Welcome to the Yogalosophy homepage, where you can follow the intention of the month.

What is Yogalosophy (View Video):

I have found that changing my attitude affects my emotions, and my body changes accordingly. Sometimes I am motivated by nurture, sometimes by intensity. My motivational hybrid technique revolves around cycles of change. Yogalosophy can help you use the natural flow to recreate your body through intentions, emotions, and other motivational triggers.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010

UNITY IN DIVERSITY

“Think Different.”

This month's themes (click below):

• Be Yourself
• Surprises! Expect the Unexpected
• Community vs. Individuality
• Humanitarianism
• Seeing Your Future

Be Yourself

My journey in finding my individuality started at a very early age. I have never been in sync with the way society says we are supposed to do things. I went to a mobile school for experiential learning. And yoga in the 70s - it just wasn't cool back then. It was weird. I was raised to question authority and think different. Now that authority has come into it’s own and yoga IS the mainstream! Talk about everything being inverted! 

Often, what begins as unpopular becomes a trend. When I was a child, dad brought yoga into our home (click here for Family Slideshow) and turned our household upside down. Literally. Dad had no shame, if he felt he needed to do a headstand in a restaurant, or a handstand at the gas station, he did it. Dad was big on the inversions. Any thing upside down.

When I feel blocked, sometimes I just need to take a different approach. If I keep doing something the same way over and over again, nothing is going to change. I remember when I became an instructor and  would share personal stuff about my family, talk about sexual energy, and discuss radical ideas, including astrology. It felt SCARY!  But it was the only way I knew how to be...  I was not a  super hero icon fitness guru. Nor was I an uber-spiritual, exclusive, devotional  yogi, so... I just decided to risk being myself. Imperfect. Radical. Irreverent. And, oh my great joy is witnessing you being yourself among the collective.

EXPERIMENT:  Try inventing your own yoga routine. Take the poses you have learned and make it up. After all, that's how YOGALOSOPHY came about. Using the traditional yoga pose, and adding a toning exercise came from invention.

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Surprises! Expect the Unexpected

TRY A GROUP CLASS. You know that class in your community? It's time to take the risk and be among others who are taking care of themselves just the way you want to take care of your self. You are ready. You can be exactly you. Notice how that group inspires you. You may be inspiring the person right beside you, just by showing up.

GO UPSIDE-DOWN. They say reversing the blood flow is the fountain of youth. Inversions include: head stand, handstand, shoulder stand, wide legged forward bends/down dog, forward bend. I do not do inversions with my clients due to my personal sensitivity to the compression of the neck, spine. However, that does not mean you should not try it. Teachers have their limitations too, and you should never let the limitations of a teacher stop you. Here is my friend, Jenni, inverting.

DO IT DIFFERENTLY. Take an alternate route to work. Try a different market, or a new spot for lunch. Routine can put us in habitual patterns which make us go on automatic pilot, and we miss the moment.

OBSERVE YOUR OWN PRACTICE. It is now a proven theory that the observer of an experiment actually changes the outcome of the experiment. Imagine that you are a scientist performing an experiment. Once you begin to watch yourself exercising, it effects the  result. I find that my results are more potent when I stay present. Is it my mind changing my body or my body changing my mind? What the bleep? Thats right.

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Community vs. Individuality

There is power in the group. It's the collective that creates the trends of society as well as the revolutions. We invent our world together, co-creating and sharing ideas and energies. It is undeniable that even within a group, each of us is a unique individual that adds their own personal energy, and has a perspective that nobody else has. We each experience the exact same event from a slightly different angle. It is each of our jobs to contribute exactly who we are.

I know that it can be very scary to VOICE YOURSELF. I have had to work up a lot of courage to speak out as a teacher. A teacher of mine told me to say out loud what I say to myself. I encourage you to join my Facebook community and VOICE YOURSELF on the WALL. We all get something from your questions and comments. Be sure to watch the new webseries: POSERS. I get to team up with the YOGAMATIC company and interview individuals to find out how yoga has impacted their lives.

Join my community and come to a yoga or spinning class. Click here to see a calendar of classes and special events at LULULEMON and other venues.

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Humanitarianism (Click here for Burma Video)

Ghandi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world”. To speak out and help others, not turn the other cheek on atrocities, is not easy. After all, how did it get this far? Sometimes it is easier to keep ignoring things and maintain status quo, as opposed to reeducating ourselves. Each of us has a unique perspective, angle and voice. We have a duty to speak from that truth which may be unpopular at first. 

When Jennifer Aniston was filming “Marley and Me”, I went to visit her, and she directed me in this skit that was designed to bring more awareness to the atrocities in Burma. Even though I was terrified at first, I felt so lucky to be able to participate, and it turned out to be really fun. The fact that it was to help others, got me out of my self and into action. Please go to my Tips & Links page for easy access to some worthwhile charities and organizations, and how you can put your humanity into action.

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Seeing Your Future

My mother used to give me TAROT card readings when I was a child. At age 14, I went to my very first psychic with mom. She was the first to go in, and emerged in tears due to a prediction. I went in next and the psychic, Norma, told me that I needed to learn to 'detach with love'. She  told me that I would be an actress for 8 years, and then I would have a career in the healing arts, teaching exercise. That was NOT what I wanted to hear at the time. My parents divorced, as predicted by the psychic, and thus sparked my belief. It happens like a flash... is it a memory of the future? We get these flashes sometimes, and in an instant we can understand and absorb the future and the as yet unseen. I have explored many tools: from I Ching and astrology, to philosophies and energy workers. I am a believer in whatever works, and that we all have these instincts. This month, I will give a daily astrological temperature report on my Facebook page.

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