Let’s get right to the point: I’m taking a sabbatical. Yep, for the entire month of April 2014 + the beginning weeks of May 2014, I won’t be posting any new content.
You might be thinking, “What … Why? You were just starting to blog all about Yoga + now you’re leaving!?” Take a deep breath – I’m not leaving, just taking a break.
You might remember when I posted about my husband’s deployment, which in-turn meant that I was moving from California back to Connecticut. As you can imagine, preparing to spend the next year without my husband + planning my 4th cross-country move in only 2 months creates quite a to-do list. In addition to a full-time gig with one of the coolest ladies on the planet, I do still need to find time to sleep + eat.
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Next to Namaste, Om is often the first Sanskrit word you’ll hear + learn (and probably chant) in a Yoga class. This one word/mantra has been spoken + studied for thousands of years (probably even longer!) and has numerous layers of meaning, which can make it feel a bit overwhelming for just two little letters.
I can still remember the first Yoga class I went to where Om was chanted at the beginning and end of our practice. For the first few classes, I didn’t Om with the other students because frankly, I had no idea what it meant + I wasn’t going to go chanting about or to who-knows-what!
Even though I wasn’t chanting, I could still feel this oddly comforting vibration when the other students chanted + I became incredibly curious about what Om was all about.
After my 4th or 5th Yoga class, I got up the courage to approach the teacher at the end of class and asked him, “What does Om mean?” Without hesitation, he simply said, “Om is the sound of the universe creating itself.”
That’s pretty freakin’ deep!
Like many other ancient Sanskrit words, Om has various translations, “the sound of the universe creating itself” being one of the more esoteric. Simply put, Om is the sound that the ancient rishis/sages felt while they were in deep meditation. Yeah, you read that right – felt, not heard.
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One question is never enough, is it? When I wrote 27 Things to Know About Yoga, my goal was to answer all of the initial questions that folks ask about Yoga, but once you ask one question, your mind comes up with another … and another … and – you see where I’m going with this?
The thrill of living is that we always have more questions than answers, more curiosities than certainties, and more hope than fear.
When you get down to the core of it, I’m here to help you understand Yoga on a deeper level + help you apply all the ancient (and ever-evolving!) wisdom that Yoga offers to the modern life that you live … and what better way to do that than by answering YOUR questions?!
Welcome to Yoga Q+A, THE place to get straightforward answers to your Yoga quandaries and curiosities. You want to know + I’m here to help – it’s that simple.
So … what Yoga question am I diving into this time?
“Do I have to be flexible to do Yoga?” is one of the most persistent questions around, and while numerous people have answered it (all coming to the same conclusion), the myth that you need to be flexible to do Yoga still haunts us.
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