Tag: Integral Yoga

Categories
Dance Environment New York City Travelling Trees Yoga

May Schedule; New Yoga Barre Class; Plastic Bags; Love Your Tree Day

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy May!  I am back from a fantastic vacation to Sedona. I highly recommend traveling to this beautiful area of our country for amazing hiking, sight-seeing (ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, an artsy old mining ghost town, new age stores and crystal shops), and delicious food (found the best vegan garden restaurant and chocolate bar for lunch, and an incredible gluten-free pizzeria).  If you go, email me for travel suggestions!

A few exciting announcements:

First, I have a new 3-week class at Integral Yoga Institute for the next 3 Monday nights: My “Yoga Barre” at 6:30- 8 pm combines yoga warm-ups, pilates, and ballet barre to strengthen and tone the body, and increase balance and coordination.  Come to any one or all three classes! Go to http://www.iyiny.org  to sign up!

__________________________________________________________________________________
Second, on May 22, please come join my West 80s Neighborhood Association, our elected officials and community board, environmental organizations, non-profits, students, businesses and city agencies, as we clean and green across the UWS. It will be a fun afternoon as we care for our important NYC street trees by adding mulch and compost, clean up litter, engage in a voluntary trash audit, and join with other New Yorkers who want to see our city be cleaner and greener.  Free goodie bags will be distributed with gardening tools, curb your dog signs, and other free items.  Compost and mulch will be provided in free take-home buckets, and coffee and snacks will be served.  We need volunteers to help that day, as well as volunteers to help market our Second Annual  “Love Your Street Tree Day”.  Please let me know if you are interested! To sign up for May 22, go tohttp://loveyourstreetday/eventbrite.com

___________________________________________________________________________________
Finally, the most recent The New Yorker magazine has a great article on the plastic bag issue, and I am quoted in the middle of the article as the author shadowed me and my neighborhood group as we trained with Bette Midler’s organization, NY Restoration Project, learning how to remove plastic bags from trees with a tool called a bag snagger.  The article is very thorough regarding plastic pollution issues, laws seeking to curtail plastic bag use, and obstacles to that environmental fight.  I do hope NYC’s carry-out bag law currently pending before the City Council gets signed by Mayor De Blasio this week.  The Speaker just endorsed it, and there are 26 co-sponsors now in the Council!   Please see http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/02/saving-america-from-plastic-bags

Categories
Yoga

March 2016 Schedule, and Core Yoga Workshop

I am back from a lovely week in Florida – soaking in the bright colors of the green palms, blue sky and waters, colorful flowers, and the shining sun was exactly what this warm-weather loving gal needed.  So I am feeling refreshed and energized, and happy to be back to my classes and to reconnect with all of you.

This month, I am offering a special 2-hour yoga and pilates workshop at Integral Yoga on Monday night, March 28th, 6:30-8:30 pm – “Strong to the Core”.  http://iyiny.org/workshops-and-events/calendar/strong-to-the-7035/

In this Workshop, you will learn safe and effective ways to strengthen the core, especially the hard-to-reach lower abdominals. Strong abs make balancing poses easier and are the key to preventing or eliminating back pain. You will learn abdominal exercises that are alternatives to traditional crunches, thereby preventing any neck or upper-back tension, or back strain.  Recent studies have shown that the safest and most effective abdominal exercises are those that work the deep stabilizing muscles (transverse abdominals) and not just the superficial ones.  We will learn those type of exercises, which, by the way, are also safe for people diagnosed with osteopororis. Working with the breath is another key to proper abdominal strengthening work, and we will explore different ways breathing practices in the movements.  The workshop also includes specific back-strengthening poses, standing balances, and a take-home outline.  Enhance your Yoga practice and your life with a strong center!  If you would like to read up on this topic, this is one of favorite articles:  http://www.alinenewton.com/pdf-articles/core.htm

Categories
Health Nature Self-care

September 2015; Benefits of Nature

I hope you had a wonderful Labor Day weekend!

