We tend to hold our awareness up in the head, and not even the whole head: we hang out right behind the eyes. And yet, our nervous system extends through every last part of our bodies. We don't normally pay our bodies much attention unless there's something wrong with it. Yoga asks us to inhabit …
Fiery Breathing
If you've been attending yoga classes for a while, you may have been exposed to several types of pranayama, or breathing exercises. With the sanskrit names and the various translations, it might be hard to keep some of them straight. Throw in the fact that even some yoga teachers use the various titles interchangeably, and the …
Valentine’s Day: Heart and Hips
Like many instructors, I've often drawn from holidays to inspire a yoga class. Valentine's Day naturally lends itself to heart-opening sequences. However, Valentine's Day is not all about heart chakras. The love celebrated on February 14th has a lot to do with sensuality (dark chocolate, red wine, sexy underwear) and that is sacral charka territory. …
Back to Basics: Yoga vs. Stretching
January is the perfect time to rediscover the things we often take for granted, to look at them with fresh eyes. Today let's address an old yet enduring question: Q: What differentiates yoga from a stretching class? A: Well, on a purely physical level, yoga incorporates strengthening as well. Follow-up Q: So what differentiates yoga …
What’s with All the Pretzel Poses?
This video is less a How-to and more a chat about the wacky poses we often see in yoga--and in memes making fun of yoga. Bound twists, arm balances, upside-down and sideways--I thought yoga was about de-stressing and zoning out! https://youtu.be/2_0PnGRtuVo Actually, yoga is rarely about zoning out, even though that might happen now and …