Best Arm Balances: Scissors

Via Candace C. Workshops

Don’t you just love it when your yoga practice goes into overdrive? You get all of these yoga breakthroughs. You start seeing huge progressions during every practice. You get the mental and spiritual growth that comes with all of that stuff. It’s pretty much what every yogi strives for. It’s almost hard to keep up with it all. Perhaps there’s an executive assistant you can hire when you’re having one of those bomb yoga weeks.

These past couple of days, my spirit has been switched ON in a big way. A lot of the things I’ve found challenging since my month with Ana, seem to be coming a little easier. When I started teacher training, I had some huuuuge ego issues. I had never really noticed it before, because I was in classes with people who were about at the same level. So, I must have just competed with myself. But when I got into that lovely room filled with all of those beautiful and talented yogis, something switched on. I found that seeing how much more advanced they were was absolutely killing me. I would beat myself up for not being able to do what they could do. I thought I was some sort of a hack. Even after I got out of training, I compared myself to these other new yoga teachers. They were all so great at it, that there was no reason for me to try to compete. I wasn’t a yoga teacher compared to these folks. I was an intermediate student at best.

But if these past few days have taught me anything, it was how to release that feeling and be powerful in my teaching career, my practice, and my every day life. When I’m freshly out of a two hour yoga class in Denver, my spirit is so delighted that I can’t help but spread my confidence around.

Today, I held Scissors for longer than I’ve ever held it. Yesterday, I practiced for two hours with my eyes closed, and I was asked by the best yoga teacher in Denver to assist her during one of her workshops. Two days ago, I got into queen pigeon by myself for the first time. It’s been day after day of awesome growth, and while I’m trying not to become attached to it, I’ve really been appreciating it. Yay for yoga breakthroughs!

I’m a huge fan of scissors now, and suggest you go ahead and give it a go. Do about 5-10 sun salutations to get warmed up for the balance and get into it!

 

What’s your latest yoga breakthrough? 

 

 

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Experimenting With The Bandhas

Hey there yogis! You know how much we love our bandhas, right? If not, then it’s time to recognize. I love a good bandha. I could throw a Bandha party and everyone would come because my enthusiasm about them is catching. Bandhas create a binding, contracting motion, and there are three major Bandhas that you can incorporate into your practice. There’s Mula Bandha, where you contract the root of your pelvis into a root lock. There’s Jalandhara Bandha, the throat lock. And then there’s Uddiyana Bandha. Uddiyana can be translated as “belly flies up,” and that gives you a pretty good idea of the motion of this particular Bandha. If you combine all three Bandhas at once, it creates The Great Lock, or the Maha Bandha. Maha Bandha is a pretty intense lock, and releasing it releases a ton of energy.

Sometimes, when I incorporate Bandhas into my Forrest yoga sequences, I like to practice them all seperately for a few rounds, and then combine them all for a long hold Maha Bandha. It’s pretty empowering and it really gets the energy flowing by use of compression, and withholding the breath.

Over the past few weeks, my yoga partner and I have been primarily playing with one of the Bandhas during our practices. Since I’m developing my teaching career, I feel strongly that we should experiment with our own bodies so I’m better able to explain what’s going on in my student’s bodies.

Here’s what we know: Uddyana Bandha is great for digestion, circulation, and getting in touch with feeling in your abdomen. Since she has scar tissue from a ruptured IUD, and I’ve struggled with an over-eating disorder for most of my life, it’s a great way for us both to work on the physical and mental issues housed in our core.

While we’ve been playing, we’ve noticed that there are some poses that compliment Uddiyana perfectly. We’ve had a lot of fun experimenting, and we’ve found that adding Uddiyana to the following poses allows the Bandha to really compress different organs, strengthen diverse muscle systems, and opens up the area from the base of the abdomen into the low pelvis.

Here are some poses that you can use to explore the properties of Uddiyana Bandha:

  • Mini-inversions: Downward dog, dolphin, turbodog
  • Bridge
  • Supta Badda Konasana (supine butterfly), lifting the feet and stretching them toward the sternum
  • Any seated twist
  • When you’re in Uddiyana, you can dig your fingers under your ribs to release the diaphragm. This feels super amazing, but it takes some bravery. Are you feeling bold enough to play with your body?

These are just a few that we played with this week, but I’m sure that there are a ton of great poses that would be perfect to try Uddiyana. What’s your favorite pose to do Uddiyana in?

Always remember to go slowly and listen to your body when experimenting with new poses. Never do Uddiyana Bhanda when you’re pregnant.

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Lessons From The Last Two Weeks of FYTT

Well, hey there yogis!

The last two weeks of yoga teacher training got to be a little too busy to document. There was so much change going on, so many epiphanies and realizations taking place, that I only had time to scribble in the margins of my perdy yoga notebook. Most of the scribblings are unintelligible and really point to how quickly things moved in that short amount of time.

So what can I tell you about the last two weeks of training? Well, in those two weeks, I truly became a yoga instructor. I learned how to teach from an authentic place, from the place inside that houses my love of yoga. I learned how to sit and stand tall. I learned how to sequence an amazing class for my students. I learned how to use incredibly healing hands on assists. I learned how to authentically cue poses by feeling for the pose inside my own body. I learned that it’s perfectly normal to be weird and that there are weird scholarships available for people who aren’t afraid to let their freak flag fly. I really learned about eating better and how to incorporate healthy recipes into my busy life. I learned how to really integrate my breath into my life, and it’s a beautiful endeavor that I work on every moment of every day.

