We Decided That April is The Month of Balance

Dear Friends,

I have a lot of students working with balance challenges right now. Aging REALLY affects balance, and we are all aging. You might curse that fact, but you can also take comfort knowing that it’s not just you. Here is a phrase that I recently heard that I love: “It’s a human problem, not a you problem.” Amen.

We can get into mental habits of thinking we are special. Not in an arrogant way, but in a way that puts ourselves down with false thinking like “I’m deficient because I can’t do xxxx (fill in the blank; perhaps for you it’s balancing on one leg), without realizing that we are in good company.

I know it is extra frustrating when we’re talking about something you used to be able to do easily (like put your socks on while standing on one foot) that has gotten much harder with age. And sometimes this stuff creeps up on us, such that by the time we realize we have “lost” a skill, it feels too far gone to get back. Barring certain medical conditions, this is usually not true with balance. But we do have to practice it.

Practicing balance may sound like a drag to many people, but perhaps not to you if you already go to yoga. Part of what makes yoga poses fun is the balance challenge! And don’t forget, you are engaging your vestibular (balance) system whenever you do a standing pose, even if it is on two feet.

So the body’s system for balancing is getting warmed up before you even think of taking one foot off the floor. And yes, then we get to those one-footed poses that are so tricky….

We get to examine our self-talk with challenges like these. Can we let balancing on one leg be more like a game, one that is a little too challenging for us, as opposed to being so easy as to be boring? Can we accept challenges that emerge newly with being a new age on this earth? Can we get through the balancing poses in a yoga class without gritting our teeth?

By biggest tip for working with balance is to notice how it affects the continuum between tension and ease in your body. Approaching it in an exploratory way, we can ask “How might I work with this such that I retain some ease in my body?” When we clench and tighten, we tend to fall over.

If someone needs to keep one set of toes close to the floor and touch them down to re-ground when they are about to fall over, I really encourage working that way. That frees up some bandwidth to notice when you get extra tense and to see where you can soften.

Will softening just make you fall over? Possibly! Possibly not. Either way, it’s information.

Heck, you can try tensing and bracing your body like crazy… it might be good information to see what happens when you do that! In other words, rebel against my advice if you want; just stay present with what happens.

My other big tip for balance practice is super basic: you have to do it. We generally don’t like doing things we aren’t good at, but we have to do them if we don’t want to lose the capacity to do them. A yoga class is a great environment in which to play with balance. It is supportive, low-risk, and contained.

In April we will be practicing balance on Thursday mornings in Steve’s class. You will get a well-rounded practice (it’s not like you will be balancing on one leg the whole class!), but we will take the time to work with balance a little more than we might normally.

You will not only get a change to practice some fun yoga poses; you might also take the opportunity to practice kind self-talk.

Your breath is your friend. Your ease is your friend. And the floor is your friend. Those are my closing tips for balance practice in yoga (and when putting on your socks).

Habits, Habits, Habits

If you are interested in making yoga or meditation a habit, rather than an occasional activity that you do, it helps to understand how habits work. How do they become established? Why do good habits get thwarted and bad ones feel so intractable sometimes?

We all have firsthand experience with habits, but sometimes we are too close to our own behaviors to see them clearly. In today’s Five-Thing Friday, let’s hear from some experts. They have all helped me understand habits in a more clear-eyed, curious, and mindful way.

These five folks are experts in different ways. Only some of them are formal researchers/PhD’s, but that doesn’t mean the others aren’t experts. (In some ways, they are my favorites on the list.) This is because of the way they have studied habit carefully and systematically, not just casually, and they have created practical frameworks worthy of writing books about.

Let’s dive in.

1. Gretchen Rubin has identified four tendencies that people have when it comes to habits. Knowing which one is the primary driver of your behavior can really clarify what you need to do for yourself if you want to establish a habit. Her book is called The Four Tendencies, and she gives a good summary of it in this interview with Dan Harris of the Ten Percent Happier podcast. From listening to it, I was able to identify my tendency, which has made a real difference for me.

