Practice Your Promise

Listening to the radio this weekend I heard an excerpt from a fascinating project called StoryCorps. Their web page says, "StoryCorps is a national project to instruct and inspire people to record each others' stories in sound."

The story I heard was a conversation between a young woman, Cinema Wood, and her grandmother, Peggy Edwards. Cinema is about to marry and she was asking for advice.

You can hear the story at:
http://storycorps.net/audio/edwards.mp3 .

I liked what Ms. Edwards had to say about her long, strong marriage. She said, "Go slow. It's not a marathon. It's a stroll."

It's a subtle distinction. A marathon implies a race with its inherent urgency to get to the end. While a stroll suggests a comfortable pace at which you can enjoy what you're doing, so much so that you hope it never ends.

What a great way to view marriage. And what a great way to view your yoga practice, too!

Don't get in such a hurry to make progress. Slow down and pay attention along the way so you can enjoy your yoga practice.

The StoryCorps conversation also reminded me of something I wrote about my parents and their marriage back in 2003 when they were celebrating their 50th anniversary.

I'm republishing it here for you today. Enjoy.

"In just a few days my parents will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. It’s a major milestone. So I hope you’ll permit me this personal indulgence: “Congratulations, Mom & Dad!” I’m proud of them. And I’m amazed by what they’ve done together.

"Extraordinary accomplishments in any area of life are inspiring. Lasting accomplishments—deeds that can’t be done in one fell swoop, particularly encourage me.

"When I began studying yoga years ago I had many opportunities to meet extraordinary yogis. Sometimes what I saw bordered on shocking. What I believed was humanly possible shifted when I witnessed what these people could do. A whole new world of fitness, well-being, and skill opened up to me as I saw what they produced through decades of practice.

"I eventually came to expect a pattern that I’ve now seen many times. Almost every one of these notable teachers would get around to saying that what they do can’t be done without practice. “Practice is the best teacher,” they’d say. Then they’d quote the yoga authority Patanjali, who said, “Practice is firmly established when it is done with reverent devotion, uninterrupted, for a long time.” (YogaSutras 1.12)

"I’d leave these encounters inspired. I was re-armed with this handy-dandy easy-to-memorize guide that told me if I did my yoga for a long time, didn’t take any hiatus, and was fervent and focused, I could do what they did.

"My parents have proven to me the truth of Patanjali’s aphorism. Their marriage wouldn’t have produced what it has, without reverent devotion and unwavering persistence.

"Here’s another truth for me (and I’d bet it’s true for Mom, Dad, and those amazing yogis): some days I don’t feel devoted; I feel like taking a day (or a month) off; I can’t muster a molecule of persistence. On some of those days, rather than being inspired by the amazing feats of others, I’m humbled. I’m discouraged. Their greatness makes me feel weak or inadequate. I don’t want to think of the cool stuff they’ve done because it makes me feel like a gnat.

"Fifty years later, I realize now that my parents were no less married on their first day together than they are now. I can look at their decades together and be overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude. Or I can realize that one day, just like any other day, they got out of bed and did ordinary things like brush their teeth, comb their hair, and eat their meals. But in addition to those ordinary things, they got up in front of their families and friends and promised to live together and work together faithfully. They made a commitment to take care of each other even on dark days when the thought of anything longer than a day was unimaginable.

"When I look back over the years, I believe that it was the promise, the commitment, that really counted.

"Maybe you’ll join me today in making a commitment. Make a promise. It might even be a promise to try yoga or practice yoga regularly. Then see what that commitment brings. Maybe decades from now you’ll look back and be shocked and amazed by the fruits of your unwavering persistence and dedication."

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
www.ExperienceYoga.org

p.s., Happy Halloween to all you spooks out there.

p.p.s., Hello to all you new Daily Yoga Tip readers in Maryland. The word about our Experience Sanskrit workshop in Annapolis (March 4, 2006) is getting around. We're looking forward to seeing you in the New Year.

For those of you who can't wait for the New Year, meet us this weekend in Dallas. We're offering the Experience Sanskrit workshop at the Surya Center for Yoga in Coppell Saturday at 1:30 pm. Find out more at http://www.suryacenteryoga.com/upcomingeventsworkshops.htm .

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC.

Autumnal Expansion

It's so beautiful here today.

The temperature is perfect outside. The sun is shining. The sky is clear. Everywhere I look I see beautifully colored leaves. I smell the smoke of burning fireplaces all throughout our neighborhood. It's gorgeous.

