Aaaah, pranaaaaaaahyama. After a solid week of the bone-crushing flu, I have rediscovered you. How you lighten my lungs, how you calm the threads of my consciousness. You give me the strength and stability to meet the challenges of each day. You beat down the anxiety that threatens my peace of mind. You are medicine for my soul.
Here’s a simple Pranayama practice to help you discover your new love:

1. Take a comfortable seat with spine long and knees level to or lower than your pelvis.
2. Begin to progressively lengthen your breath with a slight constriction at the throat.
3. Try to extend your breath to a count of 5 on inhale and 5 on exhale, sustain this for a minimum of 12 rounds. Adjust the speed of your count so that you are not out of breath but you are pushing your breath threshold.
4. Add a pause after exhale of up to 5 counts so that you inhale 5, exhale 5, hold after exhale 5. Sustain a minimum of 12 breaths. Again, adjust the count so that the ratio is 1:0:1:1 and you are pushing your threshold without feeling out of breath.
5. Release the technique and notice how you feel.
6. Repeat daily for at least a week and observe, enjoy, and fall in love!

Want some more information about pranayama and how to integrate into your daily routine? Jenny Hayo is offering her Pranayama Intensive April 10 & 11 at 8 Limbs Capitol Hill.

Posted by: Anne Phyfe

Back home in New Orleans, March means that you can go to the St. Patrick’s Day parade and catch all the ingredients you need for a stew, including water (if it rains). I remember scoring my first cabbage as a kid. It was losing leaves in the air and felt like catching a big ball. All of a sudden “cabbage ball” made sense. The aha moment I take from this memory now, 30 years later, is that whatever life throws out, we’ve got to make soup!
Here’s my soup recipe, complete with a great tip I got from Conscious Choice Magazine (a favorite) this month: use bouillon instead of store-bought stock to reduce your environmental impact.

Lentil Soup
Soak 1½ cups of beans in water for few hours or overnight
Chop and saute one onion, 2 stalks of celery and 3 carrots
Add Salt and ProVata Seasoning from R-U-Ved (Cardamom, Ginger, Cloves, Cumin, Coriander Seeds, and Fennel)
Add soaked beans and water to cover beans by 2 inches
Dissolve bouillon cubes or paste to taste
Cook til beans are soft but not falling apart (unless you like it like that)
Optional: add fresh tomatoes and/or yogurt or sour cream when serving

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, all 8 Limbs Members get 10% off anything in our Boutique that is “green” (eco) or the color green for the month of March!

Posted by: Anne Phyfe

As someone born on Friday the 13th, I have always embraced this “bad luck” day. I choose 13 for my volleyball and soccer uniforms, don’t mind sitting in the 13th row (if there is one!), and find it fascinating that $800 to 900 million of business is “lost” on occurrences of Friday the 13th. I have to admit that I am not free from superstition, and did not step on cracks on my daily walk to school as a child to save both of my parents’ backs/spines. I detest horror films, so I never even watched Friday the 13th.
The reality is, 17 to 21 million people suffer from a phobia of Friday the 13th, called paraskevidekatriaphobia. This fear comes from a double whammy: both the number 13 and Fridays are separately considered bad luck in folklore from many different traditions.
Since mind over matter works both ways, those with a fear of this day tend to get into more accidents and have worse “luck” on this day, perhaps due to their anxiety.
This month (March), if you need something to get over your fear of Friday the 13th, come to a yoga class at any 8 Limbs and we’ll only charge you $13 for a drop-in if you mention the 8 Limbs Blog. And find relief for your anxiety in knowing that the birthday of both myself and the 8 Limbs General Manager Ashley Dahl is Friday, March 13th.
But sorry, you won’t find us at work, we’ll both be staying at home, agoraphobic and working on our fear of growing old.

Curious about Friday the 13th? Check out this informative article:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/02/0212_040212_friday13.html

Posted by: Anne Phyfe

Check out Seattle Magazine for a fun piece on yoga called “Strike a Pose.” Photos were taken at 8 Limbs West Seattle by former WS manager Shannon Cummings’ hubbie Chris (he’s awesome) and 8 Limbs received mention for our great Intro Series courses and prenatal and postnatal yoga. Check out the website and add your own comments!

http://www.seattlemag.com/0p129a1292/strike-a-pose/

Posted by: 8 Limbs

Megan and Abby, our designer and boutique buyer, have co-created the new 8 Limbs t-shirts. With images that correspond to some of our favorite poses (crow, tree and frog), these Alternative Apparel t’s are soft, comfortable, and organic! Men and women styles available at all three studios.

Posted by: 8 Limbs

I just returned from a trip to my hometown of New Orleans to teach a workshop, see family, and celebrate my first Mardi Gras there since 1988. The workshop was about the koshas, the dimensions or layers of bring that cover our soul, and the participants were in “Soul School”, the Teacher Training at Sean Johnson’s Wild Lotus Yoga (Sean’s kirtan band will be here in May, stay tuned!). It was lovely to share these ancient concepts with a group so committed to yoga as a journey to the soul.

The last few years have been soul-searching for New Orleans residents. Anyone living there has made a conscious choice to stay, be it for family, music, or the sense of spirit and history that is carried through the architecture, the clanging streetcars running on St. Charles Avenue, and the friendly and spunky people.

If there’s a city that knows how to deal with challenge but continue to put on a great show, it’s New Orleans. During the day we visited the French Quarter to see street musicians and eat beignets, and at night we lined the streets with hundreds of locals and Mardi-Gras fans to watch the night parades. My family was blown away by the pageantry, the music, the strong sense of community, and the sunny weather! Mardi Gras is not what most people think (drunken mobs of college students on spring break?). It is a creative hurricane of papier mache floats, witty costumes, and high school marching bands. Here are a few of the 300 (!) pics of our time in the Big Easy. Y’all head down there soon, hear?!

Posted by: Anne Phyfe

Starting something new can be the HARDEST THING. Your first yoga class, a blind date, a home practice, you fill in the blank! It took me at least five years of taking yoga classes to finally commit to the elusive home practice. The key, for me, was to do it first thing in the morning. Make a cup of tea, light a candle, and get on the mat. I started with asana, then a dare got me to add pranayama, then a few years ago, my teacher Rod Stryker got me hooked on meditation. Now it’s as essential as brushing my teeth, my “mental floss!” To give you hands-on support with your own home practice, Douglas Ridings will offer a Home Practice workshop at 8 Limbs Capitol Hill on March 22nd.

This month the “first time” at 8 Limbs is this new blog! It’s a great format to allow us to more regularly share tips on this journey of yoga and mindful living. Our blog will also let you in the back door of 8 Limbs to show you what we’re excited about at our studios and in our communities.

Plus, we want to hear from you: what are the obstacles to your own practice and how have you overcome them?

Posted by: Anne Phyfe