Tuning the Student Mind

  • On Becoming a Mother

      I’m back on my mat for the first time. As I gaze down my body a momentary lapse of grief for the absence in my womb is followed by the relief of finally knowing who he is. My hamstrings ask me to go slow so I follow their lead with my heels off the ground. Flowing through each pose, I’m reminded of the miracle of growing a human. I feel the twinge in my hips and forgive them for their weakness. I promise them that we’ll work together to get strong again. The babe is asleep upstairs and I can’t help but laugh as my milk leaks all over and the dog bites my hair, pulling me forward to play. My neck is stiff and my back is sore…

  • Community is Shared

      I am a sociologist by training. I love to think about culture, people, interactions, identity issues and patterns. Emile Durkheim, the famous French father of all things sociological, argued that one must treat ‘social facts as things’. These “facts” become the subject of study for sociologists. Further, Durkheim believed that collective phenomenon is not merely reducible to the individual actor. Society, he believed, is more than the sum of its many parts. It is a system formed by the association of individuals that come together to constitute a reality with its own distinctive characteristics. Let me think of an example: how about language? Language pre-exists our birth and it continues after our death. Perhaps some of us will have the honor of inventing some new recognizable slang (LOL, duh),…

  • TTSM in “Mantra Yoga + Health” Magazine

    Tuning the Student Mind is featured in the February issue of Mantra Yoga + Health magazine!! Check out the article on their website – http://mantramag.com/tuning-student-mind-chelsea-richer/ Here is where you can find your copy of Mantra magazine – http://mantramag.com/find-mantra/ Here is the page spread (oooolala!)  

  • The Middle Gear

    As an avid yogi and meditator, I am endlessly reminded- by my practice, my mantra, and my soul- to favor mindfulness. As someone with an unmistakable “A-type” personality, I am persistently intense. And as most of us know, intensity doesn’t always yield good balance. I have known the power of appropriately balancing “personal” versus “public” energy for quite some time now. Public energy, I am told, is for my day-to-day life: my job, my social calendar, and my relationships. Personal energy is for me. The difference between personal and public energy was first described to me as a lake. On the surface, the lake looks still. It feels as if it does not move. Yet, at one end, there is a waterfall. The movement of the waterfall requires the stillness of the lake. Without one, you cannot have…

  • Spread Your Seeds

    “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”  ~ C.S. Lewis When I was a kid, I always wondered if I was the only real human among a sea of robot-aliens. But as I grew older, I began to worry that I was crazy, and everyone else was sane. As my vocabulary grew, the definitions of words became ingrained in my mind – of success, failure, ‘a good life’, and even sanity. Suddenly, there was a list of activities I ‘should’ be doing, majors I ‘should’ be pursuing, careers I ‘should’ have. I quit listening to my DNA and numbed my senses from what actually felt right for me. While wallowing in this confusion, I slowly realized that others were feeling guilty…

  • Movement

    A certain professor once told me that I needed to start finding intellectual pursuits that furthered my growth as a human being and kept my mind off of others. She also said that people were a matter of the heart, and all I needed to worry about was how to love them better. Three months later and I am just now starting to really understand what she meant by that. This past year has presented some personal life challenges that forced me to look at people in a different light, and it wasn’t positive. I became discouraged and sour, introverted and detached, and very not my usual self. And as a naturally self-aware person, I could only let the charades continue for so long. So, I decided to make some…

  • Entire Life Meditation

    Today, I am graduating from Yoga Teacher Training. The last two months have included well over 200 hours of yoga practice. So instead of giving you a specific project, idea, ritual or practice for living sustainably on this Sunday, I am going to share with you my final paper, which I feel is an approachable anecdote to sustainability through the practice of meditation and yoga. In Yoga Beyond Belief Ganga White states, “Your entire life is meditation, all other specific forms of meditation are secondary.” In order to lead a fulfilled life, we have ideals for how we must interact with the world. We have life partners, we maintain relationships, we raise children, we work. According to Ganga White, these day-to-day activities are all “entire life” meditations. What is the…

  • Body and Breath

    Yoga is just as much a practice involving breath as it is a practice involving posture. Even if you are lying still on your mat, as long as you are breathing, you are doing yoga. The significance of breath in yoga is heightened when it is consciously linked with posture. In simplistic terms, upward movements are done while inhaling, and downward movements are done while exhaling. Take, for example, triangle pose, which we examined in the last post. When performing this pose, you would exhale while bringing your hand down to your foot and inhale while reaching your opposite hand up to the ceiling.

  • Namaste

    If you have attended a yoga class, you are probably at least vaguely familiar with the word Namaste. Whether or not you understand the meaning of the word and the gesture that goes along with it, however, is another question. Nama means bow, as means I, and te means you. Put together, Namaste means “bow me you” or “I bow to you.” When the word Namaste is said, either at the beginning and/or the end of class, yoga teachers and students alike bring the hands together in front of the heart, close the eyes, and bow the head forward. The gesture may also be performed by placing the hands together in front of the third eye, bowing the head, and moving the heads down to the heart. Interestingly, when the gesture is preformed…

  • Utthita Trikonasana

    What if I told you that there was a single yoga pose that could promote physical strength and stability as well as balance of body and mind? What if I told you that this same pose, if practiced regularly, could also permanently relieve backache as well as occasional indigestion and even troublesome symptoms of menopause? This pose is called Triangle pose, or Trikonasana in Sanskirt- tri, meaning three and kona, meaning corner. Whether you are a beginner or have been practicing yoga for many years, Triangle is an excellent back and core strengthener. It stretches the legs, muscles around the knees, ankle joints, groin muscles, hamstrings, abdominals, obliques, back, calves, and the shoulders- just to name a few. But not only does Triangle keep our bodies supple and flexible- helping to prevent…