Posts Tagged ‘new mexico’
Yoga for Skiers and Snowboarders – with Chris Courtney, E-RYT
Prepare to hit the slopes!
Find out how yoga can enhance your skiing or boarding season!
Never done yoga but love to ski or snowboard? No fear – this workshop is for anyone looking for a way to improve their skiing through yoga. The only requirements are curiosity and an open mind.
Interested in finding core strength, body awareness, and balance that will help take your skiing to another level? Tired of dealing with tight hips or sore lower back muscles after a weekend on the slopes? Want to learn how yoga can help prevent skiing-related injuries?
With this 2 hour workshop, you’ll learn how you can use yoga to improve your strength, flexibility, stamina, balance and breathing to improve your skiing and boarding. Whether you want to prevent injury or take your skiing or boarding to the next level, this workshop can help you on the way to achieve your goals!
This workshop consists of three parts:
- Identifying where you need stability and agility – we’ll highlight the key areas of the body and explore how they relate to increasing performance, improving balance and control over your skis/board, building endurance, and preventing injuries.
- Improving stamina, building strength and increasing flexibility – we’ll move through a sequence for overall conditioning and strengthening which addresses the target areas we identified in part one.
- Learn effective pre- and apres- ski sequences to speed recovery time after a day on the slopes.
Taught by yoga teacher, avid skier (Alpine, and Nordic) and mountaineer Chris Courtney, RYT 500
To book this workshop at your studio or ski resort, please contact Chris at kirancourt@gmail.com
Picture yourself fully present in a pose during yoga class when suddenly, the teacher adjusts you in a way which throws you off balance (either physically or energetically). Perhaps he twisted you forcefully into your revolved triangle or she grabbed and adjusted your feet in headstand in a way which did not seem very supportive, but more corrective.
In another class, the teacher gently and quietly approaches you and provides a gentle hands-on assist which is supportive and allows you to more fully feel the energy of the pose (asana). And in most classes adjustments (if any), are given verbally and focus on foot and hip placements, etc. While such verbal adjustments (not to mention clear instructions) are necessary, they still seem incomplete.
I’ve come full circle on the entire question of hands-on adjustments in yoga after years of either not being adjusted while everyone else was (I’m a pretty tall guy so teachers didn’t always know what to do) or felt unsafe as a teacher forcefully tried to move my body in a way it wasn’t ready for.
After spending the last few months doing some intensive training with Doug Swenson in South Lake Tahoe (which included many days and hours of practicing gentle hands-on adjustments), I’ve come to embrace a new appreciation of them and now count myself as an enthusiastic supporter.
Doug Swenson’s four golden rules of yoga adjustments, as he taught them, were to:
- Enter and exit quietly
- Breathe with the student – on their inhale and exhale
- Be a guardian angel for your student – allow no harm to come to the student (or yourself)
- Be mindful of hand placements and avoid potentially inappropriate ones
What I find so refreshing about this approach, as we learned it from Doug, is that its not so much corrective as it supportive. In fact, calling them adjustments is something of a misnomer since his methods are more akin to an assist. Of course I really depends more on the teacher than on the student. And what I’m talking about here are not the potentially perilous issues of human touch, asking permission first, nor liability issues but rather a matter of intention.
So, in addition to Doug’s four golden rules of yoga adjustments/assists, I humbly added the following to my own approach:
- Its their asana, breath and intention, not yours.
- Be there to support and not to “fix”
If I give an adjustment which forcefully twists or lifts a student into a “fuller expression” of the pose, I could not only potentially hurt the student, but would be allowing my ego and energy to interfere with (rather than support) their experience. At the same time, if I provide a gentle hands-on assist which supports them in the energetics of the pose in a way which allows them more fully open into it themselves, then I am supporting their intention and practice.
Such corrections focus on the core of the body rather than on hand and foot placement or hip direction. That said, I’ve already found that most students will correct their own hands and feet once their core energy is gently assisted into moving in the right direction (and not just moved into the right direction).
