New kid in town.

I don't even think I know how to write a blog entry any more, it's been so long. I guess I've been using all my creative juicy juice to jumpstart a new yoga studio, called, quite simply (perhaps too simply?) The New Studio. I left "yoga" out of the name because this beautiful place will soon hatch into a gallery/multi-purpose community space where all sorts of fun things will happen. Perhaps hula hooping (good for the soul). Maybe spoken word. But definitely music, meditation, and a mishmash of other marvelous ways to move...beyond tree pose.

Come check out the space at 1241 Carpenter Street on the 3rd floor. Better yet, stay for yoga. Your first class is FREE and after that its still pretty darn cheap at $10 a class. It's $9 if you buy a 10-class card. We're keeping yoga affordable for the masses, my friends.

For a while I was searching for a no-frills yoga studio with a down-home vibe, a place where people don't take themselves or yoga too seriously. I mean, it's a serious endeavor, but honestly, the yoga scene and it's accompanying accoutrement and egos can get a little ridiculous: $150 yoga pants that promise eternal samadhi ("bliss" for those not yet versed in Sanskrit speak) along with a sweat-free crotch, a $80 vegan eco-friendly 150% hemp yoga mat-- it's durable, washable, and most importantly, edible, and tasty! Comes in handy during that 90 minute vinyasa class on a Saturday morning when that bowl of Cheerios just isn't cutting it.

I was searching for a studio where people wouldn't be afraid to laugh in class or talk to each other or talk to the teacher, where egos are checked at the door and flexibility is truly optional. A place where I could hear interesting music in a yoga class, beyond bamboo flutes and Tibetan singing bowls....a place where Krishna Das ,Widespread Panic, Nina Simone and David Byrne make it on the same playlist. I couldn't find this place, so I am creating it. On cynical mornings (yoga instructors are allowed to have them, thank you very little) I stare at this magnet on my fridge: Be the change you wish to see in the world and think, ya-dah, ya-dah, Ghandi, whatever. But deep down inside I know and believe it's the only way.

So I hope you come out and play. For you yoga skeptics out there, yoga is not what you think it is. It's better. It's hard. And fun. And beautiful. (But still manly, you macho men, you). And interesting. And good for your head. And abs. And buttox. And pinky toes.

You'll meet people who will surprise you. And you will most likely find a few moments when you'll surprise yourself. And if you're one of those neurotic people who doesn't like surprises, then I don't know what to tell you. Talk it over with a good shrink. Or pop a Valium before class or something. I'm kidding. You know I'm kidding, right?

See you all very soon. Oh, and the website is on its way. Meantime, the full schedule is to the right of this here post.

Lots of love to you,

Holly

Yoga Party!

I love parties. I might even I love parties even more than I love yoga (is that possible?).

So, when I was approached to host a surprise yoga birthday party for one of my favorite yogini's ( a regular at my Thursday night class) and her 5 friends, I was thrilled to have an afternoon to indulge some of my favorite obsessions: food, yoga, music, and parties.

Here's what it looked like: the birthday girl was bamboozled into coming to the yoga studio (I think a blindfold may have been involved and her husband was even enlisted to set aside a change of yoga clothes) where her bestest friends greeted her alongside a table outfitted with a fanciful spread of beautiful food, pink tulips, and candles galore.

After a bit of fanfare around the guest of honor's arrival, we settled on to our mats and set out on a 2 hour yoga practice. A few of the girls were new to yoga, so a bit of time was spent breaking down poses but a lot more time was spent breaking into laughter.

We did some parter yoga poses towards the end, which was so much fun and the final savasana (complete with a lavender oil mini massage) was a proper 15 minutes -- there is usually not enough time to offer up this much time for relaxation in most classes, so it was so nice to be able to give that gift to everyone! And after the practice, stomachs were grumbling and it was time to feast.

Ok, my skeptical carniverous cronies, I know what you're thinking: the menu at a yoga party better subsist of something a bit more intoxicating than hemp milk and vegan gluten-free sugar-free pseudo-cookies. While this particular menu was indeed meat-free, it was a substantive sampling of simple cold tapas: a 3-bean Mediterranean salad, roasted red pepper hummus, couscous & beet salad, savory tamari spiced nuts, artichoke tapenade. And for dessert, chocolate covered strawberries and baklava. Yum. But have no fear: if franks and beans are what you fancy, I can do it up all-American picnic-style, though that happens to sound completely repulsive to me (no judgement, though, I swear).

