a precondition to living a fulfilling life. This is like putting the cart before the horse.

Self-improvement, like positive thinking, anger management and so many other devices of the prosperous self-help industry, are superficial and ineffective ways to deal with our neuroses. They may work for some people, some of the time, but they often suppress other problems that will eventually manifest themselves in one way or another – for example, as an explosion of the repressed feeling, or as psychosomatic disorders. In the best of cases, they treat the symptom, while doing little to eradicate the disease.

It’s true that yoga leads to self-improvement, but this is more of a side effect. And, like so many things in life, it is blocked if we obsess about it (hasn’t it happened to you, that only when you give up desperately wishing for something, does it finally happen?).  In any case, real self-improvement doesn’t come about without self-acceptance. And self-acceptance is impossible without self-knowledge. Self-Knowledge… now that sounds closer to the point of yoga –IF there was a point to yoga.

But let’s stay with self-acceptance.

“Love your neighbor as you love yourself”, goes the old wisdom. But how about loving ourselves like we love our neighbor? I dare say that we’re all excellent friends. We take friendship as seriously as any other job: We comfort our friends when they need a shoulder to cry on; we encourage them when they need a little confidence boost; we celebrate with them when they achieve some success. We love them and cherish them unconditionally. How many of us can say that about our relationship with ourselves?

And the irony is that self-acceptance would make us even better friends. Our attitude towards ourselves influences our attitudes towards others. Self-acceptance translates into a more tolerant attitude to everybody around us; it frees us from comparison and competition and allows us to have a more harmonious relationship to our environment. Make this experiment: Next time you find yourself criticizing somebody else, stop for a second and ask “What is it about myself that I’m unhappy with?” If you’re honest with yourself, you may discover that there is some self-dissatisfaction triggering the criticism.

Self-acceptance is not the same as self-esteem. It goes rather deeper. While self-esteem represents one’s judgment of one’s worth; self-acceptance doesn’t consider worth as being the question. Self esteem is an appraisal of our value, while self-acceptance is an unconditional admission of adequacy. Self-esteem considers our virtues and achievements, while self-acceptance embraces all facets of ourselves. Self-esteem still allows for narcissism, arrogance and immature perceptions of self, while self-acceptance dismantles all these traps of the ego.

But, I don’t want to accept my flaws, I want to change them!

Despite all the yoga asanas we do, the yoga classes we attend, the meditation we undertake, despite all the therapy and all the self-improvement, true self-acceptance still eludes us. In my opinion, the reason for this is precisely our obsession with making ourselves better. The focus is all on how yoga benefits you, or how therapy makes you better. Why can we not relax for a moment and stop trying to improve everything about us? Why can we not accept that we will never be perfect?  –OK fine, even if we can’t stop pushing ourselves to be better and better, we need to realize that the best way to move forward this is to accept where we are right now.

Please understand that this acceptance doesn’t mean agreement. One doesn’t have to resign to a character “flaw” in order to accept it. One merely acknowledges that this is where one finds oneself, today. This is the starting point. Self-acceptance is letting go of struggle, so we can start the process of moving-on.

Although, as previously expressed, the avid pursuit of self-improvement is not an effective solution to our problems, the desire for improvement, the motivation to be better parents, friends or humans is healthy and inspiring. So, will accepting myself make me complacent and stifle my growth? On the contrary: True change is unlikely without self-acceptance.

To accept ourselves we must be aware of our different aspects, and this awareness is essential for change. Simply by experiencing something without being swayed by it we’re able to let it go. It works with everything. You can try it: Next time you’re doing a yoga pose become aware of any tension you have in the pose. Just experience the area where you feel tension, without wanting the tension to go away, without resisting it. Be there – feeling it, accepting it. And notice what happens: the tension gradually, but surely dissolves, or becomes more bearable. Go ahead, try it!

Sounds strange, but it actually makes a lot of sense. By becoming frustrated with something, by analyzing it and judging it as good or bad, we’re actually clinging to it. We’re not letting go. By witnessing something and accepting it, we can achieve the level of detachment that allows us to drop it and move forward. Just think of the addict. Any expert will tell you that an important step in conquering addiction is to accept it. The alternative would be to deny the reality of our situation, and in this denial, neurosis lurks.

A telling fact is that acceptance is the last stage of the grief process as defined by Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. Without acceptance we simply cannot move on.

How can yoga help?