And even while being gentle and supportive, it can be disruptive for a student when, instead of the teacher getting on the student’s inhale/exhale breathing pattern, they approach and tell them student to inhale when they are just starting their exhale. See Doug’s rule #2!
Of course its difficult to fully express this approach to yoga adjustments/assists without demonstrating them in person (or giving a workshop) but I hope that these thoughts can open up a broader discussion of them in general. Why don’t more yoga teachers do them? Why aren’t more yoga teachers trained in them? Why are we afraid to touch? And perhaps most importantly, what will benefit our students the most in their practice?
With deep gratitude to my teacher Doug Swenson
To book Chris for a workshop on yoga adjustmets/assists, contact him at kirancourt@gmail.com
Follow Chris on Twitter at CK_Courtney
The article originally appeared in Elephant Journal on July 27th, 2010.
I’m happy to offer classes which enable you to link your breath, mind and body – allowing you to stay focused, calm, aware and steady.
My classes vary but my style is generally a vinyasa-based mix infused with humor and generous helpings of kick-your-asana power flow sequences.
I also offer specialized classes such as yoga for climbers, skiers and runners. Private lessons and workshops are always available!
You can contact me via email at kirancourt@gmail.com
Namaste,
Chris
~
Check the “Classes” link above for specific times and days.
I often tell people that I learned more about pranayama (yogic breathing) through suffering from asthma and allergies for years than from anything else.
A story I tell less often is how I learned to find peace and serenity in meditation while under mortar and rocket barrages in Baghdad a few years ago.
In a past life while working a stint at the US Embassy in Baghdad (long story…), I used to be awakened in the morning by an alarm telling us that rockets and mortars were inbound to our little collection of trailer homes behind the embassy along the Euphrates. This usually meant rolling out of bed and onto the floor to get under my armored vest…basically into balasana (child’s pose) with my arms tucked under the vest - to wait and wonder if some shell would come crashing through the tin roof of my trailer and ruin my day.
Sometimes these alarms would go off while I was in the shower or sitting on the toilet. So, my roommate and I made a deal that if either of us was hit while on the can, we’d pull the other off so we wouldn’t go out like Elvis…but I digress.
It was during those mornings (and often late afternoons) while hearing rockets whizzing overhead and hearing the crash of mortars landing nearby that I learned how to find inner peace. Powerless to do anything but crouch and wait (perhaps even to die), I learned to let go and try not to be attached to the outcome of the situation but rather to tuck inside and be one with my own breath. At first it was a way to overcome the fear of hearing the crashes getting closer and closer to me (before they stopped) but later it became a way to access a much deeper level of meditation and get a better glimpse of my true self.
Why is it that it takes such drastic situations to make us truly focus inward and strip away the things which block us from connecting to our true selves? Why did my mind wander so in quiet rooms back home but find such focus in a war zone of all places?
Ever since those experiences in Baghdad, I’ve been able to check out and meditate anywhere. In the middle of a busy airport? No problem! Sitting next to a crying baby? Piece of cake! In a beautiful mountain meadow? Now you’re talking!
Sure, we’d all like to have that serene place to meditate or practice yoga but in an ever-louder, ever-crowded world such places are far harder to come by. Of course, that place within ourselves is always available, provided we remember to look for it.
This article originally appeared in Elephant Journal on June 28th, 2010.
Give up to grace
The ocean takes care
of each wave
Till it gets to shore
You need more help
than you know
-Rumi
It was just over a week ago while driving to attend yoga teacher training with Doug Swenson at Lake Tahoe that I decided it was time to overcome a nagging fear I’d had for years. Neither climbing frozen waterfalls in Switzerland nor having a child soldier in Africa point a machine gun at my chest caused as much fear in me as a simple handstand (adho mukha vrksasana).
Five years ago, I’d crashed from a handstand, dropping my head straight onto a tile floor and leaving me with a mild concussion and a sore neck which lasted for months. Ever since that time, I’d been wary to even kick up against a wall, fearing another drop onto my melon and the ensuing months of pain. I always dreaded a yoga teacher announcing that we were going to do the handstand and did my best to muddle at the wall waiting for everyone to finish so we could move to the next asana (pose).
