Tennis Yogini: Sunday Morning Practice

Tennis Yogini: Sunday Morning Practice

One of the things I love about playing tennis is the way I so frequently catch myself in the act of negative talking or thinking. Each ‘I’m so stupid’, or ‘How could I have missed that shot?’, or ‘Another double fault, #$@&%*!’ is an opportunity for rebooting the network. An opportunity to wake-up to the present moment. Without static, without the interference of derogatory dialogue.

Yoga Therapeutics: The Lazy Dog Trick

Yoga Therapeutics: The Lazy Dog Trick

Here’s a way to get the that delicious back stretch of Adho Mukha Svanasana without having to bear your own weight. Your back muscles will release simply because they are supported in letting go.
You can do this pose over the back of a soft, stuffed chair or by padding a yoga chair with blankets. You drape your body over the blankets, with the top of the chair at the hip creases which tractions your legs away from your hips and spine. […]

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. […]

Tootling Up & Down the Coast

Tootling Up & Down the Coast

One of the things that you just have to surrender to when you move to the country is travelling huge distances. (Other things to let go of: seeing art house films near-by and having interesting eateries to choose among. The solution – subscribe to Netflix and eat at home!)
When I lived in Sydney, it took me 30 min. at peak hour to travel from Mosman to Crows Nest, a distance of 5.5 km. It takes me about 10 min. […]

Burdened by Weight: Does Yoga Help?

Burdened by Weight: Does Yoga Help?

An article on the news today pointed to a problem that is troubling so many people in society these days – osteoarthritis.It’s not just my imagination. Statistics say that two million Australians currently have the disease. However, within 10 years that number is expected to double to four million.We think that osteoarthritis is just what happens as we get older. We call it wear and tear, but in actual fact, osteoarthritis is not inevitable with ageing. […]

The Image of Yoga

The Image of Yoga

Recently I’ve become enamoured of a social media site called Pinterest. It does two things for me: 1) connects me with other lovers of images, and also (2) with lots of interesting, striking images. When I look at the Pinterest section devoted to yoga images, I see a majority of perfect bodies doing perfect poses. The practitioners’ postures are truly works of art. […]

The Image of Yoga

Yoga Standing Poses are Unbeatable

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. […]

Posture-ing

I am reminded of the importance of good posture everyday in so many ways.
Here in Tucson, Arizona, I’m visiting my older sister whose “bad back” has finally caught up with her. As a seventy-seven year old, and having exhausted many different therapies, she now is facing a lamenectomy and L2-5 spinal fusion, next week. […]

The Crack in Everything

The Crack in Everything

Today’s blog is something new for me. I decided upon listening to one of my favourite Leonard Cohen songs yesterday that I would update one of the most popular posts that I’ve written. It gives a nod to the composer’s well-loved tune, “Anthem”, which has the refrain:

Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
I’m of the opinion that the song’s sentiment is so popular because we humans don’t want to have work so hard at being perfect. […]

Yoga &Humour

Yoga &Humour

Amazing what you can do when you are given completely new hips. (Only kidding.)
I’ve always thought that yoga poses are inherently funny. Sometimes I look around a class of students who have voluntarily submitted to being put into Kurmasana or Yoginidrasana or Simhasana and think we are raving mad. Or, how about the studios where ropes dangle from walls or the beams with students hanging upside-down like flying foxes in Sirsasna. […]

The Image of Yoga

Yearning

Here’s a quote I came across yesterday (apparently it’s the star that Julian Assange steers by). I like it very much and thought you might too:
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the seas. […]