We've started shifting to those warm, thick comfort foods, too. It seems I can't get enough soup, chewy bread, chili, and hot cocoa.

The windows in our bedroom are only slightly cracked. I love the cool fresh air for sleeping. Our beds are piled with thick blankets. I'll admit it, once the sun goes down, I'm ready to cocoon in the thick clothes and comforts of home.

But here's one thing I've noticed. When there's just the slightest breeze outside, my whole body starts to shrink, to compact itself, to grip and brace against the penetrating winds.

I came in from the car a couple nights ago with all of the muscles on the back of my neck gripping tightly. It hurt.

This contracture is a natural, protective reflex. It's a defense mechanism. You were born with it, for your protection.

But like any good thing, too much of a good thing can be BAD.

One of the things I love about Anusara yoga is that it recognizes the universal truth that everthing must be balanced. Each of the actions in the Five Universal Principles of Alignment is balanced by an opposite action.

In particuar, muscular engergy is balanced by organic expansion.

Muscular energy is the beneficial action of toning the muscles and drawing them from both the surface of the body towards the bones and from the distal limbs toward the trunk.

Organic expansion is both the widening and broadening of the trunk, along with the extension of the long bones out away from the center of the body.

If you overdo or underdo either one of these actions, you're imbalanced and you start to deviate from the optimal blueprint for your body. Pain, like that pain in my neck I mentioned earlier, usually gets your attention. And you start looking for a solution.

Might I suggest you start somewhere other than your medicine cabinet?

If you live where it's cold, start watching for the reflexive tightening and shrinking of your body. Then intentionally expand. Broaden your trunk. Lift your head. Straighten your limbs. And lengthen your long bones. Breathe. Take up more space!

But you might want to get warm first. Several rounds of sun salutations (surya namaskar) should do the trick!

Here's to a beautiful and balanced Autumn season for us all!

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
www.ExperienceYoga.org

p.s., If you read this Daily Yoga Tip with any regularity, you probably recognize that I love playing with words, puns, double entendre, literary devices and homonyms. I think I get it from my Dad and his whole family. Give them a free moment and there's a crossword puzzle or something like it being attacked.

When I read today's Daily Yoga Tip, one word comes to mind: juxtapose.

BKS Iyengar has been attributed with saying, "Every pose should have some repose." It's brilliant. Every asana involves some work, some effort, but also ease, rest. It's almost a restating of Patanjali's "the posture of yoga is steady and easy."

Maybe someone will attribute this saying to me, "To pose is to juxtapose."

Juxtapose means to bring two things into close proximity for comparison, to see more clearly their differences, or perhaps that they are opposite.

To really practice a yoga pose you must integrate opposites into one body, one mind, one person.

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC.

Tree Pose Check-up

It's Saturday. If you're like me, you've already been out to the store for something you need around the house this weekend.

If you're back in a store later today, look carefully at how people stand while they're waiting in line.

A very common posture looks like this:

• most of the weight is shifted into one leg,
• the leg that is bearing the most weight is hyper-extended at the knee joint,
• the pelvis is shifted forward so the standing leg is not plumb, when viewed from the side, and
• the pelvis is tipped so it appears that the contents of the abdomen are spilling forward and out.

Understanding these four postural features is helpful in conducting the tree pose (vrksasana) check-up I am recommending today.

Why do people do this when they stand? I believe it's a combination of muscle weakness, the desire for convenient stability, and habit.

Let's start with stability first. If you stand with most of your weight in one leg and you sink your weight so you feel heavy, you'll notice you become more stable. You can stand this way for a long time because you're "hanging" in your joints. The joints lock out and you need little muscular effort to maintain the position.

It's convenient. It's stable. And it's a habit; you're accustomed to it. Bad news: it's also tough on your joints.

This body pattern is also static. It's not dynamic.

The energy of life flows. But hanging in your joint inhibits the flow of prana. Energy gets congested. Muscles weaken. Attentiveness is dulled.

Soon you don't even notice that you're spending much of your life with the front of your pelvis tipped down and your abdomen, lacking tone, protruding. It's the well-known and much despised "abdominal pooch."

Once you adopt this common stance in daily life, it's easy to habitually express it in tree pose...for the same reasons, convenient stability and weakness.

It's ironic then, that you can, and should, increase your stability by lifting up, by lengthening your spine and whole body up. When you do this, you:

• create space in the joints (prana flows),
• align the skeleton so that you become structurally stronger (hard work with the muscles is not needed),
• avoid undue wear and tear on your joints,
• don't need to shift large body segments around to counter-balance the "sag" in balancing poses, and most importantly
• are supported by gravity when aligned with its flow; you're buoyed up, rather than dragged down.

