no shoes required

or yoga is wonderful....
what are you calling yoga if it is so wonderful?? the yoga I have come to know is demanding, difficult, sometimes wonderful, sometimes not wonderful at all.


is it wrong of me to consider vinyasa flow classes to be more like an aerobics class, more like a fitness craze than "real" yoga?  Is it "real" yoga if it is done once a week? Is it "real" yoga if the person is not interested in the spiritual aspect of the disciple? is it real yoga if it is wonderful?
When did I get to be the keeper of the  "real"yoga?.....

 Shakespeare said via the voice of Juliette on the balcony about her  Romeo "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet", this is true, but if it is not a rose, calling it a rose does not make it a rose.  People who have never seen a real rose, when seeing and smelling the non-rose collection of matter being falsely called rose will be mislead by the naming.

And that is the situation going on here in my town. We have a great deal of  air-conditioned, or super heated,  Madonna music cranking, athletes clapping for each other due to executing a nice bit of athleticism  90 minute gatherings with a 15 dollar cover charge masquerading under the name of yoga.

areobics with a yoga influenced approach, yoga type of exercise class, stretching and strength training no shoes required....

but please do not call it yoga! yoga is yoga, it is not almost yoga, it is yoga.  So how does a person who has never smelled or tasted or seen or done yoga know if it is really yoga?


when did I get to be the keeper of what yoga is? when did I start to care about who calls what/what?
WWSKPJD? Nancy Gilgoff and David Williams have both stated, in different settings at different times, for different reasons that Pattabhi Jois told them,  "Just to hear the WORD yoga in this lifetime is a blessing."
We are truly blessed. That is wonderful.
I will now try to pull this piece together... the only way i know yoga is from yoga.
the yoga i know from yoga is demanding. the yoga i know from yoga is relentless.
the yoga i know from yoga is so hard. the yoga i know from yoga is what it is.

yoga is known from yoga

the big little man shoot

FINALLY

little man assisting Kevin in upside down lotus

 A chihuahua (of mixed origin) pound puppy type of dog adjustment clinic calendar.


it is sort of a shout out to Mr. Winkle!

and sort of a sarcastic pre-emptive balm to the  onslaught of dog yoga, cat yoga, horse yoga calendars I see in the everywhere!

JO and the little in halasana

mika and the little guy

Little Man is the official  pound puppy super star

Ellen O  pet photographer and all around animal lover is our photographer

ellen, littleman and rich

ashtanga yoga club durham members are the sweaty models doing the yoga.

25% of proceeds go to the Durham Animal Shelter  from where Little Man was adopted

most of our yoga clothes are stained or torn or old or all three.

hair styled by  several hours of  yoga.

anastasia getting the double assist

dalia getting the house specialty savasana assist

no joke! 2014 with a little help from little man calendar coming soon….

Children of the Burnt Seeds

Guruji is my teacher's teacher.
My teacher is certified to teach ashtanga by Guruji, and by Guruji I mean  Sri K.  Pattabhi Jois.

The ashtangis that were/are certified by Guruji, are you teaching the way Guruji taught you?
What does that mean?
From what I gather, and I gather a great deal, Guruji taught each of you differently.

He carried Nancy Gilgoff through  the poses.
He had David Williams  practice hard twice a day.
He gave Tim Miller Third in just a few months.
He doted on some, he ignored others....

Me and my elephant friend
yes, that is a Bertrand Russell shirt 

He taught each of these certified teachers  a different way because his teaching incorporated the ability to teach to what each person needed.

To teach like Guruji does not mean to teach everyone who shows up the exact same things and way and stuff Guruji taught you, but rather to teach each person that shows up exactly what that person needs......
Guruji is like an elephant. Each certified teacher seems to have gotten a different part of that elephant.

They see Guruji through their aperture. That must be awesome, and intense and such a fantastic view.
What a blessing to have been among the people Guruji considered his students. There are so many Guruji stories. I do my best to gather these stories.

