“We become what we repeatedly do.”
-Sean Covey
A new reincarnation of Yoga Mama - what will it look like?
In 2011 and 2012, I spent a number of months at an ashram where one of the swamis taught a class on the Bhagavad Gita. At the beginning of one session she asked, “How many of you would like to be enlightened in this lifetime?” Some people raised their hands, confidently. Then she continued, “How many of you would like to be enlightened in another lifetime?” Others raised their hands, some tentatively. Then I raised my hand and said, “I have a question.” “Yes?” she asked and I replied, “What if I don’t know whether or not I want to be enlightened because I don’t really know what it will be like?”
I cannot, for the life of me, remember what she said. You’d think it would have been memorable, but what stays with me is my question. What am I really striving for with yoga? How will my yoga journey look? feel? affect my life and relationships? So often my own answer to myself regarding these questions is, “I don’t know.”
If I asked you similar questions, you might also draw a blank. What is it that you really want from yoga? Do you want to feel good, look good, have better relationships, be more efficient and effective in life? Or maybe you’ve just heard that it’s good for you or you have an inkling that you could benefit from the practice.
With all this in mind, it occurred to me as I came closer to launching the paid version of this newsletter that a person might want to know what they were paying for before they jumped right in. So, in the spirit of sharing the practice of yoga, and also in the spirit of good business, I’d like to keep all posts free for the next month (until the full moon on October 28, 2023). That doesn’t mean you can’t pay now anyway to show me some love for my work, it just means that I won’t keep those posts behind the paywall until then:).
Time as a spiral and why the yogic path is cyclical
Going back to the thought of enlightenment, the idea is that if you are not enlightened, you are reincarnated. Now whether or not you believe this, or maybe you don’t necessarily want this from your yoga practice, but this model of existence is deeply entwined with yoga throughout history.
But let’s not get too abstract or lofty here. I try to stay down to earth as much as possible in this community. I just wanted to pay homage to those beliefs that have shaped yoga so much over time. For me personally, though, I see yoga as cyclical because it is a practice of repetition: we repeat poses, sequences, the dance between inhale and exhale, mantra. I also bring focus to phases of the moon as well as the flow of the seasons and how they can inspire yoga practice. Here is a past post on how various life cycles intersect in a way that affects our yoga practices and lives. It speaks very much to why women need to craft their own yoga practice, especially since historically many of the practices were made by and for men. The post was written for the new moon, too. Here is another post I wrote for the full moon and how we can adapt our yoga practice for that special phase. I share these here as samples of what you might find in some of the posts.
Of course there will be specific guidance on postures, sequences, and breathing, too but I believe that the two posts linked above are what make this newsletter unique and particularly suited to women and mothers. I love to revisit those posts to remind myself of the power of repetition: the phases of the moon repeat, our bodies repeat their own cycles, we repeat the same poses, breathing practices, and yoga sequences, and all these things change as we repeat them at the same time we are changed by the repetition of them.
Reinventing Urban Yoga Mama
If you’ve been with me for a while on this Yoga Mama path, you may have read the posts I linked above, or even found repetition of themes and practices across posts. That is totally on purpose and it’s what builds the foundation of our yoga practices. When I decided to launch the paid version of this newsletter, I realized I could draw on all that I’ve written since 2018 and refine it or cast it in a new light to keep it fresh and relevant. My vision for this new structure goes beyond recycling my previous writing — I’d like to also invite you all to comment more on the posts, respond to the notes and threads and just all-around feel free to co-create this whole venture with me. I’m coming to you not just as a yoga teacher, but also as a friend and fellow yogi. Let’s do this together! I can serve you best if you communicate to me what it is you most want from this experience.
You might wonder, why did I change the name of the publication from Yoga Mama to Urban Yoga Mama? Well, initially I found that I needed to make my Instagram handle something other than just ‘Yoga Mama,’ which happened to be a very popular name for sites, groups, and IG accounts. But then I realized that most of us, even if living in rural areas, are highly connected to and dependent on the urban world. In our modern lifestyle, most of us have contact with urban things. Not to mention, I’m writing to you from the very urban setting of Chicago, IL. The word ‘urban’ here is to cast a modern light on this ancient practice.
What’s next?
This Friday I’ll post on the yoga pose focus for the month. I’ll break down one yoga pose to offer variations on it that make it more fun, accessible, and relevant to your body. Normally this would be a post for paid subscribers, but as I said, for now I’m offering it to everyone as an example of what will come with the paid subscription. Enjoy! And if you think someone else would benefit from it, pass it along! Thanks for being here:)