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Creatures of New Habits

Play reaches the habits most needed for intellectual growth.
-Bruno Bettelheim

Can you become a creature of new habits? That's the title of an article that describes the principles and successful methods of two executive change consultants. They believe that by consciously developing new habits we become more inherently creative. What I like about their theory is the possibility of non-productive habits being lapped by the new. Once again, we're focused on what we want, not on what we don't want.

After a discussion on habits during Saturday's yoga class, a group of us decided to embark on a 21 Day habit-forming "test". Three people want to form a more regular yoga and/or meditation practice (I hope my presence didn't skew those decisions), one wants a daily morning walk with her new dog, and I want to write weekly and daily scripts for my life.

Some behavior experts believe it only takes 14 days to rewire your brain, others hold to a more conservative 21. We'll see what our own "research team" concludes. I've been discovering that my good intentions work like a bright moon and they draw forth waves of other like actions. I can't wait to see what develops for my friends. One new habit could cause a tidal wave of change.

Photo:jeridaking

Read "Can You Become a Creature of New Habits"...

Writing My Own Script

If it's a good script I'll do it. And if it's a bad script, and they pay me enough, I'll do it. -George Burns

It's May 5th, Boy's Day, Cinco de Mayo and time for yet another Groundhog Day Resolutions check-in. It's been an absolutely fluid month with the days going by quickly but fitting together quite well.

I wrote about a stunning video of a woman describing her stroke and it prompted me to read her book, "My Stroke of Insight". The author, Jill Bolte Taylor, begins chapter eighteen by saying, "My good friend Dr. Jerry Jesseph lives his life by the philosophy 'Peacefulness should be the place we begin rather than the place we try to achieve.' "

That was also the consistent message in last weekend's workshop with Jehangir Palkhivala. When anyone found a pose to be too much of a challenge, he offered: Modify your poses. Always do it with joy and peace rather than with weakness and incapacity. Get better with peace and joy and get better without aggression. When you finally get it, you will do it gracefully.

Do you know what has to happen before you can even comprehend those instructions? You have to stop grunting and groaning with effort in order to even hear his words. Then you have to trust that your body will respond, eventually, without being forced.

I now find myself at another fork in the road. One sign says, "This Way to Contentment" and the other says, "Come This Way with Contentment". Easy pick, you say? I think I got a glimpse of the trail map though. The first path meanders endlessly with no other choices to be made. I just lower my head and go. The second path however, presents a daily (sometimes hourly) choice: "This Way to Contentment" or "This Way with Contentment".

There's no right or wrong passage and I am free to change course at any time. My joyful wait has allowed me the time to recognize and choose my connecting passage. So this month, I want to write my own script, chart my course and move with peace and joy. I want to enjoy the trip as much as the arrival.

Photo:Stephen B. Franco

The Joyful Wait

One must pass through the circumference of time before arriving at the center of opportunity.
-Baltasar Gracian

I have just come through a three day workshop with Jehangir Palkhivala and because it was not my first, the trip was comfortable and everything I imagined it would be. Parts of the journey went through familiar terrain and parts of it caught me off balance, but I expected it.

Now I sit, waiting for the connecting lines. There will be physical changes as I practice new postures and learn to move with variance into the old. There will be days when my body will surprise me with a range of motion that was once inconceivable.

It may take a year or two before I'm able to gracefully sit with one leg behind my head and the other held straight. How much more generous a future is that for growing older? I expect, and welcome that progression.

What excites me even more is that the connecting lines will take me into regions that I've not yet explored. I'll read through the notes taken during the workshop or relay parts of the experience in my classes and one day find that I've actually altered my perception of what's now mundane. I'll recall a statement Jehangir might have made and the sound of his voice will stimulate a brand new response in me.

But for now, I sit, waiting for the connecting lines. The greatest gift my teacher may have given me this time, might just be this joyful wait.

Photo: Massic

Graceful Moves

A graceful and honorable old age is the childhood of immortality. -Pindar

I will often say in class, "Come out of the pose as gracefully as you went into it". This is a reminder that all of the actions leading into, holding and coming out of a pose, are parts of the pose. Yoga suggests that we seek fluid intentions rather than halting decisions.

