As a reformed corporate warrior and athlete turned yogi, Pete Guinosso stands out as a teacher with a unique background. We talked about his classes at Yoga Tree Valencia and the concept of ahimsa – doing less harm and having more compassion for yourself and others.
Deb Burkman has been teaching yoga for 11 years and currently teaches at The Mindful Body yoga studio in San Francisco. She’s the person who first introduced me to the term “urban wellness” (she does an annual Urban Yoga and Wellness initiative in San Francisco). We got together to talk about what that means and how to find optimal health in an urban setting.
It’s easy to go on a retreat or a vacation and develop a sense of well being only to come right back into your hectic city life and lose it. The reality is that most people lead really busy lives. You have deadlines to meet, children to take care of, relationships to attend to, and constant interruptions on Facebook, your cellphone, and email. Urban Wellness is about having optimal health in an urban environment – trying to feel physically, mentally, and emotionally stable in a city.
Three ways to do that are:
1) Exercise more
Many people complain that they don’t have enough time to exercise, but exercising can actually help you optimize your time. By clearing your mind you’ll get more efficient at what you do and better able to manage your time.
Yoga is a great way to both bring exercise into your life and cultivate mental clarity. As a regular practice, it helps you refine your capacity to know yourself. It gives you a concentrated environment to directly experience everything that arises within you as you deal with the challenge of holding a posture and focusing your attention on your breath. You start to notice when you get frustrated with your instructor or when you push yourself too far or not far enough. You notice all the emotions that arise as a result.
Think about the last time someone cut you off in traffic and aggravated you. Did you take that negative state and carry it with you all day, projecting it on friends and family? Through yoga you start to be more aware of negative emotional responses and you can choose to observe them without reacting.
2) Eat whole foods
A whole food is as close to the way nature originally created it as possible. Generally you want to avoid packaged foods with ingredients that you don’t recognize. If you’re shopping on a budget then start by avoiding foods that are known to be particularly prone to pesticide residue, such as the “dirty dozen”: peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, pears, grapes, spinach, lettuce, potatoes.
3) Meditation
Meditation can be a little tricky because, unlike yoga, it can be much harder to see the benefits right away. It can take a while to understand that just sitting and being passive for a period each day cultivates a psychological strength to be with yourself and see yourself with more clarity. This state of calm helps you approach your day objectively, giving you a clear compass for what’s important to you and what isn’t.
If you’re new to meditation, a good place to start is to find a meditation group. In San Francisco, both the Zen Center and the Buddhist Center have introductory sessions. Of you can try the SF Insight website to join a meditation community. Alternatively find 10 – 15 minutes to just sit and focus on your breath. As your mind wanders, gently bring it back to your breath. You’ll find it does wonders for your sense of well being.
Deb’s classes are fun and playful. She teaches an Ashtanga Based Hatha Flow and tries to meet students where they’re at. Expect her to pay careful attention to your level of comfort. As you get more experienced, she’ll encourage you to try harder postures to advance your practice. You can find her at The Mindful Body. Also, check out her upcoming retreat at the Maya Talum Retreat in Mexico.
THE SHORT VERSION
THE LONG VERSION
Deb Burkman has been teaching yoga for 11 years and currently teaches at The Mindful Body yoga studio in San Francisco. She’s the person who first introduced me to the term “urban wellness.” We got together to talk about what urban wellness really means and how to find optimal health in an urban setting.
It’s easy to go on a retreat or a vacation and develop a sense of well being only to come right back into your hectic life and lose it. The reality is that most people lead really busy lives. You have deadlines to meet, children to take care of, relationships to attend to. Often you’ve been telling yourself the same story about being too busy for so long that this story has become truth.
In Sanskrit this is called Samskara – an event stored in the subconscious mind which will generate pre-determined thought patterns, desires, and behavior. These patterns become your reality. If you take the time to step back and reexamine this truth though, you may find that by re-prioritizing your life you can tend to yourself and get more done. By slowing down you can actually become more productive. You can feel better, be more focused, make better decisions, and use your time more efficiently while having more time to take care of yourself. This sense of well being will, in turn, free your mind.
