Mountain Pose (Tadasana)

Tadasana

Aloha Everyone,

Mountain Pose (Tadasana) Explained

“Mountain pose teaches us, literally, how to stand on our own two feet.... teaching us to root ourselves into the earth.... Our bodies become a connection between heaven and earth.”   ~Carol Krucoff

Technique:

• Stand with your feet together in line with each other and press them into the ground
• The big toes and heels of both feet are touching. (Variation – feet shoulder apart)
• Your weight should be on the centers of the arches of the feet, stretch your toes
• Tighten the muscles of the legs, life your kneecaps. pull up your quadriceps
• Tighten your buttocks; pull your lower abdomen in and up
• Extend your arms at the sides of your body
• Lift your sternum; open your chest, shoulders relaxed
• Inhale and exhale
• Hold this position for 1 - 3 minutes

Benefits:

• Steadies breathing, increases awareness
• Improves the alignment of your body and body posture
• Strengthens thighs, knees, and ankles and firms abdomen and buttocks
• Creation of space within the body to allow the internal organs to function efficiently  
• Helping the digestion process, elimination process and respiration process
• Develops strength and flexibility simultaneously, especially in the spine
• Relieves tension, aches, and pains throughout the body, relieves sciatica
• Improves blood circulation
• Leaves you feeling refreshed and rejuvenated
• Expels dullness and depression
• Harmonizes the body and mind
• Increases energy and enthusiasm
• Promotes happiness and confidence

Variations

• Tadasana Urdhva Hastasana - Mountain Pose with arms stretched up
• Tadasana Urdhva Baddha Hastasana  - Mountain Pose with arms bound & stretched up
• Tadasana Paschima Namaskar – Mountain Pose with Namaste Hands – in your back
• Tadasana Gomukhasana – Mountain Pose with hands held in the shape of a “cow’s face”
• Tadasana Paschima Baddha Namaskar – Mountain Pose with Bound arms – holding    opposite arms in your back just above the elbows

Tadasana Urdhva Hastasana

Tadasana Paschima Namaskar 

Tadasana Gomukhasana 

Cathi's note:  Mountain pose is a wonderful asana which you can do it anywhere.  Practicing Tadasana early in the morning helps you feel invigorated, motivated and grounded.  This is the foundation of other standing asanas and helps you increase your awareness of your body.

Namaste -- Cathi

To The People In My Life

Aloha Everyone,

This is a lovely essay.  My sister shared this with me years ago and I saved it on my computer.  I searched to see who actually wrote this but so far cannot give one person credit he or she certainly deserves.  Please enjoy!  Cathi

People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.  When you know which one it is, you will know what to do for that person.  When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed.  They have come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally or spiritually.  They may seem like a godsend and they are.  They are there for the reason you need them to be.  Then, without any wrongdoing on your part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end.  Sometimes they die.  Sometimes they walk away.  Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand.  What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled, their work is done.  The prayer you sent up has been answered and now it is time to move on.

Some people come into your life for a SEASON, because your turn has come to share, grow or learn.  They bring you an experience, peace or make you laugh.  They may teach you something you have never done.  They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy.  Believe it, it is real.  But it is only for a season.

LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons, things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation.  Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life.  It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.

Thank you for being a part of my life, whether you were a reason, a season or a lifetime.

Namaste -- Cathi

Ujjayi Pranayama (Ocean Breath)

Aloha Everyone,

This is one of the most important pranayama (breath control or control of the life force) taught in different schools of yoga. Ujjayi is sometime called the “sounding breath” or "ocean breath”.  Ujjayi is also referred to as the "Darth Vader" breath because of the hissing sound as you inhale and exhale.  Ujjayi pranayama help us regulate the time it takes the air to enter and exit our lungs. 

TECHNIQUE:

      1. Sit in a comfortable seated position

      2.  Close your eyes

      3.  Elongate your spine

      4.  Take 5 long, slow, gentle and deep breaths through the nostrils

      5.  Open your mouth and make “Hah sound” like you are warming up your hands

      6.  Constrict the throat muscles slightly

      7.  Now try to make the same “Hah” sound with your mouth closed as you inhale an

      8.  Begin to lengthen the inhalation and exhalation without causing tension.

      9.  Maintain equal in and out breathing sound that is smooth and continuous.

     10. Start with 3 minutes and go up to 10 minutes

BENEFITS:

1. Focuses the mind and prepares for meditation
2. Brings calmness to the body and mind
3. Helps improve the quality of our breathing
4. Helps the body regains its equilibrium
5. Helps you concentrate
6. Helps lower blood pressure, slow down heart rate
7. Helps treat insomnia
8. Effective for pain reduction and migraines
9. You will have more energy

CAUTION:

·         Yoga pranayama is not a substitute for medical care

·         Know your limits.  Do not over strain.

