Gregory Ormson

Writer, musician, yoga-loving motorcyclist.

Melody of Mass Inspiration in Audiobook form, Yoga Song

AUDIO BOOK FOR YOUR YOGI: read what others are saying about Yoga Song

Yoga Song is a melody of mass inspiration proclaiming to every yogi that their breath is their sacred song and the soundtrack to their journey of transformation. The 21 vignettes in Yoga Song speak to both the skeptic and the true believer. To those who believe yoga’s therapeutic power, they confirm what they already know, that yoga is an augury of transformation and change. To the skeptic, these vignettes hold out a vision of what could happen to you when yoga turns ordinary moments into extraordinary and aligns each yogi with their breathcentric home.

Ormson narrates his story from insights born in the depths of self-discovery, sharing knowledge, understanding, and experience to inspire listeners. Every yoga song unfolds in the yogi as they become instruments of mind, spirit, emotion, energy, and consciousness. In chapters like, “Transforming the Emotional Body,” “Ritual Process and the Yogi’s New Song,” “Armor On, Armor Off: The Psychology of Yin Yoga,” and “Yogatecture: Blueprint of Transformation,” Ormson’s Yoga Song meets you in grace and opens the way for more grace.
Available in 30 platforms worldwide. Listen to your Audible copy by going here: https://www.audible.com/pd/Yoga-Song-Audiobook/B0C3JB7JK1…
What others say about Yoga Song
“I just read much of your book and I appreciate the connections you make and the questions you ask and there is much wisdom there. I appreciate all that you are bringing to your reader’s awareness, and I wish you all the very best with the book and with your continued yoga practice.” Renee Schettler, Editor in Chief, Yoga Journal.
… read more...

The Slow Burn of a Yogi’s Becoming: milestones to 700 Bikram yoga classes

Moved to a new center, fired by a disciplined pattern moment by heated moment, yoga fastens you into a deep curriculum of transformation where your spine moves as it was meant to move and your breath deepens your experience of life. When you step across a liminal threshold into a ritual container – like a yoga studio – and follow the guru (your breath) you drop into a deep well of wisdom.

 

Yoga invites you to dig deep; when you do, you’ll catch a glimpse of the periphery turned central. You’ll learn to inhabit contentment and put on garments of integrity and your life will feel like slow-motion shapeshifting in space. Bodily shape shifts happen in yoga, but meditation and movement also shift perspectives.

 

These psychosomatic shifts are yoga’s therapeutic, opening a gate between conscious and unconscious, laying bare a pathway for a return to the depth of self. In the self that is you – the same through all time – a bodily physiology meets a mental/spiritual soul where all space and time is negotiable. This meeting alters the nervous system by pausing the strategic and analytic mind while feeding the meditative mind. Yoga calls this a state of yogacittavrittiniroda.

 

Yoga’s activation of mind, body, and spirit doesn’t happen on the same timeline for everyone, but yoga’s journey will take each yogi to the ground of their being in a breathcentric and healing therapeutic, setting them on the way to their good things comin’ . . .

 

 

 

 

… read more...

Yoga Song, the audiobook for your yogi

AUDIO BOOK FOR YOUR YOGI:

Yoga Song is a melody of mass inspiration proclaiming to every yogi that their breath is their sacred song and the soundtrack to their journey of transformation. The 21 vignettes in Yoga Song speak to both the skeptic and the true believer. To those who believe yoga’s therapeutic power, they confirm what they already know, that yoga is an augury of transformation and change. To the skeptic, these vignettes hold out a vision of what could happen to you when yoga turns ordinary moments into extraordinary and aligns each yogi with their breathcentric home.

Ormson narrates his story from insights born in the depths of self-discovery, sharing knowledge, understanding, and experience to inspire listeners. Every yoga song unfolds in the yogi as they become instruments of mind, spirit, emotion, energy, and consciousness. In chapters like, “Transforming the Emotional Body,” “Ritual Process and the Yogi’s New Song,” “Armor On, Armor Off: The Psychology of Yin Yoga,” and “Yogatecture: Blueprint of Transformation,” Ormson's Yoga Song meets you in grace and opens the way for more grace.



Available in 30 platforms worldwide. Listen to your Audible copy by going here: https://www.audible.com/pd/Yoga-Song-Audiobook/B0C3JB7JK1...



