In 1996, I took the Intro Series at 8 Limbs. I remember enjoying it, but it did not stick. 10 years later a voice spoke to me, and told me it was time to try the Intro Series again. I was led this time by Jenny Hayo, and amazingly it stuck. I soon learned there was much more to yoga than just movement. Doshas and Chakras and Sutras, oh my!

One of the first things that resonated for me in my practice I learned from Jenny, it was to be “honest with my practice”. With that information, I soon no longer worried about how my practice compared to my neighbor’s. If I’m falling all over the place, or am unable to get into a particular pose, no biggie.

As I let go into MY asana practice, things began to change for me. There was no need to feel intimidated in a yoga class. As I applied this idea to the rest of my life, I started seeing with new eyes. As I learned more about my body and mind through yoga, I began to wake up to MYSELF.

I have come to love the unfolding of each yoga class I take. Once in a while things will click in magical ways, and you can feel that something unexplainably moving has been shared in class. Some days it’s like it’s all brand new and I’ve never practiced yoga before, and other days I feel like the most bad ass yogi that has ever dropped into Ahdo Mukha Savansana.

With the confidence I have gained from my practice at 8 Limbs, I can show up at any yoga class anywhere and feel comfortable knowing that I have an established practice. As the river of life continues its mysterious flow, and I accept the inevitability of change, I feel beyond blessed to have such an amazing practice as yoga to support me in my quest for growth and self transformation. It truly all is yoga.

Posted by: Rob Nyberg

My first home in Seattle was an apartment right across the street from 8 Limbs Yoga Center on Capitol Hill. With the location being super convenient, I signed up for a membership. Right from the start, the sweetness of 8 Limbs drew me in- from walking up the narrow, red-carpeted staircase to the boutique, to the friendliness of the staff as I signed in, and of course, to the magic plant and light-filled energy of the Surya Room. After a few wonderful classes with different teachers, I began to feel excited to come back each day to go a little bit deeper. This feeling continued for years and still lives inside of me every time I step through the doors to walk up the staircase.

Because of the range of levels and teaching styles, I have always felt a sense of spaciousness for my yoga practice to grow and to be supported by an 8 Limbs teacher wherever I am at in the journey. In Surya and Chandra, I received teachings of both the basics of yoga in my first Intro class and years later, the 200-hour Teacher Training Certification. I have always felt that the diversity of teaching styles at 8 Limbs creates a very open, well-rounded student. I feel honored and grateful to now be teaching classes at 8 Limbs to such lovely people in a space that is filled with life force and sweetness.

8 Limbs has always been a home away from home for me. That’s what drew me here, and that’s what keeps me here.

Thank you Anne Phyfe. Happy 15th Anniversary!!

Posted by: Megan Kroh, 8 Limbs instructor – Monday and Wednesday 6:30am @ 8 Limbs Capitol Hill

As we lead up to the 8 Limbs 15 Year Anniversary in October, we’ll be sharing stories that make up the fabric of 8 Limbs from myself (the founder), 8 Limbs staff, and of course yoga practitioners that have come to 8 Limbs over the years. If you have a story to share, send it to me at annephyfe@8limbsyoga.com with 8 Limbs Story in the subject line. I can’t promise we’ll share them all, but I can promise I will read each and every one. I love a good story. For now, here’s the story of My Yoga Teacher(s).

I found my first yoga teacher through my African dance teacher. The practices Kathleen led were so incredibly difficult, and so deeply spiritual that I was soon hooked and devoted. After a few years I yearned for a teacher who was able to link this ancient practice with our modern understanding of psychology and offer me insight into the workings of my mind. For a long time I was without one teacher. I studied with many amazing yoga masters and devoured and digested their teachings, especially those in the Krishnamacharya linegage. Some fed me as a teacher, others as a student.

