3/28/05

Dear Student, 

I hope you are enjoying this beginning of Spring.  I hope to see you in class as you include Yoga as a terrific way to prepare for the increased activity of this time of year. The new series is beginning on Monday 3/28 and will run until May 27^th. The Schedule is attached and further details are available at www.creativeedgeyoga.com. 

Ravi Sing and Ana Brett are returning--Soon! They will be at Raven’s Wing Yoga on April 10 from 1-4pm. The focus will be on Kundalini Yoga and the Chakras. More information is below. 

I will be giving another in my Posture Pain and Performance workshop Saturday, April 23^rd from 1-3:30pmorline Center in Guilford.

If you find yourself explaining your letting go of cherished activities as being because “age is catching up to me”, seem to be struggling to no avail to rid yourself aches and pains or chronic conditions, or simply seek to move more comfortably and efficiently in sports and your life  this workshop is a must! See below for more info. 

As a reminder, the ongoing Kundalini Yoga class continues on Wednesdays at 7:30pm. Stop by and sample a class and enjoy this stimulating and transformative experience.

In a similar way, I also wish to encourage those who are looking to take their Yoga to a new level to consider sampling the 7:30pm classes Monday evenings in New Haven at Creative Body Therapies or Tuesday evenings at the Shoreline Center for Wholistic Health in Guilford. Building on the fundamentals of the basic and moderate classes, you can deepen the sense of Yoga as mediation in motion and familiarize yourself with higher practices of breathwork, mediation. Also you can enjoy advanced modifications of classical yoga poses that can help deepen and invigorate your personal practice.  As always, classes are tailored to your needs and ability level as you explore new “edges” of experience in Yoga. 

Yoga Therapy:

As the weather here in the northeast improves many of us will break out our tennis rackets, baseball bats, rakes and other “implements of destruction” as our weekend "warrioring" begins anew. Invariably with this phenomenon will follow the normal aches and pains that come as we increase the demands on our bodies. Even if we have exercised throughout the winter there is nothing like outdoor activity to help us find those muscle and body parts ”we forgot we had”. Less likely but more distressing are the incidents of sprains, broken bones and the nagging sense that maybe we shouldn’t do so much to avoid the wear and tear issues such as tendonitis, bursitis and arthritis.

It is important in support of our desires to live an active life that we not blame to the activity or those implements we use in them for any discomfort or injury that we may sustain. The effect of this is often to reject or reduce activity itself. This will over time take us down the path to further and further limitation, injury and more chronic pain and distress. We are living organisms and are built to thrive on the stimulus our activity provides. We use our muscles to build strength, we move to sustain joint flexibility, metabolic balance and sustain the health and resilience of our organs and systems. 

However, increasing demand on our bodies can and usually does flush out the vulnerable, more dysfunctional aspects of ourselves and in these cases the pain or injuries we receive have a lot to tell about the bodies we are bringing to these activities. Letting go of the offending activity, elaborate braces or “workarounds” to keep up, or reliance solely on pain killers to mange these issues can sometimes deal with the symptom but do nothing to resolve the cause. Pain is a message that something is wrong and should be heeded rather than ignored or masked.  Moreover, quite often the site of pain or stress is not the sole area that needs to be addressed to truly eliminate the pain or afford healing of an injury. In the issues involving the muscular skeletal system of the body, the message of our symptoms is usually that something isn’t working the way it should. Often the area of the symptom has broken down from long compensating for a core dysfunction located in a remote part of the body. A  common example is the incidence of low back pain that results from the low back supporting a head and shoulder that have positioned themselves forward of where they should be. The back muscles are not designed to bear the weight of the forward upper body and over time pain and breakdown of the low and mid back result. 

A body that is truly fit and functional is designed to perform as variety of functions across disciplines and thrive on the demands placed upon it. The muscles, bones and joints of the body have specific primary functions that enable us to live our lives as we are designed. Over time the residue of incomplete development, old injury and compensations, professional and personal lifestyles can ask us to use the body in stereotypic ways for which it was not designed. Even if nothing is done to restore proper function we can compensate to meet the demands of our lives for weeks, months or years without there seeming to be a problem. Our bearing can get further muddied as the individual “kinesthetic sense” that give us the inner feedback of  how things are supposed  to be in our bodies begins to contrast markedly from the “design sense” of just what actually should be happening. However, violating the basic design of our organism generally does catch up us. Often in retrospect, we can see the body has been communicating all along that something is wrong through all those nagging aches, pain and other conditions we attribute to aging, injury or accidents. Our ultimate responsibility therefore, is to interpret its messages as they unfold to fix the problem within the process of our lives. With the seeming complexity of this scenario and the fact that our society, from the medical establishment on down is looking elsewhere for solutions, just how to do this is the remaining dilemma. 

