With Chrisandra Fox

Photography: Faern, Faernworks.com

When the dance of life has us falling off center, how we find it again? Yoga teaches us that while we may not always be able to change our external conditions – in the moment – we can manage our energy to directly influence our state of mind.

Prana, our intelligent life energy or “the original breath” facilitates all our physical life processes and influences our mental state. Yoga says that to understand your mind, get to know your prana, or life’s energy. In order to know your prana, get to know your breath.

Prana flows in channels, or nadis, throughout the body. According to the tradition, there are 72,000 of these channels. Of these, three are most important for the purposes of hatha yoga: the solar channel (pingala), the lunar channel (ida), and the central channel (sushumna nadi).

The sun channel . . . The moon channel . . .and the central channel, or the Supreme Highway . . .

Practicing nadi shodhana breath can help balance the ida and pingala, thus bringing both mind and body to the same place, where we might realize our true sense of center.

The Pranayama

Sit in siddhasana, or another pose in which you can be seated with an elegant spine. Draw your left foot in. . .

As you inhale, lengthen your spine. As you exhale, draw your chin in toward your chest. Lift your sternum toward your chin to create jalandhara bandha. This position will help to contain the energy while you breathe.

Bring your left arm out and rest your hand on your left knee. Press the thumb and index finger together lightly to create jnana mudra. This seal creates a . . .

Bend your right arm and draw the index and middle fingers to the base of your right thumb. You’ll use your right thumb and the ring and pinky finger of your right hand to alternately block the right nostril and the left nostril. As you block one side, keep the finger of the opposite side resting on the upper part of the nasal passageway, so that you can slow down the flow of breath. Your fingers stay on your nose throughout each side; you’ll uncover the lower part of the nasal canal to create a long thin stream of breath as you inhale and exhale.

Bring your right thumb to the right side of your nose and close off the right nostril. Inhale through your left nostril. Close off your left nostril with your third and fourth fingers, open your right nostril and exhale through the right nostril.

Inhale through your right nostril. Press your thumb against the nose, slide your third and fourth fingers lightly along the bridge of your nose and exhale through your left nostril.

Inhale through your left nostril. Close off your left nostril, open your right nostril and exhale through your right nostril.

Inhale through your right nostril. Close off your right nostril, exhale through your left.

Inhale through the left. Close off the left, exhale through the right.

Continue . . .

• Chrisandra Fox is pursuing a yogic path of liberation and shares these practices in 5 weekly classes at Yoga Tree. She is a primary teacher in Yoga Tree’s 200-hour Teacher Training and leads The Heart of Renewal Retreats.

• Faern is an Artist, yoga practitioner and Photographer in San Francisco. Besides making as much time for tea as possible, you can find Faern in a yoga class, at her current art show or wandering the city via public transportation. You can visit her in various places online: FaernWorks website, Twitter, Facebook, Faern in the Works Blog.

Writing & Model: Chrisandra Fox

Photography: Faern, faernworks.com

In the Vedas, Moksha refers to the soul’s “release” or liberation from bondage to samsara, or the cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

The Yoga tradition teaches that samsara includes the continuous flow of life’s daily experiences – the daily roller coaster ride of passion, emotions, desire and experience. And moksha is freedom from getting rocked on the ride.

The roller coaster is the small births and the deaths we experience daily. These represent hopes and the loss of hope.

I hope I can get my foot behind my head today.

I’ll never get my foot behind my head!

Yoga provides a skillful means for gradually and consistently recognizing these cycles, and interrupting their unconscious repetition. Yoga strengthens the capacity to abide in the fiery center of the ups and downs.

When you take a long journey, you bring a GPS, or, in the old school, a compass. Yoga is this tool, this inner sense of knowing which step to take next, the stability to dwell in that knowing and the courage to change direction when we’ve gone off course.

To live in moksha is to live the life we are living now fearlessly, with purpose and success. Many of us benefit from having a compass.

This month’s pose, Parivrtta Surya Yantrasana honors and celebrates the process of unfolding moksha in this lifetime.

A beautiful hip opener, sidebend and twist, Compass Pose asks us to be both steady and inspired to fearlessly unwind our tendencies and perceived limitations.

This pose is challenging. But if we are willing to look honestly through the body into our hearts, we can “see” where we truly are and skillfully redirect our inner knowing to the goal.

Beyond hopes, beyond loss of hope.

The Pose

Sit in Dandasana. Bend your right leg and place your heel near your left sitting bone. Bend your left leg in toward your chest. Draw your left knee back toward the left side of your ribcage.

Take a few breaths here, balancing your weight on both sitting bones, and coaxing your thighbone to externally rotate in the hip socket.

Now, nestle your left leg behind your left elbow. Work slowly to bring the back of your left knee or thigh up high on your arm and toward the back of your shoulder. Cultivate a smooth rhythm in your breath.

Once you’ve found a landing spot for the back of your left leg, lean forward, and slide the back of your shoulder in a little more snug. Then, take hold of the pinky-toe side of your left foot with your right hand. You can use a strap for this.

Reach your left arm out beyond your left leg and shift your weight into your right sitting bone. Lean off your right hip, soften your left side body.

Ground your weight into your right sitting bone and left hand, and continue to soften and melt any resistances in your left side waist with a smooth and rhythmic flow of your breath.

