I’ve been looking for a way to punch up my yoga practice.

My find turned out to be quite literal.

In the past month, I’ve taken up a martial art style called krav maga. It was developed by the Israeli Defense Forces.

*Insert puzzled look here.*

“What?” You ask. “Isn’t this in diametrical (and philosophical) opposition to yoga?”

Krav maga means “close combat” in Hebrew and is a mixed, no-holds-barred martial art that’s efficient, quick-to-learn and teaches punches and kicks to the groin and jabs to the eyes as essential parts of its style.  Yoga means “union” in Sanskrit. 

In their origins, the two are very different, but in their applications, they parallel.

Krav does focus on reactions to external stimuli – such as an attacker - but like yoga, the training prepares you to find calm inside. In a yoga class you might be holding a strenuous pose and have to breathe through the discomfort and find a place of calmness.

In the martial art, you might also be in a difficult place such as fending off five attackers. Through practice, you learn to react more strategically instead of blindly kicking or punching from a place of fear or raw adrenaline. And as with yoga, when you’re fighting, you begin to learn about yourself. You discover your ingrained habits and your weaknesses as much as you do your strengths.

These two new hobbies complement each other: krav gives you strength. The pushups and punches we do in class complement the sun salutations. I’m stronger, and I can hold my yoga poses better. I’m flexible from yoga, so I can kick higher in krav.

Besides a shot of much-needed endorphins, krav has given me a new burst of confidence and assertiveness.

There is something incredibly empowering about learning self-defense. I’m a girly girl, but I haven’t ever quite outgrown my tomboy roots. My competitiveness comes out when I’m the only woman (or one of two).

I’ve been speaking my mind more and assertively laying some ground rules for people in my life – especially those of the opposite sex. Creating those boundaries has made me happier.  And so has learning to kick someone’s butt.

Here’s a clip from an episode of Fight Quest, where Jimmy and Doug go to Israel and train with the world’s best krav maga instructors and the IDF. My class is not this intense - yet.

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Owww. Ahh. Owww. Ahh.

I still <3 my physical therapist, despite him putting me through some pleasant pain I asked for.

I asked Shannon to push down really hard on my left knee while it was straight out with my ankle propped up on a bolster.

I’ve been going to PT for the patellar tendonitis in my right knee, but I always end up doing exercises for both my legs there because when the right knee feels better the left one starts to ache or get stiff.

My anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is in fine working condition after my 2005 reconstruction surgery, but it’s screwed in a little tight, so my left leg doesn’t extend as straight as my right.

But with Shannon manually pushing on it and then stretching out the iliotibial band, a small bundle of fibers that runs from the side of the hip to the knee, my left leg felt just like my right one.

And what a difference it made at yoga last night!

My balance was better. My leg didn’t wobble or shake as much. And I didn’t scream on the inside when we did the Reclining Hero Pose. (That’s when you move your heels to the outside of your hips while sitting on your knees.) The goal is to get your rear end to the floor and eventually recline.

I didn’t get my butt all the way down to the floor but I didn’t grimace in pain, I managed to relax and I sat up tall. Usually I’m hunched over and trying to put as much weight on my hands as possible with an unpleasant expression across my face.

Yoga is all about balance – not just standing-on-one-leg balance – but trying to make your body symmetrical in its strength and flexibility.

When you begin to look for that kind of balance by doing things such as forcing yourself to do poses you might not be comfortable in or stretching your weaker side more often you also become more balanced in your mind. You begin to see things more objectively and less colored by emotion.

I understand that for my body, feeling normal may just require more work than for others.

And I’ll admit that some days it’s harder to remember that. I just take it one good leg-stretching session at a time.

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I’ve fallen off the (yoga) wagon.

The culprits? Too many late nights drinking and too many evenings watching back-to-back-to-back episodes of Law and Order on TV.

Sigh.

I can feel it: My bum knee’s stiff, my back feels stressed and I’ve had a shorter fuse lately.

