This week's Poised for Possibility is Lotus pose.
In Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® we often discuss and explore how challenges can be our best lessons.
When have you learned from a difficult experience? Do you experience life as glass half-empty or half-full?
For me, Lotus pose is a lot like life. Like the real lotus flower growing up from the murky mud and blossoming into full beauty, we, too, can be working through our challenges to transform them into positive experiences.
Loto y Loto Flotantes/Padmasana with variation/Lotus with Floating Lotus
In Vishnu's OHMazing™ Journeys this pose is used to help us experience the arrival of the heroine Lakshmi. Cultural narratives reveal that Lakshmi was Vishnu's beloved. The story of Lakshmi and Vishnu is fantastic! We hope you you enjoy our variation on both of our DVDs, The Story of Ganesha (as seen here) and Vishnu's OHMazing Journeys! BUY DVDs HERE
For more information on Yoginos in Your Home including instructions:
http://www.yoginos.com/programs/yoginos-in-your-home
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
My OHMazing™ Journey: Meredith Paterson
by Meredith Paterson
On Tuesdays throughout the fall, we will be blogging about our journeys in celebration of the release of our new DVD Vishnu's Ohmazing™ Journeys, created in partnership with Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® and the Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas.
Share your thoughts on your own journey in the comments below and you will be entered to win one of the new DVDs. We will choose one person at random each week.
*****
When Beth first asked me to write about my journey, I panicked more than a little. Journeys are slippery things, and I don't quite feel like I have my head wrapped around what my own journey means. But I guess that is kind of the point. We keep on moving.
Right now, the word that most resonates
with me in respect to my journey is flow. I can be a word hater
sometimes, and flow is not my favorite-sounding word. I had trouble even
writing it. Flow is hard for me. I like to resist and analyze and edit
and squirm. But life is funny. Resistance is futile.
On my journey right now, I am learning to be more fluid. Fluidity, that sounds better. I am learning to be like water. And learning is the operative word here because still I resist like crazy.
I started my journey with yoga about 11 years ago. I was in grad school, struggling through a break-up, and like many people who walk into a yoga studio for the first time, in pain. Yoga became home for me, a time to move and sweat and get out of my brain. And the good news is that it never ends there. I have learned over and over again that yoga meets you where you are, embraces you, and before you're aware of it consciously, asks more of you.
Fast forward several years and I started wanting more than to sweat and get out of my brain. I wanted to get back into my brain and understand how yoga was working. I started yoga to disconnect from myself in some ways, and yoga taught me that what I really needed was to reconnect. The deeper I dove in, the more I realized just how powerful these practices can be. So powerful that it's often easier to shy away from them than to really feel them.
I was working in education at the time. I had always been deeply fascinated by brain development and learning, and my career was focused on helping struggling readers. As I experienced yoga, though, I began to understand in my body what we now know through research. Learning is a full-body experience. We do not learn very well when we're locked in chairs and lectured at, and unfortunately, our educational system (the system not teachers) willfully denies what science and our own experiences confirm.
It became clearer and clearer to me that my
path was to help children integrate movement, breath, mindfulness, and
connection with their bodies into their daily lives. Just as this
dawned on me, I met Beth Reese, founder of Yogiños: Yoga for Youth®.
Here was my calling, my dharma, a yoga program for children and families
that incorporated language-learning (classes are taught in English,
Spanish, and Sanskrit), art, music, social skills, environmental
responsibility, and more into each class. She has created a brilliant
program that helps children connect. To themselves, to others, to their
planet. Through Yogiños, children learn how to learn.
I have met so many incredible, talented people through Yogiños. Each training that we do fills me up with excitement and hope for the future because all of the participants care so deeply about the health and well-being of our children. My heart swells with gratitude and love as I hear about how each teacher helps the children and families in their communities. To me, this is what it feels like to be tuned in to the flow.
I'll finish with this, the thing that makes
every struggle, every fumble worthwhile. Wisdom from my 4-year-old
niece, a dedicated yogi who is always game to create new yoga poses with
me and help me refine my skills.
[On the playground last week]
Sara (my niece): Aunt Mere, we have to jump and move like this.
Aunt Mere: Why, Sara?
Sara: Because it makes our brains grow.
