If you are a Vata

Most Vatas are thin with narrow shoulders and or hips. They may find it hard or impossible to gain weight and remain chronically underweight; Or, they could be pleasingly slender and supple. Though Vata people have quite variable appetites, they can eat anything without gaining weight. If you are a Vata, type you could be hungry at any time of the day or night. love excitement and constant change. Go to sleep at different times every night, skip meals, and keep irregular habits in general. Digest food well one day and poorly the next, display bursts of emotion that are shot-lived and quickly forgotten, walk quickly. For a Vata person, mental and physical energy comes in bursts, without steadiness. you probably start things and not finish them (if you are out of balance) such people shop compulsively without buying anything. talk without coming to a conclusion, and become chronically unsatisfied. Vata people are sometimes said to spend themselves to freely, wasting money, energy, and words, but this is not true if they are in balance. Vata people are prone to worry and at times suffer from insomnia, the result of runaway thinking. Normal sleep time for Vatas is six hours or less. A Vatas typical negative emotion brought out by stress is anxiety (fear) the typical digestive complaint is chronic constipation and /or gas, nervous stomachs and unreliable digestion cramp, premenstrual pain are generally attributed to the Vata dosha.
If you are a balanced Vata person you are probably infectiously happy, enthusiastic, and energetic. your mind is clear and alert; Vata is so sensitive and quick to change that it easily falls prey to overstimulation. Vata people thrive on variety, but when things change too much, their excitement turns to exhaustion. That is why so many Vatas feel frazzled and nervous.  they have quick, acute responses to sound and touch and dislike loud noise. They have dry skin, dry hair, cold hands and feet.

The source of their restlessness is that Vata dosha is no longer setting the proper rhythms in their bodies. Instead of eating, sleeping, and exercising regularly, out-of-balance Vatas grab food when they can, skip meals, exercise by fits and starts, and go to bed at odd hours.

            Such a life is bad for all the doshas, but it is worse for Vata. Many Vata types cling to it. Sadly, they have conditioned themselves to feel that a haphazard life is the same as a stimulating one. The remedy is to begin to cultivate balanced habits, paying a little more attention to regularity every day. Suround your self with happy people, happy books, happy movies. Open your blinds and let the sun in. Vata goes out of balance  first, causing the early stages of disease. If you are feeling out of sorts Thai Therapy can help balances the doshas. My clients find it very therapeutic for mind, body, and spirit.

What is a Prakruti?

The knowledge of one's "Prakruti", or state of balance, body, mind, and soul, is valuable for living a fulfilled and healthy life. Our Prakruti is maintained by more than just diet. Our "best-self" occurs when we develop the wisdom for proper lifestyle and routine for our individual dosha makeup, the health of our personal relationships and overall satisfaction with life. Our Prakruti, or essential constitution is formed at conception and continues with us through our lives. That being said, at any specific moment during our lifespan, our doshic balance may stray from our individual Prakruti.
Our body's response to external fluctuation in our diet, environment, weather/season; and our emotional responses to relationships, work, short and long-term stressors, disrupt what Ayruveda calls "our baseline doshic equilibrium".
Ayurveda defines health as a person at ease, with all doshas working in good balance within them. It's emportant to understand that balance doesn't necessarily mean equal Vata, Pitta, Kapha; but proportionately at their optimal "Prakruti" for the specific person
for example if I am nearly equal Vata/Pitta with the least Kapha, and this mix is where I am always at my best health and true emotioanal/psychological happiness, then this is my own personl Prakruti. Any one of the doshas that shift to too much or to little, excessive or deficient: Vata, Pitta, Kapha out of that balance for me creates Vikruti (Dr. Vasant D. Lad says: "Vikruti reflects the ever-changing current quality and quantitative balance of the doshas. Vikruti may not be disease, but it can create a potential bed for future disease to appear and develop.") That which raises my Vikruti, decreased my ability to remain feeling good, and eventually makes me susceptible to disease that will finally manifest fully through my body. Vikruti goes through several stages when the doshas are out of balance that end with disease manifesting through the bodily tissues, (all diseases are caused by doshas being out of balance, stress, anxiety, cancer, depression,
arthritis, back pain), and eventually death, if rebalance can not ultimately occur through a variety of treatments.
                       Nancy Adams Thai Yoga Therapist

Meditation, not postures, is the heart of yoga

If you've ever wondered if you're missing something by taking yoga classes in a busy gym setting, you are!. The distracting setting with weights clanking in the background and the fact that these classes are designed to provide the best physical workout, there is something about the way we do yoga in the West that makes some master teachers cringe.

