Hello Yogahealer Podcast listeners! Today is one of those days where I shut myself in my gorgeous closet in Alta, Wyoming and I hit record and see what happens. In this episode, I talk to Miriam Hamui of Mexico City. Miriam and I met a few months ago, and I fell in love with her way of practicing and teaching, and what she’s doing. She’s written a few books, and she loves writing as a process to deepen her practice on the mat, on the cushion, and teaching in the classroom. This conversation is about deepening your practice through attuning to You and your intuitive body, as a way of guiding deeper into You.

I rap with Miriam Hamui about the intuitive nature of architecture and yoga:

• Both architecture and yoga can make you feel sensation, emotion, and thought on a subtle level
• As you upgrade your inner space through habit evolution, you may feel a natural desire to upgrade your outer environment
• By using intuition to create and design outer spaces like a building or a yoga practice, you can support your inner, more subtle space

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

• How to create an environment that helps you thrive
• When to get rid of rules and create your own yoga practice for self-discovery
• How to create a meditation practice that doesn’t make you dread hitting the cushion

Links:

• Miriam’s books: Yoga and Architecture: The Art of Dwelling (English and Spanish versions), Meditate From Your Body: A Somatic Guide
• Miriam’s blog (in Spanish)
• Miriam’s next retreat (in Mexico)
• Amazon Author page
• Facebook URL
• Website
• Website for Miriam’s teacher, Orit Sen-Gupta
• Yogahealer Your Inner Goddess Webinar
• Yogahealer FREE Live Training for Career Planning your 2018

Related podcasts:

• Conscious Daydreaming is How You Connect to Your Future with Summer McStravick
• Designing Your Space with Ayurvedic Wisdom (with Vixi’s Ashley Dentino
• Tiffany Cruikshank on Knowing Yourself with Yoga
• Unlocking Your Subtle Body Anatomy + Deep Time with Tias Little

Show Highlights:

• 3:35 – The body is the most complex piece of architecture: it progresses through poses and bears its own weight easefully, accommodating itself with every movement.
• 9:00 – The experience of inhabiting a body is similar to inhabiting an architectural space: both have gross and physical aspects, and both inner and outer spaces have more and more subtle levels that influence sensation, emotion, and thought.
• 16:00 – As children, we feel into creativity, but lose this intuition as adults, instead thinking logically when building something. By bringing creativity back into how we architect our environment and our practice, we can support our subtle inner space.
• 21:50 – Often in modern yoga systems, our practice is overly scripted, and doesn’t allow our intuition to create it: instead, we listen to what someone else tells us to do. Self-discovery is key to getting the most out of yoga and our own distinct practice.
• 27:00 – Ease into your meditation practice! Meditating for too long or with a rigid set of rules can make you dread hitting the cushion. If this is you, try sitting in silence without setting a timer. Go at your own pace while following a few basic principles: weight bearing, finding your axis, and breath work, and create your own practice.
• 39:00 – Because people are less inundated with information in Mexico compared to the United States and other western countries, when yoga gained popularity, people started teaching and learning it intuitively, rather than through a set of rules. This is something many of us can learn from to uplevel our own practices.

Favorite Quotes:

• “As we’re shaped by spaces outside of us, we also are shaped by how we design our internal space.” – Cate Stillman
• “I wanted to convey it… so people could have a more clear understanding of the subtle aspects of inhabiting your inner space compared to the outer space and the universe.” – Miriam Hamui
• “You can feel where you need to shift your weight, how you can create balance, and where you are needing more attention.” – Miriam Hamui
• “There’s some part of you that’s connecting to the part that knows.” – Cate Stillman
• “You’re inviting people into their own mass, into their own physicality, into their own density, into their own space.” – Cate Stillman
• “Find your specific way. And it’s going to be unique to you.” – Miriam Hamui

BIO:

Miriam Hamui has practiced yoga since 2008, and taught since 2001. Originally an Architect, she has combined her notion of inhabiting spaces with her ever-growing sense of embodiment through yoga, which inspired her first book, Yoga and Architecture: The Art of Dwelling.

She further enhanced her acknowledged sensitivity by becoming a Somatic Movement Educator though the school of Body Mind Movement. This resulted in the publication of her second book: Medita Desde Tu Cuerpo (Translation: Meditate Through Your Body: A Somatic Approach).

Miriam continually integrates whatever arises from her body through her personal yoga practice and uses it to inspire her teaching and writing. She sustains a blog since 2013 and has contributed articles to several Mexican yoga magazines.