Tag: Yoga in English

Stress & Yoga: A letter from an English Yoga Teacher in Berlin

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Dear 21st Century,

I have been teaching yoga for several years now, and to be honest, you are not making my job any easier! The stress that you have brought to Western life seems to have so many faces and seems to increase every year. Our progressively individualistic society makes people believe that they must solve all their problems on their own. People’s problems at work are leaking into every other area of their life. Every day I read from the newspapers about more people burning out due to stress at work. The combination of the flashing lights of commercialism and the constant bombardment of other stimuli that comes with living in a city only adds to these stresses. The self-employed don’t have the distinction between home and work, often lacking the discipline to employ that beautiful German word: “Feierabend”. And don’t even get me started on the state of our nutrition or how the radiation from our everyday domestic appliances negatively affects our health!

In all, it seems to me that along with tons of technological advances, your main additions to people’s personal lives have been feelings of loneliness, fear and deep stress. I believe that today, more than ever, we need to take more deliberate time to relax our bodies, emotions and minds (it’s really the only way to keep up with all the stuff you are throwing at us!) Creating a space with minimal stimuli in which a person can take the time to breathe and notice what is happening to his/her body, what feelings emerge, and what state of mind s/he in, is of utter importance. This is where Yoga comes in.

I believe strongly that the practice of Yoga can offer viable solutions for so many of the situations and conditions we experience today. In our yoga classes in Berlin we create that space of quietness and peace. My students enter the class with a rumble of thoughts and personal stress, and over the course of the hour, witness how the softness of breathing and stretching helps the mind calm down and helps them to think clearer thoughts.

As we learn to step back and observe what is happening to our bodies and our minds, we are taking the first step towards learning detachment. Detachment teaches us to not be so deeply involved in all the fancy stimuli and distractions you serve up daily. It shows us that we don’t need to get swept off our feet with every emotion or to let out lives fall apart when someone thinks something bad about us. Appropriate detachment is a tool that alleviates stress and in doing so, allows us to identify the real changes that we must make in our lives in order to better them.

I end each class with deep relaxation because it’s an important tool. Learning how to relax one’s body through a systematic relaxation, can also be used at any other important moment in life. I have had students practice the relaxation techniques we learned in class while riding the bus, before giving an important speech, or while conducting medical exams where absolute stillness was required. When people practice relaxation techniques with regularity, they can come to rely on them in times of stress. A weekly yoga class or a daily yoga practice creates this regularity and strengthens the cellular memory on the path to relaxation. This is one of the main reasons I teach yoga.

Yoga gives us many tools. Tools to breathe, tools to relax and tools to bring us inner peace. But to survive the life that seems to swirl around us regularly as a result of your active influence, my work is to help teach others to use these tools properly, how to alleviate all states of mind and emotion, and call on these tools when we need them so that we can live better lives.

Thank you for your time, Mr. Century.

Sincerely,

English Yoga Berlin

 

Berlin Yoga: Terminology Tuesday

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Pratyahara: withdrawl of the senses

Pratyahara: withdrawl of the senses

In this hectic world of ours we often suffer from overstimulation. Too many headlines, deadlines, voices in our lives and in our heads. There are things all around us that of course, deserve our attention. And so we organize our time and our minds to accommodate the overload- to do the best that we can in a world that just keeps on bringing new things to us, to worry about, work through, discover.

One of the best uses of practicing yoga is to find appropriate detachment from the world around us. Not to a point where we no longer know what is going on but to a point where we can selectively withdrawal from the overload our senses have to offer when it becomes vital for our benefit or even survival.

That leads us to a fine question for this Tuesday, what is Pratyahara?

Pratyahara- means the withdrawal of senses. This is one of the eight steps of Raja Yoga and in our English Yoga in Berlin classes gets practiced through Yoga Nidra (yoga of conscious deep sleep), Pranayama (the breathing techniques), Tratak (candle flame gazing) and concentration on the eyebrow center. Pratyahara teaches us appropriate detachment which is necessary in order to attain inner peace through Raja Yoga. The word pratyahara comes from prati and ahara. Ahara means “food” or anything that we take into our body. Prati is a preposition that means “away”or “against”. Together it means turning away from external stimuli, and thus the withdrawal of senses.