2. Judson Brewer is a psychiatrist, researcher, author, and meditator, so I feel like he knows what he’s talking about on many levels. He has theoretical, clinical, and firsthand, practical knowledge about habits (and extending to full-blown addiction). His work weaves Buddhism and modern science together beautifully, and he has helped a lot of people with his methods. Here is an illuminating interview with him on the Ezra Klein show, and if you want more, check out his website and his books The Craving Mind and Unwinding Anxiety.

3. Katy Milkman researches behavior change and has lots of practical tips for creating good habits, which are supported by evidence. She’s great at making the topic relatable. This episode from NPR’s Life Kit is only 19 minutes long, so it’s a great place to start if you don’t have time for an interview that’s an hour long or more. If you want to look for Milkman’s book, it’s called How To Change.

4. Wendy Wood is another researcher who has been studying habit formation for decades. Among the helpful takeaways in this episode of Hidden Brain, Wood and host Shankar Vedantam discuss the concept of friction, which I have found to be a helpful metaphor in setting up good habits (and minimizing bad ones) in my life. Wood also explains a famous study that many psychologists refer to as simply “the popcorn study,” which is amusing and perhaps relatable. We can learn something from it too.

5. James Clear wrote the popular book Atomic Habits, and I really appreciate his advocacy for SMALL changes that make big differences over time. He discusses his approach in this interview on the Making Sense podcast.

   In Atomic Habits (you can get access to the whole first chapter using this link), Clear does a great job of supporting his claims with a healthy combination of research, observations, experience, analysis, and anecdote. Among his good insights, this one stood out to me: We tend to focus on goals and outcomes that we want, but we are better off looking at our process.

   This is resonant with the way I learned to approach yoga: Get interested in the process and loosen the mind’s grip on wanting specific outcomes. Which is not to say that outcomes aren’t important. We all want to feel different (that is, better) after practicing yoga; otherwise we probably wouldn’t be motivated to do it. However, being more curious about the process than fixated on an outcome is way more conducive to learning, fascination, and enjoyment. And counterintuitively, it brings about better outcomes in most cases.

   Here’s one example: If I want to calm my anxiety, meditating often works for me, BUT not if I spend every other minute checking whether I’m still anxious. If I let go of the desired outcome for a few minutes, I may be able to engage in a process that brings me more peace: feeling my breath come and go in my body. That few minutes of focusing on my breath instead of my anxiety does more for my anxiety than I would have imagined. Weird. It’s like a side door approach.

I hope at least one of these authors/approaches sparks your curiosity. It’s a way bigger topic than making yoga or meditation a regular part of your routine. Once we realize how much of our day is spent engaging in things that are habitual, we might get interested in the mechanics of all those habits. And as the brilliant writer Annie Dillard put it,

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

The 15-minute Yoga Break

Dear Friends,

If you are interested in weaving yoga into your life, not just practicing when you go to a class but taking the tools you learn there into the world where you live, today’s post might be for you.

I’m all for going to classes that last an hour or more, but I’m also a huge fan of shorter yoga practices, which you can do at interstitial moments in the day. A little personal yoga practice is such a refreshing reset, it’s worth getting comfortable with a mini practice session that you can whip out of your pocket any time you have 15 minutes.

Some of my favorite times to slip in a brief yoga practice:

• Early in the morning, before the rest of my family wakes up.

• While coffee or tea water is coming to a boil, or throughout the morning during coffee breaks.

• While toast is toasting or the oven is pre-heating.

• Just before any meal.

• After my kid goes to bed at night.

• Right before I go to bed.

Last time I posted, I suggested a practice format that can work as a template for when you want to do self-guided yoga at home. It was very broad-brush, and today I’ll flesh it out a bit more, suggesting specific poses. This routine takes 15-20 minutes (unless you choose to repeat poses or hold them for longer, which of course you are welcome to do!) and, like always, can be endlessly varied in interesting ways.

Based on the template that I introduced last time, here is the 15-minute sequence that I devised:

If you attend classes, you will probably be familiar with many of these poses. If you need a refresher on any of them, Yoga Journal has a good resource:

A-Z Directory of Yoga Poses

This directory is listed A-Z in English, so you just scroll to the English pose name and click on it for more info. It has all the poses in the sequence except Revolved Belly Pose, which I’ll explain in a moment.