·         Be mindful

·         Hydrate, rest and relax after every session

·         Receive proper guidance from an experienced teacher, ask questions

 Namaste -- Cathi

Seekali Pranayama (Way to Reduce Blood Pressure)

Aloha Everyone,

Seekali Pranayama is one of the best breath control or prana control techniques in lowering blood pressure.  This pranayama is closely related to Sheetali Pranayama as they even sound alike.  Both of these pranayama helps in reducing stress, calming your mind and body so that you can enjoy calm, peace and tranquility. 

TECHNIQUE:

      1. Sit in a comfortable seated position

      2.  Close your eyes, hands in drona mudra

      3.  Elongate your spine, lengthen your neck, and place a slight chin lock

      4.  Inhale 5 long, deep breaths through the nose

      5.  Bring your teeth together; gently pull the lips back exposing your teeth

      6.  Slowly inhale deeply let the air pass through your teeth

      7.  Be mindful and notice the air passing through the teeth making a hissing sound

      8.  Close your mouth and exhale slowly and completely through the nose.

.         

Note:  Each inhalation and exhalation is counted as one round.  Do 10 rounds and build it up to 25 then to 50.

The main difference between Seekari and Seetali is how you breathe in the air. 

Seekari – air passes through your teeth.

Seetali – air passes through your curled tongue.

BENEFITS:

• Helps reduce blood pressure

• Cools the mental, physical and emotional systems

• Reduces stress, anger and irritation

• Helps you enjoy calm, peace and tranquility

• Reduces fever

• Helps induce sleep

CAUTION:

Do not practice if you have cold or respiratory related condition

Namaste -- Cathi

Sheetali Pranayama (Cooling Breath)

Aloha Everyone,

Sheetali or Seetali means the cooling breath. Sheetali Pranayama helps balance heat within your body and restores equilibrium. This pranayama is widely used in the schools of Hatha Yoga as well as breathing techniques to combat Ayurveda’s Pitta (heat) related conditions including heat rash and acidity.

TECHNIQUE:

      1. Sit in a comfortable seated position

      2.  Close your eyes

      3.  Elongate your spine, lengthen your neck, and place a slight chin lock

      4.  Stick your tongue out, curl the sides of your tongue and form a tunnel

            If this is not possible, just place the tongue between your lips

      5.  Inhale slowly through your mouth allowing the air to pass over the tongue

      6.  Bring the tongue backing, and then exhale through the nose

      7.  Repeat inhalation through your mouth, exhalation through the nose

      8.  Breathing should be nice, easy and even, repeat 10 times

      9.  Count a breath cycle of inhalation and exhalation as one.

BENEFITS:

• Cools the mental, physical and emotional systems

• Reduces stress, anger and irritation

• Helps you enjoy calm, peace and tranquility

• Reduces fever

• Helps induce sleep

CAUTION:

Do not practice if you have cold or respiratory related condition

Namaste -- Cathi

Carl Jung Quotations on life, happiness, patience, acceptance, wisdom, ego, understanding and equanimity.

Aloha Everyone,

Carl Gustav Jung (26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961), was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. His work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, philosophy, archeology, anthropology, literature, and related fields.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

- Carl Jung

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

- Carl Jung

We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

- Carl Jung

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves.

- Carl Jung

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

- Carl Jung

Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.

- Carl Jung

An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead.

- Carl Jung

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived lives of the parents.

- Carl Jung

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is a vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.

- Carl Jung

We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more.

- Carl Jung

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

- Carl Jung

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

- Carl Jung

Caution has its place, no doubt, but we cannot refuse our support to a serious venture which challenges the whole of the personality. If we oppose it, we are trying to suppress what is best in man --his daring and his aspirations. And should we succeed, we should only have stood in the way of that invaluable experience which might have given a meaning to life. What would have happened if Paul had allowed himself to be talked out of his journey to Damascus?

- Carl Jung

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

- Carl Jung

ONG NAMO GURUDEV NAMO, AAD GURAY NAMEH, SAT NAM

Aloha Everyone,

Here are phrases and meanings of some of the mantra (chants) we use in our Kundalini Yoga class.

  

ONG NAMO GURUDEV NAMO – mantra to tune-in, repeated three times.

Translation:

I bow to the subtle divine wisdom

I bow to the divine teacher within

When the entire 90 minutes is devoted to Kundalini Yoga, Ong Namo Gurudev Namo is followed by this best mantra for protection - also repeated three times.

AAD GURAY NAMEH

JUGAAD GURAY NAMEH

SAT GURAY NAMEH

SIRI GURU DAYVAY NAMEH

Translation:

I bow to the primal wisdom

I bow to the wisdom through the ages

I bow to the true wisdom

I bow to the great transparent wisdom within

At the end of our practice, we usually end with one or three long

AUM

We sometime chant one long SAT and short NAM to close our practice.

SAT NAM

SAT means Truth

Nam or NAAM means name

Popular Western translation is Truth is my identity.

NAMASTE

This is a Hindu salutation meaning "I honor the divine in you".

Yoga translation of Namaste is

"The divine light in me salutes the divine light in you."

Be well, be content, be kind to yourself and others and live a joyful and compassionate life.

Namaste -- Cathi