For some reason, I never found a teacher willing to help me try it again and in one case, encountered a rather dismissive one who remarked (as she turned her back and walked away), “oh, I see you have some fear issues.” So, somewhere between Albuquerque and the Eastern Sierras I figured that if I was going to be a yoga teacher, I needed to overcome this fear and get some part of my handstand mojo back. Upon arrival in South Lake Tahoe, I found myself with an incredibly supportive teacher in Doug Swenson, not to mention my fellow students. So, I figured it was time to give it a go. At first I thought it would take the entire month to get past this barrier of fear but on the second day of training, with the help of my roomate Simon Moseley and a few other fellow students providing me a good bit of lift, I got into a (supported) handstand for the first time in five years.
I got up into it a few more times (against a wall) and my fear of the handstand started to fade as our first week of training came to a close. This got me thinking about fear and how vital it is to have support to help us overcome it. It seems the independent Aquarian in me was slow to realize that sometimes we need help to bridge the mental gap between thinking you can’t do something and believing you can. With the help of a supportive community, we can fill that gap.
It also etched into me a lesson I hope to remember as a yoga teacher, to sense when a student is dealing with fear issues and to provide them the support to help them overcome it, just as my classmates have done for me. And perhaps even more importantly, to apply this same lesson in life every day.
This article originally appeared in Elephant Journal on May 16th, 2010
For years, I’d thought about attending a yoga festival, but for so many reasons, wasn’t sure if I would fit in. Was a six foot 2 inch, 220 pound guy bendy or enlightened enough to fit in among all of those blissed-out yogis and rock star teachers?
So many yoga festivals seemed so far away; on either coast or on an island, and always in a five star hotel, not to mention the hefty registration fee. Yoga festivals and conferences seemed so inaccessible, I wondered if I’d ever experience one.
So it was late last spring while surfing the internet for an excuse to go back for a visit to northern Arizona that I happened upon an ad for the first annual Flagstaff Yoga Festival. Here was an approachable, grassroots festival with a reasonable price in a town I loved. Best of all, a big chunk of the festival proceeds were going to the Sierra Club and toward building a new Waldorf school in Flagstaff. Something just clicked in me—I had to go.
Just over 10 years ago, I rediscovered yoga while living in Flagstaff. I was looking for a way to improve my climbing and find more balance in life. It didn’t take but a few classes with Ulla Lundgren at The Yoga Experience to give a name to what my mother had taught me as a young boy; yoga. As the years passed and I bounced around from place to place, yoga ended up overtaking climbing as my main passion in life. So, a yoga festival in Flagstaff would be a homecoming of sorts.
Last summer, while driving across from Albuquerque I did get a little nervous, wondering again if I would fit in but, once back home amid the tall pines and clean mountain air, those concerns disappeared. Everything about the Flagstaff Yoga Festival seemed almost purposely designed to say “welcome all!” The event was held in a Waldorf school where you laid your mat down in elementary classrooms amid an atmosphere of early learning and discovery. Any apprehension I felt quickly melted away as the playful and unpretentious vibe of the event, not to mention being around hundreds of like-minded people, made me feel right at home .
Sure, there were no “rock star” instructors but it was like going into one of those Nashville cafes full of amazing musicians you’ve maybe never heard of – but won’t soon forget. Everything from the opening ceremony featuring Revital Carroll’s stunning Odissi dance to Tom Beall’s insightful Yin Yoga to Aubrey Hackman’s joyful Jivamukti classes (to name a few) made me wonder why I’d waited so long to attend such a festival.
And during a Thai Yoga Therapy class I discovered that I was not the only big guy grooving to the yoga vibe when I met (and partnered up with) the 6’7” Dan Gottlieb, a Phoenix/Detroit based yoga teacher better known as Yoga Dan. It was nice to know that if a former Arizona State basketball player can fit in, so can this broken down old climber.
“This was exactly the kind of atmosphere we tried to create, where people can get into their own experience,” said festival organizer Laura Brown in describing her vision for the sold-out event.