So,how much will a yoga shindig set you back? The price per head for a party of this kind starts at $50/head, but could potentially be less, depending on the menu. For example, I'm not sure how much hot dogs cost these days, it's been a while since I've made that purchase. Thc party price includes:

- 1 1/2 hour customized yoga workshop

- 1/2 guided meditation and savasana

- Food & drinks (customized menu)

- Customized Vinyasa Yoga CD*( for this event I made a playlist that included some of the birthday girl's favorite song)

- Party Favors * (i.e., Paper tea lights & Japanese Incense from RUKA* (see http://www.ruka.com/)

*- possible add-ons!

A good time was had by all, it seems. In a shameless act of self-promotion, I will share with you the rave reviews from this yoga soiree, just in case you think I'm making this up to fill space on my blog. Actually, the feedback was quite lovely indeed:

Holly,
Saturday was absolutely amazing!!! we all had a great time and it was an awesome bonding experience. everyone just kept talking about how much they loved it. you really did a great job and made everyone feel comfortable trying new things and experiencing yoga in a whole new way. I keep getting emails today from everyone about how much they loved it!!!!!!!!
Thanks a million tree poses!!
Jenn

Anyway, it's a good kind of party to get invited to -- at the very least you don't have to worry about what to wear. Or who to bring. Just bring a mat, a sense of humor (mandatory) and a hearty appettite.

( Now, dare I write this? I think I must.)

Party OM! (Sorry. Had to. Couldn't resist.)

Hope to see you all soon! If you're thinking of having a yoga party, email me at hwestyoga@gmail.com for more info.

xo

Holly

Nest eggs

This beautiful mama bird lives on the air conditioner outside my bedroom window. I wonder if she shopped around before settiling down on the 2nd block of Catharine Street here in the Queen Village neighborhood of Philadelphia. After all, she probabbly could have had a ton more window sill space in the Art Museum. With a garage. And a roof deck.


Anyway, I'm glad she landed here. I do believe she posed for this picture, regal creature that she is. And I cannot help but look for the symbolism in her presence -- rebirth, transformation, renewal, protection, growth, family... all these hallmark happy things.


Then again, maybe the universe (just in time for tax season), well aware of my propensity for procrastination, has delivered a nudge to start building some semblance of a nest egg before I go gray. This is also possible, but I prefer the more poetic interpretation, especially since I have been very busy lately with the syrupy stuff of poetry-- quite a departure from my last lovelorn blog entry, it's true.



I'm not quite ready to write about this new adventure and will instead defer to e.e.cummings. Be advised, if you're still cynically clinging to your winter doldrums, these super saccharine sounds of springtime might make you downright nauseous. Try it out. Read it aloud. See what happens.

I'll be back soon with more tales about the crazy magic of yoga. Meantime, come yoga with me-- check out my updated spring schedule. Hope to see you in class!

when faces called flowers float out of the ground
and breathing is wishing and wishing is having-but keeping is downward and doubting and never-
it's april(yes,april;my darling)it's spring!
yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
(yes the mountains are dancing together)
when every leaf opens without any sound
and wishing is having and having is giving-but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense-alive;we're alive,dear:it's(kiss me now)spring!
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so inow the mountains are dancing, the mountains)
when more than was lost has been found has been found
and having is giving and giving is living-but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing-
it's spring(all our night becomes day)o,it's spring!all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the skyall the little fish climb through the mind of the sea
all the mountains are dancing;are dancing

Breaking Up, Buddha-Style

Happy friggin Valentines Day. Stupidest holiday ever invented. And I swear, I'd feel this way even if I wasn't currently nursing a fresh wound to the heart.

There is perhaps nothing that has the potential to bring us closer or farther away from our yoga practice and spiritual journey more than good old fashioned heartbreak.

