Focus, don´t stop the pleasure of being alive

When I started talking about leading with the heart I was afraid that I would be misunderstood. I thought that some people would think that heart and head could not get together for shared purposes, or that if we got into the business of the heart we would miss the business of the world. In fact, no business is not related to another one. Interdependence is the number one rule of life.

I am still afraid sometimes that people might misunderstand the relationship I am aiming to create between wholehearted living and productivity and performance. Some people think that these are opposite sides of the spectrum. They leave the heart for family and friends, but take to their professional lives the tightest and most protected version of themselves.

I want to shout out that we can be extremely successful and deliver great work if we take our open heart to the workplace and our projects. This does not mean that we move along under-protected. A healthy heart will always set healthy boundaries wherever it goes. So rather than closing the heart, let's focus on keeping the heart open and building the skill of creating healthy boundaries. If you had an injury in your finger, you´d rather heal it than cut the finger. If you are unskillful managing your heart you'd rather heal it and learn, rather than cut it off from your life.

I also think that people miss the deepest aspects of human nature when they think that the heart can be opened and closed as the doors of an elevator. If we keep it closed it tends to stay that way. If we open it, it gets to love light and people.

So, what to do if our heart is open and we want to focus or be productive? First, "focus + heart" will always be more pleasurable, so find meaning to your focus. Don´t do it for money, success, approval, perfection...

Focus and be productive because you love things well done and you want your life to be meaningful. In this case, your heart will help you focus with pleasure. What do I mean when I say "your heart"? I mean that your capacity to feel has to come with you everywhere. Feeling what we feel means we are engaged with life and the natural output of experiencing life moment to moment. As we are in touch with life, life flows more and better through us, so our productivity and creativity rise to the sky for our joy and the world´s light.

Focus, don´t stop the pleasure of being alive.

Stay fresh, we will get to see each other soon when the lines of the horizon get the warmth of the springtime. Stay in touch!

*****

Newsletter January 2022

Body mind connections

  When we use our body we get smarter and healthier. This is something I have seen and experienced and it has a direct relationship with the changes that are registered in the brain when we move, breathe, sweat and feel our bodies. It gets even better if we also practice intentionally the art of feeling what we are feeling, because this increases interoception; the human sense that is filling research and scientific conversations for the last years.

Thanks to diversity in movement, yoga practices and meditation I concentrate better, I regulate my moods and I find strength for the challenges I set for myself or life throws at me. I am a better partner, mother, teacher, mentor, creative, citizen, eater, thinker and lover because it affects every area of my life. 

     We need to undo the status given to intellectual activities over physical activities!  Most of our time is given to things that promote our intellectual and cognitive capacities, like thinking, solving or creating. The thing is that our brain sits in our head which belongs to a big complex and rich living organism called body! So the whole body needs to be seen, felt and stimulated.

Physical activity goes far beyond releasing stress (which it does), it goes directly to work as a preventive medicine for dementia and other neurodegenerative problems. We need to uplift even more the value we give to our body as the dimension to experience health, wealth and joy.

     In fact, the pleasure that appears after moving our bodies in healthy ways is the clear evidence that we are regulating nervous system activity and our whole physiology. This story is not to sell anything that you have to buy. But just keep thinking about it, if the day has a certain number of hours, how much are we giving to what gives us life?

When we move more we love better, we eat better, we think better, we suffer better, we behave better with others.

I leave you with some interesting documents about this and some details on how the season is approaching the schedule. Looking forward to seeing your bodies and the brains inside them very soon!

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Newsletter April 2022

Moods and Ibiza

  We can make things complex or we can take them as they are. If we just take them as they are we will save time, because sometimes they will be complex, but many others they will be simple. 

Approaching life with the appropriate cognitive frame can promote a proper distribution for our energies and can be a way of promoting healthy and productive efforts. 

There are points in our life where we realize that there is nothing to do and nothing to be, and still we are doing and being. These are the sweet spots in which we can create good quality effort, because there is no craving.

Craving moves us towards accumulation, but presence will tame desire and offer transient perfect experiences. Please, don't confuse perfection with perfectionism! Perfection is not about culminating things in a specific way, it is just being in the path with courage and patience.

     The very delicate balance between acting and letting go creates sophisticated arquitectures for the mind and the body. Well invested effort will give us energy. Overdoing the effort will leave us exhausted. These are not new ideas, taoism was talking about this long ago, and the yogic life is all about vital forces. 

This is why shape and form depend on the moment. This is why the trees and the sun look different each day, even if they don’t move.

I know that the body is aging, and that my practices through the body train the mind for the acceptance of transient things. 

It is an honor to be alive, a real privilege, even if sometimes a little confusing and clearly mysterious. 

Take the ride! Ride the wave! It is transient.

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     Here in Ibiza the weather is inviting us to take the wave, and the activity around us is announcing the preparation of a long seasonal celebration of enjoyment and sharing with open hearts and relaxed moods.

My seasonal work is starting in the first week of May, I will keep you updated on the schedule for group and private classes. Please remember to check your dates with time, bookings tend to have that delicate balance that works much better with anticipation  Like love, well done things always result in relaxed experiences.

I wish you good breathing, warm feelings and healthy thoughts, wherever you are. 

*******

Newsletter February 2022
 

The space for wisdom

Some things don't need space and can make us feel very spacious. Wisdom is one of them.

I believe wisdom to be a skill, not a fixed state.

Wisdom is exercised through inspired living, nurturing relationships and the attitude to learn through direct experience and wise others.

Wisdom can be created, felt, sensed, listened, singed, embraced, surrendered... It can be everything, and it can also be silence. Wisdom is not full, it is partially empty, so that it can welcome more of itself without getting saturated or rigid.

I have promised myself that I can make wisdom look attractive, fun, desirable and passionate, and my work is devoted to this promise. I believe that elevating our conversations to the layer of wisdom can change our levels of vitality, connection and contribution. Wisdom can not always be named, framed and explained. But it can always be confirmed when the heart is guiding us.

When wisdom is the guiding force, no conversation on ethics is needed, because wisdom includes the sense of belonging and connection that drives human behaviour to its highest expression. Nevertheless, it is worth it to use our wisdom to open conversations on social and collective wellbeing that might transcend the segmented views of self development to immerse our attention in the wide landscapes of human development.

Wisdom can help us mature, heal and love better and deeper. It does not require money but some internal abundance that can be fostered through culture and care. It can be found in people with no money and is not always found in people with secured material lives.

Talking and listening wisely can change our lives, increasing our mindfulness and appreciation for life.

Distractions are wisdom removers, they give energy and attention to the outer world. Aligned education and learning can be wisdom promoters. But the one wisdom promoter par excellence is kindness. When we behave kindly we get to see the best of ourselves and the world, and this gives us a special gift: a blend of depth, hope and strength. This gift comes from wisdom.

