Chakra Yoga WorkShop ...Week Three...MANIPURA CHAKRA

Chakras are wheels of energy where we receive, assimilate and distribute life energies. Through external situations ( pressures of life ) or internal habits such as poor physical alignment or self destructiveness, a chakra can become imbalanced. The simplest way to balance each chakra is to create alignment in the physical body. Your body reflects your imbalances, acting as a mirror through which you can gauge how each chakra is functioning. Your asana practice is he first step toward aligning your body and balancing each chakra. Instead of trying to change the way the mind works and overcoming years of patterns and beliefs, asana works to realign the physical energy centers that govern specific behaviours.

4 MANIPURA CHAKRA (City of Gems )

Location: Naval Solar Plexes

Mantra: Ram

Verb: I am

Color: Yellow

Yantra: Upside Down Red Triangle

Domain: Extroverted/Introverted,Power/Weakness, Our personality


Questions to aak if Svadishtana Chakra is Sattvic:


•Do I have trouble making decisions?
•Do I feel nervous in group situations and prefer to spend most of my time alone?
•Do I suffer from low self esteem? Constant self doubt?
•Do I engage in self destructive behaviour?
•Am I always right now matter what the argument?
•Have I been accused of insensitivity or intolerance?
•Do I have a hard time working with others?

Physical Postures to Balance Manipura Chakra: (Core Strength & Twisting)

CHATARANGA DANDASANA(Straight Arm Plank)
REVERSE VIRABHADRASANA II (reverse warrior II)
PRAVRITTA PARSVOKANASANA(twisted extended right angle)
MALTESE TWIST (supine right angle twist)

Chakra Yoga WorkShop ...Week Two...SVADISHTANA CHAKRA

Chakras are wheels of energy where we receive, assimilate and distribute life energies. Through external situations ( pressures of life ) or internal habits such as poor physical alignment or self destructivenss, a chakra can become imbalanced. The simpliest way to balance each chakra is to create alignment in the physical body. Your body reflects your imbalances, acting as a mirror through which you can gauge how each chakra is functioning. Your asana practice is he first step toward aligning your body and balancing each chakra. Instead of trying to change the way the mind works and overcoming years of patterns and beliefs, asana works to realign the physical energy centers that govern specific behaviours.

4 SVADISHTANA CHAKRA ( place of self )

Location: Pelvic Basin

Mantra: Vam

Verb: I feel

Color: Orange

Yantra: Cresent Moon

Domain: Sexuality / Likes & Dislikes, Desire, Lust, Greed, creativity


Questions to aak if Svadishtana Chakra is Sattvic:


• Do I difficulty maintaining relationships?
• Am I compulsive?
• Do I suffer from an overabundance or lack of desire?
• Do I make resolutions without the power to carry them out?
• Do I become addicted easy?


Physical Postures to Balance Svadisthana Chakra:

YATANGASANA (extended child's pose)
VIRABHADRASANA II (warrior II)
TRIKONASANA (triangle)
PRASRITTA PADDOTTANASANA (fan)
UPAVISTA KONASANA (seated wide-legged stretch)

Chakra Yoga WorkShop ...Week One...MULADHARA CHAKRA

"Chakras are wheels of energy where we receive, assimilate and distribute life energies. Through external situations ( pressures of life ) or internal habits such as poor physical alignment or self destructiveness, a chakra can become imbalanced. The simplest way to balance each chakra is to create alignment in the physical body. Your body reflects your imbalances, acting as a mirror through which you can gauge how each chakra is functioning. Your asana practice is he first step toward aligning your body and balancing each chakra. Instead of trying to change the way the mind works and overcoming years of patterns and beliefs, asana works to realign the physical energy centers that govern specific behaviours"

This weeks focus is on Muladhara Chakra ( Root Chakra )

Location: Base of the Spine ( Center of Perineum )

Mantra: Lam

Verb: I have

Color: Red

Yantra: Golden Triangle

Domain: Material Security & Procreation Instincts

Questions that you can ask yourself to find out if this Chakra is not Sattvic:

• Does my life feel out of control?
• Do I find it difficult to make decisions?
• Do I suffer from financial insecurity?
• Do I act irresponsible in regards to money, personal safety, or that of family members?
• Do I feel poor even though I have a solid bank account?
• Do I have excessive concern for material wealth to the point of being greedy?
• Do I find it difficult to nourish my body properly?
• Do I suffer from obesity, bulimia or anorexia?
• Do I have ongoing problems with my parents, children or other family members?

