Cristina at the Rodin Museum (France 2009) having a discussion with a stranger....
November 2011
As I promise some of you here is some information on my Surfing Trip. Earlier this year, my friend Mary and I organized a surfing trip to Mexico though a company called Las Olas. Las Olas organized surf safaries for women over 40. None of the six women that went knew how to surf or have ever surf before. We spend 6 nights in a town called Sayulita 30 minutes away from Puerto Vallarta.
Once we hit the upper 40s I know that a lot of people start feeling that the most fun they had is behind then. It's not true. You can have a lot of fun because lot of women don't have the responsibility of small kids by that time and "Girls, they wanna have fun!". Las Olas motto was "we make girls out of women"..Well they achieved their goal with us!
Before we went on this trip they told us that we had to go to the gym to gain upper body strength. I only do Hot Yoga, and only in our studio, usually I don't when I go on vacation (unless I need it for psychological or physical reasons). Well...honestly, Hot Yoga was all I needed. It gave me balance and strength. I wasn't sore not one day, and all I did was a little yoga in the am before my surf day.
Unfortunately Suzanne hurt her hand at the end of the second day of surfing and thanks to her we have some video to share!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzH3CLSlGRM
Summer 2011
What you are about to read is about hypnotherapy and below that energy work. I am in the process of getting my Clinical Hypnotherapy license and in order to do so, I need to turn in 100 hours of practice. Therefore, I am offering free hypnotherapy to my first 50 clients.
Let me clarify something from the get go: there is a big difference between hypnosis and hypnotherapy. Hypnosis means a heightened and/or focused state of suggestibility and/or acceptability, and has a range of uses, from medical to stage entertainment. Hypnotherapy uses hypnosis to unlock the subconscious mind and re-educate the conscious mind to help the subject overcome in a permanent way, physical and mental misalignments.
We all know by now that what we put in our mouth affects our health, the way we feel, our energy level, the way our organs function.
Well, what we carry in our minds and our internal dialogue (what we tell ourselves on a daily basis) affects our beings in a more profound way than anything else in our existence does. Even the way we react to an external event is directly influenced by our perceptions, which exist in us, previously to any event. What we have in our minds affects us physiologically and physically. It can make us or break us.
Hypnotherapy can be a way to reset such triggers (and patterns of behavior) and thus allow different action and reaction in our lives. It can help change emotional and physical patterns to addictions
Much of our emotional programming, that is, how we react emotionally as adults is programmed in us by age 6. And, many of us are still acting out these behaviors that we learned as children to cope with stress. All sorts of behaviors, all learned in the past, have been with us for most of our lives. Such as nail baiting, cigarette smoking, emotional eating, emotional distance, stuttering, and lashing out. Some of us learned to cope with stress by stuffing it down, which inevitably manifests somewhere down the line as a physical response, for example, high blood pressure, back pain, neck pain, skin rushes, and all sorts of physical misalignments.
All these things can be helped and many times completely transformed when we learn to retrain our minds and aim our thoughts and actions into a completely new direction.
I started seeing clients immediately after my recent training, and I am now ready to take on a few more. If you'd like to try it, I am offering my services for no charge until I complete my 100 hours for my clinical certification. You might have to wait a little to see me because I am pretty busy but I promise some of you that you would be hearing from me.
I work by referral only, so I won’t be taking clients I don’t know. If you want me to work on someone you know who may benefit from this, you can recommend them to me, but I will need a written recommendation telling me how long you've known this person, your relationship to this person, etc.
If you would like to try hypnotherapy but you would prefer to see someone you don't know, I can refer you to another recent graduate from the training class I completed.
I also offer Energy Attunements through Reconnective Healing techniques, which is something I now have quite a bit of experience on. I also do this work as a free service. This is my way to contribute to the world. For more information on Reconnective Healing sessions you can send me an email with the word “Recconnection” in the subject line. It’s quite a simple technique: it’s hands off and it takes about 30 to 45 minutes.
That’s all.
If you are interested send me an email. I might not be able to see you right away but this is the only time I will mention this work to the studio.
Not-yoga related...( December 2010)
Before I went to Argentina I had been researching an energy modality called Reconnective Healing. I was researching this guy Eric Pearl and his story and his healing cases etc. As part of my passion I research energy medicine, non-physical phenomenon, you name it.
To tell you the truth, I wasn’t really attracted to the person that Eric Pearl was but I was interested in the work that he did. I went back and forth, seeing u-tube videos, watching interviews etc.