For the end of this year, I am offering a workshop on perennial wisdom to illustrate and devote some time to the power of wisdom in Ibiza. I hope this wisdom pours into the first days of the year to refresh and align the design of our desires and actions.

I leave you with my best wishes and an invitation to be a wisdom tribe in 2022.

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* In the picture above you can see the wisdom tribe that came last October to the Mindful Vinyasa training in Valencia. Thank you!

*Newsletter December 2021

Fly high, in good companies

I believe that life is a cumulative experience. I feel and have seen that life does not fully show up for us unless we show up fully for her. I haven't seen any real success in anyone that hasn't put his or her life in service of the higher human goals that include justice, love, healing, education or ecology. It just doesn't happen fully because life is lived from the perspective of the individual needs and purpose dissipates in survival and competitive behaviors. The self-regulation proposed by yoga and other disciplines is meant to help us understand that we are meant to feel safe and connect through our common humanity and essential transcendence.

To live under the light of wisdom, connection and compassion we need to wake up from the illusion of separation. If we continue to see each other as essentially distinct we continue to live under the optical illusion already mentioned by Einstein and so many spiritual traditions. We will have a half-life, a half-love, a half-body, a half-awareness... Because we are missing what completes us: everything around us. This doesn't mean that we have to show up for others in an incomplete way. We show up complete within our capacities, to meet others with their completeness and share a higher complete experience of life, the one that includes me and everybody else.

Mental health is related to the amplitude that we can give to the meanings of inclusiveness, diversity and oneness. For this, we need to feel, rather than fight. As we feel more we get closer to the input coming from our bodies, which includes the information from those around us. This is how to build empathy, and from empathy stems compassion. We can't wish well to others if we can't feel them. And if we are only able to wish good things to ourselves, again we are incomplete.

I have been supporting personal growth for others for 15 years, through the tools of yoga, contemplation practices and scientific research in the areas of mental and physical health. I started doing this for myself when I was 18, guided to my first psychological and spiritual inquiries through yoga, meditation and human potential therapeutics.

Re-writing our stories and belief systems is very important in the path to discover why we are here and what we can offer. Alignment between our values and our actions reduces cognitive load and supports optimal human performance (both physically and mentally). I consider myself a yoga trainer expert in the fields of teaching skills, ethics and healthy alignment, but life has been pushing me to explore in the last years some specific skills like supporting school teachers, business people and a wide variety of professionals in the exploration of mindset, vitality and purpose.

When vitality is low I always know that drive is low and that purpose might be misaligned. The mind is not so different from the body, there is an alignment that is healthier and more prosperous in the long term.

Short-term visions don't have enough power to bring clarity and strength for our lives, long term can create a vision and a mission that awakens drive and intrinsic motivators.

I invite all of you to explore my essential ingredients for human performance:
- Motivation
- Purpose
- Impact
- Love
- Connection
- Service

As I shared in my last Mindful Vinyasa training with the students that joined this immersion, we all need mentors. I am a mentor, but this does not mean that I am your mentor. I have been for a long time informally mentoring people and doing it very intentionally and formally in the last years. I see that this figure is so needed today because we need to grow and thrive with values and clear minds.

Look for someone who has achieved some of the things that you are willing to achieve (balance, skills, knowledge, regulation, mastery) and who is a few steps forward. Let them see you, and see yourself through their eyes. A mentor should be someone you trust, who is compassionate but challenges you in a way that is inspiring and positive.

If you find someone to guide you, you are telling your brain that you don't know everything and you are ready to learn and change for the best, and this wakes you up for the relevant transformation. All successful athletes, academics and business people have mentors and coaches. I learnt in my teens that this was a space for growth and that finding the right support in each stage of life is important. I can see how having this for myself has given me success (joy and wellbeing), strength and balanced life.

A mentor brings knowledge and life experience in a blend that shapes wisdom and inspiration for others. We all bring what we have. I am very thankful that I studied Sociology for five years, that I was in the fashion industry for a decade, that I had a father with a severe mental illness and that I have built my life as a yoga educator under the umbrella of lifestyle medicine, meditation, neurobiology, business ethics and human performance.

Here are the things that I offer as a mentor, that I invite all mentors to practice and that I think are of value and you should find when you work with someone to support your dreams and strengths:
- Compassionate inquiry
- Leadership and communication skills
- Creativity and innovation
- Interpersonal intelligence
- Secure attachment/presence

If you feel stuck you might be flying too low and too alone. Fly high in good companies, give yourself that gift, give it to the world.

Of course, if you don't have a mentor or are unclear on where to find it, you can work online with me as other clients do for personal and professional development and support. I am right now open to take 2 to 3 more people for the next months. I recommend biweekly sessions for three months for specific transitions and goals, or a monthly session for general support. The sessions are recorded and given for study and revision. Personal practices and study materials are given in the session concerning the areas that need education, transformation or insight for your inwards and outwards journey. Email follow-up is part of the process when needed. You can bring in anything, all is welcome.

No doubt that this is a great subject for a newsletter to celebrate autumn life; leaving the leaves behind, allowing the naked branches to prepare for the new ones.

Best wishes, dear friends and trees.

* From the November 2021 newsletter

Amazing summer & Integrated Leadership

An amazing summer invites us to meet ourselves and other people with an open mood and curiosity. This has been the commonplace every summer of my life, strengthened since I live in Ibiza.

These social states of self help us meet, bond and cooperate because we share a celebration texture. And this is what I most like about the season. In these states we are leading with our hearts. 

For the last years I have been teaching in my classes, events, social writing and talks about contemporary leadership, from my perspectives and experiences. My definition of leadership is: "Inspiring others with our passion, purpose, commitment and compassion, promoting trust and connection". It includes many layers like hard work, good heart, cooperation, ethics and a sense of transcendence. 

I love this subject, but I would have never written a book on it. 

But someone did!

Around three years ago I met in Ibiza Chris and Gina, two university professors from the UK. We had an instant connection and decided to promote our bonding. After some common passions were revealed I shared with Chris the Manifesto Samyama that I wrote in 2017 (original version here). 

To make a long story short, Chris Dalton PhD from Henley Business School, has recently published an amazing and refined book that can change how you see and experience leadership in your business career, and beyond. This book is based on the statements adapted from the original manifesto I wrote. The depth and narratives that make the statements reveal all their power come from the author´s more than 25 years of experience as a facilitator in post-experience management education. All the books written by Chris have gained a very good reputation in his field. I highly recommend that you get the book and meet Chris Dalton´s talent through his work and passion. The visibility he has given to my manifesto and his educational expertise through his dedication, effort and talent makes me feel extremely grateful and excited that these visions can reach and inspire others.

"The Integrated Leader is a contemporary search for the questions to which 'leader' or 'leadership' is an answer. Taking a thoughtful approach to management education and learning, this book explores and explains ideas not usually found in books written for managers. Its purpose is to provoke the kind of reflection and thinking that experience (and most leadership training) tends not to reach.