Berlin Yoga: Terminology Tuesday

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Enlish Yoga in Berlin

As yoga becomes part of our daily lives, so do the most commonly used yoga words begin to enter our every day vocabulary.   I find it beautiful when different languages merge, overlap, get reclaimed and used by people of all cultures. In these globalized times, English is no longer a language just for the English speaking nations, but it is the language that most peoples of the world use to communicate with one another, the language that makes it possible for people of totally different cultures and realities to meet, to communicate, and to fascinate each other.

In my Hatha Yoga classes in Berlin I choose to teach yoga in English. I love to see people from different corners of the world come to our Berlin yoga studio to practice yoga together. I use a lot of Sanskrit yoga words accompanied by an English translation while I teach.  Sometimes though, because of Sanskrit having such a different pronounciation to English, yoga students don’t always learn the words correctly or their meaning. That is why I started Berlin Yoga: Terminology Tuesday, a blog where I explain the basic words used during the yoga class.

This week’s words are Anuloma Viloma.

Anuloma Viloma – is also a form of Pranayama or breathing technique.  Anuloma literally means “in a natural order or direction” and viloma means “produced in reverse order”.  The Anuloma Viloma breath requires one to breathe in through the left nostril and breathe out through the right, and then to reverse that process, breathe in through the right and exhale through the left.  The natural way to breathe for a healthy person who practices Pranayama changes every 1 hour and 50 minutes.  There is always one nostril that is predominant and can breathe easier then the other, and after that time-frame the predominant nostril changes. By practicing Anuloma Viloma we are balancing out that effect.

Accessible language in Yoga

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Using accessible language to teach yoga in English makes yoga accessible to all cultures and peoples.

photo by Fern “Language can be a gate from which to liberate your thoughts and ideas”

When most people think of yoga in Berlin, they probably conjure up an image of a body contorted into wildly flexible shapes, or perhaps a solitary figure meditating. They might associate the practice of yoga with chanting, or maybe with the sound of a Tibetan singing bowl. But rarely do people consider language as a part of the practice–and almost never do they associate yoga with jokes, stories or slang.  Perhaps this is because of our cultural heritage in the West around spiritual practices. We expect them to occur in a sacred domain, and we can’t imagine something as everyday as language being involved. There is definitely a time and a place for silence, but I feel, actually, that language is an  incredibly powerful and important tool, in yoga and everywhere else in life, too! Teaching yoga in English has taught me  a lot about cultural translation–certain concepts, which have a lot of different layers of meaning in Sanskrit, have been ‘shorthanded’ into English and lost much of their content. The clearest example of this is the word ‘Karma’. English just doesn’t have the depth and breadth and subtlety of Sanskrit when it comes to discussing states of consciousness (though, to give credit where credit’s due, it’s a great language to talk about getting drunk in–so many adjectives!). This presents a very difficult challenge: how do you translate yoga ideas and yoga techniques from one language/culture to another?

It gets even more complicated in our yoga lessons, because we teach Vinyasa Yoga and Hatha yoga in English in Berlin, therefore often teaching yoga to non-Native English speakers. Thankfully, yoga concepts are often extremely simple. Not easy, but simple. This is where jokes, stories and slang come in–they make people feel comfortable, and comfort is half the battle when you’re trying to learn something new. They also make it a lot more difficult to take yourself too seriously! I really feel that accessible language is incredibly important in a practice like yoga.

Berlin Yoga: Terminology Tuesday

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Yoga in Berlin can come in all shBerlin Yoga: Terminology Tuesday ASANAapes and sizes. Everything from the  truly devout practices to the trendy, cult-like fashion of yoga- there are many styles and many different kinds of people practicing. Because there are so many people from all over the world who currently find this amazing city to be their home, we specialize in teaching Yoga in English. And because we believe that it can actually change lives, we teach the practices of Hatha Yoga and Vinyasa Yoga.
Although the classes are in English, sometimes I use Sanskrit words in our Berlin Yoga classes when wanting to describe a pose or the reason behind something we are supposed to do. As a consequence I often see confused faces looking up at me.  I think many yoga teachers take their students understanding of these terms for granted and just keep going. But in an effort to be very clear and to make understanding of why we do things as simple as possible, last week I started something I call Berlin Yoga: Terminology Tuesday. Each week we will be posting info about a term to help increase depth of understanding within your practice.
 