Some of Guruji's students I have studied with:

David Williams is a native of North Carolina, and so when he comes home to visit his parents we try and get him to give us a class. We either get in our cars and drive to Greensboro or we get him to come to us, but the thing is we dig him and want to spend time with him. He loves the ashtanga yoga. Guruji loved ashtanga.

Annie (Grover) Pace was for many years  my primary teacher. She was the first  certified teacher I ever met. I remember the exact date because Hurricane Fran had just visited us, late summer 1996.  I have learned so very much from Annie. She has taught many workshops  here in our town. I have traveled to  Denver Colorado to study with her before she had her  Shala,  I have been to  her Crestone Shala.  I have practiced next to her, I have eaten her ghee. She showed me a version of Guruji's teaching that is very personal, very demanding. Guruji was a real person. Guruji was very loving and demanding too.

Nancy Gilgoff is considered by many yogis in my area to be a primary influence to them, so I wanted to meet her. My husband and I went to her week long primary series adjustment clinic in Vermont. I want to go to her studio in Hawaii too. She is rather drapey, I mean I can see back in time and see Guruji carrying her weight. She teaches  how Guruj taught her. Guruji did not turn away the weak, as long as they were not lazy. Anyone can do ashtanga, except lazy people.

Tim Miller has  been to Durham many times.  I had the honor of driving him around in my 1987 Ford F150. I have also gone up to Charlotsville many times for his week long primary series intensives and weekend workshops in various cities too many times to count. Tim somehow unites us. There is a galvanizing force in Tim. We love Tim. Guruji brought many different kinds, types and styles of people together to speak the same language, the language of ashtanga. We love Guruji.

Chuck Miller and Maty Ezarty, back when they where Chuck and Maty, came  to town many times and I took classes from them each and everytime. Maty was far more detail oriented. I learned so much from her about the yoga actual, the alignment, the positioning, the amount of effort needed to not sink. Guruji was clear.

From Chuck I got .... my mind blown!  I somehow got Chuck to lunch or a tea, just him and me, and got him talking about  life and ashtanga, and how  the Santa Monica yoga scene first came into being. He introduced me to the concept of the Burnt Seed.  To be a burnt seed is to be fully evolved, it is to not need another go round. there will be no more vritis.... Guruji was a  Sanscrit scholar. Guruji was deep.

Lauren

I have seriously slowed down on attending workshops from this teacher and that teacher because I have my teacher and I get to honker down with that one. I do acknolwedge that the many, many years of gathering of the unique  perspectives, the unique manifestations of Gurujis influence on the people that spent time directly under his influence is part of what it means to me to be a link in this lineage.  I have come to know Guruji through these apertures.

Here are few more teachers I have studied  with very briefly, a weekend, a mysore class, an intensive teacher training. Ashtanga. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

David Garrigues and Faulkner
during his first visit to
my sweet little yoga studio
Ashtanga Yoga Club Durham
mural by Laura Farrow 2010

Lino Miele**
David Swenson
Melanie Fawer
Eddie Stern
Steve Dwelley
Michael Hamilton
Christine Hoar
Matthew Sweeney

And of course David Garrigues, my teacher.

I have also taken classes and workshops from many students that are authorized by Guruji.

Each of these teachers shared a perspective of Guruji's teachings.

I call the students of these teachers the Children of the Burnt Seeds because these teachers are the Burnt Seeds. They are not allowed to authorize or certify us to teach.** Only Guruji's grandson can authorize or certify someone to teach, but Sharath is not my teacher. This burnt seed thing hurts my ashtanga feelings.... Feelings aside, I believe the Burnt Seedness of ashtanga's senior teachers disrespects Guruji by warping the trajectory of the ashtanga yoga lineage.

Statements such as this one from a blog about mysore style ashtanga yoga, concerning the idea of being a direct part of the lineage....

" I clearly favor the traditional lineage and Sharath Jois but others have found great love for other teachers such as Richard Freeman or Tim Miller." Aliya Weise
here is the blog piece I am referencing as an example
the word BUT.... I would ask people studying with Sharath to use the word  AND.

