I hope you are all getting into the holiday season spirit and also hope that you are staying warm. There is something in the air at the end of the year. It is something that I could recognize even as a kid. The strength of love in many of its forms.

We focused on the strength of the legs for three weeks because the legs can take a lot. If we focus on the arms two weeks in a row I am afraid I will be the only one in class. So this week we will turn our focus to the torso and the spine. And don't worry we will come back to the arms before the end of the year :)

I hope you are all having a great Autumn. I can't believe Thanksgiving Day is just around the corner. We are going to explore strength during these last weeks of the year. Strength is something that we can't just say we have. It is experienced as we participated in our yoga practice. I think we can all agree that we are usually more aware of how much stronger we want to be. Even if this is the case we all experience some degree of strength. As we continue to regularly step into the fire of the practice, we start to develop more of the strength we want to experience. There is no way around it.

When I first started practicing the yoga poses I thought that there were more advanced teachings beyond the fundamental principles that I was taught. As I continued to practice I realized something that my teachers had been telling me all along. It does not matter how advance (read contorted lol) a pose is we always come back to the fundamental principles. If there is an advance teaching it would be to explore how the fundamental principles are applied and manifest in the  "advance" poses.

I hope you are all having a great Autumn. I have particularly been making the point to go for walks and be outside to enjoy the great weather we have been getting.

As I was preparing for the classes I will teach this week with the focus on the foundation of the yoga poses I came across a photograph of Mount Rainier. I used to live in Seattle and I was reminded of the  steadfast presence of  Mt Rainier which inspires both respect and awe in all who look upon it.

As I was reading one of my teacher's books called "The Yoga of Discipline". I was reminded of the three qualities that according to yoga philosophy form the basis for every thing in the universe. These qualities are called gunas which is Sanskrit for strand or fiber. There is sattva guna which is the qualities of lucidity and lightness. There is rajas guna which is the qualities of energy and passion. Finally, there is tamas  guna which is the qualities of darkness, heaviness, and inertia. Everything in the universe from the most solid to the most subtle contains a mixture of these three qualities.