Move your inner left thigh away from your chest to widen the back of your left leg and to help you straighten it. Press through the sole of your left foot and continue to widen the back of your left leg. Now, turn the center of your chest – your spiritual heart – and ribcage to the right.

This pose can be more of a lateral pose, or side-bend, or open-belly twist, depending on which way your direct your inner compass.

In whichever orientation you’ve chosen, stabilize your balance through grounding your right sitting bone and right leg. You can vary the intensity by pressing your weight evenly through both sitting bones and bowing your right ribcage, widening your right side body.

Slow your breathing. Keep your eye gaze steady and soft as you deepen into your steady point of balance and open through your torso.

If your hamstrings are tight, be honest with that and work with a strap, or keep your knee bent. Remember, the path of liberation is long, sometimes slow and steady. Enjoy each moment of turning your compass. Be guided by your sense of grounding toward the earth and soaring toward your greatest aspiration of freedom.

• Chrisandra Fox is pursuing a yogic path of liberation and shares these practices in 5 weekly classes at Yoga Tree. She is a primary teacher in Yoga Tree’s 200-hour Teacher Training and leads The Heart of Renewal Retreats. 

• Faern is an Artist, yoga practitioner and Photographer in San Francisco. Besides making as much time for tea as possible, you can find Faern in a yoga class, at her current art show or wandering the city via public transportation. You can visit her in various places online: FaernWorks website, Twitter, Facebook, Faern in the Works Blog.

Pose of the Month

With Chrisandra Fox

Photography: Faern, Faernworks.com

Sirsasana (Headstand) balances the body, mind and emotions, and can initiate a playful dance between the expanse of our spirit and the depth of our soul.

Like two sides of a coin, the play of spirit and soul reveals two interconnected dimensions of being.

According to the teachings of Michael Meade, Spirit reflects the outward and uprising expansion of energy that is intelligent, unifying and transcendent. Soul brings us more deeply into the body and the heart, its multiplicity of experience, the depth of emotion and even the mystery of not-knowing.*

As we align the body and mind in headstand, cultivate our breath and increase concentration to maintain the balance, our spiritual dimension, or sense of awareness expands. We may become one with the form, gaining a sense of absolute-ness in our experience.

As we hold this pose, allowing the stability to build, our focus may be drawn toward our individual, unique self and a multiplicity of experience. We may meet resistance in our sensations, our thoughts and emotions – anything that prevents us from perceiving the “Oneness” we may have felt before.

As we re-connect with our breath to receive our present experience (fear of falling, shakiness, boredom) and meet resistance with patience, we enter a soulful place of intimacy within ourselves and to our Source, bringing us back to the Oneness and the expansion of spirit.

The journey from spirit to soul and soul to spirit is a continuum we may experience in every pose, from basic to advanced.

Sirsasana so elegantly invites us to move between the ecstatic outward expression of spirit and the co-existing deep inward movement of soul, providing an opportunity for balance.

Headstand requires tremendous steadiness, both in the physical body and in mental concentration. As your body and mind gain stability, you may notice a quality of lightness, an ascending grace and perhaps an expansion of breath that inspires you to go further and further and higher and higher.

As you meet that ascending quality within yourself, notice the downward wave of gravity that helps you root and ground.

As the matrix of your bodymind reorients to being turned upside down, you may feel your body falling out and falling back in toward the center. Use that “falling” to attune and adjust to the subtle shifts in your body that help you stay steady, as though you are riding a wave of energy and moving more deeply inside that wave to connect to its stillness.

By cultivating this recognition of non-striving, but responding to where we are, we enter that soulful space of comfort and ease within our own skin, while shining in the bright light of awareness.

The Pose

Come to all fours. You’ll lower your forearms to the floor and bring your elbows shoulder-width apart. Interlace the webbing of your fingers, bring your weight onto both pinky fingers. Lower the crown of your head to the floor so that the back of your head rests in your hands.

Then, curl your toes under and lift your pelvis up. Walk your feet in toward your head until you can stack your shoulders above your wrists.  Draw your shoulder blades strongly in toward your chest and press down through your forearms, lifting your outer upper arms up and rolling your shoulders away from your ears.

Engage strongly through your abdominal muscles.

Bend your knees, inhale and lift your legs up toward the sky. As you invert your legs, re-establish your root to the earth by pressing firmly through your outer wrists and directing the weight through the crown of your head. Keep your inner wrists drawn in toward the sides of your head and press them down into the floor, so that your forearms do not turn out.

Reach the soles of your feet up, draw your inner thighs back lightly. You’ll want to lengthen your tailbone up toward your heels and engage your abdominal muscles to help steady your body in the pose. Lift and spread your toes.

As you activate your legs, they will become firmer, creating a sense of lightness and ease. Slow down your breath to strengthen your lungs and help steady your body.

In the beginning of practice, you will likely focus on physical balance. As you cultivate steadiness, make subtle adjustments to deepen your sense of “being” in the pose.

For example, connect the bases of your big toes, as though creating a seal between your feet. Soften your eyes and muscles of your face. It is helpful to direct your gaze just beyond the tip of your nose or at a point on the floor.

Stay for 5-15 breaths. Gradually increase the length of your stay by a few more breaths each time you practice. You can work toward staying for up to 10 minutes or longer.

To come out, bend your knees and lower your feet to the floor. Rest in Balasana (Child’s Pose), allow your neck to release and your entire body to relax.