With all the ads for special gym memberships, discount Jenny Craig sign ups and a litany of other deals to jump-start New Year’s resolutions, I’ve felt even more sheepish about getting off track.

I am still taking my vow of yoga. I got derailed, have been making excuses, feeling a little sorry for myself and trying to avoid the first week back in it when I’ll be really sore.

I have a tendency to get overwhelmed, freeze and hibernate inside my head - especially when I feel like I’m flopping. It’s always been difficult for me to take one step at a time. To succeed you have to fail - it sounds like an oxymoron at first, right? But those who get farther can get up, shake themselves off and continue on.

That process feels harder when you’re in the middle of it, of course.

It turns out that my going on power walks while being a yoga truant might put me back on the right track, according to a Yoga + Magazine article about countering resolution burnout:

“Investigators have found that the constant vigilance or attention to our goals, and the need to repeatedly inhibit ingrained responses to the cues around us, can be exhausting. In fact, Roy Baumeister at Florida State University in Tallahassee, found that self-control gets depleted just like our cells’ energy stores do when we go for a long run or do a vigorous workout. And when self-control is depleted, we’re less likely to follow our intentions and more likely to fall back into our habitual patterns…

Luckily, just like food can restore the energy supplies in a cell, researchers have found that mild exercise, rest, and meditation can all be used to restore self-control.”

While the research gives me some hope in getting back on the wagon, I doubt that Law and Order reruns will ever count as meditation.

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Many yogis look at our awake mind as a drunken monkey.

I see a Curious George-looking creature with a long, playful tail, hootin’, hollerin’ and flinging poo everywhere.

This emotional whirling dervish of a primate occupies the space of our human brains. Morphing our conscious mind from desire (pow!) to insecurity (smash!) to happiness (zap!) to sadness (crash!) all in a matter of seconds.

But the monkey mind visualization reminds us to have compassion for others, my meditation teacher, Annette, explained after a class. Perhaps we have a little more control over our internal drunken monkey, but others reacting in anger or fear (name any emotion here) have been taken hostage by that intoxicated, nonsensical animal.

It also helps us have empathy and understanding for ourselves as we struggle to recognize when we’re thinking rationally or when there’s been a monkey coup d’etat.

I didn’t see the little scamp in my brain until her explanation. But the monkey is cuter than the other critical creature that has occupied my mind: A giant, hairy Venus flytrap that looks like Audrey II from “Little Shop of Horrors.”

I refer to this out-of-control plant as my inner critic. It’s the raspy voice inside my head preying on my fears and insecurities.

I’d like to see a fight between the plant and drunken monkey. I’m not sure what that means in psychological or yogic terms, but it’d sure be amusing.

Or scary.

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Streams of Thought: Periodic bits, bites and braggadocio not quite yoga related but still interesting, amusing and entertaining.

Today’s Stream: M.I.T.’s Physics Guy

I hated physics in high school. And I definitely hated my physics teacher, Mr. McCullough. (He was also my chemistry teacher too – and, you guessed it, I didn’t care much for chemistry).

But here’s a physics teacher I’m interested in learning from:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Walter H. G. Lewin, 71, a physics professor, has long had a cult following at M.I.T. And he has now emerged as an international Internet guru, thanks to the global classroom the institute created to spread knowledge through cyberspace.

Some of his students were quoted in the NYT article:

A fan who said he was a physics teacher from Iraq gushed: “You are now my Scientific Father. In spite of the bad occupation and war against my lovely IRAQ, you made me love USA because you are there and MIT is there.”

Steve Boigon, 62, a florist from San Diego, wrote, “I walk with a new spring in my step and I look at life through physics-colored eyes.”

I don’t know if I’ll have physics-colored eyes but I’m certainly going to give this guy’s lectures a try.

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Can I divorce myself?

So, this vow of yoga is harder than I expected. 

I pictured every class with me energetic and motivated by the endeavor of personal betterment and enlightenment.

It wasn’t Monday night.

I spent most of my Bikram class scowling at my reflection in the mirror.

I kept thinking: “Ugh! I don’t want to be here.”

