Practicing Yoga

This morning didn’t go quite as planned. Nothing major, just a series of small computer frustrations added to reading the morning news and writing that wasn’t going well. So, I stopped. I stopped trying to make this newsletter format properly. I stopped reading the news. I stopped trying to make the morning go the way I…

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Tadasana – The Mountains We Face

Tadasana One of the virtues we often ascribe to mountains is strength. It is also one of the attributes we want in leaders. But it is important to remember that there are many kinds of strength. Our current campus situation is a great example. In March, campus leaders needed the strength to make difficult decisions…

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Posture or Posturing

What most of us know about yoga before ever taking a class are the postures. Only one part of a complex system, these postures, called asanas in Sanskrit, were designed to help practitioners develop strong, flexible bodies to enable sitting for extended periods in meditation. Now, whether or not we wish to practice meditation, they…

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Strength

“Do you ever have to yell at your staff?” The question was posed to me some time ago by my dance instructor. A dance studio is its own mostly self-contained world and I had been taking lessons for sometime before people learned that I was a vice president at a local university. Only a few…

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Beginning Well

Over the past two weeks, I’ve written about the three elements that are, for me, an important part of a yoga class. In the hour, hour and a half of a yoga class, it is usual for these elements to take no more than five to ten minutes. And yet, I think each element is…

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Determining Purpose

When you walk into a yoga studio it’s easy to tell immediately that this is not your usual exercise class. It’s quiet. There’s no up-tempo music playing, there are no pulsing lights, there’s no peppy instructor trying to rev you up to get you ready to push yourself. If there is music playing, it’s calming,…

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The Practice of Intention

One of the elements of many, maybe most, yoga classes is the practice of setting an intention at the beginning of class. An intention may be something you want to learn in the class such as a new asana. It may be an attitude you want to maintain – openness to new experiences or keeping…

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What’s Your Intention?

What do the practices of breathing, self-awareness, and setting an intention really have to do with leadership? In my opinion, a great deal depending on the type of leader you want to be. I’m sure some of you have heard me mention before a favorite book of mine, Larraine Matusak’s Finding Your Voice: Learning to…

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Setting an Intention

Over the last two weeks, I’ve written about two of the three concepts I use as I begin a yoga class. A focus on the breath and an awareness of our self physically, emotionally, and mentally. This week I’ll be writing about the third concept – setting an intention. But what does ‘setting an intention’ actually…

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Self-awareness in Partnerships

During the Leadership Yoga workshop, we often take the time to practice some partner yoga. Partner yoga is exactly what it sounds like, it’s an opportunity to practice asanas with a partner. This doesn’t mean the teacher assisting the student or even one student helping another as a more experienced student. Partner yoga is two…

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