I
dedicate this to my husband, Steve. There aren't enough words to
express how supportive he has been as I move down this path. He understands intuitively what it means to flow with life, and I learn from him every day. He reminds me to
laugh and move and dance and not take it all so seriously. Love.
Meredith Blanks Paterson is the Director of Yoga Trainings for Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® as well as the Director of Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® Austin.
On Tuesdays throughout the fall, we will be blogging about our journeys in celebration of the release of our new DVD Vishnu's Ohmazing™ Journeys, created in partnership with Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® and the Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas.
Share your thoughts on your own journey in the comments below and you will be entered to win one of the new DVDs. We will choose one person at random each week.
*****
When Beth first asked me to write about my journey, I panicked more than a little. Journeys are slippery things, and I don't quite feel like I have my head wrapped around what my own journey means. But I guess that is kind of the point. We keep on moving.
 |
| My sister, Jennifer Seibel, Sara (my niece), and me doing yoga at the Crow Collection of Asian Art |
On my journey right now, I am learning to be more fluid. Fluidity, that sounds better. I am learning to be like water. And learning is the operative word here because still I resist like crazy.
I started my journey with yoga about 11 years ago. I was in grad school, struggling through a break-up, and like many people who walk into a yoga studio for the first time, in pain. Yoga became home for me, a time to move and sweat and get out of my brain. And the good news is that it never ends there. I have learned over and over again that yoga meets you where you are, embraces you, and before you're aware of it consciously, asks more of you.
Fast forward several years and I started wanting more than to sweat and get out of my brain. I wanted to get back into my brain and understand how yoga was working. I started yoga to disconnect from myself in some ways, and yoga taught me that what I really needed was to reconnect. The deeper I dove in, the more I realized just how powerful these practices can be. So powerful that it's often easier to shy away from them than to really feel them.
I was working in education at the time. I had always been deeply fascinated by brain development and learning, and my career was focused on helping struggling readers. As I experienced yoga, though, I began to understand in my body what we now know through research. Learning is a full-body experience. We do not learn very well when we're locked in chairs and lectured at, and unfortunately, our educational system (the system not teachers) willfully denies what science and our own experiences confirm.
 |
| Beth and Meredith at a training in Park City, UT |
I have met so many incredible, talented people through Yogiños. Each training that we do fills me up with excitement and hope for the future because all of the participants care so deeply about the health and well-being of our children. My heart swells with gratitude and love as I hear about how each teacher helps the children and families in their communities. To me, this is what it feels like to be tuned in to the flow.
 |
| with Sara at the Dallas Aquarium |
[On the playground last week]
Sara (my niece): Aunt Mere, we have to jump and move like this.
Aunt Mere: Why, Sara?
Sara: Because it makes our brains grow.
I
dedicate this to my husband, Steve. There aren't enough words to
express how supportive he has been as I move down this path. He understands intuitively what it means to flow with life, and I learn from him every day. He reminds me to
laugh and move and dance and not take it all so seriously. Love.Meredith Blanks Paterson is the Director of Yoga Trainings for Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® as well as the Director of Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® Austin.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Creating Connections: Divine Feminine Yoga Telesummit
by Meredith Paterson
In our Monday posts, we'll be letting you know about people and organizations who are spreading yoga and healing around our world. Follow these OHMazing™leaders, share them with your friends, and help them continue to make the world a healthy, thriving place for our future generations.
Today, I want to tell you about a FREE teleconference that is happening all this week. It is called the Divine Feminine Yoga Telesummit, and it is sponsored by Barefoot Yoga (a wonderful environmentally-friendly yoga products retailer). You can join at any point this week and call in via phone or Skype. If you can't make the calls, they will send out recordings after the fact.
Each day this week brings another incredible speaker. When you go to the website, scroll down to learn more about each speaker. Saraswati and Kate Clere McIntyre will speak on Tuesday, September 13 about their new film Yogawoman. Patricia Walden will speak on Thursday, September 15 about "Yoga for All Ages and Stages of a Woman's Life." Shiva Rea will speak on Friday, September 16 about Yoga Energy Activism (YEA), a great concept for reducing our energy use and simultaneously recharging ourselves in accordance with the rhythms of nature. And many more.
To access the free calls, sign up via their website.
Comment below to let us know if you participate in the calls and what you learn!
In our Monday posts, we'll be letting you know about people and organizations who are spreading yoga and healing around our world. Follow these OHMazing™leaders, share them with your friends, and help them continue to make the world a healthy, thriving place for our future generations.