So don't surrender to gravity and sink into standing poses.

Now stand near a wall and come into tree pose. It's time for your tree pose check-up.

Reach out an touch the wall any time you need it. The adjustments I'm suggesting will probably throw you off balance at first.

First, check to see if your groins are hard. (See my previous Daily Yoga Tip.) It's more likely that your groin on the straight leg side will be hard and protruding. Hang onto the wall, you'll need to do enough of a forward bend (see the hips move back?) to soften the hard groins.

I'll caution you. If you've been "hanging" in tree pose for convenient stability, this forward bend to soften the groins will confuse your balance. So stick with it. Don't bail out early. Softening your hard groins will reveal your "hidden backbend."

Next, put a micro-bend in the knee of the straight leg. You'll notice right away that this requires you to use leg muscles. You proabaly won't like it. It reveals knee hyperextension. Hyperextension is easier, by far.

Lastly, without shifting your pelvis forward again, tuck your tailbone and draw the circumference around the navel back.

Then reach the arms over head and lengthen the side ribs, pulling the torso up out of the pelvis. You should feel light!

If you have difficulty with any of these instructions, that difficulty provides the revealing function of this tree pose check-up. That difficulty shows you where you've been "hanging out," surrendered to the pull of gravity, rather than "growing up" like a majestic tree, supported and buoyed by perfect alignment with the flow of the universe.

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
www.ExperienceYoga.org

p.s., Vrksa means "tree" in Sanskrit. Therefore, vrksasana is tree pose. But what's adho mukha vrksasana? It literally means "downward facing tree pose." What's that, you ask? It's handstand or full arm balance.

This points to one of the problems with learning the Sanskrit names of yoga poses: we know poses by their common English names, which often have no correlation to the literal English translations of the Sanskrit word roots. We'll help you sort it all out at the Experience Sanskrit workshop coming up one week from today in Dallas.

You won't want to miss this fun, four-hour workshop at the Surya Center for Yoga. Register today at http://store.yahoo.com/yhst-13837176072520/exsawodatxno.html. The price has already gone up to $60. So get in now, before the workshop sells out. You get a 100-page companion course guide to use and take home with you.

Find out more at www.ExperienceYoga.org.

p.p.s., This is a very special greeting to my 10-year old daughter Richelle, who lost a tooth (a molar, in fact) on Thursday. In honor of this auspicious event I will give my Daily Yoga Tip readers a mantra to recite. This is a mantra that invokes and honors Lord Ganesha, the elephant-faced deity, who is always portrayed with one broken tusk. Ganesha is known as the remover of all obstacles.

The mantra goes like this:

Aum ekadantaya namah

Namah mean "I bow to you" or "greetings, salutations." Ekadantaya means "One who has one tusk."

Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami says that "Ekadanta refers to one tusk in the elephant face, which means God broke the duality and made you to have a one-pointed mind." He also recommends that you repeat this mantra 108 times, with "sincere devotion," concentrating on the meaning, every day for 48 days. Be sure to do this practice, after you've bathed or washed your limbs, at the same place and time.

Remember, if you don't want to repeat this mantra, you can still remove the obstacles to achieving the state of yoga. Patanjali says "To overcome the obstacles and their accompaniments, the intense application of the will to some one truth (or principle) is required." (YogaSutras I:32) You can focus your meditation on any single truth.

p.p.p.s., We're also conducting the Experience Sanskrit workshop on March 4, 2006 at Golden Heart Yoga in Annapolis, Maryland. Find out more about Golden Heart Yoga at http://www.goldenheartyoga.com/. And we're staying an extra day for an asana workshop on Sunday. Make plans to attend now.

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC.

Hard Groins, Locked Pelvis, Hidden Backbend

The dictionary says that a groin is "a crease or hollow at the junction of the inner part of each thigh with the trunk."

I'm giving you this definition because "groin" is a generic term. It's not specific. Groins can be hard to find. And they're hard to teach about because...well because your groins are close to your private parts. And I can't just walk up to you and point at your groins or touch your groins without the possibility of ruining your yoga experience and my reputation.

Yet the groins hold to the key to a very simple but powerful yoga tip.

If you can figure out where your groins are, you can touch them. And you can be sure when you touch them that if your groins are hard and protruding, your pelvis is less functional than it would be if your groins were soft and hollow.

You can stop reading right there if you want to. It's a great tip in and of itself.