Physical Postures that balance Muladahara Chakra:

TADASANA(mountain pose)
VIRABHADRASANA III(warrior III)
ALANA(high lunge)
VRKSASANA(tree)
PRAVRITTA SUKASANA(seated twist)

To practice more chakra yoga go to:

http://www.mypypeline.com/store/video/yoga_chakra_series/

A Little Time For Yoga

Whew...what a crazy month I have had. I hate that I haven't been on here for over a month but for some reason life with a 16 month and working full time just got really busy!!! So, now more than ever I am realizing how important is to take some down time and do something just for myself. Today, I got a baby sitter and went to a yoga class. So exciting. Yes, I go to 3 or 4 classes every day, but as an instructor not a student. It was such a nice treat. As I was practicing I noticed myself doing everything that I wasn't suppose to be doing. I was looking around the room to see if I could find any familiar faces, then as the class began I noticed myself thinking about my morning with my son and anticipating the rest of the day...and then...the worst thing happened...I noticed I was holding my breath! So, there I was "yoga teacher" doing the 3 worst things you could do in yoga! At least I had the awareness to notice what I was doing, and very quickly made a conscious effort to stop looking around, stop thinking and start breathing...then a beautiful thing happened...I was present, I was breathing and found myself in a moving medatation. After the class ended, I felt like a brand new person. I had ove 60 minutes of nothingness. Yes, I physically worked hard, but while doing the physical part of the practice, I was able to still my mind and be still. At the end of the class the teacher gave us a reading and couldn't have been more appropriate. Here is what it said:

A son and his father were walking in the mountains.
Suddenly, his son falls, hurts himself and screams: "AAAhhhhhhhhhhh!!!"
To his surprise, he hears the voice repeating, somewhere in the mountain:
"AAAhhhhhhhhhhh!!!"
Curious, he yells: "Who are you?"
He receives the answer: "Who are you?"
Angered at the response, he screams: "Coward!"
He receives the answer: "Coward!"
He looks to his father and asks: "What's going on?"
The father smiles and says: "My son, pay attention."
And then he screams to the mountain: "I admire you!"
The voice answers: "I admire you!"
Again the man screams: "You are a champion!"
The voice answers: "You are a champion!"
The boy is surprised, but does not understand.
Then the father explains: "People call this ECHO, but really this is LIFE.
It gives you back everything you say or do.
Our life is simply a reflection of our actions.
If you want more love in the world, create more love in your heart.
If you want more competence in your team, improve your competence.
This relationship applies to everything, in all aspects of life;
Life will give you back everything you have given to it."
YOUR LIFE IS NOT A COINCIDENCE. IT'S A REFLECTION OF YOU!

So, take time today for you and start living your best life!