Avoid practicing Sirsasana on the first few days of your moon cycle, or if you have head, neck or shoulder injuries, high blood pressure or heart conditions. Ask your teacher to show you how to do headstand if you have never practiced this pose before.

The ancients advise practicing this pose during the pre-dawn ambrosial time of the morning. As the sun rises, its radiant beams awaken the pituitary and pineal glands and stimulate the expansion of consciousness, the ascension of the spirit.

In headstand, the winds of energy that are generally moving toward the feet and out through the senses come back toward the central channel of the spine and deeply in toward the core of our being. Gravity assists this flow of energy toward the crown of the head, or the “aperture” through which the soul is said to enter and leave the body upon birth and death.

Beginners will benefit by using a wall and taking more weight into the arms to help with stability. With practice, as the body becomes firmer and lighter, you can take more weight directly onto the crown of your head, settling the mind into a soulful seat of comfort and ease.

Chrisandra teaches Sirsasana and other practices to balance spirit and soul at 5 classes weekly at Yoga Tree.

*This article was inspired by the teachings of Michael Meade.

Writing& Model:  Chrisandra Fox

Photography: Faern, Faernworks.com

The Divine Shakti, celebrated as the life force behind all manifestation, animates the whole universe just as the vital force (prana) sustains the body through all of its [life] phases and flows most powerfully from the heart to the crown of the head.

[sage Ramakantha, commenting on Kalottara Tantra, c. 8^th century – trans. Christopher Tompkins]

Yogic study and practice weaves the story of our human lives within the greater context of the story of the universe. The individual microcosm of practice allows us to embody and experience a larger macrocosmic concept.

In the Tantric universe, Shakti is associated with the macrocosmic intelligent feminine power that animates all creation and is inherent in all creative potential. Shakti unifies and empowers the universe into its many unique limited forms.

Traditional hatha yoga, the “forceful union method” gives systematic guidelines for awakening Kundalini Shakti, the microcosmic creative energy and spiritual potential inherent in each individual. This “serpentine power”, coiled three and a half times, sleeps at the base of the spine until She is aroused and inspired to journey along Sushumna Nadi, the central channel of the spine, to meet her beloved.

Upon reaching the crown, Shakti, feminine principle of creation, unites with Siva, pure consciousness. Meanwhile, the bindings of the chakras, or energy plexuses along the “Supreme Highway” are pierced, releasing and rewriting old patterns of thought, emotion, mind and matter and bringing forth an integration of the masculine and the feminine, and the opposites inherent in duality.

The ancient texts describe this beautiful process of spiritual unfolding and give simple, yet comprehensive practices to awaken Kundalini Shakti primarily using pranayama (regulation of breath), bandha (the valves or “bindings” to efficiently regulate the flow of prana), asana (mostly seated positions), mudra (seals) and sometimes mantra, after sincere preparations through diet and purification are made under the guidance of a teacher.

This month’s column offers a pose that can give of a taste of awakening the energy, heart-opening and deep surrender that is associated with Kundalini Shakti. Scorpion Pose requires steady concentration of body and mind, internal support of the breath and deep yielding of spinal movement to the pulse of energy that circulates from root to crown on the waves, crests and peaks of prana.

Scorpion combines deep spinal extension with an inverted arm balance. You may want to practice this pose with a teacher or yogi friend.  Shakti manifests in many ways – this short sequence provides several poses to work with so that you may begin to experience the heart-warming waves of prana shakti, or your own life energy. May they lead you to the bliss of realizing the all-pervading, cosmic embrace of Mama Shakti.

The Warm-up

Begin your practice with a few rounds of Surya Namaskar, Virabhadrasana I, and Utkatasana to warm up. Cultivate a steady rhythm of breath and movement to prepare your body for the quiet strength in stillness you will find in Scorpion.

Wall Lunge

Next, you’ll open your hip flexors with a lunge at the wall.

Place a folded blanket at the wall and kneel so that your back faces the wall. Place your right knee into the wall joint, weight resting on the fleshy part of your thigh above your kneecap. Rest your shin against the wall with your toes pointed up. Step your left foot forward, stack your knee above your ankle. Place your hands on your left thigh and press your right shin strongly against the wall for a few breaths.

Cultivate a feeling of curiosity and even friendliness as you observe the sensations in your hips and thighs. You’ll want to remember this quality of friendly detachment in the intensity of Scorpion.

Then, bring your pelvis back to the wall so that your right foot rests just to the outside of your right hip. You’ll feel a deeper stretch in your quadriceps. From here, you can raise your arms up overhead, turning your hands to face the wall. Notice the pauses in your breath. Can you lift and engage the muscles of your pelvic floor and tone the space behind your navel as you exhale, balancing the rhythm of dynamic energy in your body and internal stability?

Bend your right knee more deeply toward and beyond your right toes. Sink your pelvis toward the floor, bend your elbows toward 90° and walk your hands down the wall. Turn your palms to face the wall and draw your inner elbows in. Coil your spine into the backbend. Bring your head back, and deepen the base of your sacrum toward your front body. Keep a rhythm of support and surrender – work your arms strongly, engage the deepest layers of your abdominal muscles and feel a sense of lift through your pelvic floor, all while softening your eyes, your inner ears and to the steady flow of your breath.

Inhale slowly, rise up.

Step back to Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-facing Dog Pose) to restore your sense of equanimity. Then, practice on the second side.