This trouble with hard protuding groins is never more obvious to me than at the start of wide-leg standing poses.

Take triangle pose (utthita trikonasana), for instance. To do triangle pose you first step your feet wide apart, then your turn your feet and legs. Since I usually start on the right side, I turn my left foot inward, then I rotate my right leg and foot outward so that my right knee and foot point to the right.

For most of us, we haven't yet begun the pose, but our fate is already sealed by a locked up pelvis.

You can find this out for yourself if you follow the instuctions I just gave you above. (Don't just read about it. Get up. Do it.) If you've got your feet turned so they point to the right, like I asked you to, you'll probably notice a few common body patterns:

1. Your shoulders, abdomen and pelvis are probably turned slightly (or not so slightly) to the right also. So instead of being squared up with the wall in front of you, you've rotated rightward.
2. Your right hip is lower than your left hip.
3. Your left groin is hard and protruding, while your right groin is soft and hollow.

When one or both groins are hard and protruding, you're not as free to move your pelvis as you would be if they were both soft and hollow. If your left groin were soft and hollow you could more easily shift your pelvis into a deeper triangle pose.

So how do you make your left groin soft and hollow? Bend forward. When you do a forward bend, notice that your torso moves forward and your pelvis moves backward. When your pelvis is back, your groins are soft and hollow and you can move it freely now into the pose.

Maybe the most important thing to notice here is that many of us, whether we're standing around or doing a yoga posture, are doing a "hidden" backbend. We're backbending, but we don't know it. When I look at most untrained yoga students from the side in nearly any standing pose, their legs are not vertical. Rather, their pelvises are positioned forward (over their toes, not their ankles) so their legs appear to be leaning forward. They look that way because they are learning forward.

If you begin your triangle pose with a hidden backbend and a hard groin, it's unlikely you'll get rid of it as you come down into the final position. So check it out. In your triangle pose, are your torso and head thrown back in a back bend? If they are, the opposite hip will be thrust forward and the groin will be hard.

So start checking yourself for hard protruding groins in standing poses. If you've got 'em, chances are good you're backbending and you don't know it. Forward bend enough to make the groins hollow and you're on your way.

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
http://www.experienceyoga.org/

p.s., I was teaching the Experience Sanskrit workshop a couple months ago in St. Louis when one of my students said she remembers that the Sanskrit word kona (as in trikonasana) means "angle" because she associates it with the word "corner." Brilliant. Get it? Kona sorta sound like "corner."

That's what the Experience Sanskrit workshop is all about...association. We give you vivid experiences that you can associate with yoga poses so that the Sanskrit names become unforgettable. Don't miss this great opportunity to join us for this fun, four-hour workshop.

Our next workshop date is in Dallas at the Surya Center for Yoga on November 5. It's coming soon. So register at http://store.yahoo.com/yhst-13837176072520/exsawodatxno.html. Do it before Saturday, when the price goes up to $60. You get a 100-page companion course guide to use and take home with you. Register today.

Find out more at http://www.experienceyoga.org/.

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC.

Forgotten Knee Pain Remebered in its Absence

A few nights ago I taught a yoga class that was primarily focused on stretching the quadriceps and hip flexors. These are the muscles on the fronts of the legs and pelvis.

We explored postures like thunderbolt pose (vajrasana), hero pose (virasana), reclined hero pose (supta virasana), reclined half hero pose (supta ardha virasana), and various lunges (banarasana).

After class I noticed that I had no pain in my right knee. What a great feeling...the absence of knee pain!

[Note: Here's an important instruction. If you experience knee pain while performing any of the poses listed above, you should stop immediately. Make appropriate adjustments so that you can practice these poses without pain.]

So, there's a great yoga tip. If you've got a sore knee, try a good series of poses that warm up the hips and legs, and stretch the quads and hip flexors. You might find out that, like me, the soreness leaves you.

But here's the puzzle that really made me think as I drove home from class:

Why didn't I notice my knee soreness until it went away?

Stump the teacher. I don't really know why. But I'm guessing two things got in my way: lack of awareness and laziness.

I had coffee Friday morning with my Dad. He was talking about a pain about which he said, "I've been living with it so long, I forgot I had it." That sums it up for me!

We humans have a tremendous capacity to sort through ideas and phenomena and immediately ignore the ones that aren't useful or seem to get in our way.

Patanjali says "the posture of yoga is steady and easy." But sometimes I practice yoga poses with ego gratification in the driver seat. When that happens, I'll do anything to accomplish the pose, even if it hurts. That's not yoga.