The days following a breakup, each breath teeters precariously on the edge on a sob, while the heaviness in your chest makes deep breathing feel like an Olympic sport. On a good day, the runny mascara under your eyes makes you look like Tammy Faye Baker on a bad day. Wine for breakfast starts to sound good. A vat of Ben & Jerry's for dinner sounds even better. And cigarettes, those evil little embers glowing in the night that you swore off ages ago, even they, amid the raw wreckage in your heart, feel like they could offer you some shred of relief from the shock, confusion, and bewilderment of an aprupt end to a burgeoning romance. Sure, yoga still seems like an inviting place of refuge, if only your mat wasn't downstairs and the 7 o'clock class didn't feel like continents away.

It can be frightenly easy to crumble, feel week, tired and uninspired under the crushing weight of a loss of intimacy, no matter what was shared or for how long. There are, however, some humans walking about who seem to be inately equipped with a robotic resistance to falling to pieces. Perhaps they have managed to encase their egos and hearts in shatterproof glass (which ultimately can't be good for the internal systems, if you ask me). But for the rest of us, the hopeless romantics who went against our better judgement, ignored all the warning signs and gave the sonofabitchbastard the time of day and then some, well, I'm afraid there's simply no cure for the ache.

There are of course plenty of band-aids but to be ultimately free from the poison of resentment and anger that so often follows failed relationships, we have to grieve and grieve well.

We must bravely greet our suffering and allow the pain to surface and rear its ugly head.And then we learn to stay with the ugliness, the rage, and the tears in all their dramatic glory, lest they take root somewhere in the body and manifest as pain or sickness or addiction. "All disease comes from bad grieving" -- I wish I knew who said that but just take my word for it that it was someone very old and very wise .

It's best to just drag yourself to your yoga mat during these times, even if you just sit there and wail in child's pose. Yoga facilitates the grieving process by keeping you close to who you are, by reminding you what you are capable of, and requiring a presence of mind and body that offers a quiet from the storm of our self-sabotaging scripts. Often when relationships end, we are rarely given closure and are cut off from the explanations we think we need in order to move on and let go.There's a yearning to have questions answered and to make sense of actions and events-- anything to solve the mystery, to figure out what happened.

As a spiritual practice, yoga asks us to relinquish the ego clinging of needing those answers, right here, right now . When you arrive on your mat, downtrodden and depressed, there is always the breath to reconnect you to your existence, to your oneness with the universe, however new-agey that sounds. Someone somewhere is feeling what you feel. And no matter how much disillusionment or sadness you are carrying with you, the simplicity of stillness and breath brings healing-- not overnight and perhaps not without intermittent glasses of wine, bags of cookies, crying fits, or hours under the covers, but it comes.

Even if you're only interested in yoga to help you touch your toes, just by creating more space and flexibility in the body you are cultivating the same qualities in the mind. The body is so much easier to work with and change , so why not start there.

But where does the rage go, the human urge to exact revenge fueled by powerlessness you feel when someone has caused you pain?

Nowhere. It sticks around and can easily eat away at you unless you aggressively work with h your mind to shift your focus back to your own strength, your own warmth and compassion towards yourself and others.

The challenge then, in the immediate wake of a breakup, is to not let the agony of the unknown (why did he do this? why won't he call?) and self-blame eat away at your self-worth,draining you of your joy, your power, your energy, and spirit . The next step then is to accept that everything is just as it should be, that things happen for you, not to you. Remove yourself from the role of victim and get on with creating your rich and inspired life. Be Buddha-like and put an end to your suffering by loosening your grip on your need to know, to understand, and to make sense out of someone else's nonsense.

Meantime, not all of you are heartbroken and today is Valentine's Day and there should certainly always be room in one's life for flowers, cheap chocolate, and silly cards.

Actually, I imagine Buddha would be down with Valentines Day, just so long as BE MINE was shortened to BE on every pastel conversation heart in the cosmos.

It seems Lama Surya Das would agree, judging from this sugar-free excerpt from " A Buddhist Valentine" .

This is how we love, Buddha-style: impartial to all, free from excessive attachment or false hope and expectation; accepting, tolerant, and forgiving. Buddhist nonattachment doesn't imply complacence or indifference, or not having committed relationships or being passionately engaged with society, but rather has to do with our effort to defy change and resist the fact of impermanence and our mortality. By holding on to that which in any case is forever slipping through our fingers, we just get rope burn.

Chew on that when your ready to sober up from your sugar high.