Sphinx

Lie down on your belly. Bring your elbows beneath your shoulders with your hands in the line of your elbows and lift your chest up so that weight is resting on your forearms. Press your fingerpads against the floor and lightly “drag” your forearm flesh toward your torso without moving your arms. Draw your upper arms back and your shoulder blades more deeply into your back ribs. Press the tops of your feet into the floor.

Cultivate breath in your heart space. As you stabilize your arms, can you begin to coil your back ribs toward your front body? Feel the deepening of your upper thoracic spine toward your front body.

The Pose

Now you are ready for Scorpion. Place your sticky mat perpendicular to the wall. Kneel on all fours facing the wall and lower your forearms to the floor so that your hands are somewhere between a hand’s width to a foot from the wall (experiment to find the right distance for you). Rest your forearms shoulder-width apart.

Curl your toes under and press your thighs back to Dolphin Pose.

Anchor the lower points of your shoulder blades toward your hips. Guide the weight of your forearms into the flesh between your thumb and index finger.

Lift your head and set your drishti (gaze) toward the tip of your nose or to a point on the floor just beyond your hands.

Inhale, lift one leg up. You can bend the other leg and kick up to Pinchamayurasana (Feathered Peacock Pose or Forearm Balance). Bring your heels to the wall and press the soles of your feet up. Release the sides of your neck so that the crown of your head faces the floor. Draw your legs in towards the midline of your body, lift your heels up, engage your abdominals and navel center.

Then, deepen the shoulder blades on your back ribs and lift your head, return a soft and steady gaze toward the floor to help create a sense of “grounding” in body and mind.

From here, bend both knees and press your feet against the wall. Press the top of one foot against the wall, pointing your toes toward the floor. This will draw your spine into a deeper backbend, so keep your upper arms pressing back, as in Sphinx. Lightly drag your finger pads against the floor to keep good balanced action in your arms.

With steadiness in your shoulders, deepen your breath in your upper body, widen your chest and heart space. Press the top of the other foot against the wall. Work both feet strongly into the wall as you lengthen your tail toward the backs of your knees.

Slow your breath, allow it to deepen and draw the energy in your limbs toward your spine, as though you are creating a cord of pranic power in the central channel of your spine to help support your body in the pose.

This may be enough, and, if so, enjoy a few more breaths before releasing your feet. You’ll walk them back up the wall, then lower one or both feet to the floor. Rest in Balasana, Child’s Pose.

If you are steady and ready for more, hug your upper arm bones back and deepen the extension of your spine by melting your heart space lightly between your arms, move the wind of prana into your chest. Walk your feet down the wall. On steady, balanced arms, lift and spread the wings of your sternum, deepen your sacrum. Draw your navel toward your spine to stabilize your sacrum.

Coil your spine more deeply into the backbend, lift your head up, bend your knees more deeply and allow your feet to gently strike your crown, uniting Kundalini Shakti with her beloved.

When the feet rest upon the head, maintain the steadiness in your breath and your gaze, remembering the sacred toning at your navel center and the upward pulsations of pelvic floor energy toward your crown. Soften your eyes, your inner ears and the corners of your mouth. Allow the quality of friendliness in as you ride the waves of your breath with sweet humility.

To release the pose, engage your abdominals and spinal muscles to lift your legs back up, uncoil your spine and slowly release your feet to the floor.

Rest in Balasana (Child’s Pose) or Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog), or continue your practice, still abiding in the sweet surrender to the power of Shakti.

Chrisandra Fox guides you to surrender in 5 Shakti-ful classes a week at Yoga Tree. Click here for her schedule. She leads the Heart of Renewal Retreats in California and beyond.

Faern is a mixed media artist, photographer and yoga practitioner in San Francisco. Visit her website, follow her on Twitter, or like her on Facebook.

Pose of the Month: Paschimottanasana- Intense Stretch of the West

Writing & Model: Chrisandra Fox

Photography: Faern, faernworks.com

It’s Spring, a natural time for melting, shedding and sprouting. As the earth warms and opens and daylight stretches into the evening, we see a natural increase in growth and renewal – the sprouting buds of plants, the singing of baby birds, spring housecleaning and renewed interest in physical activities outdoors.

Even digestion speeds up as we lighten our diets and savor in the abundance of a new season’s fresh fruits and vegetables.

A daily dose of Paschimottansana can help your body shed its winter layer, wake up your life energy, calm your nervous system and cool excessive activity in your brain. Considered “the best among asanas” in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Paschimottansana helps to increase digestive fire, tone and strengthen the liver, kidneys and reproductive organs and help you stay cool and centered during the increase of seasonal warmth to come.

Regular practice of this seated forward bend “stretches” the back or “West” side of the body and its fascia layer covering the muscles of the spine, legs, arms and shoulders. This stretching improves impulse function through the spinal column to the brain and helps to calm the nervous system.

Paschimottansana also directs the flow of prana from the lower chakra centers of the torso to the higher centers in the heart and brain. This redirection of energy can help to burn through stagnation and excessive attachment in our material lives and “lift” our spirits toward a sense of higher vision. We can transform the inertia that may have collected during the darker months of winter (or longer) into a lightness of being and renewal in body and mind.

The Pose

You may want to warm up with a few standing forward bends and asymmetrical seated poses before practicing Paschimottanasana.

