Click here to head over to Art Asana on Etsy!

With Love and Light,

Eliza 

Cyber Monday Sale Announcement!

Tomorrow is Cyber Monday and I'm going to have an amazing sale in the Art Asana Shop to get you all geared up for the holidays! Have a yogi or yogini on the your list? How about one of my yoga-inspired prints!

Here's the low-down for the sale:
From 6am tomorrow morning until 11pm (EST), all prints in my shop will be on sale in a

I'll see you there! 

Also, I'll be randomly drawing a winner for the giveaway on the new Art Asana website tomorrow. So head on over there for your last chance to enter the "blue notes necklace pendant" giveaway! Click here to head over to the new site!

P.S...I'll be posting on both this site and my new site for the next few days and will conclude the posting here on this blog and start up full force over on the new site by Wednesday of this week! Thanks so much for sticking it out with me through this transition!

Cyber Monday Sale Announcement!

Friday Five: Exciting Art Asana Announcements and A Giveaway!

I have been away for a week, getting my ducks in a row, and now I'm back with lots of exciting things to share with you!

{Blue Notes Necklace}

1. Art Asana Necklaces
I've hinted at the fact that this has been in the works all fall and now I am finally pleased to announce that I have pendants available in my etsy shop! At the moment, I have created necklace pendants from the paintings, "Flow", "Shakti Drops", "Root Chakra-Symbol", "Root Chakra-Affirm", "Root Chakra-Yantra" and "Blue Notes Mandala". I even made one of the "blue notes" necklaces for myself and have been wearing it to my yoga classes to add a touch of shri (beauty) to my teaching outfits! Are there other designs you'd like to see? Let me know and I will create those ones in my next round of necklace pendant making!

2. Boston Handmade Downtown Holiday Gallery 
This show begins today at 11am! It will be up until December 24th. I am really excited to be part of this show with all these other amazing artist and crafters. The space looks amazing and there are so many enticingly beautiful handmade items. I'm going to do some of my own christmas shopping there! If you are in the Boston area, I am going to be at the gallery today from 3-7pm! I'd love to see you there!

3. Boston Bazaar Bizarre
In a spontaneous turn of events, a space opened up for the Boston Bazaar Bizarre show and I am going to be participating with the Boston Handmade Group! It is on December 5th at the BCA Cyclorama, 539 Tremont St. Boston from 12-7pm! This is going to be the first craft show I've ever been a part of! I am nervous and excited about the opportunity and going to have to work like a mad woman to get ready for it! I'l share lots more about it next week!

4. Cyber Monday Sale
Do you have a yogini or yogi on your gift list? How about a yoga-inspired art print! I'm going to have a Cyber Monday Sale in my etsy shop on Monday, November 29th. I will post more details about the sale on Sunday!

and last but not least, a launch and a giveaway....


5. The New Art Asana Website 
I'm excited to announce the launch of my new website!!! It's up and ready to go! I have spent a lot of time on the new space and I am so excited to get started over there! I am a little sad to be saying goodbye to this little blogger space because I have so many good memories here, but I have big plans for the new site to make your visit to Art Asana a great experience! To celebrate the kick off of the new space, I am hosting a giveaway of one of my new Art Asana necklaces on the new website! For more details, head on over to the new Art Asana to find out how to win!


Happy Friday!

Friday Five: Exciting Art Asana Announcements and A Giveaway!

Gratitude

{Late November light on Cape Cod}

"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you" that would suffice." ~Meister Eckhart

Today, I am pausing to offer my gratitude for all this life has provided, for the full spectrum of my experiences, for my family, friends, home and health.  I am thankful for the love and the light that the day bring and for the difficulties that help mold me. I am thankful for the support of Grace, who I feel has forever got my back and reminds me of that whenever I forget.  

I am thankful for all of you who come into my world through this little online space, I am deeply honored and grateful for your presence. You make my world more beautiful. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Gratitude

Ducks in a Row

{photo by Zedbee}

I've been rocking it out over here this week preparing for something very exciting! Last Friday, I was accepted as a member of Boston Handmade, a collective group of artists and crafters in the Boston area who all have shops on Etsy! AND they are having a Downtown Holiday Gallery show in Boston and I am going to be participating!
The show will run from November 26 through December 24, 2010 (Wednesday - Sunday, 11am - 7pm). 

So over the next few days, I'll be hastily getting ready for that, getting ready for the launch of my new website and finishing up some other long over due work on my thesis writing! Because of all this, I've decided to take some time off from blogging to get my ducks in a row. I'll be back in a week or so to announce the launch of the new website and then will be kicking things off from there! Hurray!

Here's to a busy, happy, healthy holiday!

Ducks in a Row

Teacher of the Month Questions

{me in urdhva daunurasana}

The Blossoming Lotus Yoga Studio (BLYS) where I've been teaching yoga is going to make me their "Teacher of the Month"! So today, I answered the following questions and I thought it would be fun to share my answers here on the blog too:

1) What is your favorite yoga pose?

I love the heart opening effects of backbending, especially in urdhva daunurasana, wheel pose. I used to get pain in my low back from deep backbending, but then I learned how to curl more from my upper back and root my tailbone down to lengthen my low back and this changed back bends for me dramatically! Now, I experience a pain-free, energizing and happy backbend that enlivens me from the inside out!

2) What is the primary style of yoga that you practice and teach?

I have been studying Anusara yoga for the past three years and did a teacher training in Anusara Yoga with Todd Norian and Ann Greene and am a registered Hatha yoga teacher! I love combining a flow of invigorating poses with an uplifting theme and a layering of alignment principles that have the ability to totally transform you. I include all of these elements in both my own practice and in the classes that I teach for an upbeat, inspiring and dynamic yoga.