First let me say that learning poses from pictures and words can be helpful, but it’s not ideal. If you are a rank beginner or have never encountered these poses, you will be best served by attending our Wednesday evening class a few times. It might not take you long to start to see/feel/understand the logic of the poses and to be able to guide yourself into them at home, safely and effectively.

That being said, I hope you will have the courage to dive in! If you’ve never guided yourself through a practice, you might not feel like you know what you are doing at first. You might wonder if you are doing things right or feel like you’re “mucking about,” which is fine! I strongly encourage mucking about on a yoga mat any day of the week. Read on for a little tutorial on Revolved Belly Pose, and if you don’t feel you need it, go get onto your mat and play with some poses. Don’t try to be perfect; be curious!

Revolved Belly Pose, a.k.a. Jathara Parivartanasana:

1. Lie on your back and tuck your knees in toward you.

2. Spread your arms out wide on the floor.

3. Slowly lower your legs over to the left towards the floor, also encouraging your knees to draw up towards your left arm.

4. Rest your legs on the floor and your left hand on your legs. If it it is too much of a twist to go all the way to the floor, put something like a pillow under your legs and let them release into it.

5. Your ribs will be turning to the RIGHT (away from your legs), with your right arm lengthening out along the floor and your right shoulder dropping (over time, don’t force it). You can either turn your head to the right or look up at the ceiling if that’s more comfortable.

6. Spend 30 seconds to minute here and then bring the legs back up and do the other side.

7. Note: You do NOT need to straighten the leg, as I’m doing in the photo. Try it if you like, but the pose is at least as wonderful without it!

As always, reach out with any questions. Happy practicing!

~Chelsea

The Floor Is Your Friend

I have several students working on developing a home practice and I know it isn’t easy. Challenges include finding the time, setting up a good space for it, and all manner of distractions both inner and outer.

Yoga teachers deal with all these obstacles too. One common scenario goes something like this: I go to put down my yoga mat but I look at the floor and decide that it needs to be vacuumed first. Then things can go sideways. Basically I choose one of four paths, and let it be noted that TWO of these — that’s half — DON’T end up leading to the practice that I wanted….

The best case scenario is that I vacuum the floor and get on with my practice. Sounds simple enough. Vacuuming a small area takes literally just a couple of minutes, and doing yoga on a clean floor is one of life’s great pleasures, if you ask me. But it is surprisingly hard for me to just vacuum that one area and get on with yoga….

I could, of course just practice on a dirty floor, which I have done in desperation. It’s not my first choice, but I knew myself well enough to know that I sometimes risk getting distracted if I dodn’t get on the mat right away. So that’s my second-best-case scenario.

When things don’t go so well is when I either start vacuuming and decide that I should really vacuum the whole house, which of course eats into my yoga time or even completely steamrolls it, OR I decide that’s it’s all too much and do something else entirely. That last scenario is the worst; it doesn’t feel good. But sometimes we just can’t muster the motivation, and let it be said that sometimes there are really legitimate reasons for that.

Whenever you can choose option #1 or #2, it might help to think of your first task of practice as simply getting in contact with your mat. It might sound strange, but you’ve got to start by touching some part of your body to the floor. (I use the terms “mat” and “floor” interchangeably here.)

If you are starting with standing poses, great — feel your feet on the mat. A gentle cat/cow more what you need to start out? Fantastic — hands and knees make contact with the floor. The obvious but overlooked thing is that we have to get some part of us in contact with the floor.

I find this to be a really fun moment, the start of the practice when I come to feel some part of myself against the mat. I can drop out of thinking and problem-solving mode, and it almost feels like I can drop my brain into whatever part of me touches the floor and just be alert there, feeling stuff.

If I begin with standing poses, for example, my feet wake up and start to notice sensations. I might practice standing poses for 3 minutes or 30, but at some point, it’s going to feel really good to get some other part of me touching the floor. Then I might come down to practice seated poses, then perhaps I come all the way down onto my back…. This can be a way to organize practice that is somewhat improvisational but still structured. It’s not the only way, but it’s a fun one, and there are lots of ways you could sequence it. Here is one possible practice plan that you are welcome to use at home:

• Start with just five minutes of standing poses.