The book will get leaders and managers to stop and think. This may not sound like much, but it is very important and significant. It represents a shift in gears in personal leadership thinking and is written for anyone who wants to ask better questions of themselves. The Integrated Leader is practical and also philosophical. It is easy to read and will reward multiple readings. Informed by the experience of practicing managers who re-enter education, it does not simply regurgitate tired old leadership theory. It neither talks down to the reader nor dumbs down any of the complex concepts needed to sustain organisational and personal health and well-being. The book includes between-chapter reflections on the Integrated Leader's Manifesto, an eleven-point declaration for leading self in various contexts.

The Integrated Leader is a must-read for anyone sincere in their need for sustainable personal development."

Get the book In hard cover here

Get the ebook here

Getting fit for life

Our strengths and talents will get tested, since we are born until we die, constantly. This is what I have found to be true throughout my life. Both the pleasurable and difficult situations have challenged how fit I was physically, emotionally and mentally, to enjoy the sun or to navigate the storms.

We can spend our time getting beautiful, or pursuing the best house, or waiting for magnificent relationships, and it will help, but getting fit from within is probably the best long term investment.

Mental strength is at the axis of this fitness because from here we can calibrate the rest of our dimensions. Staying inspired has been my specific mental strength, where I have found my way to stay connected and bring the best of myself to my personal and public life, in every moment.

I have found that feeling inspired has always driven me to help and support others in the ways that are available to me. So this is a strength that brings me inwards to move me outwards.

In this first newsletter of the year, I share my best possible inspirations to promote the highest intentions and experiences for changes or stillness. I have created an ebook with the reflections that I have written that have kept me inspired and in alignment with myself and with life in the last years. I hope you savor it with love, peace and joy, wherever you are in your life. More details below.

Tender and slow

Slow and tender, furious and wild, much and little.
Everything is part of life, and everything is life. 

      The less time we spend getting irritated with what we don't like, the more energy we have left to learn, create and solve the different landscapes of our world. To access our abilities and capacities we need inner balance. Promoting it is the art of living wisely.

Yogis have always spoken of the importance of overcoming polarities so as not to be dragged by them. In Buddhism, there is an essential principle: "Embrace everything, reject nothing." In both cases, the message, as I interpret it, is: "Wait, don't react quickly."Because what we don't like sometimes ends up being interesting, and what arouses passion in us sometimes dissolves without leaving a trace.

"Slow and tender" is something that tends to be lacking. It is important to give ourselves time, soften ourselves inside, make space and welcome our feelings, thoughts and emotions. All this offers us availability and protects us from stagnating in the known. If we go at full speed, there is no possible turn. Downshifting and assessing the route is important. Slowness is part of doing and being, tenderness is part of being and loving.

Some people, when I talk about this, imagine that if they practice it they risk their productivity and efficiency. It is just the opposite! The "furious and wild" has earned fame and admiration; to arrive quickly, to live intensely, to shine brightly. But any excess energy needs an opposite and a complement. The warrior needs a rest.

Choosing moments and textures of slowness and tenderness is for me the ideal compensation for a professional and personal landscape of intense creativity and productivity. Slowness and tenderness are invisible and we can practice them intentionally and internally at any time. We just have to evoke them and let them seize us. I encourage you to do it often! 

If we want to be strong and effective, we need tenderness and slowness to see our landscape (the world, ourselves and others).

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This text belongs to the intro of my November newsletter, you can read it here or subscribe in the home of this website.

The Manifesto Samyama for yoga educators

I wrote this text in 2017 to provoke change and reflection in the international yoga scene in Ibiza. The Manifesto gradually extended itself into the Spanish yoga community with great response and success.

I copy here the original Manifesto because I think it can inspire anyone who wants to lead with ethics, intellectual refinement and efficacy.

It is divided into categories, including micro and macro, gross and subtle. It reminds us about human core values and it guides professional development for sustainable growth and positive social impact. You can use it as it is or write your own personal declaration and guidance to give you light in moments of change or confusion.

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MANIFESTO SAMYAMA

One body, many cells.

· As a yoga teacher and educator I recognize myself as a unique, specialized and talented cell that belongs to one only body. That body is made up by all the teachers and educators that are spreading the wisdom of Yoga, creating a culture and a legacy for the next generations.

· I acknowledge that a body works well thanks to the cohesiveness, coherence, cooperation and truthfulness of each of these cells.

· I believe that the aim of this body is to serve, modeling and inspiring the world through thought, word and action.

· I recognize my power to transform and affect the world. I believe that we teachers are here to remind each other each day that this collective goal of transformation is a priority and more important than our individual goals of personal success. I know that true success is the success of the community.

Around skills, development and knowledge.

· I take 100% responsibility for my skillfulness and the state of my career and professional development as a teacher.

· Finding my own voice and sharing my truth is the best way in which I can serve this community. Other teachers can be a reference of style or wisdom, but none of them can see and feel my truth as I can do it. Thus, I ́m happy to listen to others, and at the same time I ́m grounded in my convictions and values.

· I ́m happy to revise my teaching and assumptions every day. Keeping updated my knowledge and skills through inquiry and study is my obligation, not a choice, but a responsibility I have with this community.

· I strive for learning, not perfection. I know that there are many blind spots in my experience and knowledge. Therefore I keep my humility, honoring the diversity of schools and teachings.

· I accept jealousy, fear and envy as part of the human experience. I decide to feel it, not to feed it.

Sharing.

· I wish to make yoga accesible to everyone, honoring each context and each student, always.

· It ́s my desire to share the experiences and the learning that have served me, helping the people around me to find their own training, inspiration or learning resources.

· Students have a right for freedom and decision making in their evolution and practice, my commitment is to offer as many intellectual and practical knowledge as it ́s necessary and possible in each case.

· I ́m willing to share the deep values and philosophy of yoga, and happy to accept the degree in which each student wants to commit to these values.

Ethics, intentions, awareness.

· Minimizing others breaks the ethical rules of a true teacher.

· Judging others will not help them and will interfere in my ability to communicate with kindness, compassion and clarity. I decide to stay open to the needs of the students and aware of my own emotions in every moment.

· I believe that community awareness puts the emphasis on our capacity to support each others in our transitions. As teachers we all have fears, doubts and weak areas. In our vulnerability lies our power for transformation. Being fierce and brave to share these vulnerabilities will get us closer to each others hearts and to the heart of Yoga, and we will be able to serve better.

· I believe that there ́s enough for all and that sharing naturally and effortlessly increases our health, wealth and true success, both individually and as a community.

Core values, true yoga, belonging.

· I ́m happy to break the patterns in my mind and heart that give me a sense of fragmentation and separation. Yoga is about wholeness, connection, union.

