iambensears

[iambensears]

Anyone else have trouble sleeping? No, I'm not here with some holier-than-thou spiritual platitude. It straight up sucks. The most useful thing for me is ironically to remember that I've been here before and still always manage to do what has to be done. Time to get moving. #yoga #keepiteversoslightlyreal #bensearsknows #luxyoga 📷 @jonasjpark at @secondsideyoga (at Upper East Side)

[iambensears]

We all have our scars. #yoga #keepiteversoslightlyreal #bensearsknows #luxyoga 📷 @jonasjpark at @secondsideyoga (at Bel Air, Los Angeles)

[iambensears]

The mountains are always in my heart. ——————————————— Pay attention to your struggle signals in practice. Some people will push really deep into a pose right away and then fling out because it's unsustainable. That's a struggle signal that leads right to a quit point. You try to hard, you get hard. Another struggle signal is erratic breathing, or futzing with your pedicure, or even picking up your water every time things get tough. ——————————————— Rather than running your racket when you feel challenged, use a complete breath cycle to run a check on the form of your posture and the engagements that support the posture without going deeper or backing out. Just find all the edges of the pose and when when you do, bring a positive sense memory into your work, remember what it felt like to look at the mountains. Wash beauty through your cells like the sun finds all the cracks in the sky. #yoga #keepiteversoslightlyreal #bensearsknows #luxyoga #luxlife

[iambensears]

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Yoga after teaching yoga/a sequence of poses held only long enough to support the compulsion to post to the Internet. Also: Graham Parsons. Also 2: I forgot my kindle on this trip and the iPhone is doing that evil chuckle while slowly eating my brain like Hannibal, offering little pieces up to seat mates on the flight to the end of thinking. Wait — forgot the recycled spiritual quote: "the man alone on the island is not alone but with himself after all." — Swami Stuckatsea #yoga #keepiteversoslightlyreal #bensearsknows #grahamparsons #swamistuckatsea #beyerself (at Bikram Yoga Huntington Beach)

[iambensears]

Happy to add a week to my Cali tour! Studio info is below and all levels are welcome. ———————————————— Teaching is a supersonic practice; the mind simply cannot wander when people depend on you, and any attempt to sound like something you want to be rather than just being who you are is as easy to detect as a gas leak. Make it as simple as it can be and no simpler and be ready to serve. #yoga #keepiteversoslightlyreal #bensearsknows #luxyoga #luxlife #california (at Bikram Yoga Huntington Beach)

[iambensears]

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First one's a doozy. Almost always feel more flexible or tighter than looks. Very rarely does it look how I felt it. And the life-thing is often less work than I make it out to be before getting started or far more intricate than I allowed myself to imagine before diving in. Repetition over time can provide a frame of reference as the sample size grows, and raise one's ability to respond skillfully to sensation, to prepare willfully for execution. #yoga #keepiteversoslightlyreal #bensearsknows #luxlife #luxyoga (at Bel Air, Los Angeles)

[iambensears]

Have support. Learning to use it. ——————————————— Sometimes you might lean too much, other times not enough. The scaffold of any yoga or life prop is not meant to replace effort but to direct it towards the fruition of inherent potential, to reveal what's already possible, to raise the vision. #yoga #keepiteversoslightlyreal #bensearsknows #canturnyourjeadwithoutyourlegs #bigsky #montana #littlecondonotontheprairie (at Big Sky, Montana)

[iambensears]

Look! The mountain has cloud antlers. The second best thing about this malasana-in-Montana photo is that it appears that I'm bowing in gratitude to nature. I'm not sure if that's what I was thinking in the moment, but it would be a fitting sentiment. My friend @45north gave me timely reminder about the importance of gratitude the other day while showing me around his state. Often the best yoga lessons come outside of yoga, from people who are just plain smart and conscientious. So today I'm grateful for many things, but most prevalent is my gratitude to that dude, the folks at @bendbeyondyoga and this place. #yoga #keepiteversoslightlyreal #bensearsknows #luxyoga #luxlife #bigsky #montana #malasana #saythelast2tentimesfast ————————————————UPCOMING EVENTS 🇺🇸🙏🏼 🇫🇷 April 8-9: Huntington Beach, CA @bikramyogahb Vinyasa Workshop Weekend, Bikram class Friday night May 13-14: Norwalk, CT May 20-21: Miami, @sunshineHotYoga May 25, 26: St. Augustine, Fl @theyogacollective June, July, August: @luxyoga South of France Retreats September: 200 hr Vinyasa training, Huntington Beach, CA (at Big Sky, Montana)

[iambensears]