And then: “You made a commitment, remember?”

I retorted: “What’s the point of a commitment if it makes you miserable? What good will this 90 minutes I’m struggling through – hot, tired and with a headache – do me?”

And then I’d fall over – ’cause it’s hard to balance when you’re not focused.

Of course, I’d breathe, think for a few more minutes and then start wondering again whether this vow was such a good idea.

I told myself I was going to take this one second at a time - I wasn’t going to push myself. Each class - just like each day – is its own, and I’d ignore how good I was (and how I good I felt) last week.

There’s a part in the book “Eat, Pray, Love” where the author describes an intense yoga class where she’s twisted into triangle pose and holding it much longer than she’d like.

“Why do we practice yoga?” The teacher asked her class.

“Is it so we can become a little bendier than our neighbors or is there perhaps some higher purpose?”

Now I’m left pondering my purpose.

Emotions and feelings are fleeting, bouncing back and forth in one’s head. So while I ponder my why, I’ll just keep going and find out the answer from a more reasoned place.

In the meantime, I took a random, unscientific poll about what commitment means to other folks.

Here’s what I got:

From Beth, 34:

But commitment is about the emotional ties.  It’s about investing yourself, not your money.  The old-fashioned marriage vows sum it up best: “Do you promise to love, comfort, honor and keep (him/her) For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. And forsaking all others, be faithful only to (him/her) so long as you both shall live?”

That’s what commitment is all about.  And it applies not just to marriage, but to friendship as well.

From Briana, 25:

I think commitment begins when you look at the big picture and realize that there is something that you want to develop within yourself...what you are really seeing is that you want to develop the quality within yourself that leads you toward the person you see when thinking of that outcome, not so much the outcome itself.

Then, the essence of commitment is in taking that big picture, and applying it to all of the smaller snapshots of your life.  It means not losing sight of that big goal, even when it feels impossible to get there.  It’s like one of those pictures that you see sometimes that, from a distance looks like one big image, but up close it becomes apparent that it is really made of a thousand of tiny, independent images.  Commitment is the process of creating all of those little pictures.

From Crystal, 25:

Making commitments is essentially investing in stability, keeping them determines the rate of return. If you uphold your commitments to an employer, the return may be a raise or promotion - financial stability. If you uphold your commitments to a friend or significant other, perhaps they’ll be yours for life - emotional stability. And if you uphold commitments to yourself, I reckon the return will be spiritual stability. Commitment - It’s the stock market of life.

From Corrie, 29:

I think commitment, whether it be to a job or another person, is the personal decision to see something through. I think problems come in when two people have differing opinions on when something is “through.”

From Joe, 53:

A commitment carries the weight of a promise, because once you’ve made it clear you have “committed,” others develop expectations.

Then again, you could be talking Baker Act.

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I’m taking a vow of yoga.

No - this isn’t my two-week notice before I run off to an Indian ashram. And it’s not some new age vow of celibacy either.

It’s a commitment to me.

“Jeez,” you’re probably thinking, “This girl does yoga and reads and writes about it for fun, and she’s not committed?”

Leave it to a best friend to put your life in check.

Briana and I were having an e-conversation about how we wanted to improve our lives – not like resolutions but more like paradigm shifts, altering our perspective to create real change.

When she e-mailed me and said that she hoped I would try to round out my life by stopping my obsessing about my dating life, I was taken aback.

“It seems to bring you A LOT of unhappiness,” she wrote. “I do think you are realizing, much like you did with your weight, that you’re too good for that.”

“Uhh … that’s not what I was thinking … but maybe that should be my goal,” I told her. “I’m a little scared.”

That conversation was two months ago but has whirred in my mind nearly every day since.

At the gym last week, I stumbled on a Yoga Journal article about how finding yourself is finding your soul mate.

I thought about all the things that inspire me, all the adventures I want to embark on, stories I want to write and things I want to see. 

“How much of my energy have I misplaced?” I wondered.  “How many times have I worried about someone not worth worrying about when I could’ve been making myself happier?”