My teacher, Swami Janakananda asks: “Can you experience and respect the current conditions of your life?”, then he goes on to explain that this is the first step towards transformation. His teacher, Swami Satyananda said: “An important step in yoga is to accept your nature as much as you’re able.”  Satyananda spoke a lot about self-acceptance, and the reason is that acceptance of self is crucial to yoga and tantra. Tantra has even been called the way of acceptance. If you look at many of the tantric methods, they teach us to allow and accept any emotions and thoughts as a first step to letting them go.

So yoga can certainly help with self-acceptance. The mere act of practicing the asanas, of bending your body as far as it wants to go, requires a degree of acceptance that this is as flexible as we are right now. It helps us discover that this flexibility can change from day to day, or from morning to evening. But more importantly, it helps us realize that it doesn’t really matter whether we can reach our toes or not. The posture works anyway.

Acceptance depends on awareness. It is impossible to accept something that we haven’t experienced. And, as any experienced yogi knows, developing the ability to experience is one of the benefits of yoga. For example, when we practice breath awareness – just being aware of the breath, without changing it – we are required to accept the current way our body is breathing, whether is shallow, or fast, or irregular. We soon discover that by simply experiencing our breath, letting it be however it is, it gradually becomes slower, fuller, more rhythmic.

One direct and powerful way to train self-acceptance is through tantric meditations such as Antar Mouna. In Antar Mouna we experience the sense perceptions or the spontaneous thought process, and we learn to keep our mental hands off whatever happens. If suddenly the shrill scream of a baby breaks the peace, that doesn’t disturb the meditation, it simply becomes part of it. If the baby’s scream does disturb or causes some other mental reaction, then that mental reaction too is accepted as part of the meditation. We experience and accept whatever we become aware of during the practice (inside or out), letting it come and go without resisting or clinging to it. If we abruptly feel anger, or self-loathing, or any destructive emotion, then we become fully conscious of it, and allow it, again without pushing it away or holding on to it. We also don’t analyze it or try to explain or justify it (that would also be clinging); we simply witness it come and go.

Whatever we experience in such a way looses its hold on us – by feeling it fully, we exhaust it. It is only those things that we don’t allow ourselves to feel that keep on influencing us.

But here we’re talking about something that one should experience in order to truly understand it. Yoga and tantra are not theoretical or philosophical endeavors, but rather a living tradition that offers us methods for daily life. So, do some yoga and discover how it can help you to stop fussing and start living.

English Yoga Berlin offers yoga in English out of our Kreuzberg studio. We teach hatha yoga, vinyasa yoga, yoga nidra, restorative yoga and classical yoga, and our classes include yoga asanas (yoga poses), pranayama (breathing) and meditation. Our emphasis is on community yoga and we strive to make our yoga classes as high quality, accessible and inclusive as possible, so that all members of our community can share the ways in which yoga benefits modern life. You can learn more about us here.

Heal Yourself Through Writing

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Heal Yourself through Writing

Heal Yourself through Writing

~ A writing workshop with Nicole Olmsted ~

When: Sunday Nov. 9, 11h-15h

Where: English Yoga Berlin’s Kreuzberg yoga studio (click for map)

Cost: 30€ (20€ reduced)

 

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“The hand is an expression of the heart therefore writing is an act of love.”
~Nico

The power of storytelling is when we become aware that we create our own reality. It allows us to take responsibility for our life and to make choices towards our authentic self. When we react out of pain, confusion or fear, the story can lead down a hallow road but when we step towards our highest potential we have the ability to lead a heroic tale.

During this workshop, we will dive into techniques to heal your life through writing. We will go over the art of “Morning Pages,” a technique made famous through Julia Cameron‘s The Artist’s Way. We will use focused writing exercises to help shift perspectives of the past and create new ways of seeing your world. We will then recast your story by identifying archetypes to empower your sense of self. Rewriting yourself is part of the healing journey to discovering your greatest story.

About Nicole:
Growing up as a writer, she explored the different stories of life. In her youth, she wrote poetry of the vast beauty of nature and the fantasy of a hidden world. As a young adult, she wrote of romantic curses of young love and the exquisite pain of loss. She wrote what she experienced and what she hadn’t.
It was when she showed up for an Artist Way workshop, that her world began to make sense. It was being dedicated to the creative force and taking responsibility for the life she had written. What she found, is that the journey to your truth, is one of the most powerful stories of all. Now, building community through sharing these techniques and self awareness is part of her devotion to this work.

English Yoga Berlin offers yoga in English out of our Kreuzberg studio. We teach hatha yoga, vinyasa yoga, yoga nidra, restorative yoga and classical yoga, and our classes include yoga asanas (yoga poses), pranayama (breathing) and meditation. Our emphasis is on community yoga and we strive to make our yoga classes as high quality, accessible and inclusive as possible, so that all members of our community can share the ways in which yoga benefits modern life. You can learn more about us here.

