Recently the CDC released research into the trend towards obesity in both adults and children in the USA ( cdc - http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/2009.2014). The prevalence of obesity has been steadily increasing in the USA since the mid-1970’s. Today more than a third of the population is battling obesity and its associated illnesses of heart disease, diabetes and other metabolic disorders. It is common knowledge that exercise can have a profound effect on weight loss, controlling blood glucose and reducing triglyceride levels in the blood. Some recent research is showing that interval training, intense sprint sets followed by brief rest sets, can kick start a stalled metabolism and make a good workout regimen even more efficient and effective.

The idea behind interval training is to alternate effortful short burst activities with short, slower recovery periods. Interval training has been used by professional athletes to improve performance for decades. Modern research is indicating that these fast-slow workouts with steep peaks and valleys can dramatically improve cardiovascular fitness and generally increase the body’s potential to burn fat.

Studies published in the Journal of Applied Physiology and research performed at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario found that interval training doubled the endurance of test subjects, increased the amount of fat burned during moderate exercise by 36% and increased cardiovascular fitness by 13%. By comparison, volunteers in the control group not doing interval training, but who did engage in regular moderate exercise, didn’t see similar benefits. Even more striking is that the overall fitness of subjects didn’t change the benefits of interval training. Borderline sedentary subjects and college athletes alike had similar increases in fitness and fat burning from interval training.

The idea behind interval training makes a great deal of sense. When we work hard or when we confuse our muscles by exposing them to a novel exercise, the body is forced to access new muscle fibers. Accessing unused muscle fibers means that the we are tapping into new energy reserves. The benefit here is twofold. First, once activated, these newly engaged muscles fibers will now be trained and available to burn fuel even when we are doing less intense activity. Second, these newly activated muscle fibers stimulate the mitochondria, the energy centers in cells, encouraging them to convert more fuel into energy and causing them to burn fat first. This change takes place across all exercise we do, even during lower intensity workouts!

Lasting benefit can be achieved from interval training by adding only a single session to your weekly workout regimen. If your interested in experimenting with interval training we will be starting two classes at onlYoga on Tuesdays beginning February 16th - 6 - 6:30pm & 6:45 - 7:15pm. Everyone is welcome. The cost is $10 to drop-in, free for unlimited students. See you there!

There was a time, early on in my spiritual development, when I thought there might be answers to the big questions presented by the serendipity of a conscious mind. As an adolescent the BIG questions, for me, perpetually centered around my own mortality. It wasn’t necessarily the death of my physical body that disturbed me so much as it was the existential crisis presented by the emptiness seemingly inherent in ceasing to be conscious. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around why/how we humans were blessed and cursed with the awareness of our own mortality.

Looking back, I can see how my unusual childhood tuned me to this sometimes dark fascination which was further amplified by an inherently artistic temperament. By my late teens and early twenties, I was primed to spend a large portion of my energy as an adult seeking answers, looking for truths and generally being earnest. I explored the problem from a variety of angles, imbibing various substances in an attempt to dissolve the self imposed barriers between me and everything else. I resolved to fight a pitched battle to unlock my chest and hips through hours of asana practices. I meditated alone and in groups, for hours and sometimes days, staring into the eyes of another human. I repeated my mantra and chanted or sang with passion. I read the sacred texts, the histories and philosophies, the self help books and the reflections of great minds. In short I searched in earnest.

More than two decades later, I haven’t found The Answer and more than once I have cast about in confusion, wondering what it is I am searching for. After all this time, with no apparent goal in sight, I can’t help but wonder from time to time at the futility of my efforts. This isn’t to say that there haven’t been great benefits to all this effort. There certainly have been, but most of them are as transitory as the seasons. Most profoundly and possibly importantly, I no longer feel the existential angst as deeply.

So the questions remain but so to do the lessons. The most lasting lesson has been the realization that all the striving and searching we do as humans to have the answers, to garner ownership over this fleeting experience we call a life, is just another form of grasping and attaching. Although the searching we do is perhaps somewhat more ephemeral than our attachment to external things, the end result or the net effect on us energetically is the same - tangible or intangible, in the end we must release it all.

My searching will continue, not because I believe I will ever find the answer, rather because I see now that being blessed with consciousness means being entangled in living. We are forever grasping and releasing, grasping and releasing. Living is poignantly beautiful and distressing all in one breath. There is no answer to this predicament. Regardless of chaos or the promise of a bright future, life looms before us and demands to be lived. I don’t know about you but I will likely continue to cling and become attached. I will also continue to celebrate the practices like yoga and meditation, running, swimming, walking, loving, nature, dogs, etc. that cultivate a lasting sense of peace within me.