That’s when I decided to take my vow.

For the next year, I’m going to commit to going to yoga as not just a calorie-burning activity but as an exercise in learning about me.

I will go to yoga and mediation class as often as I can. In 2009, I want to start teacher training.

I’m still trying to be yogic and flexible about the whole thing:  OK, I may not make class seven days a week. It may be better for me to have a drink with the girls or a beer with a boy and skip class on occasion, but I’m vowing to decidedly put me first.

So I guess it’s ’til death do me part, right?

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I left an hour into my 90-minute Bikram yoga class last night.

At about an hour in just after we finished the standing series, I left dizzy, nauseated and a little annoyed with myself.

My body reminded me why moderation is better than excess as I sat in the lobby outside the 100-degree studio dehydrated and overheating.

Ugh. I consumed way too much alcohol, sweets and meat lately and I had started to uncomfortably sweat it out.

I had a blast drunkenly eating turkey dogs, s’mores and drinking vodka and coke while tailgating for the USF game Saturday. From what I recall of Thursday’s adventure barhopping, concert-going, drinking four vodka tonics and two shots I had fun too.

While I took care of my social life, I hadn’t taken care of the rest of me. And it was painful.

Our teacher’s message last night was to give gratitude to all out bodies do for us. I felt thankful that on most days I can do the 90 minute hot workout I enjoy so much.

A very apropos e-mail from Yoga Journal today reminded me I needed not live yesterday’s scenario next week. I’m going home to St. Louis for the holiday and will be enjoying five full days of my mom’s cooking.

Mmmm.

But ahh yes, the magic of mindfulness also works when it comes to Thanksgiving dinner.

As the Yoga Journal article points out:

According to Ayurvedic principles, there’s a physiological reason for this: When you eat in moderation, your body and mind are happy. But when you eat too much, you overwhelm your agni (the digestive fire), creating chaos in your belly and inviting unpleasant imbalances such as gas, weight gain, and depression.

I’m sure too much tryptophan adds to this too.

So for this trip home I’m going to try and exercise a little self restraint and not gobble everything in sight.

Maybe then my digestive fires won’t be so aflame and my return to yoga won’t be as painful as yesterday.

Happy thanksgiving and namaste!

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Even amphibians struggle with self-acceptance.

Well, OK, maybe just one musically-inclined puppet.

In the lyrics of his well-known song, “It’s Not Easy Being Green,” Kermit starts off wishing he were something else:

It’s not that easy bein’ green;
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves.
When I think it could be nicer being red, or
yellow or gold-
or something much more colorful like that.

But by the last verse, Kermit begins to accept himself for what he is:

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why?
Wonder, I am green and it’ll do fine,
it’s beautiful!
And I think it’s what I want to be.

And not only does Kermit think yogically – he does yoga, too.

Yoga also helps with his youthful appearance, Kermit said in 2005 in Kermit, Texas at a celebration of his 50 years in showbiz.

“My favorite position is the downward frog.”

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The calm, rational yogi in my head told me to focus on how good it feels to move and how I was breathing as I watched my reflection during a Bikram yoga class last night.

The not-so-calm yogi screamed, “Aaahh! I’m fat!”

Part of the Bikram philosophy is to keep focused in the mirror as you go through the series – which I’m not too keen on.  Bikram is a set of 26 postures done in a room heated to about 100 degrees. The postures, performed in a distinct order and timed, are designed to improve spine strength and flexibility.

In the perfect world, I’d say I transcended my feeling of inadequacies and focused on my yoga practice for the hour and a half.

But, no, my restless mind took over – I kept flitting between focused movements and contemplating how my thighs looked (not good) in spandex shorts.

Sometimes, I feel very Bridget Jones (the plump and goofy British character played by Renee Zellweger), neurotically wondering if fat can really solidify overnight and if it’s possible to gain 5 pounds in one gorging sitting.

When I was trying to let those feelings of insecurity go, I reminded myself of the progress I’ve made.  Like any 12-step bettering program, the first leap is acknowledging the issue.