This week’s word is the basis for Hatha Yoga:
Asana – literally means posture in Sanskrit. All the yoga postures we do in class are asanas. A specific asana has a name describing the posture and then the word asana at the end of it. For example take Matsyasana, Matsya literally means fish and asana posture- in plain English- it’s the fish pose.Berlin Yoga: Terminology Tuesday ASANA

Berlin Yoga: Terminology Tuesday

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As a teacher of HathBerlin Yoga: Terminology Tuesday YOGA explaineda Yoga in Berlin, I often use Sanskrit words in our classes when wanting to describe a pose or the reason behind something we are supposed to do. I try to always accompany these words with a translation, but every now and then I still see confused faces looking up at me. I realize that sometimes, especially when teaching yoga in English, it is important to not only describe the action in Sanskrit but to also offer a translation in plain English.

No matter how long you have taken yoga classes or how deep you are in your own personal practice, it’s important to understand the words being used over and over again. In an effort to explain the terms that many Berlin Yoga teachers (myself included) often take for granted that their students already understand, I am starting something I call Berlin Yoga: Terminology Tuesday. Each week we will be posting info about a term to help increase depth of understanding within your practice.

Perhaps the beginning is the best place to start….
Yoga: yolk (as in the yolk of an egg.)
The yolk of an egg has the capacity to bind ingredients together. Yoga also strives to bind or unite the three aBerlin Yoga: Terminology Tuesday YOGA explainedspects of the self: the body, the mind and the soul. Over the centuries, it has become common for people to also translate the word yoga as “union”. And since the practice of Yoga affects people in so many different ways, the definitions of Yoga seem to be multiplying as yoga spreads throughout the world.

How to Create an Effective Sankalpa

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planting seeds

Always returning to the same sankalpa is like watering a seed after you planted it.

In my last blog, “What is a Sankalpa?”  I explained that this short, positive phrase can have a very positive impact on changing your subconscious. But changing your life takes clear, focused work and commitment. As an instructor of Hatha yoga in Berlin, I have seen many students come in with some very sincere desires for personal change. When they come to my class, I try to explain the main components of creating the most effective Sankalpa to stimulate this change.

Simplicity
The subconscious does not express itself with spoken language. It can be said that the massive amount of information stored in the subconscious is in symbolic form. Symbols and images are what the subconscious uses to express itself, the most common example being our dreams.  The images and symbols we dream of could be a way that our subconscious is trying to communicate with our conscious self. But this communication is hard when the conscious does not understand the language of symbols used by the subconscious and vice versa. Through our Sankalpa, our conscious world is trying to communicate to the subconscious world. In order to do this the language used must be as simple, short and as clear as possible, so that the meaning is able to penetrate the subconscious.

Positivity
The type of wording used is also important. In this way, a Sankalpa is not like a New Year’s resolution in that it does not focus on what is wrong, but rather on what will be right. If one wanted, for example, to work on his/her stress levels then it is better that the Sankalpa formed is something like, “I can relax at will” rather than it being “I am not stressed”. We want our subconscious to pick up on the word “relax” rather than on the word “stressed”, so that we imprint energy on what one wishes to achieve rather than its opposite.

In Your Own Language
When asked to repeat your Sankalpa mentally in class, you are also asked to repeat it with feeling and emphasis. Even though I teach yoga in English, I understand that most of my students of yoga in Berlin are not mother tongue English speakers. Repeating it in the language you feel the most connected to will have a more powerful effect on your personal progress and make emphasis more natural.

Stick with your Sankalpa
It is said that one must not change their Sankalpa until they feel it has become true. If we were to take the analogy of the Sankalpa being a seed that we are planting into our subconscious, if each time we go into relaxation we plant a different seed, then the energy we wish to imprint on the subconscious would be too dissipated and our plants would not be able to grow. We should instead always return to that same seed to water it and take care of it until it is a full grown plant – able to stand on its own.