With the start of a new year it is important to restate the intention or meaning behind the practice of ashtanga yoga.   The practice is meant to sharpen the razor of discrimination. With sustained practice we develop razor-like attention that can be used to slice through karmic attachments both latent and active.  The discrimination developed enables one to see through the four primary forms of ignorance, these are: 1) confusing the temporary for the eternal, 2) mistaking the impure for the pure, 3) experiencing misery as happiness, and 4) believing that the limited ego self is the true Self.  Essentially discrimination allows for subtler forms of introspection which in turn shed light on why we suffer.  The first five stages or limbs of yoga hone the razor edge of discrimination, these are: yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara.  The final three stages or limbs of yoga put the finely sharpened tool of discriminating awareness into action allowing for direct unbiased experience. Yoga, much like modern day psychology, is a systematic method for understanding the perceptual flow of the mind.  At its most basic level, discrimination is a process of sorting this from that.  The sorting process usually begins at the most primary level with our relationship to the external world.  We begin to develop discrimination as we practice principles such as non-injury, truthfulness, compassion and contentment.

Q: Why don’t you talk philosophy more when you teach? Don’t you think it would be helpful to give students an idea of what they should be focusing on or thinking about while they are practicing?

A: A Yoga practice is like a Rorschach inkblot test in action. It is important to give students plenty of time to really sink into the thickness of their own thoughts. As they do this they will project a great deal of their own internalized struggle and resistance onto the experience (the practice). If a teacher is always “proselytizing” or espousing beliefs, then students will ultimately not have the “thinking” space to befriend their own mind and gain a deeper understanding of their own very personal mental habituation. Simply put, there is a significant difference between having someone tell us we are stuck, or being reactive, versus reaching that conclusion in our own time. We are far more likely to take ownership over our own realizations! I also believe that most of us tend towards taking life far too seriously and we bring that limitation with us onto our mat. We turn our yoga practice into another way to avoid the sometimes heartbreaking inconsistencies and injustices of being mortal humans. I believe that learning to truly be uncomfortable and...make it through to the other side of that discomfort is a big part of what yoga has to teach us. Having someone croon dogmatic pleasantries while we are attempting to pull our senses inward seems counter intuitive at best, if not wholly egocentric. What about inspiration? One of the most profound concepts I was ever exposed to in my life is that motivation comes from within. A good teacher learns to step out of the way so that students are able to find their own inner cheerleader.

This isn’t to say that the philosophy of yoga is unimportant. Certainly it is possible to fill in some of the shadows cast by one's own mind and gain a much deeper understanding of the overall yoking process by slogging through an original source like the Yoga Sutras. However, unlike other philosophies, yoga is relevant only to the degree we are willing and able to put its ideas into action in our practice. It is primarily for this reason that I continue to practice Ashtanga yoga, it is philosophy in action and in many respects an artful recipe for living a rich and delicious life.

-John Merideth • Director and Owner of onlYoga

Swim Smart

Stepping to the front of the mat and attempting to surrender to the idea that for the next 90 minutes we are going to practice "relaxing effort" can present something of a conundrum in our practice. Since yoga is at least in part a physical experience we often assume that without struggle we wont reap its many flaunted benefits. So we hold on tight, contract our mental muscles and launch ourselves into the "work" of making it happen. Instead of floating, we bang and stumble our way from one practice to the next. I refer to this as the "hard work" paradigm and it is mostly about affirming what we already know about our physical experience? Since the effort we exert sometimes allows us to muscle our way through yoga postures that seemed unreachable a few months ago, this paradigm can be difficult to shake. Inevitably though we hit a plateau and begin to wonder why we are working so hard all the time. We begin to wonder if this is it...and for some of us it is. We have simply affirmed what we already knew - our bodies are finite structures.
When I was swimming competitively one of my coaches, Jack Nelson, used to go on and on about how important it was to swim smart. He employed many “fascinating” techniques to make his point (most of which ended with a fairly large portion of the team treading water). I thought I understood his point then but it wasn't until I began suffering through my yoga practice a few years later that his words really clicked into place. “Muscles can help you float or they can drag you down. Brute strength and effort don’t win a race. Efficiency and awareness can make a mediocre swimmer great. Swim smart!”
In life we often approach a situation with our full compliment of attachments, habits and preconceptions about who we are and how we are. Before we say a single word, take a single breath or make our first move we have predetermined the outcome of the experience. Pema Chodron calls it our story line - the self-perpetuating tale we weave to maintain the status quo. Relaxing effort means that we allow the story line and its limiting internal definitions to fall away. Essentially we attempt to move or love or breath or eat or work with intelligence. The key to this form of intelligent action is nonjudgmental observation. We watch, we notice and we make small adjustments that keep us asking questions about where we are. The real practice then is in learning how to allow the experience to live us so that ME stops getting in the way. I have found over the years that intelligent action can infuse an otherwise stale, flat practice with new life and tons of fresh energy. Suddenly we are like children again curiously exploring and playing through what we previously identified as “work”. So the next time you step to the front of your mat don't try so hard to be who you think you are, instead relax the effort and swim smart!

