by Kara-Leah Grant Recently I received an email from a woman I have mentored through my Forty Day Process. She asked: Ok, ethics! I have a question for you and I have never thought of asking this of any of my other teachers in the past! I have a student who was just here practicing with me in Mexico. Here is where I don't know what is right from what is wrong. I intend to support her and take her through the home practice and also to get her on the 1 Giant Mind app so she will have two … [Read more...]
Search Results for: Shiva Rea
When Kundalini Awakens. Now What?
WIN a copy of Kara-Leah's new book 'Field Notes from Kundalini Awakening', publishing in 2018. Guaranteed to take you on an intimate journey into the depths of the Kundalini experience. Click here to sign up for the book launch list and go into the draw to win one of THREE print copies. by Kara-Leah Grant Recently, I sat down cross-legged to do my daily Kashmir Shaivism Tantric* practice as I have done every day for the past 150+ days. More if you count my first attempt at hitting 1000 Day … [Read more...]
How I Dropped the Ball on Day 338 of My 1000 Day Practice
by Kara-Leah Grant Today is Day 138 of a 1000 Day practice I'm doing. It should be about Day 500. But earlier this year, on Day 338 something happened and I dropped the ball. I've been doing Forty Day practices for nearly a decade now. At first, it took great dedication, commitment and mindfulness to practice yoga every day for forty days in a row, especially when I was doing the same practice each day. I learned so much about myself, how my mind worked, and where I was sabotaging … [Read more...]
The Truth on Drinking Coffee and Teaching or Practicing Yoga
by Kara-Leah Grant Since stopping regular coffee drinking back in 2013, I have become fastidious about never drinking coffee before practicing or teaching yoga. Since I practice every day, and teach often, there are very rare windows when caffeine is an option for me. At a recent summer festival, I realised how deeply this belief I have about the importance of not having caffeine in the system when practicing and teaching was ingrained. A couple of hours before I was teaching a class, I … [Read more...]
Patanjali’s Five Key Attitudes for Committing to Your Yoga Practice
by Kara-Leah Grant Today was Day 300 of a Tantric yoga practice I'm doing, which got me reflecting on what it takes to commit to yoga. Every day, no matter what, I sit and do this particular yoga practice, which consists of seated spinal rotations with pranayama, chanting with visualisation and mudra, and meditation. My intention is to do 1000 days in a row - that's almost three years of dedicated, committed practice. If I miss a day, I have to start again on Day 1. It's taken me over fifteen … [Read more...]
The Tapestry of Yoga Cueing: Four Keys to Mastering Yoga Teaching
By Michelle Jayne, Yoga facilitator, therapist & coach "Step your foot forward and stretch your arms up." I looked around the studio I was practicing in, trying to figure out if we were still on the right leg, or without warning, this had changed. "Square your hips forward, breath in, stretch your arms, breath in, bend your front knee, and take one more breath." Hang on a second, I hadn’t had a chance to breath out, and if I continued listening to the teachers cueing, I was about to faint … [Read more...]
I’m Afraid my Students are Going to Get Bored with my Yoga Sequences
by Kara-Leah Grant This came up in conversation this week - a new teacher expressing a fear that her yoga sequences weren't interesting enough and that she was going to be boring her students. She wanted to know how to make her sequences more interesting. However, there is a fallacy of logic here. The teacher has a fear arising - that of boring her students. Her approach to working with that fear is to ensure that the external circumstance triggering the fear is removed - bored … [Read more...]
The Ups and Downs of Mastering Squat Pose
by Kara-Leah Grant Welcome to the fourth Creative Sun Salutation Abundance flow here on The Yoga Lunchbox. This week we explore a transition posture as we move from the front of the mat to the back of the mat - an important part of working with circular sun salutations. In this particular variation, I'm using a squat to make that transition, which gives us a greater sense of our roots or foundation. Squatting is all about our relationship to the earth - we have to both surrender downward … [Read more...]
On the Dilution of the Genuine Transmission of Yoga Part 2
by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat I've been contemplating the many reactions I received to this article over the past week or so, On the Dilution of the Transmission of Yoga. One person unsubscribed from the website (or at least - one person told me they had because of this article, more people may have!) saying that I had made some good points but she found the article judgemental and unyogic. Other people rejoiced that someone was speaking such things out loud. It does feel … [Read more...]
How to Cultivate Abundance on the Yoga Mat Part 1 {video}
by Kara-Leah Grant Welcome to the second Creative Sun Salutation flow here on The Yoga Lunchbox. As with the last six-part series, the first two episodes in this series are free for anybody to access, and the final four are for Insiders only. (You can become a member of Inside the Box here.) When I teach and practice yoga, my tendency is to work with different energies on the mat, cultivating those energies as required, depending what's going on in my life at that time. This particular … [Read more...]