· I wish a long life to Yoga and to myself as a teacher. I work for the longevity of this tradition and my own longevity as a teacher. When I take actions I consider the effects of those actions in the long term more that the immediate rewards of those actions.

· The power of Yoga is much stronger that the power of my yoga. I ́m willing to recognize that this power is not coming from me, but through me.

                                   ****************************

About the meanings of Cooperation in a

Community of Yoga Educators

· Owning the beliefs of cooperative teaching might be a slow process, I ́m willing to honor it ́s rhythms and take them into my own language and emotion. Creating a new culture requires time, dedication, intention and patience. New habits and behaviors are necessary for a new teacher to be born.

· When we cooperate we don ́t sum up our parts, we become something new by joining these parts.

· The aim of a community of teachers includes supporting new teachers in developing the skills and overcoming the challenges of this profession.

· Humility and tolerance are absolutely necessary for the health of this movement, there ́s no human hierarchy but different states of experience and knowledge.

· A community or body of teachers is a creative space, not a space of followers. Each cell has intelligence and the capacity to take it ́s own decisions, it simply never forgets that its behavior affects the whole body, and thus takes the right responsibility and integrity always.

· Willingness and attitude are the roots of our strength as a community. All the members of a community need some time to reflect on the right balance of freedom and commitment.

· Spiritual maturity will give us the courage to move forward in these roots and grow our branches.

· Empathy is the basic tool for understanding each others, even if we don ́t agree.

A community does not absorb the individuals and their personal path and development, it just reminds us that we can also refine ourselves through interaction with our peers.

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MANIFESTO SAMYAMA BY DIANA NAYA (IBIZA, 2017)

Slow, intuitive, rich and tasty!

Today, I want to take you into my world and my breath. Follow me slowly, step by step, into the mysteries, secrets and offerings of slowing down your dynamic asana practice.

For a long time, I have been an intuitive promotor of slow movement in my practice and my teaching of Vinyasa. Maybe because it takes me time to guide each step of the flow with care and detail, fast-paced vinyasa makes me feel too tight in general. To breathe, and to talk. To see and to feel. Rushing myself and rushing others around me seems like the wrong medicine for the world in which we are living.

Slow does not equate to inefficient, boring or soft. You will see why further down.

I never knew why I had this instinct towards slowing down the dynamic practice of asana. Looking back I realize that the teachers of Vinyasa that inspired me were not very fast-paced in general, which was probably a manifestation of my natural inclination.

I felt attracted by elegance, smoothness and soft strength both in teachers and students, as much as I would feel restless or disturbed by abrupt movements and accelerated transitions when I saw them. It is not only about technique, but it is the smoothness part that I feel very inspiring, the sensation that things are floating undisturbed by the thickness of the air.

Very often I found myself in a class saying “Find your time to get into down dog” rather than “get into downdog” because I found out that this first instruction avoided the rushed movements in many students, giving them permission to explore transitions. In vinyasa asana practice, transitions have the same relevance as poses. They are the fluid that holds the elements togeher.

Though this might open a new subject, in a yoga class when the teacher indicates the next pose in a sequence should not mean that we already have to be there. It should take time to arrive at destiny! Yoga is not a military instruction, it is an invitation for movement and awareness that should awaken higher qualities in the mind and higher vitality in the body. Yoga guidance is not about stiffening the experience of the student but about allowing space and time for the authentic breath and the authentic movement to unfold in each individual.

I don´t know why rhythm should be associated with speed. Something can be rhythmic and extremely slow and vice-versa, tempo and rhythm are not the same thing. So, in an asana yoga setting, flowing should not mean rushing or running from one thing to the next one, as if we were going to miss something. That would represent a scarcity mentality. We want to practice with abundance, with wholeness. Wholeness is not about perfection, it is about including all. We will miss that wholeness if we go too fast!

I always use my metaphor of the car to explain this idea. If you were driving in a beautiful place during your holidays, would you go slowly enjoying the landscape or rushing to get to the next place? And which of these two options you believe would bring you more joy, awareness, inspiration and health? When we rush we move as if we need to grab the future, missing the life in front of our eyes. This rushed attitude settles the mind in a poor space for receptivity, learning and inquiry.

Thanks to many hours of teaching what I finally came to notice was very simple. Those people that were rushing from one pose to another in the sequence had a shorter and more abrupt breath, and when the challenging time of holding a pose came would struggle more because there was no inner stillness, no anchor to the breath. On the other side, the people that were taking the necessary time to develop and unfold the next step normally had more control over their voluntary breath (aka respiratory muscles) and would be more contented in the effort of holding poses, supported by the good tempo and quality of their breath.

With time I have found many good reasons for teaching and practicing slowly. I keep refining my skills and knowledge in this context that I have named Mindful Vinyasa. This is not a term or style that I own, it just defines my mood.

I want to highlight some of the tastiest upsides of this approach to the practice:

1. COHERENT, SMART AND WISE BREATH.

Slowing down the breath represents the conquer of body-brain communication. Voluntary breath Is a neuromuscular event that is independent of our lung capacity, flexibility and strength. It gets better when our body is healthy and spacious but it can happen under nearly any circumstance. For some people, it is a very easy and accessible practice and for other amazingly complicated, even after years of practice. Deciding for how long we are inhaling and for how long we are exhaling requires practice and intention. If we move slowly in our asana practice the movement itself can serve as a guide for the tempo of the breath. Then when we get more proficient it is the tempo of the breath that guides the movement of the body.

There is a lot to say about the anatomy and physiology of the breath and this is why I developed a 15-hour workshop on this subject. Anyway, it is just necessary to understand that slow movement will help us master slow breath and slow breath invites our heart for more coherence which has a great number of benefits. Amongst others, coherent breathing affects our physiological parameters, changing heart rate, blood pressure, brain activity and psychoemotional states. Coherent breathing involves symmetry, which means that the length of inhalation and exhalation will be the same. How long you make that breath depends on your comfort. I generally invite for a count of four seconds in and for seconds out. Some people find it tight so three in and three out is a helpful first step towards amplitude. In my practice, I sometimes slow it down to six seconds or even eight depending on my sensations and intentions.

2. ATTENTION AND MINDFULNESS

This is mainly about the idea of the car and the landscape. As we move slowly we can pay more attention to details and practice relaxed alertness in the pleasures and challenges of our asana practice. I consider slow vinyasa a luxurious context to practice mindfulness. Our asana practice should be treated and honored as a moving meditation. The integration that the mind experiences after paying full attention to movement and breath for a whole yoga class is something that we never forget, and it makes us come back to the practice. This is a reason why it can work as a motivation booster. Refined attention will give us refined awareness and clearer access to our inner power. This develops consistency and trust in ourselves, we become aware of the capacities of our mind and the power of focus.

