Tag Archives: DC Yoga

Spotlight on a DC meditation teacher

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Tara Brach is a psy­chol­o­gist and teacher on Bud­dhist med­i­ta­tion. She is the founder and senior teacher of the Insight Med­i­ta­tion Com­mu­nity of Wash­ing­ton, a spir­i­tual com­mu­nity that prac­tices Vipas­sana meditation.

The Wash­ing­ton Post Med­i­ta­tion guru Tara Brach is calm eye of Washington’s stress-​​filled storm
Lis­ten­ing that night would be far more than the 300 peo­ple in the room. Brach’s talks are down­loaded free nearly 200,000 times each month by peo­ple in more than 150 coun­tries. Strangers write from around the world to say her words have saved them from com­mit­ting sui­cide or relaps­ing into drugs. Gov­ern­ment con­trac­tors who para­chute into the Dis­trict plan trips around her class. One devo­tee last year gave her new­born son the mid­dle name Brach.

Her lat­est book, True Refuge: Find­ing Peace and Free­dom in Your Own Awak­ened Heart was pub­lished ear­lier this year and has become a best seller (for good rea­son). I’ve writ­ten about her dharma talks before (both attend­ing the talks in Potomac and the audio files avail­able online). She has deeply influ­enced my life even though I have never per­son­ally spo­ken to her..

Major exhibit of yoga-​​related art to come to the Mall

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Get ready, Wash­ing­ton, we are about to dive deep into yoga’s his­tory over the ages.

YOGA: THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION | Freer and Sack­ler Gal­leries
Through mas­ter­pieces of Indian sculp­ture and paint­ing, Yoga: The Art of Trans­for­ma­tion explores yoga’s goals; its Hindu as well as Bud­dhist, Jain, and Sufi man­i­fes­ta­tions; its means of trans­form­ing body and con­scious­ness; and its pro­found philo­soph­i­cal foun­da­tions. The first exhi­bi­tion to present this leit­mo­tif of Indian visual cul­ture, it also exam­ines the roles that yogis and yogi­nis played in Indian soci­ety over two thou­sand years.

The DCist also has more details on the exhibit, includ­ing crowd­fund­ing, which will start on May 29. Under the aus­picies of the Smith­son­ian Insti­tute, Yoga: The Art of Trans­for­ma­tion will be opened from Octo­ber 19 to Jan­u­ary 2014.

Listmania comes to city rankings for yoga

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There is an unhealthy fas­ci­na­tion with lists on the web so the news should not be surprising.

Forbe’s has pub­lished a List of Top 10 Cities for Yoga, and Wash­ing­ton is in a tie for fourth place, in a tie with New York City. Some­how, Los Ange­les does not make the list, though you’d prob­a­bly have to divide up sub­urbs. San Diego does.

Who elected Forbe’s as the arbiter of yoga sta­tus among U.S. cities and why?

To deter­mine the top U.S. cities for yoga, we turned to data from the mar­ket­ing firm GfK MRI, which con­ducted sur­veys in 205 mar­kets last year, ask­ing par­tic­i­pants whether they prac­ticed yoga, and if so, how fre­quently and for how long.

To be fair, Alice G. Wal­ton has writ­ten mul­ti­ple arti­cles about yoga, med­i­ta­tion and neu­ro­science so we can’t ascribe her motives to the lat­est run on Lul­ule­mon stock.

The appeal of an Ashtanga practice

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Ash­tanga prac­ti­tion­ers have more options than you might think:

Wash­ing­ton Post Express Never Out Of Prac­tice: Mysore yoga classes help stu­dents advance at just the right pace - ”First-​​timers get per­sonal train­ing in a few pos­tures, start­ing with five rounds of sun salu­ta­tions, and that may be all they do. As they return to class and mas­ter that sec­tion, the instruc­tor adds on. Advanced stu­dents can com­plete the begin­ning of the series, but at some point, even peo­ple who can hook their legs around their necks need an assist, a mod­i­fi­ca­tion or a pep talk.”

A few months ago, I pointed to another arti­cle about Ash­tanga and Mysore prac­tice in the DC area.

Thanks to Don­a­van Wil­son for tip­ping me off about this arti­cle since I am “out of pocket” (mean­ing “away,” it’s jour­nal­ism jar­gon, if I remem­ber correctly.)

DC Yoga Week – starting today!

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It’s here again! Thirty seven DC yoga stu­dios are join­ing forces to encour­age peo­ple to take to the mat.

DC Yoga Week 2013 – dc com­mu­nity yoga
The DC Com­mu­nity of Yoga (DCCY) is host­ing the 8th Annual DC Yoga Week and Yoga on the Mall Mon­day, April 29 thru Sun­day, May 5.  This means par­tic­i­pat­ing stu­dios will be offer­ing FREE and $5 classes daily – all week long!