In our Yoga practice the poses themselves can give us a window into how our body is working. The invitation Yoga gives us to consciously attend to proper form in movement and posture turns up the feedback of inner experience and reconnects us to our present kinesthetic sense. When we release struggle, force and self rejection we can hear this message even more clearly before dire consequences are brought to bear.

We enter the intended pose and honor the “edge” of our poses in which we encounter our limits of movement and strength with compassion. Here we can come to learn the discrepancy between our individual and design kinesthetic sense; more and more we come to know in each moment how what we feel is in our bodies does or doesn’t corresponds to what is supposed to be happening. If we can avoid an overt or unconscious athletic approach to practice and override the pitfalls of pride or attempting to conform to a self generated image of what should be happening, our adjustments in our poses become more subtle, accurate, and intuitive. Our physical practice aligns itself with the higher Yogic aim of restoring ourselves to full function and well-being in body mind and spirit. From this deepening faculty all the other endeavors of life can be transformed into an extension of the idea of all of life as meditative(aware) process. 

Practice:

The following mediation is from the Kundalini Yoga tradition and according to Yoga supports the appreciation of the subtler aspects of life and enhances the intuitive sense. All this can deepen the experience of the physical practice of Yoga as described above and enhance the experiences of your life. 

***Sit in a cross legged position(easy pose), Your spine is straight and with the hands face up over the knees with the tip of the index finger touching the tip of the thumbs(Gian mudra).

***Allow your eyes to close and feel the delicate pulse sensed at the index finger and thumb.

***Your eyes are closed and your gaze is focused at the third eye point(Ajna Chakra), the space in the forehead between the eyes.

***With each pulse say the mantra “Sat Nam” inwardly. Sat Nam means “truth is my name” or “true identity”.

***Continue for 3 minutes or more. 

Workshops:

With Ravi Singh and Ana Brett
Sunday, April 10th, 1-4PM
At Raven’s Wing Yoga
869 West Main ST  
Branford, CT    
Fee: $50 pre-registered, $55.00  at the door.
Kundalini Yoga - A Journey Through the Chakras
Shine like the sun with Kundalini Yoga's powerful blend of breathing, stretching, movement, meditation, and more! Chakras represent the complete spectrum of the human experience. In this fascinating class you'll learn where your blocks are and how to dissolve them. We'll do exercises and meditations for each chakra to allow energy to flow freely in our lives and for a tangible experience of spirit. Knowledge of this model will enhance your yoga teaching or practice. Also included is deep relaxation to the transcendent sounds of live gong music.  Each of Ravi & Ana's classes is a unique event. This dynamic duo is Master Teachers who've been cited as a prime catalyst for yoga's current popularity.
This class, 80% physical and 20% meditative, is for all levels. Fees are $50 pre-registered $55.00 at the door.

Contact me at (203)488-1700 or Christina Sillari at (203)435-6110 for more information or to register. 

With Alan Franzi
At: The Shoreline Center for Wholistic Health,
35 Boston St. Guilford 
Saturday, April 23^rd,  2004,
1:00-3:30PM
$32.00incl. tax pre-registered; $37.00 incl. tax at the door, Space is limited
  (all levels of experience) 

“Posture, Pain and Performance:
Yoga, Meditation and the Egoscue Method of Postural Alignment for Healing and Pain Relief” 

Join all those who have taken time to introduce themselves to a practice that supports the endeavor to do all that can be done to live the best, most active life possible. Learn specific tests to discover just how and why posture mis-alignment is at the cause of so much muscular-skeletal pain and dysfunction.
Experience specific, positional movements, stretches, Yoga posture and other therapeutic exercises sequenced specifically according to the Egoscue approach.designed to restore postural alignment and function. As this happens we address and resolve the actual cause of acute and chronic pain, repetitive stress and cumulative trauma disorders and other dysfunctional conditions thereby enjoy the unique possibility of pain relief and enhanced life performance.  Practice breath-work and meditation as additional tools to help rediscover lost comfort and joy in your body.  
    This experience provides an extraordinary opportunity to explore principles and practices of a tried and true non-medical intervention to empower ourselves to restore the body to it’s design posture and function  and change your mind forever about what it means to grow older! 

Services

Private, semi private and small group Yoga Sessions, Meditation Instruction, Corporate Yoga Classes
And the Egoscue Method Postural Therapy for Chronic Pain Relief and Enhanced life performance. 

 Over the past several years I have worked with several students in private sessions in both brief and longer term scenarios.
The sessions have served different purposes for each individual  depending on specific needs and intentions. Students have utilized this time to: 

Sessions can be held in your home or at my teaching studio locations. For details and to answer questions about how you may benefit from one of these modalities please contact me at (203)488-1700.  

I appreciate any feedback and you may contact me with any suggestions you may have for future events.

Thank you once more for your support.
Sat Nam and Namaste,

Alan Franzi

Forward this to a friend.

For feedback, questions or to subscribe email me at ceyogaa@tt.net 

To opt out of future amiling please reply with unsubscribe in the subject line.

Creative Edge Yoga Home