3. EVOLUTION AND SKILL

We all want some type of progress when we are practicing a discipline. Slow movement allows us to refine the technique in our practice. Technique is about alignment but also about integrity. If we want to work with directed and intentional muscular actions for a functional approach, like the one in which I frame my teaching, having time to find the muscles and engage them is important. We also need a little time to decide how far we want to stretch a specific chain or body part. This can save us from injuries, it can help us develop long term strength and cultivate a whole-body awareness. Slow-paced flow can help us progress while avoiding habitual repetitions that keep us stuck in our practice. When we slow down we start noticing what is happening in our body and we get the chance to reconsider and correct our course when needed. Evolution is about moving back and forth with no fear of change and staying open. Skillfulness is our capacity to improve ourselves and adapt to the challenges thrown at us in our practice. In our daily life skillfulness is seen in the unfolding of inner strengths like resilience, inspiration and creativity.

Oh dear, I could go on with this list forever and ever, into details, possibilities and models. This is one of the reasons why I decided to offer a Mindful Vinyasa module for yoga teachers (for the moment only in Spanish, in Barcelona and Ibiza) because I feel that the world and the profession are ready to take this revolution further and beyond.

A slow-paced practice is reflecting us the wide landscape of the relationship with ourselves, with others and with life, and requires us to be present to many different aspects. It is healthy multitasking!

With all this, I don´t want to say that this is the best way to practice asana. I am sharing the benefits, interests and contributions of approaching our practice with these ideas in our mind. I believe that most of the approaches offer benefits and losses. It is important that we know why we are doing certain things and not just do them out of habit or imitation. Once we know the reasons why we do what we do we can start testing it to see if we can prove it valid in real life, in the long term and with enough people.

Mindful Vinyasa is whole, but not perfect. It has some downsides, I would like to talk about which ones and how to compensate them, but that will be in another post! Meanwhile, find your breath, find your body, find your mind and get them together, in the best way you can!

Yoga is the union of breath, body and mind (Desikachar). Ideally, you and I will discover our authentic way there!

* See below my last Mindful Vinyasa class in my Spanish Youtube channel. Even if you can´t catch the language you will catch my breath!

Unavoidable, learn or disappear!

      Our brain has behind it a process of evolution of 2.5 million years. This type of figures, like those of the dinosaur era or distances to the stars, always make me a little dizzy.Without any doubt, the passage of time is constantly modeling the tools, and one of the most important ones is inside our heads!

      We are programmed to survive, this is why we tend to look for security and the known, but this is only part of the program. We are also programmed to express the capacities that this brain has been developing for so long: creativity, communication, connection, language, abstract thinking, ... Our brain has evolved, among other things, to adapt to the greater complexity of our societies. And, in the process, we have gained many things, and not just a heavier head!

      Keeping our brain as healthy and active as possible is a responsibility and a pleasure. Personally I follow some daily practices, today I want to tell you about five of them:


1. Doing things that are uncomfortable or that make me feel lazy and are important (to reduce the control of the primitive part of the brain, reducing fear and anxiety).

2. Offering myself learning challenges intelectually, physically and emotionally (to favor the most sophisticated of my neurology).

3. Practicing meditation (cleans and arranges everything in my brain while I'm in stillness with my eyes closed!).

4. Developing quality relationships with people around me (activates areas of the brain that deal with love, compassion, empathy, ...).

5. Reading things that inspire me and help me to understand the world around and inside me (although sometimes I feel even more lost and ignorant!)

     I like to teach yoga because it keeps me active at the neurological level. Simply moving the arm or leg is already a brain activity. The brain has to tell the body what I want to move and how much and where. I consider movement one of the most efficient ways to stay young. Of course we favor our whole body, but what is often overlooked is that recognizing right and left, coordinating movements and maintaining balance are neurological skills.

     For the next few months my brain will be devoted to the consolidation of the subjects that I will teach in the first training module on Mindful Vinyasa in Barcelona and Ibiza. In this module for teachers I incorporate different areas of learning and teaching with the purpose of promoting and feeding our neuroplasticity. This is the project that I treasure and cherish most at the moment. The training covers the subjects of inspiration, ethics and functional alignment. For the moment this training is coming only in Spanish, I´m not sure my brain can do the work in two languages!

The rest of my activity can be found in the schedule. For private projects in the area of training or retreats you can consult me ​​directly, they do not appear in the schedule.

     If you pass by Ibiza do not hesitate to book a place for a Yoga & Brunch at Amante Beach Club.  I teach Mindful Vinyasa classes in front of the sea on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays until mid-October.

What else?...  I love hearing from you. I am very grateful to receive your messages with ideas, feelings, doubts and inquiries. I learn every day thanks to them, many thanks to all.

This is the introduction the the June Newsletter, please continue to read here…

And subscribe if you like it!

Taking care of ourselves through power, discomfort and passion

Self-care is a term that we hear quite often nowadays. I believe that it is possible and easy to misunderstand this expression so this is why I wanted to dive in this post into the nuances of what taking care of ourselves means. 

Taking care of ourselves is not so much about spoling or indulging. In my opinion self-care is about increasing our vitality through physical, mental, emotional and spiritual practices.

Many people would agree that we naturally tend to associate a happy life with a life full of ease and comfort. Rarely will we look at someone who is going through a hard illness and desire that for ourselves but commonly we will see a nice house or a nice job and desire that for ourselves. We normally crave pleasure and avoid pain. This has been a long term yogic conversation!

The truth is that to feel really empowered in life we need to dissociate less from the discomfort areas and befriend them more. As we rename disconfort into “opportunity” or “unknown” then our mind starts reframing each experience with this pattern. The word opportunity is, in my opinion, a very good one to guide us through the hard times. There is always an opportunity waiting for us, behind every situation. It is an oppportunity for growth or for loss and we decide (to a big degree) how things turn out in the long term.

The best way to manipulate our tendency to avoid challenges is to become observers of our inner worlds. Every time we sit to start and finish our practice I like inviting people to feel three layers of their experience in the moment: phyisical sensations, emotional textures and mental qualities. When we realize that after the disconfort of our practice we feel better then we start loving, chasing and embracing discomfort. This is why I think that, to the degree of our capacities, we want our asana practice to be challenging.

Though it is nice to relax and just linger in our bodies this is great to do when we are in restorative yoga or yoga nidra but asana must include the effortful side of body and movement. Effort is not forcing. Effort is creating enough energy as to be stable, grounded and powerful. Forcing is breaking the balance of our body to go to a place where there is no growth but there is violence. We do not want to exert on ourselves a level of stress that is overwhelming. We want to provoke a level of stress that is helpful for stimulation and aliveness. All our tissues need it, our mind needs it.

Relating the word “care” to discomfort requires some degree of passion, some degree of willingness to train body, mind and heart for challenges. If you want to get addicted to something, get addicted to overstepping the known areas to meet new people, apply for new opportunities, ask a little more from your body, be a little more hungry, a little less warm and less fearful.