But as cliché as you-just-read-it-in-Cosmo sounds, I spent much of the hour and a half trying to convince myself I looked OK.

And then I remembered the day I took that leap.

I was a freshman in college. On the way to my dorm room, I looked in the hallway mirror and thought, “Ugh. I need to lose weight.”

Of course, the rational side of my brain reminded me I hadn’t eaten anything differently to suddenly gain 5 pounds. So why did I feel like this?

I remembered I’d been upset about something else, causing my self-esteem to plummet that day.

How this translated into me miraculous gaining weight I have no idea – but the realization felt right.

As I stood in the mirror last night, I remembered that moment. I thought about the worry I’ve put into some other things in my life.

I’ve learned in yoga that progress comes from acceptance. You accept your body will be different from day to day. Comparisons of the person next to you do you no good because the battle on the mat lies between your expectations and reality.

I wonder how long I’ll keep diverting the worry to my self-worth. But I think (and hope) that with every practice and every day filled with more insight and wisdom, I’ll be able to answer that question.

Namaste.

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“I watch the ripples change their size

But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and

So the days float through my eyes …”

Come on, sing it loudly with me …

“Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes!”

I played this David Bowie ditty on repeat for a time when I was going through some ch-ch-changes (no, it wasn’t puberty). It was a winter of the soul for me, if you will, and I felt some kind of personal evolution taking place.

But I didn’t quite get the lyrics of “Changes” until a few months ago as I was pondering a Sheryl Crow song, “I’m Gonna Soak Up The Sun”:

“I don’t have digital
I don’t have diddly squat
It’s not having what you want
It’s wanting what you’ve got”

And I realized that soaking up the sun (lyrically and literally) is all about being content with the present – very yoga – ish.

I thought again about “Changes” – and visualized his “stream of warm impermanence.” OK, maybe that’s a little far out, but his message really is about acknowledging and accepting the natural flucuations of one’s life.

I had another audio epiphany listening to the pop station:

“Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten”

As I was singing loudly (and badly) in my car to Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten,” I thought, really, how often do we pay homage to the now?

Yahoo’s mind-body expert, David Romanelli, actually tunes his yoga classes to playlists that inspire him. And lucky for you and me, he posts them on his Web site.

Do you have any songs that remind you of what you’re all about? Leave a comment!

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We’re encouraged to obsess about relationships. How to get ’em, fix ’em and make sure we stay in ’em (with or without a prenup). And we’re encouraged to think that we can change ourselves to fit them.

Here’s a smattering of headlines from women’s magazines about the pair-bonding obsession:

* How to Reach Soul-Mate Status with Any Man

* Cure the Lure of Bad Boys this New Year

* Get the Love You Deserve

I’ve picked endless flowers, leaves and whatever else I can get my nervous hands on, asking, “He loves me, he loves me not?” all the way back to grade-school crushes. I’ve had marathon phone conversations with friends trying to figure out if the current one is, in fact, “the one.”

I’m in no hurry for cohabitation, marriage or babies. But I’m curious to know how people pull it off. My parents have been happily married for 43 years.  They’re opposites — my mom’s energetic and has manual smarts (she can recreate just about anything she tastes); my dad organizes his budget and life with a collection of Excel spreadsheets and prefers to spend his evenings watching TV.

Most recently, I was obsessing and stressing about a boy on the phone with my best friend, Briana — a situation after 14 years of friendship she’s quite used to.

I’d successfully avoided “the conversation” with him — you know, the one where you declare your feelings, decide how you should refer to each other to acquaintances and acknowledge whether or not you see a future together. 

But then I had an “Ah-ha!” moment. What if, for once, I stopped consulting Magic 8 Balls, flower petals and fortune cookies and just rolled with it, until it a) worked or b) it didn’t.

So I took another random, unscientific poll to see if maybe I was on the right track to this whole happiness thing.