Sit in Dandasana (Staff Pose), with your hands resting at the sides of your hips. If your pelvis tilts back, sit on the edge of a folded blanket.

With legs extended, press the heel of one foot forward, then the other foot a few times to help gently spread your buttocks flesh back. Press strongly through both heels. Your quadriceps should be lightly engaged, careful not to lock your knee.

Inhale, reach your arms up overhead. Exhale, bend forward at your hips, take your hands to your feet or shins.

Inhale smoothly and extend your front spine, keep your chin drawn in lightly toward the center of your throat. Exhale, lengthen your low belly, then mid-torso and chest over your legs. Keep your neck in the line of your spine. Widen the backs of your legs and spread broadly across the bases of your toes.

With each inhalation, feel the lengthening of your spine toward the crown of your head. As you exhale, allow your organs to fold deeply in toward your back body, massage them with your breath.

For many students, tightness in the hips, hamstrings and back will present an immediate sense of limitation in the pose. If this is true for you, loop a strap around your feet. As you inhale, extend your front spine and as you exhale, fold at your hips without rounding your back. Keep the extension of your front body, use your exhalation to find tone in your abdomen. Lower your eye gaze toward the tip of your nose and soften the skin on your forehead.

Another option is to bend your knees and deepen the angle between your thighs and your torso. As the backs of your legs begin to open, try straightening them a little.

For everyone, avoid pushing, straining or pulling into the shape of the forward bend. Support the openness of the front, back and sides of your torso with smooth rhythmic breathing. As your torso comes closer to your legs, round your back gently, allowing your forehead to rest on or toward your shins.

You can bend your elbows to open across your chest. Release the tops of your shoulders away from your ears.

Feel your senses turn toward the inner landscape of your body, breath and mind. As you fold more deeply inside, feel a light lift of your pelvic floor energy towards your heart. Find the lifting of your abdomen up towards your ribcage after your exhale, purifying any heaviness there and cultivating ease in your heart.

To come up, inhale and slowly lift your spine to neutral. Sit in Dandasana, or come into a comfortable seated pose and rest your mind in the quiet open space of renewal.

Chrisandra Fox teaches Tantric-inspired hatha yoga six classes weekly at Yoga Tree.

She leads The Heart of Renewal Retreats in California and beyond. Email Chrisandra@gmail.com

Faern is a mixed media artist, photographer and yoga practitioner in San Francisco. Visit her website, follow her on Twitter, or like her on Facebook.

Pose of the Month: Parivrtta Trikonasana

(Revolved Triangle Pose)

Writing & Model: Chrisandra Fox

Photography: Faern, faernworks.com

Spring is just around the corner. Like the dawning of a new season, pregnant and potent with possibility, spanda is the creative spark and vibratory impulse that births our deepest intentions into the living fold of our reality.

Spanda is vibration, a throbbing, pulsation. The Tantras describe the origins of spanda in manifold ways and as a dance of evolution and regression, expansion and withdrawing, recognition and the concealment of one’s own Divine Nature.

“This ‘subtle swelling’ is the seed state of all phenomena and is the bliss of consciousness, as the awareness it has that ‘I am everything’” (The Stanzas on Vibration, Dyczkowski, 52).

When we “follow our hearts”, when we are guided by our inner-knowing and when we attend to the natural rhythms of our bodies as they align with the rhythms of nature, we increase our spanda. The result is vitality, unbridled and spontaneous creativity and a natural movement towards personal growth that can positively influence everything around us.

Our yogic practices pave the way for living a “spanda-full” life, and twists provide a particularly rich environment for directly experiencing the pulsation of spanda. As the body literally turns off its center, an awareness of that center springs forth, bringing us “back” to center, even as we twist.

Twists help wring out the internal organs, assisting detoxification and helping us to literally change our minds and shift perspective, purifying and cleansing the very fabric of our physical existence. Twists liberate our essential life energy and “integrate the opposites” of activity and passivity, the masculine and feminine, the solar and the lunar.

As you practice Parivrtta Trikonasana, notice the ways in which you experience expansion and withdrawal. Notice where you feel open, and where you experience resistance at the level of body, mind or breath. Adjust your body as needed and connect with the energy that is moving your breath. As your prana flows more freely and your body begins to open, stay attuned to your own vibration – to your sensations and emotions just before arising, to the space between thoughts, and to the essence of your very being.

The Pose

Stand with your feet placed widely apart. Turn your right foot out at a 90° angle, and turn your left foot in at 45-60°. Align your heels, or for greater stability keep some space between them.

Place your hands on your hips. Ground strongly through your left heel and spread your weight evenly through both feet, into your heels and across the bases of your toes. Draw your quadriceps strongly up and rotate your thighs in lightly to encourage the support of mula bandha (root lock).

Now work your outer right hip back and wrap your outer left hip around until both frontal hip pointers, your navel and sternum are facing front.

Lift your arms up overhead. On an exhalation, turn your belly to the right and keep that length along the left side of your body, extend your torso forward and down, bring your left hand to the pinky toe side of your right foot. Place your right hand on your right hip and encourage a strong pull back so that your hips are level and your right side waist is not collapsed.

Exhale, coil your ribs to the right and turn your belly, chest, neck and head, twisting strongly off your left hip. Lift your right arm up toward the sky, lengthen your fingers and spread across your hand.