This statement somehow, or perhaps directly infers, with the BUT, that to study under Richard Freeman or Tim Miller is to study outside of the traditional lineage. My heart quickens, I feel threatened, undervalued. How could it be okay to have students of Richard and Tim, Nancy, David, David, Christine, David etc... be considered students that are choosing to be not in favor of the traditional lineage of Ashtanga! We are in favor of the traditional lineage of ashtanga yoga, in fact, we ARE the traditional lineage of ashtanga yoga. We are, at the very least, an aspect of the direct lineage!

What level of parampara would we be experiencing if when Guruji passed, we severed our connection from our teacher and switched over to Sharath because well... Why would that even be considered??

In a very real way he, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, IS my teacher. In a very real way I have an amazing bird's eye view of Guruji and his teachings.  I can see  that his teaching style was  BIG. I can even say that I do my best to teach how he taught his students. I am unable to claim any definitive "Guruji told me this way",  "The left hand holds the right", "Hold the big toe", "The dristi is the nose in this pose". I have been spared the particulars and instead see the over arching teaching style.  He taught them all differently. He taught them all what and how they needed to be taught. He taught them all ashtanga.

We, the Children of the Burnt Seeds  are an important part of the ashtanga lineage. I am trying to write us back into the living tradition of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga as taught by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois.

Our perspective matters. Our perspective includes Guruji because Guruji taught our teachers. We are links in the chain of instruction that is alive and well in us. We have spent many  years with our experienced teachers. We are fit to  receive knowledge. We are direct lineaging right now!

I went up to meet Guruji at the Puck Building in NYC in 2000. I had been studying ashtanga for many years at this point, and I was way beyond excited to meet Guruji. He taught a large group of perhaps 200 people. He led us through the primary series, and a second group through the intermediate series!!   I did not think for even one second that this meant that Guruji intended for me to think I should teach large groups by calling out the primary series. I knew, I thought we all knew it was a service he was doing for us, it was a way for us to meet him. We needed to meet him. We had been told by our teachers to meet him!

For over 20 years I have been studying, doing, thinking about, falling in and out of love with Ashtanga.

I teach a morning mysore  ashtanga program, in obscurity, in a small studio in the attic of my home.

I aim to continue this for many more years. If you ever find your way to Durham, North Carolina you are welcome to come take class. 

Guruji taught me this....

JO

scrubbing Mina

feeding the baby

how tired is the 6 blind men and the elephant thing?

pretty tired!!

Janelle and the Ganesha of YogaSpot in Durham NC
painted byLaura Farrow in 1995

 **Lino has taken the path of action and grants his dedicated students a different title than burnt seed.

click here for lino info

I am really hoping that the Burnt Seeds and the Children of the Burnt Seeds can hold onto the big picture, the full elephant. 

It is with the desire to bring attention to awareness of our connection to Self and so of course, to each other, that I write and post this piece. 

Welcome Back

The Welcome Back Practice.

If you have not had a welcome back practice well then.... either you have been practicing only one day so far, or well ... self report continues to be unreliable.


It's okay, it's fine, it's how it is. Welcome Back.

The reasons for taking some time off practice are as varied as the people that take the time.

Ms. Faulkner and some of her fantastic reasons!

A smattering of my personal longer than a week  reasons: Grad school while also working a 60 hour work week as a special education public school teacher, Noro virus, vertigo, depression, .....

Some of my friends have a slightly more interesting items on the list: Getting married and going on an adventure  type of honeymoon, giving birth,  remodeling a house from the bare bones to a thing of livable beauty, making a movie, canoeing the amazon.....

can't wait to meet this little reason

No matter the reasons, when it is time to get back to practice, you are welcome back to practice!

  I have  been to many AA meetings, and at nearly every one, someone gets a white chip.  The white chip signifies the decision to live sober; to live sober one day at a time, to start the program.  Often, the white chip signifies a re-making of the decision, and  a re-starting the program. NO MATTER WHAT! The person getting the white chip is welcome and welcomed back. "Keep coming back!"
There are the very few people who get that one white chip and then live happily sober ever after. They are of course blessed. They work their program and the results are obvious. There are the "chronic" white chippers. They keep needing the re-starting because they drank again.  Many people with many years of sobriety were at one point  the chronic type of white chippers.  They are also blessed because they kept coming back.They used to  need what seemed like an inordinate amount of support, and now they are the backbone of the support.