Here’s what I got:

* “Relationships are about surrendering. It’s not so much about the other person not letting you be you. Rather, you have to be comfortable with being yourself. You have your trial folks to deal with so you are able to determine your likes and dislikes, and what it is you want from a partner. However, in the end, the one who causes you to pause, the one who consumes your thoughts, the one who carries you in their heart and you the same is the one who you thought to be impossible … And it’s not that it’s hard to believe that this person is the one, you have to be ready to believe it.” — Sarah, single

* “Understand, you can’t change anyone! The only person you can change is yourself! This is the key to counseling. When I can get someone to buy into the idea that the best way to change their relationship is to change themselves, this, in turn, makes their relational partner change their attitudes and actions to adjust to the changes the other has made.” — Rocky, married for 35 years

* “If you are immature and insecure and don’t know yourself, then you get caught up in expectations, fears and fantasies about how someone or some situation should be. In the second scenario, the relationship works and you can be your true self and you accept your partner’s true self because you’re into acceptance of what is, not what you think it oughta be!  When you learn to first accept yourself as you are then you can accept others … My advice on letting go and letting you and the other just be? Self-Study through yoga (of course).” — Laraine, married for 29 years

* “You cannot marry someone and expect to change them. If you do that, the relationship is bound to fail. When I married my husband, there were things about him I didn’t like and vice versa. Now, he was aware of this and changed the behavior because he knew it was detrimental to our relationship. It’s not something I tried to make him do, he did it on his own; the same with me. We are from two completely different backgrounds and were raised very differently.” — Cloe, married for nine years

* “There is no one-fits-all answer for relationships. Love is complicated and complex. And the older we wait before stepping knee deep into a committed relationship or marriage, the less open we are to compromise. But that shouldn’t be a reason not to open your heart to someone. It’s human nature to guard your feelings early in the dating stage. No one wants to be labeled a sucker, so we proceed in a new relationship on eggshells, fearful of speaking our mind, trying to prevent Mr. or Miss Right from becoming Mr. or Miss Right Now. We are afraid to be ourselves, living with the false illusion that if this person likes me, they won’t want to leave if the relationship lasts and my true self is finally revealed. Stop kidding yourself. You don’t want to be involved with someone who doesn’t allow you to be all the person you are, faults and all.” — Ken, single

What do you think makes it work? Post a comment.

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After spending two-thirds of my life thinking about my weight, I’m dumping my scale.

I had a pair of red Arizona-brand jeans I thought I looked fat in when I was in third grade. I was upset that I weighed 60 pounds instead of 50 pounds like many of my classmates.

As a seventh grader, I wrote a magical equation in my diary I didn’t learn in math class:  1 pound = 3,500 calories.

I held my head over the toilet in high school and pushed my finger down my throat hoping my parents wouldn’t hear me throwing up.  I tried to the binge-and-purge method a few times and was a little annoyed I couldn’t stick with it.

After a bout with pneumonia my freshman year of college I was pleasantly surprised I lost 15 pounds. It’s easy to lose weight when you can barely breathe, let alone eat.

I’m 24 now and realize women are socialized to think their self-worth is attached to their look. It’s undeniable that there’s pressure to be beautiful and thin. The actresses who are deemed “curvy” in photos or on TV are still incredibly tiny – a size 4 or 6 as opposed to a 2 or 0. But I also decide how much that expectation will dictate how I live my life. And for too many years, it’s pulled a lot of weight.

I suggested to a friend last week we try a month-long plan to lose weight/get in-shape/tone up. She had mentioned something to me about wanting to slim down (and she looks fabulous without the plan, by the way).

When I stood in the mirror with the measuring tape around my waist, I had this fleeting thought in the back of my mind, “Maybe I’ve been doing this all wrong.”

I continued on though, measuring my hips and thighs. I grimaced at the numbers, dutifully recorded them anyway and thought, Ok, maybe it’ll work this time – daydreaming about a gorgeous Diane Von Furstenberg dress and me wearing it in a size 4 or 6 instead of my current 8 to 10.