In 1999 I was intrigued by a workshop on the chakras and the subtle body with Shari Friedrichsen, a teacher from Portland. I felt curiously drawn to the content. After just a few hours I knew that she was the teacher for me. I asked and she fortunately accepted. I followed Shari to Portland for classes, studied with her when she visited Seattle, and called on the phone when I needed guidance. At the time Shari had been taking a break from having a formal yoga teacher after learning from greats like BKS Iyengar and Angela Famer and had studied on her own for more than five years. I could feel the authenticity of her teaching. It so clearly came from deep exploration rather than regurgitation. It also helped me to sift through what I had been learning with others and clarify what my own special gifts as a teacher were. She helped me to become my own teacher.

In 2004 I came upon my other teacher in much the same way. I signed up for a 6-day conference in Olympia and chose Rod Stryker as my main track to learn about Tantra, the Gunas, and the Koshas without having met him or read anything by or about him. I felt immediately connected to a very deep well of knowledge and knew that something beyond that was also being transmitted.

Here I had two amazing teachers as resources and guides to my studies, one that nourished my emotional, intuitive, and female side and the other who helped me tap into discerning power and my more male attributes.
As it turned out, by cosmic chance the two of them had come to study with the very same teacher, Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, head of The Himalayan Institute. The teachings from the Tantric tradition are vast and limitless. I am continually amazed at their relevance as I “study up” to teach the Intro to Rod’s weekend to our 500-hour Teacher Training Participants. I feel very fortunate to have this deep well to draw from in my teaching and personal life. What I have learned from both of them has been so nourishing and supportive of a balanced and mindful life.

I invite all of you to join me next weekend, October 7-9, for a weekend of Yoga with Rod Stryker at 8 Limbs Capitol Hill. These classes are accessible to practitioners of all levels as they go beyond asana (posture) and deep into practices and teachings that can immediately enhance your life. Don’t miss it. Really.

Rod will also give a short talk and sign copies of his new book The Four Desires (Random House) on Saturday, October 8, 5-6pm at 8 Limbs Capitol Hill (free event).

Interested to hear more about having/finding a teacher? Check out The Guru Question or Mariana Caplan’s Insights at the Edge podcast

Posted by: Anne Phyfe Palmer

8 Limbs started on a road trip to Idaho with the question: “if you could start a business, any business, right now, what would it be?” My immediate answer, without having ever considered it, was “a yoga studio.” From that moment, the idea percolated and brought forth the vision for an inclusive and welcoming home for yoga in Seattle. I spent most of my free time in 1996 bringing the vision into reality, and with the help of many friends, we cleaned, painted, and decorated the Surya studio the entire month of September to open on October 15, 1996.
It’s now been fifteen years since that first 7am class on a decidedly crisp fall morning. At 8 Limbs remain committed to our original mission, though we have grown and evolved with many different teachers, students, managers, and desk staff.

To celebrate, 8 Limbs Capitol Hill received a lovely facelift this summer. Both Chandra and Surya studios have new lighting, fans, and a fresh coat of paint. Thanks to our designer Jenny Hayo, 8 Limbs instructor since 1999, the look is clean, modern, and cozy. We hope you’ll come check the spaces out soon. They are ready to hold the space for 15 more years of your practice.

We have chosen to celebrate 15 years with a walk through our history from 1996 through 2011. From October 1st through 15th we will commemorate the milestones of 8 Limbs and offer a special each day.

Mark your calendars now for our October 13th benefit classes at all four 8 Limbs and our 15th Anniversary Celebration Class on October 15th at 5pm taught by Dawn to Stephen Fandrich’s live music and preceded by a dance performance by Douglas Ridings.

Thanks to all of you who have walked in the doors of 8 Limbs over the last 15 years. You have made 8 Limbs what it is today.

Posted by: Anne Phyfe Palmer

I became inspired for the idea of this workshop in the early spring of this year by asking myself “what sort of workshop would I most like to attend right now?”  At the time I was feeling overwhelmed and out of balance.  I yearned for an opening in all the busy-ness where I might slow down and reconnect to my Self with a capital S (there is truth in the saying that teachers often teach what they need to learn most)!  As a result of this self inquiry, I envisioned a workshop infused with the healing energy of self care.  I would now like to offer this unique opportunity to all of you to recharge and renew, because I know I’m not the only one who could use a little support in replenishing their natural vitality and joy!