Namaste • John Merideth • Director onlYoga

Light - The God Of Generosity
For longer than recorded history, native cultures living in the northern hemisphere have recognized that December brings with it ever increasing darkness.  The days grow steadily colder and shorter and the age old drama in the war of light against darkness takes on a particularly poignant significance.  In late December (this year December 21),  the sun seems to hover in the sky in its lowest arc of the year.  The winter solstice (meaning standing still sun) brings with it the shortest period of daylight during the year and historically has been the most hopeful and conversely the most dreaded time of the year.
Cultures from across the globe watched and recorded the movement of the heavenly bodies to assure they would be prepared for and able to predict the time each year when darkness would appear to rule over light.  Humans have struggled with the darkness during the winter months for millennia.  Complex and often lengthy rituals were developed to ensure the triumph of light over darkness.  To this day the Hopitu Shinumu, or The Peaceful Ones, a native culture from the pacific northwest, practice the Soyal ceremony.  The ritual begins on the shortest day of the year and is a time for offering prayers and wishing prosperity and health in the coming year.  During the Soyaluna ritual, the most powerful humans of the Hopi, the warriors, intreat the Sun God to turn around and return to the earth.  This ritual represents, among other things, the start of another cycle of the wheel of the year and is one of the most important periods of purification.  Prior to the Christian era the Roman solar cult had its major festival on the winter solstice, December 25th.  This date of the invincible sun was carried into the iconography of Christianity as the birth of Jesus and the story of a brilliant star that lit the sky symbolizing life over death...light over darkness.
Although science has given us a precise and clear way for understanding the decline of the sun during the winter months, light continues to play a significant sub-conscious role for us during December.  We continue to mimic age old customs of building bonfires, burning candles and celebrating festivals of light by wrapping our homes in glittering reminders of the transition taking place during this season.  The lights of December are an invocation of the coming warmth and brighter skies of Spring.  This time of year is a reminder that just as light follows dark, great joy often follows and flows from deep sorrow.  Satisfying some primal instinct within each of us, light, the Giver God, brings with it comfort and hope for life’s renewal. 

Namaste • John Merideth • Director onlYoga

The Auto-Familiar
One of the most difficult tasks of teaching a movement based practice like yoga, is getting across to students that they must unmask the assumptions they carry within them around what it means to fully be in their body. Some of the assumptions we use to shape our experience of ourselves are obvious; gender, age, weight, height, etc. Many, many more are far more subtle and often require fairly intense study to uncover. The difficulty is in illuminating how years of conditioned action have brought us to our current level of self-awareness. Movement and posture, not unlike language, can take on a very auto-familiar quality within the closed sphere of our own experience. The range and vocabulary of our movement can feel limited to what we have previously experienced or known. Movement based practices like yoga or dance are in many ways like learning a foreign language. By demanding that we stay present, they dislodge us from our assumptions and quite literally propel us into the possibility of redefinition. From the vantage point of a new vocabulary of movement, we can envision being in our bodies in a fresh way. The known is a powerful and safe place to reside. Stretching beyond our comfort zone into a new vocabulary of experience is how we shake free of the assumed prejudices we hold about ourselves.
“Taken by itself, each language is auto-familiar: it has its own concepts, its own system of thought which, within it, condition the thinkable. The way we think and speak arises out of decisions our language has already made for us: language discreetly dictates to its users - in an invisible manner - self-evident assumptions and proscriptions that are inscribed in its grammar (which is, by definition, imperceptible from inside the language.) In order for grammar to appear as such one must dislodge one's language from its self-presence, from its assumptions and proscriptions, by subjecting them to the otherness of a different grammar, by putting them in question through the medium of a foreign language.”
Felman, Shoshana. Writing and Madness. pp 18-19.

