Maybe it’s not just a mouse

Habits . . . they’re everywhere.  Even without realizing it we create habits for the way we do most repetitive tasks.  Sometimes that’s good.  Habits can make us more efficient, less likely to make a mistake.  Other times habits are there even though we don’t realize it – and can keep us from growing and experiencing new things.

It all started with a mouse . . . a computer mouse.  I teach yoga in the studio about once or twice a week.  When students arrive I check them in at the computer and process any purchases they may wish to make.  The studio computer does not have a mouse.  (And here’s where I am likely showing my age!)  Everyone else at the studio uses the touchpad.  I can use a touchpad, but I’m pretty inefficient.  So I started bringing a spare mouse with me to the studio.  Who doesn’t travel with a mouse tucked into their yoga bag?  I use the mouse whenever I teach and then put it back in my bag.  Then one evening I left the mouse at the studio.  My secret was out!  And it prompted the question . . . do I really need to use the mouse?   The mouse is a habit.  Instead of spending a little time becoming more efficient with the touchpad I did the work around – bringing a mouse to the studio to support my mouse habit.  Will I always need to travel with a mouse?  That seems crazy!

Lots of habits are good . . . putting on your seatbelt before you drive, drinking lots of water, eating healthy food, regularly putting money away for a rainy day, brushing your teeth.  These are all easy to recognize as good habits.  Other habits are bad . . . smoking, eating too much fast food, texting and driving.  Those are clearly bad habits.  Good habits generally keep us safe and healthy and can open us up to more good experiences.  Bad habits can bring on bad things (i.e. smoking and lung cancer) or keep us stuck in place. 

Many habits we develop may not really fall into the bad category . . . but they may still get in the way of learning new things and having new experiences.  Always go to a one hour hot yoga class?  That can be a habit that’s getting in your way.  Maybe you tell yourself you go to the one hour because you can’t do the 90 minute class.  That keeps you stuck and limits the classes you can attend.  Perhaps break the habit – try the 1 ½ hour class.  Once in the class you can choose how you practice – you can still choose to do only one of each posture, standing in mountain or sitting during the second set.  Feel cooked an hour into class – just lie down on your mat and enjoy some extra savasana time.  Letting go of the one hour “habit” can help you see new options.

New experiences can open us up to all sorts of opportunities – help us feel powerful, refreshed, out of the old “grind”.  It’s also good for our brains – creating new pathways, helping us see things differently.  That mouse . . . it may not be bad but I’m pretty sure it’s not a good habit.  And breaking that habit certainly isn’t on the list of things that are hard to do . . . it’s not like trying to understand organic chemistry, running a marathon or figuring out how to download pictures from iCloud . . . those are all really hard!  I’ll just spend a little time here and there using the touch pad and leaving the mouse at home.  Not only will I no longer need to travel with a mouse, it may well help me see some other habits that are getting in the way of new experiences.  Hope you’ll find a habit to break too!

Jen took her first yoga class at a London YMCA in 1984 – and loved it.  That was over 30 years ago and she’s been practicing ever since.  A long distance runner and triathlete, Jen credits yoga with keeping her body healthy and injury free.  Yoga was the calming influence in her life when running her own business and raising 3 children.

Jen has her 200 hour teaching certification and enjoys sharing her love of hot yoga with her students.  She believes incorporating yoga into every day is key – postures, breathing or meditation – just take a little time for yoga every day to reap timeless rewards.  Jen loves the outdoors - hiking, biking, camping, traveling – always taking her yoga with her.

Just Be Still.

On a recent overnight camping trip I decided to get up early to ensure I could watch the sunrise.  It’s not something I do often, yet I’m always glad when I do.  I was actually up before the alarm, made a cup of coffee and went outside to wait.  There was a hint of purple in the east, it would be a while.  I sat quietly and just observed.  Osprey called to each other.  Mullet jumped out of the water and landed with a splash.  Water bugs raced around on top of the water and small fish swam around looking for breakfast.  There was a slight breeze making the leaves rustle quietly.  It was very, very peaceful.  And I realized I need to spend more time practicing what I preach in class . . . just being still.

In yoga class you’ll frequently hear the instructor encouraging stillness.  In the hot 26 we practice stillness for a few seconds between standing postures and lying still in savasana during the floor postures.  It can be difficult to do both of these things.  As you’ve likely heard, savasana is often considered the most difficult of all the postures.  To just lie completely still . . . easier said than done. 

Stillness is often in short supply as we move from one activity to the next, one responsibility to the next.  And when we do have time to be still we often fill it with activities like watching TV, reading, listening to music.  And all of these are wonderful ways to relax and enjoy some down time.  But they are not stillness.  Few of us can admit to participating in much complete stillness except when asleep.

