Teaching as a Practice was the title of my keynote address last night at the Kripalu Yoga Teachers Association Conference, which was very, very FUN!  I totally HEART Kripalu.  It is better and better every time I come here.  I will tell you more about the content of my talk later because after I do this post I have to drive back to NYC, change suitcases and go to Michigan for retreat with Rimpoche.  But here are some pictures:

The awesome, excellent, smart, sweet and so much fun Vandita -- Director and Creator of the KYTA conference. Thank you, my friend!

I also taught a 3 hour workshop and here they all are in savasana. I meant to take pictures during the class but I got so involved in what was happening that I forgot, which is a good thing, right?

My workshop was called Deconstruction and Reconstruction.  But now I’ve learned that the word deconstruction is out and unpacking is in.  So at the YJ conference in Florida in November, I’ll be teaching a workshop called Unpacking a Pose.  But, for now, this was it and it was great.  A fantastic group and we had a lot of fun.  I quizzed them a lot, especially on their Sanskrit since the whole group were yoga teachers.  They got a little bit stumped on parivritta so I said what is the second sutra and a voice with an indian accent called it out nicely.  I dashed over to her and she translated Yoga Citta Vritti Nirodha in the most beautiful way touching her head for vritti and heart for citta.  Her name is Ritu.

Time for Bollywood dancing!  The evening began with a short performance and then a Bollywood dancing lesson which was totally fun!  

After dancing, everyone sat down for my talk.

I mean, Bollywood dance class is a tough act to follow, but I did my best.  I tried to get the audience involved and they were very willing participants.  Even though people get up at the crack of dawn here and my talk went past their bedtime, people seemed to enjoy it or at least, they managed to stay awake!

Jonathan Ambar, OM yoga TT grad who now works here in the Kripalu marketing department, assisted me all weekend.  So after the talk, he packed up all our goodies and he and I were heading up to the cafeteria for a cup of tea, when I took a left turn. I could feel some kind of fun energy in that direction and then I saw…

It's Ritu!

Ritu not only knows the Yoga Sutras and is the mother of one of the beautiful Bollywood dancers, she is a fantastic henna and mandala artist.

Ritu's artwork on my foot.

And then….

Ritu also did a henna painting on my hand. This is me and Vandita looking at the picture in the computer which Ritu was using as a guide. It was a picture of a Ganesha in tree pose which she had done before.

And here he is! Isn't he cute? He will cut through obstacles and bring happiness. We love Ganesha!

Thank you, Vandita and Stephen Cope and Kripalu, for inviting me to be part of this beautiful event.

We love each other and we love to hang out together.  Sometimes we let our significant others join us but mostly we like to just be together with us.  So, we were happy but also a little bit sad because this dinner party was a send off to our dear Sarah and Margi.  They are both going West.   Sarah is moving and Margi is semi-moving.  Margi might come back (we hope).  So for now, what can we do but eat and drink and laugh?  We went to Gemma on Bowery and Great Jones.

I think Frank's face means "I want more olives in my pasta."

Did you notice that Edward is with us but Joe is not?  Yes, that does mean something.  It means that Joe was not feeling well.  We tried to call him but the restaurant was too noisy.  The food is great, by the way, but somehow this street has become the hottest place in town and it is just packed with lots of people, many of them are very loud.  We might have been some of the loud people.

Did you know that all the OM yoga TT faculty women are originally from the West coast?  Christie is from Eugene, Oregon; Sarah is from Seattle; Margi is from San Francisco and I am from Seattle.  Now that Edward has joined us we have another West Coaster — he is originally from San Francisco.  Yes, it’s true — Edward has joined our ranks.  He will be apprenticing as an OM yoga Teacher Trainer this summer and I have also appointed  him our new Director of OM yoga Teacher Training.  I think he will do an awesome job.  He’s already brought in some new ideas and fresh insight!

Edward, Frank, Margi, Christie, me, Sarah.

I am tremendously proud of the team I have gathered together and of all the work we have done together.  Every single person puts all of themselves into the process and we are constantly revising and evolving the living practice of OM yoga to make it be the best, most useful, elegant and practical yoga method.  The training is thorough and our graduates tell us they have no problem getting teaching jobs anywhere in the world.  

But, now it is time to turn the wheel.  You know, Big wheel keeps on turning. Proud Mary keeps on burning.  Rolling, rolling, rolling on the river.  We wish you all the very best of everything, dear Margi and Sarah.

Random guy sitting in a chair on the sidewalk.  He let me take a picture of his t-shirt.

This is a t-shirt made by famous graffiti artist, James de la Vega. You can check out the De La Vega museum on St. Marks Place.

The guy in the t-shirt wanted to see the picture but he didn’t like it because it didn’t show his face, so here he is.

Hello, sir. I like your t-shirt.

This is Lena. She took my workshops at Hamsa Yoga in Copenhagen. She came to my class at OM yoga last week because she is in NYC working. She is a cellist. And she does a very nice Vishvamitrasana!

Judith Lasater is teaching Experiential Anatomy at OM yoga this week. So I took her out to dinner last night at Tabla. Yum!

