Good morning, everybody! As most of you know, I am a very social little dog, and this weekend, my mommy and I were both invited to a Labor Day party. For several weeks before the party, I was super excited, anticipating all the fun I would have: I'd get to see some of my doggie-friends and I'd probably be able to convince some unwitting party guests I was starving so I'd get a few extra treats!

A few days before the party, I found myself becoming a little impatient; I mean, I'd been waiting for what seemed like an eternity, looking forward to all the fun I was going to have, and the date of the party still wasn't here. Even the day of the party, we still had to get ready and drive there. I felt like I'd never get there, even a little hopeless, like maybe there really was no party. But when I thought about it logically, this was silly! Of course we would get there eventually; it just took a little time for the date to arrive and for us to make the necessary preparations before we could physically see the party. But just because we couldn't physically see the party yet didn't mean that it wasn't there.

We have all experienced this same feeling of impatience and even hopelessness, whether it's waiting for a certain job, house, or relationship that we want, or practicing a certain yoga pose. Sometimes we put artificial time constraints on ourselves, and if we don't get that house or accomplish that pose in that certain amount of time, we feel like we've failed. Then we become hopeless, and it seems like we don't ever get what we wanted. I've found that the key is to focus on all the positive and fun things that you have going on right now, and to give yourself credit as you progress towards your goals. Just like with me and the Labor Day party, even though it seemed to take forever to actually arrive at the party, I knew without a doubt that with each day, that party was getting closer. And wouldn't it have been silly for my mommy and me to be a few blocks from the party and decide to turn around to go home, just because we couldn't physically see the party?

When you realize that without a doubt you're going to arrive at the party eventually, it allows you to relax and enjoy the preparations for that party. Whether it's performing a challenging yoga pose, getting that job you want, or finding that special relationship you desire, don't give up and go home just because you can't see it yet. Keep hoping and dreaming because it's right around the corner!

Namaste,
Tiki

Join Joy Winkler on a wild, magical ride into the basic principles and mind-boggling implications of quantum physics (yes, Joy does have a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, but don't worry - you won't need one to understand these general principles!). And why would a physics and yoga workshop be interesting? Because as cutting-edge research brings science and spirituality closer and closer, we're beginning to grasp the infinite power each of us has to create the blissful, abundant life of our dreams.

In this playful, booty-shakin' workshop, we'll use our yoga practice as a tool to experience our power and to feel that giddy, heart-overflowing love, whether we're in child's pose or chaturanga! We'll learn ways to take these lessons of our yoga practice into our daily lives so that we can begin to realize our full potential, and move through our lives just as joyfully and playfully as we move through our yoga practice.

Caution: this is mind-blowing stuff - information and techniques that have the power to change your life, your community, and the planet - so bring your imagination and your wildest dreams!

Where: Joy Yoga Center, 4500 Washington Avenue, Suite 900, 77007
When: Saturday, Sept. 11th, 2:00-5:00pm
Earlybird pricing of $39 before September 1st, $49 thereafter.

The workshop will be followed by viewing of "The Living Matrix" movie at 5:30pm.
Even if you can't join us for the workshop, please join us for the BYOB (beer, wine, snacks, pillow to sit on!) movie afterwards, beginning around 5:30pm!

Tiki the Yoga-Dog here, and I hope you have all had a wonderful weekend! This week has been very hectic for me, as I’m sure it’s been for all of you, too. And I think I’ve experienced every possible extreme of emotion: everything from being really excited about getting treats from my yoga-friends, to feeling stressed out and frazzled about everything I needed to cross off my to-do list. Thankfully, I got to participate in my mommy’s meditation class the other night and learned a little something about equanimity.

The first thing I learned was, what the heck is it? Equanimity is the ability to remain peaceful and joyous, no matter the circumstance. In any given period of time - a day, a week, or a year - we all can experience extremes of pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame. It’s perfectly natural for these experiences to arise and then pass away, and no amount of trying to control our experience is going to change that. The challenge for us is to not be slaves to our old patterns of reacting to these experiences, but to be aware of how we feel so that we can consciously choose a response that makes us feel better.

With this in mind, I myself set out into my week and started to notice that even within one day, I was experiencing just about every possible extreme of emotion. I noticed that each time I got a treat, I felt elated; when my kittie-cat little brothers stole my favorite toy, I felt angry; and when I saw a really big dog, I felt afraid. I felt out of control because my circumstances were determining my mood. Since I’m a yoga-dog who prefers to be happy, I wanted to figure out how to liberate myself from this prison of allowing each situation to determine how I felt.

So I thought back to my mommy’s meditation class and remembered the exercise we had been taught - just to notice in each moment if that moment feels pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. And after noticing how each moment feels, trying to experience that moment fully without clinging or grasping if it’s pleasant, without trying to push it away or condemn it if it’s unpleasant, and without spacing out if the moment is neutral. The more I practiced this, the more liberated I felt: I began to understand that experiences are just experiences, and we if live in fear of what we label as unpleasant or bad experiences, our lives are not going to be very fun. But if we remember that even the unpleasant experiences will pass, we can just let them go without judgment and can fully enjoy the pleasant experiences all the more, without the grasping need to hold on to them.

With a little awareness, we can begin to choose our responses rather than being slaves to our old reaction habits and can start to experience emotional freedom. By consciously choosing thoughts and responses that make us feel good, we can live each moment fully and joyously without sleep-walking through our lives and without trying to push away large portions of our life experience. I’m finding it so liberating to realize that change is just the nature of life, and the true liberation comes when we don’t just cope with these changes, but we revel in them because they’re what make life so fun and interesting! I hope you all have a great week and enjoy all your experiences!

Namaste,
Tiki

Visit joyyogacenter.podbean.com to get the limited time promotion of 3 months subscription for just $6.99! With new hour-long classes added each week, you can now find your "Joy" on your schedule!

Good morning, to all my yogi and yogini friends!

With the adventures of Advanced Yoga Studies coming to a close last Sunday, I had the chance to take a little break this past week and spend a few days hanging out with one of my best doggie-friends, Izzy. After all the fun of spending a vacation chasing Izzy around the yard and relaxing by the pool, I started thinking about how great if would be if I could start approaching my life the way I approach my vacation. When I'm on vacation, I'm not just biding my time until it's over; I don't look at the fun vacation activities as chores to be crossed off some to-do list. Even just looking forward to all the activities is exciting, and then I have a blast actually doing them, too.

Somehow, we forget that life is meant to be joyous; that it's not just about completing a bunch of chores. We tend to get so bogged down with work and all other sorts of responsibilities that it all starts to feel like drudgery, not fun. Think how great and exciting our lives would be if we could decide to change our perspective and approach every day the way we do a vacation. Well, the amazing part is that we can decide to approach our lives this way.

Even our yoga practice can be a reminder to us to enjoy our lives. Sometimes we get so focused on the goal of completing the poses and getting to savasana that we forget to actually enjoy those crazy poses while we're in them. When we start enjoying the movement, even if it's a challenging one, we stop muscling our way through our practice, and the practice takes on an effortless, vacation-like quality. We want to use the yoga practice to teach ourselves that even when we're in poses or situations that feel uncomfortable, it doesn't have to be a negative or stressful experience. When we stop anticipating when we'll come out of a challenging pose and just let go, we feel the beauty and the flow that is yoga. The more we can practice this on our yoga mats, the more we can connect to this beauty, grace, and enjoyment in every part of our lives.

Remember that life is not just a series of tasks we have to complete - life is meant to be enjoyed and lived to the fullest. Enjoy the journey, whether it's a literal journey on a fun vacation, or if it's a journey through your asana practice. Now go out there and have a fun vacation of a week, even if your vacation is going to work, cleaning your house, or performing another chaturanga pose!

Namaste,
Tiki

Date: Saturday September 25th,2010
Time:6pm-8pm
Price: Early Bird Pricing: $45 before Sept. 10th
Thereafter $55 (Wine is included in the price)
Where: Joy Yoga Center 713-868-9642

With music ranging from The Who to Erykah Badu setting the tone, he will lead you through a 2 hour flowing vinyasa yoga class focused on aging gracefully. After class, we will enjoy Sicilian wines from the Feudo Arancio vineyards. We can all learn a thing or two about how to model the aging process after one of the few things that ages well: a bottle of wine. As John Barrymore said, "You don't age until your regrets outnumber your dreams."

Date: Sunday September 26th, 2010
Time:11am-1pm
Price: Early Bird Pricing: $45 before Sept. 10th
Thereafter $55 (Chocolate is included in the price)
Where: Joy Yoga Center 713-868-9642

After a two hour flowing vinyasa yoga class set to great music (from Sinatra to the Grateful Dead), He’ll lead you through a tasting of exotic Vosges chocolate truffles. The chocolate is a metaphor: Everything is sweeter in the moment.