We will begin this 2 hour journey with self massage and Shiatsu, using our own healing hands, rolling on rubber balls, gentle movement, and breath to help move energy and ease sore and tight places where we feel stuck or stagnant. I will provide charts of traditional chinese medicine accupressure points that you can take home with you, in case you wish to continue this exploration on your own (and I hope you will).

I will also offer aromatherapy during class in the form of chamomile and/or lavender essential oil infusions, chosen for their calming and healing effects.  I have been testing different mixes and I have found some that are sublime.

The second half of this workshop will be reserved for Yoga Nidra, a most beautiful and relaxing practice. If you haven’t yet tried Yoga Nidra you really owe it to yourself to check it out. If you are already familiar with the practice then you know what I’m talking about!  During Yoga Nidra you are in a state of deep sleep with a slight trace of awareness.  Yoga Nidra is a systematic process of deepening relaxation that moves through all the subtle layers of body and mind (koshas). It is said that an hour of Yoga Nidra is more restful than 4 hours of normal sleep!  We will also learn how to create a Sankalpa — a positive affirmation or intention that helps to enhance the healing effects of the Nidra experience, and infuses the body and mind with the pure energy of your heart’s desire.

Please join me for this special event on Saturday, August 13, from 2-4pm at 8 Limbs West Seattle. Wear your most comfortable clothes (pajamas come to mind). Blankets, eye bags and bolsters will be provided. You are welcome to bring a pillow if you like. All levels are welcome, bring a friend.

See you on Saturday,
Tracy Hodgeman
www.tracyhodgeman.com

Last night I returned from a weekend of teaching at Breitenbush Hot Springs in Oregon. 8 Limbs leads retreats at “B-bush” in April and July and I get to enjoy the sacred land and geothermal waters while teaching yoga classes and workshops to a diverse group of participants. Some are teachers learning about yoga and how to share it with others, others join us as a personal yoga retreat. All are interested in learning more about yoga and most end up learning more about themselves.

When I first met with our group I asked them to think of a teacher that had influenced them. I got goose bumps hearing the stories: a seventh grade teacher who, with two pointed questions, had helped a small town girl to think beyond “finish high school, get married, have three kids”; a yoga teacher who helped an overweight woman find the strength and confidence to moved beyond the layers she carried on her body; a strict music teacher who set firm boundaries and expectations that invited the students to stretch beyond their limitations. Their lives had been affected by these teachers, to the point of a complete turnaround.

In my eyes, these teachers had all put out an invitation. They had all seen their role as teacher as several steps beyond simply passing on information. They had asked for participation, they had seen beyond their students and had guided them towards their potential. As David Whyte says, “An invitation invites the self beyond one’s self/oneself.” You can invite someone, as the 7^th grade teacher did, out of their inheritance, beyond what they might expect of themselves.

To me a retreat is an invitation. It is a container outside of our ordinary lives. We can shed our roles, chores, jobs, phones, and use the practice of yoga to help us to see and work with what comes forth when we let go of these habits and demands.

8 Limbs we take retreats seriously. We are working right now on the 2012 retreat schedule and welcome your suggestions for times of year, teachers, areas of and locations. You can send them to ashley@8limbsyoga.com.

I am heading, tonight, on another retreat, this one my family vacation. I’ll be on a lake in the Adirondacks, unplugged, for a whole week. Enjoy some Seattle sunshine, and consider what invitation you have for own students, children, friends, co-workers, and for your Self.

Posted by: Anne Phyfe Palmer

P.S. Your opportunities to retreat for 2011 are posted on our Retreats page, Embracing Change (Yoga for 50+ Retreat) with Sally Carley August 26-28 and Fall Sleeping Lady with Anne Phyfe Palmer and Melina Meza November 4-6.

After practicing hatha yoga the first few times, I fell in love with how it made me feel. It wasn’t like a “runner’s high,” I knew what that was, and this was quite different. I was also astounded at how little I could bend my body compared to others. After all of the weight lifting I had done, I was so stiff it was at times embarrassing, as no posture came easily to me. But then I had an epiphany: I was the stiffest person in class, and I may always be. And for the first time in my life that became okay. I decided to give myself permission not to have to be the best or compete like I’d been trained to do in sports (compete until you win, or die trying). I knew that I would never excel at this, but I LOVED it.