Our ability to see into things, to see the truth, is intrinsic. We can extract happiness and meaning from life despite our awareness of our own mortality. This is a universal quest that crosses time and culture. By practicing yoga we learn to rein in the tendency of consciousness to gravitate toward the impermanence of external things. As consciousness settles, it takes on a transparent quality and our experience of time becomes more spacious and less personal. With more time and space the drama of life becomes less compelling. At this point consciousness begins to experience a less personal way of seeing and a problem emerges. We are faced with a conundrum - the very action and energy propelling us to seek clarity is itself an obstacle on our path. The more force we use, the more it feels like we are doing something. It is at this point that we must develop the ability to rest in the stillness of the moment. However, first we must learn to identify the point of focus. Once we can identify the stillness, we can learn to return to it without exertion. There are many important issues that allow us to reach this juncture but two stand out above the others. The first is motivation or the genuine energy we bring to liberating our mind (effort). The second is intelligent orientation or our willingness to continually place our consciousness before the divine mirror of life (effortless). Motivation requires energy but truly seeing the sublime beauty in a sunset is intrinsically effortless.

John Merideth • Director

It is a challenge teaching...everybody is looking for something
different in their practice. I have to remind myself that all too
often we only see what we are looking for and miss much of what lies
before us. The real practice is in allowing the experience to live
us so that we stop getting in the way.

Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

-Henry David Thoreau

Counsious Evolution
How can one be totally present and accepting and still strive to be a better person or work on self-improvement? I get this type of question fairly often from students, especially when we are reading some seemingly esoteric text directly and indirectly stating that enlightenment requires complete acceptance of the moment. How can we have a "goal" of reaching higher consciousness while accepting that we're not "there" yet. If we are content to just be, why would we strive for more? Of course, the easy answer is that full acceptance is itself an "end point" of sorts...but such solipsism doesn't usually get me very far in a discussion.
The more difficult answer, and the way that I try to live my life (with varying degrees of success), has to do with what I refer to as placement. Who we think we are and how we define our experience is often relative to culturally dictated data sets that we collect about ourselves, like our weight, our bank balance, job title, status, etc. We use this data stream to compare and contrast our current position with where we have been. Life is "good" as long as we see a positive trend and tends to make us anxious when we notice negative growth. The placement part of this is related to identifying our position, placing our ego, relative to stuff that is in flux, like our bank account, our waist line or our partner, rather than something infinite like universal compassion, pure awareness or non-violence. When we stop tying our sense of self so strongly to culturally predictable normative standards and begin instead to shape our identity around unbounded ideas like pure awareness, our position shifts from the fluctuation of outcome to one anchored in possibility..
For me personally this translates into being a highly motivated, goal oriented, overachiever without loosing sight of what’s really important. In fact, I try to regularly evaluate where I am and reset my intentions to move me toward greater abundance but my sense of who I am or what makes John a “good” person has little to do with external factors. I continually orient myself towards trying without being attached to the outcome. I can continue to strive for greater abundance and new experience, without feeling limited by the results of my endeavors, because I have set my internal awareness towards a concept that is greater than my own limited existence. Working this way offers one the benefit of being proactive without the drawback of self-definition based on accomplishments alone. On a day to day level, I have goals and the pendulum of success swings back and forth but in terms of my life work, my experience transcends these temporary fluctuations.
A mind set like this can take a little getting used to and requires consistent practice in letting go of the linear methodology employed by our woonky culture. Its like arguing gravity is relative. Of course, on earth, gravity isn’t relative but how we frame our relationship to its force in our life is relative. Without gravity we wouldn’t have a down or an up and our placement in space would depend on “choice” rather than assumption (Think The Matrix). For me, regular meditation and LOTS of asana work helps wash away some of life’s inherent habituation, keeping me clear and focused on the big picture...god.
Sadly I have noticed over the last few years that this great practice we call YOGA is itself becoming mired in limited constructs of money, power, fame and status. Instead of practices providing students with a place to land and evolve after hyper scheduled days, I see more and more teachers emphasizing outcome as they take their students through endlessly rehearsed scripts. The result is a strict and mundane kind of experience where students believe yoga = legs behind the head, rather than yoga = liberation from self-limitation. So look for more creativity and less...status quo...from onlYoga in the coming months as the studio continues to evolve consciously.
Sadly I have noticed over the last few years that this great practice we call YOGA is itself becoming mired in limited constructs of money, power, fame and status. Instead of practices providing students with a place to land and evolve after hyper scheduled days, I see more and more teachers emphasizing outcome as they take their students through endlessly rehearsed scripts. The result is a strict and mundane kind of experience where students believe yoga = legs behind the head, rather than yoga = liberation from self-limitation. So look for more creativity and less...status quo...from onlYoga in the coming months as the studio continues to evolve consciously.

