The Best Gifts Don't Need Any Wrapping

My son and I have been doing walkabouts since he was three. In the early years, we would walk into our imaginations and create elaborate stories --usually about dinosaurs.  He would start the story and I would add to it. As we walked, we turned our surroundings into a stage for our characters and they would come alive.  My son knew all the names of every dinosaur imaginable, what they ate, what they liked and didn't like.  So imagine if you will, taking a walk around the city with a Stegosaurus, Tyrannasorus Rex, and a Brachiosaurus just to name a few.

The stories became very involved.  It wasn't just about habits, what they ate, and where they lived- there were power struggles, loneliness, shyness, search for friends, fights for attention, and more.Through the stories, I would get to know my son in a way I would have never gotten to know him.  Together, we got to explore all kinds of different situations. We both learned things. I feel he learned a great deal about things he was consciously or unconsciously concerned about.

When he got older, the stories turned to discussions and brainstorming. When he was in middle school, he started a small gaming company to develop computer games. We would use our walks to discuss how his business was going. He asked if I'd be willing to be on his Advisory Board, which of course I agreed to do.  He wanted advise on how he could better motivate his programmers and sales team.  He was only in 6th grade, but he was already learning how hard it is to get some people to do what they said they will do.  I would make suggestions and we would bounced ideas off each other to test the suggestion or improve upon it.  A few walks later, after a small DVD of his game was finished, he told me that he'd realized and appreciated how dedicated each member of the team had been to get all the levels of the game created.

In 8th or 9th grade, one walk was about an experiment he was conducting. Inspired by his palentologist grandfather, he had buried three chicken carcasses in different solutions (coffee, bleach, etc.) and assessed the variants affect on the carcasses' decomposition - this was all for a Science Fair competition. It was this walk when I knew the tides were turning. His imagination and his education were coming together in a big way. We had become so comfortable with our walkabouts that brainstorming about his new ideas was becoming the norm. We discussed theories, mythology, history, science, along with ideas for new books and interesting recipes for the chili he would compete with every year in the Chomp 'n Stomp chili cook off.

I listened as his thoughts got deeper and deeper. I learned about all his insightful and thought provoking ideas from renovating schools with a nature component to improve the education system to his realization of the disconnectedness that all our connectivity was causing. It made me really appreciate the fact we were still connecting. In Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood, by William Pollack, based on over two decades of learning from his Harvard Medical School research, I learned that as a rule boys talk more when they are moving. I figured if I could begin the conversation early enough, I could keep it going.  I think it worked. I can't even begin to express how much our walkabouts have meant to me, and while his graduation from high school is approaching and I will miss our weekly walks, he promises we will keep our tradition at least on the holidays. What a gift that will be.

Demystifying The Yoga Sutras - Lesson I

Many people can get lost in the many styles of yoga offered in this country.  However, once they find The Yoga Sutras they have found the basis of all yoga. The Yoga Sutras are threads of wisdom offered by the Indian sage Patanjali more than 2,000 years ago.  These sutras or threads are still regarded as the authoritative wisdom in yoga.  As mentioned by Yehundi Menuhin in the forward of BKS Iyengar’s, Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, “The Sutras were the earliest – and are still the most profound and enlightening – study of the human psyche.”  Iyengar Yoga instructor, Kquvien DeWeese has been an avid student of The Yoga Sutras for many years and integrates her knowledge of the subject to enhance the lessons she offers in her yoga classes.  She recently held a workshop that engaged us all in some very enlightening discussions.

A gaggle of us sat around the wooden floor of a yoga mate’s house with book upon book of interpretations of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras by BKS Iyengar, Edwin Bryant, SwamiPrabhavananda, and Christopher Isherwood  just to name a few. “The purple Sutra book is more accessible,” we hear one student say referring to Inside the Yoga Sutras: A Comprehensive Sourcebook for the Study and Practice of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras by Jaganath Carrera. I.K. Taimni’s The Science of Yoga is another book brought to the mix to answer questions.

One question you may have is what does some guy over 2,000 years old know about my life?  Well, more than you think. The basic human problems haven’t changed.  We still face doubts, fears, and loss of hope.  Of course, when most of us begin reading The Yoga Sutras, we immediately think, “no way can I live up to all of that”.  However, Kquvien points out that we shouldn’t look at these 196 aphorisms as some impossible feat or imposing justice. Instead, we should consider them a source of comfort.  

Kquvien is an expert at demystifying The Sutras and helping us ward off our fear of their strange language: Sanskrit. She studied Sanskrit with scholars from Emory, so she can breakdown the mechanics of the words and make them more palatable -- for people like me who never imagined ever being able to make sense of any of it. In the workshop, we talked about how when the language was born it was not written.  It was spoken. The construction of The Yoga Sutras is designed for singing and chanting.  The sounds alone create a resonance in the body. You don’t even need to know the meaning to gain access to the wisdom.

