Almost as much as I love teaching yoga, I love inspiring students to do home practice.My spirit soars when I hear that someone is gotten turned on enough to buy a yoga mat, remember the postures they learn in class, and even begin to bend the practices so that they make a good fit for their individual lifestyle.The habit of practising yoga has such a huge momentum for me that it’s what gets me on the mat each morning (except Sundays!). […]
The asanas can be grouped into families: standing poses, seated poses, abdominals, forward & backward bends, inversions, restorative poses. And, finer tuning might include: lateral forward bends, standing forward bends, passive backbends, prepatory poses, and so on. It’s certainly handy to have a coat hanger to help organise the huge miscellany of yoga postures. The style of yoga called Iyengar, is often taught in a monthly schedule where week one emphases standing poses, week two, forward bends, week three backbends, week four inversions/pranayama/restorative. Standing poses are a stand-out group among the clans of asanas because of their all-round utility. […]
Oh my, it’s been hot here! This extreme humidity feels like it stacks on tons of degrees to the temperature.
I tell the yoga students who venture out on sultry days that they get extra yoga merit points in heaven for attending class when our brains are feeling like they’re simmering in their juices.
Here’s 5 Tips on What to Teach…when it’s 30 plus and 90% humidity.
1. Chest openers of any passive variety – You can’t go wrong with something that promotes breathing when the lungs are approaching pneumatic apathy, block pose, for instance:
2. […]
Maybe it had to happen. Yoga has been on such a great roll. In recent weeks, though, the N.Y.Times has published a couple of articles, both by the same writer, that have stirred the opinions, angst, and ire of worldwide yogis.
The first yoga article by William Broad added promotional currency to his newly-ly published book, The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards. The piece was titled “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body.” There was a storm of activity on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and on the New York newspaper’s on-line forum. […]
My wise friend Shirley passed on this message from the great man to me the other day. […]
The first time I came across the term “negative fantasy” was in the workshops produced by the Human Awareness Institute. Over the last two days I have gone in and out of my own negative fantasies which had the effect of making me feel about as low as I have in a long time. Until I had a chance to talk about what was going on in my head, I was accepting the fantasies as being true pictures of reality – albeit highly emotionally charged ones. […]
I spent the last weekend with my 7 woman friends, aged late 40’s to mid-seventies. In this company, I participated in many of those familiar-by-now conversations about medical complaints, impending surgeries, and just plain loss of hearing, eyesight, and libido. (Does loss imply ever finding those items again?)
Did we sound like broken records? Absolutely not.
We’ve surprised even ourselves that ageing isn’t really such a scary thing. I can honestly say that each one of us has experienced more wisdom, wholeness, authenticity, and improved sense of humour with the arrival of age. […]
A renowned yoga teacher has been in trouble recently. I’ve been following the story through tweets, FB offerings, and web logs. These are not necessarily dependable sources but they have spoken of big ructions in the yoga world. Whether or not the allegations prove true, it is true that we all veer off the straight-and-narrow at times. Being in touch with our own frailties is one way we can cultivate compassion for our humanity and that of others. […]
Repetition can be so tedious for a person like me who gets bored easily and likes to keep moving to the next exciting thing.
Fortunately for me, more than 40 years ago, I got on to yoga, or maybe it grabbed onto me, and we’ve been together through thick and thin ever since.
Things that one does over and over, practices kept up for a long time, and relationships lovingly fostered have an lasting effect on one’s character.
Think of all the music lessons that cultivate concert performers, spiritual disciplines that lead to bliss states, good parenting that creates good […]
Tomorrow is a 2 year anniversary of my release from Hunters Hill Private Hospital where I did 12 days of rehabilitation after my double hip replacement surgery.
On my return home, my husband Daniel made a great video clip of my walking up the stairway without needing to use a stick. He put some backing music to it – Patsy Kline’s Walking After Midnight – and stuck it up on the Internet as a YouTube video.
I tell people now that if anyone is having qualms about the surgery, they needn’t. […]
There’s been trouble in the yoga world. First with Lululemon, the swish yoga gear outfitters. Then along came the stories of how yoga can wreck your body in the NY Times. […]
Now don’t get me wrong. I have become as dedicated to Facebook surfing as anyone of my vintage (well, maybe that’s not saying much). I enjoy the extraordinary photos, clever jokes, uplifting quotes, and mobilising for social activism that goes on in this milieu. I do.
But I also wonder from time to time, why it is that we are recycling stuff and not creating it newly ourselves. Even admitting that nothing really new under the sun exists, why such dependance on reusing others’ ideas and images. […]