It is wild! Before I herniated my diaphragm five years ago I was not able to come back up in Karandavasana but now that my surgery has healed I am! It is amazing! A friend of mine thinks that the diaphragmatic hernia was congenital. That would explain why I couldn't come up before but I can now. I needed the strength of the diaphragm in order to accomplish the pose. I still cannot come down though without first my hands coming together when I go into Padmasana and having to put the crown of my head onto the floor. When I do come down I am sliding my face along the mat and slowly bringing my knees onto my elbows. It is not correct but is better than what I had been doing. Lately I hav
Gossip is a weapon used against whomever one wants to do damage. The beauty is it does not have to be true. The more outrageous the gossip the more believable! If someone knows gossip they feel empowered. If they are able to pass it on they feel they are doing service. The Bhagavagita takes place on a battlefield. Arjuna is disturbed because he is pitted against his relatives. Krishna assures him he must fight. The Yoga Scene is the battlefield and it is our Dharma to go into battle.
On my first trip to Mysore in December of 1998 the Shala was still in Lakshmi Purim. I was told there was a good restaurant out on what was then the edge of town. I rode my bicycle out there and took a table and waited for a waiter. A man sat down at the table with me which is not unusual in India as strangers often share tables due to the space restriction. He asked me what I was doing in Mysore and I told him I was here to study yoga. He asked me who with and I said, "Pattabhi Joise." He told me to get out of there. I asked him why and he told me that he was a friend of Ramesh Joise the son of Pattabhi Joise and he had committed suicide. I assured him I would be fine. I did not kno
I first read about Ashtanga Yoga in Tim Miller's article in the Yoga Journal in 1988. I immediately knew from his description of the synchronization of the breath and movement that Ashtnga was the yoga I was looking for. In 1997 I read that Guruji's wife Amma had died. I realized if I was going to meet Guruji, I needed to go to Mysore now! In the spring of 1998, while attending a workshop conducted by Tim Miller in Mill Valley, I decided I would go to Mysore: I made my first trip there in December 1998. When I arrived in Mysore in early December, I did not realize that for the whole month, Guruji was conducting Puja for his wife Amma to honor the year-anniversary of her death. Staying
