The family (with the Husband-Elect joining us soon) is up in Rangeley Maine for the holidays.  Snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, downhill skiing (maybe), and a lot of napping, sleeping, reading and hanging out is being accomplished.

Brother Bear & Me on Cross Country Skis

Christmas was beautiful and laid-back.  We really pared down on the buying this year, focusing on spending time together rather than buying a ton of stuff that no one really needs.

A Maine Christmas: A new fly fishing net!

On Christmas Eve, the clouds sunk really low and as the temperatures continued to drop, everything was coated in a thick layer of rime ice.  I’ve never seen this happen at such a low elevation, usually it happens up on the mountain tops.  It made for a gorgeous, crystally morning and some cool photo ops.

Internet access is spotty (as in I have to get to the ski lodge or the public library for access) so posting will be sparse until I get back to Cambridge.

There are some great posts coming your way in the New Year!  So in the meantime be safe, be healthy and be your yoga.

Happy New Year & Namaste!

Going to be in the Rangeley Lakes region over Christmas and New Years?

Get out of the cold and come warm up at my yoga class at the Rangeley Region Fitness Center!

I’ll be teaching a “yoga-lates” class.  (It’s really more of a Core Flow, but I guess “yoga-lates” is better marketing.)

Class times are:
Monday 12/28 –  9am

Tuesday 12/29 — 5pm

Wednesday 12/30 — 9am

Hope to see you there!

This questions pops up every now and again, usually in response to news stories of nations banning or recommending against yoga.

Yoga Journal Buzz blog recently asked a spin on this question to readers:  Should yoga be included in religion study?

Now, I’m no theologian nor can I claim an in depth knowledge to any particular religion, so I relied on my Librarian Skills to try and decipher this knotty question.

What did I do?  I looked the words up in the dictionary.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines religion as

“a belief in or sensing of some superhuman power , entitled to obedience, reverence and worship, or in a system defining a code of living, esp. as a means to achieve spiritual or material improvement; acceptance of such belief (esp. as represented by an organized Church) as a standard of spiritual and practical life; the expression of this worship etc.“

The Oxford English dictionary defines discipline as

“Instruction given to pupils or disciples; teaching, education. Instruction fitting one to perform an activity; training.  Controlled and orderly behavior resulting from training.“

Finally, the dictionary defines yoga as

“union of the self with the supreme being; a system of practice and meditation.“

Using these dictionary definitions, one could safely make the argument that yoga is a religion.  The eight limbs of yoga work together to achieve union with a greater spiritual power.  The path of yoga outlines ways of living and behaving that help the practitioner achieve this relationship.  The term discipline also applies, but seems too narrowly defined to include all that yoga encompasses.

However, the modern use of the word religion is fraught with cultural baggage.  It implies a more dogmatic view of the world with much stricter rules for behavior and belief.  I think this is what makes people so uncomfortable calling yoga a religion — they’re operating from the cultural definition rather than the dictionary definition, where, for the most part, all social context has been removed.

Is yoga a religion?  Should it be included in religious studies?  I say yes, on both counts.  The study of yoga, both personally and academically is a worthy and enlightening path, as is any open, curious and unbiased study of any religious disciple.

What do you think?  Is yoga a religion or a discipline?

Here we go with some link-a-liciousness!!

These are my favorite yoga blogs.  Thank you to all the great authors out there who keep me regulary inspired!

What blogs inspire you?  Please share them here — I’d love to check ‘em out.

Everyday Yogini
Based in Rome, Italy, Nona Jordan writes about yoga and life.  Posting isn’t very frequent, but everything up there is solid gold.

Everything Yoga
Written by a yoga therapist, the mind-body connection (and a great sense of humor) are present in every post.

Find Your Balance
Michelle is a health counselor and yogi who offers practical advice for anyone looking to find more balance in their lives.

Grounding Through the Sit Bones
Brenda P is a yoga teacher, event coordinator, mom and so much more!  Her blog is great for alignment tips and asana experiments as well as insightful prose into every day life.

Joy Yoga
Former Editor-in-Chief of a major publication, Lindsey Lewis is now a full-time Kundalini yoga teacher.  Her blog is a fun mix of yoga, media and interviews with other yogis.

Prana Journal
Michael keeps a great (almost) daily log of his yoga exploits.  It’s down to earth and fun to read.