Today, I want to tell you about a FREE teleconference that is happening all this week. It is called the Divine Feminine Yoga Telesummit, and it is sponsored by Barefoot Yoga (a wonderful environmentally-friendly yoga products retailer). You can join at any point this week and call in via phone or Skype. If you can't make the calls, they will send out recordings after the fact.
Each day this week brings another incredible speaker. When you go to the website, scroll down to learn more about each speaker. Saraswati and Kate Clere McIntyre will speak on Tuesday, September 13 about their new film Yogawoman. Patricia Walden will speak on Thursday, September 15 about "Yoga for All Ages and Stages of a Woman's Life." Shiva Rea will speak on Friday, September 16 about Yoga Energy Activism (YEA), a great concept for reducing our energy use and simultaneously recharging ourselves in accordance with the rhythms of nature. And many more.
To access the free calls, sign up via their website.
Comment below to let us know if you participate in the calls and what you learn!
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Hero at Home: Big Wheels Keep on Turning
I admit it. It was difficult if not daunting to sit down and write about being a Hero at Home, our Sunday Blog theme, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. And then I realized that what makes a hero a truly extraordinary person is not because they do one special act in their lives—though those are important—but because real heroes make compassionate, helpful choices a way of life everyday.
 |
| Vishnu,
Cambodia, Khmer culture
, Sandstone
, 1999.30 Crow Collection of Asian Art |
In Yogiños: Yoga for Youth®, we refer to making good choices everyday as being OHMazing™. We encourage kids to stand tall and proud and say, I am OHMazing™, and Somos OHMazing™which means "we are OHMazing™" in Spanish.
Starting today and continuing for 6 additional Sundays, I would like to reflect on the internal wheels in our bodies, also known as chakras. Here I would like to start a conversation with you about how we can activate these centers to make heroic—or OHMazing™—choices. These ideas are appropriate for heroes of all ages.
There are seven main chakras:
- Muladhara, Base or Root Chakra (perenium/ovaries/prostate)
- Swadhisthana, Sacral Chakra (last bone in spinal cord, the coccyx)
- Manipura, Solar Plexus Chakra (navel area)
- Anahata, Heart Chakra (heart area)
- Vishuddha, Throat Chakra (throat and neck area)
- Ajna, Brow or Third Eye Chakra (pineal gland or third eye)
- Sahasrara, Crown Chakra (top of head/soft spot on newborn)
- wborn)
Muladhara/The Base Chakra: This first chakra is located at our perenium or seat. It is represented by the color red governs our ability to be truly grounded, sense of survival, and flight-or-fight response.
Cultivating these feelings of groundedness can be acheived many ways, including via mindful breathing and healthy posture.
Flower Power: Making good choices often requires a moment to pause and decide how to handle a situation. Using our base chakra to be a hero often means balancing our sympathetic and parasympathetic systems through our breath, prana, or life-force.
Flower Power breath is one of our most powerful tools:
Root to Rise: whether sitting or standing, exhale and extend your base chakra or tail bone toward the earth to "root." On your next inhalation, extend the crown of your head toward the sky to "rise."
There are many elements of yoga, and I mean the 8 Limbs of yoga, that invite us to nurture this grounding, first chakra. Share your practice below!
by Elizabeth Reese, Ph.D., with assistance by Jordan Barger
Elizabeth Reese, Ph.D., RYT, RCYT, is the founder and executive director of Yogiños: Yoga for Youth®. She is a teacher with over 20 years of experiences leading learners of all ages in creative problem solving, self-reflection and empowerment.
Cultivating these feelings of groundedness can be acheived many ways, including via mindful breathing and healthy posture.
 |
| The first, or root, chakra is represented as a yellow square, with 4 red petals. |
Flower Power breath is one of our most powerful tools:
- pretend to pick a flower
- bring imaginary flower to your nose
- inhale deeply and feed your sympathetic—active—nervous system
- exhale slowly and engage your parasympathetic—calming—nervous system allowing your imaginary flower to open
 |
| During a recent Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® Instructor training in Crested Butte, Co, we practiced engaging our Muladhara Chakra off the mat. |
There are many elements of yoga, and I mean the 8 Limbs of yoga, that invite us to nurture this grounding, first chakra. Share your practice below!