3) What's the biggest challenge in your practice?

Sometimes, the biggest challenge I have in my practice is making it a priority. I always have a zillion reasons why I don’t have “time to practice”. I have to be very conscious of making time for it. It helps when I remind myself that making time for yoga actually makes everything else in my life easier. It helps me to be more productive, more creative, healthier and happier.

4) Why do you like teaching at BLYS?

I think community is really important. I have experienced first hand the powerful effects of being in a supportive community of people who embrace you for exactly who you are. I’d like to think that when we come together in a yoga class at BLYS, we are beginning to tap into that kind of experience. You just never know how your showing up might help someone else. I like teaching at BLYS because I like contributing to the creation of this kind of community right here in our town.

Teacher of the Month Questions

Notes from a busy week

Wow! How did it get to be Thursday already!? 

One reasons I've been so quiet here on the blog these last few weeks (besides being gone for the spontaneous road trip and the ongoing work on my graduate thesis) is that I've been hard at work on a new Word Press website that I am creating with the help of Tara Gentile's Website Kickstart e-course! The above screen shot is the site in it's current state and I have some more tweaking to do until it's ready, but once it's done, I'll have a website/blog all-in-one! I have lots of exciting ideas and plans for the new space and will let you know when it's ready!

On the painting front, here are the other two paintings that I finished this week:

This one's called "Love Roots Us". There was something about the deep plums and rich pink layers that reminded me of being rooted in the expansiveness of love...I'm not sure why. One of the reasons I love creating these mandala pieces is that I never really know how they are going to come out and the final visceral feeling that they invoke in me is always a surprise. 

I am curious to know if the effect they have on you is similar to my experience or if you receive different kinds of feelings from the work...Also, I've wondered if my naming and explaining their effect on me as I create them changes the way a viewer engages with them....I'd love to know your thoughts!

This one is called "Elephant Power", inspired by the Elephant God, Ganesha. While I was in Colorado, I  purchased a little Ganesha statue that I have started bringing to my classes when I teach. Ganesha is the remover of obstacles from our path and the go to guy when starting out on a new project. I have been working on this here Art Asana project for almost a year now, but it still feels so new, so I think I'll keep Ganesha around! 

Happy Thursday! 

Notes from a busy week

A New Yoga Painting

"Fearless Warrior" 

8x8 Print

Available in the Art Asana Shop

It feels like it's been a really long time since I've completed any new paintings....Today, however, I finished three! (I will share them over the next few days!) It felt wonderful to paint again. I am yet again, invigorated and refreshed by the incredible healing power of the creative process...

This piece is called "Fearless Warrior" and I created it as an affirmation:

I am a fearless warrior, steady and committed to my path.

I am rooted and connected to my source and pulling and pooling all that I can into the core of my being. From that place, I can think and soar. From that place I extend back down through my feet, like an affirmation that says, ‘I am Here and I belong’. I exist on this sacred ground. From the core, I also shimmer upward and outward, beyond the periphery of my outer most limits of body. I am more than body, I am also earth and sky and the line between where I end and they begin is not as much line as it is light that blurs and bends. I am grounded and strong and yet soft and limitless, both light and dark, and I am holding both with my heart open. I lead my life from there and I engage the world, others, my challenges and successes with this same grounded-ness, this same softness. In this way,

I am completely free.

A New Yoga Painting

Road Trip Pictures

Readers, Prajjwal and Americanepali, asked to see more pictures from the spontaneous road trip that I took with my brother last weekend. So here they are! 

I was amazed at how many wind turbines and wind farms we saw! It seemed like many more than the last time I drove out there (four years ago). I love their sculptural effect on the landscape and what to me seems like a symbol of positive, clean, green change. 

Once you leave Pennsylvania, the sky gets so big and wide and beautiful. We were usually up and on the road before sunrise and it was an incredible treat to get to witness the sun beginning to fill up all of that sky.

It was amazing to me how as soon as we crossed over a state line, the scenery changed, even if it was only from cornfield flat to grassland flat. As soon as we reached Colorado, we both felt a sense of excited anticipation, even though we didn't see the mountains for a few hours in. 

We arrived in beautiful Fort Collins and stayed with our cousin. She brought us up to Horsetooth reservoir and we went for a much needed walk along the "Bobcat trail". Fall had met the Rockies with crisp, golden yellows and the fields and aspen trees were all decked out in it.

On Halloween night, we carved pumpkins and set them out on my cousin's deck to welcome trick-o-treaters! It was fun to see the kids all dressed up in their costumes and to eat candy corn until my belly ached.

I really enjoyed spending that time with my brother, sharing laughter and exhaustion in turn, experiencing the big space of country I feel grateful to be a part of, and celebrating Halloween with my cousin. Saying "yes" to all of this experience was like saying "yes" to life, to spontaneity, to adventure, and to familial love and friendship. Thanks for inviting me along, Pat.

Road Trip Pictures

Unplanned Road Trip

Perhaps you have noticed that I have gone missing these past few days...disappeared from blogging, facebooking and tweeting. I was on a short, online media hiatus. Why, you might be wondering?

Well, on Wednesday of last week, I made a quick decision to accompany my brother on his move west. Over these past few days, I've been in a car, driving across the country with him. I was his wing sister from Cape Cod to Colorado.

I flew home last night.

We saw a lot of country: flat prairies, wind farms, funny billboards and that oh-so sweet first glimpse of the snow capped rockies.

Today, happy and exhausted, I'm playing catch up and am in dire need of a good long yoga practice.

After all that sitting, some hip opening poses are just what I need!

Unplanned Road Trip