Interestingly enough, the breath integration is one of the most meaningful and important lessons that I learned throughout the month. In the beginning of the training, I would beat myself up every time I realized that I had lost the connection to my breath. I mean, I’m a yogi for crying out loud. I might not have handstand down, but I should be able to control my own breath. In the end, I learned how to welcome my consciousness back to my breath enthusiastically. When I reconnect, I give myself three long, living, congratulatory breaths and think “Welcome back!” The excitement keeps my breath rolling for much longer than it would have if I would continue to badger myself about forgetting once again.

I can say now, a week after we completed the training, that I miss all of those AHA! moments. I miss those beautiful and accepting people. I miss the feeling of growth and change every day. But I pledge that I will continue to learn, to teach, to share and to love. I can’t wait to bring more lessons to the readers of this blog, to my students and to my friends as time wanes on.

Have you ever done a teacher training before? What lessons did you peel off the mat?

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Forrest Yoga Teacher Training: Day 7

 

A Blurry Testimonial of Growth

I looked back to that first post about yoga teacher training to get grounded, and see how much has happened in the past six days and it nearly brought me to tears. If you all don’t mind, I’m going to go ahead and quote myself from last week’s post…

[...] at the end of day one, who do I think I am, trying to learn how to be a yoga teacher? I’m the girl with the upper body strength of a t-rex, as flexible as a rubber band in the freezer, who doesn’t know sh*t about sh*t. I’m the girl with the fire inside of her to become a warrior and to share my truth and healing abilities to nurse the people back to health. I’m the woman who knows that the path she’s on is the right one, because the fire gets bigger every time she steps onto the mat.

I really needed to hear that last bit from myself on a training day like today. I can’t tell you everything that has changed, because much of it is still too incomprehensible to explain in words. But I can tell you that this training is living proof that time is relative, that there’s more to yoga than asanas, and that there’s more to life than learning how to be a yogaproject manager.

It seems as if a month or more has passed and as I get to know each of the other trainees a little more, I begin to realize the unshakable, undefinable love that I have for every one of them that I’ve been in contact with. The way we care for each other seems almost intrinsic. You could chalk it up to the fact that we all want to do the same thing. But that’s not really it.

We’re all here for very different reasons, and even though we have a common ground, it’s not our shared goal that has drawn us all together. This beautiful process has brought forth an understanding in all of us, even if we don’t quite understand it yet. Things shift in our personal transformation from day to day (or minute to minute as it sometimes seems) and that has allowed us to move beyond the surface level bullsh*t. It has allowed us to open up, and show each other our true selves as we simultaneously work to uncover that true self.

Even though that’s an amazing process and every day is filled with amazing yoga, it’s the most challenging thing that I’ve ever done. I’m physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. Today, I just wanted to pack it up and go home. So when I sat down to write this, I had a pow wow with the girl from last week. It seems that she would have a lot to be proud of this week.

Today, my upper body is stronger and my rubber bands are beginning to thaw. I know a little more sh*t than I did back then. Looking to her words was a great reminder that the warrior is still inside, that she’s still ready to go to battle. It was important to remember that the healer still has more to learn before this month is done. And when I saw what she had to say, the fire started to grow with fury, and I didn’t even need to step on the mat to know that I was on the right path.

 

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Forrest Yoga Teacher Training: Day One

For the past two weeks, I’ve been suspended between being terrified and excited, while my Forrest Yoga teacher training loomed in what seemed to be the ever distant future. Even yesterday, it seemed as if today would never come. I’m usually a sound sleeper, but last night was racked with the “what if’s” and the “holy sh*t’s” that my mind has been circulating ever since I hit the button to register. My brain kept running a constant track saying, “You? A yoga teacher? A Forrest Yoga teacher? Really, you? You know you’re talking about you here, right? Don’t you know you’re as flexible as a rubber band in the freezer? Haven’t you realized that your upper body strength is equal to that of a T-Rex? Don’t you understand that you’re crazy inexperienced in this style of yoga? What, you’ve been to like, six practices, and you think you can teach it?”

When I finally rolled out of bed this morning, most of those worries had subsided. I was just ready to walk the short distance to the studio and get my yoga on. I couldn’t wait to meditate and chant and yoga my morning away. What yogi in her right mind wouldn’t love to wake up every morning for an energetically charged drum circle, followed by an excruciatingly difficult “sweat lodge” style yoga practice? That was a question I could answer positively. It might mean squeezing two inches away from my neighbor and slipping in pools of my own sweat, but at least it kept the teacher training far from my mind. But during the practice, Ana started having the trainees holler while repeating the cues for poses, and I already couldn’t keep up. I felt like a lost puppy in the body of a downward facing dog. After that, we went on to have an intense and amazing practice that truly rocked my world.

The fire was back and I remembered why I chose a practice that I had very little experience in. There’s something special about this Forrest Yoga. These people were lovely, strong and spirited. I wanted to come out on the other side more like them.

When we reconvened, we sat in a talking circle, and I would qualify that hour as being one of the most meaningful experiences that I’ve ever had with a group of strangers. It was beautiful to see everyone put their egos aside and share their fears and their intentions with open hearts. We laughed together, we cried together, we began to understand one another.