Feel the grounding and the stability of your legs, and use this sensation to encourage a release of tension from your forehead, your eyes and the base of your skull. Draw your chin in lightly and soften the orbits and the backs of your eyes.

Inhale, draw the breath in toward your heart, into your side ribs, upper chest and the spaces between the vertebrae of your spine. Exhale and twist, wringing out the organs in your abdomen and releasing any excessive effort.

As you twist, still feeling connected to the earth, keep awareness at your heart space. Within the heart is the pulsation of pure consciousness and everything that arises from this seat of witnessing. Can you soften and melt into that deep presence, witness the unfolding of sensations, emotions and thoughts, allow each to dissolve back into the expanse of your pure conscious being?

Feel the unwinding, spiraling energy through the central channel of your spine, the inward and upward rising movement and the outward and downward flowing of energy. As you exhale, continue to find the internal support of your root and gently draw your navel towards your spine to integrate and weave these intertwining directions of energy.

When you are ready to come out, inhale and lower your right hand to the floor, release the twist. Slowly lift back to center. Stand in your wide-legged stance for a moment and allow your body to integrate the work of the twist. Feel the waves of pulsation and your own vibration.

With a steady breath, take the second side.

Chrisandra Fox teaches Parivrtta Trikonasana and other spandifying yogic practices in 6 weekly classes at Yoga Tree. She leads The Heart of Renewal Retreats in California and beyond. Email Chrisandra@gmail.com

Faern is a mixed media artist, photographer and yoga practitioner in San Francisco. Visit her website, follow her on Twitter, or like her on Facebook.

Being a resource is an honor, thank you again.

Pleas note: we are now MOVING forward with all entries- we have completed back posting for now~

please share this blog around, and let us know if you have any questions~

best, Faern

Pose of the Month: Trataka

{ NOTE: this was previously Posted on December 9, 2010 here:

http://faern-in-the-works.com/2010/12/09/trataka/ }

Writing: Chrisandra Fox

Photography: Faern, faernworks.com\

Trataka is a yogic practice of gazing steadily at an object to build concentration (dharana). It is one of the six cleansing techniques, (shatkarmas), used traditionally to purify and harmonize the body, mind and senses before the practice of yoga asana.

Nowadays, it is common to practice asana and hope for calmness and mental clarity. The yogis used asana to prepare for meditation and establish the mind in its unwavering recognition of the true self. And meditation requires concentration.

Trataka helps to stabilize the mind and develop the psychic center of clarity and insight at the third eye, (ajna chakra). Increased concentration (dharana) can lead to an uninterrupted state of concentration (dhyana) through which the mind dissolves into a blissful, integrated awareness of both the dark and the light, (samadhi).

This simple and powerful practice can have far-reaching results. As your mind becomes steady and calm, delightfully resting in its own awareness, you can more easily abide in a natural state of inner peace.

There are two stages of trataka – external, or bahir trataka and internal, or antar trataka. Generally, we lose energy as the mind is drawn in different directions through the senses. By focusing attention on an external or internal object, the mind becomes steady and gains energy for meditation to naturally arise.

Various objects can be used for gazing steadily – a flower, an inspiring picture, the moon or whatever brings you a calm, peaceful feeling. We’ll practice here with the flame of a candle as a way to weave both stages of outer and inner visualization.

The Practice

Sit in a comfortable and steady seated position, such as simple cross-legged pose (sukhasana), sitting on your heels in thunderbolt pose (vajrasana), sitting with your legs in half and or full lotus (padmasana) or sitting with both feet placed between the thigh and calf muscles, with the left heel pressing against the perineum (siddhasana), or sit on a block or bolster.

Light a candle and place it an arm’s length away from your eyes. Lengthen your spine and neck, relax your shoulders and close your eyes. Let the downward flow of energy bring grounding and stability to your body, and the upward flow of energy bring lightness, attentiveness and ease.

Open your eyes and gaze at the wick of the candle, into the center of the flame. Relax the muscles surrounding your eyes. Keep your eyes open, but not strained. Try not to blink, gaze steadily at the flame of the candle and focus your attention on the unwavering wick. Bring full concentration to the wick for as long as you can or until your eyes begin to water.

Close your eyes and find the image of the flame behind your closed lids. Hold this image in your awareness at the center of your eyebrows, your third-eye point. You may become aware of your thoughts, your feelings and the sensations in your body. Keep drawing your attention right back to the image of the flame.

When the image is gone, open your eyes and return your gaze to the wick of the candle. Gaze steadily into the flame and bring your full mental energy into the flame for as long as you can.

Then, close your eyes and focus on the image of the flame at your third eye for as long as the image is clear.

Continue moving from the external flame to the internal flame. Notice how your concentration sharpens with practice. When you are ready to end your practice, chant three rounds of OM, allowing the vibration of the sound to completely fill your body and resonate towards your third eye point.

Then, meditate in the silence. Keep awareness at ajna chakra and continue moving your mind toward the still quiet place inside, aware of your body, aware of your thoughts and becoming more and more enchanted by your sense of inner peace.

*Trataka is a simple and powerful practice that can strengthen the eyes, improve concentration and memory and lead to stages of meditation that can bring deep peace. As you gain spiritual experience, it is always helpful to work with a qualified teacher who can guide you. Om

Chrisandra Fox teaches weekly classes at Yoga Tree, Yoga Garden and leads The Heart of Renewal Retreats in California and beyond. She teaches in Yoga Tree’s 200-hour Teacher Training.

