yoga snacks
yoga snacks
In a world of excess, consumption, and material, yoga snacks were created to be easily digestible tidbits in the form of questions, quotes, breathing techniques, and the likes for living life with a little more ease and to provide tools for popping your own cork. To enjoy is to be in joy. Enjoy!
Yoga snacks is also the name of my bi-weekly newsletter. Included is a digestible piece of material, class schedule and links, and a playlist.
curiosity > criticism
exploration > expectation
pleasure > perfection
Katonah Yoga® is a registered trademark, used with permission of its owner, Katonah Yoga Center, Inc“The great goal is to support personal and communal well-being. You're the third hand that's going to take this mind and this body and this breath and manipulate it so that it pumps it up into bigger function. The biggest function you can do is make yourself, in a sense, healthy, round, well-adjusted, buoyant, radiant and concentrated because when you are all of those things, then you have positioned yourself to be the center of a sphere. You've positioned yourself so that you're round so that if you fall, you bounce. You've positioned yourself so that you're not edgy so that you don't bang into people and hurt them or hurt yourself. You've positioned yourself, really, to be the best you can be. Because the symbol of perfection is round and buoyant and spherical and well-adjusted. So the goal of these practices is to bring you into a position that allows you to up your game so that you can be all of these things.”
— Nevine Michaan
“If you want to become whole,
let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight,
let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.
If you want to become reborn,
let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything,
give everything up.”
chapter 22 , Tao Te Ching
“I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?”
—Zhuangzi
how can you be more gentle, more compassionate, easier with yourself? what if it was possible to situate yourself in the liminal space between your dreams and reality? make yourself available to exist within such a suspended state to open up the possibility for more lightness and to be more enlivened. in time, you’re living the dream.
what is life for if not to shake and stir?
what is life for if not to shake and stir?
for the thymus gland, the center of radiance
start in a seat of your choosing
bring one arm out to its own side and the other is bent in with the fingertips touching your sternum
(reminiscent of waltz arms!)
the arms will alternate side to side tapping the sternum at the center each time
(think windshield wipers as you wave side to side!)
pump the breath out through the nose, the inhale is passive— kapalbhati breathing
keep pumping the breath as you wave the arms
move side to side at a pace that works for you and bring in what you need more of
anything that is spacious moves in two directions at once
Each time we come to our mats we are planting a seed. Life tells us to ask what’s next too often. What’s next doesn’t come without the seed of right now. No mud, no lotus, if you will.
You are a gardener, your body is your garden. What do you need to plant, grow, cultivate?
Here are a few seeds to germinate:
Practice being content with how things already are. Celebrate being patient as you potentiate. Honor being gentle with yourself when you need rest. Really listen in and cultivate the relationship you have with you without the noise of the world out there. Striving and achieving do not define your worth.
“Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, ‘you owe me.’ Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky.”
—Hafiz
box breath
inhale for 4 counts
hold the breath in for 4 counts
exhale for 4 counts
hold the breath out for 4 counts
layer the imagination
inhale and image spring rising in front of you
retain the inhale above you for the ripening of summer
exhale for autumn leaves falling down your back
hold the exhale out for the hollowness of winter below you
Nevine Michaan
“Gratitude is what you see in the rear view mirror when you drive towards joy. If you don't like the reflection, you can always change your direction.”
Sharon Salzberg
“You don't have to believe anything in order to feel your breath.”
You don't have to search the whole world for things to make you whole because you already are whole.
Are you looking for an outcome or honoring the process of becoming?
Ahh the great esoteric principle of you are enough.
The blueprint is the lesson and that is enough.
There is nothing wrong with you.
you don’t get a gold star for suffering
Making the unconscious conscious is part of the great goal here. To know where you go and where you don't go. So that your strength doesn't become your weakness and to honor that there is hope in a foible.
the physiological sigh
a do-anywhere breath to regulate the oscillations of the nervous system. it’s as simple as a a two part inhale through the nose and a longer, slower exhale. repeat.
a breath practice for cooling yourself off
bring your top and bottom teeth to touch and allow your lips to separate without strain
place your tongue so the tip makes contact where you would make an 'L' sound. life, love, hallelujah!
breath in through the mouth dragging the air in between the teeth and over the top and sides of the tongue
close your mouth and exhale smoothly through the nose
repeat as many times as you'd like!
this practice is called sitkari. you could also try a similar practice called sitali where you do the same thing but for the inhale your tongue is curled like a taco. a genetic gift we can't all have! both techniques are used to cool and balance.