From then on, we were learning how to talk, how to teach with our voices and our bodies. It was the most uncomfortable and difficult part of the day. Since I don’t know Forrest Yoga poses, I was relegated to teaching easy ones, which made me feel inferior, which made me lose my confidence, and hide behind stupid giggles and little shrugs. I lost my power somewhere along the way, but everyone laughed with me and at the end of the day, none of that seemed to matter.

So at the end of day one, who do I think I am, trying to learn how to be a yoga teacher? I’m the girl with the upper body strength of a t-rex, as flexible as a rubber band in the freezer, who doesn’t know sh*t about sh*t. I’m the girl with the fire inside of her to become a warrior and to share my truth and healing abilities to nurse the people back to health. I’m the woman who knows that the path she’s on is the right one, because the fire gets bigger every time she steps onto the mat.

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Preparing For Teacher Training

Ana Forrest is B.A.

Hey there yogis! Thanks for stopping by today! Be forewarned, there might be a lot of exclamation points in this post. Why? Because I’m getting ready to leave for Forrest Yoga teacher training. I can’t believe it’s already time to start packing up, but class is in session a week from this Friday! I’m flying into Denver in a few short days and it feels as if my heart might beat out of my chest, because I’m just that excited!

I’m sure most of you understand this feeling. When you’ve been doing yoga for any amount of time, I’m sure teaching has crossed your mind. When I first fell in love with yoga, I just wanted to share it with everyone. A  month after I had picked up the practice, I remember having a drunken yoga practice with some girl in a kitchen. I remember teaching people in my office how to breathe into uncomfortable spots. Heck, I even tried to teach my dog how to do downward facing dog to the command “Namaste.”

But my teaching has always been awkward and untrained. A few months ago, I wrote in my journal that it was my dream to become a yoga instructor. On New Years Eve, I walked into a lovely yoga studio in Chicago, and after an intense and beautiful practice, when we sat down to set our goals and intentions for the year, I set it in stone. It does seem like a dream now. I can’t believe that I’m really leaving for Denver in a few days. I can’t imagine what my life is going to become after doing yoga for a month with Ana Forrest and my lovely fellow students.

Fortunately, there’s really no time to wonder. I have to pack a month’s worth of living materials into my backpacking backpack, my regular backpack and a purse (mama likes to travel light). Plus I still have to work, finish up my class at comedy school and squeeze in at least an hour of yoga every day.

Well, wish me luck getting ready. The next time I check in, I’ll be in Denver!!! Yes. That was three exclamation points in a row. Hey, I warned you.

Have you completed your 200 hour training? How did you feel before you did it?

 

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The Evolution of a Pose

When you’ve been practicing yoga for awhile, you begin to notice the way that poses seem to evolve over time. Not only do poses become simpler as you become physically stronger and more flexible, the very purpose of a pose changes over time as your body and mind begin to transform.
When you begin, downward dog can be a nightmarishly difficult pose, and as you continue to do yoga, it works to strengthen your arms, legs and back. Eventually, downward dog becomes a way to increase shoulder flexibility as you pull your tailbone towards the sky, and reach your chest towards your shins. When your shoulders become increasingly flexible, you can rotate your arms externally to create a solid foundation and strengthen your latissiumus dorsi muscles. Then, downward facing dog becomes a meditative and relaxing home base during your practice. It’s where you come back to gather your breath and remember your foundation. It becomes a grounding and nurturing pose.
Savasana undergoes a similar transformation. When you begin practicing yoga, savassana can seem like a pointless part of your practice where you have to lay around for several minutes and try to relax. You can’t relax, of course, because every time you try you start thinking about your ex, your to-do list, how you smell, that cute police officer you met when you were speeding last week, and whether or not you should get bangs. Then your yoga teacher has the audacity to tell you to clear your mind. You try and try with all of your might, but every time you try not to think, you’re thinking about not thinking, and that’s thinking, right? This must be some kind of evil yoga trick.
Eventually, you come to see it as the medatative pose that it is. You begin to feel like you completely melt into the mat and experience the realization that what people call meditation really just means regaining focus after you lose it. Then there’s no struggle, no fight to stay present. There is just a calm ebb and flow of consciousness that grows greater with every practice.
Perhaps it turns into something more for you over time. Perhaps you begin to feel a connection, an energy and perhaps it becomes a spiritual practice for you.
I’ll admit that the realization that poses really evolve came at the perfect time. I was feeling like my practice had become a bit stale. Sometimes thoughts would bombard me. I wasn’t progressing enough. I hadn’t learned enough poses or perfected anything yet. I was getting pretty trapped in this thought process, which isn’t a very good place to be right before yoga teacher training. Thankfully, when I was in down dog a few days ago, I thought about how much the pose had changed for me over time. Throughout my practice I noticed it again and again. I began to realize that the new poses that I’ve incorporated into my practice would change over time as well. I was struck with this huge volt of excitement about my yoga practice again. It was pretty stellar.
What evolutions have you noticed in your practice?

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Pose of the week: Shoulder Stand

Hey there small space yogis! Thank you for joining me today. I hope you’ve had an amazing week so far and I really hope you’re enjoying this lovely winter Saturday morning.