Chrisandra@gmail.com

Faern is a mixed media artist, photographer and yoga practitioner in San Francisco. Visit her website, follow her on Twitter, or like her on Facebook.

Bharadvajasana: Pose dedicated to the sage, Bharadvaja

{ NOTE: this was previously Posted on November 5, 2010 here: http://faern-in-the-works.com/2010/11/05/bharadvajasana-pose-dedicated-to-the-sage-bharadvaja-with-chrisandra-fox/ }

Writing: Chrisandra Fox

Photography: Faern, faernworks.com

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others. -Cicero

In this month’s pose, ground yourself in the greatness of gratitude. Gratitude is that quality or feeling of appreciation and thankfulness for what we have. But what is great about gratitude is that it is available at any moment – arising spontaneously and sometimes conjured up with practice – to ground us in the power of awareness of the gift of the present moment.

We often feel grateful when we receive something we want, like a gift. However, as a mindful practice, we can cultivate gratitude for the abundance of life’s treasures – easy and difficult, sweet and bitter, ecstatic and mundane – to ground our awareness in an enduring inner state of peace that allows us to be more receptive to that which is impermanent.

In yoga practice, gratitude can help you acknowledge the larger context of practice, and guide you to an inner abode of humility and possibility for peace with where you are. From here, the asana practice unfolds not as a gainful attempt to get anywhere, but as a continuity of awareness and creative expression of skillfully harmonizing your individual life’s energy with the cosmic energies of the universe.

Twists help integrate the solar and lunar energies of the body and balance the nervous system. These equalizing poses strengthen the shoulders, hips and spine, and purify the digestive system by stoking the fires of agni, which improves metabolism of food, emotion, and experience, and provides heat for assimilation and transformation.

In twists, we compress and “wring out” the organs of the belly, pushing out the stagnant blood and stoking agni, our metabolic fires of transformation. When we release the twist, the organs are supplied with a fresh flow of blood and prana, and the digestive process is quickened, thus leading to purification. The heat of agni aids in our ability to “let go” of what is no longer needed, physically, emotionally and mentally and assimilate the absorption of nutrients, emotional clarity and change in perspective.

A practice involving twists like the beginner-level, open-belly Bharadvajasana, can leave you feeling calm, light, and more balanced, with ease of heart and peace of mind that inspires a natural flow of grace and an outpouring of gratitude.

The Pose

Sit in a cross-legged postion. Bring your hands together in prayer at the heart for Anjali Mudra. Take a moment to connect with your breath and the presence of your heart space. Contemplate 3 things for which you are grateful. Name each one and take a moment to feel the energy of emotion connected with your gratitude to these parts of your life.

Extend your legs to Dandasana (Staff Pose). Bend both knees, swing your lower legs to the left. Rest your left foot in the center of your right foot’s arch.

Inhale, and slowly draw length in your spine. As you exhale, twist to your right, walk your right hand behind your pelvis and place your left hand on your outer right thigh. Turn your palm to face up, and slide the back of your hand beneath your right thigh.

Keep your weight steady and grounded through your left buttock. If your left buttock lifts off the floor, place a folded blanket beneath your right buttock.

Draw both shoulder blades down on your back ribs to level your shoulders as you find the spiral wave of the twist from the base of your spine to the crown of your head. On each inhalation, draw length into your spine. As you exhale, twist more deeply to the right. Soften your belly to receive the twist. Allow your pelvis to turn with the twist to protect your sacral area. Keep your buttocks grounded.

You can turn your head in the direction of the twist, or turn your neck in the opposite direction, gaze to the horizon. For a deeper opening in the neck draw your right ear toward your right shoulder without straining the neck. Gaze toward the tip of your nose.

Stay for a minute or two to increase the potency of your twist. As you build inner fire, continue to abide in the equalizing calm and receptivity. Inhale and unwind your twist, turn back to center to unlock the gate to savor the greatness of gratitude.

Variation: Take your right hand to your left arm and take hold of the inner elbow. As you twist, draw your forearm into your back body, feel the pressure of your arm against your back muscles and kidneys.

Chrisandra Fox teaches weekly classes at Yoga Tree, Yoga Garden and leads The Heart of Renewal Retreats in California and beyond. She teaches in Yoga Tree’s 200-hour Teacher Training.

Chrisandra@gmail.com

Faern is a mixed media artist, photographer and yoga practitioner in San Francisco. Visit her website, follow her on Twitter, or like her on Facebook.

Simhasana (Lion’s Pose)

{ NOTE: this was previously Posted on October 6, 2010 here: http://faern-in-the-works.com/2010/10/06/simhasana }

Writing: Chrisandra Fox

Photography: Faern, faernworks.com

Simhasana (Lion’s Pose), dedicated to the Man-Lion incarnation of Vishnu, clears ama, or waste from the tongue, tones the throat, improves speech, and creates an ideal condition for the practice of all three bandhas.

This pose can also ignite the fierce purifying energy of Kali, who is the dark feminine and destructive face of God. Kali has been honored in Hindu mythology and Tantric practice as the warrioress who protects universal and individual order when balance is disrupted. Like a mama lion, she is fierce, loving and protective, her eternal energy pulsating in the Heart chakra. In the rhythm of life, she is the transformative power of action and life-energy that is expressed through life and death, or more simply, through the breath.