David Romanelli discovered yoga after graduating college, and soon thereafter opened his own chain of studios ( AtOneYoga.com) with his thoroughly “Yeah Dave” attitude, melding main stream grooves (like the grateful dead) with the ancient practice to help open doors to new students. David then joined forces with 2007 Entrepreneur Magazine’s Woman of the year Katrina Markoff to create the Yoga + Chocolate Experience which has been featured in Oprah Magazine, Newsweek, and the New York Times. In addition to Yoga + Chocolate, David has co-created Yoga + Wine and Yoga + Country Music for his ever popular nationwide Livin’ the Moment tour. David visited 25 cities in 2009 to launch hid debut book, Yeah Dave’s Guide to Livin’ the Moment: Getting to Ecstasy through Wine, Chocolate and Your IPod Playlist (Random House) which in June was the #1 ranked book on the Amazon.com Self -Help Best Seller List. He brings his unique spirituality with a rock’ n roll sensibility to his teachings, and proves in all he does that the core of “enlightenment” is “lighten” (as in up). Visit www.yeahdave.com for more information about Dave.

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Hello, my yoga buddies! For the past 6 weeks or so, you may have noticed that I've been hanging out at the studio a lot more. That's because I've been assisting my mommy with her Advanced Yoga Studies program. It's been an intense but very rewarding program, and after all the coaching I've been giving the Angels-in-Training, this little Chihuahua is a little pooped!

As you know, I've been up at the studio throughout Advanced Yoga Studies in order to show our lovely Angels-in-Training the ropes and demonstrate the proper form for the poses. At first their form was way off, and it took lots of patience and encouragement to remind them of the proper alignment. You should have seen the way they used to do their Downward Dog - good thing they had the Yoga-Dog there to show them how it's done! Even though at times it was challenging, I found it incredibly rewarding to guide the them and share some of the wisdom I've gained in my years as the yoga-dog.

During the course of helping my mommy with this program, I discovered how much fun it is just to give of myself - to share my knowledge, my wisdom, and a few tricks I've picked up along the way - without expecting anything in return. I found that when I did expect a certain response, I ended up feeling frustrated because the response was never exactly as I wanted it. But when I let go of that, and got back to just having fun leading and sharing with them, I stumbled onto this strange paradox: when you give, you are truly the one who ends up receiving. The feeling I get from unconditionally giving my encouragement and support is so amazing that it ends up being its own reward.

So this week, don't be stingy about sharing. Give encouragement, support, and love without expecting anything in return. And when you do, you'll find that it's your life that is enriched!

Namaste,
Tiki

It's Tiki here, and if I seem a little older and more mature the next time you see me, it's because this coming Tuesday, I'm celebrating my 8th birthday! Marking the passage of another year got me thinking about how much I've learned in my eight years.

You see, when I was but a young pup, I used to push and push myself until I almost collapsed. Whether I was taking a walk, guarding the studio, or just playing with my doggie friends, I approached everything with the attitude of wanting to dominate it. Over the years, as I gained a little wisdom, I began to realize that this approach was stressful and was wearing me out. Little by little, I started approaching life from a new perspective, the perspective of listening to my body and not pushing too hard when my body told me to back off.

Now sometimes it's hard for me to hear these messages from my body because I'm always on the run and my mind seems to always be racing. That's when it's important to take a minute to relax and breathe deeply so that my mind can quiet down and I can listen to what my body is telling me. I realize that even though I ran a certain distance or jumped a certain height last week or last year doesn't necessarily mean that distance or that height is right for my body today. And you know what, with each passing year, I realize more and more that I'm completely happy and grateful to be exactly where I am.

This is how we want to approach our yoga practice, as well. Sometimes maybe we feel the need to muscle our way through poses or fight to dominate the pose, but the more we practice, the more we increase awareness and wisdom about our bodies. Through the yoga practice, we gain a wisdom and sensitivity that makes us realize that sometimes the most benefit can be obtained just by relaxing and breathing, instead of pushing. Just as I learned that I may jump different heights on different days, we learn that our yoga practice will vary from day to day, or year to year. And we realize that wherever we are in our practice is right where we need to be. This awareness gives us a peace that truly allows us to let go and be happy in our own skin, both in our yoga practice and in our lives.

So this week take a little time to breathe, quiet your mind, and listen to your body. Take a little time to appreciate every experience in your life because those experiences have helped you gain the wisdom you have today. And take a little time to celebrate life's wonderful journey, with its birthdays, its yoga poses, and its surprising new experiences around every corner!

Namaste,
Tiki