What others say about Yoga Song:



“I just read much of your book and I appreciate the connections you make and the questions you ask and there is much wisdom there. I appreciate all that you are bringing to your reader’s awareness, and I wish you all the very best with the book and with your continued yoga practice.” Renee Schettler, Editor in Chief, Yoga Journal.
“Your writing is very good and would be ideal if you ever fancy contributing on any regular basis, especially in our OM spirit section.”
… read more...

Coming soon, Yoga Song in a two-hour audiobook by LANTERN audiobooks

Audio version contains one new chapter and five original songs in a  recording of 21 chapters
Ch. 1 The Sailing Forth
Ch. 2 Yoga: A Breathcentric Community
Ch. 3 OM
Ch. 4 Yoga: A Melody of Motion
Ch. 5 Yoga: Work, Play, Worship
Ch. 6 Making Heroes
Ch. 7 A Yoga Parable
Ch. 8 Finding Depth, Discovering Bliss
Ch. 9 A Child Leads
Ch. 10 Yoga and the Pure Consciousness of Healing
Ch. 11 Yogi, Heal Thyself
Ch. 12 The Power of Hot Yoga
Ch. 13 Endowed With a Longing for Connection
Ch. 14 Yogatecture: Blueprint of Transformation
Ch. 15 Transforming the Emotional Body
Ch. 16 Truth Force in Your Yoga
Ch. 17 Ritual Process and the Yogi’s New Song
Ch. 18 Release Into Savasana
Ch. 19 Armor On, Armor Off, the Psychology of Yin Yoga
Ch. 20 A Yoga Song for All Beings
Ch. 21 First and Last Breath

Ormson narrates a story of the yogi as an instrument made of mind, spirit, emotion, energy, and consciousness. In “Transforming the Emotional Body,” “Ritual Process and the Yogi’s New Song,” and “Yogatecture: Blueprint of Transformation,” Yoga Song advances an inspirational melody of motion, proclaiming to every yogi that their breath is their yoga song, a sacred song.

Review: INSPIRING AND ENRICHING

“Yoga song is the sound track to your journey of transformation.” This beautifully written book, expressing yoga in its most authentic way, is unique in its kind. This book takes the reader on a journey to self-discovery, providing helpful tools that encourage curiosity and introspection.

Gregory Ormson is an internationally recognised author also known as a motorcycling yogi.… read more...

YOGA MAGAZINE FEATURE STORY: Yoga and Leather: A New Road for Bikers (#yogainspirationals 79).

 

YOGA & LEATHER: A New Road for Bikers

Every yogi is the same. But every yogi has been injured in their own way. Debbie McGregor, passionate yogi and motorcyclist, was first injured at age 11. It happened in a rodeo mishap when she was locked in a cramped chute with a panicked horse. A broken back sustained in a motorcycle accident in her early 30’s became major injury number two, and she suffered a broken neck in a car accident during her early 50’s.

“When I read about YOGA AND LEATHER: Yoga for Bikers,” she said, “I couldn’t believe it; something combining my two passions, I had to come.”

After her car accident, Debbie was told she’d be paralyzed from the neck down, but she resolved to walk and was determined to ride her Harley Davidson motorcycle again. She invested in physical therapy and added yoga as a daily routine. Three years after the accident, Debbie is doing yoga and motorcycling around the country. “It’s unexplainable how much yoga does in the path of healing. The more I do, the more I want and the more I heal,” she said.

Paul, a 79 year old retired Chicago police officer, is another dedicated rider of Harley Davidson motorcycles but new to yoga. Like Debbie, he found his way to YOGA AND LEATHER, and considers it healing balm and an island of peace.

Recently, Paul’s 900 pound motorcycle tipped over and landed on his foot. He hobbled into class wearing big boots and blue jeans, but did what he could. “I need it, it’s good.… read more...

THE POWER OF OM: rediscovering the deep, abiding peace of coming home in a frantic world.

Thank you OM Yoga and Lifestyle magazine (UK) for publishing my 72nd YogaInspirational, “Traveling OM,” December, 2018

Traveling OM

By Dr. Gregory Ormson

THE POWER OF OM: rediscovering the deep, abiding peace of coming home in a frantic world.

