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Welcome to the holiday edition of Conference Connection. For many of us, the holidays are both a time of joy and a time of stress. So, to help you get through the season, we've asked Baxter Bell, MD, to write a short piece especially for this newsletter. And if you're traveling over the holidays, read below for Airplane Asanas to make your ride more comfortable.
Also featured this month is an inside look at Ana Forrest, one of our most popular yoga teachers. Who would have guessed she took her first yoga class as a dare when she was only 14?
Finally, we'd also like to take this opportunity to wish you and your family a safe and happy holiday season. Regardless of which holiday you celebrate, we think you'll agree with one of our favorite holiday quotes:
"Perhaps the best Yuletide decoration is being wreathed in smiles."
Namaste,
The Yoga Journal Conference Team
Elana Maggal, Conference Director
Renee LaRose, Conference Manager
Jenny Bangert, Conference Coordinator
Jenny Andrews, Conference Sponorship Associate
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Grand Geneva Conference registration is now open.
Due to popular demand, we've added a second Beginners' Conference to the San Francisco
Conference.
Visit the Goodness Design Group booth in the Yoga Marketplace at the San Francisco Conference. Check out their "Namaste by the Bay" t-shirts for sale at the Yoga Journal booth.
www.goodnessdesigngroup.com
Jenny Andrews, Yoga Journal's sponsorship associate has posted her pictures from last year's San Francisco Conference.
The photos are online at homepage.mac.com/jpandrews_23.
Airplane Asanas
If you're flying over the holidays, trust me, you'll thank us for these tips - especially if you fly coach!
Feel free to practice along at your desk as you read.
- Before you start, remove your shoes and make sure your clothes are comfortable.
- Begin by centering yourself. Sit up tall, with your sitting bones firmly in contact with the seat, feet parallel.
- Keep your spine long, your chest open, and your shoulders released back and down.
- Stretch the back of your neck by interlacing your fingers and place your hands on the back of your head (not your neck.)
- Inhaling, sit up tall.
- Exhaling, allow your head and arms to reach forward.
- Breathe deeply, letting each exhalation move you more deeply into the pose.
- After five breaths, release your hands and slowly roll your head up.
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Special Offer
One month of unlimited yoga and lots more at the most beautiful yoga studios in San Francisco. Only $125 (a $200 value).
Contact Linda Sparrowe at 415.901.9357 for more information (mention YJ promotion).
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Save the Dates
San Francisco Conference
Hyatt Regency San Francisco
Jan. 14 - 17, 2005
Registration now open
Lake Geneva Conference
Grand Geneva Resort & Spa
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
May 13 - 16, 2005
Registration now open
10th Annual YJ Conference
Colorado Conference
Estes Park, Colorado
Sept. 26 - Oct. 2, 2005
Registration opens Apr. 2005
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Special Offer
LIFT's Stretch Yourself Give-Away
Win a 4 day pass to the 2005 SF Yoga Journal Conference and a membership to LIFT—three months of unlimited access to personal, professional and financial workshops for women.
Visit www.liftwomen.com to learn more about stretching your body, mind and soul.
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By Baxter Bell, MD
Editor's Note: Baxter Bell, MD, recently teamed up with Yoga Journal for the new Yoga Step-by-Step: The Total Guide to Managing Stress video.
Change. Any kind of change—whether it's change of venue, change of milieu, or change of menu—has the potential to trigger your "stress response." And the busy holiday season is chock full of both large and small changes.
So, whether you are traveling around the corner or across the country, your personal and unique stress response triggers will abound!
My recent Thanksgiving holiday travels afforded me a cornucopia of opportunities to both observe and personally experience this phenomenon up close. After a short night's sleep, I headed into a long weekend packed with change: a 6:30am dash to catch the BART train from Oakland in order to catch a plane to the east coast, a two-hour wait in an airline's "B" line,
the deep-fried bar food and cocktails my yogic body had long ago weaned from, plummeting temperatures in Philly, the excitement of meeting my girlfriend's entire family for the first time and the inevitable homeland-style interrogation by at least one family member, endless connect-the-meals dining and prolonged unaccustomed inactivity, driving in an unfamiliar city's crazy holiday traffic, and finally sitting on the runway upon my return for exactly 31 minutes at 7pm EST,
knowing I was due to teach yoga in Oakland at 7:30am the next day…
The stress response, for those unfamiliar with the concept, is your body's physiologic response to change, but more specifically, your body's response to any perceived threat to your well being. Also known as the "flight-or-fight" response, the stress response is one way we humans have evolved over time to survive any number of real life threatening events (see Yoga Journal's Balanced Living 2004 article by Roger Cole, PhD.).