One night I had bought this new movie that is called “The Living Matrix” and it’s about energy healing and how the body heals etc. To my surprised Eric Pearl was feature in the first scene. I wont’ tell you about the first scene just in case you want to watch it yourself, but I stop the movie went to my computer and started looking for a seminar taught by Eric Pearl. To my disappointment, the guy hardly does any seminar in the US. All the seminars were in Nederland’s, Tokyo, Italy, Spain, Israel, I was getting disappointed when all of a sudden my heart skipped a bit (you know when something very coincidental that you know it is no coincidence happens…)
And I read: “Buenos Aires, Argentina, Seminar with Eric Pearl, November 19-21”. I had gotten tickets three months before for my trip to BA and I was arriving on the 19 of November, leaving for Mendoza (wine county) on the 22.
So I did the seminar, which means that I am a Reconnection Practitioner now. And I want to practice on anyone who wants to interact with these energies. You can find more about it in the Internet. Particular here:
http://www.thereconnection.com/faq/
Right now I will practice on anyone interested. Send me an email and I will tell you more about the session. It's a 30 minutes session in which I will work on your body (but my hands never touch your body) and then I record any experience you might have. That's all I can tell you for now.
cristina
To Teach or Not to teach...(September-October 2010)
This has been the question that Jason and I have been asking ourselves for quite some time. Should we offer teacher training? Should we be part of the Yoga Alliance? How should we do it?
For me there is no question that we should train some of you to teach. Some of you have been practicing with us for ten years! I believe that the incredible benefit of teaching is that it takes your practice to a completely different level, a level that we can’t take you to unless we train you to teach. When you teach you are constantly studying all aspects of yourself so you can transmit this information to your students. On a completely different level we can use some new teachers so we can pour a new energy in the studio and offer more classes. Like anything that becomes popular and profitable, the yoga business is now full of politics. And the whole Teacher Training has become part of that. Did you know that you get certified as a Bikarm Teacher without ever teaching a class? It's also hard to recommend it when it has become so expensive. (10K!!!) For years, Jason and I have been teaching teachers to teach once they come from Teacher training…so we’ve have been training teachers already…But teaching is not about knowing how to teach a posture, it's a lot more than that. Some people are natural teachers; they have the gift of inspiring their students to a new level. Some other teachers are so enthusiastic and grateful about the opportunity to teach that their enthusiasm is infectious. Some teachers, no matter how much they try, or how good their practice is are not so good at teaching. You really never know though until at least you try…….
Honestly, I’m ready. (Me too!! -says Jason from the back row) I’m ready for the challenge to take a group to the next level. With this in mind, here it goes…If you are interested keep on clicking!
TEACHER APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAM
Balance (August 2010)
Balance: the concept of Balance in yoga is not limited to our physical equilibrium or how we distribute the weight in our bodies. The concept of balance, rather, encompasses ALL aspects of us, but specifically the way in which we take and process our experiences. Most of us experience life through our left-brain. The left-brain classifies and takes in our experiences through a logical, sequential, rational and analytical process. It is the part of us that gives thought to judgment, the feeling of separation, and ultimately the feeling of fear and stress in our bodies. Through these constant feelings of separation and isolation, the obsession with problem solving and time management, we create a state of anxiety and stress that brings disease and distress to our bodies. The right side of the brain takes in our experiences in a very different way. The right hemisphere “is the part of us that allows us to focus in the present moment. It learns kinesthetically through the movement of our body, and it takes information into our beings in the form of energy”(Jill Bolte Taylor). The hidden aspects of this wonderful discipline and practice of yoga is the ability to teach us to use our right hemisphere of our brain, balancing the dominance of our experience between the left-brain and the right brain. At a core level our yoga practice teaches us to experience our bodies with a completely new appreciation. Learning to connect to aspects of us at a level of compassion and gratitude that we usually are too busy or too rushed to experience in our daily life. Balance in yoga goes way beyond the limits of physical equilibrium. It takes us to a level of thought where the rational meets the god in all of us.
For an AMAZING video w/ Jill Bolte Taylor (you have to check this out!):
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
Having a Base Practice (July 2010)
When we start practicing yoga there is this natural tendency to try to do more than we can do. It’s natural because we are trying to find our limits and so we explore where they body can go, how flexible we are etc. After this initial exploration we should establish a BASE PRACTICE. A base practice is finding the place in every posture where we feel as if we “own” the posture; the place where we can hold the posture with stillness balance and strength for a minute without falling. A base posture is a hard concept for students to grasp because the majority of students are looking to break a barrier in their body. The problem in using this as your main focus on your practice is that over time it weakens your body. Imagine trying to build any structure over a weak base. In a discipline practice that aims to restore balance and harmony in your mind and body, a base practice is key. Try for a few weeks to establish a base practice in all your postures. Once you do that your body will naturally call you forward to a new place in your practice. You don’t need to use your mind to establish a goal of your practice. The beauty of the practice of yoga is that if you learn to listen to your body, your body will call you forward when it’s ready to tackle a new level of difficulty in each posture.