So, back to business: this prescription for giving and receiving love must extend to how we manage breakups, too. The name of the game is not to resist change, but to continue to live in the flow of whatever is happening, and to do so lovingly and without judgement of yourself or of that sonofabitchbas--- I mean, other human beings.

As for all you warbling lovebirds out there, just keep it down tonight , will ya? I need some peace and quiet.

Breaking up (especially Buddha-style) is hard to do.

New space.

Playing with peacock pose at new South Philly studio.

It's been too long, my friends. And I have no good reasons for why I have not posted anything on this here blog other than that I've been practicing balancing on my forearms a lot lately (I've posted this picture as evidence, taken with a 10-second self timer, so be nice!) which makes my writs a little tired, which keeps me away from the computer keyboard.

And also, I suppose I was hibernating this holiday season, pretty much held my breath and waited for it all to be over, while seriously considering taking action to become a Buddhist Jew. Not even kidding. You'd think with a name like Holly I'd at least have a bit of reverence for the yueltide, but alas: I spent the day solo with peanut butter, flannel pjs, champagne and bubble bath, with nary a Christmas bauble in sight. L'chaim!

So, I'm back now. I promise. I won't disappear on you again, though it is a good experiment to see who, if anyone, reads your blog. I am most grateful to those of you who have been prodding me to get back in the saddle.

So, ye-haw, full speed ahead in 2008.

I don't do resolutions, but I do throw things out at the start of a new year. But this year, I didn't discard so many physical objects as I did attitudes and relationships and attachment to personal history that was weighing me down. Too bad you can't actually take these things to the dumpster, but you can commit to chuck the parts of yourself that are habitually damaging to your ability to move forward, to create, to live your best life and inspire others to do the same. It's about creating new space in your head, new space in your heart. It's a kind of tilling of your emotional soil, churning the healthiest parts of you to the surface to create fertile ground where you can stand tall.

Of course, there's always a feeling of loss that accompanies getting rid of things, parting with the old patterns, detaching from the stale vicious circles of unhealthy attractions and addictions. And there's nothing we can do avoid the inevitable pain of loss, try as we may. People leave our lives and no doubt we experience something missing, a piece of ourselves gone. But rather than find a quick fix for the anguish this absence creates, it's best to just sit with the discomfort and amble aimlessly around the new spacious landscape of your life. It's a bit scary, but creating new space is necessary for any real growth to take place.

That's all for my New Year's schpeel. The story of the moral is simply this: throw shit out.

As my exceptionally resilant and wildly ambitious friend (see why: http://phillyfit4life.blogspot.com/) Bobby says, "Clean the Slate in '08". Keep what works, toss what doesn't: clothes that never fit when you bought them, a boyfriend who never fit since you met him, a self-defeating script of negativity that has gotten you nowhere fast, a broken lamp that you've been meaning to fix since 1995, old love letters. Yes, old love letters. Toss 'em. Then read this poem by Derek Walcott:


Love after love

The time will come
when with elation
you will greet yourself
arriving at your own door
in your own mirror
and each will smile at the others welcome

And say. Sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.


Ok, dry your eyes. Keep it together.

Now, down to business. In terms of actual new interior spaces in my life, I have one very important one to share with you. Philly Power Yoga (http://phillypoweryoga.com/) has opened a beautiful new studio at 1241 Carpenter Street. It's a gorgeous converted artist's loft space ( the above picture was taken there), with warm orange walls, high celings and hardwood floors, decorated with spectacular sacred treasures from India and Tibet from one of my favorite Philadelphia stores called RUKA (http://www.ruka.com/). It's a most inspired space for practicing yoga and meditating. I hope you all come and visit. No mirrors, either, so the ego can really relax. I teach on Thursdays and Sundays, so come and play! Classes are only $5 for the month of January. Hope to see you there.

One more commercial announcement....
FREE CANDLELIGHT YOGA with on Sunday, Jan. 27 th!!
Philly Power Yoga is Lululemon's "Studio of the Month" and the lovely Lululemon ladies are hosting a FREE!! Candlelight Yoga classes taught by PPY instructors. Yours truly will be teaching on Sunday, January 27th at 6-7pm!

For more information check out Lululemon at:http://www.lululemon.com/philadelphia/philadelphia/events

Be well, my friends. See you on the mat.

Om, shanti, shalom.