“We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year old carbon…”  Lyrics from the song Woodstock suggest that we are made of cosmic energy and matter. We have a hard time believing it because there are very few places that affirm such a grandiose and luminous being. But when we yoga, we participate in a pattern that moves the stars, and positions us to touch an inner OM at the core of our being.

In a soft chant of OM, rooted and expressed from the core, our cares are set free. Then we note our deepest truth: we are beings at one with a divinely animated critical mass of stardust and carbon waiting to meet and welcome us home.

But cultural voices bombard us with an unending cacophony of negativity and dismissal. This poisonous milieu is designed to make us feel small and inadequate, serving us from a menu of strife and anxiety. News and current events can leave us feeling like we’re a nonsignificant cog in a great drama that’s happening elsewhere.

The world is effective at labeling and objectifying. It does so with convenient categories submitted for fast indexing and stereotyping: age, race, sex, job, income, and education level. But a mountain is more than a geode, a river more than an eddy, men and women more than insignificant pieces of something more important.… read more...

Elevation by Breath

In a lifetime practice, the yogi inhabits a ritual container where they are steeped in hours of wordless, focused being.  In a deep breath and release, the gathering-round is moved by that which has not yet had the luminous drained from its presentation; and in its sound, a mystery of centuries in the awful exhale shifts matter into new shapes and in steps uncounted.

Their inner fire is animated by breath and stilled in meditative gaze. Their embodiment of asana and mobilization of prana rises anew in the “fierce breath” of simhasana. This breath elevates sleepy diaphragms and makes avatars of humans.

Yogis come to know their practice braids them to a light not of this world, for their choice of assembly over disassembly shapes them through a soul dialysis that cleanses. Carl Jung once said yoga is “psychic hygiene” and in their time on the mat they are cleansed from the inside out.

Yoga is not like the rest of life; neither is a yoga class just another class but a life-saving reclassification of the nature of being. Steeped in a history of insight, and grown from the dimensions of meditation and mindfulness the yogi looks out from another summit.

Yoga as a moral and physical compass is revealed in stages, starting when the yogi begins practice with sankalpa, or solemn vow. Step by step, through intention and awareness, the yogi encounters the core tenants of hatha which bring them to self. There, hand in glove with self and the philosophical satyagraha of the practice, the yogi is transformed.… read more...

YogaInspirationals number 72 #motorcyclingyogiG

I remind myself that in spite of the surrounding maladies, I must manage to hope. I also counsel myself, and anyone who will listen, that the yoga we do is not just a hobby or something to fill up the time; rather, it is the door through which happiness and joy enter into an arena where we share a divinity that transforms stories from iatrogenic to generative.

 

https://blog.sivanaspirit.com/yoga-script-into-health-and-joy/

 … read more...

https://gregoryormson.com/writing-on-yoga-motorcycling-music-misc/yoga-motorcyclingyogig/yogainspirationals-number-72-motorcyclingyogig/

TRANSFORMING THE EMOTIONAL BODY

  68th published yoga article, Issue 187 ASANA JOURNAL

 

Louie Netz, Director for Harley-Davidson’s Styling and Graphics Department once said, “Form and function both report to emotion.” It’s likely when observing a yoga pose, or the stylish symmetry of a Harley-Davidson taking a curve, to believe motorcycles are about speeding through curves and yoga is about perfectly aligned asanas.

A yogi on the mat or a Harley-Davidson on the highway both perform their function at a high degree and garner attention, but the brilliance of yoga – and a great motorcycle – is its move from form to function and ultimately to emotion.

Like many newcomers, when I started yoga, I thought it was about what I saw; and I noticed people bending into forms that were – at first – perplexing. I also thought it was about what I heard yoga could do for my injured back. I believed if yoga could heal my injuries I would feel better and that would be all I could expect.

My yoga evolution was gradual; I practiced to feel better, then to learn good alignment and accomplish more asanas. As a dedicated student, I paid attention to words from my teachers as they led me to correct placement of my feet and hands. I followed their instructions which led me through breathing techniques and transitions.

But right away, I sensed there was something happening well beyond what was taking place on my mat. I didn’t know, but I was on my way to connect, or yoke deeply to my full self, and at the same time, something much broader and deeper than just me.… read more...

ITS NOT JUST EXERCISE

They practice yoga in a 104 degree room when it’s 105 outside. They come from all walks of life: age, race, physical condition, gender, profession, and status. But they all do YOGA to sharpen their mind and focus their will. They show up to strengthen their bodily systems, to ground their minds in the present and deeply draw breath to hold the vital principle.

