It’s Moving Day!

Shanti Shift Yoga, the blog, is moving! The new ashram is at SuzanColon.net. Please join me there for more of the same stuff you’ve found here.

I’m doing this in the spirit of simplifying my online life; it’s easier to have one unified blog than two separate ones. Also, as a student and teacher of Integral Yoga, I’m trying to practice what I teach and integrate my lives as an author and yoga instructor/devotee. Why be all over the place when I can be in one place, present and chilled out?

Thank you for your support, your comments, your “Like”s, your re-Tweets, and for being such divine lights. I hope we can walk together on this journey, because the path is always better with the sangha

Namaste, y’all!

xOMx,

Suzan Saraswati Colón

My Weekly Quote

Reblogged from Brian Liem:

Karuna (KUH-roo-na) noun

  Loving compassion.

From Sanskrit karuna (compassion).

"Once we experience and feel this inter-dependence of all living beings, we will cease to hurt, humiliate, exploit and kill another. We will want to free all sentient beings from suffering. This is karuna, compassion, which in turn gives rise to the responsibility to create happiness and its causes for all."  

Read more… 11 more words

I heart Brian.

Russell Brand: “I Spend More Time Doing Yoga Than Having Sex”

Russell Brand recently admitted the above to interviewer Piers Morgan. Gotta love Russell for admitting that he’s doing more yoga and meditation than… other things. If you don’t love the ex-Mr. Katy Perry, forward to :25 to hear the above quote. I adore yogic humor.

 

 

Oh, what the halasana; here’s one more pic of Russell, meditating.

A Tax Upon Ye?

New York State is trying to re-classify yoga centers from “movement spaces,” such as dance studios, to “fitness centers,” like gyms. What does this mean? If it happens, then yoga in New York will become prohibitively expen$ive.

In addition to yoga classes being taxed, yoga studios will have to pay the state arrears for up to three years. Imagine having to pay three years’ worth of back taxes–holy shanti! That could very well put many privately-owned studios out of business. Those that survive will have to pass the cost along to students. Yoga in New York City is already pretty pricey, averaging $17 and up. In these difficult financial times, will people be able to pay over $20 for the yoga they need? (Answer: not likely.)

Yogis and yoginis, let us revolt! Peacefully, of course. MoveOn.org has partnered with SignOn.org to create a petition. Please click here and sign your aversion to this proposal, which will cause a lot of suffering. Unless we all get together and stop it.

xOMx,

Saraswati

To read more about this in$anity, click here.

Gone Meditatin’

Namaste, yogis and yoginis!

Just a quick note to say that The Daily Swami and ShantiShift Yoga will be on hiatus for a while. Life happens–it’s beautiful, it’s big, it’s busy. I hope to make the Swami daily again soon. Until then, I bow to your divine light.

xOMx,

Saraswati

The Daily Swami

‎”God did not make us to be eaten up by anxiety, but to walk erect, free, unafraid in a world where there is work to do, truth to seek, love to give and win.”

–Joseph Fort Newton

You Can’t Go OM Again, But You Can Go NOW

Yesterday was the final day of OM Yoga’s home base studio in Union Square. After fifteen years, OM owner Cyndi Lee led a brief meditation on transition before reminding the couple-hundred strong crowd that this is why we meditate and practice: impermanence.

The final evening featured a series of simultaneous classes, each in a different studio, each led by a senior teacher: Cyndi, Brian Liem, Frank Mauro, Edward Jones, and Joe Miller. Class assignments were democratically at random. Sri Hubbins and I drew Frank Mauro, a great teacher who has become a friend over the years. He’s the only yoga instructor I know who can play Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath during a class and make it somehow fit and work.

The class was sweaty, meditative, and somber. The mood ranged from big pranayama sighs to big pranayama sighs of relief that Brian, Frank, Edward, and Joe–the Fab Four of Yoga–and a few select other OM teachers will be regrouping down the block at The Shala under the name Now Yoga.

Now Yoga: Joe, Brian, Edward, and Frank.

After the classes, the pizza and boxes o’ shiraz came out. As Sri Hubbins and I contemplated impermanence, we decided not to make this a long goodbye. Especially since it was more like, see you down the block next week.

I thanked Cyndi for providing the yoga retreat that led me to meet Sri Hubbins, and we left our OM yoga home for the last time.

Om shanthi, OM. And namaste, Now!