Sitting Is The New Smoking

Dear Yogis

You may have heard the phrase ‘sitting is the new smoking’. People tell us with authority that our hunter-gather ancestors used the body as it was supposed to be used with constant activity, with proper, minimal use of stress and proper time spent resting and digesting.

A dear yogi friend gave me a book: Move Your DNA, Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement by Katy Bowman. She says we can hypothesize on the movement of the ancient tribes based on existing evidence. It demonstrates why we are ill-at-ease in our bodies today.

As a baby, you would have been exercised many times a day and walking and squatting long before the modern toddler. ‘When not play-gathering, you played in constantly varying terrain. This all-day movement... developed the skills, strength, and shape you would eventually need in order to function as an adult, and your gait and walking patterns were much less toddler-like and wobbly because you didn’t wear diapers. Your pelvis and hips took the shape necessary to continue squatting, sitting on the floor, and walking a ton, and were not influenced by... continuous time in a single position. Adults (from fourteen-years-old) walked 3-to-10 miles a day, harvested and carried load, all maximising bone density.

Katy Bowman says the way we move now is so drastically different from our ancestors that even an hour-or-so in the gym, many, many times a week, adds up to almost nothing compared to what the muscles, tissue, fascia and cells were designed for. She asks: ‘For how many hours a week is a chair pressing against your hamstrings? How does this constant pressure affect the blood vessels running down to your feet or the nerves in the pelvis? Have your body’s tissues atrophied to the point that they are no longer able to adapt?

Sitting isn’t the new smoking. It’s the original smoking.

Training

If you haven’t tried Mysore before, consider coming tomorrow, Saturday, to Triyoga Ealing anytime after 7.00. The class finishes at 10.00. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t memorised the sequence yet, Zephyr will help. Newcomers to this system come at 9.00 and people who know the routine come earlier. Think about it; why wouldn’t you get up early on a weekend morning, walk through the cold, wet streets to yoga, spend 90 minutes on your mat and celebrate with a bowl of free gruel afterwards! What fun!

Home Studio

I felt so particularly overjoyed after the classes yesterday: the yoga, the atmosphere, the chatting and joshing, the newcomers, the oldcomers, the effort, the groaning, the older yogis, the foetus, the corpse poses at the end... I’d be lost without you. Book through this website here.

Yoga in the News

This is interesting... NPR has: How 'Namaste' Flew Away From Us. Apparently the use of the word in the US makes US South Asians crazy. The writer explains: “The first part of Namaste, "namaha," means "to bend" or "salutations" or "greetings." The "te" in namaste means "to you." All it means is “hello”. But 'it makes our skin crawl, our face burn and our heart do weird things’ when Western Europeans and North Americans use the word! Who knew!

The Sunday Times has a book review: The Story of Yoga by Alistair Shearer. “Even beyond the baddies, yoga’s journey West gives Shearer a compelling cast of characters. Its proponents included... Mollie Stack, who, living in India before the outbreak of the First World War, noticed that the local women had superior posture to their colonial counterparts. Stack taught a version of yoga when she returned to London and created the Women’s League.”

Enjoy your weekend... if you've done your taxes!

Ants In Your Pants Yin Yoga

Dear Yogis

Last weekend I did a class with top Yin teacher Norman Blair – and bought his book, Brightening Our Inner Skies. Many of the things he says about Yin Yoga can be applied to Ashtanga Yoga. Yoga is all about awareness and meditation, after all. For example, Norman says: “A Yin yoga practice with its emphasis on awareness can build bridges towards meditative practices. Meditation in postures develops confidence about and diminishes fear around meditating. In meditation, there can be glimpses of freedom from being so tightly bound to exhausting wheels of self: that maintaining of the sameness of identity, that maintaining or the masks of personality”.

All yoga is about this, the ‘stilling the fluctuations of the mind’. Norman says that mental distractions (fluctuations) can be put into four groups: Fantasising and being lost in daydreams; judging and commentary from our inner critic; planning and existing in the future; and ruminating like a cow chewing its cud, ‘stuck in a maze of memories, repetitively eating past events’.

We are naturally distracted; the mind dwells in a naturally distracted state. Before we discover yoga practice/meditation we are dwellers in distraction with no tools to disentangle ourselves. Norman tells us this: “Daniel Amen, a psychiatrist and an expert in brain disorders, talks about how the mind is full of ants (automatic negative thoughts). He suggests that we become aware of these ants and consciously question them; otherwise they will continue to multiply, thus constructing denser walls of self”.

Ants! Brilliant!

Yoga Retreat

There’s nothing like holding on to the summer warmed by Kytheran sun in September by joining our Magical Kapsali Yoga Retreat. If you’re considering coming, take a look at this example of flights.

Depart: Sunday 13th September – British Airways 06:40LHR, arriving 12:30ATH (£94 today)

Aegean Airlines - 16:10 from Athens, arrives 16:55 Kithira

Return: Saturday 19th September – British Airways 19:55ATH, arriving 21:45LHR (£175 today)

Aegean Airlines - 17:20 leaves Kithira, arrives 18:05 Athens. (€ 84.24 today)

Take a look at different combinations. Easyjet from might be a cheaper way of getting to Athens. And the other carrier from Athens to the island is Sky Express. You can do the whole journey on Aegean but the outgoing journey goes via Germany.

Training

Tonight I’m going to the first of three workshops: ‘Headstand to handstand’ with Anastasis Tzanis. Tonight’s theme is Alignment. In this video Anastasis talks about tonight’s inversions. Next month it will be backbending and March has transitions. All this is at at Triyoga Chelsea, 19:45 - 21:45. Come with me!

Home Studio

The later classes next week are booked up but the earlier classes have plenty of spaces. For those of you who have been coming for a while, please click here to write a small review.

Yoga in the News

Good News Network has: Boy Was Inspired to Become Youngest Yogi in US After Seeing How Yoga Healed Mom. At just 7 years old, this boy was inspired to become the youngest yoga teachers in the United States... Now 14 years old, Tabay Atkins teaches three classes a week and holds seven different yoga teacher certifications.

The Times has: The Story of Yoga by Alistair Shearer review — our flexible friend. “This is a tale of what happens when East and West meet, and about a shift from the sacred to the secular.” “The cultural historian Alistair Shearer argues that while we might have enthusiastically embraced yoga in the West, most of us don’t understand it.”

The Independent scolds: Why you should stop using Instagram for yoga: 'It has been reduced to a show’. The article rather marmishly tells us: ‘Priest is able to pose with her legs behind her head but only because her skeletal structure allows it. “If another person tries the same posture, a person whose hips are built quite differently than mine, well that’s a recipe for injury and disaster,” she adds. “Nobody on Instagram ever tells you not to try this at home, but maybe they should.”  (Did you need telling?)

Don’t forget the eclipse this evening, at its greatest point at 7.10pm! (The January full moon is called the 'Wolf Moon' because wolves howl more in the winter!)