Yet stillness fulfills us in a way that nothing else does.

Try it.  Take 10 minutes to start with.  Sit down, be still, let go of everything else.  It can be pretty darned challenging at first.  Just be still and observe.  If you’re outside you can notice the breeze on your legs, birds chirping, different shades of brown and green in a tree, a cloud.  Observe your heart beating, slowing down, your breathing becoming slow and deep, your shoulders relaxing.   If you’re inside perhaps observe the color of the light coming in the window, the pattern of a rug.  Let your eyes linger.  Just observe – don’t analyze or make lists.  If those things start to happen just bring yourself back to observation.  You may start to notice your mind becomes calmer, relieved of its multitasking.

The first few times you do this it may be difficult, it may be very hard to sit still, your mind continuing to race with all the busyness of life.  But hang in there – the reward is worth the effort.  With practice you may find it’s sort of like a mini vacation that you can schedule every day.  You don’t have to be in a special place, you can even be sitting in your car in a parking lot.  Keep at it, take time every day, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, you’ll figure out what works best for you.  They say it takes two weeks to create a new habit, so do it every day for two weeks.  See what happens.  In that stillness you will find what you need. 

Jen took her first yoga class at a London YMCA in 1984 – and loved it.  That was over 30 years ago and she’s been practicing ever since.  A long distance runner and triathlete, Jen credits yoga with keeping her body healthy and injury free.  Yoga was the calming influence in her life when running her own business and raising 3 children.

Jen has her 200 hour teaching certification and enjoys sharing her love of hot yoga with her students.  She believes incorporating yoga into everyday is key – postures, breathing or meditation – just take a little time for yoga every day to reap timeless rewards.  Jen loves the outdoors - hiking, biking, camping, traveling – always taking her yoga with her.

Your New Favorite!

You’ll hear us teachers saying that to you before and during most Hot 26 classes.  It is good advice – and listening to your body during class is the best way to determine when to push yourself and when that’s really not what your body needs.

There’s also listening to your body before and after class.  When something hurts, we usually listen – and that’s often because we weren’t listening before!  Our body has to get our attention with pain – and it usually works.  But when there isn’t pain, we tend to not even think about our bodies.  I know I take mine for granted most of the time – just assuming that I’m going to be able to do all the stuff I want to when I want to.  Then I do something I shouldn’t have and my body has to remind me to take better care of it.

In the Hot 26 practice, we have 26 postures and two breathing exercises.  After practicing for a while and becoming more familiar with the postures, we decide we prefer to do some postures over others and they become our favorites.  It’s not unique to yoga, we develop favorites with most everything we do repeatedly.  We have favorite songs, favorite chairs, favorite foods, favorite everything!  But we don’t often think about why they are our favorites.  With a chair it’s usually pretty obvious – it’s the most comfortable.  But with a song it could be many things – the things it reminds us of, the way it makes us feel, perhaps the way it helps us dream about the future.

A favorite yoga posture can be a favorite for many reasons.  It usually has to do with a result that we see immediately.  We often pick postures based on how well we can do them – it makes us feel good because we can regularly count on being able to do that particular posture with relative competency when we are in class. 

A posture can also become a favorite because of the way it makes us feel during the posture.  Many people love hands-to-feet pose—that first deep forward bend after half moon pose can feel so good because it helps stretch out the back and is generally the first deep forward bend of one’s day.  Ahhh.

Perhaps you have a favorite because of the way it makes you feel immediately after the posture.  A posture many people have in this category is fixed firm pose – the first posture after the spine strengthening series – when you sit down on your heels, separate your heels and then work on sinking your hips to the mat (eventually for some going all the way back).  This can be uncomfortable when you’re in it but as soon as you lie down in savasana there’s usually a big “ahhh” feeling as you release all that tension and blood flows back to your lower legs.  Immediate gratification is often the reason we categorize a posture as a favorite.

If you take that “listening to your body” further, you may find you develop favorite postures for the way they make you feel a day or so later.  For me, this type of favorite posture is locust pose – part of the spine strengthening series - where you are on your belly, sliding your straight arms underneath you, and lifting your legs separately and then together off the floor.  I do NOT like it during the posture.  I remember taking my first Hot 26 class and thinking “are you crazy, you want me to do what!?”  I’m breathing hard, my whole face is pressed into the mat (making breathing even harder) and usually it seems like the posture will never end.  In fact as I write this, I realize I normally have that same reaction during class even now.