We were joined by her daughter, the lovely and talented, Lizzie. Lizzie said the dinner was a high "WPM" meal. That means words-per-minute.

Back in April I did an interview with Dr. Christiane Northrup as part of the research for the new book I am currently writing.  Chris invited me to attend the graduation ceremony for Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts and so I did — yesterday!  It was fun, uplifting, kooky, and very brilliant on many levels.  Here are some pictures:

Here is Mama Gena!

 There were about 25o women graduates who paraded down the aisle to the wild cheering of another probably 250 guests — all women.  Lots of boas and tiaras and feathery fans.  The school color is pink (which I love because pink is my favorite color.)

So, what’s it all about?  It’s about women fulfilling their desires, identifying their desires and learning to be proud of themselves and their accomplishments.  It’s about sex and pleasure and living a life of joy.  It’s about sisterhood.  It’s about embodying your life!  I tell you, it was pretty darn inspiring and uplifting.  

Then, I ran into Christiane Northrup and her daughter as I was leaving.  She remembered me from our interview (she said she really liked my yoga DVDs which I had sent her) and she asked me what I thought of the event.  I was momentarily speechless.  I know, that is shocking.  But then I said, “Well, I am thinking so many things right now, and first of all, I’m struck with what a need this is filling for us women”.  You women know that basically we have been taught that it is illegal for us to feel proud of ourselves (they learn to Brag in this course and everyone cheers each other’s brag), we’ve grown up learning that it is selfish to take care of ourselves and our own needs and desires; and that to feel and act really sexy is not for nice girls.  All that gets flipped on its ass in this training and it was quite remarkable and genuine.  I liked it!

Here are some pictures from our OM yoga teacher training taught by Joe Miller and me.

8am. 40 people breathing. peaceful 6th floor up above the Broadway rush.

This is Ryan, a graduate of the OM yoga 200 hr. TT program in Cleveland. Here he is doing one of the pranayama TT assignments: teach a warm-up vinyasa to prepare for pranayama.

Joe gives an anatomy of pranayama lecture with the skeleton and slides and his fun drawings.

Working in partners to feel how the breath moves in the body.

Working in partners to explore the rib cage while Joe works with his partner, the skeleton! Actually I am Joe's teaching partner and also have been teaching this training but since I'm the one with the camera there are no pics of me...

This morning Joe guided students in feeling their bellies in preparation for practicing Kapalabhati.

Joe demonstrating Jalandharabandha using a rolled up yoga strap.

Then it's their turn to practice Jalandharabandha.

Then class is over for the day. 4 hours each morning and then we go out into the world and take our breathing with us, sharing it with every other breathing being who lives in this vast ocean of air.

Had an awesome day yesterday at Rimpoche’s teachings. I love being with him and with my Jewel Heart buddies.

Here we all are at the NYC Jewel Heart Center in Tribeca.  Carole Corcoran asked a question of Rimpoche.  He took a lot of questions yesterday.  Not just from us but from our JH sanghas in Ann Arbor, Chicago and Lincoln, NE.  Jonas has figured out how to hook up all our sanghas via the internet and so people get together for Rimpoche’s teaching in their own town, no matter what town Rimpoche is in, and so it was like we were all together.  Very cool.

Here is Rimpoche answering a question from a JH member in Lincoln, NE.  We will all be together in “real life” in a few weeks.  If you have the chance, I highly recommend the Jewel Heart summer Joyful Retreat — it’s going to be especially good this summer.  www.jewelheart.org. —  I’ll see you there!

We were so honored to host Tenzin Wangyal Rimpoche at OM yoga Center on Friday night.  100 people were there to receive his teachings.  

My friend, Patty Gift, who is also a dedicated student of Rimpoche’s, and I, met him as he arrived.  We gave him and the friends that were with him a brief tour of OM and then we hung out in my office for about half an hour.  He is very gracious and also, quite luminous.  I look at him and think, “I’ll have what he’s having!”  He talked about how some people like to take a lot of teachings but it is important to actually DO the practice.
Here we are after his talk.  He gave a brilliant talk about the impermanent pain body and how we get stuck there.  How we get stuck sitting on our karma cushions but we don’t have to.  We can actually change it right now — snap!  Then he taught us some practices for doing that.  They are part of Tsa Lung, which is Tibetan Pranayama, but the breath work has to be connected with understanding of “I” as the pain body (also known as emptiness), and faith in the practice.  The crown chakra is the body, throat chakra is speech and heart chakra is mind.  So first you locate the pain or confusion, then you do certain movements coordinated with a certain way of breathing and exhaling.  Then, speech or thought in the throat , then feeling in the heart chakra, then navel chakra which is ripening and secret chakra which is action.  He led us in a powerful practice.  You will have to study with him to learn it.  I am not eligible to give that transmission.  It is not appropriate to just go teach anything you learn after one time — although, of course, many people do that.  But I am trained in the Buddhist path and you must receive permission from your teacher to do that.

Rimpoche kindly made himself available for group questions as well as individual connections after the talk.