I think I've mentioned before that it was a vision of myself as an eighty-year old woman doing a headstand in the middle of a room, that took me to my first yoga class. I decided that I wanted a pliant spine to support me as I aged. I didn't think about the possibility of failing or falling or how long it would take me (although I did wonder what I would be wearing).

That simple whimsical wish, changed the course of my life. I can now do a headstand and I still have some time before my 80th birthday. Every year, I see improvements rather than decline. Of course my point of interest may be different from the norm, but it serves me.

The little girl in the photo perfectly illustrates what I have learned: I can worry about something or make a choice and go with it. Hopefully with the same glee she shows. Every choice will more than likely sprout another but I'll already be headed in the right direction. It's all a part of the pose.

What I now want to be able to do, is to go out of this life as gracefully as I came into it. It's a choice that could change the rest of my life.

Photo: -RR-

Memory, a relative to truth.

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

Just before we did the three seated poses in the Mother Sequence this past Tuesday, I was inspired to ask, "Of course you're all accessing feelings of joy while inhaling, aren't you?" I tallied the smiles and smirks as I moved into the poses myself.

This is the one class in which I participate in every pose and offer little or no corrections, aside for the blaring safety issues. When I twisted into the pose, Matsyangasana, a thought popped into my head: "So....if I have the choice to feel happy in the present moment, why can't I do the same about something that happened in the past?"

In the next few breaths (out of the requisite twelve) I ran through scenes from the past few years and literally edited them. I changed the sound bytes for the stored mental videos and altered accusations into accreditations, given and received. I felt better about myself and all of the other characters in my scenes.

Call me psychotic for not facing reality but what good does memory serve if it doesn't enhance your present or your future? Besides, even short-term stress has been found to impair memory and learning so you may not even have a firm grasp of the details of that displeasing event anyway.

After class, I found an e-mail message with a thoroughly fascinating video of Jill Bolte Taylor, described best by TED:

One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor's brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness ... Amazed to find herself alive, Taylor spent eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk. She has become a spokesperson for stroke recovery and for the possibility of coming back from brain injury stronger than before. In her case, although the stroke damaged the left side of her brain, her recovery unleashed a torrent of creative energy from her right. From her home base in Indiana, she now travels the country on behalf of the Harvard Brain Bank as the "Singin' Scientist." Watch the video (18:00)

By the end of the eighteen minute presentation, I felt as though I had reviewed and understood my entire life, thoughts and actions: it's been a constant foray between the left and right sides of my brain. Yoga, particularly the Mother Sequence with it's focus of blending movement, breath and emotions, has taught me how to waltz between the hemispheres. I think, the next sequence will teach me how to tango.

Original Photo: Jerrie Stafford

Jehangir Palkhivala, creator of the Mother Sequence, at Kona Yoga: April 25-27.

Bounce Bebe at Kona Yoga

Kona Yoga is happy to announce that Perry "P.K." Longno, who's a certified personal trainer (NASM) and certified in Group Fitness (AFAA), recently created an instructional video for her Bounce Bebe workout.  Perry and her son Cruz, lead other moms and babies through the workout at our studio on Fridays at 11am.

It's a great way for new moms to get back in shape under the guidance of a trained fitness professional with their babies right there with them.

The DVDs are on sale for $19.95 at Kona Yoga and through the Bounce Bebe website. P.K. just can't stop the creative process...thank goodness!

Josh Skaller for City Council

In yesterday's Kona Yoga Newsletter, I asked, "Who Is This Man?" and promised to give an answer today. Those who didn't want to wait could click the photo for an answer and the number was.....record-breaking.

The man is Josh Skaller, running for a seat on the New York City Council (39th district in Brooklyn) in 2009. So why do I, living in the District of Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii, care? Because I know Josh Skaller.

Josh and my brother Jason Uechi, have been friends since college and Josh was Jason's best man at his wedding. Family in Kona traveled to Massachusetts for the wedding.  Then Jason and his wife Heidi, along with Josh and his wife Kelly, came back to Hawaii for a local wedding reception. Both couples now each have a son.