In class, we instructors are usually talking about the benefits to your spine, and especially your cervical spine during this particular posture.  And those benefits are huge and well worth the extreme effort (and sometimes discomfort) of that posture.  But the biggest “after” benefit for me is the work it does on my elbows.  I don’t have a formal diagnosis but it’s either arthritis or “mouse elbow” that can flare up for me – pain in the elbows probably due to a lifetime of typing and “mouse-ing” and, in more recent years, using a smart phone.  All those tiny, repeated motor skill movements can do a number on fingers, wrists, and elbows. 

During locust pose, we put pressure on our arms as we lift each leg up separately and then both legs together.  That compression blocks off the blood flow to your lower arms during the posture and as you release the posture, blood flows back in, flushing out the joints – and for me relieving and preventing the pain that can flare up in my elbows.  As long as I do locust pose several times a week, I’m good to go.  If I take a week off – perhaps when traveling for work or vacation – I know it.  My elbows hurt.  So I make sure I do locust pose several times a week – often just on the living room floor in whatever clothes I happen to have on.  I may not do any other posture – but just 30 seconds of locust means I don’t even have to think about elbow pain.

All of the postures do wonderful things – far more than we can usually tell you about during class. It’s all good stuff.  But I’ll bet there are one or for you that really “hit the spot” just like locust pose does for me.  If you don’t know what they are, think about it.  Before your next class, really listen to your body—pay attention to the parts that perhaps just don’t feel right, maybe even write them down.  During class, focus on listening to your body respond to the postures – particularly to parts of your body we teachers don’t specifically mention during a posture.  Then after class, later that day (and even the next day!) continue to listen.  See what parts of your body feel differently than before class – look at the list you made before class.   It may take a while.  I know I didn’t figure out the magic about locust pose for over six months.  I knew my elbows were feeling better, but didn’t really think about why.  I knew it had to be the Hot 26 postures – because adding them to my life coincided with the happy elbows.  But I sure didn’t think it was that crazy posture I really didn’t like.  But then one day as I was doing a better job of listening to my body, I figured it out.

Give it a try! See if you can find a magic posture by listening to your body before, during, and after class.  You may be surprised by the posture that is creating the magic for you.  And when you find it, do that posture often, perhaps even every day.  What may have been a trouble spot for you in the past may just disappear.  I still don’t much like locust posture when I’m struggling to maintain it, but it sure is magic afterwards.

Jen took her first yoga class at a London YMCA in 1984 – and loved it.  That was over 30 years ago and she’s been practicing ever since.  A long distance runner and triathlete, Jen credits yoga with keeping her body healthy and injury free.  Yoga was the calming influence in her life when running her own business and raising 3 children.

Jen has her 200 hour teaching certification and enjoys sharing her love of hot yoga with her students.  She believes incorporating yoga into every day is key – postures, breathing or meditation – just take a little time for yoga every day to reap timeless rewards.  Jen loves the outdoors - hiking, biking, camping, traveling – always taking her yoga with her.

Don't forget to breathe.

Breathe. It’s something you’ll hear the teacher say in pretty much every yoga class you take, usually over and over again. Sometimes with instruction on how to breathe, other times a reminder to not hold the breath in postures. As a hot 26 yoga teacher I probably say “breathe” at least 40-50 times during the 90 minute class. We start the class with a breathing exercise, end with a breathing exercise and focus on breathing throughout the class. And usually when we are students we listen – after all that’s why we’re there. So we breathe in yoga class.

But later that day, or the next day, at home, work, do we think about breathing? Do we pay attention to how we breathe, how often, how deeply? Generally . . . absolutely not. Our bodies breathe automatically – so we don’t need to think about it. There are so many other important things to think about.

And yet breathing is the most essential part of our existence – we need it more than anything else in life. If we don’t breathe for even a few minutes, that’s it for us, game over. We can do without water for hours to days, food for weeks, shelter for a while. But breathing? It’s essential every minute of every day.

And yet our attention is generally elsewhere. We often pay a lot of attention to what we eat, when we eat it, how we eat it, where we eat it. We can be very conscious of exercising our bodies – planning how to exercise, when, where, with whom. We frequently pay a lot of attention to how much work we have to do – and ways to de-stress from all the things on our plate – looking for ways to be more efficient and ways to spend our free time that will help us relax.

So breathing? It takes a back seat, it happens automatically, it doesn’t need our attention. Or does it?

Try this, right now, wherever you are: sit or stand up straight, shoulders stacked over your hips, relax your shoulders down. Breathe in through your nose slowly for six seconds, fill your lungs completely. Hold for a second or two. Then exhale slowly through your nose for six seconds.