by Elizabeth Reese, Ph.D., with assistance by Jordan Barger
Elizabeth Reese, Ph.D., RYT, RCYT, is the founder and executive director of Yogiños: Yoga for Youth®. She is a teacher with over 20 years of experiences leading learners of all ages in creative problem solving, self-reflection and empowerment.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Together at the Table: The Slow Food $5 Challenge
by Meredith Paterson
We are blogging this fall about our OHMazing™ journeys, and one of my journeys through the past few years (and even months) has been with food. Today, I want to tell you about a great event that is coming up next weekend to help us all make OHMazing™ choices about what we eat.
When I first heard about the Slow Food movement a few years ago, my first thought was that it was about using a crock pot, or a movement for people who love long-simmered stews. (I'm in!) I was all wrong, of course. Slow Food is intended to be an antidote for Fast Food. It is a movement about healthy local, sustainable food.
Some people actively want to become part of the local, sustainable food movement, but they worry that eating in this way will be too expensive, more expensive than their current budgets allow. To help allay that fear, Slow Food USA™ has created an event called the $5 Challenge. It will take place on Saturday, September 17. The idea is for people to eat together to show that we can eat in a healthy, sustainable way for less than what it costs to buy a fast food meal.
I first learned about this challenge through a podcast interview with Slow Food founder Josh Viertel on Edible Radio (highly recommended podcasts).
I'm so excited to take part in the challenge! Right now, I'm trying to decide what to cook!
Click here to find a Slow Food $5 Challenge meal in your area or to start one up. They have lots of resources for recipes and other information about how to get involved here. Here are a few links I have enjoyed.
Tips on how to cook for $5 and under
Cheap Recipes for Slow Food USA’s $5 Challenge: Slow Food for the Price of Fast Food
Have a great under-$5-per-person recipe to share? Post it below. If you take part in the challenge, let us know about your experience.
Meredith Blanks Paterson is the Director of Yoga Trainings for Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® as well as the Director of Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® Austin.
We are blogging this fall about our OHMazing™ journeys, and one of my journeys through the past few years (and even months) has been with food. Today, I want to tell you about a great event that is coming up next weekend to help us all make OHMazing™ choices about what we eat.
When I first heard about the Slow Food movement a few years ago, my first thought was that it was about using a crock pot, or a movement for people who love long-simmered stews. (I'm in!) I was all wrong, of course. Slow Food is intended to be an antidote for Fast Food. It is a movement about healthy local, sustainable food.
Some people actively want to become part of the local, sustainable food movement, but they worry that eating in this way will be too expensive, more expensive than their current budgets allow. To help allay that fear, Slow Food USA™ has created an event called the $5 Challenge. It will take place on Saturday, September 17. The idea is for people to eat together to show that we can eat in a healthy, sustainable way for less than what it costs to buy a fast food meal.
I first learned about this challenge through a podcast interview with Slow Food founder Josh Viertel on Edible Radio (highly recommended podcasts).
I'm so excited to take part in the challenge! Right now, I'm trying to decide what to cook!
Click here to find a Slow Food $5 Challenge meal in your area or to start one up. They have lots of resources for recipes and other information about how to get involved here. Here are a few links I have enjoyed.
Tips on how to cook for $5 and under
Cheap Recipes for Slow Food USA’s $5 Challenge: Slow Food for the Price of Fast Food
Have a great under-$5-per-person recipe to share? Post it below. If you take part in the challenge, let us know about your experience.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Everyone's Earth: Make OHMazing™ Choices
 |
It is lovely indeed, it is lovely indeed.
I, I am the spirit within the earth...
The feet of the earth are my feet...
The legs of the earth are my legs...
The bodily strength of the earth is my strength...
The thoughts of the earth are my thoughts...
The voice of the is my voice...
The feather of the earth is my feather...
All that belongs to the earth belongs to me...
All that surrounds the earth surrounds me...
I, I am the sacred words of the earth...
It is lovely indeed, it is lovely indeed.
~ Navajo song
In Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® classes, we talk a lot about what it means to be OHMazing™ and to make OHMazing™ choices.
 |
| Eating healthy foods enables us to practice Yamas and Niyamas. |
Together, the words OHM and amazing celebrate our interconnectedness. To make an OHMazing™ choice is to make the choice that best supports and uplifts oneself, others, and the environment.