That's why regular practice of savasana, the corpse pose, is so important. In the absolute stillness of that pose you become more senstive and aware. And that sensitivity and awareness can be carried over into the more vigorous poses and your life off the mat, too.

When you're sensitive and aware, you're more likely to notice your knee pain AND notice that you've been ignoring it, or blocking it out.

I know many really great techniques and tips that are effective for eliminating knee pain. But I'll be honest with you. Sometimes I'm lazy. I know what to do, but I don't do it.

The awareness I gain from yoga also helps me to slow down and see clearly when I'm being lazy, too.

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
http://www.experienceyoga.org/

p.s., Here's my standard disclaimer. I am not a doctor or other health care provider. This information is not intended to be medical advice or diagnosis. You should seek medical advice and diagnoses from qualified licensed health care providers.

p.p.s., I am qualified to help you learn and remember the Sanskrit names of yoga poses. Look at the yoga poses named above. Vajrasana means thunderbolt pose. It looks and sounds almost like virasana, the hero pose. In both poses, your legs are folded under you. In vajrasana, you sit on your heels. In virasana, your feet are wider apart, so you sit on the ground between your feet.

How do you keep it all straightened out in your mind? Mostly by association. You associate new ideas with ones you already know. We'll do lots of that when we get together for the Experience Sanskrit workshop.

Our next workshop date is in Dallas at the Surya Center for Yoga on November 5. It's coming soon. So register at http://store.yahoo.com/yhst-13837176072520/exsawodatxno.html before the price goes up to $60. The four-hour workshop is fun. And you get a 100-page companion course guide to use and take home with you. Register today.

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC.

A Renewed Practice

Hi everyone. I'm back.

Here's a special hello to all of you new Daily Yoga Tip readers in Texas. It's great to hear from you. Thank you for your comments and subscription requests.

For you readers who aren't in Texas, I'll clue you in. As Texans in the Dallas area find out about our Nov. 5 Experience Sanskrit workshop, they're also checking out the Daily Yoga Tip and subscribing. That means we're adding new readers every day.

Today I spent all afternoon at the Show Me Yoga Center Natural Health Fair. Happily, I talked to many of you Daily Yoga Tip readers. It was great to visit with you.

I heard your mesasge loud and clear: We read your Daily Yoga Tip and where have you been? We miss it!

Well...I'll admit I didn't know you enjoyed these Daily Yoga Tips and benefitted from them so much. Thank you for letting me know.

So where have I been? I've been asking for, interviewing, negotiating, and getting a new job. And I've been giving notice at my current job and doing all the things I need to do to transition out. It's been stressful, thrilling, time-consuming and exciting.

I haven't written a Daily Yoga Tip in so long I am starting to hear my own advice in my head. Physician, heal thyself.

Here's the advice. When things go bad, keep doing your practice. When you've been sick, or when the Holidays interrupt your routine, or when family crises distract you, keep practicing yoga. It's the steadfast reliance on your practice that will get you through the not-so-ordinary hills and valleys of life.

Healthy people don't drop their "maintenance" routines when life throws them a curve ball. You don't stop brushing your teeth when a project at work gets complicated. You don't stop eating when your in-laws visit unexpectedly. So don't stop practicing yoga.

It's an essential. It helps you when unexpected circumstances arise.

...just like writing this Daily Yoga Tip helps me. It helps me sort out my thoughts and clarify my convictions. It's an important practice for me. I'm committed to it. I'm going to keep doing it, through thick or thin.

Patanjali reminds us that a practice is firmly established when it's done uninterrupted, with true devotion, for a long time.

Join me in renewing your practice today.

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
http://www.experienceyoga.org/

p.s., You can still enroll in the Experience Sanskrit workshop in Dallas BEFORE the price goes up. Don't wait. Tuition goes up from $50 to $60 in just a few days. You can enroll at http://store.yahoo.com/yhst-13837176072520/exsawodatxno.html . Sallie Keeney and I have been communicating almost daily now with our host Shannon Buffington at the Surya Center for Yoga in Coppell (near DFW airport). We are really excited to be doing the Experience Sanskrit workshop there. Don't miss this fun and unforgettable 4-hour workshop designed to help you learn and remember the Sanskrit names of yoga poses.

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC.

Dancing Corpse

I've read BKS Iyengar's book Light on Yoga many times. It is an amazing resource. One thing that makes it so amazing for me is whenever I read it, I find something I've never seen before.