 

How to Develop your Personal Yoga Practice

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Personal Yoga Practice

Personal Yoga Practice

For many people “doing yoga” means visiting a yoga studio and allowing themselves to be guided through some sequences and routines, without having to think too closely about what’s going on. Maybe it has something to do with our therapeutic culture, accustomed to experiencing well-being as something provided by a knowledgeable professional; or with our old tendency to transfer responsibility – to the doctor, to the legislator, to the child psychologist, to the yoga teacher… But given the popularity of yoga today, it is remarkable how few yogis practice yoga in daily life, on their own, in the quiet of their room.

That’s not too bad for us yoga teachers. After all, if everybody was doing yoga at home then we would struggle to make a living even more than we already do. But somehow, many of us are not comfortable with what we perceive as an unnecessary dependency. We certainly don’t what to stand between you and something as precious and important as your personal practice. Besides, we believe that if you had a regular home practice, you would get a lot more from your weekly studio visits, and make the yoga classes a little more challenging to us teachers.

In this blog we address some of the common questions we hear from people who are trying to establish and develop their home practice. There are no hard and fast answers when it comes to yoga, so please take the following lines as mere suggestions. This is why we include more than one answer to some of the queries. Be experimental – only you can find out what works for you.

Q. When is the best time to practice yoga?

A1. When you have time, naturally.   It makes no sense to rearrange your life to fit your yoga practice; it’s better to arrange your yoga practice to fit your life. So the first consideration when trying to decide a time for yoga is: When is it convenient? Ideally you would do it always at the same time, so that it more easily becomes a routine; but if your day’s schedule varies a lot (i.e. people with rotating working hours) then your yoga schedule must necessarily reflect that. One helpful way to deal with an uncertain weekly schedule is to set your yoga practice in relationship to a regular activity (e.g. after getting home from work, before going to bed, etc). In that way, you ensure that yoga fits in regardless of the actual times at which things happen.

A2. When your stomach is empty.   Having an empty stomach is one of the few rules of yoga practice. So it’s important to keep in mind your eating habits when deciding on a good time for doing yoga asanas. Schedule it before dinner, before lunch, or before breakfast. You can use your meals as a trigger for doing yoga, getting into the habit of hitting the mat before you hit the table.

A3. When there are fewer distractions.   It seems obvious, but it’s worth mentioning. Schedule your practice around your friends’ visiting hours, or after the children go to school, or before your noisy flatmate returns from work. Let your yoga time follow the patterns of your environment and get on the mat when things are more calm and quiet. But beware of waiting for the perfect conditions! A good yoga session doesn’t depend on having a silent environment or on being left alone; it depends more on accepting the conditions as they are and experiencing your reactions without identifying with them. Meditation can happen anywhere.

A4. Anytime you need it.   Remember, yoga is not just bending and stretching on a mat, doing what we think of as yoga poses. You can, in fact, do your yoga in many situations throughout your day: just before an important meeting (coming earlier to the conference room and practicing a bit of pranayama or breath awareness to ground yourself); on the way home from work (sitting with eyes closed and listening to the sounds while riding the bus); during a little break from typing that long school report (doing the shoulder rotation or other upper-back loosening exercises while sitting at your desk)… yoga benefits are as varied as yoga practice, and the possibilities are only limited by your imagination. Use your yoga as a tool to cope with the challenges of daily life. Make it gentle yoga or stronger stuff, and do it whenever you need it.

A5. Rather earlier than later.   If you want to establish a regular yoga routine, it might be best to schedule your practice earlier in the day. This way if some unforeseen event gets on the way of your practice, you may still find an opportunity to do some yoga before the day is over.

Q. How Long and How Frequently Should One Practice?

A.  Whatever doesn’t feel too ambitious.   Any discerning yoga teacher will tell you that it’s best to do a little often, than a lot seldom. One of the biggest obstacles to beginners who want to develop a regular practice is to be overambitious. We want to do two hours daily and reach enlightenment before next year’s high-school reunion. Well, it doesn’t quite work like that. Sure, you may have an iron will and plenty of time to dedicate to yoga, but for most of us, mere mortals, it’s more realistic to start with 15 to 20 minutes, twice or thrice a week. Remember, nobody is making any demands on you; just do enough so that it doesn’t become a burden. Listen to yourself: How much can you manage? How much do you want? This is something you do because you want to – not to uphold some ideal or become your own role-model. And, most importantly: don’t be swayed by a bad conscience or yoga guilt if you have taken a long break from yoga. Just get back to the practice whenever you feel like it.

