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Have you ever seen a Tripsichore performance? Did you know that its origin dates back to a 10-minute version of the opening of Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment set in a futuristic grey world?
In a Conference Connection exclusive, we asked long-time yoga favorite Edward Clark to detail his troupe's humble beginnings.
Also, this month our new column by Dayna Macy gives some helpful tips on getting a good night's sleep - tips on everything from helpful yoga poses to bedroom amenities.
Finally, don't forget if you're coming to the Boston Conference you should register soon.
Classes are filling quickly and the conference is sure to sell out.
Namaste,
The Yoga Journal Conference Team
Elana Maggal, Conference Director
Renee LaRose, Conference Manager
Casey Ruby, Conference Coordinator
Heidi Hill, Conference Sponsorship Associate
Boston Conference
Our Boston Conference is only 3 weeks away – April 7-10, 2006 – in the heart of downtown Boston at the Sheraton Boston.
Click here for more information, including a faculty list and registration.
Be sure to register soon to get your first choice of classes and events.
- Tickets are still available for Friday Evening's Tripsichore event — open to general public.
Click here for more information.
- On Saturday evening, Yoga Journal is pleased to host LUNAFEST, a national film festival featuring works made specifically by, for, and about women.
Donations for LUNAFEST benefit the Breast Cancer Fund.
- The Continuing Education for Teachers 3-day conference is sold out.
- The Beginners' Conference has a limited number of spaces remaining and will sell out soon.
- The Boston message board is open for ride sharing and room sharing options.
- Even if you're not attending our Boston Conference, stop in and shop at our extensive Yoga Marketplace, your one-stop-shop for everything yoga.
Conference Blog
See yoga theatre troupe Tripisichore in action, get Ayurvedic tips to ease anxiety, try your hands at some Thai Yoga Massage, and learn how to sequence your home practice. Tune in to the Boston blog for daily coverage of your favorite conference teachers.
Plus, check back after the conference to browse the photo gallery for class shots and candids. http://blogs.yogajournal.com.
San Francisco Conference
See the photo gallery of the 2006 San Francisco Conference, filled with candids of teachers and students.
This year, we've teamed up with Be Present to bring you the official "Be Inspired" 2006 Boston Conference t-shirt.
Pick one up while you're at the conference and Be Inspired!
Conference t-shirts (shown here) will be on sale at the Yoga Journal Registration Desk at the Boston Conference for $20.
by Dayna Macy
It's 2 a.m. You're lying in bed, having another restless, sleepless
night. You try to turn off your brain and relax, but you can't.
You're not alone. About 60 million Americans suffer from insomnia, which
tends to affect women more than men. While occasional sleep deprivation
is a common response to stress, it can wreck havoc if it goes on too
long. Prolonged sleep deprivation can depress the immune system,
increase irritability, and make it difficult to concentrate on daily
tasks.
Yoga can help. Yoga directly addresses not only the psychological
aspects of stress, but the physiological ones as well. A regular
practice slows down heart rate, relaxes muscle tension, inhibits the
production of stress hormones, and calms the mind.
Forward bends in general are deeply relaxing and calming for the nervous
system. Some poses that help ease insomnia include:
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- Uttanasana (Standing Forward Bend)
Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Dog)
Paschimototasana (Seated Forward Bend)
Janu Sirsasana (Head to Knee Pose)
A few things to remember: While in your forward bend, try to keep your
eyes moving down towards the bottom of your lids instead of up towards
your forehead. The downward movement stimulates the relaxation response.
Use a block to support your head. This helps relax the body more
completely.
And don't stretch to your limit. Drop all sense of striving.
If you're still not fully relaxed, try a supported supine pose such as
Supta Baddha Konasana (Reclining Bound Angle Pose), which also helps
quell anxiety.
Some other helpful sleep hints:
- Avoid sleep medication. While pills may seem helpful in the short term,
they tend to lose their effectiveness with prolonged use, and long-term
safety is questionable.
- Keep regular hours. Go to sleep the same time each night, and get up the
same time in the morning.
- Avoid caffeine and alcohol late in the day. Caffeine can make it
difficult to fall asleep and alcohol can interfere with sleep quality.
- Create a yoga sleep ritual: Says Ann Dyer, creator of zYoga: The Yoga
Sleep Ritual (www.sleepgarden.com), "If you create a yogic bedtime
ritual, which includes specific poses done in the proper sequence, you
don't have to will sleep to come -- you can woo it to come."
- Get regular exercise -- but make sure you're finished within three hours
of going to bed.
- Don't eat a large meal late in the evening.
- Let go of the to-do list in your brain. Keep a pad by the side of the
bed and write down any "to-do" item onto the list and then let it go.
- Make sure your bedroom is comfortable. Keep it, dark, quiet, and at a
moderate temperature. If you are sensitive to noise, use earplugs.
- Massage your feet. Use an oil like sesame, almond, olive or coconut oil.
Massaging your feet is extremely calming.
- Keep your bedroom a sacred place. Don't watch TV, or have one in your
bedroom. Keep your bedroom sacred by saving it for sleep, contemplation,
and making love.
Dayna Macy, a writer and musician who can be found at www.daynamacy.com, is the communications director of Yoga Journal.
Editor's Note: In addition to a special Tripsichore performance (open to the public), Edward will also be teaching at the 2006 Yoga Journal Boston Conference.
Click here to see his classes.