Summer Newsletter 2006

Acquire an 8.5 x 11” piece of paper and a black writing pen. Draw a line across the page so that your piece of paper is divided into two separate spaces (it doesn't matter where you start or whether it is a vertical or horizontal line as long as it bisects the page). Now draw a circle near but not touching the line (it doesn't matter how large or small the circle is as long as it fits in one of the two spaces on the page). Place the paper in the center of a table that you can walk around. Pick a side and stand facing the drawing. Describe the relationship of the circle to the line. Moving clockwise, walk around the table stopping in turn on each side to describe the relationship of the circle to the line. Continue around the table until you end up where you started. Notice how the relationship of the circle to the line changes. Sometimes the circle will be above the line, sometimes below. Sometimes the circle will be to the left of the line and sometimes to the right. Now ask yourself the following question

“What changed the relationship of the circle to the line?”.
The relationship of subject to object is an artifice of the mind relevant only as long as we insist on maintaining our perspective of up versus down, left versus right, inside versus outside, hot versus cold, black versus white, etc. What does this have to do with anything? Well, as long as we maintain a perspective that places us in opposition to our subject then we are separate from it. Placing ourselves in opposition to our subject makes sense if we are attempting to stay out of the way of the MARTA bus on Peachtree Street but it begins to cause problems when we make ourselves the subject of our inquiry. How can you both be yourself and be separate from yourself simultaneously? How can you be in opposition to you? Trying to hold this kind of mental space is the root of dysfunction. It is easiest for me to conceive of this concept in terms of music. To experience music is not to read notes on a page or say out-loud the words of a song. To experience music is to hear or play or sing the notes and the words, to actively participate in the process of making the musical language into Being. To experience the Self, or to experience God requires the same kind of active participation. God is not a conceit of the mind to be grasped but rather a continual act of non-placement.

The tradition of New Year’s is as ancient as civilization itself. In ancient Babylon the turning of the year coincided with mid-March and the transformation of Winter into Spring. In modern times, 153 B.C., we see the figure of Janus (January) a mystical king from early Rome appearing at the head of the calendar. With two faces, Janus could reflect on the past year and consider possibilities of the coming cycle. Janus the god of beginnings and the guardian of thresholds became a symbol for the resolutions we now associate with the holiday. Although the date for New Year’s Day varies in every culture, the theme of celebration and the customs observed to ensure a fulfilling new year are universal.

Reinventing Yourself
New Year’s is the only holiday that celebrates the passage of time. It’s no surprise then that as we explore the last few moments of the year our thoughts can be reflective, even introspective. Inevitably our introspection leads us to consider possible ways we might improve upon our self and our life in the coming year. Thus ensues the annual ritual of making resolutions. New Year’s is a perfect time to begin the process of reinventing ourselves and in the process replace some outdated habits with fresh invigorating new experiences. Approaching the coming year as a painter would undertake a blank canvas, full of creative possibilities, can fill our life with passion fueled by a sense of natural purpose, intention and hope.
Maintaining Your Momentum
While we may start the year with great intentions for forging ahead in the most positive way possible, come mid-February we are often faced with the shocking reality that staying healthy, happy and successful is hard work. So what do we do when we start to feel the momentum and excitement of those “new” resolutions fade? What can we do to reinvigorate our commitment and make sure we stay on course for the year? Below are some simple strategies for ensuring that this year’s resolutions don’t turn into next year’s anxiety.

1. Make a plan. Break it down. What are the top five things you need to do in order to keep your resolutions rolling? What adjustments, both long-term and short-term, will need to be made in order to achieve your goal(s)?
2. Stop punishing yourself for “bad” behavior. If you get off track don’t waste time wallowing in your own vomit. Keep the self flagellations to a minimum and simply get back on track! Guilt and shame can be short term motivators but ultimately serve only to reinforce what we already know about ourselves.
3. Make the time. This is one of the biggest road blocks to success. You have to carve out the time you need to work on yourself. This should be a no-brainer given that you are your greatest resource.
4. Don’t try to save the world tomorrow. Pick realistic manageable goals that can be achieved over the short and long-term. Picking impossible goals can be a great excuse to fail. Multiple smaller successes can be just as powerful as one large achievement.
5. Motivation, motivation, motivation. Write it down. Talk about it to your friends, partner, family. Motivation keeps us clear and honest during those murky times when that extra piece of chocolate cake is calling or when we think we are just too busy to make it to class. Motivation is not static so what motivates you today may be different next week or next month. Be prepared to adapt your motivation to suit changes in your lifestyle and attitude over the course of the year. Motivation keeps our commitments fresh and invigorating!
Now then, go out there and conquer the world! Happy New Year!

 

There is within each breath a simultaneous fear of both flying and falling. Experiencing the freedom of one requires the fortitude of the other. The battle rages and the feather floats.