Yoga and Life

Bikram Yogis are Students of Life

If you’re reading this article you probably do Bikram Yoga regularly or at least have done it a few times. You know the grueling routine of the class. You’ve experienced the adversity of the heat and the classroom setting. You’ve stared into the cosmic mirror and had to face yourself, for better or worse, for more than an hour each time. “How does all this serve you?” you ask. The physical benefits are obvious. The structure of the class is true to hatha yoga and its purpose of healing the body. No other yoga class or form of exercise... Read More ››

Bikram’s Take on Spirituality

Bikram’s favorite way to start a lecture or an interview is to ask the audience or person interviewing him, “What is spirituality?” Most everyone is caught off guard by the question and freezes temporarily. To Bikram, spirituality is Self realization, God realization. It’s simple and complicated all at once. Acknowledgement of spirit is personal and private and there are some who have no interest whatsoever in exploring this concept. Ideas and situations that challenge the status quo can be threatening until we know more about it. Bikram knows this. That’s why his yoga class is plain and simple hatha... Read More ››

Breath is Life

Breath is life. If you don’t breathe, you don’t live. It’s that important and that simple. And while it can happen normally without our awareness, there are other times when the breath is shallow or irregular. The breath connects the body with the mind. When the mind is out of sorts (alignment), the breath goes out of sorts (alignment). And when the breath is out of alignment, the body goes out of alignment. Just as our heart beats without our mind telling it to, breathing is a function that our body performs without our conscious awareness. Ever noticed how... Read More ››

Building Community Through Competition

Along with many others from all over Texas, I attended the 7th Annual Texas Yoga Asana Championship on November 8th in The Woodlands. The venue and format had been expanded greatly from past years to include the first ever Texas Fitness and Wellness Fair. But even knowing that, I can’t tell you how surprised I was to open the event magazine and find that there were 55 competitors, 33 women alone, on the roster to compete. When we hosted the event here in Austin just 3 years ago we were thrilled to have 30 competitors altogether. It’s made me... Read More ››

Celebrating All of Life

What is your favorite thing to celebrate? Your birthday? A long and hard fought victory by your favorite athlete or team? Holidays? A graduation? I like this last one, a graduation. It implies growth, a change, a moving forward or up a level. For some people just being able to breathe easily or move about pain free is cause for celebration. These are the people that have in their grasp a very powerful key to happiness—appreciation for the simple things in life. Being from Calcutta, India, Bikram has a very different perspective on life in America than those of... Read More ››

Change is Good!

Change is good! As they say, the only constant in life is change. But just because it’s good doesn’t always mean it’s easy. The times in which we struggle and suffer the most are the times in which we resist change. In fact, all suffering is the result of resistance. We lack the faith that everything will work out in the long run so we resist. While we may be very clear in knowing that our current circumstances are not satisfactory or far from our ideal, we’re afraid to allow the change that creates the space for the better... Read More ››

Experience the Bikram Challenge

Bikram himself has put out the challenge to one and all to do one class of Bikram’s beginning yoga every day for 60 consecutive days. At the end of those 60 days he promises you’ll have a new body, a new mind and a new life. If you’re like most people, you’re probably wondering just what he means by that. How can that be? Bikram Yoga is an amazing process in so many respects. The structure of the class, the sequence of the postures in which every posture prepares the body for those that come next, the group environment,... Read More ››

Finding Balance

Retreat! Retreat! My psyche screamed at me as I saw the latest emails waiting to be opened. These were from a new source demanding my attention and time, something that was already in short supply. Just days before I’d realized that my life was out of balance. The daily routine of work and life had lulled me into a place of complacency such that I’d become so bogged down with responsibilities that I was no longer enjoying my life. I was not sure where my professional life ended and my personal life began or where those boundaries should be... Read More ››

Growing Through Change

Growth is the natural evolution of life, all life, all aspects of life. Sometimes it shows up in the guise of death, but as the saying goes, “As one door closes another one opens.” Death is really just a new beginning. In order to grow, things must change. We know this, and we may consciously want change, but more often than not we cannot seem to let it happen. Why is change so scary? It is very easy to maintain the status quo and stick with things and situations, even ones that we know are harmful, dysfunctional, or simply... Read More ››

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