Most people think they’re most productive when they’re actively working on a problem, but your brain processes information much more efficiently on a subconscious level. Try to multiply 82 by 24. For most people that would be almost impossible without a calculator. But your brain handles much more complex problems just figuring out how to walk and calculating the exact amount of pressure for each muscle to apply. Research by David Rock consistently shows that true insight arrives suddenly – when you’re about to fall asleep, when you’re exercising, showering, walking, doing yoga, etc – when you’re brain is actively disengaged.
Deb noticed her own life suddenly get much more stressful when she got her first cellphone last August after lots of pressure from her friends (you might say she’s a technology “late adopter”). All her free time was now taken up with phone calls. Instead of just walking and being present in her environment, seeing the trees and the sky, she was on her phone being busy. This took time away from her subconscious mind to creatively solve problems. The phone didn’t reduce the things she had to do, sometimes it created more things for her to do! As she found herself becoming more manic, she made a conscious decision to put the phone away and just do one thing at a time.
Our culture thrives on over stimulation. People live a global “do more” story where your values and your self image are tied up in how many hours a day you spend actively working and multi-tasking. You lose sight of the true value of your actions and the quality of your output. You don’t think about WHY you’re reaching for the phone. Is it because you really want to talk to somebody or is it because you’re feeling anxious and just want to fill time? By becoming aware of the underlying reasons for your actions you can begin to interrupt recurring patterns in behavior.
As social technology becomes an inevitable part of modern living, there’s a movement towards mindful technology use – to not only live connected to one another through technology, but to do so in ways that are beneficial to our own well-being. The recent Wisdom 2.0 conference included thought leaders from Google, Twitter, Zynga, and a host of top startups and organizations discussing positive technology use.
Technology itself is neither good nor bad. Think of a buffet dinner. With so many food options, everything looks awesome so you pile up your plate with things that don’t necessarily go together. Individually, each item might be fine. But you overstuff yourself. Similarly our tech oriented culture over fills us with too many inputs. It’s the difference between walking away from a buffet feeling like you just gorged yourself with a bunch of generic food or simply enjoying one well prepared meal mindfully.
Yoga helps cultivate mindful use – building awareness around the underlying reasons for the actions that we take. That’s why it’s important to slow down. To meditate and see what arises. To observe yourself so that you can better understand what motivates the decisions you make. Any action can be performed yogically (I believe Deb just invented this term!). In yoga you’re using your muscles and bones and you’re paying attention to your thoughts and how you feel.
As you try to make time for yourself, don’t get overwhelmed. You have to meet yourself to understand where you are. In yoga, you start slowly and build a strong core. In life, you start small and build a strong foundation. Be willing to be new to something and enjoy the beginning. Over time you’ll start to notice all the random thoughts in your head. You learn to pay attention to how every movement makes your body feel. This awareness translates directly to your life off the yoga mat. Think of it as practice for modern mindfulness.
TJ Burleigh has been teaching yoga for over 10 years. She currently teaches regular classes and workshops at Bernal Yoga as well as yoga therapy at UCSF. We sat down to talk about her class and simple ways to live better.
We live roller coaster lives with honking cars and ringing cellphones (even the audio on this video has cellphone interference!). Find some inner sanctuary with TJ’s class as she takes you inward and beyond. Close your eyes, take a moment for yourself, and lend an ear to you inner being.
TJ will help you carry this connection with yourself on and off the mat. That means that next time someone cuts you off and you start to feel your blood boiling, you might just smile and let it go. Isn’t that much better?
If you do just one thing…. remember to breathe. If you’re tired, focus on the inhalation, the uplifting sensation as the breath rushes into your lungs and belly.
If you’re feeling tense and stressed out, focus on the exhalation. Take a minute by yourself and bow your head slightly. As you inhale, really let the breath come deep into the belly – it into the sides and back of the belly, feel the whole body grow. Then just let it all out. Release the breath and exhale completely. Enjoy blissful peace of mind.
TJ has an upcoming workshop on Yoga for Carpal Tunnel, Shoulder and Wrist Health on April 17.