In this context, another thing so commonly avoided is doing things we don´t know how to do. If you are doing very well something because you have mastered it, congratulations! Now you need to move forward and do things that you have not mastered to keep the learning curve ascending and cultivate a humble mood.

I am sometimes afraid of exposing myself in certain situations where it will be obvious that I am ignorant of something. Nevertheless, I try to force myself into those situations. ThoughI know I chould do it even more!

This post is for you and for me, to remind us that discomfort is growth, the unknown is opportunity, power is in our freedom and passion is a must to engage in life facing storms, sun, wind, day and night with a radiant smile and a curious gaze.

* I include here an image of how different levels of stress create different effects in performance. Note that our performance improves with the right level of stress and decreases when too much or too little stress. Self-care is most probably about being in the right side of the hill!

Love, own, share.

There is more to life than the things that make us different and that are so visible. Our common humanity is broader and bigger than these different shapes, ideas, habits and social classes that we play. 

Why would I say this? Because I have seen myself and others get to the same points over and over, beyond the formal differences. We might not discuss it as often as necessary but most of us have some of the inner questions unanswered, at least during some time of our lives. This sets us in the same chapter and in a similar landscape.

What is the purpose of life? What am I meant to do here? This existencial, philosophical and spiritual questions are not meant to be easily answered but we can learn to live easily with them while we find our genuine and inner answers. It takes time!

I have this simple strategy to help myself or anyone else in the process of unfolding answers for the questions related to meaning and purpose. The strategy I have created is Love-Own-Share. This strategy creates a fertile day-to-day experience in which we allow the laws of nature and spirit to answer to the questions. Meanwhile we create the best possible contexts for us to enjoy the process and engage in the actions that guide us to the answers.

1. Know what you love. Start by doing every day a little bit more of those things that bring you peace, excitement, joy. This can be anything and it does not have to be related specifically to your profession. Make sure you don´t miss those things that cover your true needs, wether it is reading poetry or ironing, just don´t skip moments of pleasure, joy and devotion to your authentic motivations. 

2. Own the right to your joy and wholeness. Don´t expect anyone or anything from outside to come and give you permission or motivation or money for doing these things that really fuel your heart and inspire your soul. Take full responsibility for including self-inspiration, self-care, self-joy. If you think you don´t have time, you are driving on the wrong track. Time is created and used every day consciously or unconsciously. Stop the excuses! They take away your power.

3. Now, it is time to share it or it will just become a game to feed your ego and self centeredness. Your joy and your bliss are meant to change the world and impregnate those around you. These things that you love so much, and that you give yourself permission to practice and enjoy are the ones that you are meant to share in the world. They are specific talents or gifts and in sharing them they become universal goodness. You learn through them to go beyond your survival into thriving and serving in the world.

Now, these things might not give you all the answers but will add meaning to daily life and will increase your sensation of being useful and helpful to those around you. These mood moves us from the mind to the heart where true listening can happen. Inner guidance appears in the form of intuition, insight, callings, longings, knowings… Then we start understanding, then we start loving.  And even with some unanswered questions, life gets delicious! 

So Love-Own-Share every day… Thank you!

Hard work, light life.

Some people don´t want to do the hard work. And I absolutely understand it. Because it is a type of work that is completely uncertain on outcomes. The hard work for me is the one that does not give you fame, nor wealth, nor friends and maybe not even health. The hard work is the one that takes care of the purity of actions, even if that costs the loss of other things. Not very attractive, right? On its behalf I must say that there is some type of pay for this type of work. It gives the fruits of inner peace, of knowing that we have put things in the right order in such a way that we will live with the full spectrum of emotional nuances and die disturbed in matter but undisturbed in our spirit.

What does this work bring? It forces us for the cultivation of noble and traditional values such as courage, sacrifice, service, love, honesty, truth and justice. It does not mean that you have to die for someone every day, but you might stop to help an old person when you are in a rush for an important job interview that affects the long term of your professional life. The hard work means we are willing to assume the risks of not pleasing everyone but knowing that we are pleasing our heart. It is not the same to offer a friend a teeshirt you just bought as it is to take off your favorite teeshirt and offer it to someone that really needs it. I´m not talking about overplaying the hero or reducing love for yourself. I mean taking actions that would honor life to its highest expression and our humanness to its brightest light. It is easy to share when we have more than enough (and still many people struggle to do this), but what about sharing when you are not sure if you will make it through the month?

What we learn along this path of being willing to do the hard work is that it is not so hard once it has become a habit. It is not so hard to wash your dishes a little bit slower because you choose a thinner flow of water. It is not so hard to buy things according to your needs and not to impress others or confirm artificial identities. It is not so hard to wake up earlier to honor your body rather than stay late disturbing your mind with social media or tv. It is not so hard to be with your kids when they need you rather that prioritize adult social life which can be done or pursued later. It is not so hard to share the secrets of your professional or personal successes to inspire or help others. It should not be hard to listen to a friend even when you want to tell them how well you know how to solve everything.

In our yoga practice it should not be so hard to practice the core teachings of yoga and choose to ignore the tendencies given by the competitive moods of the modern world.

Still, all this is a little hard. But not so hard. Inner strengths get stronger as we work them. Mindful living gets easier as we practice it. Truthfulness reaches a cellular level when we commit to it every day. Simple living is sustainable, maybe not so glamorous, chic or attractive. I know.

We should try to feel how the vibration of the world changes every time we take a step to take care of something else than ourselves. An easy way yo find the answers when we are in doubt: think about the impact of what you are doing in the world and the people around you in the long term. Answers and decisions take a different colour. Life takes a different course. I can´t promise amazing outcomes, it just feels good. In a natural human way.

My favorite Instagram post of August

      We can´t do yoga. We can “be” yoga or “be in” yoga.But we can´t do it. No shape in the body will bring us to yoga if the breath and mind are not participating of the experience. 

      Asana or yoga pose requires body, breath and mind to be one. This prepares us for the comprehensive approach of the integrative experience of yoga. When we say we practice yoga just because we do poses we are being imprecise. It has value to perform the poses by itself, as physical exercise. But when directed awareness and breath are missing from the equation, if we are precise and respectful to the teachings of yoga, we are not really assuming the principles of the practice.

     I don´t believe that everybody should commit to the multilayered practice of yoga, but I believe that knowing more about yoga can help us take decisions about how far and how much we want to interact with the discipline. Strict and stiff perspectives make no sense nowadays. I believe in the yoga practice for householders, therefore something down to earth that can be integrated in daily life. I believe in something that educates us in compassion, elegant suffering and mindful living so we can experience joy and wholeness in most of the contexts of life. 

This is how I envision yoga, as a life practice that comes with us in every mood, shape, landscape, company and breath. Something simple but extremely refined, something friendly and at the same time clear and honest. Something that fits you and me, and comes to meet us where we are. Something that makes us human beings and gives us true freedom. Something that makes us feel that we are in a fairy forest with our feet in the earth. 