Many worry that something special has been lost in American-style yoga, and that something is meditation. Meditation, not postures, is the heart of yoga, meditation plays only a minor role in many American yoga courses. In others, it is not taught at all.

Some yoga students regard meditation as boring cultural baggage and appreciate learning postures without it. It's OK if you never get into meditation. But if your experience with yoga has inspired you to go deeper into yogic spirituality, meditation is a wonderful place to start. Today, try to sit in the presence for just five minutes to see how it feels. If it feels good, you might consider working it into your daily routine.

Squeezing and soaking

Each time you practice yoga, you take your joints through their full range of motion. This can help prevent degenerative arthritis of mitigate disability by "squeezing and soaking" areas of cartilage that normally aren't used. Joint cartilage is like a sponge; it receives fresh nutrients only when its fluid is squeezed out and a new supply can be soaked up. without proper sustenance, neglected areas of cartilage can eventually wear out, exposing the underlying bone like worn-out  brake pads.
        Yoga increases the ability to feel what your body is doing and where it is in space and improves balance. People with bad posture of dysfunctional movement patterns usually have proprioception, which  has been linked to knee problems and back pain. Better balance could mean fewer falls. For the elderly, this translates into more independence and delayed admission to a nursing home or never entering one at all. For the rest of us, postures like Tree Pose can make us feel less wobbly on and off the mat.
http://www.gobodhi.com

The Retreat

Every year I take my students on a retreat. Its not big, last year and the year before we just pitched tents in the beautiful Payson Blackhawk Canyon. last year we got rained on. also this year was so busy with my Thai classes and then the trek I didn't feel like doing all the work of camping again, so we went looking for something different. We were going to Nephi one day and came across Big Mountain Campground. later I found them on line, they have 6 cabins that sleep 4 each it was perfect so I booked all the cabins for our retreat. The next weekend we went to see all they had. It was more perfect then ever the cabins are darling they have a pool, and a pavilion with a little kitchen and lots of tables. We could pull the tables out to make room for our lectures and yoga if it rained. yes this was perfect. It did rain all day the first day but it stopped before I gave the first lecture on the "Subtle Body", then we did yoga, after yoga we ate dinner, that my wonderful husband prepared for us he is the best dutch oven cook ever. After dinner I gave a lecture on "What's your Dosha" I gave a test to see what dosha they were. It was really good. later that night at the camp fire I gave a lecture on "Mantra on The Mind". We chanted alot during the day it was great.
     The next day we did yoga first thing in the morning, I did a lecture on "Being Vs. Doing" it was long but it was good. Gary fed us breakfast while we talked about "Eating Wisely" which was one of the lecture topics
last year that was really good. Mishelle concluded our lectures with "The Energy of Yin Yang" which was excelent. A great time with great students and great people.
http://www.gobodhi.com/

My Thai Room

I have been doing Thai in my yoga studio, but it is getting really old getting my Thai mat out every time. The mat is really heavy. also I heat my studio to 88 degrees for yoga, if do Thai on my yoga days I have to cool down my studio so I can do Thai then heat it up again for the evening class. I told my husband I need a Thai room, the great man that he is said OK lets do it. This week end He and I cleaned out a room that was just being used for junk and painted it. We had a few problem areas so it took us longer then we thought. But it should be done in a day or two and it will be happy Thai Room to me.
http://www.gobodhi.com/

Deepen your Focus

This is part of an article I found a long time ago. I use it as a hand out when I teach my class about meditation. yoga quiets the mind, it slows down the mental loops of frustration, regret, anger, fear, and desire that can cause stress. and since stress is the cause of many health problems--from migraines and insomnia to lupus, MS, eczema, high blood pressure, and heart attacks--if you learn to quiet your mind, you'll be sure to live a longer healthier life. I can not remember who wrote it, sorry.

         "A good deal of mystique has grown around meditation, yet it is one of the most natural of our human capacities. You've no doubt had moments in your life when you were not thinking or analyzing your experience, but simply "going with the flow." In these moments, there was no past or future, no separation between you and what was happening. That is the essence of meditation.

Contrary to a common misunderstanding, meditation is not a limiting or narrowing of our attention so much as it is a focusing on what is relevant. Our attention can be narrow, as in observing our breath, or broad, as in cooking a five-course dinner. When the mind is able to focus on what is relevant to what is happening now, we experience ourselves as being at one with what we perceive. This experience is deeply joyful, as we become freed from the illusion that we are separate from everything else in the universe. In fact, meditation isn't a withdrawal from life but a deeper, fuller presence in life."
http://www.gobodhi.com/