Hello, world!

Welcome to Habitual Student, a blog written by, curiously enough, someone who has always been able to describe herself as a student. The previous sixteen autumns of my life have begun with a new school year and an accompanying set of notebooks, textbooks, and planners, et cetera. This fall, I've found myself completely unable to detach myself from learning new things in a school, except that the subject at hand is more spiritual rather than scholarly.

Om namah shivaya.

From October to July, I will be studying to become a certified Yoga instructor. It's much less of a career move than a soul-searching move. Nevertheless, among the language, anatomy, ancient texts, I'll be deepening my practice, turning attention inward. Perhaps along the way I will find a path that allows me to share my practice with others.

This panda attempts halasana. I have a feeling he is not being mindful of his C7 vertebra.

So why, you ask, document it all publicly in the blogosphere? The answer lies in the idea of Pranayama (work with me here). Prana is energy and breath. Yama is control and restraint. There are a slew of techniques outlining how to really connect, deepen and pay attention to your breath. Calm the breathing, calm the mind. (Incidentally, it has been suggested [1] that this is the primary mechanism by which smoking cigarettes is relaxing, but I digress...)


Pranayama is part of the natural pulsation of receiving and giving energy. In the anusara tradition, pranayama taps into the balance between muscular energy, generated in your body, and organic energy which you exude and has a positive net effect on those around you. It's sort of like a cosmic pay-it-forward.

When I learned about pranayama, I pictured it like this:

Use the Force, you should.

I can't be sure George Lucas hasn't read the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. But I find the visualization of drawing upon energy generated in an internal anchor (e.g. in standing poses, the pelvis) and radiating it from extended limbs very grounding.

How does this relate to the blag? The next few months will provide me ample opportunity to reevaluate the way I interact with other people, and what my role is in leaving the world a little better than the way I found it. By spattering some of my findings on the intarwebz, maybe I can extend this positivity good juju insight to others.