Did you feel it? Did you feel your body’s response? Often it’s a feeling of relaxation, a calming feeling, perhaps a feeling of well-being. Try it again, several times. Often when we are in “auto” mode our breath is pretty shallow – using just the upper part of our lungs. When we are stressed it often becomes even more shallow – sending less and less oxygen to our bodies and to our brain (our brain loves lots of oxygen) – and that intensifies that feeling of stress. Long, slow deep breathing can immediately help bring calm to any situation – calming our bodies, calming our minds, helping us gain perspective.

So keep it in your back pocket and bring it out often – your breath is always there for you, no one knows you’re doing it (much easier than jumping into camel posture during a board meeting), it costs nothing and it works. Stuck in traffic, try it. Running late for a meeting? Breathe. Relaxing at home? Breathe. Long and slow and deep.

Jen took her first yoga class at a London YMCA in 1984 – and loved it.  That was over 30 years ago and she’s been practicing ever since.  A long distance runner and triathlete, Jen credits yoga with keeping her body healthy and injury free.  Yoga was the calming influence in her life when running her own business and raising 3 children.

Jen has her 200 hour teaching certification and enjoys sharing her love of hot yoga with her students.  She believes incorporating yoga into every day is key – postures, breathing or meditation – just take a little time for yoga every day to reap timeless rewards.  Jen loves the outdoors - hiking, biking, camping, traveling – always taking her yoga with her.

Bodywork at Gaze

When people ask me what I do for a living, they see my man bun and long beard, and are fully expecting me to say yoga teacher. When the next thing on the list is "body worker" most folks think automotive body work. So of course I end up letting go of my pretensiousness to tell them I'm a licensed massage therapist.

The reason I don't always say massage therapist, is because that causes folks to assume that they will need to get undressed. I don't do that.

I use a combination of therapies that are meant to remove obstacles from the body systems, and stimulate your body's own ability to heal itself.

Thai massage is an ancient practice of manipulating energy channels called Sen, using rhythmic compression, movement of joints, and deep stretching. When the flow of energy is free of restrictions the body can heal.  The client remains clothed for the entire session.

Craniosacral therapy is a collection of very light touch maneuvers meant to remove restrictions in the tissues and fluid that surround your brain and spinal cord.  When the craniosacral system is free of restrictions the body can resume its natural ability to heal. The client remains clothed for the entire session.

I am so glad to be offering these therapies at Gaze. They are a great compliment to a regular yoga practice, and another way for me to do my favorite thing; chit chat with people about their bodies and empower them to take charge of their health.

Appointments available online here and in person at the studio.

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Wesley Bozeman, LMT (MA58298) was Nationally Certified in Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork in 2009 and is a Florida Licensed Massage Therapist.  He began his massage practice after the birth of his daughter, when substandard maternity care cast a light on the value of bodily knowledge and wellness for his whole family.  He received his preliminary massage training from D.G. Erwin Technical Center in Tampa, FL.  Wes has studied Pregnancy Massage with Kate Jordan, and is certified in Bodywork for the Childbearing Year.  He has also studied Craniosacral Therapy at the Upledger Institute, Reflexology with Dwight Byers, and Thai massage with Jongrak Intatha. He also owns  Gaze Hot Yoga in Tampa Heights where he teaches hot yoga. Wes’ only goal for his practice is to empower his clients to be aware of their bodies, and facilitate healing

Don't sweat the sweat.

Hot yoga.  Hot yoga in the summer.  Hot yoga in the summer in Florida.  Which of these phrases is most likely to make you think twice before you head to class?  Maybe all of them.  And yes, the last one in particular may seem a little counter intuitive sometimes.  It can easily feel just as hot and humid outside as it does in the studio in Florida in the summer. 

The first summer I practiced Hot 26 on a regular basis I had those same thoughts.  Do I really want to go to a hot room and sweat for an hour or so during class when it’s so hot outside that I work up a sweat just making my way to the car in the morning?  Some days I really struggled to make the decision to go to class, and some days I definitely talked myself out of going to class with the “it’s hot” excuse.

But then I looked at it a bit more closely.  Was fear of sweat my excuse?  It couldn’t be! I’m one of those people who sweats buckets.  I’ve been a long distance runner since high school and most of that time I’ve lived in Florida.  My body learned it needs to start sweating early and keep sweating – because it never knows if I’m going to stop after 20 minutes or after 4 hours.  Sweating is our natural cooling system - and I’ve been happy that my cooling system works so efficiently – if it didn’t I wouldn’t able to participate in many of the activities I love.