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Morning. Routine. Got one? Start small. 3 minutes can be a catapult. Use your phone as timer — not a phone. Basically my recipe is move my joints, then pranayama. DM with questions. #yoga #keepiteversoslightlyreal #bensearsknows #luxyoga #luxlife #bigsky #montana #fakewesterncondo (at Big Sky, Montana)

[iambensears]

There's no backbend in a triangle, no concavity in a line. Applying the body to the geometrical archetypes of the postures is like slowly stretching a canvas over a frame. Here's a Bikram-style triangle up against a wall in beautiful Montana. One thing to feel for in this pose is a stretch in your lower back on the side of the back leg, rather than the feeling of those muscles pulling you into a backbend. That "triangle" of the lower back corresponds to the inner hip on the same side which corresponds to the arch of the foot. #yoga #keepiteversoslightlyreal #bensearsknows #montana #bigsky (at Big Sky, Montana)

[iambensears]

I am struck by the smallness and fragility of each human life and also by the immensity of feeling within these little bodies; the different but equal fullnesses of joy, pain and meditation. #yoga #keepiteversoslightlyreal #bensearsknows #luxyoga #luxlife #montana #bigsky (at Big Sky, Montana)

[iambensears]

Snow is coming. Empathy is an internal emotional-physical barometer that reads the shifts in other people. Looking back I understand now that as a kid I developed as an empath as a survival mechanism, to try to shift the adults around me before things got nasty, or to prepare an escape route. Things could get pretty ugly. ——————————————— There's a balance to be found between being knocked about like cork in the water by the fluctuations around you, being of service, and protecting oneself. The same can be said of knowing oneself and how to shift your frequency rather than tumbling into your favorite well. I find I can quite easily poke the clouds till they turn to rain when a little change in temperature could bring a beautiful snowfall. #yoga #keepiteversoslightlyreal #bensearsknows #luxlife #luxyoga #bigsky #montana (at Big Sky, Montana)

[iambensears]

I found center. It's in Montana. #apresski #keepiteversoslightlyreal #bensearsknows #luxlife #luxyoga (at Santosha Wellness Center)

[iambensears]

Your practice: the one place in your life where process (how you do it) is indisputably more important than outcome. It's not that progress isn't important, it's that everywhere else in life we are forced to cut corners to survive, to keep up, to put on appearances — but practice is the recognition that you make no compromises. In this one place you have the time. Finished my morning meditation and heading over to @secondsideyoga for my Dallas workshops. Still warm with the love from last weekend in Laredo at @casayoga #yoga #keepiteversoslightlyreal #bensearsknows #backbend 📷 @alejandra_casayoga (at Dallas, Texas)

[iambensears]

Boundaries are where they are, right now. And they've already changed. Stillness is an illusion. Exploration is the real constant. It's how we're wired, bundles of stimulation responding in grace or reacting with turbulence every moment of every day and every breath of every pose. Here are some folks all working to discover their edges to find center at @casayoga Laredo his past weekend. What a gracious and love-rich group of humans. I'm grateful. #yoga #keepiteversoslightlyreal #workshop #bensearsknows #casayoga #gracias (at CASA YOGA)

[iambensears]

Fill the frame, fill the pose. Lift from the bottom as much as the top, or in this one, as much or more from the legs and hips as from the arm and shoulder. The foundation often remains one's legs regardless of the orientation of the posture. #yoga #keepiteversoslightlyreal #benjaminsears 📷taken on the terrace at @luxyoga South of France - but right now I'm having a blast in Austin at @yogaeastaustin - check out my few remaining workshops here over the next few days! (at LuxYoga)

[iambensears]

Après-ski; riding the line between maintenance and compulsion. ————————————————— Once you reach and sustain a fundamental level of health and wellness via asana practice, the most important piece is mediation. Whether via the devotional (Bhakti), breath, visual (Drishti), psychological (intention), the next step in asana practice is to use the poses as a conduit to stillness of mind. ————————————————— Ongoing work towards more impressive asana is a tool to keep the mind engaged in practicing, and a hobby that's considerably more holistic than most others. The gross/obvious leads to the subtle, which paradoxically is bigger and more powerful than anything. #yoga #keepiteversoslightlyreal #benjaminsears #luxyoga #luxlife ————————————————— UPCOMING WORKSHOPS 🇺🇸 🙏🏼 Feb 11: Norwalk, CT - @bikramyogasolnorwalk Feb 24 - 26: Austin @yogaeastaustin March 5-7: Laredo, TX @alejandra_casayoga March 11-12: Dallas @secondsideyoga March 25-26: Bozeman, MT @bendbeyondyoga April 1-2: Big Sky, MT - Santosha Yoga April 8-9: Huntington Beach, ÇA @bikramyogahb Late April: Florida tbd June, July, August: @luxyoga South of France Retreats September: 200 hr Vinyasa training, Huntington Beach, CA (at Park City Mountain)