My friend, Sandy Gross, owner of Evolution Yoga in Cleveland, and a wonderful OM yoga teacher (we have held OM yoga Teacher Trainings at this great OM yoga affiliate studio for years!) called me yesterday. She was nervous because Lady GaGa was in town and since it was her day off she wanted to take a yoga class and was on the way to Sandy, along with her assistant and her bodyguard. I told Sandy to teach a class that wasn’t too fast but kept moving and to give lots of hands on adjustments and good information. And, to just be herself. And, most important, to call me after the class and tell me how it went!

Here is Sandy with Lady Gaga -- looking nice and relaxed after yoga.

Check it out!  The email newsletter called My Yoga Journal is featuring the Best of Cyndi Lee this week — all my writings and teachings and interviews and even some videos from the last many years.

http://shar.es/mUQ6Q

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

Check out what I wrote for this month’s OM yoga Practices of the Month.  Let me know your thoughts.

http://www.omyoga.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=84&Itemid=111

In addition to YBBM, I taught OM yoga: Mindful Flow on Thursday night and Unlocking the Lower Body on Sunday afternoon.  

We worked on feet -- inner and outer arches and how they relate to rotation of the legs; how the work of the inner thighs relates to every position; how awake, organized, balanced feet redistribute the work of arm balances; how the legs as organs of action are crucial to inversions which is what they are working on here.

Do try this at home. Block on the head for tree pose. Then again standing on a block with a block on your head and then close your eyes. Write to me and tell me what you think this is about, what is your experience, what did you learn?

It was a great weekend in Copenhagen; and in Berlin; and in Istanbul. But, honestly, I'm glad my work is done for now. Whew. Time to ride on the bike back to Soham's for a tiny rest.

We loved being at Hamsa Studio, owned by the smart and adorable Soham.  The students are insanely smart, engaged and strong.  

Here I am teaching at Hamsa.

They really drank it all up -- listening very intently.

Sunday morning's Yoga Body Buddha Mind session is called Awakened Heart....so let's do drop backs!

Here's how you do it as a team. I promise I won't drop you! I'm supporting Stina's back and My has a horseshoe hand under the base of Stina's skull.

The students watch closely for all the important details...

...and now it's your turn! I ask similar height people to go together so here is Soren, Miles and Jacob getting ready to work as a team.

Another team in progress -- that's Cami on the right, originally from North Dakota. Maybe we are related....parts of both sides of my family come from there.

Ta da!

Here we are, all together at the end of a great weekend. In the planning for two years, and now it has passed like a flash. Impermanence.

Hey, you can't have a group picture at Hamsa without Soham!

I’m doing the Yoga Journal Basics Column for the whole year coming up.  Part of my assignment is to take photos of the asanas I’m writing about — variations, do’s and dont’s.  But, I can’t take pictures of myself so my lovely student and up-and-coming OM yoga sub teacher, Becca Grossman, helped me out.  Here is a sneak preview of some of the poses/variations coming soon in YJ.

Viparita Karani -- yummy -- this is my favorite pose. Can you see little Leroy watching over Becca?

When the organizing principle and the container principle meet up -- through the use of props, in this case -- a balanced, effective asana happens.

Can you guess what pose this is a prep for?

Today is the first day of spring.  The raging storm passed through and it is a beautiful sunny fresh day.  It is a national holiday.  My hotel is next to a TV station which pumps out canned music Every. Single. Morning.  It’s 6:30am and the music (which is more appropriate for Romper Room in my humble opinion) has been playing for an hour.  oy vey.   

Here are some pictures from yesterday.

 

The sink at the studio -- so fancy! I need glasses to read the control panels in the toilets. This sink has a spout for water on the right, a spout for soap on the left and then if you put your hands just inside the close rim of the sink hot air blows to dry your hands. Whoa..

The famous Sunday Tokyo Flea Market.