Sounds quick and simple, but years have passed and lives have been enriched. Jason and Heidi left Brooklyn a few years ago and just bought a home in New Jersey but Jason's convinced that Josh is the "Best Man" for the job.

When you're new to the game and your campaign war chest is filled with more conviction and enthusiasm than money, your face beams with that energy. If clicks on a website counted as votes, you're well on your way, Josh! You may be the only candidate in the race for NYC City Council with a campaign office in Hawaii! IMUA!

Plastics in Our Ocean

The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery - not over nature but of ourselves.-Rachel Carson

Gloria Cohen, editor of Edible Hawaiian Islands, included a link at the very end of her recent newsletter that has been haunting me for the past few days. There's a massive, plastic garbage heap floating out in the North Pacific Ocean! I've heard mention of styrofoam cups and plates floating out in the Pacific and lawn chairs and coolers washed up on deserted beaches, but this is truly bizarre.

When Charles Moore, the American oceanographer credited with discovering this "ocean fill", wrote an article for Natural History Magazine in 2003, the estimated area was the size of Texas. This February, one of Moore's colleagues stated in another article that the plastic soup has grown to twice the size of the continental United States!

Maybe it's not yet considered critical mass because it exists in an area not frequented by sailors or fishermen. The North Pacific gyre is a vortex where the ocean circulates slowly because of little wind and extreme high pressure systems. However, it appears to be growing at an alarming rate and the researchers believe that all the plastic that has ever been produced, still exists. (Even that white vinyl skirt I wore in high school?)

I thought I was making strides by getting rid of my plastic storage bowls (replaced them with glass) and taking my own reusable shopping bags to the store with me, but a look through my kitchen reveals a horde of food items wrapped in plastic. The truck I drive is full of it, inside and out. I have CD cases and stuff from COSTCO encased in plastic that I can't get into without a hacksaw.

Maybe this is all part of a plan. We're building another continent with our plastic trash so there will be land for all of the people who will be living past 150. A sense of humor hopefully precedes a sense of urgency.

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When you have a few minutes, watch Balance (07:23), it won the Oscar for Best Animated Short in 1990. Let me know where you think we now are in the continuum.

Also watch a preview of Synthetic Sea by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. Charles Moore is the founder.

Kamilo Beach is a Big Island beach near South Point that's coated with trash from the sea.

Photo: sponsible.org

Groundhog Day Resolutions Check-in, 4/4

  It's time for a Groundhog Day Resolutions check-in and the shadow says, "Peace!" On March 3, I thought that the coming month would be all about order and organization. Well, not so. My compromised lungs were the order of the day.

I allowed some virus to move in and had a hacking cough for a couple of weeks which pulled my yoga mat out from under me! I managed to teach all of my classes because I didn't actually feel sick (accept for the day I broke down and drank some narcotic-laced-cough-syrup), I just hacked.

Just as I'm recovering from bronchitis, the air quality takes a dive from the volcanic ash and fumes. The good news is, I'm determined to make my once weakest organ into my strong suit so I've been focusing on the practice of pranayama, in and out of class. Lately, I've been breathing much deeper and slower, particularly while doing the Sun Salutes. Moving in and out of the poses slowly, I'm building more strength, power and focus.

That said, I'm not going to make any predictions for the next month of practice. It will be, what it will be: peace.

Photo: SkeletonPie

Make It Easy on Yourself

Here are just a few suggestions to start clearing the air around you. We can start with what we have control over, our homes.

1. Survey Your Indoor Air Quality - at home.

2. Green Basics: Indoor Air Pollution.

3. Consider the food you eat and possible allergans.

4. Say "NO" to stress. Aside from physical stress, such as those mentioned above, emotional stress is toxic too.

5. Finally, from Abraham-Hicks: "DEEP BREATHING IS A BIG PART OF YOUR WELL-BEING, It is the current that carries the vitality to the cells. And so, the more you are breathing, the more you are thriving. Fortunately, it’s not left to your conscious mind to prompt you to breathe. It just happens. But you can prompt yourself to breathe more."

Cartoon: Savage Chickens