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A Special Glass Bottle

I love this time of year, looking at all of the New Year’s resolutions surrounding becoming more healthy this year. I was just scrolling through my Facebook and I saw four or five different ads for superfood and green powders that you can purchase that you can mix with water and become healthier and more detoxified. Why do we feel that we have to buy something to make ourselves healthier? I have a solution that doesn’t cost anything, and it will make an immediate impact on you and have lasting results like detoxification, making your skin softer and hair shinier,   it helps with digestion, and it gives you tons of energy!!!! drink more water… It is a simple as that. I remember recommending to my classes to drink more water after class, and I would hear things like “it’s so hard to drink more water, “ how do you remember to drink more water?” Yet it is   so much easier to buy green powder and mix it with water and Sludge   it down when it tastes horribl

First Post.

So the reason I never started a Yoga blog is because I always felt like I needed to have this big opening remark that would draw people in. But I realize that especially with a Yoga blog things just reveal themselves as time goes on so I suppose the blog would kind of do the same thing, just highlight a random journey through yoga from the standpoint of someone who has taught a ton of yoga classes and taken a bazillion classes.

So in this first blog I would like to highlight a yoga pose called the “Shiva squat."

I’d like to start by mentioning that I am not one of those yoga teachers that pooh-poohs all of the cool adaptations of yoga that are happening lately. I love to go to “cardio flow“ and "extra core and glutes" even though I was trained in Ashtanga and Traditional Hatha Yoga. For about 15 years I have taught a Vinyasa flow class that was based on the Ashtanga premise and even has a little bit of Anyusara, depending on what was inspiring for me that week.

So back to these new types of classes… I love how teachers are incorporating a workout into yoga, because frankly there just isn’t time to do an hour of Pranayama, an hour of Yoga, and an hour of meditation each day… and still get a workout in.

I’ve read countless articles and posts from “authentic yoga teachers“ about their distain for these new types of yoga, and frankly those just irritate me because whatever it takes to get people on a yoga mat, that’s what it takes, and people enjoy these kinds of classes, so who cares? I think they’re just mad because everybody’s left the traditional classes and are favoring these new of classes so they can get what they need in in one hour.

OK, so having said all of that, in these new types of yoga classes my issue is that the teachers are not well trained or well-versed in Sanskrit. So going into some of these classes is like playing the telephone game. They’ve heard a pose being called something by a teacher and then somehow the name of the pose gets changed a little bit and turns into something else.

For instance, one of my pet peeves is the mispronunciation of a seated head to knee pose which is traditionally called janu sirsana  (pronounced Johnushirshasana).  This has somehow become janu sirasana (johnusirasana) missing the SH sound in the middle. I thought it was a one off, but then all kinds of teachers started calling it that… and for some reason that makes my skin crawl a little bit.

But none of the mispronounced words bother me like that of the Shiva squat. So what is the pose first of all. Basically if you stand in a standing splits with your hands on the floor and one leg lifted as high as it can be or in a standing L-shape with the leg parallel to the ground, you draw the lifted  leg behind the standing legs calf and then lift the leg back up again as an exercise to tone the gluteus muscles and hamstring muscles and it’s a nice preparation for doing handstand hops.

So back to the telephone game, somehow this pose went from being a Shiva squat to a “jiva squat”. And lately even worse the teacher will energetically squeak out something like  “three more Jivas”!!!

So I started to wonder, is it a Shiva squat or a Jiva squat?   This pose is not in the traditional ashtanga sequence, however my great guru teacher from the city used to teach this pose 20 years ago, and she was an ashtanga yoga teacher, so as far as I’m concerned it’s a valid pose. And I like it !!

From all of my readings about the dieties or Hindu gods,  I have never read about lord Jiva. However Shiva, Lord of Dance is depicted as the Creator, Preserver and the Destroyer of the Universe and conveys the Indian perception of the never ending cycle of time.

In some of his images, he is shown with two bent knees which is similar to the pose that was created that I was telling you about.

So my guess is that this pose is called the Shiva squat.

I love that all teachers have a different adaptation of how they want to present Yoga to their class. And I honor and welcome everyone of them. But can we all just agree to call the poses by the same name?

That’s all I have for now… Thanks for listening!!!


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