You can follow me at @samyamayogaibiza

Storms and Passions: Gestures of Freedom

      During these last days of August I can feel how the island slows down the breath. Or maybe it is only me.

I have had an exceptionally well balanced season up to know. I´m very grateful that without overloading my schedule I still have been fortunate to observe and share my teaching with many people from different places and very diverse backgrounds. During this time of the year I teach international groups and private classes that give me a very heterogeneous landscape of the world beyond my quiet and intimate country life. 

On the other side, the off season period is more homogeneous as I dive into regular classes for local people and I travel for my teaching in the mainland. Though both contexts are interesting spaces for discovery, the big contrasts of the summer season give me some special and extraordinary feedback that I find of great help for myself and the development of my work.

      When I  was young I studied Sociology but never really  knew which was the origin of my interest in social behavior and the human nature. Later, while I was a fashion designer, I had no clue about why I had landed with so much ease and pleasure in the field of creativity while my mood was more inclined towards organization and management.

Now I know why all these things happened. I needed the skills of observation as well as the talent of creativity to be a good teacher (my heart profession). They say that you never really know why you are doing certain things in the present moment but when you look to the past you can perfectly understand the hidden reasons.  This is the case for me. I hope that this timeline approach helps me in the future to understand why I embark today in the adventures that I choose!

      I think that observation is the most amazing tool for research and inquiry. In this time of observing life through so many students I have been able to validate some of my intuitions. I do not collect data in an orthodox way, but data is registered inside me in a way that makes sense. I give for granted that my personal filters are part of the equation so I want to share this as personal opinions, not as proven science.

      I have seen how much our experiences are regulated by the level of opening we bring into them. Openness refers to our ability to keep good distance between our preconceived ideas or personal memories and what life is offering us in a given moment. Openness is even more. It is a type of freshness and innocence;our ability to take the best out of each situation, being available to richness, insight, discovery and learning. 

      The first thing that a teacher of any field can do is help students to be in this mood of openness and curiosity. How to do it? From my experience I believe that it helps very much to offer the knowledge without making it too exclusive or strict, inviting students to always refer to themselves when the time to validate something comes. I believe that openness is related to having an internal sensation of freedom and choice.

People who feel victims of the world who tend to see drama everywhere normally have a harder time to experience openness because they don´t feel free. On the other side, people that know that they participate actively from their personal reality tend to be more open. It is not hard to guess which of them enjoy more the challenges of life and learn faster!

      The good thing to know is thatour personalitiesare not stagnant programs, they are dynamic experiences of behaviors, thoughts, habits and emotions. And they can be redefined and recreated through our awakening and willingness to make a change, wether big or small.

I have confirmed with these observations thatit is much more efficient if we want to improve our movement skills to address first the education of attention and attitude. When we retrain the mind through awareness the body naturally follows into more integrated and healthier landscapes.

       As a conclusion, we need to know if we want to we see life as a place full of storms(drama, fear and loss) or we want to see it as an experience in which we want to express our passion and openness. In our decision we´ll define our whole life experience. Which is our choice as students and teachers?

Ilustration: www.agathebb.com

Newsletter July: Breathe in education. Breath out wisdom.

      From all the inner strengths that we can cultivate I believe that learning is one of the most important. Learning will keep us alive, awake, informed, free, responsible, mature, joyful and in permanent positive growth through intimate inquiry.

In this context I´ve been aiming to define education, as it is one of the sources of learning (not the only one!).

      Education is often associated to the delivery of knowledge from one person that is more knowledgable in any area to one that is not so knowledgable in that area. So far, I basically agree and would be confortable with the idea that education is an upgrading of our current knowledge (in any area). 

Still this was short so I had the chance to see two of my most beloved students from United Kingdom here in Ibiza recently. Gina and Chris (real names, they will read this newsletter!) are professors at Oxford and Henley universities respectively and I very much admire and appreciate our rich and intelectual conversations. I decided to share this definition of education as an upgrading of knowledge and they each gave some ideas that helped me.

      From Chris I took the idea of education as freedom and from Gina de idea of education as a waking up. 

So here goes a definition of education that comes from adding up our perspectives (it does not mean that Chris and Gina will completely agree with me!). 

Education is an upgrading of knowledge that wakes you up (shakes your system!)  and gives you freedom (in form of power to be genuine, skills to engage in life with wholeness and inner sensations of well being and easiness).

      Why do I want (again) to talk about education? It appears to me that a good yoga learning environment should offer concentrated education (like and aromatic essence). This means that you can take home and to your life many things that will serve you forever (how to breathe, how to stay inspired, knowledge about your body, awareness of your own awareness, tools to master the mind, contemplation and concentration skills, creative thinking and a long so on).

Now I know why I love teaching yoga. I have an excuse to offer education in a context that includes the body. What I want to offer goes far beyond the body, so why use the body and yoga? In my opinion both of them make the perfect path to create a physiological state that promotes learning. The steady flow of the breath plus the directed attention promote optimized brain organization and this creates the perfect landscape for taking in impressions that will stay with us and give us long term knowledge.

      With this knowledge we give ourselves de right and freedom to reformulate the way in which we think, feel and look at the world. We honor therefore the obligation we have of becoming experts in the art of living well and happy, as well as we honor our physical and intellectual capacities stimulating them in an intensive and respectful way.

I think that with this my glass of reflection is full. I will not bother you until the next newsletter :-)

Ahhh... I hope these ideas help us to understand and love even more our adventures on the mat!

You can continue reading my bilingual newsletter in this link: Newsletter July

Inhale. Exhale.

BREATHE. 

This is the only thing I want to share today, but it would be a very short article! I want to give it a context and share the reasons why I say this.

     A good asana practice should never interrupt the steady flow of the breath, an obvious principle when said but not obvious when the time to apply it comes. The embodiment of this principle in the physical practice of yoga can take a lifetime. 

Many things disturb that steadiness in the flow of breath when we practice poses. In my opinion two of them are the greatest ones: unfocused mind and excessive effort. In fact, the extremes move us out from a balanced breath; a déficit in the quality of the mind (due to chaos or overactivity) or an excess in the capacities of the body.

      An easy way to encourage the steadiness in the flow of breath in this frame would be to make sure we stay present to what we are doing and we move with detail and sensitivity in the challenges offered by asana practice (looking for precision and integrity more that fighting or forcing the poses!).

The observation of these elements (mind and body) plus the willingness to master the flow of breath can bring great joys to our experience of life moment to moment. Imagine what would happen if we managed to control our body and our mind and at the same time breathe in a generous and open way. It would probably happen that control meets openness and the skills we build are not rigid but have a healthy degree of flexibility. And that is health; a balanced state of mind and a sweet feeling tone. If we only controlled the mind and the body but did not add a nice deep smooth breath we would run the risk of being too much into that controlling quality. Who wants that level of stiffness?  

