Tag Archives: meditation

Developing a Daily Meditation Practice

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“Over weeks and months of practice you will gradually learn to calm and center yourself using the breath. … listening deeply, you will find that mindfulness developed on the breath helps to connect with and quiet your whole body and mind.”

“After developing some calm and skills, and connecting with your breath, you can then extend awareness of all the foundations of mindfulness, fully opening to your body and mind. You will discover how awareness of your breath can serve as a steady basis for awareness in all you do.”

Read Jack Kornfield’s artivcle on how to make meditation and awareness into your daily routine.

Interview with Peggy Cappy

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Turning Point: Peggy Cappy

From Kripalu Online: http://www.kripalu.org/article/890/

Peggy Cappy, author of Yoga for All of Us, is known through her best-selling video series Yoga for the Rest of Us as seen on public television. Her DVDs include Back Care Basics and Heart Healthy Yoga. Peggy teaches yoga internationally and also teaches a gentle yoga class that has been ongoing for over 25 years, and includes many students in their 80s and 90s. www.peggycappy.com

Kripalu Online Describe what you do in 15 words or less.
Peggy I create “yoga for the rest of us” programs for PBS, inspiring and empowering others.

KOL Tell us about a turning point in your life.
Peggy I made a top-quality, gentle-yoga video of my ongoing yoga class of 25 years, which led to a yoga program that became an unprecedented success, first through WBGH in the Boston area, then nationally and internationally through exposure on hundreds of other PBS stations.

KOL What do you love about teaching?
Peggy I love knowing that I have made a tremendous difference to many in relieving pain and restriction, helping them to feel better, move better, and enjoy life more. In each class I teach, I am devoted to creating sacred space that demands focus and one-pointedness of mind, while fostering greater health and freedom in the body.

KOL What are you passionate about right now?
Peggy Meditation. Although I have practiced meditation over the past 40 years, it is especially fruitful and fulfilling at the moment. I am amazed that it can be both familiar and new.

KOL What do you do in your downtime?
Peggy I love to spend time in nature, whatever the season. I treasure connecting deeply with friends and family, whether through traveling, art activities, or simply sharing a good meal together. I love doing what makes me laugh.

This interview appeared in Kripalu Onlines: http://www.kripalu.org/article/890/

Tips for Preventing Yoga Injuries

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I found this discussion on Yoga Alliance’s LinkedIn group. It draws on one of my favorite Sutras—one I use regularly when starting to teach a new class.

Stephen Parker • The most important point about prevention of injury is that you never push your capacity. In Yoga Sutras II.46 & 47 Patanjali describes asana as “steady and comfortable” and that comfort is achieved through prayatna-shaithilya, “relaxation of effort” and anantya-samapatti, “coalescence with infinitude,” a phrase implying entry into samadhi. (Samapatti is essentially synonymous with samadhi in the Samadhi-pada.) By practicing in a meditative and contemplative way, always remaining two steps short of your capacity, you never have to push your body; it’s capacity will naturally expand before your efforts without pushing. Needless to say, this model doesn’t well fit a class where one is trying to get through 15 postures in 60 minutes. Two postures is more like it.

In the early 1970’s my master, Swami Rama, said, “American yoga is all ha- yoga (energetic solar force). There is no -tha (contemplative lunar force)!” He made it his mission to try to put the -tha back in hatha, but, unfortunately, American hatha-yoga practice has continued to move in the other direction, away from meditative depth.