July 2019 | Summer & Fire Element

Summer is our brightest time of year, both physically and emotionally. It can be joyful, but sometimes a manic season, when the sun hits us and inspires our passion and creativity. 

In Chinese Medicine, Summer is associated with the element Fire, the color red, the bitter flavor (including leafy greens, coffee, and chocolate), the Heart, Pericardium and Small Intestine organ meridian systems and with embracing our dreams, joyful emotions, creativity, passion and love, even our sexuality.

We do our best to channel this energy into healthy activities while enjoying our long days by playing outside, traveling, enjoying barbecues and time with friends and family. 

When the Fire Element within us is in excess, we tend to feel overexcited, chaotic, and even frantic, trying to fit too much in, creating busyness, often left feeling like we aren't able to enjoy those activities or feel connected to the people we’re with. When the Fire Element is deficient we can feel little excitement, lack of joy, despair, disconnection and in extreme cases even isolation. 

Signs and symptoms that your Fire Element may be off include rashes, inflammation and constipation due to heat, halitosis (bad breath), seasonal allergies, insomnia, mania, lack of joy, anxiety, or despair. Yoga, Pangu Yoga, Qi Gong, Acupuncture and other self-care can bring more balance in these areas, helping us feel greater ease, and connection with others."

I look forward to seeing you for some VERY special Pangu Yoga events and an exciting powerful Pangu Mystical Qi Gong healing weekend September 19-22 with Master Ou Wen Wei,  (founder of Pangu Mystical Qi Gong) hosted right here in Asheville, NC at Black Mountain Yoga!

I am also incredibly honored to be invited to teach in Black Mountain Yoga's next 200 hr Therapeutic Yoga Teacher Training beginning THIS October. 

If you have asked me in the past about being a Pangu Yoga Teacher, the first step is receiving your 200 hr Yoga Teacher Training and practicing Pangu Mystical Qi Gong for at least one year.

Please save the dates below so you don't miss out on these once in a lifetime opportunities. 

Community & individual Acupuncture + special events described below all help tremendously to support a healthful and vital summer season and transition into fall.

Love for the journey,
Anisha

June 2019 | Transcending Faux Pas

This past May, yoga students of the Czech Republic warmly and graciously welcomed me to teach them Pangu Yoga. Crossing boundaries of ethnicity, culture, language and customs, we found a common ground in love and kindness, all seeking true health and happiness. I entered the country as a stranger and left with many friends.
Adjusting to a foreign culture is one of the many challenges that comes with being abroad, but especially while teaching abroad. Despite my best efforts, the occasional gaffe is bound to happen -- especially when your host country’s customs differ from the U.S. customs you know and love.

As an Australian with Indian heritage living and teaching in America, I am open to and used to cross cultural faux pas, but they still make me giggle and reflect. In America, it's common to smile at strangers in an "I acknowledge you" or "I see you and welcome you" kind of way. But in the Czech Republic, this isn't the case. Most of you who have been in my classes know that I'm quite expressive and use my face, voice and emotions as an invitation - and I'm a hugger.

I believe that historically, Czech people do not readily show emotions, and typically only smile at others when they want to initiate a conversation. For many tourists, I'm sure this results in many unintended conversations -- especially at bars!

At first contact, the Czech students seemed cautious, impersonal and indifferent, but I noticed with a tactful approach they became effectively engaged. I was called and inspired to use my other senses and skills as a teacher to feel and reach them, to demonstrate my willingness to meet them in a way that was more comfortable for them. It felt important for me to adapt my behavior and teaching style to them, rather than expecting them to adapt to me.

What we believe separates us can always be shifted through self responsibility.
"What can I do in this moment to achieve a better result, to make connection?" I had to let go of what generally works for me in making connection to be present with how I needed to shift so they could more fully receive and learn.

Through this, we stretch beyond what's comfortable, we move beyond the artificial human constructs and enter into the feeling and understanding that the essence of our existence rests on common ground, common desire; though our method and way might be different, we all seek love, happiness, and good health. Beyond our differences, beyond the highs and lows of emotion-- or no emotion, beyond what's familiar and not -- is the place that is independent of separation. When I found that in my teaching and in the group, the magic unfolded.

The irony...in the end, I was met with more smiles and many hugs!

Love for the journey,
Anisha

May 2019 | Seeking Truth

Thanks to my sister Sona, her love, her support and her soul touching words to me, I am inspired to share this story with you.

What is it inside that drives us to want to change, to be better? Is it wanting something different than what we grew up with? Is it wanting to understand the truth behind our pain? Is it the desire to seek knowledge about our world and want to use it to help others?

People have thanked me for being vulnerable, but the truth is, the more vulnerable I am, the more protected I feel, the more connected I am to a collective, to being in it together, and that brings an ease, a bond to all of life. The change has felt so gradual and I'm still very aware of the times when I guard, and why, but I'm also becoming much more ok if I can't please everyone, if other's don't agree with me, choose to be condescending or just don't like something about me. I still try my best to offer respect when I can. And that makes ME feel better to move out of reaction and into choice.

I grew up with a fear that was crippling, bereft of any belief in myself. Through the fog of terror, unease, confusion and loneliness, I left home when I was 17. All I really did was enter in to a different kind of prison, a different kind of loneliness and loss, where I was rife with the guilt of knowing I had left my younger sister.

Sometimes we have to rebel against everything we've been told to begin to know ourselves, to find a rising courage, that even for a time being can be profound enough to call the storm to stillness, to shake us and wake us from the nightmare, the pain, the darkness; to engage in life despite the fear and get a glimpse of something different-- another way, and we start to welcome the voices that call us back to ourselves and beyond ourselves.

We find a way to see the beauty that we can harvest from the riches of the darkness. We respect the beauty, hold on to it for dear life, and it becomes visible in our dignity. And if we look for it we can see it in how we hold ourselves in the world, how we hold others in the world, eventually enveloping them too in trust and safety. We are in this together.

There is a remembrance in me that wanting to help myself and others to improve their lives means that sometimes I get to go first. It's an honor to show up in a way that gives others permission to open up and find their own Truth that allows their most beautiful selves to emerge. Sometimes we have to go in and in, into what can feel like a scary abyss, so that we can find and release whatever is false and crawl out the other side. And yet we must also find the balance between overindulging the memories and emotions and denying that they are there at all, to the point of a deep insincerity towards ourselves. Both are dangerous places if we stay for too long. We must use the subtle eye of the heart to watch ourselves in this process, to hear and see the hidden heart, to heal it and bring it back to life; to create one spark - is all we need to nourish the flame.

As you're reading this, I will have left home again, at 39, traveling to Europe celebrating 10 years with my love. Each time we leave home, the road takes us into a world we've never been in, finding ourselves alone in a different way. We become more attentive to the selves we have brought along, and what and whom we meet almost always touches the part of the heart that is waiting at home. When I travel, a renewed presence comes with me, welcoming all invitations of transformation, and if I listen deeply I can hear what my heart would love to say. A journey is a sacred thing where we discover more of the hidden, returning enriched. May you have your own in the nearing summer days.

My love to you always and love for the journey,
Anisha