So, I gave myself permission to be the stiff guy in the back row, the guy who was trying hard but was kind of embarrassing to watch. This allowing felt so liberating, I believe it inadvertently accelerated my practice tenfold. It was almost indescribable; I started to feel like plates of armor were being pulled off of me, creating a new sense of physical freedom and emotional ease. My joints were opening and my muscles were elongating, but I was also opening stagnant energy channels and pulling open my heart center, especially from the impact of the breathing practice.

That is when things really started to move. Unexpectedly, I started making choices from a different perspective, and was noticing that my life was subtly changing. This, I learned, is because as soon as your criteria for making choices changes, it changes the course of your life. From little decisions to big decisions, you begin to make them differently. Instead of going here, you go there. Instead of eating this, you choose that. Instead of befriending this person, you befriend that person, and so on. All those little decisions change the course of your life. Finally, one day, my heart learned what joy was, and I felt my spirit heal from within. Then my life began to grow toward the light, like a plant reaching toward the sun.

Posted by: Max Strom

Max Strom returns to 8 Limbs Capitol Hill on July 31 for two workshops: Heart Core Yoga and A Life Worth Breathing. Born with severe clubbed feet, Max Strom spent much of the first six years of his life with his feet confined in plaster casts and braces. Today, he is known for inspiring and impacting the lives of his students. Due to an ever-increasing demand for his teachings, Max travels extensively teaching and lecturing on personal transformation, spirituality, and yoga. He has taught tens of thousands of students, trained several hundred teachers. You can see more of his work on his DVDs, Learn to Breathe, to heal yourself and your relationships, and, Max Strom Yoga – Strength, Grace, Healing.

Hello you all out there! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I fell off the writing wagon for a while and am attempting to jump back on. At a yoga class last week I ran into local writer, Stevie Kallos. The last time I’d seen her was at Clair Dederer’s Poser reading at Elliott Bay Books. At the time I was writing daily (thanks to the inspiration of Clair’s book) and doing it without any effort at all. Wake up, brush and neti, write, then sit and practice asana. Easy, peasy! I find rising early in the winter wonderfully peaceful and grounding. It’s dark, quiet, and I relish the solitude before the whirl of the day begins. I told Stevie that I was myself writing. She was excited and encouraging, and gave me her card.

In the last few months, as the sun has beat me to the punch (and Mad Men Season Four held me in its throes each night), I have had a harder time with any of the previously mentioned practices. Our family adopted a dog (and guess who now gets up as soon as I get up?), I had several workshops and projects to prepare for, yadda yadda yadda. I just had stuff to DO each morning before the kids woke up and the earlier light fed that DO mode I so easily tap into.

At first I was OK with letting go of the writing – I had shown myself that I could branch off into creative writing and knew I’d return when the time was right. But after a while it started to feel like I’d lost the vein I’d been mining so successfully (and more importantly, to such personal satisfaction). I’d read an amazing article or even just a poignant phrase and get a little jealous (rather than inspired).

When I saw Stevie last week I lamented that the writing habit had fallen off, and that I was feeling ready to get back to it. I’d brought back daily asana and meditation (with a weekly commitment verbalized to my mentor!) and seated in that could take on that newer practice again. Oh, and we finished the season of Mad Men.

“It’s like a yoga practice,” Stevie said. “You start it up with just one pose. Writing is like that, just write as long as it takes to do a pose.”

Oh how many times I’d said just about the same thing to a yoga student who wanted to start a home practice: “Don’t think of practice as a whole 90 minute class, connect to a couple of poses you enjoy and just do them.” Practice is just that, it is practice. It is a discipline, but it is also a reward. It is a commitment, but it is also a freedom. When I practice, be it yoga, writing, patience, conscious parenting, or vegetable growing, (next up: piano playing), I feel more free to be exactly who I was put on this planet to be.

