Tag: Original Hot Yoga

Do You Have a Place Where You Can Go?

Healing, Mental Benefits, Philosophy, Poetry

Do you have a place where you can go?

A place within yourself
Or a place with humans
A place with a loved one
A place with friends

A place where you can just fall apart

A place where you can feel every feeling

A place where each and every one
Can just be
Can unfold
Can flow through the body
So the mind can catch up

Without reaction
Without explosion
Without the pressure to
Shut it down, or
Dismiss its importance

This place is not only a place
It requires a being

A loving witness

A friend who sees you

A love who can hold you
Through it

A parent who is
Strong enough
To let it unfold

Or an inner being, mine or your own

Strong enough
To trust

The wisdom of the body, mine and yours
The intelligence of our emotions

Rooted in place
Witnessed
Loved
Within

Bikram Yoga: What Happens If You DON’T Practice

Current Research, Ethnography and Culture, Healing, Health, Mental Benefits, Philosophy, Physical Benefits, Practice, Student Highlights, True Stories
What Happens When You DON'T Do Bikram Yoga

by Ann Chrapkiewicz

For almost 20 years now, I have been sharing a certain topic with anyone and everyone who might want to listen.

Just a few minutes on this website will tell you what that topic has been.
An hour spent with our book on Bikram Yoga and Autoimmune Disease will also give you a clue.

Any guesses?

Answer: “What happens to humans when they do Bikram Yoga.”

Yep, that’s it. 

No, YOU! YOU are ready for yoga!

Mental Benefits, Philosophy, Practice, Teaching and Coaching, True Stories
all ages full locust bikram yoga
by Ann Chrapkiewicz

Are you ready for yoga?

As inclusive as North American yoga wants to be, yoga in its deeper dimensions demands certain qualities.

Are you ready for yoga?

Well, I have a yoga mat and I hydrated well.  So yes, I think so.

But the question again: are you ready for yoga?

The yoga clothing companies would like you to think you are.  

Blessings in the Form of a Broken Back, part 2

Healing, Practice, True Stories

by Ann Chrapkiewicz

. . . . . . . . . . . .

I have learned a dozen lessons and received a thousand blessings from my back injury on March 17, 2004.

But before getting to those, let me finish telling you about that day.  If you missed the first part of the story, you might want to read that first.

Maybe you should get an X-Ray.

When is this going to be easy?

Philosophy, Practice
by Ann Chrapkiewicz

In my 14th year of practice in this amazing yoga lineage, I continue to love and appreciate the steadiness and auditory meditation that comes from the near-constant instruction from the teacher.  I enjoy the rhythm of the “dialogue” – which truly is a two-way exchange of information between student and teacher! – and its phrases, or the flow of an expert teacher using his or her own tremendous experience and unique instructions to guide us.  

26 Impossible Things Before Lunch

Philosophy, Practice
Alice and the White Queen Impossible Things
by Ann Chrapkiewicz

The weekday morning classes here are indescribably special.  I love every single class I teach and practice – evenings and weekends included – but the 9:30 am classes have this special energy that dedicated, regular, curious students create.  The average age is probably 55, with many of my 70+ students attending regularly at that time.

9:30 am Class Bow Pose

This past Tuesday’s “warm” 9:30 class – practiced about 10 degrees cooler than the usual 105F – was an all-front-row class with the kind of calm, deep focus that leaves you floating the rest of the day.