Puddle around the mat at the end of class?  Yeah, that’s me.  Sometimes it seems like I must be the only one in class who’s sweating so much – and indeed every once in a while I am.  Early on one of my yoga teachers challenged us to stop wiping away the sweat during class, to just ignore it, let it flow.  It’s there for a reason – to help cool your body.  If you wipe it away your body has to work to create more cooling sweat.  You won’t win this race!  And wiping sweat is a distraction, it means you either miss those precious few seconds of stillness between postures, or it means you’re missing part of the posture itself to pause and wipe sweat.  I accepted the challenge and gradually, with attention to sweat every practice for several weeks I stopped wiping sweat away.  Sometimes we look for distractions in class – anything to take our mind off the hard work and focus required.  When I stopped wiping sweat I became less distracted, found more stillness during class, which also helped still my mind.  Now I just stand there and let the sweat drip – it’s a visible sign that I am working hard, that my body is strong and powerful, that I am able to do this practice.

So no, it wasn’t fear of sweat that was stopping me from going to Hot 26 in the summer.

Does life get sort of crazy in the summer?  It definitely can.  Often summer is a time of change.  If you have kids they are usually out of school – and that is a BIG change.  Depending on their age it can mean a lot of organizing activities, juggling your own schedule with theirs, trying to make sure they have things to do to stay out of trouble, a lot of stress.  When my kids were that age I would love it when school ended in June (no more tight school schedule, no homework to supervise, no last minute projects, no packing lunch every night) and I would love it equally, maybe even more, when school started up again in August and our schedule returned to normal.

With or without kids, summer can often include a vacation, or friends and family coming to visit (especially if you live in Florida!).  At work the load is often affected by colleagues taking vacations at different times.  And of course there can also be the occasional tropical storm or hurricane that comes along to throw things into disarray (if we’re lucky that’s all it does).  We humans are creatures of habit and when our normal routine is disrupted it can be stressful.  Summer often includes disruption to our routines.

Was it “summer disruption” that was stopping me from going to class?  Sure, summer was busy, the schedule was different.  But it was still just life.  Changes to one’s schedule always happen at every time of the year.  The kids may not be out of school but they can get sick anytime and require a juggled schedule.  Friends and family come to visit – often at holidays, when things can get really crazy.  And colleagues go out of town or big projects come along to change the load at work.

So I went to class.

I discovered that maintaining my hot yoga practice in the summer was vital!  Some days it seemed I needed it more in the summer than at any other time during the year.  And my excuses?  It’s too hot, my schedule is crazy – what about those?  They were just that, excuses.  They were small items that I allowed to become big – I gave them the power to keep me from doing something amazing for my body and my mind.  Yep, it was hot – and I was going to sweat, a lot.  Was my schedule disrupted – yes, it was.  But I was in control of whether I decided to interpret that as “crazy” or just as “different.”

Did yoga help me see these things?  It did.  When I stopped finding excuses and just went to class I saw all sorts of amazing things.  Attending hot classes in the summer helped bring stability to my disrupted schedule.  That hour and a half was time just for me – time when no one could ask me questions, demand my attention, and interrupt me.  Afterwards I was able to handle the disruptions, interruptions and demands of summer more calmly.

Attending hot classes in the summer also generated a productive sweat – a sweat born of focus, determination, concentration and muscles working hard.  This was not the mindless sweat of walking out to get the mail in the summer – this was the sweat of tensions and frustrations being left behind, literally dripping out of me, if only for an hour or so – leaving calm in its wake.

Hot 26 in the summer, in Florida.  Absolutely.

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Jen took her first yoga class at a London YMCA in 1984 – and loved it.  That was over 30 years ago and she’s been practicing ever since.  A long distance runner and triathlete, Jen credits yoga with keeping her body healthy and injury free.  Yoga was the calming influence in her life when running her own business and raising 3 children.

Jen has her 200 hour teaching certification and enjoys sharing her love of hot yoga with her students.  She believes incorporating yoga into every day is key – postures, breathing or meditation – just take a little time for yoga every day to reap timeless rewards.  Jen loves the outdoors - hiking, biking, camping, traveling – always taking her yoga with her.

We're here for you.

Hot yoga sounds intimidating. Heck, yoga sounds intimidating. It isn't always well understood that hot yoga refers to a particular kind of yoga specifically designed for beginners.  While it is practiced in a heated room,  the series of positions that are used, help to systematically bring fresh blood to every cell, in every corner of the body.  YOU CAN DO IT! AND, you will never be asked to stand on your head, or put any pressure or weight on your hands and wrists. You have a spot waiting for you here. Everyone does.