A few years ago, I noticed next to each Sanskrit name of a yoga pose, Mr. Iyengar spells out a number. For example, next to mountain pose (tadasana) is "One." By triangle pose (trikonasana) is "Three." "Five" is spelled out right next to downward facing dog pose (adho mukha svanasana).

It took a great deal of hunting around in the book before I finally found Iyengar's explanation for these numbers. These are his indication of the difficulty of each pose. (See page 55 in your copy of Light on Yoga.)

In my examples above downward facing dog pose is harder than triangle pose. And triangle pose is harder than mountain pose.

I've spent years since then trying to figure out why he considers some poses more intense than others. My experience just doesn't match his numbering system. For example he gives shoulder balance (salamba sarvangasana) a "Two" and head balance (salamba sirsasana) a "Four!" I think if I were in Colorado at the Yoga Journal conference right now, I'd try to ask him why. Until then, I continue to ponder.

Here's a little point for you to ponder with me. The highest number in the book is Sixty. It's associated with a pose called tiriang mukhottansana. But when I look up corpse pose (savasana), the relaxation pose we do at the end of every class, there's no number!

Iyengar simply says "this apparently easy posture is one of the most difficult to master." He says, "by remaining motionless for some time and keeping the mind still while you are fully conscious, you learn to relax."

I've been teaching yoga for a decade and a half. And I can tell you "remaining motionless" is hard. It's hard to do and hard to teach.

I've stood in thousands of clases and watched as students wiggle and fidget in the final relation pose. They toss and turn, scratch, flex, wiggle and on and on. Some of them never really experience stillness in the time we have together.

I eventually named these students dancing corpses.

This all came to mind tonight as my wife and daughter sat with me in the theater watching Tim Burton's new movie, Corpse Bride.

The main character, Victor, finds himself in the world of the dead after the accidentally places his wedding band on the finger of a corpse while practicing his wedding vow in a dark forest. The inhabitants of the nether world welcome him with celebration. The screen is filled with, you guessed it, dancing corpses in various stages of decomposition.

My favorites were the dancing skeletons.

If you fidget in this relaxation pose, I have two tips for you.

1) Progressive relaxation. When you're lying down ready to do the pose, start at your feet. Contract your muscles there. Then release after a few seconds. Move progressively through all the muscle groups in your body until you've reached the muscles in your face. You can really get the feel for letting go with this practice.

2) Practice. Yup. Practice. Regularly. Frequently. Relaxing and being still are just like any other skill, the more you do it, the better you get at it. Keep practicing. Don't give up.

Put these tips into practice and soon your dancing corpse will rest in peace.

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
http://www.experienceyoga.org/

p.s., One of my favorite parts of the movie was when the lead male character was reunited with his dog Scraps (in skeleton form) in the nether world. It was a happy reunion.

In Sanskrit, sava is corpse, and savasana is corpse pose. Svana is dog, and svanasana is dog pose. So I suppose a pose named after the dog corpse, Scraps, should be called svana savasana.

Svanasana and savasana are often mixed up by yogis who are learning the Sanskrit names of the poses they practice. I call these and other common mix-ups "problem pairs." We'll work on problem pairs when we get together for the fun, four-hour Experience Sanskrit workshop coming up October 15 in Columbia, MO.

Find out more at http://www.experienceyoga.org/. Register ($50) at http://store.yahoo.com/yhst-13837176072520/exsawocomooc.html.

We also have dates set for Dallas, TX and Annapolis, MD. Click on
http://store.yahoo.com/yhst-13837176072520/index.html%20to%20register.

p.p.s., I love to look at bodies. Even though they're animated, the characters in Corpse Bride show some fabulous (and exaggerated) examples of kyphosis, a common posture variation. I wrote about yoga and kyphosis in a Daily Yoga Tip back in April. According to my web page statistics, it is one of the most frequently read tips on my web page. You can read it at http://experienceyoga.blogspot.com/2005/04/kyphosis-and-bending-backwards.html.

p.p.p.s., We chatted with Lucas, the manager of the Hote Lagunita, several times this week. He's in the United States. We were able to put the finishing touches on many of the details of our Experience Paradise yoga vacation coming up February 18-25, 2006. You wil not want to miss it. Find out more at http://www.experienceyoga.org/vacations.asp.

I really got excited this week after talking to Lucas. Your experience in Yelapa and in the yoga room will be fabulous, guaranteed. Many of the vacationers we took with us to Yelapa last year said it was the best vacation they'd ever had! It's the perfect combination of adventure, pleasure and affordability. Please make plans now to join us in Mexico. You will not be disappointed.

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC.