yoga with jeff
Based in household yoga practices of more than 40 years, Jeff’s yoga work will include group sessions, and additional content not focused exclusively on posture. That additional content will include 9 Minutes or LESS, and will include THE PRANA PROJECT. Jeff will share therapeutic, maintenance, and training that alternate between the Playful (Lila) and the Heroic (Vira). Look for an occasional Book Review, Interview, Creative Adventure, or Personal Note in realms practical and imaginative.
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Live Streamed on January 14, 2025 7:30 AM ET
Jeffry Farrell / yoga with jeff@jeffryfarrell
January 13, 2025
Tuesday Livestream Wake Up With Yoga
We enter the new year observing four principles of progress: Shtira, Sankalpa, Sukha, Dukha.
Shtira is a unified wholeness. It observes balance, strength, alignment, breath, and three planes of engagement. It is neither passive nor aggressive. It is the alert wholeness and fulfillment of every posture. Shtira can be present whether you stand or sit, kneel, lie on you back, in every starting position that you find yourself. When we recognize Shtira then we set our intention, Sankalpa.
Sankalpa is to decide our movement, our direction. To de-cide means to “cut away.” We cut away everything except our intent. It is a concentration. We decide and concentrate to move, to carry our Shtira. To carry Shtira well is to move with grace, with the appropriate energy required, with an effortless effort we call Sukha.
Sukha is the effortless effort. It carries wholeness. It uses not too much energy nor does it try with insufficient strength. Of course, as we begin we may drop Shtira. We may feel awkward or imbalanced and weak. However, we begin. We find Shtira and carry, and go back to Shtira and carry again. The difficulties, the resistance, the limitations are called Dukha, or pain. Pain is the teacher to awaken the Shtira.
We move in three planes, open the lymphatics, mobilise the joints all with breath. Let your lungs fill, let the breath fill the posture, every inhale awakens and identifies, every exhale liberates.
Ok! Come on in. . . .
00:29:59
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What else you may like…
Videos
Posts
Articles
Picking up hand balances again after years away.
What is needed for hand balances? How do they build? How do we enter and exit? Where is shtira?
Beginning again means asking familiar questions and looking for the answers in the posture, observing what doesn’t work, and what does. Learning twice, and twice again in Beginners Mind.
00:00:52
Morning practice, Wake Up With Yoga
I recorded this last night because I must be on the road during our usual time. Here we observe three planes of functional spinal movement with breath. I invite you to recall warm-ups of this past week and to practice from whatever you can recall. If you cannot recall, then reboot yr favorite livestream recording and use that.
This week marks the start of a new endeavor at the SAMURAI INTI Martial Arts Studio in Frisco. I’ll be teaching i a group class there at Sendai Sebastian Mejias ‘ dojo on Monday and Wednesday mornings.
00:08:18
Friday Livestream 4th of July
Although not a true morning wake up, the song remains the same.
Today’s practice is my first intentional movements with breath. Three planes, lymphatics, joints. That’s the way we address the experience written in our bodies like physical graffiti. Through our intentional breath and movement we recognize our state of being dazed and confused. We can move with grace through good times bad times. We awaken our bodies like houses of the holy. Not to say that our practice is a stairway to heaven, but we cannot hope to get clear and strong if we try to sneak in through the out door.
You don’t need to go down to the seaside, or over the hills and far away, or even to california. Practice wherever you are in the light.
And after practice? It’s a celebration day. Eat a Tangerine, I will listen LOUD to a British rock n roll band who made their fortune in the U.S. of A. I will boogie with Stu and my black dog. These are dancing days. Led Zep is dead, long live Led Zep....