So the next morning, I wrote. Just a page, mind you, but a page none-the-less. The next day I put in another page. And now I am finally writing a full-on blog post. Phew that feels good (you can imagine how many times in June I thought “I need to write a blog post!”).

What will your practice be today? What have you put off because you don’t have time, or have too much to do? Try just five minutes. And then do it again tomorrow. Tell someone about your commitment, or write it down. And ENJOY!

Posted by: Anne Phyfe Palmer

For many of us in the U.S. Memorial Day means a long weekend and the start of summer. Historically, though, it is a day of remembrance for those who have lost their lives in military service. Now in another era of war, our country has lost many men and women to combat in the last decade. Memorial Day is our way to pause and remember those lives as we continue on our own journey.

The Sanskrit word Smrti means literally “that which is remembered.” It is one of the five Vrttis, waves or fluctuations of the mind. It is one of only five ways that our mind moves. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali speak to these five thought waves in Sutras I.5-I.11. Each is said to be Klista Aklistah, colored or not colored. Memory can be colored by conditioning, ignorance, fear or attachment, or it can be pure uncolored memory.

Coloring the waves of our minds makes life interesting. My daughters and I went to see the musical Mary Poppins on Saturday. Some of the most memorable scenes involved bright colors, representing the magical places Mary could transport Bert and the children to (remember those horses that leapt off the carousel in the movie?). Mary could take the children from the greyness of their London life to a technicolor fantasy world, and make them “feel like I could fly.” But now I’m getting diverted to another of the five Vrttis, Vikalpa (imagination)…

The challenge of coloring our memories is that over time it becomes difficult to separate out the real from the unreal. This leads to Avidya, ignorance, and the other Klesas, the five causes of suffering. One of the practices of yoga is to become a witness to the Vrttis, our thought patterns, to progressively learn to remove the charge or coloring, from these waves as they move through our minds. Then they stay clear and we learn to see life as it is rather than through distorted lenses.

Even the American day of Memory, Memorial Day, can be colored, by aversion or attachment. Those who disdain the military and U.S. involvement in the affairs of other countries could refuse to acknowledge this day. Others could experience it as a tragic day of mourning for those lost at war and be upset that others are having a social BBQ. A Memorial without color might simply honor lost lives, with a moment of silence, or the decoration of a grave (Decoration Day was the precursor to Memorial Day).

Memory is powerful. It can shape our present in a variety of ways. If we can uncolor it, we let go of the drama that surrounds the past and arrive more fully present in each moment.

Posted by: Anne Phyfe Palmer

Ever since I got my Undriver License I have been meaning to blog about the non-profit group that is licensing people to STOP DRIVING. May is Bike to Work Month so, though it’s late, it’s time! I met the Undriving folks at the Ballard Sustainability Festival in the fall of 2009, where I made an “Undorsement” to walk, bike, telecommute, or skip the trip at least 50% of the time instead of driving a car.

My serious cycling days began when I was about 13 and took long rides under the oak trees in (flat) New Orleans. I loved it for the exercise but hardly thought of it as a commuting option. When I went to college in the cold mountains of Vermont, I got my first mountain bike and went carless for my first three years of college (yes, in the cold…I mastered the use of two wool scarves over everything but my eyeballs). Once settled in Seattle in 1993 I managed to get around town on my bicycle more often than not.

In 2000, pregnancy and moving to Madison Valley put a bike wrench in my cycling habit. I just didn’t think the surrounding hills were surmountable, plus I was tired, and pregnant, and then had a baby to bring with me. The car became my main mode of transportation. This persisted for the most part until 2008, when my family moved out of our home to remodel. I lived in a home with an easier bike ride to work, and thus I shifted from driving everywhere to biking whenever possible. My Undorsement was to not drive 50% of the time. I have had weeks of 100%, but have held to at least 50% since then.

Check out the video a local documentary student at UW made for Undriver about my story back to the bike, even with kids, an uphill commute, and a busy life. We made it to inspire you to make the extra effort and UNDRIVE!

http://undriving.org/anne-phyfe-palmer

Posted by: Anne Phyfe Palmer