Third Eye Roaming
Third Eye Roaming: Weed and Yoga
Yoga may free you from your suffering, but sometimes you’re suffering too much to do yoga. That’s where the marijuana comes in. Knee aching too much for warrior pose? There’s a THC-infused lotion that works well. Stress of the day weighing you down too much for yogic...
Third Eye Roaming: Passing Gas In Yoga Class
Ah, farts. Can’t live with ’em and can’t live without passing ’em. When I started this column nearly two years ago, I knew that at some point I would have to broach the issue of passing gas in yoga class. It’s an endless point of fascination for folks who don’t do...
Easthampton ‘Acroyoga’: A Fun, Interactive Path To Inner Peace
My shoulders and arms stretched backward like wings, I couldn’t help feeling like Rose from Titanic, and a grin spread across my face as I said: “I’m flying!” On a recent Friday I gave acroyoga a shot and it was the most fun I’ve had in while. Live music played beside...
Third Eye Roaming: Goat Yoga in Easthampton
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story originally listed writer Amanda Drane as the author of this story. It was written by Caitlin Ashworth. The Advocate regrets the error. Seven young goats wandered throughout the room, climbing on yoga students in child’s pose, sniffing...
Third Eye Roaming: Yoga for cancer survivors: Calming the battle within
Mary Kennedy of Northfield says she could barely move her neck before she began taking yoga with Pam Roberts at the YMCA in Greenfield about six years ago.Kennedy, a breast cancer survivor living with torticollis, a painfully twisted neck, says yoga has at times saved...
Third Eye-Roaming: Self-help and Farts, Local yogi and author writes ‘108 Prompts’ to improve your practice
Brian Leaf wants you to pass gas, audibly, in yoga class at least once.Why, you might ask? He says the practice reacquaints you with your humanity.The barrier-breaking suggestion is one of many in a new book written by local author Leaf, The Teacher Appears: 108...
Third Eye Roaming: Cogs in the Wheel
While everyone stands to benefit from yoga, barriers to entry remain. The practice is meant to end suffering, yet ironically those who suffer the most — poor people, people of color, and those with limited mobility among them — often find yoga inaccessible....
Third Eye Roaming: Only the Yoga Should be Hot
Studio owner Audrey Blaisdell says she fell for the yoga behind Bikram, not the “cultish belief system.” It became necessary to draw the line, she says, about a year ago. Prospective students came to fear the authoritarian reputation and mistrust the brand...
Third Eye Roaming: Yoga for Election-Related Insanity
Turn off the news. Put away your phone and shut the newspaper. That heart rate spike that came with the latest election-related news — while appropriate — is not healthy. It’s important to stay informed, especially as America stands at the precipice of an...
Third Eye Roaming: Amherst yoga leader aims to move minds
Whether he’s working with homeless veterans, prison inmates or queer and trans people in his yoga classes and buddhist teachings, Jacoby Ballard emphasizes the struggle is “part of the journey.” “There’s actually beauty that you have to offer because of that path,” he...
Third Eye Roaming: Body on the Brain, Path to Peace Begins with Yoga at Pioneer Valley Shambalah
Mindfulness, or the practice of being completely aware of everything happening in the present moment, can serve as the path to a peaceful world. That person in your life attacking you? Perhaps it is because they are threatened by you. That man who sexually harasses...
Summer Yoga with Emily Dickinson
“The truth is stirless,” our yoga teacher recites during a moment of closed-eye silence. Seconds later, a boisterous squirrel in an overhead tree knocks loose something heavy. A cone-like fruit lands with a thud between my face and my neighbor’s, and we jump...
Third Eye Roaming: Twelve-Step Yoga, moving through addiction and its effects
While I was growing up, my dad was addicted to alcohol and crack cocaine. He still is, he’d say, although he’s been sober for more than six years. At times it wasn’t easy having a good relationship with my dad, but the thing that always got us through rough patches is...
Pain to Gain: Ashtanga Yoga Northampton founder talks path to more enlightened practice
Michelle Ryan says she didn’t truly know yoga until she knew chronic pain. And that’s not because Ryan, founder of Ashtanga Yoga Northampton, hadn’t done yoga before — she’d done it for over 15 years — but because it took working around the spasms to show her the...
Yoga instructor Brandon Compagnone Wants to ‘Unstick’ You
The power vinyasa class hasn’t even begun and most around me — 50 bodies with mats no more than an inch apart — are drenched with sweat. As we struggle through the humidity-induced delirium in the 93-degree room at Northampton’s Shiva Shakti, tonight’s teacher...
Third-Eye Roaming: Some Like it Hot — And Cheap, yoga on a budget takes strategy
Ahh, yoga, you’re so good for us but you can be so downward-dog-darned expensive. If I had a ten-class card for every time someone’s asked me for tips on how to do yoga on the cheap, I’d be yoga-rich! Let’s face it, yoga classes at $15-$20 a pop can really add up,...
Bending Toward Northampton: Jocelyn O’Shea on teaching and yoga for kids
If you had the opportunity to work as a designer for Law & Order and Gossip Girl, would you quit and teach yoga instead? That’s exactly what Jocelyn O’Shea did, and she has no regrets about it. The Cambridge native recently moved back to Massachusetts after...
Resolve to Yoga: get started in 2016
A staggering 80 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail, and yogis can tell you why. These surface-level resolutions — get a gym membership, lose ten pounds, and the like — lack San Culpa, or deep-seated intention. In yoga, the phrase means that you set an intention in...
Grab Some Health: lunchtime yoga at Fire and Water
Yoga instructor and studio owner Tea Musketaquid ends today’s yoga and lunch class with a smile-asana. “Now carry that posture with you throughout the day,” he tells me and two other students. Walking into the windowless room in the middle of the day, with its mood...
Third Eye Roaming: Some Like it Hot
While in the throes of the dog days, it’s difficult to imagine willingly exposing oneself to a 105-degree room with 40 percent humidity. But now, as the temperatures drop and bodies start hunching inwards in the self-protective pursuit of warmth, yogis of the Valley...E-Edition
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