So now, having finally attended a yoga festival, I’m filling my calendar with more of them, especially the grassroots events like the Telluride Yoga Festival (July 8th to 11th), the World Peace Yoga Festival (October 21st-24th) and of course the Second Annual Flagstaff Yoga Festival to be held July 30th to August 1st. Sure, someday I hope to attend one of those fantastic big festivals sponsored by a well-known yoga center or magazine, but for now I’ve found my home (and so can you).
Photo: Rob Dutton
This article originally appeared in Elephant Journal
Buy Less, Live More.
Over the past year, we’ve heard more than a few observers state that the current economic downturn may have arrived just in time to save the planet from our excessive consumption. At the same time, it seems something even more powerful may be going on; this downturn could be helping us cleanse our souls.
While I would certainly not want to make light of the hardships faced by millions as they lose their jobs (and health care), there is no doubt about it: we are living in a new age of frugality. It’s a forced frugality, of course, but the result is the same: more people are learning to be happy with less. Gone are the days of packed parking lots at big box stores and throngs of shoppers exiting with big bags of gadgets and new clothes (often bought on credit). We forgot the difference between what we want and what we need—and many now have no choice but to re-learn this difference quickly.
The longer our economic malaise goes on, the more Americans are learning what millions in Namibia, Peru, and India knew already; happiness does not come from acquiring more stuff, and that “retail therapy” is highly overrated. We now see more people spending their Saturdays together in the park, checking out books at the library or planning a nice family dinner at home. We also see more people realizing that you don’t need to own something (like a flower or singing bird) to be enriched by its beauty.
This of course is bad news for advertisers and retailers, many of whose success depends on making you feel that you are missing something if you don’t buy their products. How will they sell to people who no longer feel that they lack much of anything? It’s much harder to convince you to keep up with the Jones’ when the Jones’ are wearing comfortable old jeans and planting carrots in the back yard.
So how can these businesses (which we rely on for food and jobs) still survive?
Simple: by inspiring people rather than making them feel they lack something. Is it any wonder that so many of the businesses thriving in the current economic climate tend to rely on inspiration to get their message across? And that inspiration must be authentic, otherwise we’re still not convinced.
But are frugality and inspiration enough?
My own father was not a yogi, but he certainly observed the yogic restraint (yama) of aparigraha, or non-hoarding and non-selfishness. A child of the Great Depression, he learned early on not to seek happiness from material things and other outside sources, but to find it within himself (in his spiritual tradition). His constant exhortation to us growing up was that “everything you need is right here” (while pointing to our hearts and heads).
He had never read Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, nor its advice that “freedom from wanting unlocks the real purpose of existence”—but he certainly lived it. Today, millions of people seem to be learning the same lesson.
As the US economy began its sharp decline last year, my father feared that many people, after years of seeking happiness through material things, would be unable to cope with the coming hard times (which he had experienced as a boy). So, in the final months of his life while lying in a hospital bed dying of thyroid cancer, he penned one last book titled “Painting The Milkweeds” in the hope that some helpful lessons could be passed on.
Perhaps the most vivid story from the book (and a bedtime story we were often told) was of a Franciscan monk named Brother Aloysius Gilmartin, who embodied the spirit of selfless generosity and non-hoarding.
A prime example of Brother Aloysius’ selflessness happened one freezing Pennsylvania winter during the depths of the Great Depression. Seeing that he did not have anything to keep him warm outside, my grandfather had given Aloysius a new winter coat…and he showed up without it the following day. When asked what happened to the coat Aloysius replied:
“You see I saw an old man sitting on the curb, and he had no coat, so I gave him mine. He needed it more than I did.”
So, now that we are living in similar hard times, we may find we have an easier time looking inward for happiness rather than seeking it through material wealth or hollow achievements. At the same time, with increasing hardship all around us, we have more opportunities to look outward and practice compassion, just as Aloysius did.
What we do with these opportunities may have a lot to do with whether we lose our way again when the “good times” return—or whether we realize that those good times have always been here, provided we make them so for someone else.
This article originally appeared in Elephant Journal in September, 2009.