If you’ve been look­ing for an oppor­tu­nity to explore other yoga stu­dios and styles, now’s your chance because of free or low-​​cost classes. The weather should be good for Sun­day when you can catch Yoga on the Mall.

Bad Tim­ing

This week, I am at an undis­closed loca­tion on the Del­marva penin­sula, with wife, yoga mat, lap­top, note­books, and read­ing mat­ter, and will be unable to take advan­tage of dis­counted rates and open doors. I may get to DC in time for the week­end activities.

National Yoga Month (late) and the search for a broader community

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Logo of National Yoga Month

Sep­tem­ber was National Yoga Month

Last month, Sep­tem­ber was National Yoga Month, and I did not get around to men­tion­ing it. In fact, I didn’t even post in Sep­tem­ber, which shows how I have shifted the focus of my prac­tice or been pre­oc­cu­pied with other things. In any case, I still lived my yoga.

Activ­i­ties were pro­moted on Face­book and on the Web, and the DC yoga com­mu­nity did their thing too. It is mainly an oppor­tu­nity to open up stu­dio doors to new­com­ers who want to sam­ple a yoga class or take a basics course. But National Yoga Month is just a slice of time, and yoga has become a year-​​round activity.

What strikes me about yoga’s place in US main­stream cul­ture is the cur­rent surge in “yoga fes­ti­vals” across the coun­try. It prob­a­bly grew out yoga con­fer­ence, a week­end or week-​​long con­ven­tion of yoga stu­dio own­ers, teach­ers, ser­vice providers, equip­ment sup­pli­ers and other busi­nesses. The best known ones are those orga­nized by Yoga Jour­nal. But the fes­ti­vals are broader phe­nom­e­non, some­thing like mini-​​Woodstocks where music, dance, food, and cel­e­bra­tion are melded with the yoga move­ment at an attrac­tive out­door set­ting like the Hanu­man Fes­ti­val in Boul­der, the Wan­der­lust fes­ti­vals in mul­ti­ple sites, and else­where. Many take advan­tage of ski resorts dur­ing off-​​season. Oth­ers are more local affairs, steer­ing closer to the con­fer­ence for­mula (Also see this older arti­cle about this trend.).

Part of the yoga fes­ti­val phe­nom­e­non is that there is a search for a broader social envi­ron­ment in which to play out yoga’s growth, with­out strict alle­giance to doc­trines, bound­aries and other restraints. There is also a strong com­mer­cial pres­ence at these events, and not just strictly yoga-​​related busi­nesses: the mar­ket is the petri dish of yoga in the United States, as opposed to reli­gious or spir­i­tual con­sid­er­a­tions. Because the yoga  hap­pen­ing is so grass­roots, decen­tral­ized, and amor­phous, there’s no clear regional or national leadership.

Spreading the word and the spirit around the world

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Each time I hear or read about a U.S. yogi or yogini head­ing abroad to enlighten under­priv­i­leged peo­ple, I feel a twitch of con­cern, even when I know some of the peo­ple involved:

The Wash­ing­ton Post — D.C. teach­ers offer yoga to com­bat the stresses of conflict-​​ridden Ramal­lah: The train­ing is the first of its kind in the West Bank. The 15 women who par­tic­i­pated — sev­eral of whom came on buses from sur­round­ing vil­lages for the nine-​​hours-​​a-​​day classes — say they hope to take what they learned about yoga’s deep breath­ing and stress-​​relieving pos­tures to schools, com­mu­nity cen­ters and refugee camps.

I have taken class with Angela Cerke­vich at Flow Yoga Cen­ter, and I have fol­lowed her efforts through the Ana­hata Grace, her non-​​profit for per­form­ing seva (self­less service).

My reser­va­tions come from two sources: first, I grew up the son of a min­is­ter and expe­ri­enced up close the mis­sion­ary zeal of “spread­ing the good news of Christ” around the world; and sec­ond, I lived abroad for 18 years in Peru and saw reli­gious and sec­u­lar vari­a­tions of mis­sion­ary zeal lead peo­ple to go to Peru to bring about change and lib­er­a­tion. I saw a lot of good done, but also the other side — the poten­tial for cul­tural insen­si­tiv­ity and social harm. Today, I wince when I hear of a 20-​​year-​​old going to Haiti or South Africa with a mat and a vinyasa prac­tice to show the grace that yoga can bring to peo­ple in distress.

