Eddie Stern: One Simple Thing

Eddie Stern is a yoga teacher, author and cofounder of Ashtanga Yoga New York, the Brooklyn Yoga Club and the Brooklyn Ganesha Temple. Described as, ‘so grounded and normal, yet holds incredible connection to a larger consciousness’ by his student and friend Gwyneth Paltrow, Stern is spoken of with a certain amount of reverence amongst serious yogis in the US, and increasingly, worldwide.

Through his teachings and his new book, One Simple Thing: A New Look at the Science of Yoga and How It Can Transform Your Life— he succinctly translates the ancient yogic texts into a realistic way for us all to live now.

Stern came to yoga in the 1980s just before the popularity of yoga as we know it now. “My teens were tough,” he admitted. “I was feeling lost and got into music, drugs and alcohol trying to figure out who I was.” His ninth-grade English teacher introduced him to the teachings of Siddhartha and the three fundamental questions: Who am I, what am I doing here and what can I do next? “These questions shifted me and when I found yoga, the puzzle started falling into place.” After training in India with Ram Das, it soon dawned on Stern that everything he was getting from drugs and psychedelics (and a lot more too), he got from yoga. “I was a quasi hippy-punk rocker and once I started tapping into yoga, synchronicity started to occur.”

Ashtanga Yoga’s Eight Limbs

“Ashtanga yoga’s eight limbs are ways we can consciously choose to live our lives,” Stern explains, “but commitment is crucial. “Our brains are amazingly ancient developments of evolution, but our impulse to question, to know, to create, to express compassion and to plan are fairly young. Practising yoga everyday creates a habit that changes us physiologically, while also changing our interaction with the world around us. So when we meet challenging situations, we start to view them through new eyes- this comes from developing a habit of awareness by working with our bodies in a particular way.”

Stern says that practicing yoga—and specifically focusing on the breath—can cultivate habits that can help reduce stress, rewire our brains and change our biology, orienting us toward steadiness, connection and a spirit of compassion. “We are not trying to get rid of the person we are, but we are using yoga to feel better integrated into the world.

The Breathing App

The Breathing App

“Living our lives in a state of sympathetic arousal, we perceive threats all around us and begin to live in a defensive state that prevents us from being in the moment and seeing things as they really are. But once we apply the vagal break, we learn to slow and pause. This is what yoga does, through breathing, postures and meditation - with our breath being the single most important tool to help reset this break.”

With this in mind, Stern created The Breathing App, a free and easy app designed around the concept of resonance breathing (see my review of this clever app here) “When monks and yogis go into a meditative state their breathing rate automatically slows to about 5-7 breaths per minute (as opposed to the usual rate of between 12-20 breaths). When this baseline frequency is in equilibrium, the nervous system resets and we are better able to listen to the wisdom of the body. While most of us say we can’t meditate, we all breathe, so we can use our breath to help us meditate and this is what The Breathing App does.”

Daily Yoga Practice

The key benefit of daily practice is that it helps us withstand the ups and downs of life (Tapas in yogic speak) with a calm mind, but we can’t do this in the moment; we need to train our minds outside of the moment. “Start with small achievable goals, maybe no more than 5 minutes, but do it at a similar time every day,” he advises, “and within 5 weeks it will be ingrained habit. While yoga is not a cure all for every disease, it is act as an internal balancing act for our brain, nervous system and cellular mechanism.”

And in the end, this is the essential thing, Stern believes, quoting from his book: ‘Yoga is a practice and if we do even just a little bit every day the effects are compounded over time and carry over into the rest of our lives.’

Eddie Stern will be in Ireland and the UK in September/October 2020: For further info: https://eddiestern.com/workshops/

[Headshot credit Michael Halsband]