Q. Where is a Good Place to Practice?

A1. Anywhere.  Just like you can practice yoga anytime (see the fourth answer to the first question), you can also do it anywhere. Lying in bed, just before going to sleep, you can do some rounds of the yogic breath. Sitting in a classroom, waiting for the next teacher to arrive, you can do the neck exercises. Hatha yoga poses are extremely flexible (ha, ha): standing by the kitchenette in a transatlantic flight is one of my favorite places to do the Stretching Palm, and you can do a great Eagle Arms sitting on the train.

A2. When at home, it’s good to have a dedicated space for doing yoga.   It doesn’t have to be a fancy place (I’ve been using the walk-in closet in our flat for some advanced do-in-the-dark meditations), nor does it have to be a zen hall (I often have to push my son’s toys to one side of the play room to do my asana practice). Any space will do, regardless of size and condition – of course, if you plan to do Savasana, it’s probably good that there’s enough room to lie down; if you plan to do the Hello Sun, the ceiling should be high enough to raise your arms; and if you want to practice a more dynamic form, like vinyasa yoga, it would probably be helpful to have a bit of space around you. But you can almost certainly find a space that is good enough, right in your home–just use your creativity.

A3. If you’re lucky enough to have your pick of room for yoga, choose a well-ventilated, non-cluttered space; somewhere relatively calm where people are not constantly walking by. The ability to lower the light or draw a curtain over the windows would enhance the more meditative/healing practices, such as Yoga Nidra or restorative yoga.

A4 Yoga outdoors is not often feasible in northern latitudes, but it’s also a possibility during the warm season. However, you may find that some breathing exercises and advanced meditations are more conveniently done indoors. Make your own experiences!

Q. What Should I Do?

A1. Do what you feel like doing, do what you like.  Your yoga session is no bitter medicine, it’s something you do to feel good, to enjoy yourself. Make it enjoyable and make it yours!

A2. Do two thirds of things that you like and one-third of things that you resist.   The things that you like will make you feel good and want to do it again soon; they things that you resist are probably what you most need.

A3. Do asana (physical poses), pranayama (breathing exercises) and meditation or relaxation.  In that order. Limiting your practice to just yoga asanas is like eating from only one food group – would you confine your diet to just carbohydrates?

A4. There are many resources you can tap for inspiration: YouTube, books, DVDs, etc. I would personally recommend my teacher’s book, one of the most concise and complete yoga manuals that exist today: Yoga Tantra and Meditation in Daily Life.

There are still many common questions, which we will try to answer in further posts. If you would like personal advice, or if you’re unsure how this all applies to you, contact us for more guidance.

English Yoga Berlin is a collective of teachers offering yoga in English from our yoga Berlin Kreuzberg studio. We offer hatha yoga, vinyasa yoga, restorative yoga, classical yoga and yoga nidra. We specialize in community yoga and offer yoga for beginners through advanced. We look forward to practicing with you!

Yoga for Cyclists

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Berlin is a city of cyclists. The combination of a well developed bike lane infrastructure, wide streets, relatively little traffic and very few hills is a hard one to beat. Perhaps the only drawback to cycling in this great city is the winter—it can get grey, wet, cold and generally miserable. But, as long-time Berliners will tell you, cycling through the winter is a great tool for keeping fit and fighting the seasonal depression that plagues the city from January till April.

We teach yoga in English, so we meet a lot of newcomers to Berlin, and we can tell you that, even if you weren’t a cyclist at home, you’ll probably become one in Berlin! And we think that riding your bike is a meditation style all its own. (Bonus points for singing as you ride.) Because we teach yoga in Berlin, we often end up teaching yoga for cyclists—yoga poses can really help ease sore muscles, lengthen tense calves and hamstrings, strengthen your back, increase lung capacity and generally get your body in shape for biking. Yoga asana are a great complementary practice for city and long distance cyclists.

In this blog post, we’d like to introduce some of our favourite yoga poses for cyclists. Yoga benefits your muscles, your breathing, your endurance and your concentration. It also relaxes you and helps you enjoy your life. We hope these yoga asana help you relish cycling in Berlin even more, and that they provide you with an opportunity to enjoy yoga in daily life.

These postures can be gentle yoga or more advanced yoga—you choose how long and how deep you want the stretch to go. They are also appropriate as yoga for beginners—just move slowly, breathe deeply and practice regularly.