In a way, EVERY practice is a welcome back practice. Every day when I step on my mat is a new day.

Yesterday was a close call. I really almost did not make it to my mat. I had the list going in my head;  I was hungry, I was tired, I was  fine with taking a day off, the new moon was still looking awfully new, I needed to do some other stuff....But thank goodness I have a habit of practicing, an urge to practice, an impulse to break away for the reasons to not practice. I set the intention of doing the primary series as it is, no dinking around. It was so lovely!  It was so  light. It was like the best thing that had ever happened to me. I was so grateful for the experience. It had been a very close call.

Today I was able to get on my mat in my own house without a teacher watching over me.  No joke I think I figured out ekabaddha bakasana A today!! I have been working on that pose for a little over a year. Also no joke, I believe that the primary series   I did the day before pointed the way to the eka A of today.

I have invited a few yogis to come practice with me tomorrow at 7 am.

You are welcome to join us. 
My studio has a strong welcome back policy in effect.

Gala (vasana) Anniversary

how it felt the first few times

Today is my one year anniversary of being "given"/shown/ held up in Galavasana.

Last year on  July 25th my teacher David Garrigues, brave man that he, is assisted me in the gateway pose of third series.  Gateway in that...here come the arm balances.

This image was captured by my husband july 25th 2012
This was Garrigues and Faulkner's first go at Galavasana!

I grew up a gymnast. This means I grew up  doing arm balances and press up every things. Flying through the air and spotting the correct place (and time) to land was standard operating procedure. These skills, these upside downs, these twistings, being airborn, condensed, stretched, these ways to spend time, they are my dear old friends. They are my peeps. None of this means this stuff is easy for me. I was always a big girl type of gymnast. My team had to transport and set up a special set of uneven parallel bars so that I would not break the home team's set of bars with my muscle mass' ability to swing.

 So now that I have been working with dedication on some advanced poses, it stirs up a bunch of feelings for me (irritating, amusing and soothing to name just a few),  to see the recent onslaught of  pictures of people doing amazingly difficult poses, and not just that, they are out there in front of the city fountains, on park benches, or with the lakes, rivers and oceans of the world. Shit, I need a damn 2 hour warm up to do that on a nice, even (in some spots) wooden floor in my own house with a mat that has been properly juju-ed, and a bunch of other exquisitely added details.

So, yes, it initially makes me angry. I remember when I first started doing ashtanga, and it was fashionable to poo-poo the gymnastics of it. "Yoga is not gymnastics...., yoga is not a sport, yoga is not a competition." I know, I get it.  But I grew up in a gym, doing the incredibly intense sport actual of gymnastics. I grew up being judged. I never minded being truly judged, you know, with a scoring system. But being judged by other members of the community at the time WITHOUT the scoring system really sucked.  I was often called a show-off for doing tick tacks and handstands in the yoga room. I was judged for doing them in a gymnastics way, but it was my heritage that made me able to do them in the first place.

The anger subsides and is replaced with some amusement and understanding. I know it's a developmental stage the yogi is in, feeling the energy of the pose light you up and wanting to somehow capture that energy for eternity and share it with the world in some way. I did it, and I judge it's a natural urge, and urge to want to celebrate the pure goodness of the shape, and the feeling of you, or the self, or the union of energy that is the body in a wonderful relationship with the planet's gravity. It is sweet, endearing and it makes me smile. It reminds me of the taste of watermelon on a hot day. It reminds me of gymanstics camp when I was twelve and the late night handstand competitions we would have. It was SO MUCH FUN. My face smiles when I see images of talented yogis doing advanced poses, and I appreciate the energy, poise and dedication the poses show me. I am happy for them, but for me, I have to really warm up to even try to do those things and sometimes I doubt that my version has what David calls the "Tom Sawyer effect" of seeing someone channel the energy so well, you want to be doing it. Back to the images, though,  I need the inspiration they supply, the enthusiasm and gusto they have for the practice. Maybe I'm feeling my age and still trying to grasp some of that youth I see around me, but maybe, it's that I can still feel some of that youthful energy in my own body. So yeah, I might have some sour grapes lurking, but I think that my real nectar is just starting to come of age now that I'm 51. So, galavasana it is, picture-worthy or not!

