September 18 - 25, 2011 Estes Park, CO Early Bird Ends Tomorrow, Aug 17! Yoga Journal is heading to Estes Park, Colorado for the 16th time to produce the Yoga Journal Conference: Colorado, Sept 18-25! Create an inspiring conference for yourself: discover the lightness of being with Desiree Rumbaugh, learn how to unplug, tune in, and regenerate with Shiva Rea, and flow within the five elements with Janet Stone, all in the same weekend. This conference features a 3-Day Baptiste Power Flow Immersion, 35+ master teachers, 100+ classes, and special events including a Saturday night kirtan concert with Snatam Kaur and GuruGanehsa Singh, a free aromatherapy and yoga workshop, and the LUNAFEST film festival. Whether you're coming up to the mountains for a class, a day, a weekend, or the whole week, you will feel the balanced beauty of the great outdoors and yoga. Speaker Spotlight: Tias Little, Director of Prajna Yoga Tias Little will instruct four classes during the Yoga Journal Conference: Colorado and will present a free Dharma Talk Friday, Sept 23, 2:00pm-3:00pm. 
Tias Little began studying yoga in 1985. Four years later, he traveled to Mysore, India to study Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga with K. Pattabhi Jois. Today, Little, the founder of Prajna Yoga in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is considered a teacher's teacher, whose unique teaching style combines anatomy, cranial sacral work, Rolfing, and Zen and Vipassana meditation. Little will be teaching at the upcoming Yoga Journal Colorado Conference, as well as delivering a dharma talk, "Yoga and the Quest for the Im/Perfect Pose".
DM: I often see a whole lot of striving in yoga class. Why did you choose to give your talk on the im/perfect pose? TL: So many yoga practitioners are driven by the demon of perfection. We may continue to refine our poses, but mustn't confuse refinement with perfection. Refinement is the continued process of discovery, with no specific end point. There's no such thing as the perfect pose. A pose is never over, never done. And therein lies the true meaning of practice -- to be at ease with the fact that a pose never arrives and it never ends, not until our last breath. In Zen training, we study the image of an incomplete circle. The Zen Circle [called Enzo] suggests completeness, but this circle isn't closed, it isn't finished. In other words, it isn't perfect. It's imperfect, yet still beautiful at the same time. This is yoga. You can do your practice, it can be imperfect, but still you stay connected with yourself, your mat, with the truth of how things are. When you can relinquish that urgency to get it right, that's when your yoga can give you a sense of peace in your practice, in your body, and in your life. DM: You are teaching a class on Savasana at the conference. Savasana is usually tacked on at the end of class and done for just a few minutes. Why did you choose to devote a whole class on this pose? TL: I'm fascinated by the art of letting go, of dropping in, and dropping down -- whether it's letting go of the weight of the body, or the weight of the ego. If we can do that, we can live our lives with greater ease. The class will be on the art of dropping and as segue to yoga nidra, the deep rest that is celebrated in the yoga tradition. This deep rest is healing and necessary. We're a restless culture. We're always on to the next thing. We're always lifting up and putting out rather than dropping down and going in. But we have to drop down, to rest, in order to regenerate and heal. This is why we study Savasana. DM: You're teaching a class on the anatomy of breathing. You mentioned that for many of us, our breathing is out of sync with our bodies' natural rhythms. Why is that? TL: Many people's abdomens are tight, so they hold their breath. In this class, I am going to teach how breathing works. We will explore the structure and movement of the diaphragm, and the mechanics of breathing. We will do direct palpations to get back in touch with our diaphragm and our natural rhythms. DM: You're also teaching a class on bringing Mountain Pose into all your poses. Tadasana is one of the first poses you learn in yoga. Why did you choose this particular pose? TL: Tadasana is a blueprint for so many poses, and requires an openness of the feet, the support of the ankles, and correct position of the tailbone. There is an inner alignment we establish in Tadasana that we carry through the rest of our poses - an alignment that follows the natural curvature of the spine, and the balance of the femurs relative to the pelvic floor. There's something profound about standing upright, centered, and harmonious on your mat. Standing is such a basic position that we often bypass the importance of it. When standing, we must embody grace, efficiency, strength and ease. Learning how to stand in the very marrow of our bones makes us extremely efficient with our energy, which is an excellent tool to bring to a yoga practice. DM: How does your meditation practice affect your yoga practice? TL: A sitting practice is less busy. There's less need to refine the form. So in meditation, there is more time to cultivate the nuance of sensation, thought and perception, and one can rest at the most subtle edge of one's experience. Asanas are vehicles to help cultivate meditative awareness, yet meditation allows us to be where we are - more open, less critical, and with less of an agenda to have to change our experience and try to make it better. So meditation helps cultivate openness, called "radical openness" in Zen. I try to bring this wide-open field of awareness to all my yoga poses. DM: How has becoming a father affected your yoga teaching? TL: It's made me more humble. It makes me realize that life is changing and that it's passing. This helps me develop a deeper heartfelt appreciation for what we have right here, right now, in this very moment. Interview by Dayna Macy, Yoga Journal's communications director and managing editor of international editions. Dayna is the author of the recently published Ravenous: A Food Lover's Journey from Obsession to Freedom. www.daynamacy.com Yoga Journal Conference: Midwest In case you missed them last month, check out the Midwest videos hosted by Kasey Luber.
Don't forget to take a look at the Midwest 2011 Photo Gallery and Audio. Stay Tuned - Our 9th Annual San Francisco Conference Registration Opens at the End of August!
January 12-16, 2012 - Hyatt Regency This year's San Francisco conference has so much to offer: kirtan with Krishna Das, a community yoga and hooping event, hiking yoga, yoga groove and a keynote with Rodney Yee. Be sure to take advantage of our three tiered pricing system. Mark your calendars--first early bird deadline is October 21st! |
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