Reclining Big Toe Pose/Supta Panangusthasana

hamstring stretch

Tight hamstrings and calves are almost inevitable when you start cycling. As your muscles strengthen, they’ll probably also become much tighter. Tight hamstrings can pull your lower back out of alignment—and you don’t want to go there! But you can counter this with regular stretching. The safest way to stretch the backs of your legs is while lying on your back.  Forward bends also stretch your hamstrings and calves, but most people with tight legs end up bending from their waist, and this stresses the lower back. It’s safer to start from the ground, and only progress into forward bends if you’re sure you have a strong core, no disc injuries and relatively long hamstring and calf muscles.

Simply lie on your back and extend one of your legs up towards the ceiling. You can keep the other leg lying flat, or you can bring the foot to the ground and bend the knee. With your raised leg, you can either point the toe to stretch the hamstring, or flatten your foot and press through your heel to stretch the calf. You can reach towards your big toe with the arm of the same side, if you like—that’s where the name of the pose comes from—but this takes a fair bit of flexibility. Just holding the leg there will be plenty for most people! Hold it for 1 to 3 minutes, and breathe deeply.

Kneeling Crescent Moon/Anjaneyasana

back bend kneeling crescent moonAaaah, tight hip flexors. A sure sign of time spent sitting—in a chair, or on your bike. Every time you pull your foot up and over the pedal, you’re using your hip flexor. If they get too tight, especially in combination with tight hamstrings and weak abdominals, they’ll contribute to lower back pain. But never fear! You just gotta lunge.

Start kneeling. Tip your pelvis so that your public bones are flush with your hips. (You can practice this against a wall to get the feeling of it. You want to feel your pubis and your hips both pressing forward.) Place your right foot forward, with the thigh parallel to the floor and the knee bent just over the ankle (not beyond). You can put something underneath your left knee if it feels sore. From here, engage your lower belly and draw your torso upwards, towards the ceiling. You’ll soon feel a pulling in the front of the left hip. That’s your hip flexor. Stay for 5-7 deep, long breaths, and then repeat on the other side.

Downward Facing Dog/Adhomukhasvanasana

downward-dog-juliWhether you’re sitting up or bending forward on your bike, you’re going to need to have a strong back. That means strong shoulders (this also helps protect you in case of accidents: if they’re not strong, the shoulders dislocate more easily when you brace yourself during a fall or impact), strong paraspinals and—very importantly—strong abdominals. Downward Dog, when practiced correctly and regularly, will help you strengthen your whole spine and make it easier to ride without pain.

Start with your knees on the ground and your arms stretched forward. Lengthen and straighten your back by bringing your ears between your upper arms and lifting your bum into the air. Tuck your toes under to give yourself traction and then, slowly and using your lower belly, exhale and push your bum into the air. Keep your back straight and your arms long. You can leave your knees bent if straightening your legs compromises having a straight back. Draw your shoulders down and away from your ears, let your neck be long and keep breathing, whatever you do! The posture will get easier with time.

Eagle Arms/Garudasana arms

EAGLE_ARMSHolding onto your handlebars takes a lot of work in the arms and shoulders, especially if you’re cycling into the wind or uphill. Over time, cycling will help you to develop a stronger upper body. You can minimize pain and discomfort by taking the time to check your alignment on the bike and stretching your shoulders and neck before and after riding.

Sitting comfortably in a chair or on a block, gently bring your elbows, forearms and palms together in front of your chest. Bend your elbows and bring your hands roughly to the height of your gaze. Press the elbows and forearms together and breathe into the space between your shoulder blades. If you want to go further, place your left elbow over your right, and wrap your forearms around each other, bringing your right fingers or palm to the left hand. Drop the shoulders and gently lift the elbows, or make circles slowly with the arms. Don’t forget to breathe. Repeat on the other side.

English Yoga Berlin is a collective of yoga teachers offering yoga classes in Berlin. If you’re looking for yoga in Berlin, we offer community yoga: accessible, affordable and high quality vinyasa yoga, restorative yoga, classical yoga, hatha yoga and yoga nidra. See our yoga class schedule or find the location of our yoga Berlin Kreuzberg studio.

Aging and the Body in Western Yoga Culture

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The World Health Organisation estimates that, between 2000 and 2050, the world’s over-60 population will double, bringing the number of elderly people to over 2 billion. That means more elders than children for the first time in human history.

This demographic shift is often portrayed as burdensome, expensive and even threatening. Especially in Western societies, media reports of an aging population carry a certain tone of doom and gloom. Why, in the West, do we fail to value older people? What, exactly, are we avoiding by directing our attention elsewhere? And what, given this is a yoga blog, does this have to do with yoga?

Dying tree in the sunset

One of the slow mental/emotional/spiritual changes that yoga practitioners meet with is the realization that the body is finite. The body is also full of stories; it links us to the past, as well as displaying the present. As you practice, you become more sensitive. You learn to recognize and respect your body’s limits, and to value your body’s messages to you. You learn when to push, how to push wisely and when to back off.