Here is one of my favorite ways to discuss with youth—as young as age 3—about how our choices impact the earth.
- Show an orange soda, carton of orange juice, an orange.
- Ask "Which one is the most OHMazing™ choice?"
- Because the orange is closest to the earth—made by the earth 100%, and 100% of it can be comsumed by humans and the earth (composting)—it is the most OHMazing™ choice.
- Depending on the age of your participants, conversations can explore the materials and energy it takes to make and recycle the packaging for the juice.
- Here I often introduce that eating closer to earth—foods that come directly from earth—is also an OHMazing™ choice.
 |
| Dylan enjoys eating foods found closer to the earth. |
How do you select foods and other items that are mindful of our earth? What can you and your family do this weekend to celebrate and take care of the earth?
Let's take time this weekend to touch the earth, toco la tierra!
by Elizabeth Reese, Ph.D.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Daily Dose of Wellness: CEOs Do Yoga, too
Yoga, Yoga, Yoga…
And no wonder; that magic was Yoga and her company, Yogiños: Yoga for Youth®. As I got more interested, I started to read more about Yoga, wellness, health and all the subjects that will help me to make OHMazing™ decisions.
I read an article on Forbes and I felt the need to share it with you, my Life-Lovers friends.
I hope you enjoy it.
Yoga Made Me A Better CEO by Stanton Kawer
I never imagined I'd be writing an article about how yoga makes me a more effective CEO. I don't even know if I'm more of an authority as a CEO or as a yoga student. I do help run a successful organization, and I drive to and from work with a yoga mat and towel in my car (though it's not the "green" vehicle you might expect of a yoga student). And I now wear fewer ties and more bracelets when conducting meetings than I would have ever thought (not as midlife crisis or new age attire, but just for fun and self-expression). For kicks I have started off meetings asking employees to take a deep breath and to "live in the moment." But I promise I am not some counterculture contortionist opposed to standard business practice. Quite the contrary. I love business. I am passionate about growing companies. Still, I can share that since I started practicing more than two years ago, yoga has profoundly influenced my life in every aspect. It has redefined my sense of self. I have changed as a husband, father, friend and leader.
I proudly serve as the CEO of Blue Chip Marketing Worldwide. Even before I started practicing yoga Blue Chip made a clearly articulated pledge to all of our stakeholders. We call it "The Promise of Uniting." It embodies a philosophy that none of us alone is as good as all of us together. It recognizes that a culture that unites the best of heart and mind will achieve remarkable results. Little did I know that many consider the definition of yoga to come from the Sanskrit root "yuj," meaning to unite, or the practice of uniting body, mind and spirit. At Blue Chip we have always communicated that we have a social contract. We expect all of our talented professionals to deliver at the highest intellectual level (mind), and in turn we offer a nurturing environment (body) that respects them as human beings and professionals (spirit). We were yoga, and we didn't even know it. The result has been nothing short of remarkable. Like a yoga studio, we have built an organizational culture that encourages employees to contribute and astound without fear of judgment or failure. Ultimately yoga has encouraged me to build a corporate environment that is less constricting and more community.
On a personal level yoga has been instructive in helping me redefine my expectations for achievement. Perhaps the most salient lesson I've learned is that there are no scorecards to define success. In the yoga studio there are no winners or losers. No umpires. No victory measured against the loss of another. In yoga success emanates from within and is defined by self-mastery.
As a CEO I have learned the same goes for effective leadership. We all have quantifiable scorecards in business. We look at our numbers every day. Revenue, stock prices and market share all provide indicators of the success of our organizations. But as CEOs, we have other attributes that gauge our success as leaders, including establishing vision, creating an affirmative corporate culture, demonstrating emotional intelligence, displaying the courage of our convictions, assessing risk and offering buoyancy of spirit.
Damla Eytemiz is from Turkey and she is trilingual in Turkish, English and German. She started Yoga in 2010, and she has been doing Pilates since 2007. She loves sports and thinks kids should put “Yoga” in their lives so that they can readily work through life’s challenges and be happier kids. Damla completed her training with Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® in Fall 2010 and joined the Kula in August as Director of Marketing & Sales and Manager of Programs in Corpus Christi. Feel free to contact Damla at yoginosmarketing@gmail.com
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