Being a yoga teacher is more than poses. It's about guiding and inspiring others on their transformative journey. If you aspire to be a yoga teacher, here are some essential qualities to cultivate:
1️⃣ Dedication: Commit to personal practice. Continuously deepen your knowledge and refine your skills to provide authentic guidance to students.
2️⃣ Authenticity: Let your teaching reflect your genuine passion for yoga and create a space where students can connect with your authenticity.
3️⃣ Compassion: Create a supportive and inclusive environment where everyone feels seen, heard, and valued.
4️⃣ Communication: Develop communication skills to clearly articulate instructions, provide meaningful feedback, and create dialogue.
5️⃣ Adaptability: Be open to different needs and abilities. Adjust your teaching to the challenges of the class to create an inclusive and accessible practice.
6️⃣ Continuous Learning: Never stop learning. Explore diverse yoga styles, attend workshops and trainings to expand your knowledge and keep your teaching fresh.
7️⃣ Mindfulness: Cultivate presence and mindfulness. Lead...
Have you ever wanted to start (or re-start) a writing practice and just can’t seem to make it happen? Maybe you think you don’t have the time or you don’t think it’s productive or that there is no benefit unless you publish. Those roadblocks along with many other myths are just some of the excuses we tell ourselves to keep us from creating and reaping the benefits that come from a creative practice.
Writing for no other purpose but ‘to write’ can be a helpful thing to do during times of uncertainty. It is a simple practice where writing for as short a time as three minutes can be beneficial after one session. While there are no guarantees, writing often helps people make sense of things going on in their lives. Writing can also help with processing and coping.
No matter what ‘purpose’ we have for writing, many people know that writing can be settling and comforting. Franz Kafka, a writer of...
Meditation Spelled Out! By Devinder Kaur
M - Mantras, mudras and asanas are the concentration points. They provide you with the form and focus for the meditation. Mantra is a repeated sound rhythm that directs the mind. Mudra means ‘seal’ used to seal the body’s energy flow into a particular pattern and asanas are the body postures.
E - Eliminate Mental Intrigues. Mental Intrigues are what happens when the mind is left on automatic and thoughts and feelings dominate you. The combination of the subconscious and thoughts start the mental intrigues and self-defeating patterns. Meditation helps to clean the mind of these thoughts and break your old patterns. It is a sort of mental housekeeping.
D - Don’t over analyse or intellectualise. This takes you away from the meditative process. Intellectualising thoughts expands the intrigue and your mind weaves the thoughts into an elaborate story that goes to all parts of your mind. You lose track of your real self and then become...
We are delighted to welcome Michael Stone back to PranaShanti on December 9-11, 2016 for a Master Class Weekend on Embodying Practices.
Before Michael's arrival you may like to listen in on some of his podcasts to get a feel for his teaching.
The Dharma Talks podcast with Michael Stone is a library of talks on a wide-range of topics, including bringing mindfulness and meditation practice into daily life; personal and community issues regarding mental health; and social change. The podcasts are recorded at live events so you might hear coughing, airplanes, cars, sirens, laughter, and peoples’ questions—all part of the intimate experience. Michael Stone is often described as a cross between a spiritual teacher and public intellectual.
His ability to integrate traditional contemplative teachings from his studies in yoga, Zen, and Vipassana, with the insights of Western psychology, gives him a unique voice for a new generation of students integrating mindfulness with the demands of their busy lives. He is the author...
- Yogi Bhajan, Excerpts from KRI Level 2 Conscious Communication Manual
Do you know what real communication is? Real communication is when after uttering, saying, or communicating, you stand fully one hundred percent by whatever you said. Real communication does not give you any right to change it afterwards, no matter what. Anything which is not real is a lie. It is not whether it is right or wrong, good or bad, or moral or ethical. Person A talks to person B and between A and B, the talk is real. Then A and B are bound down to put their totality in it until infinity.
You should not say anything that you cannot put your totality behind. The total value of you is that whatever you say, you stick with it. When you don't stick with what you say, you have no value, and your decoration and your jewelry and your sex and your person have no value. Real communication is the faculty...
The Desire Map fits like my favourite yoga pants. Comfortable. Transformational. Practical. Versatile. Natural. Like putting on a hug. An investment in awesome. An investment in forward motion. An investment in life: lived on purpose, with purpose.
It also solved one very big problem.
First, a little back story. Danielle Laporte, creator of The Desire Map, lights up truths and pulls it all together – practically and poetically. She asks us to turn old habits, beliefs, and ways of getting stuff done inside out. Born in Windsor, Ontario, she’s globally known as a powerhouse of manifestation. Without post-secondary education, she rose up through The Body Shop by achieving new goals, and then asking for promotions.
The Desire Map is premised on the clarity of intention. Clarity of desires. Clarity of choices. Clarity of action. Yet (and this is a big yet), the approach is oh-so-soothing. to body, mind AND spirit. Soothing to the soul. It’s gentle, powerful and life affirming.
I was an early...
According to its founder and North American yoga pioneer, Ana Forrest, Forrest Yoga is “an intensely physical and internally focused practice that emphasizes how to carry a transformative experience off the mat and into daily life.” This style of yoga is more about healing the body and mind than trying to achieve fancy poses. If practiced regularly, however, Forrest Yoga will guide you to a safe, beautiful and strong practice – enhancing beauty inside and out.
Forrest Yoga addresses current stresses in our contemporary lives, focusing on cultivating a practice that responds to the stresses and injuries common in the world we live in today. For example, it is so common these days to carry stress in our gut, leading to various eating disorders and digestive problems. Our necks and backs also become places of undue stress when we spend so much of your time seated either working at desks, driving, or watching TV. Forrest Yoga’s poses and principles offer...
Try and guess the source of this philosophical quip: “Your eyes can deceive you, don't trust them”.
This is actually from Star Wars Jedi knight Obi Wan Kenobi, but it might as well have come from the Vedanta philosophy (the philosophy stemming from the Vedas, the Hindu scriptures). Let’s take a look!
Is what we see real? How far can we trust our senses? How can Yoga help?
We'll start with the simple expression, “my eyes were bigger than my stomach”. This is an expression many of us have heard and used, though what does it actually mean? Sight only happens with our eyes, yet we use to sight to judge the visceral taste experience – we think, “boy, that chocolate cake looks good” and “wow, that pizza looks delicious!” How do we know they really are good, and how do we know we’ll enjoy the experience of eating it as much as assume? Here is the illusion. Seeing the whole picture...