 Garrigues Galavasana adjustments
remind me of the two person  horse costume

The energy of the many new people dedicating themselves to the practice reminds me of my recent bus trips in India. The bus is full, but then 15 more people somehow fit in! It soothes me to know and feel that there is room for us all in this time space continuum of strength, balance and agility.  The yogis that want to know yoga from yoga, we all meet in the crowded expansive place inside ourselves. We share this, we are all on the same team, even if it irritates you that I think of yoga as a team (wait for it....) SPORT. I was never competative in the usual sense. I was more in it for the sport itself. The TEAM. No one is ever cut from my team.  To me TEAM is a big loving, we can do it, work hard kind of thing. The fellowship, the creative process of the individual experiencing the best and truest aspects of self while working in and with the scaffold of the group dynamic. oh yes. My sister in law once said, "well, we all have to find our tribe," and I think I have found mine.

I was and still am eager to take direction, eager for  corrective feedback, even eager for rules and regulations. You gotta know the rules to bend them well.  It is very exciting to have  a forum to  continue  to  cultivate my long standing relationship with gravity into adulthood. It is a big soothing, happy place in my body/mind/spirit entity that I have ashtanga and ashtangis.  If you show up for your practice. well then like it or not you are in my band, on my team, all of it.

So my parting words for everyone, on this great day of celebration of my gala-vasana anniversary are: Damn, it took a long time, as it always seems to do, but I am so glad the cat is out of the bag and people are seeing and feeling for themselves that this shit is fun! Gala type fun. Special occasion type of everyday fun. Like another David says, "hey, it's cheap thrills!", and of course more than that, too.

I'll keep doing these poses for as long as possible in the yoga room actual, mostly all by myself, but always with the power of the practice and the people everywhere practicing, holding me up.

2012 the year of the Dragon
for me it was the year of Galavasana

Olga! Here I come!
Moscow with Garrigues
December 2013
Garrigues and me going to Moscow

or click her for english

I used to do ashtanga.....

The Neek at the Nasher Museum
in our hometown of Durham NC

 still do, but I used to too.

What gets bigger the more you take away?  A hole.  I think Gollum said that…….

me and my boys with Tim
at the Barn in Charlottsville on Hanuman's birthday!

This also applies to my life. My life on ashtanga.

I go to bed as early as possible.  I make polite  excuses for not attending parties.  I don't often go to the movies because even the early show ends too late.   I prefer my husband's cooking to going out to eat.  My very best friends are my dogs. I have no job (besides teaching Alexander Technique and ashtanga in my home studio). I go days without getting in my car. 

If I could have taken a look into the future and seen my life as it is now when I was 20 I would have barely recognized me.  Well…I would have recognized my physique because that looks very similar to how Iooked back then, and I am right now sporting a rather Dorothy Hamillesque Short and Sassy type of hairdo(what was I thinking). It is my mind that  I would have had a hard time seeing as my own.

I used to need so much action, so much noise and commotion. I needed snacks. I needed attention. I loved speed, and heights, and that feeling of the edge of something…. 

I know I was a hard case.  I know I was a consumer, a taker, a loud talker, a close stander, an impulsive just about everythinger. Back in those days  my new year's resolutions were littered with items like: stop doing handstands on the edge of roofs, no more musicians, no more back handsprings in the  flatbed of trucks while driving on the highway, no more TKE parties the night before track meets, no more parachuting of any kind. I used to make NEW MONTH resolutions to remind myself to remember to not take so many risks with my self. I would get a drink in my system, or get an idea in my system, or feel a sense of boredom….. and there I was on a rooftop, there I was in a basement apartment with complete strangers, there I was completely forgetting my own safety.