I am sure that Angela and her group have han­dled their expe­ri­ence on the West Bank, sup­port­ing Pales­tin­ian women and chil­dren. Angela is purs­ing a doc­tor­ate in psy­chol­ogy and her col­league has expe­ri­ence work­ing in inter­na­tional devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tions. They are work­ing with a Pales­tin­ian orga­ni­za­tion with deep roots in community.

 

A month of yoga practice and few classes

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June was a rather uneven month for my yoga prac­tice. While treat­ment had grad­u­ally improved the issues aris­ing from my iliop­soas to the point that I could resume tak­ing class, other prob­lems inter­vened to keep me from get­ting back to a reg­u­lar prac­tice at Thrive Yoga.

Vaca­tion on Cape Cod

For one thing, I took a week off (June 16-​​23) with my wife for a vaca­tion on Cape Cod. We went up via Amtrak and rented a car to get out to Province­town (or “P-​​town,” as they like to call in Mass­a­chu­setts), which must be a full two-​​hours from Boston or Prov­i­dence, so it’s not an easy reach. We prob­a­bly could have got­ten along fine with­out a car once we were at our resort because P-​​town and neigh­bor­ing bor­oughs have reg­u­lar free buses run­ning the main roads, includ­ing the beaches. But hav­ing a car was nec­es­sary to get to Ply­mouth (for the Plimouth Plan­ta­tion and museum about the Pil­grims) and New Bed­ford for the National Whal­ing Museum. We went to those site on Mon­day and Tues­day when the weather was too chilly for extended time on the beach. The weather heated up for the rest of the week, but the tem­per­a­tures on the Cape were still 10 degrees below the heat in the rest of New England.

A heated practice

Speak­ing of heat, this week­end in the DC area has been extreme: the “dere­cho” storm that flew through here on Fri­day evening has cre­ated havoc. Power has been knocked out in most of my area of Mont­gomery County (but by some mir­a­cle we have been with­out elec­tric­ity for 90 min­utes at most!), and most busi­nesses, includ­ing yoga stu­dios, have shut down. Con­sid­er­ing that the Wash­ing­ton, DC area has been through mul­ti­ple weather events that dev­as­tated infra­struc­ture (snow and ice storms, hur­ri­canes, earth tremors), inhab­i­tants have absorbed lots of dis­rup­tions in pub­lic ser­vices. It’s espe­cially bad that the power out­age come at a time when air con­di­tion­ing is vital to get­ting through the heat. It may be a full week before most peo­ple get power back.

Daily Prac­tice

I was able to make it to five class at Thrive Yoga in June, far less than I expected to attend. That did not mean that I stopped doing yoga. Prac­ti­cally every evening, I went through my sequence of yoga poses and restora­tive rou­tines that seem to help me con­trol the dis­com­fort caused by my periph­eral neu­ropa­thy. I took my travel mat, strap and roller with me on vaca­tion, and I needed them after spend­ing time behind the wheel. The stress tended to accu­mu­late between my shoul­der blades, knot up my neck and tighten my lower spine. I don’t think I would get to sleep at a rea­son­able time with­out my practice.

But the short­com­ing of my prac­tice has been that I have not done a strong vinyasa prac­tice and I can tell that I don’t have the strength and sta­mina that comes from a more dynamic, upbeat, bal­anced prac­tice that I usu­ally get in class. I could feel guilty about being a slacker, but I want to approach my prac­tice on an even keel, not lean­ing to the phys­i­cal side with an alpha-​​type inten­sity or endow­ing it with a kind of mag­i­cal power to change to trans­form my mind, body and spirit (but isn’t that why I’ve been going yoga for the past eight years???).

BuddhaFest – June 14-​​17

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Since I am mak­ing up for a pro­longed silence and not blog­ging, there is another DC event that should be mentioned:

Bud­dhaFest – Films Talks Med­i­ta­tion Music

Brought to you by the Insight Med­i­ta­tion Com­mu­nity of Wash­ing­ton (IMCW) and Tri­cy­cle magazine.

Oh, wait. I am too late to make much of a dif­fer­ence. Prac­ti­cally all the all day passes have sold out. You may be able to get indi­vid­ual tick­ets for films or dharma talks. On Sun­day night, Krishna Das will be chant­ing a trib­ute to Ram Das, but you’d want to tick­ets in advance.

Northern Viriginia Yoga Week

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I am already late off the gun.

June 10-​​17 is the fifth annual offer­ing of the Vir­ginia Yoga Week 2012 and there are 12 yoga cen­ters sup­port­ing the effort. Check out the web site for addi­tional details on activ­i­ties, dis­counted classes and work­shops. It’s a great oppor­tu­nity to sam­ple yoga styles and teachers.

More infor­ma­tion is avail­able at the Wash­ing­ton Post.