The practice of unifying the physical, spiritual and emotional layers of self is yoga; and the integration of the paths of yoga in daily life hopefully lead one to a higher regard for all life: the widening of the circle of awareness, love and attention. The isolated ego learns to accept its unity with all things, and all things become sacred. This is how yoga benefits the world—it teaches us to remember our interdependency.

It is precisely this all-things-being-sacred that our societies are scrambling to avoid, and this is why, I would argue, we fail to recognize and value older people. Because aging bodies often bear the scars of overwork, stress and isolation more visibly than younger ones, the depiction of older bodies—as well as the depiction of differently-abled or ill bodies—is often studiously avoided, in order to avoid dealing with these uncomfortable social realities. This is a very wide-ranging social trend and it has been, disappointingly but perhaps also understandably, reproduced in the yoga world.

Yoga is not a path to eternal youth, thinness, beauty or flexibility. It’s a highly personal dance with the reality of impermanence. It’s about death as much as it’s about life. Unrealistic images of young, thin, white, female able bodies doing yoga poses have become the norm in the yoga industry, and it has the very sad effect of sidelining this fundamental, potentially revolutionary aspect of the practice. It would be more honest to portray yoga with an image of a rotting piece of wood, or a void of nothingness (…if that could be somehow depicted).

The yoga world could stand to learn a lot from the Japanese practice of Wabi-Sabi. Wabi Sabi is an aesthetic tradition that seeks to celebrate imperfection and impermanence. In contrast to our glorification of youth and perfection (and our avoidance of anything that doesn’t fit into that model), Wabi Sabi teaches us to slow down and appreciate decay, asymmetry and what Leonard Cohen calls the ”crack in everything/that’s how the light gets in”.

So, next time you’re feeling bad about some way in which your body has changed—next time you’re frustrated about having a cold, or being tired, or feeling your bones ache when the seasons change—use it as a moment to value everything you have ever seen in this world. Use it as a moment to consider all of food and water you have consumed in your life, to think of the people who you have known, to remember the places you’ve passed through, to have gratitude for the ways in which you’ve become more interesting and more humble through your life’s challenges and your body’s stories.

Take a moment to practice a gentle yoga of the mind, a yoga that restores and cherishes your body, that celebrates and values your finiteness. Restorative yoga, yoga nidra or a gentle hatha yoga practice are good options if it helps you to do something physical. But, regardless of how you move, consider your frustration as an opportunity to change your expectations of permanence and of perfection. Take it as an opportunity to practice yoga for beginners, which is the most advanced kind of yoga anyways: breathe, release, accept yourself and celebrate that you’re still here.

English Yoga Berlin is a collectively-run studio offering yoga in Berlin. We specialize in accessible, affordable community yoga and we offer vinyasa yoga, hatha yoga, classical yoga and yoga nidra. You can find our schedule of yoga Berlin Kreuzberg classes here. We look forward to practicing with you.

Practicing Yoga When You Have Chronic Pain

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Untitled-5People are often surprised that I have chronic pain, because I am a yoga teacher and the two are somehow supposed to cancel each other out. If only it were so simple! In my life, it’s been a more nuanced relationship—I got into yoga because of chronic back 

pain (and a whole host of attendant emotional and psychosocial issues), and my practice has, over the years, both helped me and hindered me in coping with pain and injury. When it’s helped me, it’s been because it has helped me to relax, centre, clear away my mental chatter, calm my nerves, and teach me to tune in to my body’s needs and capacities on any given day. When it’s hindered me, it’s been because of a combination of my own unrealistic expectations of myself and a culture of yoga classes that emphasizes fast and hard yoga asana practice, rather than slowness, deliberation and boundaries. Overall, though there have definitely been bumps along the way, yoga (and all different types of yoga, including yoga asanas, yoga nidra, hatha yoga, vinyasa yoga, pranayama and meditation) has helped me enormously.

I picked up some tips along the way, and would like to share them with other people who have pain, limited mobility or (dis)ability issues. This is what I have learned about practicing yoga with chronic pain—I hope it’s helpful to you and good luck on creating a style of yoga that fits and nurtures you.

