Thursday, August 28, 2008
Pre-Labor Day HuffPO - You & Work - ENJOY!
Click here! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tevis-gale/for-recent-grads-and-the_b_121180.html I wanted to call this post"Life Is a Tab of Acid" in homage to Ram Dass, but the PR divinity decided those days have passed. Check it out - just in time for a long, Labor Day weekend, so please forward and comment!
Interestingly, our summons earlier this week for Labor Day reading suggestions with yogic philosophy mostly resulted in books drawing from Buddhist philosophy. This may be due to the fact that the Buddhists have been much more prolific in commenting actively on day to day challenges of life in a modern context while yoga seems to surface more as a physical practice than the operational philosophy it was designed as.
Granted, Gautama Buddha was raised Hindu so the concepts are very aligned in many ways. It all works, no pun intended, but we're doing our best to create a space for those beyond the list of usual suspects. After all, given the number of Yogis who go to work, think about work, and even coach, facilitate, consult and "guru" in organizations, and the fact that yoga is a set of practices to support us IN LIFE, where the heck are all the yogis? C'mon yogis - put your voices out there!
Here's the list we came up with - doing our best to keep it yogic, you'll see one exception.
1. The Highest Goal - Michael Ray
also
2. Creativity In Business - Michael Ray
3. The Bhaghavad Gita - you can get this online for free, just Google it. Sally Kempton suggests the Eknath Esarwan translation for language.
4. Management By Consciousness - Sri Aurobindo Society, their .org should have sources for it
5. Yoga Nidra - Swami Satyananda Saraswati. This is a GREAT way to achieve meditative clarity and reenergize in the midst of midday monkeymind.
6. Quiet Leadership - David Rock. I don't know if David Rock practices yoga, but his explanations of brain patterns using laymans terms for scientific insights are a modern explanation of the Vrittis.
7. The Office Sutras - Marcia Menter
8. Yoga For Suits - Edward Vilga. Basic stretches you probably know but always forget to do. Stay tuned as we'll be debuting the media downloads version of this under the name Digital Guru on our website balanceintegration.com next month.
9. Ten Zen Seconds - this came from my brilliant friend, writer Martha Garvey. It's written by Eric Maisel who I certified as a creativity coach with - yes, Buddhist, but with two personal connections we had to let it in the list.
10. Paths To God - Ram Dass. From a Harvard/Stanford professor who delved into psychedelics to learn about consciousness and landed solidly in the practice of yoga, this is a transcription of a course he taught one summer at Naropa Institute. Supposedly the course was on the Bhagavad Gita, but the main take away I found is the relationship between the heart and the intellect.
Always looking for more - feel free to send anytime and I'll help spread the word.
Now, how about MOVIES??? Got any movies you particularly like to raise insight into work/self? Again, send me your faves and if you get me your address, I'll send you a little blue balance stone - they rock!
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Balancing Action
Just a few minutes ago I sat down to do crank out some ideas for my blog. Let's be clear about the situation: here I am, Balance Integration founder, and after a nice weekend in the mountains with family, the sun is setting over beautiful Chelsea NYC, and at my feet is a sweet puppy I KNOW would love a walk - what am I doing? About to crank out ideas for my BLOG?????
Luckily our new branding gimmies came last week and I gotta say, these little blue glass stone balance reminders actually WORK! With a big bowl of them strategically placed by my laptop, one caught my eye and reminded me to be conscious of my choices and the actions I take and to do so in this very moment.
So damming the idea vesuvius from erupting into a molten mass of hours immersed in writing, I'm going to ask a question instead: what books do you LOVE that relate work to yoga or apply the concepts of the practice of yoga to the workplace? I have a couple in mind - so in honor of Labor Day quickly approaching I can't think of a cooler list of books to take to the 'zon or bn.com in prep for the long weekend than ones that reinforce yoga as a householder (ie. regular folks like you and me) practice and everyday ticket to blissful being.
Send me your suggestions and if you take a moment to email me your name/address, I'll send you one of these blue balance stones with a big huge karmic hug sprinkled in for good measure.
You never know - strategically placed it could just save you from a beautiful night lost in the cool glow of pixelated images.
With that, I'm OFF!
Thursday, August 21, 2008
The Belly of Balance
People always ask how we keep the good vibe going, how we manage to connect with such a broad spectrum of clients, students and workshop participants, and how we find the time to really be what we teach others. Not a secret, nothing serves the ability to connect and feel good and respect priorities quite so much as serving others.
Suann Polverari, our director of client relationships in NY shimmies the talk by teaching bellydancing to physically impaired women in her own time outside of her work with Balance...and though it is of her own choice and has nothing to do with our work in corporations, I can't think of a better portrayal of the values we strive to represent.
Rockin' the OM on NPR
Our whip smart corporate yogini and Director of Programs Sonia Wilczewski in Miami gave me the heads up on this great story that was featured on NPR.
The story explains the science of why breath and meditation techniques WORK in managing stress related dysfunctions and diseases - even for the doubters among us.
THANK YOU NPR!
Lesson from the Mat - Falling Free
A lesson from practicing yoga: when people fall or fail, they smile. Really. In seven years as a teacher, with very few exceptions the moments of greatest levity and human playfulness in practice follow those in which a difficult pose is suggested and people FAIL to accomplish them.
Forearm stand, scorpion, kundiniasana, astavakrasana, handstand without the wall, bird of paradise, vishvamitrasana, tripod headstand. Calling the names of these positions has the power to furrow brows and harden the breathing of even hearty practitioners. More timid yogins may find an urgent need for the bathroom as excuse to slip from the room and flee their knee-jerk fear response.
Here's the secret I've discovered: in attempting the impossible it is those who try but fail that convey pleasure, humility and even a sense of renewal - a sense of YOGA or union with the moment, themselves and life itself. Those who actually somewhat achieve the shape tend to emerge with fretful expressions perhaps questioning their performance, resisting the natural urge to celebrate, or worrying if they will ever get into the shape again.
That picture above of me frowning in an "okay" version of astavakrasana is a great example of joyless, critical execution, ie. asana performed as an exacting technician, devoid of the experiential fruit of the practice of yoga. In comparing the faces and energetic bearing of those who give these more challenging shapes a try and find themselves humbled by failure to those who actually come close to achieving them, there's no second guessing the instances where grace is present and where grace has been evicted by the critic. Let's face it - if we're moving through what we do totally in our heads, locked in constant analysis, chances are we're not fully present or enjoying it much.
As a lesson from the mat, this suggests that ALLOWING oneself to humbly try the "impossible" and fail (gracefully or not) is the renewing or regenerating act. That you are not done evolving or acquiring new skills allows you to be small and humble in such a way that allows for your greatness to emerge. Be radical. Know you do not and cannot possibly have all the answers. Let yourself off the hook from pretending as much. The permission you give yourself to be a student and not be perfect requires your acceptance that there is growth at hand, and invites you to consider all the wonderful possibilities growth may bring. It reorients us towards the experience of the attempt rather than the evaluation of the outcome.
Where do you need to give yourself a little freedom to fall?
Monday, August 18, 2008
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