Look for me on YouTube and Insight Timer

Hello Friends!!!  

During all of this social distancing time, I have been a happy and busy butterfly working with my passions and getting creative juices flowing. I've been granted the time to accomplish new things which I have wanted to do but previously had trouble setting aside the time to do them.

Since teaching in person is currently impossible, I've been working on creating yoga videos and uploading them to my YouTube channel. While I much prefer connecting, relating, and teaching in person, posting class videos on YouTube offers my regular students a way to have access to my teaching when classes can't be attended in person.

I've also been recording guided meditations and uploading them to the Insight Timer app.  It takes about a week’s time for each meditation to go through the approval process and become live.  Therefore, I'm also adding the meditations to my YouTube channel for immediate access.

On the upper left ß side here of this website, you can click on the YouTube icon or the Insight Timer icon to link up to my pages and have access to all the videos and meditations.  Insight Timer meditations can be accessed online on your web browser, or you can download their free app to your phone.  On the app, you’ll find me by searching “MaryAnn Broussard – Feisty ‘n Free Wholistic Living”.

To get you started from this post, here are the links to the first 4 videos I’ve posted to the YouTube channel and the link to my profile page on Insight Timer:

YouTube Channel for Feisty 'n Free Wholistic Living with MaryAnn

YouTube Channel Video 1 - Introduction to my Yoga Videos

YouTube Channel Video 2- Helpful Tools for the Practice

YouTube Channel Video 3- Yin Yoga Practice

YouTube Channel Video 4- Beginner Gentle Practice

Insight Timer for MaryAnn Broussard - Feisty 'n Free Wholistic Living

May you be and stay healthy and strong. 

May you be at peace and feel joy. 

May you explore new opportunities with this different way of life we must live right now. 

May love and light guide your every day.

Namaste.  😊

If You Can Be Aware of Your Breath, You Can Do Yoga

I like to say to people who doubt their ability to "do" yoga: 
"If you can breathe, you can do yoga."

Being aware of the flow of your breath alone is "doing" yoga.

The video below by Dianne Bondy Yoga is so inspiring! This yoga student may be missing complete use of his legs and feet, but that is not stopping him from living life fully or from enjoying a fulfilling yoga practice.

Bolsters, blocks, blankets, straps, and chairs are helpful and practical yoga tools!

YOUR body, YOUR yoga! 
YOUR attitude, YOUR yoga! 

Seek Adventure in the Depths

Are you caught up in the routine and mechanical or are you adventurously exploring deep in the mysterious?

     "The greatest danger in yoga, that by necessity involves routine, is becoming mechanical and regimented. I find that the beauty of a mind-body discipline, such as yoga or qigong, is that it is an endless process of discovery and surprise. This is frequently overlooked by students, driven by gain and bent on mustering as much strength and flexibility as possible. I think that yoga, rather than a path leading to mastery, is an invitation to evoke mystery and channel a powerful, subtle, and ultimately unnameable energy that roams inside. A dedicated practice is like a rite of passage that guides one to sense, feel, and remember that which inevitably resists identification. I can testify that the further I travel into the inner processes of the body and mind, the more I realize I don’t know.
     The following words of Ken Kesey speak to this process of discovery and the necessity to invoke mystery. The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer—they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden where strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer." 

-- Tias Little in his book Yoga of the Subtle Body

Play with Your "Edges"

Whether in Life or in Yoga, it is so important to "play around" with your edge rather than fearing it or avoiding it all together.

"There are valid reasons for fearing your edge--danger lurks there. But so does growth. If fear prevents you from playing your edge, that same fear is preventing you from learning, from progressing, from developing your full potential, including full health..."

"...the edge is the cliff of challenge and change. It may be high, it may be scary, but it is necessary. There are many kinds of edges. There is the physical edge...the emotional edge...the psychological edge...the spiritual edge..."

"Edges are where something is about to happen..."
                                                                                          --Bernie Clark in his book Your Body, Your Yoga

What edges are you playing with today?
How is that playfulness challenging and growing you?

What edges are you fearing, avoiding, or running away from?
How is that fear or avoidance keeping you stagnant?

I have an immense fear of heights. However, I play with my physical and mental edges by hiking mountains and getting as close as I mentally can to the edge to enjoy the incredible view. That view from the high points is exhilarating. It is worth every sore muscle and the occasional shaky legs, and it makes me feel wonderfully alive!

As long as we have life and breath, let us not stop playing, learning, growing, adventuring!  Savor every moment of this gift of life.

Consciously Choose Your Path

“We set out to better ourselves, only to find legions of reasons to break our commitment to health.  We say it is too difficult to make the hard choice today.  And yet, the obstacles in our path are the path.  Every time we stretch beyond our resistance and our fear, we make a choice for life.  And every time we choose life, we find that fear loses its grip on us.  We all know more than we think we do, and we are stronger than we believer ourselves to be.  We come to [the] mat and to our lives to learn by going where we have to go.”  

--Rolf Gates in Meditations from the Mat

This Is Yoga - Sukhasana "Easy Pose"

This is an expression of Sukhasana/Easy Pose 
without using any props or adopting modifications.

To help dispel some common erroneous ideas about yoga (like "Yoga is impossible" or "Yoga is too hard" or "I'm not flexible enough to do yoga"), I will be posting pictures of poses that may be done during a yoga practice and some of the modifications that can be incorporated if a person has trouble getting their body into the full expression of the pose.  Yoga practice is not just for the flexible, the thin, the fit, or the physically strong individual.  Yoga is especially beneficial for the person who would like to stretch, be more flexible, feel stronger, and find overall well-being.  Yoga is for any body and every body.

Throughout my "This is Yoga" posts, I will typically share the Sanskrit word for each pose and its English correlation.

Most commonly a yoga practice begins with the participants seated in Sukhasana or "Easy Pose".  If a person finds Sukhasana not so easy to do or downright painful, props can be added and adjustments made to bring more ease and comfort to the pose.

Sukhasana/Easy Pose brings calmness and peace to the body.  It stretches the knees and ankles and strengthens the spine while also opening up the groin area and hips.  

Yoga Can Be for EVERY Body and ANY Body

An awesome privilege and special moment in time
of sharing a yoga practice with my mom.  She has faced
and overcome quite the number of physical struggles in her life.

False Yoga Myth #1 – A person must have just the right body shape or flexibility in order to practice yoga.

When I mention to people that I practice and now also teach yoga, I usually receive almost the same response that can be summarized in these words: 

“Wow!  Yoga is hard.”

“I could never do yoga.”

“I’m not flexible enough.”

“My body doesn’t bend like that.”

By no choice or doing of my own, I happen to be a person of small frame with low body weight and hyper-mobility.  However, that is not why I decided to try yoga in the first place or why I continue to practice it today.  I sought out yoga because of the struggle with my overall health and my utmost desire to find wholistic well-being: emotionally, mentally, and physically. 

Yoga is not about a particular body size, shape, ability, strength, or flexibility.  Any living and breathing, aware human being can practice yoga.  Yoga is a practice available to and doable at some level by any person with any body type.  There are no right or wrong, best or worst poses.  Our considerations are better focused on practicing and working with safe poses at a level that is just right for each individual.