The AfterMath of Belly Dance & Yoga

Well, I just finished a weekend workshop of Belly Dance and Chakra Yoga ( which is the part of the workshop I faciliatated) and I have to say I was totally inspired by this beautiful dance and quite intrigued by the similarity of the two. I learned that Belly Dance is a dance designed for women by women and it consist of movements that enable the women to let go of different physical and mental blocks. Like yoga it works with the subtle energies of the chakra system and through the dance, the women enables herself to balance the chakras by moving different physical areas of the body. A lot of women's second chakra is unbalanced. The pysical location of the Svadisthana chakra is the pelvic basin. The ASIS (hip bones ) are either tipped forward too much ( anterior tilt ) or too far back (posterior tilt ). When there is an inbalance pyhsically, the chakra becomes unbalanced. The most effective way to balance the chakras are to realign the body physically. In the example of the Svadisthana chakra we can do a posture such as Utkatasana (chair posture) to realign the pelvis. If you sit down like there is a chair behind you with your feet together and your hands on your hips, you can feel what happens to your pelvis as you bend into the knees. To really find opposite ends of the spectrum you can really reach you tail up to the ceiling and find anterior tilt in the pelvis and then really tuck your tail to the floor and find anterior tilt. Play with these two extremes a few time and then see if you can find a place of equilabrium. Eventually, the muscles used to support this posture become stronger and the pelvis becomes align with the feet, which eventually realigns the entire spine.....and then we are into an entire different groups of chakras. Lets stick with the second one ( Svadisthana ). Once we have found this alignment, we can use different mantras and yantras or belly dance to move and focus energy to this chakra. Svadisthana chakra is related to the elements of water and is concerned with creativity, sexuality, likes and dislikes. It is very much an energy center of feeling and signs that this chakra is out of balance are things like complulsive behaviour. fear of commitment, lack of desire and addiction. The chakra system is a very intresting tool that you can use to explore yourself in a very non-evasive way. You can use yoga to help you balance your chakras and really find the energy of the chakras in my new found love of the belly dance

Yoga & Belly Dance

Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Yoga & Belly Dance

I never thought that I would be using yoga techniques to improve the movement and exploration of belly dance, and then I met Tsaid Springfield, a professional belly dancer. After a few conversations about the dance and chakra techniques that I use in my yoga classes, we decided that two fused together could make a very interesting weekend workshop of moving energy, discovering location of physical and psychological blocks and how we can use dance and chakra exploration to bring awareness inwards well expressing energy outwards.

I am by no means a belly dancer, but I do know that we all have physical and physchological blocks that prevent us from exploring our inner self more in depth. For a lot of people there is fear to explore the unknown and what we may find out about ourselves. Using different Chakra meditations and specific postures, we can begin to balance the seven energy centres and in turn find more balance..so we started a workshop!

Sacred Chakra
BelyDance
Workshop
Saturday April 25, 1 – 5 pm
&
Sunday April 26, 12 - 5pm
Awaken the divine feminine within;
BellyDance is a language of sacred geomety, a
pure refecton of nature, and a gatway into
our deepest selves. Using tantic theory, chakra
visualizaton, Yoga, and Belly Dance, this
workshop is an invitaton to explore your body,
both physically and energetically, and bring
awareness to the way that you move in this
world. Join Jana Webb and Tsaida Springfeld
for this amazing weekend of looking inward, and
expressing outward. Specifically designed for the
complete beginner to the intermediate level
dancer, this is a truly unique opportunity to be
inspired by this dance in ways you never
dreamed possible.
Space is limitd so please register by caling Jana @ 403 269 YOGA
or email: jwebb@mypypeline.com
you can also email Tsaida: Bellyhellion@hotmail.com
Locatd @ Sanguine Yoga: www.sanguineyoga.com

Takin Health For Granted

This past Sunday I got thrown for a bit of a loop. I got really sick! It came on very suddenly and ended up being quite fierce. I think it must have been the 24 hour flu...not fun. I don't get sick that often ( the odd sniffle ) so it really shocked my system. I forgot how lousy it feels to be down and out. Just today I am getting my energy back and am not feeling weak and fragile. I guess you have to get sick once in a while to appreciate being well which has been my message to all of my students this weak; really appreciate and be grateful that you have the health to practice and move. Now that I am back, I have been inspired to pay attention to how it is that I haven't gotten sick for over 3 years! I practice yoga, I walk or go to the gym a few times a week, I chase my 14 month old, I eat breakfast, I drink coffee twice a day, I drink wine once or twice a week...usually twice, I eat a lot of salad and I love sushi, I drink Youth Juice, I drink a lot of water, I try to get 6 hours of sleep a night, I put ground flax seed in everything, I love cheese, and I always get popcorn at the theatre. I guess I live a pretty balanced life...hmmm. Ok, now that I have written that all down its time to get back on the healthy train. It is a way better place to spend the day!