This is inspiring to observe and compels me to write. I love yoga, and I love these yogis and yoginis that keep working, keep activating, keep grounding, keep breathing, keep centering, keep on keepin’ on to make their lives better, deeper, and more leonine.

They yoga to embody their asana, mobilize prana, focus the monkey mind, and surrender cares; and when they do, the transforming medicine of yoga in its physical, non-physical, and metaphysical form makes them anew.

The yoga journey is a process of transformation, and it’s stunning to observe. This is the privileged observation of a yoga teacher: nothing more or less than friend, companion, and witness to the truth of being.

 

… read more...

Preview of Yoga Temple 3 at MOTTO YOGA: The Pure Consciousness of Healing (Sunday March 4, Noon to 1:30)

Today, spiritual notions of integrated unitary consciousness are popular but suspect. Some people require facts, and without verifiable facts proving esoteric dimensions, will dismiss such notions and think of consciousness and chakra activation as nothing but wild speculation.

But quantum studies in the subatomic realm more than suggest that everything is composed of vibrational energy even if we cannot prove it. Yogic philosophy treated this idea by suggesting that anything in matter has previously existed in the unmanifest cosmic womb. Indian philosophy even had a name for this place of pure potentiality, calling it hiranyagarbha, or the Golden Womb, the origin of all creation. Technically, ‘hiranya’ means ‘golden’ and ‘garbha’ means womb, and its symbol is a golden egg.

The science of physics has opened up big ideas like the notion of energy as vibration, or a not-yet manifest form of matter. It has helped Westerners accept that matter is not as concrete as we thought. Quantum thought maintains that the unmanifest is as real as each of us here and now, but is unrecognizable until energy and matter manifest or bring it into material form.

This is how healing consciousness moves too, for consciousness of a thing also changes the mode of being in that thing which is beheld. The Heisenberg Indeterminacy Principle, from the field of physics, affirms this insight and points out that it’s not possible to observe matter without influencing its actions. And while it’s true that the principle was developed while observing the velocity and speed of quantum particles, it applies to all matter.

The paralytic man’s friends (story from the Gospel of Mark), were determined to place him in close proximity to the pure consciousness of healing in Jesus.… read more...

Starting Yoga Teacher Training

I’m starting a yoga teacher training program this Saturday in Pine, Arizona. It’s been five years since I first walked into a yoga room in Hawaii, and during that time, I’ve learned from many teachers practicing at 12 studios in four states.

I’ve also been fortunate to attend three yoga workshops outside of regular classes, and while these were only a few hours or a half-day, I caught a glimpse of what a lifelong practice can look like. I was moved by what I learned and experienced with Kim Tang, Esak Garcia, and Lucas Miles. I’d like to borrow something from them and from all the teachers and yogis I’ve met. I hope to use it in my teaching and practice.

All these teachers are good at communicating and leading classes through basic asana. All of them speak of connection to breath and self and they all say breathe and stay present, everyone invites relaxation, and gives encouragement to do the work, and in this intentional engagement everyone discovers what they need to know.

Some use oils and music, some heated room, some chimes, bells and singing bowls, but not everyone. In some cases, they go beyond, as in the practice of Bhakti (devotional) and Naad Yoga -sound and healing – which opens self to greater Self (Cassandra Bright, Gilbert Yoga, Gilbert, AZ); speaking of how yoga restores hope and saves lives after horrible accidents, healing physical body which leads to spiritual restoration (Sheila Nelson, Motto Yoga, Queen Creek, AZ); energy healing and the way of chakras, sound, and the singing bowl (Suzette Johnston, Motto Yoga, Queen Creek, AZ); yoga after running and the pursuit of kundalini and continual learning  to make intellectual connections (Leslie Pelke, Motto Yoga, Queen Creek, AZ); how to take joy and happiness from a disciplined practice (Kirsten Holmson and her team at Community Soul, Wausau, Wis); yoga as gift for all ages and peoples – especially kids – (Robyn Bretyl, Lightbody Yoga, Wausau, Wis); the willingness to take risks and reach beyond the normal (Lori Jokinen, Jennifer Taylor, and her team from Tulivesi Yoga in Marquette, Mi); the courageous heart – Croix Croga – of yoga (Katie Ziemann, Croix Croga, Wausau, Wis);  yoga as the moving, transforming connection between heart and soul (Andrea Hutchens Tika Anandisari, Aaron, Melissa Katherine Lotus Heart, Brooke Meyers, Sarah Bloom, Jenna Rae, Dana Strang and Sai Fon Woozley from Yoga Hale in Hawaii); the affirmations and benefits of yoga, asana, and pranayama leading to a heightened breathcentric awarenss (a special shout out to Mark Hough, Shannon Matson, and Yolanda Bottomley from Bikram Yoga on the big island of Hawaii); the willingness to take yoga anywhere (Lorrie Blockhus, OM Sweet OM Yoga in the serene but tick infested northwoods of Wisconsin.… read more...

YogaInspirational number 54 in Yogi Times “9 Ways to Return Yoga’s Gift.”

April 2017

https://www.yogitimes.com/article/what-you-give-to-yoga-

Yoga gives each of us more than we can repay. It’s the reason we continue our practice and make it a long-term life discipline. Yoga creates new space and provides the impetus for us to search for our true self. It has our backs and has fixed our spines.

Yoga balances our perceptions and teaches us to look to the horizon even when we resist and find it would be easier to look down and fall flat upon the mark of our diminished vision.

Yoga levels our judgments to a place of calm detachment; but also fills us with courage to say and do the right thing (on and off the mat) as often as we can. Yoga moves us to meet,  greet, and bow to worlds upon worlds, and that is why those of us practicing yearn to find our limits, breathe deep to fully inherit the spiritual science of health, and release everything into the realm of OHM.

What do you give to yoga?

Every yogi answers in their own way, but here’s one yogis answer:

I give my pain.

Perhaps it’s a surprising answer, and this is open to misinterpretation. But yes, I give yoga pain. I know the pain I need to release, and I know from experience that yoga will keep teaching me how to release it. It’s a pain I hold in my being, in my body, and it’s the pain I hold for the world.

I give my love for family and friends.

I see them aching not just from the slings and arrows of misfortune, and the lance of gossip and backbiting envy.… read more...

A Walk to Lake Superior

7

 

8     This summer of nostalgia and reunions has left me dizzy with memories. The two roads of which Frost wrote have never been relevant to me. I’ve always seen only one road, the one in which I was all in. I don’t care if the glass is half full or half empty; speculating on this is a waste of time. What are ya gonna show me today? What are ya gonna be now? What am I going to be? This is all that’s important; all the other stuff is exterior stuff and it’s not really stuff; to describe it, I often use another S word minus one letter

Recently, I walked a path dark and green; the pony trail in Michigan. When they were young, I held the reins and led my daughters on their ponies Billy and Midnight. It’s a trail that always led to the not trending and to the deep blue sea of Lake Superior. Sometimes on this trail, I’d see the passing of a shadow and remember the words of Chief Seattle, delivered 100 years before I was born:

“And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children’s children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone.”

At that place, on the shores of gitche gumee, today I prayed on the wall where for many years I sought the counsel of silence.… read more...

YogaInspirationals #39

My Purpose? That’s simple.

To live, to love, to tell stories.2breathcentric diamond body

This fluid journey called yoga – four years in the making – continues its remaking over me.

My practice takes place in the heated mist of a hot yoga room. It’s a practice of eustress and relaxation which morphs into a luminous cloud, salty and damp.

I am connected to you through drops of sweat.

Your asana is my asana, your bending and shaping is my bending and shaping.

To return again and be in that dusty – but it’s not really dust – cloud becomes the road-map for traveling outward as breath moves to sweet release.

My longing is your longing, my travel is your travel.

I’m dragonfly, now rabbit, then camel, now fish – now myself.

Then I evolve once again, going back and yet forward at the same time to child in his innocent repose.

Your evolving is my evolving: we go back to child.

“The way in is the way out,” my guru said

Her wisdom, “the way in is the way out” comes to me from her bloodline far to the east, from a practice that bent and molded her matter-mind, from evidence etched into the soles of her feet. Tucked in like a child, she steps back and forth over the soles of my feet and east meets west.

Moved to low places like water, propelled by gravity, heating, bending, and shaping, I’m an ongoing story of learning. My teachers are ancient yoga reformers.

My reformation is your reformation, my learning is your learning.… read more...

Yoga Inspirationals #34 Asana Journal

STORAGE WARS AND YOGA’S EMOTIONAL RESCUE

http://www.asanajournal.com/storage-wars-and-yogas-emotional-rescue/

A reality TV show on the Arts and Entertainment channel is called, “Storage Wars.” In it, a group of bidders look for five minutes at the contents of abandoned and locked storage units, but they can’t go into them. After competitive bidding, the winner is declared the owner of everything in that locker. They rush in with great hope and begin looking through boxes, drawers, and accumulated piles of mishmash.

Sometimes they find valuable coins or artwork, antique toys, or newspapers; however, their newly-bought pile could be old tee-shirts, magazines, or dirty linens and parking tickets, vestiges of life in transit. More often than finding gold, the winning bidder digs up a clutter of left over’s from a human pack-rat.

Storage Wars is popular because it’s a modern day version of the mother-lode gold strike. And in rare cases, the winning bidders of Storage Wars make hundreds of thousands in profit. One discovered Spanish gold coins dating back to the 16th Century valued at half a million dollars, another winner found a model grand piano, and a third uncovered classic toys worth nearly $13 thousand.

CONTINUED IN ASANA JOURNAL.   http://www.asanajournal.com/storage-wars-and-yogas-emotional-rescue/

 … read more...

Latest article in Asana Journal

The Missing Link

On Feb. 3, 2014 my first yoga article was published in TheYogaBlog. Now, nearly two years to the day, the 30th is published in Asana Journal. Thanks for reading folks, and please pass these on.

You may not do yoga, but perhaps someone you know does or maybe someone you know is thinking about it. Right now my literary agent, Elizabeth Kracht, has my full yoga book and will be shopping it soon to publishers.

Put your best wishes forward for this effort not for me, but for words that will encourage many people to try something new for their health and well-being.

Thanks and ALOHA.

Here’s the link www.asanajournal.com/the-missing-link/

… read more...

Writing

RECIPE

WRITE. Revise, annotate, put it down, parenthesize (it). Change the script, compose a new song, jot a saga, create a path, follow the crumbs, depict a vision.

TRACE the arc, endorse the light, follow energy, create curiosity, register my stamp, Trust the way . . .

WRITE 2

Chart a course, chronicle a title, engrave my name, be true.

AUTOGRAPH my correspondence, draw up, reveal and dream. Deliver my rap, savage the critic, curse the blow-hard, kill the perfectionist, punch – u – ate the negative.

CHERISH my cloud, enroll my allies, extract all good, bless my colleagues, publish my creed.

REMEMBER, advocate, strip away adiophora, exalt all heroes and discern.

CHOOSE to do, walk in sure steps, choose to be, hold my own. Honor each word, aim for truths, love creation, write the project, accept what appears. Wait.

REPEAT.

… read more...

New Ways to Cope #yogainspirationals from #motorcyclingyogig

sr class 2

I attended a senior yoga class at the West Hawaii Civic Center in Kona, Hawaii, taught by Andrea Hutchens. Afterwards, I asked students for a few comments about their experiences of yoga and aging. In just a few minutes, I heard enough to affirm, once again, that the ancient discipline and practice of yoga changes lives.

It doesn’t happen in an instant, and the change isn’t easy or predictable. One student said, “I was 58 when I started, but I really wish I would have known about it and started when I was a kid. I think Kaiser should have a program. I think it should be in all schools”

She went on to explain why she started yoga and what it’s done for her. I’m saving it for a later piece on yoga and aging. But the important point for seniors, is that it’s never to late to start something that treats mind, body, and soul without relying upon medication.

And when it comes to finding new ways to cope in a world that’s increasingly distressed and dangerous, yoga is a good place to start a quality of life change no matter how many years we have lived.

sr. class 1

 

senior class 4

… read more...

To Breathe or Not to Breathe: Lessons from Yoga and Freediving

It’s odd to think of yoga and freediving as complementary activities, for it’s accurate to identify yoga as bodily movement led by breathing and freediving as bodily movement while breath-holding. Yet yoga practice can help improve freediving by expanding lung capacity and improving tissue flexibility; and lessons learned beneath while moving under pressure can improve yoga practice.

Living in Hawaii provides me with the opportunity to practice both yoga and freediving as often as I like. These activities are intimately related and both connect to the same core principle: breath work.