So, up to know, we´ve shared that steady uninterrupted breath, focused mind and sensitive movement would give us a good experience of asana. 

Great, but our life is more than asana, right? If we apply the same principles we could say that good life practice should never interrupt the steady flow of breath. In any activity that we perform (or any moment without an activity) we aim to not interrupt the flow of breath. I would say that everything improves with good breath: thinking, speaking, singing, dancing, making love, taking a massage, visiting the dentist, negotiating a contract, buying clothes, choosing food in a restaurant, telling someone you love them, telling someone you don´t love them, being who you are, etc.

Why is this so? Apart from all the philosophy related to vitality described by the yogis, there is a physiology to the breath. Breath is the doorway to our physiological coherence. Slow rhythmic breath modifies the heartbeat and the heart as a major organizer organ starts sending coherent signals to other organs that will also start changing their rhythm to synchronize it. The heart sends much of its communication to the brain (and the brain also sends information to the heart, but there is more flow of information from the heart to the brain than viceversa). After a few minutes of slow deep breath the nervous system starts receiving the signal that we are safe. Would you breathe slowly if a lion was chasing you? You would breathe fast, accelerate the heart and get into fight, flight or freeze response. You would let your body know that you are in danger!

       When you breathe slowly you are telling your body that you are not in danger, so the alarm systems shut off and the repair systems kick in. The heart beat is a game amongst the two branches of the autonomic nervous system. The sympathetic branch tells the heart to beat, and the parasympathetic puts it to rest. When these branches are working in balance and synchrony the heart beat has a nice stable rhythm (like a good conversation in which one talks and the other listens alternatively in a very natural flow). This is why good breath connects us to our truth, because when we are relaxed we are free from trying to impress others; we feel safe and act with ease and honesty.

Maybe we can now say that good breath encourages a good conversation with life through a balanced experienced in our body.

If you match this with an elevated emotion that you can hold towards yourself, something or someone (love, appreciation, gratitude) your whole system will enter a state of energy, mental clarity and good feeling state. 

I love applying this wisdom to my practice and my teaching, blending what we know today about physiology with what we always knew about yoga.

In case it is not clear.

BREATHE! :-)

For your own personal study please check www.heartmath.org and any classical text of yoga on prana, pranayama or asana*. 

*Recommended authors Van Lysebeth, Iyengar, Desikachar, Richard Rosen, Swami Nirajananda.

Illustration Joe Anderson

Nothing to declare, nothing to confess, nothing to validate.

      Our mats are not a space of validation. No examination is going on when we practice yoga. No competition should be present (though a lot of competent focused action will benefit us).

Our space and time on the mat are a gift to us. A time to know ourselves, feel our breath, create healthy and stimulating shapes for our bodies. Our mats are a blessing; a metaphor where we can practice skills for the challenges and pleasures of being alive. In our yoga practice we will find time to be who we are and breath with the present moment. Our yoga time is an experiential context to feel undivided, linked to everything and everyone. 

Therefore, there is no reason to create struggle, resistance, tension, criticism, denial or attachment to anything we experience. There is already a lot of that out there, in our daily lives. Ideally, the mat is informing of another way of living and feeling life. 

From the most basics. The deep directed attentive breath we apply in our physical practices regulates the nervous system. Paying attention to something, instead of being scattered, brings refined brain organization that allows us to get into creative heightened enlightened states. Just the good vibe you have when you finish your yoga practice can change your whole day for the best.

When we believe  that our yoga is defined by our range of movement or advanced poses, when we think that flexibility or extremes validate and certify us as true yogis, we are missing a big part of the story!

You and I have been given the chance to self regulate our human experience from within. Through mindset and mood we define our relationship with the external world. There are no prerequisites for this. We all have the right.

My focus as a yoga educator is bringing these concepts to my teaching. While exploring movement and shapes I remind students to move their attention to their breath and stay focused. I know that a successful practice is not one that attains the most advanced pose, but one that targets the soul of the human being. If anything within us feels broken or fragmented we don´t want to break it more bringing separation and violence. We want to bring tenderness, love, respect and compassion to our bodies. That doesn´t mean we are weak. It means that we are finding our strength where it is: in our intention and our determination.

We need to nourish our intentions taking time to define our highest values and how we want to bring them into our lives. The yogis consider ethics a very important and primary part of the practice, and I believe that they did for a very obvious reason.

How could we bring our physical, mental or spiritual practices to success if we are not proud of how we are behaving in the world? 

How can a person that is not doing goodness in daily life concentrate on a meditation or pranayama?

How can we do an asana with the purity of alignment and breath that it requires if we have been stealing or judging or offending people? 

     All our troubles and inner demons appear when we settle ourselves in silence or observation (a good asana practice should have both of these qualities). We would like to have as little of those troubles and demons as we can.

A daily purified way of living will keep shame, guilt, resentment, anger and other strong emotions to their lowest. In this context we can concentrate in our practice with less interruptions and obstacles.

Then, we have nothing to declare because we are travelling light and and we are not exporting our burdens from one place to another.

We have nothing to confess, because our loving actions in the world keep our heart clean and serene.

We have nothing to validate because we already know of our perfection and are happy to support ourselves as we are.

Now, are we willing to be open and  explore the adventure of travelling light, be loving and shine our truth in the world?

* Ilustration Daniella Ferreti

March Newsletter - Essential Spring

  I was wondering for this newsletter if I should adopt a spring or a yogi mood, wether I should use for the heading one of today´s pictures of the natural landscape or a few cute pictures doing poses.

To be honest, I spend more time looking at the landscape than I do on the mat. This is life. There is more life in my life than mat. However, they both interweave in such disproportionate perfect proportion that they can´t live one without the other. My life would be dull without the mat, and my mat would be ungrounded without the roots that daily and common life gives me.

So I´m going to put the spring as heading and a couple of discrete yoga pictures in poses that remind me how much I need the center of my body to embellish and stabilize all the other elements. The center is that aspect of my life that brings me back to the origin of things, so I can naturally assume the complexity of life and rest in the simplicity I consciously chose.

I´m wondering how the regular students feel after a couple of exciting months focusing in the core of our body. I have the impression that it has helped us all to center and focus in the essence of the practice. To my way of thinking, an intense posture only makes sense if we are able to perform it with quality, and for that we need precision, time, devotion and intention. This has been the central axis of my teaching these months. The juice of any fruit or vegetable will keep better its vitamins if we squeeze it with slowness and patience. From my perspective the yoga physical practice is the same, it reaches perfection when it is nourishing and simple, when anxiety disappears and inspiration appears.

I don´t want to make it too long, since I would like you to keep some interest for the articles I wrote in the blogs and the talk at the end.

I wish you a beautiful spring!

* For daily or weekly inspirations you can visit me in social media (Facebook & Instagram @samyamayogaibiza).

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