Select Your Teachers Carefully
Unfortunately, many yoga teachers aren’t actually trained in the kinds of modification and adjustment you might need. This isn’t their fault—it’s because the standard of training (the 200h training that most teachers have) doesn’t address injury and limited mobility adequately. Someone with a 500h training may have more knowledge, but may also not. The best thing is to find a teacher who, through their own practice and teaching, has had injuries themselves or has made it a priority to learn about injury. Look for a teacher with a lot of experience; it’s also great if they are trained as a physiotherapist, massage therapist or other bodyworker, or if they have connections to such practitioners that they can recommend to you. Such a person might also not be working in a yoga studio, but rather giving yoga classes in a different setting. (This is because studios are often run on a very specific profit-maximizing and class-stuffing business model, and people who’ve been teaching for many years are often not compatible with it!) Most important of all is to find a teacher who puts you firmly in the driver’s seat, who gives you the information and then allows you to decide how far to go with it.

Select Your Style Thoughtfully
There are many different types of yoga. I would encourage you to try a few different styles, and then select what you need on any given day or week. Yoga benefits you in many different ways. For example, if you are having a pain flare, you might find restorative yoga or some other gentle yoga to be most helpful. If you’re feeling anxious, you might want something with more movement, or more meditation. I would suggest starting with slower styles—like Hatha Yoga or Classical Yoga. Chair yoga is also a great option for people with limited mobility. When you feel that you know your own body’s preferences and limits, you can try a more dynamic style (like Vinyasa Yoga or Ashtanga Yoga). Be careful with hot yoga, or with very fast-paced yoga classes; they can be a lot of fun, but it’s often challenging to listen to your own boundaries in such environments. It’s easy to overdo it and aggravate pre-existing problems.

Do Your Research
Don’t rely on a teacher to know what your body needs or shouldn’t do; It’s great if s/he can inform you, but it’s ultimately your responsibility. You’ll feel more empowered if you actively search for information, and then can make better decisions. If, for example, you have hyper-mobile shoulder joints or a slipped disc, it’s a good idea to ask your other healthcare practitioners about particular movements that might be dangerous for you. Of course, ask your yoga teacher, too—but don’t rely solely on their opinion.

If You Need To, Do Your Own Thing In Class
So, let’s say you have some disc issues in your lower back. And let’s say your teacher is teaching a lot of forward bends on a particular day, because other students are interested in learning them. And let’s say that, due to your research, you know that forward bends are something with which you should be careful. You can start by modifying the postures (and asking the teacher for ideas about how to do so). But, you know what? If you modify and it still hurts or feels like too much, just don’t do it. Feel free to rest in Savasana until the sequence is over, or do some other asana or pranayama while the other students are bending forward. A good teacher will support you in this, and won’t take it personally. Remember, it’s your time and your practice—do what’s best for you.

Practice Alone—It Will Help You Learn Your Boundaries Honestly
We’re social animals and we all like to feel part of the group. Unfortunately, when the group is moving in a specific way and you can’t follow, it’s very common to try and push and see if maybe you can get there today. Everyone with chronic pain or disability issues knows these thoughts. If they come up for you in yoga classes (and they often will, even in very gentle yoga or yoga for beginners classes), the best way to counter them is to balance your yoga studio practice with home practice. Then, with time and space, you can figure out what works for you, and you can come to a class prepared to respect and love your body’s limits.

Share Your Feelings About It
When you feel isolated, frustrated, invisible, hurt—find a way to let it out. Part of the journey of dealing with pain is learning to share it, verbalise or otherwise express it. Pain is often a silencing and isolating experience, and making it a social experience lessens the burden drastically. You might want to let your teachers know. You might not. It’s entirely up to you, how and with whom you share your emotions, but that you do share in some way is a very important part of learning to cope with your body’s limitations, negotiate this in relationships and celebrate what you do have and how great it is.

If you are looking for injury-, pain- and disability-aware yoga in Berlin, please don’t hesitate to contact us or drop into a class. We offer yoga nidra, hatha yoga, vinyasa yoga and classical yoga, in small classes with experienced teachers. You can see our yoga Berlin Kreuzberg schedule here.

 

Steps to Creating A Personal Yoga Practice

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For many people in the West, yoga is something that happens in classes, at a yoga studio, with a teacher who they don’t particularly know, in a room full of people who are more or less strangers. This is a relatively new phenomenon in the history of yoga, and this model of teaching and learning yoga asana, pranayama and meditation is basically an outgrowth of the economy of fitness, physiotherapy, massage and other wellness modalities in the West. The class/studio model has some benefits: most notably, some studio owners have found it very lucrative, and the commercialization of yoga has also lead to its legitimization in some people’s eyes. It’s not, however, a teaching model that is necessarily the most effective for either students or teachers. It’s also a model that raises some serious concerns about commercialism, capitalism and cultural appropriation. And, on an individual level, relying on classes alone can be expensive, disheartening or frustrating and often is just not feasible over the long-run.