Super-Mom
As the tag line says, it’s really more for Super People.  Sharing her unique voice, Taylor Wells, co-founder of Prana Power Yoga, posts daily quotes and longer personal posts including stories and interviews of Super People in the surrounding community.

Teaching Yoga
Awesome and inspiring posts about teaching yoga.  I’ve found some great sequences and transitions from Kira’s blog.  This is a great resource for teachers.

Buzz Blog
A sporadic blast of news-related posts from Yoga Journal.  Great for blog-fodder!  [Now that I've given my secrets away...]

Yoga Rants & Raves
Yogis who are decidedly yogic about their yoga.  This is a funny look yoga and the yoga community.

YogaDork
For the true Yoga Dork in all of us.

And for something a little different:

Namaste Book Club
An online community tacking one yoga text at a time, with lively and fascinating discussions.  This is a great place to meet yogis from across disciplines, background and practices.
Currently reading: Holy Cow by Sarah McDonald
Next up: Moving Into Stillness by Erich Schiffman

If you were anywhere on the Eastern seaboard from Virgina on north, then you saw a whole lot of snow this weekend.  We got about 8 inches here in Cambridge.  Which is nothing compared to what Washington DC saw.

Watching the snow drift up against the window sill, we were snug and warm inside with hot coffee, tea, beef stew simmering on the stove and a new knitting project for me.   We just cracked open a couple beers: Peak’s Organic Maple Oat Stout for the Husband-Elect and a Geary’s Winter Warmer for me.

snow on the sill

The wind is picking up outside, blowing the snow sideways and drifting into the plowed road.  The Husband-Elect’s car needs to be dug out, but no one’s in a rush to leave the couch any time soon.  There are some bills to be paid and laundry to do.  We’re totally pulling a Scarlet O’Hara and “we’ll think about it tomorrow.”

Happy Snowy Sunday!  Cheers!

big toe out the front door. that's as far as I was going.

In going through all my photos in my old bedroom at my parent’s house, I found this one:
This is my Bumpa.  He and his wife Mamie ‘adopted’ my brother and I as their grandkids.  They were with us for every Christmas (and every birthday, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Halloween …) pretty much every day of our lives for as long as we can remember.

Mamie would play for hours with  me on Christmas morning, with whatever new toy I had received.  It was Bumpa’s ever-present pocket knife that cut open the boxes, through the tape, and into the blister packages containing the necessary batteries.

I took this picture a few years ago, when the bladder cancer that eventually claimed Bumpa was just starting to rear it’s very ugly head.

Mamie passed away about 15 years ago.  Bumpa, who went down fighting, died last year, a few days before Thanksgiving.

This will be our first Christmas without them.

It’s times like these that pictures are worth a thousand words.  There are a thousand platitudes to offer people who are facing holidays without loved ones, but for me this picture captures everything I want to remember about Christmas with Mamie and Bumpa.   The joy, the silliness, the sense of family that comes from not only those who you’re related to, but from those you choose to be a part of your family.

This year, I am choosing to be grateful for the many wonderful years I had with Mamie and Bumpa.  I will remember all they have taught me and all I have learned from them.  I will still miss them – a lot – but I this Christmas I am choosing gratitude.

Thank you.

Vinyasa Flow
60 minutes
10 peeps (5 guys!)
Music: Prana After Dark 7, mix by Ray Mucci

child’s pose
down dog
down dog to high plank x3
broken vinyasa
rag doll
tadasana
3 sun As
3 sun Bs
- sun B 2 and three flow from warrior I into humble warrior
open to warrior II
reverse warrior
runners lunge
drop knee with hip opener
3-legged dog
hip opener/flip dog
crescent lunge twist
warrior II
side angle
half bind
triangle
prasritta A/B
pivot to front and into eagle
airplane
tadasana
repeat from sun B through airplane on left
dolphin plank
forearm side plank with threading on right
2 locust
1 bow
forearm side plank with threading on left
2 bridges
1 wheel/bridge
supta baddha konasana
happy baby
half pigeon
spinal twist
savasana

So, so so proud of my yoga students today! They have grown so much over the semester.  I’m especially proud and excited about the men who come to class.  It can be doubly tough for a guy to come to a yoga class, put himself in a situation that he’s unsure of and uncomfortable with … it’s a big risk.  But these men come with no previous yoga experience and take the risk — and do great!  It’s so hard to take those personal risks but these guys do it.  So proud and them and so grateful to have them in my class!