For me, this week has been pretty lovely. It’s been a week of inversions! It seems like I’ve been upside down and against the wall for the majority of the past seven days. It’s been great, so today, I wanted to talk to you about how good inversions are for you and talk about the most accessible inversion, the shoulder stand.I was never much of an inversion person.

If you’re shoulders and neck aren’t quite strong enough to move into a headstand, you can use the go to beginners pose, shoulder stand. What’s great about shoulder stand is that you don’t need to utilize any valuable wall space, and you still get all of the benefits of inversions.

Benefits

Inversions are good for your cardiovascular system. This benefit is obvious in many ways since being good to your heart is pretty much a no brainer, but in the winter, it’s magnificent. Your circulatory system that keeps your limbs warm is stimulated when you play with gravity and get your heart over your head.

Doing inversions is also very calming. Being upside down helps to regulate hormone fluctuations and calm the nervous system.

Iyengar uses inversions for all types of respiratory conditions. It may be a little uncomfortable to go upside down when you have a cold, but the extra blood supply to the system can help it clear up faster.

Should You Invert?

You should not do a full inversion stand if you’re menstruating, because it is said to interrupt the natural cycle of your period. Even though camps are divided on whether or not this is necessary, it’s better to err on the side of caution. You’ll be that much more excited to get back to your shoulder stand if you give it up for a few days anyhow.

If you have blood pressure issues, you should never invert.

Do it!

If you’re not on the list above, get into shoulder stand or another inversion sometime during your practice today. Here’s a tutorial from Yoga Journal.

 

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Is Bikram Bad for Your Body?

Last week, I talked about how I’d be doing Bikram yoga this month to get a feel for what it’s all about. I started doing Bikram a couple of  weeks ago and I incorporated it into my daily yoga practice. I planned on doing Bikram as my main yoga and rotating between a few other studios and a home practice.

That was the plan, at least. About five days into practicing Bikram, I was feeling pretty good. I’m a fan of all of the sweating and the heat. I’m in pretty good shape, so the 105 degrees didn’t leave me looking for a cardiac nurse. I figured the intensity would help me shed those last few pounds that have been hanging on since the holidays. I left every practice feeling foot loose and fancy free. Sure, it wasn’t the yoga that I preferred, but I tried to turn Bikram into my own practice (even though Bikram is not a fan of that mentality). I tried to make the most out of each pose and make it meditative (even though they’re quite strict in their instructions). I asked an instructor what alternative poses I could do if I was experiencing pain in my neck during one of the first poses. She shrugged and told me that I would get used to it.

Each day, my knees got a little more sore. Since I’ve never had knee issues, I was more than a little concerned, but I wrote it off. I figured it was the combination of doing yoga every day and walking everywhere. But in the back of my mind, I wondered if it was the Bikram. Still, I wanted to continue to give it a shot and went to one more practice. A few hours after the practice, my knees and neck were killing me. Every time I walked, I experienced pain in both of my knees.

After a few days of hatha and restorative yoga in Chicago, my knees are almost back to normal and my neck is open and pain free. I surly can’t speak for everyone out there, but I’m a careful yogi and I tried not to take it too far in my first experience in Bikram and still experienced unnecessary pain. There’s enough suffering in this world. You shouldn’t have to “suffer some” in your yoga practice. Take care of yourself when you’re practicing Bikram.

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What is Bikram Yoga?

Bikram Yoga - with Bikram Choudhury
Hola Dorm Yogis!

I know this blog is dedicated to helping you get your dorm yoga on. But it’s winter and there’s no use in being cooped up in your tiny drafty cinder block box of a dorm room all of the time. Why not head to a studio? Why not try out some hot yoga? How about some Bikram yoga?

What’s Bikram yoga?

It’s pretty controversial in the yoga world. Some yogis say that Bikram causes too many injuries. Some practitioners say that it doesn’t embody the spirit of yoga. Some yogis say that beginners shouldn’t practice it.

Bikram Yoga is a sequence of twenty six postures and two breathing exercises that are practiced in a heated room. The room is generally one hundred and five degrees. Ideally, the room will also be at forty percent humidity.

But the heat isn’t what causes all of the controversy. What makes many yoga practitioners wince, is generally the part that Bikram students love. Bikram instructors  clap rhythimcally, instructing you to keep up, they tell you to push yourself, they want you to go further. There’s a sign on the door of a studio that I went to that instructed students, among other things, to “suffer some.”

Another part of Bikram that many yoga practitioners abhor is that the practice promotes competition. While you’d be hard pressed to find a yoga competition for any other type of yoga, Bikram’s version bucks the belief that yoga is about harmony and shunning the ego. There are full scale, regulated, Bikram competitions. The idea that someone can win at yoga is non-traditional. But does that make it wrong?

This month, I’ve started doing Bikram yoga to see whether or not this nay saying holds true. I’ve been practicing for seven days so far and it’s clear that there is a different mind set abound at the Bikram studio in Chicago. I’m trying to keep an open mind and give Bikram a chance this month. Check in the next few weeks to hear my full report.

Namaste!

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Forrest Yoga Teacher Training

I may not be ready to do this, but I'm ready to learn from the woman who can.

Hello Dorm Yogis!

Sometimes life just works itself out in mysterious ways. I told you about my  master life plan just last week. And my plan involved hanging out in Chicago for the year of 2012. I was pretty set to do yoga for the better part of this year getting ready to do my Forrest Yoga teacher training in October.