I started to think how much happier I’ve become since I started yoga a year ago. I’ve stopped stressing about my life and accepted thing as they are, stopped worrying about what I can’t change and focused on what I can do.

I took a good look in the mirror.

I’ve landed dates 10 pounds heavier and 10 pounds lighter. I’ve gone kayaking and salsa dancing at this weight.

Why should this be any different from the rest of my life?

And then I decided to throw the scale away.

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Hamm…sahhh…sohhh…hammm…

And so it went it my head at a guided mediation class Tuesday night.

We repeated “hamsa” with every breath we took --“ham” on the inhale and “sa” on the exhale.

A large component of mediation – and yoga – is focusing on your breathing. It’s supposed to calm and focus you.

I don’t speak a lick of Sanskrit – so why was I repeating this mantra over and over again in my head when I had no idea what it meant?

I set my skepticism aside. I calmed down, repeated the mantra and listened to the Tambura, a trippy-sounding stringed instrument that reminded me of when The Beatles teamed up with Sitar player Ravi Shankar.

Our teacher told us that “hamsa” was a natural mantra – the sound it makes when you say it is the same sound that you make when you inhale “ham,” exhale “sa.” It’s believed that the sounds of mantras such as “hamsa” and “ohm” have a meaning independent of the translation.

As soon as I got home, I Googled “Hamsa mantra.”

It’s a declaration of self.

When you repeat ”soham” (the sound of hamsa backward) it means “I am that I am that I am that I am,” according to Swami Jnaneshvara Bharati’s Web site.

I smiled.

It’s a more universal message than Stuart Smalley’s self-acceptance affirmations (You’re Good Enough, You’re Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like You!). There’s no book to buy or elaborate self-improvement plan - there’s just one word.

And hey, if you need an affirmation and say it out loud, chances are no one will know what it means.

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With the goal of (eventual) world peace, I went into “yogic sleep” yesterday evening.

Yoga-philes around the world, including yours truly, participated in the “Global Mala” this weekend.

Described as the “the largest unified worldwide yoga event,” studios from around the world held yoga-centric fundraisers to help create a global “Peace Wave.”

The Lotus Room and Yogani, both in South Tampa, led 108 sun salutations on Bayshore Boulevard on Sunday.

Idealistic? Sure.  But why not give it a shot?

As Gandhi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

Or for those who remember Michael Jackson in his pre-dangling-babies-off-balcony days: “If you wanna make the world a better place / take a look at yourself, and then make a change.”

I went to a “Yoga Nidra” or “yogic sleep” guided mediation class at Yogani studio. It is supposed to be a conscious deep sleep where you are incredibly relaxed but are still aware of your feelings and thoughts.

It was my first meditation class. 

There’s a misconception often floating around that people who do yoga and meditate are naturally calm, serene and low-key. I’m energetic, easily excitable and easily distracted. I’ve found that yoga keeps me from going into the deep end – and I’ve heard others express a similar sentiment.

When I practice, part of what keeps me focused is the immediate threat of tipping over or falling if I don’t, so the thought of staying focused and still for a whole hour is a little terrifying to me.

The experience was kind of surreal and kind of wild. Really.

Here’s part of what I did:

*Set an intention of a goal for myself (I said I’d like to be “more focused with my energy” – an alternative to my usual “more disciplined and more organized” bleck.)
*Visualized myself in a rewinding movie of the day
*Imagined past moments of frustration, joy, happiness
*Tried very hard to watch a Gulf of Mexico sunset in my mind’s eye

What I didn’t expect:

*That my body and head would hurt from keeping awake and still for so long
*To feel energized today after not enough sleep (It’s Monday!)
*To Feel focused the next day

I didn’t have any life-shattering epiphanies or grand awakenings during the conscious sleep. I did feel calmer and more aware of my senses (the world often slows down after yoga for me anyway). But I think these evolutionary kinds of changes are subtle and come with practice.

The next Yoga Nidra class is Nov. 4. In the meantime, I’m going to give the studio’s Tuesday night mediation class a whirl. A very thoughtful whirl.

Until next time, namaste.

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