I write this newsletter at the end of a wonderful 2-week vacation in the Berkshires mountains in Western Massachusetts. We were fortunate with the weather and I was able to walk/ jog almost every day outside surrounded by a forest of beautiful trees, listening to the sounds of nature – from the wind rustling the leaves to the hum of the Summer insects, and the bird calls. Nature is endlessly fascinating, and I often stop to view interesting sights along the road, such as turkey feathers, rock formations, berries, apples (growing in great abundance this year), dragonflies, butterflies, and other constantly changing beautiful images before my eyes. (Ironically, this year we saw our first Berkshire bald eagle – but it was diving for food along a busy road and not in the forest. But it was quite the sight, and we were awe-inspired by its’ wing-span and by the fact that we now know there are bald eagles up here, which is a great sign). Stretching on the deck after my wanderings while looking at the blue Summer sky and green trees was so relaxing and invigorating at the same time. A great setting to do deep yoga breathing!

Recently, more studies have come out about the benefits of being in Nature – such as the lowering of blood pressure and the stress hormone cortisol, reducing feelings of stress, hostility and depression, increasing circulation and improving sleep patterns. In fact, in Japan, walking in their many forests is prescribed by doctors and is called “Forest Bathing” or “Shinrin-Yoku”. There is a fairly recent book on this topic: “Your Brain on Nature – The Science of Nature’s Influence on Your Health, Happiness and Vitality” by Eva Selhub, MD and Alan Logan, ND – but most of us don’t need to read a whole book to know what feels intuitively beneficial to us.
So what to do if we are urban dwellers? Well, as often as I can, I make time in my commuting schedule to walk through Central Park on the bridal path, or end the day by getting into the park. We are lucky that we have a lot of NYC parks (even smaller ones are helpful, such as the charming park near Integral Yoga on Hudson and 13th Street). Spend some time each day disconnecting from technology, and bathing in Nature. Bring plants into your apartment, and meditate on their beauty and health benefits. Of course, if you can get into a local forest on the weekends, like in Harriman State Park, that is wonderful too! (There are trains from Penn Station that get to Tuxedo, NY in less than 1 hour.) Wherever is convenient, reap the benefits of walking in Nature, hugging a tree, doing legs up a tree, and combining your spiritual practices with the natural outdoors! I would like to be able to lead yoga and qigong retreats in natural settings in the near future, so stay tuned! I will set that intention, and hopefully it will manifest.

Sunset trees

Sunset Halo Through Forest by Melissa Elstein c 2015

Categories
Uncategorized

June 2014 – World’s Oldest Man

I am very intrigued by a news story last week regarding a NYC man designated by Guiness Book of World Records as the world’s oldest man – he is 111 years young (and yes, the oldest human is a Japanese woman).  Alexander Imich lives near me at the Esplanade on West End Avenue, and he is a professor of the occult, a WWII POW, and had a book published in his 90s!  He seems to embody the spirit, humor and curiosity of a yogi – even though I do not know if he did or does practice yoga.  In the online West Side Rag article, he is quoted:  ‘“How long can this go on?” he told the Times. “The compensation for dying is that I will learn all the things I was not able to learn here on Earth.”

His quote reminds me of the ancient Upanisad Sanskrit chant that we do at Integral Yoga at the end of each class:  “Lead me from Unreal to Real, Lead me from Darkness to the Light, Lead me from the fear of Death to Knowledge of Immortality.  Om, Shanti, shanti, shanti.”  It is a beautiful and powerful chant (and by the way, it was chanted at the end of the first Matrix movie), and at Integral we chant it in Sanskrit and English.  When I was at Rasa Yoga, we chanted it repetitively in Sanskrit during cobra pose.  It speaks to so many spiritual aspirations, but the most challenging one for most of us is the deep-rooted fear of death.  Even for those of us who believe in soul reincarnation, there is still likely a sense of unknowing and fear (either in our conscious or unconscious) regarding what happens to us (the spark that makes us unique individuals) when the body dies.  Maybe I am reading too much into his quote, but it does seem that this interesting man who has lived on this Earth for 111 years has summarized the sanskrit chant in his concise and unique way.

And on a lighter note, he seems to have the yogic understanding of balance:  “Eat sparingly, but enjoy chocolate ice cream.”

For the full TV interview and news report:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2621334/111-year-old-New-Yorker-Alexander-Imich-oldest-man-world-admits-no-idea-hes-alive.html

And West Side Rag article:

http://www.westsiderag.com/2014/05/21/upper-west-sider-certified-as-worlds-oldest-man