Well, the stars have seemed to align to make something completely different happen. A friend of mine is living in Denver and he sent me a message letting me know that he wanted to move in April, that I should come along and that we should make our destination Boston, to hang out with one of our beloved besties.

I thought this sounded like an awesome idea. But alas, I had this other plan, one that involved hanging out and doing yoga in Chicago for the better part of the year until I could do my teacher training for Forrest Yoga in the fall (remember?). I needed to get ready, prepare, and practice.

But then I remember something. I saw something about a teacher training in Denver on the Forrest Yoga website, but skimmed right over it, to get to the good stuff about Chicago in October. Later in the year… You know, when I’m ready.

I look into it and my memory served me right. There is a teacher training in Denver, and it takes place in March. That’s only a month away. It’s too soon right? There’s no way that would work out, time wise. As I think about it, I realize that my house sit ends mid-February and my writing classes will be done by the end of the month. So timing isn’t an issue. But, there has to be something standing in the way of this. It’s too quick. I’m not ready…

Oh, I’ve got it. I don’t have a place to stay. I’m sure I would need my own space since I’d have to get up very early in the morning. No can do.

Then the news comes from Denver that my friend’s roommate is graduating from his software engineering training and would be moving out in February. He has an extra bed in and extra bedroom. Harumph… This can’t be falling into place… Not now. I’m not ready… Or am I?

Nope, I don’t have the cash on hand to pay for the course. That will stop me in my tracks. Almost the moment that this thought pops into my brain, I a bunch of work falls in my lap. With the extra hours and extra contracts, I’d be able to swing it by the deadline. It would be tight, but I could swing it. Oh man. I can swing it, everything’s falling into place, I have a place to stay… I am ready!

And that’s how I found out that I’m ready to train to be a Forrest yoga instructor. All signs point to go!

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Yoga Shopping Part Deux

Stimulus studio

So, I’ve got a little more time to finish up my yoga shopping story, which I guess isn’t quite finished and might never be… Well, we’ll get to that later. When I ran out of time at the finish of the last post, I was studying at a studio in Arkansas doing hot yoga.

After studying hot vinyasa for a a few months, with a great group of teachers and students, I went through one of those life shake ups and ended up without a home, or a studio, or a path. That’s when things got interesting. I went back to the videos, hit the books, started developing my own daily practice, and really started studying yoga for the first time. For a long time I was just doing yoga. Now, for the first time I was learning yoga. So as cruddy as it felt to be displaced and without a studio, it really brought a new dimension into my practice. I started really understanding the therapeutic uses for poses, the importance of unblocking your energy, and how imperative and helpful a regular meditation practice could be. I began sharing what I learned with others. My mother had a back injury that I helped her with and I turned a close friend onto the practice, and then, I realized that I was ready to begin certification training.

I realized that I wanted to learn as much about yoga as possible and to help people heal. It would be nice to say that I got very serious, picked a practice to study and followed through. Instead, a studio fell in my lap that teaches a healing and strength based practice of yoga called Forrest Yoga. It was love at first pose. It’s challenging, but holistic. It’s nuanced, but the teaching is very hands on and adjustment heavy. It began to heal my spirit from the first moment on and I knew that this was what I needed to study.

So right now, I’m practicing with the folks at Forrest Yoga. They have a training class in October, and if everything falls into place, I’ll study with them to get my body used to the practice before the class.

Where has your yoga shopping led you? What practice do you love the most?

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Yoga Shopping

Barefoot in the Park

Last week, I talked about my amazing New Years Eve experience at Turbodog Yoga in Chicago. I mentioned that it was awesome and that the studio was a Forrest Yoga studio. So, I wanted to talk about something my last yoga instructor called “yoga shopping”. I was going to take this week to talk about your shoulders, but let’s just shrug that off until next week (see what I did there?).

I started doing yoga a few years after I was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease. My doctors prescribed a combination of physical therapy and high doses of painkillers, so I lived in a hydrocodone fog for a couple of years. In  2006, a friend of mine got certified and started teaching a class at our college. The class was awful. It was in a smelly gym room in our annex gym, and it was taught by someone who clearly didn’t have a passion for yoga, she just wanted to be something other than an administrative assistant. I went to a few classes and it just didn’t stick for me.

A few years later, the new gym on campus was completed and they brought in a fully trained yoga teacher. I’d lost a bunch of weight by walking and getting more active, but I was still trying to get in shape. I decided to give this yoga thing another shot. I entered the studio and a small, no nonsense, middle aged woman in a sari told us to back up against the wall. She explained that the type of yoga she taught was in the Iyengar tradition and got to work. In that hour, I learned more about my body than I ever had. I was hooked.

I studied with her for a few months but when I graduated from college, I was on my own. I tried a few types of yoga, and none of them really reached me. I stopped doing yoga for almost six months. Every morning when I woke up and got out of bed, I wished I had done yoga the day before. Every night, I went to bed without doing any.

In December 2009, I started doing TV yoga. This is something I used to be embarrassed about, as if I wasn’t a serious yogi because this is where I got my restart. But I fell in love with the practice again by doing Namaste Yoga in a small room on a mountain. I did it once every few days at first, then every day, then for hours a day. I felt great. I would have studied at a studio then, but didn’t have the funds.