I always heard these flea markets were so great but since I work every day, including Sundays, I never could go to one…until yesterday.  This flea market, the biggest one in Tokyo, was just down the street from our studio so I went with Mayumi, Anu and Chigusa on our lunch break.  With their help — bargaining power and also helping me see what is special — I bought a Japanese cheerleader t-shirt that says Shark Girl on the back and Cheer on the front for 50 cents; and for $5 I bought a Kokeshi, a traditional Japanese doll.  It has big eyes and a teeny tiny mouth.

A ladies drumming team practicing in the park.

Back to Restorative Yoga. Here is Yukiko watching over her partner in Supta Virasana. Today they learned how to meditate so that they can pay close attention to their students. The students are their dots of awareness and the teachers won't try to "fix" things before seeing what is actually happening first.

Here is RedPants doing a great job placing Chigusa in a variation of Setu Bandhasana at the wall.

 

Then, it was time for dinner...and yes! yes! yes!....

Ramen! This is salt ramen, which Chama says is from Hokkaido. Oishi!

This is how it works.  You go into the ramen shop which is quite small and only has counter seating.  You make your selection at a vending machine which has many pictures.  Put in your coins, push the buttons for what you want and out comes a little ticket.  You give the ticket to the waiter and have a seat at the counter.  In a few minutes, piping hot ramen!  The nori in the bowl tells what is in your personal ramen that day.  And, of course, then you stir that nori in and eat it.  I got Salt Ramen without the pork and even though it was very unusual, Chama talked them into giving me some bok choy instead. 

Kazumi making TKG.

Kazumi had a different kind of ramen which they said is very trendy right now.  The noodles and the broth come in separately and you mix them together.  But after she ate that she also ordered TKG.  It is a bowl of rice, a raw egg and a package of seasoning.  You crack the egg over the rice, pour in the seasoning and mix it all up.  That is what she is doing here.  TKG stands for Egg Over Rice.

She loves it!

Our ramen chef -- Arrigato, gazimasta!

After an active morning asana class and a lunch break, we began the Restorative TT.  What is Restorative yoga?  Why do we need it?  What does it do?  How does it work?  What is relaxation, anyway?  We looked at all that but first, we practiced.  After practicing Supta Baddhakonasana, the students learned how to put each other in that pose.

Chigusa, in her cute OM yoga t-shirt, is setting up Agapana AKA Red Pants. That is his nickname because he wears Red Pants every day.

Here is a classroom full of many yogis helping each other to relax.

Yes, that’s Joe in the background — and that’s another story which I will tell you later.

These students are very good at paying close attention to their partners, with care and right attention.

I love this one. Her partner really created a cozy pod for her to rest within.

Gotta go now and hey — the sun just came out.  After being awakened by the loud, shrill 65 mile an hour winds blowing through the high skyscraper canyons of Shinjuku, it is lovely to see the clouds lift, the rain stop and beautiful spring time sun shining.  Off to teach!

I taught a 3 hour Yoga Body Buddha Mind workshop at Tokyo-Yoga in Aoyama.  A gorgeous studio – check it out when you are in Tokyo.  The students were — as always — totally openhearted and open minded.  I think it was a good workshop!  

Here are two of the students from the workshop with me.

 The woman on my left, Tammy, is a native born and raised Tokyo -ite, but she lived in NYC for three years.  During that time she was an avid yogini and practiced at OM yoga.  She wanted to take the OM yoga Teacher Training but one of the requirements is the ability to do Sirsasana, Headstand.  She was told by a teacher at another yoga studio that because her upper arms are short and her head is little bit bigger than that length, she would never be able to do headstand.  So she gave up and didn’t take the training at OM yoga.  When she told me that I felt sad because, of course, she absolutely can do headstand.  There are so many ways to do it, no matter what proportions you have.  So I showed her how to place blankets under each forearm to create space for her head and now she is sooo happy that she can do Sirsasana.