I am still a thrill seeker, it is just that my thrill has changed.For that shift, I give thanks to ashtanga yoga.

This shift has taken many moons, many years, in fact decades. I started practicing ashtanga in 1993.

The big thrill of each day is/are the kisses I get from my husband at bedtime (how in the name of Ganesha, did I end up with a loving life partner?!) The next biggest thrill is giving Ganesha his little cup of coffee every morning before my practice. After that comes the thrill of my practice, followed closely by the thrill of being a part of my  students practices. A glass of water after practice with all of its hydrogen bonding making it so very water like thrills me like no other beverage ever has. So pretty thrilling, right? To me it is a thrill a minute. And It all happens very early in the day. 

What gets bigger the more you take away?? in my case, my life gets bigger the more I take away.

Ashtanga is my shovel.

   

for our honeymoon we went to a primary series mysore intensive
 taught by Nancy Gilgoff
 at Christine Hoar's studio in Vermont

 Yoga is known from yoga.

So even though my life may look small on  the outside because it looks like I don't do much besides ashtanaga, it is this limiting factor, it is the demands that ashtanga puts on me that allows me to stay focused on it. It used to be hard for me to remember to keep myself and my safety in mind. Ashtanga requires so much attention that it has enabled me to remember it. In remembering it, I also remember myself, because I need myself to do ashtanga. This emerging ability to remember, to look inward, is what has sculpted me into  a person I enjoy spending time with and  person I love enough to keep safe.

Janelle and Ganesha at YogaSpot
in 2003

 David Garrigues (my teacher) leading us through a primary series at my little studio
Ashtanga Yoga Club Durham. I name each workshop. This was DG3

DG and me in Kovalam India this past february

I know this is sounding like a love letter to ashtanga. 

Like every worthwhile relationship that is standing the test of time, ashtanga and I have had some hard times, but we keep making it through. We stick with each other. Me and ashtanga,
we love each other.

I used to do Ashtanaga, still do, but I used to too….

Sincerely Suzanne

PS
Mitch Hedberg video will make you giggle.
He used to do drugs! It's in the first 2 minutes xoxox
Mitch video, you take it.

One Glorious Week

Last week I got a call from my yoga buddy JO, asking if I needed a break from teaching my morning mysore classes. My answer was an unhesitating,"YES"!! JO needed a break from the city of brotherly love where she is studying Ashtanga under the tutelage of our teacher David Garrigues. JO got in her faithful roadster and drove to North Carolina for a working vacation type of get away. For one glorious week, Joanna Darlington was Ashtanga Yoga Durham's in-house morning mysore yoga teacher. This week was glorious for many reasons: I got to sleep in till about 7 AM and then practice with my community. I practiced 6 days in a row, one day second, 4 days all of third(sans that last pose) one day primary. Usually I practice AFTER teaching, and It is often difficult to sustain a full practice. My students received great teaching from JO. Hearing instruction from a new source can help get the ideas into the skull. Everyone's practice has gone up a notch. My husband cooked for JO and me, so we got to hang out together AND be waited on by my terrific husband. When my husband was not around to cook for us, I took JO to many of Durham's great restaurants.(Durham is one of the United States' foodiest cities) JO and I where housemates in India this winter while we studying with David Garriugues. It was fun and familiar to be housemates again. It was incredible to see JO be such an adept and proficient mysore teacher. She is half way through a one thousand hour teacher apprentice program with David Garrigues. WOW! Can't wait to see what the next 500 hours of being an apprentice with David G will bring to her practice and her mysore teaching. I am SO GRATEFUL to be a part of ashtanga yoga's living tradition of daily mysore practice. Thank you T Krisnamacharya for teaching Pattabhi Jois Thank you Pattabhi Jois for teaching David G Thank you David G for teaching JO Thank you JO for teaching ashtanga yoga durham peeps Thank you AYSphilly peeps for letting me have JO for one glorious week!