Everyone asks about the name Tripsichore - as good a conversational gambit as any other, I guess. My grandmother was fond of ferreting out interesting words and facts for me. One day, while I was attending university, studying acting and dance, she wrote out the word T-E-R-P-S-I-C-H-O-R-E as a little test to see whether I was getting a decent education.
"How do you pronounce this?" she inquired with faux innocence. I tried various permutations of the "Terp-se-chor" and "Terp-sick-or" variety. Delighted with my ignorance, she informed me that Terpsichore ("Terp-si-cor-ee"…yes, the "chore" is pronounced like the beginning of chore-ography!) was the Greek muse of dance.
Briefly humiliated, I was more than pleased at the prospect of taking this "toy" out to show my friends at university - especially the group with whom I used to get together with to choreograph, all of whom did not know what the word meant either.
We always had big plans to put together outrageous (or so we thought) pieces of dance and theatre that would blow peoples' minds.
We thought we'd be a real "trip" once we were let loose on the world…and so the name of TRIPsichore was born.
We didn't get around to performing anything as Tripsichore until 1979, and come to think of it, it may have been a bit "trippy." It was a 10-minute version of the opening of Dostoyevski's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT set in a futuristic grey world. For the notorious murder scene,
we dropped a curtain of red balloons (each individually weighted with a penny) from the flys and threw red streamers across the stage.
By this time, we were already practicing yoga and made it a part of our daily warm-up. But, we didn't see it as being useful choreographically. We questioned how anything so static could be interesting.
We used to joke that one day we'd create something called Yoga Theatre and it would be so boring that the Arts Council would love it (sly dig at the funding bodies).
One day, a company member brought in Ganga White and Ana Forrest's book on Partner Yoga (must be around 1986), and we were blown away. We experimented with this material,
but we couldn't successfully shoehorn much of it into what we were doing at the time - a piece called LOVE AND THE NEW VANDALS - a kind of Punk Ballet with a live rock band.
However, things were evolving for us. We abandoned the "punky rock thing" for a while and did a show that was very classical - very ballet. The English ballet dancer in those days could be rather snobbish about the contemporary/modern dance scene, so they didn't much like the kind of class we set,
but they weren't too keen either on our ballet master whom they found a bit old fashioned.
To their credit, they were keen on the yoga part of the warm-up. As a project, the Dominion Dance Company ended disastrously - a tale for another time.
We embarked on a show called REVENGE OF THE LOVE CANNIBALS - a sort of 50's horror spoof. We began studying yoga with Narayani and Giris Rabinovitch - whom we esteem to this day.
A number of the Tripsichoreans were mastering various Scorpions and Handstands and would regularly fall out of them and get up dusting themselves off. Giris observed, "You guys are dancers.
Why do you stop the flow when you fall out?
Why don't you turn it into a Wheel and keep the flow going?" And so, we began to deliberately take postures to the point where they had to become something else.
We started assembling a piece that made fun of various dance styles that were in vogue. This seemed like a good time to wedge in that old idea about Yoga Theatre - it might be funny because it was really boring, but only for a short time. We started by doing a sort of Sivananda sun salute facing each other, but trying to do it in each other's space.
Once we began doing it, it quickly became clear that it was much more interesting than anything we'd ever done before. So, we jettisoned all the other material we'd been working on and started to do a full-length piece of Yoga Theatre called THE SPIRITS.
Now, many years later, we continue to experiment with this form and each day brings new discoveries. It has proved an ideal way to express themes of balance, harmony, spirituality, ecstasy, bliss and mysticism for the postures are inherently about these subjects.
Tripsichore is currently based in London and they perform their inventive choreography worldwide.
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Avalon Organics
Namaste. Avalon Organics honors the importance of yoga and organic body care in a healthy, balanced lifestyle. As a sponsor of the Boston Yoga Journal Conference,
we are happy to send a complementary gift of our 12 ounce Hand & Body Lotion, made with certified organic plant oils, to the first 100 individuals who respond to this offer.
Learn more and register to win.
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lululemon is coming to the Back Bay!
lululemon is opening a showroom in Boston this Spring!
Email jmalone@lululemon.com to learn more and to reserve your FREE gift
from the showroom*.
lululemon is a happy sponsor of the 2006 Boston Yoga Journal conference.
Providing components for people to live a longer, healthier, more fun
life!
*Offer good May 1-June 1, 2006
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MindBody Online
As Sponsors of The 2006 Boston Yoga Journal Conference, MindBody Online is offering Conference Connection readers a savings of 20% on purchases made through
mindbodyonline.com. Learn to manage your business completely online anywhere, anytime...from the studio, home,
or even the beach! As a central source of harmony between your clients, instructors, and business, MindBody Online will be there to help you manage and grow. Relax and watch your business increase sales & reduce costs.
Call 1-866-990-2990 to learn more about increasing your revenue!
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Sleep Garden
Attend either one of Ann Dyer's special events: "Chanting 101" or
"zYogaLIVE,The Yoga Sleep Ritual" at the Boston Conference and receive a
free copy of Ann Dyer's "zLullaby, The Yoga Sleep Lullaby". Yoga Journal
named Ann Dyer "...a near perfect sleep guru".
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Save the Dates
Boston Conference
Sheraton Boston
April 7 - 10, 2006
Registration Now Open
11th Annual Yoga Journal
Colorado Conference
Estes Park, CO
Sept. 25 - Oct. 1, 2006
Registration Opens May '06
San Francisco 2007
Hyatt Regency
January 19 - 22, 2007
Registration Opens Fall '06
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