Obstacles to practice

ByAaron Fleming March 13, 2015

All practitioners, either seasoned or just starting out, are well aware of the many things that get in the way of a regular and consistent practice. Patanjali outlines 9 obstacles to practicing. They are:

Vyadhi: disease
styana: lack of interest / mental laziness
samsaya: doubt
pramada: carelessness
alasya: idleness
avirati: sense gratification / over indulgence
bhrantidarsana: living under mistaken notions
alabdhabhumikatva: missing the point
anavasthitatvani: backsliding

Who cares about interruptions. Practice anyway!

ByAaron Fleming June 25, 2019June 25, 2019

Last week I was practicing at home and settling in for Savasana (usually the last pose where you lay down and just try to be still and quiet). My two year old, who had been mostly playing quietly in the room with me, comes over and begins stroking my eye lids and lips with her…

Post convention and still aglow

ByAaron Fleming April 23, 2019April 23, 2019

It’s been five days since I returned from the national Iyengar Yoga convention and I am still aglow. I have never attended a convention mega class so I didn’t know what to expect. I figured there could be a lot of sitting and listening to lectures–boy was I wrong! We were up and down, moving…

When to take a break from practicing

ByAaron Fleming July 2, 2019July 2, 2019

I am always so grateful when a holiday arrives. I am glad to have a break from the usual schedule and spend time with my family. To “sleep in” (there’s no sleeping in at my house), to not rush to a meeting, to take a slower pace. My body and brain need a break from…

Getting started

ByAaron Fleming April 24, 2015

In the 2nd chapter of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Patanjali states that in order to get started in your practice one should follow the path of Kriya Yoga. Kriya Yoga is the yoga of action and is comprised of three parts: Tapas (burning zeal / excitement), Svadhyaya (self-study) and Isvara Pranidhana (surrender of the…

Yoga as Therapy

ByAaron Fleming May 18, 2017June 7, 2017

The practice of Iyengar Yoga is diverse; there is a wide variety of approaches within the method itself. This variety in approaches is important because people are varied. People within the same age group are varied compared to each other — for instance, some people are fit and some are not. And a person will…

Grow your own relationship with yoga

ByAaron Fleming July 23, 2019

Can you grow a relationship with yoga? Many people don’t think of yoga as something you can actually learn. That is probably because a lot of what we see in advertising makes us think that yoga is an exercise for people who are already flexible and some how intuitively already know what they are doing….

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