But the subject is important to anyone taking 20 to 30 thousand breaths a day, and that’s a big group, including everyone living.

 

breatheBut since practicing yoga, I’ve noticed a big improvement in my ability to hold my breath while diving. In yoga, I do breath-work to make yoga practice satisfying and my dives into the Pacific extraordinary.

It’s not so much the depth to which I can go in either the asana or the dive, but the satisfaction of getting the most from my potential as a diver, a yogi, and a breathing and grateful sentient being.

Growing up in the Midwest, I never dreamed that someday I’d be freediving in the ocean and swimming next to sharks, dolphins or rays. But it’s happened. Neither would I have thought that one day I’d be bending like the palm trees outside the yoga studio, experiencing the depths to which yoga would take me. But that happened too.

BREATH, YOGA’S FOCUS

Anyone stepping into a yoga class learns immediately that the first action focuses on breathing.… read more...

Yoga 20th Installment Yoga Inspirationals.

21st installment YOGA INSPIRATIONALS

Yoga and the Place of Soul, elephant journal June 5, 2015
Below are the online links covering yoga and:

Rabbit pose at Bikram Yoga in Kona, Hawai, photo by Yolanda used with permission

Inner truth
Appolonian Alignment
The Big Ease
The Teaching Yoke
Unconscious Impact
The Savasana Cloud
Breath and The Diamondbody
The Deep Silent
Ego & Injury
Yoga and Your Healthy Future
Mantra/Power of Word
A Yoga Parable
I-IT
Who Moved the Yoga Mat?
Adopting a Rabbit (for back pain)
Yoga’s Touchy Subject …Touching
Becoming Your Own Inspirational Quote
Social Responsibility: I Am My Brother’s Keeper
The Yoga Community and Bad Behavior
Yoga’s Covenant: The Bendable Arc of Change
Yoga and the Place of Soul

With thanks to: The Yoga Blog, elephant journal, DoYouYoga.com, and Yogi 


June 5, 2015 elephant journal

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/06/yoga-and-the-place-of-soul/

April 12, 2015 Yogi Times
http://www.yogitimes.com/article/yoga-covenant-agreement-vow-commitment

March 11, 2015 elephant journal
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/03/how-yoga-makes-us-kinder/

February 21, 2015 DoYouYoga.com
http://www.doyouyoga.com/why-yoga-should-bring-us-to-social-action/

February 15, 2015 Yogi Times
http://www.yogitimes.com/article/who-moved-the-yoga-mat-practice

January 6, 2014 DoYouYoga.com
http://www.doyouyoga.com/4-reasons-teachers-should-use-touch-in-yoga/

December 27, 2014 elephant journal
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/12/the-yoga-pose-that-healed-my-lower-back-injuries/

December 11, 2014 Yogi Times
http://www.yogitimes.com/article/story-of-yoga-poem-parable/

November 24, 2014 The Yoga Blog
http://www.theyogablog.com/favorite-quote-practice/

November 21, 2014 DoYouYoga.com
http://www.doyouyoga.com/mantra-the-power-of-word/

October 22, 2014 The Yoga Blog
http://www.theyogablog.com/doing-yoga-30-years-now/

October 16, 2014  elephant journal
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/10/ego-injury-10-questions-for-yoginis/

October 2, 2014 The Yoga Blog
http://www.theyogablog.com/find-silence-yoga-practice/

Sept. 21, 2014 DoYouYoga.com
http://www.doyouyoga.com/how-yoga-moves-from-it-to-it/
Sept. 17, 2014  elephant journal
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/09/mapping-yogas-breathcentric-diamond-body-gregory-ormson/

Aug. 15, 2014 The Yoga Blog
http://www.theyogablog.com/take-inventory-yoga-yoga-like-aa/
Aug. 2, 2014 elephant journal
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/08/the-savasana-cloud-gregory-ormson/
July1, 2014 elephant journal 
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/07/the-importance-of-living-in-alignment-gregory-ormson/

April 5, 2014 The Yoga Blog
http://www.theyogablog.com/reality-check-yoga-teachers/


March 12, 2014 The Yoga Blog
http://www.theyogablog.com/yogas-hidden-benefit-unconscious-mind/
Feb. 3, 2014 The Yoga Blog
http://www.theyogablog.com/365-days-yoga-completely-changed-life/
… read more...

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