Ep. 1: Elsie's Yoga Kula (The Beginning of Deepening Community)

This is NOT a yoga class. This is episode 1 of a new facet of the podcast. More yoga classes comig up next week! Hello and welcome to the First episode of Elsie's Yoga Kula, where we share, cultivate relationship and deepen our yoga by entering the community of the heart, which is both your own heart, AND it's the heart manifesting as the company we keep. I've been talking a lot about getting new facet of the podcast up. And it's finally here! Some of you guys may have been listening for a while so you may be a bit more aware of my story, but some of you may just have started to listen so I'll just do a quick recap. I lived in Los Angeles and taught in yoga in Los Angeles until October 2007. While I was there I was blessed to have lots of fabulous classes and an incredible community of both students and teachers that I could delve into and cultivate. The LA yoga community is thriving and abundant. Now I live in Pittsburgh. I transported to the Burgh for LOVE. I'm very happy being here. I have the best family ever ever ever! with my soon to be husband and my 9 month old little daughter Hunter. The only thing that I'm lacking (other than Jamba Juice...but I digress) is the yoga community. Having started teaching again after my baby was born and being able to once again post my classes has given me a connection to you all, and I cannot tell you how much it means to me. The power of this medium and our ability to share together this incredible practice is one of the greatest blessings in my life, so I decided to share a little bit more! I want you guys, all of you that are part of this podcast and practice together, to get to know each other a little bit, plus it also gives me the opportunity to share a little bit more about other yoga related things :) You guys up for it? So to begin, here we go with our first voice mail, It's Nikki from DeMoines! Please listen to the Podcast to hear the Voice Mail :) You are so welcome! You know, I have to do another one of those deep savasana (Episode 61: Chill the Body Out, A 13 Minute Full Body Relaxation) and yoga nidra episodes (Episode 62: Yoga Nidra Yourself Out, a 65 Minute Deep Meditative Relaxation). Personally .... I LOVE those!!! I used to practice yoga nidra a lot more than I have an opportunity to now. One of these days I'm sure I'll be able to again...oh the Mommy life :) Thanks for the call! I'm a very big RSS lover. RSS is sorta like using a DVR to record the shows that you wanna watch. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication, which means that you can syndicate or publish material 'simply'. Most websites now days, have a feed associated with them. If you subscribe to the feed, then whenever new content is published to that feed you receive it automatically. This brings me back to the DVR metaphor, so you can read, listen or watch that content whenever you want. The way that you are subscribing to this podcast is via it's RSS feed. When you are in iTunes (for the majority of you subscribe via iTunes) and you subscribe to any podcast, you are subscribing via RSS feed. Sorry for the long winded explanation, just doing it for those of you that may wanna clarify a bit :) In order to receive the content you need to have some sort of RSS reader, such as iTunes. iTunes deals primarily with audio and video feeds. My personal favorite RSS reader that deals with audio, video, but mainly text feeds is Google Reader. I subscribe to A LOT of feeds and love reading them on my cell phone. Google Reader has a really easy and simple mobile site that I check countless times a day. The reason for this huge discussion is that I'm going to share with you guys, blogs, posts, videos, etc. that I find inspiring from Google Reader! So, here we go! I'm not sure how I found this blog, but I'm loving every post. It's called Rose Garden Yoga by a yoga teacher named Elizabeth Goodman AND she's a certified Anusara Yoga teacher! I'm thrilled every time I see a new post. I'm inspired by her eloquence and her love of the garden. It is soooooo worth your time. Great insight into the yoga of every day :) Another blog that I'm diggin' is the Everything Yoga Blog at itsallaboutyoga.com. I enjoy this persons posts very much. I always end up with some new information, whether it be about a specific point of view, some sort of new product or website, whatever. I believe that I enjoy reading the posts so much because the author's voice is so natural and absolutely down to earth. Check those 2 blogs out, AND use Google Reader! You can read so many more blogs in one place! Kinda like having your own special magazine :) Here's a nifty little product that I LOVED! Found out about it via the Everything Yoga Blog I just mentioned. Ok, I'm sure y'all have come across SIGG water bottles, those really cool bottles from sweden? Well you can totally MAKE YOUR OWN PERSONALIZED ONES!!!!! O M G. I have 2 already, and I LOVE THEM! So if you go to http://www.cafepress.com/designer/sigg/ You can see how to do it! It really is the coolest thing ever, plus if you don't know about Cafe Press you'll get a chance to check out that site! It's a GREAT resource for creating your own stuff. And now for our next voice mail: Mary from Houston Dude, Mary, totally humbled. Thank you! You are way too sweet. I'm soooo glad that the podcasts are able to serve you, honestly. I'm very glad. I absolutely know how you feel. Totally get it, AND I'm working hard at this whole Mommy thing, doing my best at that and all the other stuff. I think at times the will to do it all comes from a desire to connect and to serve fully. Thanks again And now for our first email of the episode from Nora in North Carolina This is all about Prenatal Yoga!!! You can hear the email conversation and what I have to say if you listen to the episode Empowering your Prenatal Yoga Practice: Advise from Yogi Mama to New Yogi Mama Speaking of prenatal yoga, Sue Elkind is doing a prenatal yoga teacher training in Athens Greece!!!!! Sept 7-11 Athens, Greece Prenatal Teacher Training www.NYSYstudios.com Check it out at www.sueelkind.com If you decide to do this...please email sue and tell her that you heard it from me! snyoga (at) mac (dot) com Another email: Lina from Malasyia!!! how exciting is that???? Thank you so much Lina! Now I'm not going to answer this question here, I've (actually we, my dear friend Hillary Rubin and I) Have just answered this question and lots of other neat little teacher type discussion topics over at Mudra Moments. You can subscribe via RSS in iTunes or listen straight from the website at Mudramoments.com! I've already let Lina know that we addressed her question in Mudra Moments Episode 13, but I thought some of you guys may be interested in still hearing the question! One of the reasons that I'm doing this also is so that I can share with you the listeners stuff that you care about and would like to share yourself. I got an email from someone that I got to know in LA, although they lived in Las Vegas: Yoga Rants and Raves (http://www.yogarantsandraves.com) and they are on twitter! http://twitter.com/yogasanctuary) plus, this is their WEBSITE: http://www.lasvegasyoga.com And our last voice email of the day, Anne NC thank you sweetie, I think Hunter is FAMOUS!!! I still have a lot more of your emails, comments and phone calls to share! I contacted some of you to see if I could use your email, please know that I will, it's just that I didn't want to make this a REALLY long show...just enough to make it fun. If you want to be on the show, or share something about yourself or something you are doing that you would like me to check out and share with the Kula, send me an email [email protected], comment at elsiesyogakula.com or CALL ME!!!!!!!!! it's soooooo easy to do it, and how fun is it to hear yourself on the show!!!!! woo hoooo 310 651 6238 :) or you can record your own MP3 and send it to me! Please let me know if you enjoyed this. It's really another way that I can deepen our relationship and allow us all to get to know each other better! Hope to hear from you! Oh yea...one last thing :) The 3rd year anniversary of this podcast is coming up at the end of July. I hope to put up a special episode, plus some fun giveaways, so if you wanna be part of that episode, send me a voice mail sharing with me a special time that you practiced with it, or something along those lines so I can put it on the show! Much love and blessings