by Brianna | Aug 26, 2011 | Breathing, Healing, practice
Years ago I discovered Rumi during a yoga class and he has been a meaningful part of my practice ever since. If you have yet to make your way to Rumi’s writings I recommend that you get yourself a book. If you are anything like me it will be worn by your hands. Today to mark the start of my personal practice, I blindly opened my book and was struck by this beautiful passage: The spiritual path wrecks the body and afterwards restores it to health. It destroys the house to unearth the treasure, and with that treasure builds it better than before. Rumi I remained still for a moment giving his words room to have weight. After a bit, I turned my focus inward and became aware of my breath rolling in and my breath rolling back out. I added movement for a while playing with my edge. Moving and breathing, breathing and moving, I made my way back to...
by Brianna | Jun 7, 2011 | Healing, practice, Yoga
First and foremost, I know that “efforting” is not a word. Lately though, I have found myself using it when I teach. At first I used air quotes to acknowledge its made-up status but I even dropped that. Full disclosure, when I read books and there are typos or grammatical errors I find a pen and circle them. So why am I using a fake word? I think we can all agree that word choice is powerful. For example the word “try” has a very different meaning and implies a very different energy than the word “effort”. So in all honesty I am hopeful that my students will forgive my bad grammar when I ask them to make sure that they are efforting. I wish instead that they use that cue as a reminder to take a breath, reconnect to themselves, become active participants in their pose and put forth some focused...
by Brianna | Apr 6, 2011 | Healing
Allowing yourself to actually experience your emotions can be very intense. Because of that many times we begin to live on the surfaces of our being. We turn to one form of escapism or another; choose your “poison” for the list and style of escape in all actuality is endless. When we behave in this way, metaphorically we become a “neat” house with everything shoved in the closets. Without thinking we swallow our painful emotions. Tamping them down, not realizing that all we are doing is saving the emotion for later. We take an active hand in creating our personal field of Yuck. Emoting and how it can be appropriate has been a hot topic in my life lately. I have been known to do it exactly wrong. When you are releasing old stored emotions, patterns of pain, you don’t need to direct it at anyone. In fact, the “emotional vomiting” for lack of a better term should merely be for the purpose of release. Sometimes, I totally mess that up and direct my emotion at someone undeserving. After I apologize I try to recognize that it is okay to make mistakes in practice, just as it is okay to make mistakes in life. I have found personally that often those recognized and admitted mistakes unfurl into the most beautiful growth point. Anyway, lately I have been thinking about emoting so much because of my beautiful niece Alexandra finding her voice. Like all babies Alexandra makes no bones about showing you exactly how she feels. It’s pretty beautiful. When she is angry she is angry, when sad she is...
by Brianna | Mar 24, 2011 | Chanting, gratitude, Healing
Almost twenty years ago, when I was a teenager I became interested in psychic phenomenon. Because of that fascination my Mom arranged an appointment for me with an acclaimed medium. During my session, she said to me, “I don’t understand this but they say you will. They want you to know that: ‘We are all one. It is we who are the universe.’” At that time I really didn’t understand it either but I never forgot it. Although I had been raised Christian, and deeply respected my Reverend, I spent most of my late teens and very early twenties trying on other peoples beliefs like clothing. It is not all that rare after all, I was young and I was seeking. At different times I practiced being: Agnostic, Buddhist, Jewish, Sufi, and Wiccan – to name just a few. Where I landed is a very personal place as all belief is. From my experience if you put two people of any tradition together and ask them to define their belief, you best step back and simply watch those sparks fly. Debating faith, which is literally man’s ability to believe that which he knows not to be true, is fascinating. As years have passed, and my understandings have shifted through both trial and joy, I can summarize my belief like this: “We are all one. It is we who are the universe.” The Lamps are different, But the Light is the same One matter, one energy, one Light, one Light-Mind. ~Rumi This weekend at Charm City Yoga (www.charmcityyoga.com), I am teaching a Yoga Benefit for Japan with Kim Manfredi....
by Brianna | Feb 2, 2011 | art, Healing, practice, Yoga
During college, I took yoga as my gym credit. The practice transformed me, as it does, deepening my ability to be present. Ultimately, that awareness rippled off the mat, making me better at ferreting out the subtler aspects of composition, technique, and story in my art historical studies. Back then, I spent a lot of time meditating in galleries at the local museum, using objects as my point of focus. Both Yoga and art, as practices, require: discipline, introspection, contemplation, and focus so deep that it becomes a meditation. In Yoga, each breath builds on the next; in art, each artist builds on the ones who came before them. There is a flow to both; an unfolding is intrinsic to each. I wonder, the last time you went to a museum, did you actually see the art? Are you sure? Seems strange but most museum visitors will spend less than three seconds looking at an object. Which begs the actual question: “were you even present for that bit of time?” Recently I shared with my yoga students at The Baltimore Museum of Art how I came to design a public program where art history and yoga are interwoven. Although there are many reasons (including that it is the coolest thing ever to do yoga next to a Rembrandt), I realized as I said it: “my true goal with this class is to teach you to not just look, I want you to actually...
by Brianna | Jan 26, 2011 | daily practice, Healing, practice, Yoga
For years I had tried to create space for a daily yoga practice in my life. I marked out hours on my schedule, kept a mat on the floor, talked myself into poses, and sometimes even managed to practice several days running. Still even those on some level fell short. It wasn’t until I had worked a fourteen hour day and was berating myself for not immediately moving to my mat that I finally understood that my thought patterns were holding me back. At some point I had conditioned myself to believe that a daily practice was only if an hour or more had passed. That night my perspective on what a daily practice was shifted drastically and I took in with a little more than a breath that practice is not defined by time; practice simply means practice. Through that shift in my mindset finding space in my life to practice came easy and at some point, although I always move to my mat with a particular intention, fitting it in is now merely a habit. In hindsight it seems so simple. Yet it took me years to find my way to that understanding. More than ten have passed since that moment, and I am grateful each day as I take time to find my breath and connect to my deeper...