And although this reaction to real harm—the release of adrenaline and the resultant increase in heart rate, respiratory rate and mental and physical alertness—can steer you to safety on a moment's notice, it unfortunately gets triggered by events that are not immediately or truly harmful to us, such as waiting for an airplane or having dinner with your relatives.
So give thanks for yoga this holiday season, as it may be the perfect antidote for just about all of the above stress-response triggers. Did I mention that my two-hour wait in line that first day of travel turned into a perfect opportunity to do a sequence of standing and seated poses that relieved the morning's lack of sleep and hustle to the airport? And that when I sat on the plane, I used Aadil Palkhivala's technique of strapping my legs together,
which eased the effects of five hours of straight sitting. Instead of the fatigued and frazzled fellow I might have become, periodic pranayama and meditation allowed the calm and collected me to greet new friends. In addition to counteracting the effects of holiday inactivity and overeating,
Hatha yoga's ability to invoke the relaxation response—deep relaxation of the physical body, lowered blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, and more—allows your digestive system to perform more efficiently, supports your immune system functions (crucial with all of those nieces and nephews coughing and sneezing), and may help you fall asleep on your mom's air mattress with the perfunctory flat pillow.
The following yoga asana are great travel tools for the hopefully joyful, but almost always-hectic holiday season:
- Drop-knee lunge: The perfect counterpose to the flexion at the knee and hip that sitting long stretches requires. (Hands to a wall or lobby chair, coat under dropped knee for cushioning)
- Chair backbend: Car, train, or plane seats tend to accentuate the upper back curve, so balance this with at least one backbend. (Backbend over a lobby chair with your upper back, just beneath the lower tip of shoulder blades, resting on the chair back. This pose best with those long banks of seats that won't budge.)
- Wall supported forward bend: There's nothing like getting part way upside down to both quiet the nervous system and brighten the mind! (Keep your buttock's on the wall and your heels 6-12 inches from the wall, as you come into this variation of Uttanasana.)
- Seated twist (Ardha Matsyendrasana): This pose's potential impact on the abdominal organs and its effects on the hips, lower back and spine make it a must do pre-trip prep.
Once on a plane, things get a bit limited, but in the airport lobby give these poses a try, and don't be surprised if strangers start following your lead!
And please remember, any of your favorite yoga asanas can be adapted and enjoyed just about anywhere you may find yourself between now and the New Year.
Happy, Healthy Holidays!
Baxter Bell, MD
Ana Forrest took her first yoga class on a dare at 14 and became a certified yoga instructor at age 18. At first, Ana taught about the importance of getting yoga forms and anatomical alignment correct, until she began to understand that there was more to yoga than great poses.
"After awhile I realized that if there's not that spark and light in the form, what have you got? A statue. If the spirit's not in the form and someone's got it all locked up in some little crevice in the pelvis, that needs to be addressed. As a teacher if I'm not dealing with that entrapment, what am I doing here?"
Ana teaches yoga from an intuitive and highly developed understanding of the human body and psyche. She teaches the student to use Forrest Yoga as a path to find and clear the emotional and mental blocks that dictate and limit their lives. The gift of yoga is to let emotional issues that may be stored in the body come up and ride it like a wave and breathe into that new space.
That's part of the path of freedom. She calls this "Embodying Spirit."
It is through the physical that Ana Forrest feels we come to know our spirits. "Yoga is the arena to ask people to begin to find out what their life is about. If it's only cerebral, it's still delusional. It's got to come right through the body. We're in bodies, and if we don't take it through them, it's not real."
"My intent in teaching Yoga is to do my part in mending the Hoop of the People; to inspire people to clear through the stuff that hardens them and sickens their bodies so they can walk freely and lightly on the earth in a healing way, a Beauty away."
Ana's inspiring poses have graced the covers of Yoga Journal and Yoga Journal Calendars. Ana's 20-minute advanced yoga demonstration has been met with standing ovations this past year at Yoga Journal Conferences. "It brought tears to my eyes; there was a lot of shatki going-on on that stage," says one audience member.
Ana's demo at San Francisco Yoga Journal Conference will be Sunday January 16 at 2:20pm.
Click here for details of her workshops at both the San Francisco and Grand Geneva conferences.
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