• Then spend the next five minutes with your hands touching the floor, working with poses such as downward-facing dog, plank, cobra, cat/cow, child’s pose, etc.

• Next you could do five minutes of seated poses,…

• …finally ending with 5 minutes of poses that touch your back to the floor, like revolved-belly pose for 1-2 minutes and savasana, (simply resting on your back) for at lease three minutes.

There is a basic, 20-minute practice plan that will probably wake up lots of parts of your body and give a good mix of challenge and restoration.

When the overarching structure of the practice is clear and simple, you can make lots of choices within that and not get overwhelmed with the question of what to do next. Within each 5-minute segment, follow your body’s desires for what to do next, staying within the parameters. (And if you’re feeling rebellious, go ahead and throw a pose into one of the segments where it’s not “supposed” to be. See what happens!)

One more tip: Don’t be afraid of using your phone’s timer. It can be a great tool.

If you are interested in developing a personal yoga practice at home, the best way to get that going is to attend group classes regularly and also get some one-on-one time in a private session. Memberships at Yoga With Chelsea include a reduced rate for private sessions, so check out your options here, and email Chelsea if you want to schedule a private.

Hope you can stay healthy out there! Let’s practice together soon.

-Chelsea

Quiet and Peace, and the Challenges

There is palpable excitement around holidays, especially if you are around any children, God love 'em. And there can be a lot of noise. Lights, parties, music, shopping, popping of corks, fireworks, and being around people.

For all the joy this all brings, it can also be a challenging time if what you are craving is some peace and quiet. I am an introvert, so even though I love the holidays, I yearn for quiet breaks from that excitement.

Sometimes we do get some down-time after holiday, but sometimes not. And sometimes we come down from holiday cheerfulness and start to feel the foreboding of a long, dark winter ahead. Are quiet or solitary moments welcome then? Probably not.

Finding space for quiet is its own problem, which is perhaps easier in some seasons (of the year, and of life) then others. But a separate problem is what to do in that space when we actually find ourselves in it.

For me, this is the trickier challenge: when I do get a quiet moment, it doesn't always translate to inner peace. It would be so much easier if it did! Peace and quiet are actually two different things. Sometimes, even in a quiet setting, we are restless.

I recently came across a quote from Pema Chodron that phrased it like this: “In meditation we discover our inherent restlessness.”

Coming from a VERY experienced meditator, this was nice to hear. If you have ever tried to meditate and felt restless, you are in good company.

I would point out that a yoga class can be a place to notice restlessness as well. Can you relate to having an antsy feeling at some point in your experience taking classes? Let’s face it, an hour to an hour and a half is a long time to keep focus, and not one of us does it "perfectly."

Novelist Dodie Smith (or, one of her characters) put it this way: ”I am a restlessness inside and stillness inside a restlessness.”

We all are.

We need to remember that if we crave peace and quiet, we are getting that message for a reason. It is worth seeking out quiet moments, even though in some of those moments, we are anything but calm and collected on the inside.

Yoga and meditation have taught me that it is worth it to get quiet in my body, even if my mind is a mess. It’s okay that inner peace doesn’t always magically happen. Restlessness happens. And goes away. And happens again.

I still look (greedily) for pockets of time when I can be quiet on some level, because I love those moments (for the most part), and I seek out environments that are conducive to doing so. Challenging as it is, I try to protect that time and those spaces from all sorts of “noise,” literal and figurative.

Sometimes it’s too hard to create that time and space myself, so I need a container, like a formal class or some guidance from another person. I strongly encourage attending live classes, but recordings of guided meditations are great too, especially when you only have a few minutes. I’m including one for you here.

The recording is 10 minutes long, and you can do it sitting or lying down.

If you’d rather attend a full-length yoga class, here is our current slate of classes.

And don’t overlook those smaller pockets of time, which can be found, even in busy lives, even if you have to fight for them a little bit. No amount of quiet time is too small to bother with, if you ask me.

Whether you use this guided meditation in the quiet hours of morning, during a break in the day, or before going to bed, I hope it is helpful.

-Chelsea