Fun with photos

Took a picture of my son doing Janu Sirasana.
Then added a little Photoshop to it. :)

Carbon Footprint

Studying yoga has allowed me to be more in tune to how my life and actions effect my environment and the Earth. One term that I'm examining more frequently is Carbon Footprint. I wanted to add some information about it here.

A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, and in particular climate change. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation etc. The carbon footprint is a measurement of all greenhouse gases we individually produce and has units of tonnes (or kg) of carbon dioxide equivalent.

A carbon footprint is made up of the sum of two parts, the primary footprint (a measure of our direct emissions of which we have personal control of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels including domestic energy consumption and transportation) and the secondary footprint (indirect CO2 emissions from the whole life cycle of products we use–those associated with their manufacture and eventual breakdown: the more we buy, the more emissions will be caused on our behalf.)

We can use any online calculator to find out our personal carbon footprint. I used this one from the Nature Conservatory to find that my four-person household uses 57 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent per year, which is below the U.S. national average (0f 110).

No Yoga tonight :(

Hubby could not come home on time tonight so I missed yoga class at the studio. No biggie. I have seven days of Yoga upcoming. I'll catch up. Plus, I am finding myself doing more yoga stretches just for the heck of it during the day. It's slowly becoming a part of my lifestyle.

Power Yoga

I did a Google search on on "power yoga". First four entries--in order--were Bryan Kest's Power Yoga, "what is power yoga" on About.com, Baptiste Power Yoga Institute, and The Hard & The Soft Yoga Intitute (Beryl Bender Birch). Most of them credit Ashtanga yoga as the style that gave "birth" to power yoga. From About.com: "The term 'power yoga' came into common usage in the mid 1990s, when several yoga teachers were looking for a way to make Ashtanga yoga more accessible to western students. Unlike Ashtanga, power yoga does not follow a set series of poses. Therefore, any power yoga class can vary widely from the next. What they have in common is an emphasis on strength and flexibility. The advent of power yoga heralded yoga's current popularity, as people began to see yoga as a way to work out. Power yoga brought yoga into the gyms of America."

Both Bryan and Beryl have formal Ashtanga training from Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. Baptiste has an exclusive power yoga, like Bikram Yoga, that only he can certify teachers to teach it.

Hatha Yoga Pradipika

I found a full online text version of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. I saved it to PDF and will try to take time to read before teacher training next week. Also, I found some "teasers"of the Bhagavad Gita, Gheranda Samhita, and the Shiva Samhita online.

Yoga with friend

My friend came over this evening to practice yoga with me. I recently found out she is interested in it. We did asanas for about an hour and then we talked about yoga. I think I overwhelmed her with info as we talked about some history of yoga that I know and gave her a list of recommended reading. I like having someone to talk to about it.

Nauli this morning

JT got up extra early this morning. I did nauli again. The up and down felt good, but the rolling nauli--both ways--was really difficult today.

Teacher Training in one week

I paid for my seven day intensive teacher training course this evening. Wow! one more week. I'm very excited. I started doing more online research about yoga. My motivation is high. I found a little piece about yantra yoga, which includes a little bit about bio-rhythms. I found a few places that chart bio-rhythms. If they are true, then my emotional and physical rhythms are pretty well in the gutter next week for teacher training, but intellectually, I'll be "all systems go!" Ready to learn, just not practice.

108

A Yoga Mala has 108 beads. I learned why in this nice article "Meaning of 108 Beads on a Mala" by Swami Jnaneshvara Bharati. In it, it lists many reasons why 108 is so special. The swami does maintain that, "Regardless of the meaning of 108, it is important that if a mala is used to count mantras, the mantra be remembered with sincerity, devotion, feeling, and full attention."

Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana

What a mouthful! Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana literally means "extended hand big-toe posture." It is the title of tonight's blog because for the first time in six years, I felt solid in this stance during tonight's practice. Not exceptional, mind you, but solid.
Worthy.
Progressing.
Good.

Create a Yoga Practice for Kids (book)

I picked up another interlibrary loan today; this one came all the way from Virginia! Create a Yoga Practice for Kids by Yael and Matthew Calhoun. This one offers yoga classes in a learning plan format and states the benefits of each pose in the plan. It also groups the plans into common themes like "Poses that get wet" and listing all poses that have to do with that theme like Fish Pose or Frog Pose. I like this idea as it helps children reinforce what they are learning when they can extrapolate the new topics to things they already know about and do everyday. The plans are geared to older children...maybe 8 or 10 and older, depending on emotional maturity.

Anticipatory Anxiety

A few months before JT was born, I began to worry. "What if's" filled my head: "what if I don't love him?" "What if I begin to ignore my older son?" I knew these were normal thoughts. In the seventh month, my doctor and I discussed and scheduled a planned c-section. I had a date that my son would arrive! I had mixed feelings about this and started to dwell on the c-section procedure. During a regular appointment, I broke down crying in front of my OB. She asked me if I would consider seeing a therapist. I said "but isn't this normal to be emotional?" She said that at this time, I should be experiencing euphoric feelings as my body was pumped with good-feeling hormones. Since I experienced some "baby blues" after my last birth, my emotional state now increased my risk of a deeper depression post-partum.

I planned to see a therapist. Even against my husband's wishes. He felt talking to a therapist was invasive on our privacy and a sign of weakness in the relationship we had. He felt that I should be able to talk it out with him and get over it that way. This made me feel even worse. I decided that my well-being, and the well-being of my family, were too important to NOT go see a professional.

My therapist was wonderful. In our first visit, she gave me a term for what I was feeling: anticipatory anxiety. It is the anxiety that one experiences before starting a challenging activity. Typically, this pre-event anxiety is much higher than what one actually ends up experiencing during the event. Once I had this term, I felt that I could better handle my emotions. The c-section went just fine with fewer complications than I anticipated.

As one resource states, "Why do we experience anticipatory anxiety? I think it’s because the panic response is over-zealous about doing its job: trying to locate any danger, in order to protect us. When it can’t find any danger in the present, it looks into the future...Each time you actually start the new activity–bringing the activity into the present–the anticipatory anxiety fades away."

Yoga teaches us to be in the present. I have thought about this with regards to my tendency to worry about things that may happen in the future. Focusing on the present and being here, calming my mind from the bombardment of worries I hear and read about, should help me better control this anticipatory anxiety in the future.

Nauli goes on

Still practicing Nauli in the mornings. Even when I am out late celebrating a friends' wedding and getting in at 3:00AM.

Storytime Yoga (book)

I have been doing my research on preschool yoga and have been finding that a lot of yoga practices for children incorporate stories or books. I checked out Storytime Yoga: Teaching Yoga to Children Through Stories by Sydney Solis from the library. It had some nice stories and corresponding poses, but it was not quite for what I was looking. For preschoolers, I think pictures play an important role. This book had few pictures.

Practicing Nauli

We were supposed to practice nauli at least 5 of 7 days before next yoga teacher's session. I finally did it this morning.