When I did, I started studying at a hot yoga studio. It was great exercise, but it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. But there, my teacher Erica told me that it was okay to “go shopping” before you settle into a practice.

Darn, we’re out of time for today… To be continued…

Are you “yoga shopping” right now?

 

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New Years Eve Yoga

Hello Dorm Yogis!

I hope you’re all enjoying your first day of the new year! I’d like to begin by thanking you for joining me today. Last night, I decided to forgo the usual New Years Eve festivities and spend them at a completely foreign yoga studio in Chicago with a bunch of beautiful strangers. I’d like to take a moment to plant the seed in your mind for next year. Skip the champagne! Go do yoga! It was the most amazing New Years Eve I’ve ever had. It allowed me to start off the year, sans hangover, completely energized and ready to take the opportunity to re-connect with my world after a few challenging months.

The studio I went to was called Turbodog Yoga and they practice a type of yoga that I had never tried before, called Forrest Yoga. I can’t say enough about the practice. It was love at first pose. Forrest Yoga is all about personal growth, finding your inner strength and empowerment. If you’re used to a more gentle or classic practice as I was, it was some powerful stuff.

Afterwards we had a potluck picnic on the studio floor. The studio space is in a Ukranian Village warehouse with exposed brick walls and huge windows. It’s a beautiful space and the spread was unbelievable. Such good food and such great company. A girl really couldn’t ask for more.

Before midnight we took part in a New Year’s Intention ceremony. During the ceremony we committed to some goals for the year and the lovely Steve and Talia (owners at Turbodog) put a bunch of cool support systems in place to keep us on track this year. I committed to finishing a full length creative work of my own choosing and complete yoga teacher training. I’m very excited for both of those dreams to come true and with the help of the fine folks I met at Turbodog, I know that it will happen for me this year.

Did you do yoga on NYE? Have you found a new practice that you’ve fallen in love with?

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Pose of the Week: Ardha Matsyendrasana

Happy Holidays Yogis!

The holiday season is passing by very quickly. We just passed the winter solstice and while the days are getting longer and it’s time to be hopeful, it’s also time to get ready for the coming winter. We’re also passing the annual food festivus that coincides with the winter holidays. It’s a good time to celebrate the passing year, to indulge, to relax and spend joyful time with your family. It’s also a bad time to over-eat, drop your practice and forgo sleep.

I’m not trying to sound like a hypocrite. It’s the middle of the night, and I haven’t been to sleep yet. It’s getting to the point where I’m finding weird stuff on the interwebs like scholarships for left handed girls. Those exist. I’m so full from our holiday meal that I can barely move. I missed my daily practice today and used the festivities as an excuse. I’m guilty of over-indulgence and I’m the first to admit it. I’ll also be the first to admit that I’m super jazzed that the holiday season is over, and that I can get into my lovely and smooth routine.

That might sound selfish, but I’m tired of working in between every little distraction. Skipping my practice makes me feel crunchy inside and out. Plus, for some reason, during the holidays, people seem to be less respectful of your time and personal space. Lordy! I sound like quite the loner. Perhaps that’s what I am right now. No use fighting it.

Leave me alone guys! I’m doing a Lord of the Fishes pose! Technically, this is the Half Lord of the Fishes pose. It’s awesome for stoking your digestive fire, bringing energy into your spine and stimulating your filtering organs (liver and kidneys). That’s why it’s awesome to focus on this pose during your post holiday detox. Even if you’re not doing a full on cleanse or detox, it’s a good idea to step away from the cookies and heavy holiday foods for a few days in order to allow your digestive system to work through the things it needs to work through.

Even if you want to keep indulging, get into this pose for a few minutes out of your practice tomorrow. Here’s a great description of the pose with more information from Yoga Journal.

 

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Heart Opening

Hello Dorm Yogis!

Two posts in one week?! That’s a scheduling fluke! It’s a scheduling fluke that works for me, because I love writing for this blog. I love that it snowed yesterday but the grass is still green and the sun is shining. I love that I reconnected with my best friend (who also happens to be my ex…. I know). I love that it hasn’t blown up in my face yet. I have a lot of love that’s starting to seep out of the cracks of the wall I put around my heart recently.

During my trip to Panama, I found a balanced fullness within myself. I was still, calm. I was focused, clear. But I was closed, and although I no longer feared being alone, I almost found solace in it. I began to work on my chakras a few weeks ago and focused each week on one of the energy sources starting at the root. This slow and steady pace doing chakra work has made me extremely grounded. As I’ve only worked on the lower three chakras (the material or emotional chakras), I haven’t worked on the spirit chakras that occupy the upper body. This work starts at the heart. And I’ve been focusing on the heart chakra for several days.

The heart chakra is called Anahata and it translates to, unstruck, unbroken, unhurt. I think that’s a great sentiment about the true nature of the heart. I think subconsciously I wanted to reconnect with my beloved bestie because I wanted to feel my heart again. I wanted to know if it was still broken. I wanted to know if he still made it leap in my chest. Neither of those things seemed to happen, but I did feel it. I felt a clear, open space. Everything was calm and I could feel the love there, physically residing in the space of the chakra. It was a different kind of love. Not the grasping, addicted to attachment kind of love. It was something better and more fundamental. I’m thinking that the anahata chakra opening paid off today.