“The whole educational thrust of yoga is to make things go great in our lives. But we all know that an apple can appear perfect on the outside but have been eaten away by an invisible worm on the inside. Yoga is not about appearances, it is about finding and eradicating the worm so that the whole apple, from skin inward, can be perfect and a healthy one. That is why yoga and indeed all spiritual philosophies seem to harp on the negative — grasping desires, weaknesses, faults, and imbalances. They are trying to catch the worm before it eats and corrupts the whole apple inside. This is not a struggle between good and evil. It is natural for a worm to eat apples. In yoga we simply do not want to be the apple that is rotten from the inside. So yoga insists on examining scientifically and without value judgement, what can go wrong, and why, and how to stop it. It is organic farming of the self — for the Self.”
— B. K. S Iyengar
The Four Agreements
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be impeccable with your words
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don't make assumptions
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don't take anything personally
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always do your best
breathwork for a kick in the butt
come to stand on your shins and reach up with open palms. this will be your inhale done through the nose.
sit back on your shins and pull the arms down beside you hugging your elbows in and keeping punchy fists. this is your exhale through the mouth.
repeat. inhaling to reach up and exhaling to pull down. you can try sticking out your tongue or letting some noise release.
if this is not healthy for your knees, no problem. Sit in a cross legged seat and stay seated the whole time. You'll still get the punchy rev you seek.
"Eventually but one micro-festival remains – the joke. To not take things so seriously is to stand outside their reality; it is to affirm for a moment that this isn’t as real as we are making it, there is something outside this. There is truth in a joke, the same truth that is in a festival. It is a respite from the total enclosure of conventional reality."
from Between Heaven and Earth: A Guide to Chinese Medicine
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"Spring, a time of rebirth, sudden growth, and rapid expansion, marks the ascendance of this power. Movement surges to the surface, bursting through the confinement of winter. A crescendo of excitement builds as the life process reawakens. One day the forest appears gray and lifeless, the next day sunbeams cast warm light upon branches brimming with buds."
On Wood
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"Summer conjures up a sense of splendor and fulfillment as we stretch to the limits of our capacity. A brilliant sun climbs to its zenith over full-bloom magnolias amidst the hum of bees buzzing... In summer, Yang is dominant- light, warmth, activity, and interaction are at a peak. Fire, like summer, is expansive, radiant, outgoing, and warm. As the sun accelerates the life streams of the earth, the Heart squeezes the living juices of the blood through the vessels, imbuing the body with mindfulness."
On Fire
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"Late summer marks the ascendance of the power of Earth, the time of ripening, when all that has grown and matured throughout spring and summer lies ready for harvest. Momentarily free of the cycle of birth, growth, decay, and death, this is a secure time of peace and plenty during which we appreciate the flowering of our labor."
On Earth
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"Metal, derived from the earth, is a pure substance generated by a process of reduction. With fall comes a sense of gathering in, stocking up, mingled with a sense of loss as the light begins to fade and the air chills. Yin waves as Yang wanes... Fall is a contractive time of pulling in and dying back."
On Metal
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"[Winter] is a time of apparent quiescence and stasis, yet beneath the surface is the hidden activity of gestation and germination that will bring forth renewal in spring... Like Dionysus, Greek god of nature, Water represents the primal inchoate forces of human nature, the realm of the collective and personal unconscious. Water is the primeval ooze out of which form materializes as life. It links past and future, ancestor and descendant, and is the source of our inherited intelligence."
On Water
The most well-adjusted people are willing to readjust.
It’s always an invitation, never an obligation
ask yourself: am I loved? do I love well?
welcome everything, push away nothing
be curious rather than critical
for when you’re feeling anxious, overwhlemed, or agitated
start by lying down or finding a comfortable seat and place your hands on your belly. on each inhale you can imagine your hands fill with breath and each exhale it softens away.
breathe in and out through your nose.
let the length of the exhale be twice as long as the inhale.
maybe start with the count of 3 to inhale and 6 to exhale.
work your way up in the counts as it feels comfortable.
repeat it as many times as feels right!
"You can stunt your own growth by predetermining the cage you put yourself in."
“The journey is part of the experience - an expression of the seriousness of one's intent. One doesn't take the A train to Mecca.”
— Anthony Bourdain
I revisit this idea when I lose sight of my destination. When you get lost, you don't close your eyes, you open them. Look around, find something familiar, reorient yourself in relation to it, and continue your route.
And if you don't like what you see in the rearview mirror, change your destination to see the reflection from a new angle. It's a very hopeful way forward if you ask me.
“Sometimes we try to wrap our minds around things when we should be wrapping our arms around them.”
yoga snacks
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