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Each week, the editors at Yoga Journal compile sometimes mind-bending, sometimes simple moments that are notable reminders to us all that yoga is, in fact, everywhere.
LISTEN
No one would guess that the final recording by one of the founding members of the Velvet Underground would be of ambient meditation music. But in 2007, musician and songwriter Lou Reed quietly released a collection of tracks designed to help silence his mind during yoga and meditation. The album, which remained largely unknown among fans, is being reissued on vinyl this Friday, January 12th. It’s available through Light In the Attic Records although you probably also want to learn more about how the album came to be.
LAUGH
“That’s my mom…I’m certain she says to say ‘hello’ to you…”
—a yoga teacher during a 6 am class when she forgot to silence the notifications on her phone
LEARN
“You cannot learn all of yoga.” That’s just one takeaway from episode #125 of the “Let’s Talk Yoga” podcast, in which host and teacher trainer Arundhati Baitmangalkar explores “10 Truths About Studying Yoga.” She speaks truth that everyone would benefit from hearing—and that many 200-hour yoga teacher trainings would do well to consider including.
FEEL
You know that feeling when you’ve been attempting a challenging, elusive, or seemingly unattainable pose and then you take a class with a random teacher who cues it in a way that you’d never heard before and it somehow elicits a knowing or understanding of how to hold yourself that changes your entire perception of the pose (and maybe of yourself)? Yeah. We spent the last six months researching exactly those kinds of creative, iconoclastic, informative cues for Crow Pose precisely so that more of us can experience that. Here are the 12 cues that we think might help you.
FOCUS
Before Monday night’s College Football Playoff National Championship, Michigan starting quarterback J.J. McCarthy sat quietly against the goal post. Photographers were flashing, folks were staring, yet he sat there, unbothered.
The 20-year-old junior typically meditates at home for 30 to 40 minutes on game days and then later has a “tune-up,” as he refers to it, while sitting cross-legged in the end zone with his shoes kicked off, focusing on his breath and listening to Bob Marley.
“I meditate before the game to really get my mind set into that calmness, that emptiness where I can allow things to happen and I can react from a higher perspective instead of reacting out of just straight impulse,” McCarthy explained in a recent University of Michigan football video.