Someone’s been doing some tidying up!

A few new things here on Perusals:

1) Yoga Teacher Training Links are now their very own page!

2) There are a few new blog links in “Other Great Blogs.”  Definitely check out Social*Ology for some beautiful and thought-provoking writing.

3) Twitter updates!  Follow me @AbbyThompson
Hopefully the sidebar is a little more streamlined and less cluttered.

Is there anything you’d like to see on the side bar (or on the blog in general) that you’re not seeing now?   What about extraneous stuff than can get chucked?

Also … IT’S SNOWING!

Here on Perusals at least.  Certainly not in Cambridge.

Have a WordPress blog?  Want to make it snow?

Browse any major DVD or book retailer and most of the yoga media will have a tag line about yoga and weight-loss.

Here’s a heads up.  Yoga as a way to lose weight is bunk.

Yes, yoga can be a great workout.  “Flow-style” yogas like Power Yoga and Vinyasa work every major muscle group in the body in the first 10 minutes.  (Practice in a heated studio and you’ll find yourself a few pounds lighter just to due water loss.)

Yoga is a great cardio workout.   A single backbend or inversion will get your heart pumping as if you were in cardio kickboxing.

Lift weights?  Head to a yoga class and guaranteed those chaturangas will get you feeling like you’ve been bench pressing 100+ pounds for an hour and a half straight.

And yes, yoga can make you more flexible.

But the weight-loss?  That comes from somewhere else and, in my opinion, is directly related to why yoga works.

Yoga works because it teaches you to love your body exactly as it is.  Yoga doesn’t want to change you.  It can’t change you.  Yoga is simply a method, a style.  But this style, this particular method called yoga, allows you to tap back into your self.  Some people call it spirit, soul, core or center.   Doesn’t matter what you call it, but it’s there and it’s yoga that helps us remember that we all have that resource.

This is how yoga works. It teaches us to re-learn to love our bodies as they are.

We may tell ourselves we go to yoga because we want a work out.  We want to sweat and get strong, flexible or thin.  Maybe we’ve had an injury and yoga is part of physical therapy.  We come to yoga for a lot of reasons.  But stop for a moment and really think about not why you went to your first yoga class, but why you keep going.

Take a moment.

Think about it.

I’ll wait.

We keep going to yoga classes or develop a home practice because it feels good.

Why does it feel good?  Because in that 60 or 75 or 90 minutes we are given time to reach deep and touch that essential part of ourselves that is beautiful, strong, compassionate and powerful.

Coming to yoga because you want to lose weight is a great way to start.  That’s your body calling out to you, asking to be acknowledged and be made healthy.  But yoga won’t work if you can’t let go of the attachment to the modern media interpretation of what we should look like.

There are plenty of beautiful, strong, muscular and curvy yogis out there.  They shine and are beautiful because they love their bodies as they are.  They care for their bodies by living their yoga.

Once you learn that, once you learn how to love yourself as you are, in the moment, then change can happen.  Maybe the change manifests itself as weightloss.  Maybe it’s just that you don’t care any more because you feel good.   The physical shape of your body no longer matters.

It doesn’t matter because you are healthy.

You are strong.

You are beautiful.

And that’s how yoga works.

I was intrigued about this recent post on detoxing your armpits.  Fascinated by what this woman went through for her “detox”, I was hoping that I’d learn something to help me in my continuing quest for an non-aluminum, non-toxic antiperspirant.

The big difference here is that I don’t have stinky, bacteria-ridden arm pits.  What I do have is sweat, enough that I would sweat through whatever shirt or sweater I am wearing if I didn’t have an antiperspirant.  This is especially frustrating because most of the time I’m cold and still sweating.

Deodorant is not the issue … it’s the perspiring.  The last post generated some interesting comments about alternatives to deodorants, but didn’t really touch on the antiperspirant part of the debate.

Is there an all-natural solution to controlling/containing the sweat?  And yes, I know it’s a natural, bodily function, but I’m tired of walking around with damp armpits and wet clothes.

Do you buck the societal norms that “women don’t sweat” and rock on with your underarm water spots?  Do you compromise your health with aluminum and paraben loaded antiperspirants?  Has anyone found something in the middle?