One translation of Kali is “time”, and this Goddess is the great womb of existence or time, the void from which the universe is born and to which it returns. Her unpredictable and often terrible force helps us to break down the ego attachment that binds our consciousness to what is known and desired so that we may merge our awareness into the unmanifest, unknowable, formless ground of being.

While not directly related to the practices that honor Kali, the Mother Goddess, Simhasana helps us to expel the toxicity of excess or stagnation, to forcibly release what is no longer needed, to refresh our organs and our energy, and to dissolve a busy mind into a moment of eternity.

The Pose

Begin in Dandasana (Staff Pose), with legs extended. Lift your seat, bend your right knee and place your right foot beneath your left buttock. Bend your left knee and place your left foot beneath your right buttock, so that your ankles are crossed. You’ll sit back on your inner heels and point your toes, rest your pelvis on your heels.

Alternately, sit in Bhadrasana (Gracious Pose). Kneel on your shins, bring your toes together and knees widely apart. Rest your buttocks in the cradle of your feet. If your knees are tight, sit on a block.

Place your hands on your thighs, palms resting and fingers cupping your knees.

Draw your chin in toward the center of your throat to engage a slight Jalandhara Bandha (chin lock). Inhale through your nose. Exhale through your mouth, stretch out your tongue as far as you can, and release your breath with a resonant “haaaaaa”. You can gaze toward the tip of your nose, or lift your gaze to your third eye point. Inhale, and repeat. Take three rounds of lion’s breath, gradually increase the duration of your exhalation, stretching the tongue and letting it roll from side to side to increase its activity.

Then, change the position of your legs, and do three rounds on the second side.

If you are familiar with the bandhas (locks or gateways for regulating the flow of energy), you may engage them after the exhalation. Draw your chin further in towards the center of your throat, draw your pelvic floor up and scoop your low belly in and up to the center of your ribcage.

The positioning of the body in Simhasana induces the bandhas, although it will take practice to cultivate steadiness within them. The pressure of your heels against your perineum creates a natural “lift” in your pelvic floor. You can enhance this lift by imagining and creating an energetic “tug” or doming of your pelvic floor toward the center of your throat.

Uddiyana Bandha (Flying Buttress) occurs most naturally when the chest is lifted powerfully, or the spine is tilted forward. In Simhasana, keep your arms extended to encourage a lift in your ribcage, then slowly draw your low belly in and up to create a vacuum with your diaphragm.

Keep a soft steady gaze and linger in that void of stillness. Feel the power of your bandhas (locks or energy gateways) as you dissolve your mind into the roaring silence. Slowly release through your belly and your perineum, and lift your chin.

Beginners, ask your teacher for instruction with Mula Bandha and Uddiyana Bandha before applying these locks in Simhasana. Women, avoid practicing the bandhas during your moon cycle and focus on the purifying work of the tongue and relaxing your belly instead.

Variation:

If you have a Padmasana (Lotus Pose), try practicing the pose referred to in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika as Simhagarjanasana (Roaring Lion Pose).

Sit in Padmasana. Extend your arms and place your palms on the floor in front of your legs. Lift your pelvis off the floor and bring your weight onto your knees. Then lower the front of your pelvis toward the floor, balancing your weight between your hands and knees. Keep your arms extended and stretch through the back of your body. Move your sacrum in toward the front of your body to create stability in your pelvis.

Inhale through your nose and exhale all your breath out, stretching your tongue towards your chin. If you are working with the bandhas, after your exhalation, draw your chin into the center of your throat, lift through your root and slowly draw your low belly in and up to the center of your ribcage. After a few moments, release through your belly, your root and then lift your chin. Return to Padmasana. Change the cross of your legs, and repeat on the other side.

In addition to purifying, Simhasana reinforces the Kali principle of time as it relates to creation and destruction, and allows us to experience that principle in action. In Tantric Yoga and the Wisdom Goddesses: Spiritual Secrets of Ayurveda, David Frawley writes:

Time is our eventual death and destruction of all things. Hence Kali is also death. Yet death is not merely annihilation but the doorway to the eternal . . . Spiritual death, the death of the separate self, is the way to eternal life.

Life and death are the rhythms of time, the ebb and flow of the eternal sea. Kali is the life that exists in death and the death that exists in life. To be conscious of life in death and death in life is one of her meditational approaches. To die daily is her daily worship. This is to die to all the things of thought, our worries, cares, anxieties, ambitions, loves, and hates, likes and dislikes. It is to daily cast our minds into the highest flame of the fire of awareness. (p. 67).

Nature so simply and beautifully reveals this sequence daily death and daily rebirth through sunrise and sunset; Autumn leaves change color, wither and leave the trees bare until the Spring rebirths their new life blossoms. A daily practice of roaring lion’s breath may give you the fierce courage to release not only your tongue, but a limiting belief, an anxiety, an emotional attachment, or simply the endless chasing of experience and rest your mind on the ground of eternal presence.

Chrisandra Fox teaches weekly classes at Yoga Tree, Yoga Garden and leads The Heart of Renewal Retreats in California and beyond. She teaches in Yoga Tree’s 200-hour Teacher Training.

Chrisandra@gmail.com

Faern is a mixed media artist, photographer and yoga practitioner in San Francisco. Visit her website, follow her on Twitter, or like her on Facebook.