Episode 23: Abbie Galvin

On ritualizing your practice, developing your interior world, and measuring up for joy, with Abbie Galvin, author of 'Home Practice' and founder of The Studio.

Abbie Galvin is the owner of The Studio, a NYC based yoga studio, teaching Katonah Yoga. She has been honing this practice for the past 25 years and has a strong student-base from all around the world. Abbie's instruction is informed by her own creative process as a filmmaker and from her exploration of the therapeutic process as a psychoanalyst. She has learned over and over that truly participating in any formal process of self-exploration leads to transformation whether it be physical, psychological or intellectual. Her goal is to engage students of yoga in the dialogue between their conscious and their unconscious selves because it is through that effort that we potentiate ourselves. It is her intention as a teacher to cajole each student in that most rigorous effort to be grounded, to grow upwards, and to participate in the creation of their best self.

Length: 45:44
Timecodes:

0:45
Home Practice Book. Ritualizing your home practice, gaining insight.

4:40
Abbie's home practice and time management.

6:05
Longevity practice. As you get older, your interior life expands.

8:38
The interior shift of mind to the body's intelligence.

9:08
Cocooning yourself in your own breath. Being kind to yourself and using ritual to elevate your experience.

10:02
Grounded being practice as an antidote to the doing culture.

11:20
Ties between the interior organs and the peripheral.

13:07
Kidneys as battery.

14:24
Practical details for setting up a home practice.

16:52
Creating a community of shared public space, with mats facing each other.

18:35
Why there is no Shavasana at the end of a Katonah class.

20:40
Middle of the practice.

23:15
Readings from the Home Practice book.

24:43
Time knows everything. It is through time that you become yourself.

27:45
What you're doing in the silence of the postures to heal yourself.

30:31
Fluency practice.

31:45
Longevity practice.

33:27
Staying with yourself.

34:05
Magic Square on the palm of the hand.

37:10
Nature's intelligence is seen through its' patterns. There is a technique for joy.

38:34
What needs healing right now.

39:45
Favorite view.

42:50
Prayer as a capacity to be with yourself.

Resources

The Studio
Come of age by Stephen Jenkinson
Katonah Yoga Home Practice Book

A home practice addresses the vision and virtue of personal health, wellbeing and long life. A home practice is a commitment to self-care, a ritualized modus operandi for one's participation in a technical integration of mind, body and breath. Engaging in a home practice is a way of addressing the manner in which one personally organizes one's self; developing a determined life, setting goals and following through. Our home practice book will guide you through developing your own home practice.