Have you ever done work on your heart chakra? Did you notice any change in the way you open up to people, especially people you would normally be guarded around like FBI agents or ex boyfriends?

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Pose of the Week: Shoulder Stand

IMG_0156 Kowabunga! That’s not the kowabunga that people usually say when they’re really excited about something or they’re about to catch some really gnarly wave. It’s the kind of kowabunga that you say when you’ve been sitting on airplanes, crashing on hostel beds, sleeping on air mattresses in tents on islands in the Caribbean (shyes! I was!), researching the best online colleges in your downtime, and when you have to sit on your behind playing catch up all day today, tomorrow and everyday until the end of time (it seems).  That was a super crazy run on sentence, but that’s okay. It made the point that when all of this stuff is going on, seemingly all at once, it’s easy to neglect your body and your practice.

I like to think of it this way, even if you can only give proper attention to one pose today, count that as your practice. Sometimes we tent to lose momentum because we think that the only way to have a daily practice is to commit to an hour every day. While that’s can be the goal, you have to be able to forgive yourself if you find that there are times in your life when you can’t quite make the commitment. So at the very least, work on one stretch per day. Today, let that be the shoulder stand.

This pose has many benefits. It calms the mind and reduces stress. It alleviates insomnia and mild depression. And it gets you inverted which is one of those important parts about life that we forget about. You can’t always be right side up. Like an hourglass, you have to flip it around in order to get it flowing in the right direction. Don’t worry about it, that metaphor totally makes sense.

It’s also amazing for strengthening and stretching your lower back. Today I’m going to direct you to Yoga Journal for the step-by-step instructions on how to get into this pose. They have a very nuanced way of writing the directions that are perfect if you’re a beginner. If you’re not a beginner and you already love doing the shoulder stand, get into it. Let this post serve as inspiration to get partially upside down today.

What lower back poses are your favorites?

 

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Winter Yoga

Dragon Castle In Winter.  5,500 visits. Thank you.

Keeping your practice strong while you’re on the road is a good idea. It can help you reduce stress and energize you, if you’re feeling the downward pull of jet lag. Fortunately for small space yoga practitioners, it’s usually very simple to pack up our practice and take it along with us.

If you’re headed home for winter break, it’s important to think about the future of your yoga practice while you’ll be away. If you can’t commit to keeping a daily practice, strive at the very least for a weekly practice, and try to get to a studio for that practice if you can. If you don’t think you can commit to a practice at all, try to incorporate some of the essential yoga practices below. These ones are so easy to integrate, no matter how busy you are wrapping gifts and applying for next year’s undergraduate scholarships, you’ll have no excuse to quit your yoga practice for winter break.

 

Uddiyana Bandha
It’s important to stay connected to your body and keep it warm and flexible, when your instinct is to eat too much and go into hibernation mode. To keep this from happening, start each day with uddiyana bhanda. It’s a great way to fire up your digestion and keep you aware of your eating habits. It’s a simple but nuanced practice that takes minutes to complete every day. You can do it in the bathroom before you take your morning shower. Here’s a great video that will guide you through uddyana bhanda.

Neck Tension Yoga
If you’re going to be driving or flying long distances, take special care of your neck and notice any tension that is building up over time. Take a few minutes, when you can, to fully rotate and stretch your neck. Start at the right side with your chin pointed to your shoulder. Roll your neck forward, led by your chin and stop at any points of tension. Rock slowly back and forth over the knot and use your breath and the motion to massage the pain away until it disipates.

Forward Fold
Keeping your lower back flexible will allow you to get back into your practice much easier when you get ready to start spring semester. Do a few minutes of standing or seated forward fold every morning and evening. If you have time add some twists. If you have even more time, do a full practice… Okay, I’m not here to nag you. I just want you to have a great winter break! Keep up the yoga!

What do you do to keep up your yoga practice during the holidays?

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Setting The Best of Intentions

I like to set my intentions in child's pose every morning.

I’m a huge fan of setting intentions. Setting a daily intention allows us to shine a light right in front of our feet, on our own path. It allows us to have a little chat with our personal inner guide, confront our personal demons, celebrate the success of intentions manifested and align our values with our behavior.

Right intention is part of the eight-fold path of Buddhism. In Buddhism, intention is considered the mental energy that drives our actions. No matter what you believe in, you have to admit that that’s a really great way to define it.

On the eight-fold path, Buddha differentiated between three types of intention: “1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion.” [The Big View]

Intentions are not the same as goals, as goals deal with an imagined future. No, intentions are a different breed of mind work. Intentions are set in the now. That’s not to say that goals are unnecessary. It’s good to aim for something higher. But goals are set in an imaginary time and place, usually one that’s far away. Goals are set in a our mind’s concept of the future and as such, this future is constantly shifting as we move forward in life. To put all of our stock in an imaginary existence is futile and many goals  typically fall away or evolve into new goals. Right now you may want to be a medical assistant, when you see you could travel more if you could earn something better than a medical assistant salary, you may want to become a doctor.

Here’s a great article about the essence of intention setting from Yoga Journal. It’s really in depth and explains the balance of goal and intention setting in detail.

Do you set a daily intention?

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Small Space Sequence: Hip Openers

Good afternoon Dorm Yogis!