This is another rimpoche that came with Tenzin.  He also teaches in Tenzin Wangyal’s sangha.  Check out their website at www.ligmincha.org.  I formally invited Tenzin Wangyal Rimpoche to return to OM yoga and give us another teaching, so hopefully that will happen again soon!

Leroy and I went to the park yesterday but when I started turning right to leave, he pulled hard to go left.  He is a stubborn poodle so I said, “Okay, we can walk around the fountain that way today,” and to the left we went.  Where there was a huge crowd gathered around and lot of buzzing conversations.  Then I saw what was going on — there were literally hundreds of boxes sitting on the ground under the big famous arch at the end of Fifth Avenue.  Every box was wrapped in a coral colored cloth with a bow on top — a Japanese kind of wrapping thing.  It looked amazing and beautiful.  People were all excited and taking the boxes.  I looked around to see if it was a giveaway from some big company like Revlon or something but, no.  No big promotional thing happening.  So I thought, I’ll take a box, too.  I picked one up and then I thought, “No.  I don’t want this.  I don’t want more stuff.”  So I put it down and started to walk away and then I saw a tiny sign that said:

EMPTY IS NOT EMPTY. FULL IS NOT FULL.

Well, that hooked me right then and there because it was obviously a rephrasing of the most important Buddhist sutra, the Prajna Paramita Sutra, which begins, “Form is emptiness.  Emptiness is form.”  So I picked up a box.  It was very light.  It was obviously empty.  I hesitated.  I wondered if I should try another box that was heavier so I could get one with someone in it and not one with nothing in it.  It was not because of my nonattachment-like nature but because I felt embarrassed to be seen in public ( even though there was no one there that I knew…) picking and choosing which box to get, that I did stick with that very light, obviously empty box.  I sat down on a park bench and opened it up.  It was fun to unwrap the coral colored cloth.  It was a cardboard box that would be the right size for a baseball cap.  Inside was a piece of paper which said:

“YOU CAN DO ONE SMALL AND GRACEFUL THING TO SAVE THE PLANET BY REUSING THIS BOX AND CLOTH.  THE CLOTH IS WASHABLE AND IRONABLE.

SUGGESTIONS: USE THE CLOTH TO WRAP A PRESENT, TOTE YOUR GROCERY, FASHION INTO A PIECE OF CLOTHING, OR USE YOUR IMAGINATION.”

IF YOU’D LIKE TO LEARN ABOUT BOJAGI USES, GOOGLE BOJAGI OR BOJAGI WRAPPING.

THANK YOU,

UJIN LEE, ARTIST

WWW.UJINLEEART.COM

I left the box on the park bench.  Leroy and I walked home with the cloth.  We saw people blocks away from the park carrying the boxes, still wrapped.  I guess they were waiting until they got home to open their surprise package.

This weekend we New Yorkers have an abundance of great Tibetan Buddhist teachings offered.  I recommend:

Friday, June 11, OM yoga Center — Tenzin Wangyal Rimpoche will be at OM yoga Center.  I am so honored that he is coming back to OM yoga for a second time.  Tenzin Wangyal is a very special teacher.  His lineage is both Gelugpa, the lineage of HH the Dalai Lama, and Bon, the shamanic tradition of Tibet.  I have studied a little bit with Tenzin Wangyal and been very influenced by his teachings and from reading his books.  I have also studied with one of his main disciples, Alejandro Chaoul-Reich, who teaches Tsa Lung and Trul Khor.  Tsa Lung is Tibetan Buddhist pranayama and Trul Khor, which means Magic Wheel, is Tibetan Buddhist yoga.  

Friday night Tenzin Wangyal will teach Tsa Lung Yoga Movements at OM yoga Center.  He only comes to NYC every 2-3 years so don’t miss this special opportunity.  www.omyoga.com — for more information

*** Gelek Rimpoche in New York this weekend!!  Gelek Rimpoche is my root guru, my dear, precious teacher.  He will be giving one of his famous Sunday morning talks in New York this coming Sunday, June 13 from 10-11am at the Jewel Heart Center in Tribeca.  These talks are open to the public and are guaranteed to be inspiring, useful and fun!  This is a great chance for you to meet Rimpoche and receive his teachings with minimal commitment.   His Sunday morning talks in Ann Arbor, Michigan are legendary and attended by hundreds every week.  We are so lucky to have him here this weekend.

www.jewelheart.org — for more information

Just got done with a final planning session for next week’s OM yoga Pranayama Immersion and Teacher Training, which will be led by Joe Miller and me.  Joe is a quiet genius.  A truly great yoga teacher, an anatomy expert with a Masters Degree in Applied Physiology, specializing in the breath.  My part will be leading practice, inspiring you, helping you learn how to teach this beautiful practice….and more.  This will be a fairly complete Part 1 Pranayama TT and you will be ready and confident to incorporate this work into your classes and your life.  If you don’t want to take the teacher training, you can just take the Immersion.  Start your day with stretching and breathing and see how much goodness comes forth.  Immersion June 14-18, 8-9 am; TT 9:30-12:30 (starting with the 8-9am immersion).  www.omyoga.com