Author: 8 Limbs Yoga

This morning I attended the final class of this year’s Summer Intensive Teacher Training. One of my most favorite honors as Studio Director of 8 Limbs is as witness to the power of yogic teachings, when shared and studied with earnestness and integrity. The enthusiasm, tapasin Sanskrit, is energizing and contagious! The second limb of yoga, niyama, addresses […]

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.”  – Dalai Lama Whether we have an independent streak or not, each of us at our core is an interdependent being.  As Martin Luther King Jr. shared in a 1967 peace sermon, “Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on […]

The first limb of the eight limbs of yoga, Yama, is made up of five restraints – five ways to prevent harm to other beings: ahimsa (non-harming), satya (truthfulness), asteya (non-stealing), brahmacharya(moderation), and aparigraha (non-grasping). In the Yama-s lie the keys to being in community – with unity – with other beings. I am thinking, as July 4th nears, of another […]

“Yama,” the first limb of the eightfold path of yoga, is sometimes translated as “restraint.” (8 Limbs Owner/Director Anne Phyfe Palmer wrote about her relationship with Yama in her May and June blogs.) This first limb essentially shares what skillful restraint looks like in practice. And by practice in this context, I mean life – […]

This weekend 8 Limbs is hosting a workshop that I would have never imagined ten years ago. I was a yoga teacher who made adjustments without asking, because I hadn’t considered that for some, this would be invasive, or even harmful. I regularly asked folks in class to “close your eyes and go within” without considering […]

I first learned of the acronym W.A.I.T. (Why Am I Talking?) from 8 Limbs Yoga Teacher Sally Carley. When she shared it’s meaning I laughed and paused. It’s a question most of us could benefit from pondering more often than we do. Why do we say the things we do? Why do we feel compelled […]

I have a confession to make. I skipped a limb. As an ambitious 26-year-old, I named 8 Limbs after the eight aspects, or limbs – anga in Sanskrit – of yoga. I did what some of us do when we find something we love, and want to share it with others, urgently, I bypassed the deep learning […]

“Between stimulus and response there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Vicktor Frankl* Last month I wrote about sitting with discomfort. Earlier this month 8 Limbs Director Anne Phyfe Palmer wrote about taking space. Today I want to talk about a […]

There are times when life feels incredibly complex, when the threads and strands of responsibility and purpose are weaving a new pattern, one that is yet to emerge. For me (and I am guessing for many others), this is such a time. Sitting down to write this newsletter I felt overwhelmed with both how much […]

In a letter that went out earlier this month, we said a lot of things. I’m going to focus on one of those things, a single sentence near the end – “Discomfort is not unsafe.” It’s a line I’ve been actively sitting with because it’s a statement I can experience as true and untrue. Discomfort […]