What a relief right?  The funny thing is once you start chanting them and the resonance of the words start to work on your body, you actually want to understand the deep effect they’re having on you.  Just like how you are compelled to move deeper into your yoga asana practice – the more you do it the more you want to learn about it. The sounds become ingrained before the meaning. The first five Sutras basically introduce the idea of yoga:  Now we begin the practice of yoga.  Yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind. When this is accomplished you’ll be in bliss. Of course, those other times you will identify with the fluctuations of the mind and that isn't fun - no matter if the thoughts are good ones or bad ones.

There are four padas or chapters in The Yoga Sutras. The Cliff Notes version: the first chapter talks about Samadhi or the ultimate union of your mind, body and spirit with its source, the second, Sadhana talks about how to get there through the practice of the Yamas, Niyamas, and asanas.  The third chapter talks about Vibhuti, the super powers that you can attain from rigorous practice of yoga, and the final chapter is the supreme kiberation or Kaivalya that can be attained through diligent and sustained effort.  Needless to say, there is not a Cliff Notes version of The Yoga Sutras. You actually have to do all the work to attain the goal. Most folks give up before they even get started.  Patient diligent effort is what is called for. However, Kquvien makes a great point: what appears to be miniscule gains in the practice initially, become monumental the more you understand them.


The cool thing you begin to realize is Patanjali knew what he was talking about – the process works and it has for thousands of years. Consider it a guidebook on how live a compassionate life; free from pain. For example: Asana can be considered vritti replacement. Vrittis being the fluctuations of the mind that are and forever will be part of our nature. However, Patanjali gives us ways to still the constant chatter.  He first tells us about the five states of chatter:  Pramana, valid knowing, Viparyaya, contrary thoughts or inverted thinking, Vikalpa, doubt, imagination, or fantasy, Nidra, sleep and Smrtaya, memory.  Each thought is a seed and he teaches you to burn the seed through tapas. Tapas is rigorous discipline, which ultimately becomes simplicity. 

Don't laugh.  It's true. It’s been said it takes 21 days to form any habit. If you choose to make that habit yoga, you will spend 21 days in a tapas state of commitment to the practice that will soon become a simple part of your day. You will begin to replace your vrittis with asana.  You will practice living compassionately towards yourself and others.  You might even crack a book on The Yoga Sutras and lo and behold the words start making sense.  You begin to make connections externally then internally then shazam!  You’re on a path you don’t want to get off of because you know it’s leading you to a better place (a simpler place) within yourself.

Thanks Kquvien.  Looking forward to our next lesson. Namaste. 

For more information about Kquvien visit her website at http://kquvienyoga.com/

A Simple Act of Courage (And A Farewell To A Great Teacher)

Robert Joiner, my first alignment-based yoga teacher once said that simply keeping your shoulders back and your chest lifted can be an act of courage. I may be bastardizing his words, but the idea he conveyed never left me. The more I work on opening by chest and shoulders in yoga, the deeper I understand what he meant.

I knew I'd been caving my chest for years, ever since I went through puberty faster than most girls my age and my chest felt like the first thing to enter a room. What's worse, as a ballet dancer, it was horrifying to be more endowed than the older dancers in my company.  I finally resorted to binding my boobs with surgical tape. Though I would get on stage and perform with my head held high and my chest lifted, when I stepped off the stage or out of the studio, my chest caved.  I would think about everything I'd done wrong and find myself getting sad even if I had done well.

Robert talked about when the chest is caved it can actually cause depression.  If you think about what happens when you round your shoulders and hunch over like we so often do at our computer, not only does the heart lose space, the lungs are compressed.  When our lungs are compressed that means we aren't getting the oxygen we need to function. Granted, offstage I thought by caving my chest I was also protecting myself from torment and improper advances, but in the process, I was also closing myself off from the world. Our chest is the heart center, in yogic and many other philosophies the heart center is where the higher intelligence resides. It is the chamber of the emotional heart.

Robert will always hold a special place there for me.  He is an impressive human being; and not just because he is a great yoga instructor, Master karate teacher with a 6th degree black belt, and probably a soon-to-be medical professional.  I truly feel honored to know him.  He taught me so much in such a short time. I don't know how to repay that. He made me stronger not only physically, but mentally and emotionally --that may sound hokey, but it's true.  His uncanny intuitive ability to sense when I needed encouragement, motivation, or detailed understanding of a pose or concept is something I will never forget. He is the reason I chose to gain deeper knowledge in the Iyengar method of yoga. The more I train the more meaning his words seem to have.

I am sad that Robert is leaving Atlanta, but I know wherever he ends up in his new ventures, anyone who gets the opportunity to know him or take his classes will be touched by the magic that he brings to their life.  It's taken me a long time to change my habit of slumping; and I slip back into my old ways more often than not. However, I notice the difference my lifted and open chest makes on my well being.  I feel better. Not only that, other people who I encounter feel better around me. When I have the weight of Sysiphus on my shoulders, I remember Robert's words and I know this simple act of courage can change everything.