If More is Better, When is Enough Enough?

If More is Better, When is Enough Enough?

Do you subscribe to the notion that more is better?
I didn’t think I did, but when I visited my new dentist yesterday, I found out I was over brushing my teeth. Eek! I was just trying to do a good job. I had some decay in one of the teeth in my jaw’s upper left quadrant, and I thought I should be getting in there to give it a good scrub. […]

The Whole World in Our Hands

The Whole World in Our Hands

When I was growing up in Chicago in the 1950’s, there was a popular song called ‘He’s Got the Whole World in Hands’. Back then as a little girl, it was comforting to know that Someone was taking care of everything, even though it seemed to me that there were a lot of problems that were getting overlooked.
Now as an adult, I can see that each of us has to step up to the responsibility of creating a world that works for all of us. […]

Families of Yoga Poses: Seated Poses – Dandasana (Staff Pose)

Families of Yoga Poses: Seated Poses – Dandasana (Staff Pose)

It would be hard to imagine teaching a beginners yoga class without including the seated pose Dandasana. Why? Because it’s one of those poses that’s simple but still challenging. You start out relatively comfortably sitting on the floor, but then, you find there’s much to pay attention to: hamstrings, the curves of the back, your overall posture, for instance.
Think of Dandasana as being home base when you do a sequence of seated poses. You take a couple of minutes in Dandasana, being mindful of basic alignment points. […]

Families of Yoga Poses: Seated Poses

Families of Yoga Poses: Seated Poses

 

The laughing yogini pictured above (me, c. 1989) is demonstrating the seated pose called Samakonasana. Most people would be crying rather than feeling light-hearted in this position, as they struggled with the combination of external hip rotation and hamstring stretch. The technique that B.K.S. Iyengar describes in Light On Yoga for getting into this pose doesn’t make the pose one bit more user-friendly. […]

The (Not So) Sad Case of the Disappearing Blog Post

The (Not So) Sad Case of the Disappearing Blog Post

Yesterday a post that I wrote titled ‘Families of Yoga Poses: Seated Poses’ disappeared from my site, who knows why. I’d nothing differently. I’d performed each of the steps I usually do, as in saving my draft writing, and then clicking on ‘publish’.
An odd thing happened next. Even though the post was showing up as unpublished, it had in fact been mailed out to subscribers. Then, in an attempt to fix this pesky ‘Yoga Suits Her’ bug, my husband accidentally broke the site. […]

Families of Yoga Poses: Forward Bends

Families of Yoga Poses: Forward Bends

In terms of our anatomy, the spinal column is an engineering work of art. Getting up on two legs – evolving from bipeds to quadrupeds – allowed us humans to see further and freed up our hands to carry tools and perform other tasks. It also conserved energy. Comparisons have shown that humans walking on two legs consume only a quarter of the energy that chimpanzees use while knuckle-walking on all fours.
The changes in the spine’s relationship to gravity did, however, come at a cost. […]

To Do or To Be?

To Do or To Be?

indulgy.com via pinterest
Do you make to-do lists? If you do, one item currently near the top of your list might be getting your tax information together so you can lodge this year’s return.
That’s what’s going on in our household at the moment. It’s been a perfectly beautiful winter Sunday and instead of going out for a picnic or a bicycle ride in the country, two of the couples in our house are slaving away filing receipts and working in their computer financial programs.
Nobody here is thrilled about doing their taxes. […]

The Goodness of Gardens

The Goodness of Gardens

I went to Trent, the hairdresser, in town today, and he gave me a pretty ‘do’. In my old life as a city girl, my hairdresser would say, ‘I hope your husband is taking you some place special for dinner tonight.’
Instead of a glamorous outing, in my current incarnation as a country girl, I took myself and my new hairdo home to work in the garden. Specifically to muck around in the compost, a job that’s needed doing for some time. […]

Mulling Over the Meandering Mind

Mulling Over the Meandering Mind

While meditating this morning, I started to mentally create a to-do list. You may have had a similar experience; in the absence of other stimulation your mind starts to fill up the void with the overflow of your too-busy life. These might take the shape of conversations you had with people which you didn’t finish satisfactorily. Or, tasks that you promised completion of and then didn’t deliver. […]

Families of Yoga Poses: Side Bending

Families of Yoga Poses: Side Bending

evolve wellness via pinterest

Stretching the sides of your body, particularly hips, waist, rib cage, shoulder blades and arms, has benefits for your inner and outer body. In almost any yoga workout, you’ll find simple poses like triangle pose (trikonasana) or side flank stretch (parsvakonasana) enjoyable just because they open up the sides of your body so well.
I’ve heard the notion that the sides of our bodies are lonely parts. I get that. […]