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This is why, as most teachers will tell you, creating a personal yoga practice—one that you do at home, alone, with yourself as the teacher and perhaps some resources to guide you—is an important step to take. Often students are intimidated by this idea, but integrating yoga into daily life a lot easier than one might think. In this article, I’d like to offer some easy tips for starting a Home Practice that reflects you, your schedule, your family/work/community responsibilities and your needs.

1. Go Slow

By which I mean, start off with a modest goal: for example, 10 minutes of sun salutations in the morning, or 10 minutes breathing deeply in child’s pose. You will probably need to build your own confidence and your own commitment to the idea. You might also need to get people in your life (like children, roommates or partners) used to the idea of you taking time for yourself at home. Like all habits, It’s a lot easier to do this slowly and incrementally. When you feel ready, you can expand your sessions to 20 or 30min. If you get to an hour one day—well, hats off to you! But if you don’t—don’t stress about it. Yoga benefits you after just 10minutes of practice, and rigidity and guilt aren’t attitudes that will help you in the long run.

2. Reward Yourself

Look, it’s hard work. Even the so-called yoga basics (breathing, awareness and movement) require a high level of attention, commitment and self-love. If you’re like most yogis (advanced, as well as beginner yogis!), you’re probably facing up against a bunch of internal chatter, anxiety, worry and negativity. So, when you meet your modest goal, reward yourself! Cook yourself a lovely meal; make a coffee date with a friend; visit a museum or a botanical garden. Do something nice for yourself, and be proud of yourself.

3. Experiment and Have Fun

Because of the way most of us were educated (in classrooms, in schools and other institutions), we tend to subconsciously associate experimentation with the risk of messing up, ‘doing it wrong’ or getting in trouble. From a spiritual perspective, these kinds of risks are absolutely essential to take; if you don’t let yourself be vulnerable, you can’t grow. And, in your yoga practice, not only are risks essential, but they can also be a lot of fun! You can close the door while you practice—and then let yourself fall over, dance, move in uncontrolled ways that feel good, make noise, whatever works for you! Don’t be constrained by what you know of yoga asanas; feel free to integrate freestyle movement, or influences from other movement modalities, like martial arts or dance. Your yoga practice doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s, and it’s not anyone else’s business what you do or how you do it.

4. Make Your Place

This can be tricky, because you probably share living space. But all it really requires is good communication; tell your people that, when you close the door to the bedroom and hang a red ribbon on the door, it means 30minutes of personal time. Or choose a time of day where everyone else is out of the house. Or go up onto the roof. Or into the garden. Or organize a time with where you all come together into the living room, and do your individual practices alone. Be creative and, again, take it slow; it might take some time for people to get used to it. And, finally, it’s a great idea to spend 1 or 2 minutes clearing up the space in which you plan to practice; if you’re down on the ground, you will see all of the dirt and dust at close-range! It’s easier to focus when you’ve already swept it away.

5. Take Classes To Give Yourself New Ideas/Find A Good Teacher

This is where classes can be really great. Let’s say you’ve been doing 30min of yoga asana and pranayama every morning, and you’re feeling pretty good about it, but you feel a bit stuck with how to go develop further; maybe you feel you don’t have the knowledge or experience, or maybe you just don’t have the inspiration or the motivation. Maybe you would like to learn more about less-widely-taught parts of yoga: Yoga Nidra, Tratak, the Yamas and Niyamas or the Shatkarma. Well, this is where a good teacher comes in handy. Find a teacher who supports your home practice/exploration and attend classes or workshops occasionally with this person; someone with experience and empathy, who can support you and point you in the right direction, but who believes firmly that you are your own teacher and that their role is to develop your contact to this inner teacher.

6. Finally, Make It Your Own

Many of us have rather rigid ideas about ‘what yoga is’ or ‘how to do yoga’. Well, as you have probably heard about a million times, yoga means ‘union’—unifying your mind, body, heart and soul (and, I would add, creating connections between yourself, your community and the ecology that supports you) is the only ‘goal’. If you decide that your home practice will include 30minutes of journaling, because this helps you bring yourself into unity—wonderful. If you want to dance, sing, massage yourself, pray, draw, have orgasms, garden, laugh, cry, clean your room, take a shower—all of those can be part of your yoga practice. As long as you’re doing it with love, attention, awareness and intention, it’s yoga. Your home practice is your DIY spiritual practice, and it should be as unique as you are.

Good luck! Please feel free to let me know how your home practice is developing, either by contacting me or coming by an english yoga class in at our Berlin yoga studio in Kreuzberg.