I would like to begin by mentioning that I’m very grateful to be with you today and I’m glad you stopped by to have a look at my brand new blog about small space yoga. I’m very excited about this new project, and I’m glad that you’re here sharing it with me!

Yesterday was 11/11/11 and whether you believe there was some kind of energy shift coinciding with the date or not, I’d have to say it was pretty serendipitous. I won’t go into the long story about what happened to/for/with me last night, but something perfect took place at around 11:11 p.m. (kid you not) that I needed. I wasn’t expecting it, but the universe delivered it anyway. As a matter of fact, I was sitting at home, on the computer, thinking about what a sad sack I was for being home on a Friday night. I was thinking about a lot of painful things. I was worrying. My ego was wounded. I felt weak, powerless, debilitated… And then this thing happened and it changed my whole outlook. It came out of nowhere and was instantly meaningful.

Don’t you love it when that happens? But then things kept on happening. I had a magical evening talking to some people that I love, hearing old stories that I’d never heard in their full glory, laughing and generally being in awe. So when I woke up this morning in a bad place, I didn’t understand what went wrong. All I understood was the crushing sadness that I was still feeling. Then the universe did it again. It took that thing that happened last night, and opened it up further and made it more meaningful than I could have ever imagined. The universe likes to rub stuff in when you’re not getting it.

But when I started doing yoga today, I began to notice that there was a lot of stuff built up in my hips. Your hips are where you store negative emotions like resentment, guilt and blame. The reason for this is that your second chakra, Svadisthana, is located in your hips, pelvis and lower back. When this chakra is cleared, you will almost instantly feel more free, creative, and sexual. I don’t know if there’s a Sanskrit word for ‘booyah’ (if there is, I know what I’m getting as my first Sanskrit tattoo) but clearing this chakra gets a ‘booyah’ for sure. If you don’t clear up the negative emotions that you’re storing in your hips, you won’t be able to be ‘free’ from those emotions no matter what the universe gives to you.

Hip openers are easy to do in small space yoga and there are tons of poses that help release the tension in your hips. Yoga proves to be most effective when you keep an intention in mind. If you’re feeling the burden of negative emotions, set your intention and focus your breath on your hips and pelvic region.

Here’s a short sequence that you can add to your practice today to allow you to open up your hips and clear your second chakra to release negative emotions.

  1. Begin in downward facing dog.
  2. Gently swing your weight forward and tuck your right knee. Come into pigeon pose. Try to get your shin to run parallel with the top of your mat. I had 10 seconds and didn’t want to hurt myself so I just tried to get into the pose and rest into my hip.
  3. Ripple through the spine and stretch your head and neck out as you lay over your thigh. This can be difficult. It is not uncommon to experience a rush of emotions in this pose. Relax into the pose on every exhalation and address the emotions as they rise and let them go.
  4. Curl the spine and lift your chest to return to pigeon pose. Draw your left leg in front of your body and cross it over your right thigh. Pull the left knee into your chest.
  5. On an inhale, sit up very straight. On the exhale, begin twisting to the left while pulling the knee to the chest. You can slide your elbow in front of your knee for a deeper stretch.
  6. On an inhale, return to center and slide your left leg up your thigh.
  7. On an exhale breath, lengthen your spine and stretch forward from the crown of your head bending forward out of your hips. This half lotus stretch can be difficult. Do what’s best for you today. If you can only move a centimeter, that’s enough. The main priority is for your spine to be straight and for the fold to come from your hips.
  8. Unfurl the left leg and push it behind you. Return to downward facing dog.
  9. Repeat this sequence on the left side.
Light and love dorm yogis!
Namaste
Corinne

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Welcome Dorm Yogis!

Namaste! That's me workin' on that lotus after a 7 day ayurvedic detox. What. a. hippie.

Namaste Dorm Yogis! I would like to welcome you to a new blog that I’m launching to help us all develop a healthy, well rounded, home practice in a small space. This blog comes out of the need to find poses that allow you to express a wide range of motion within the confined space of a dorm room, studio apartment, your bedroom or when you’re on the road. When you’re in college, it’s important to stay active, flexible build strength and to reduce stress all while studying to get your online teaching degree. Yoga is a perfect practice that fills all of these needs for your body and mind.

One of the beautiful aspects of yoga is that the practice doesn’t require many materials. All of the poses and sequences that we’ll feature in this blog will allow you to practice without having to buy and store a lot of yoga stuff. All you’ll really need is a yoga mat, a towel or strap, and possibly some folded blankets.

My experience is mainly in Iyengar yoga, Hatha yoga and Ashtanga yoga. But we’ll focus on any type of yoga that fits the scope of practicing in a small space.

A little about me and my yoga practice:

My name is Corinne Tobias and I’m a young writer, yogi and outdoor enthusiast. I am very committed to my daily yoga practice and have begun a daily meditation practice as well. I have been practicing yoga for six years and I committed to a daily practice over two years ago well, because yoga is awesome. As my joy for yoga continues to grow, and my abilities continue to flourish, I have decided that I would like to share my love for yoga with others.

I am now trying to figure out which style of yoga I would like to teach, and where I would like to teach. It’s a difficult decision, and I’m not going to be hasty about getting my teacher training without first knowing which style brings the most passion to my practice. Many people begin a yoga practice and rush into teacher training in their first year without exploring their options. I have found that the beauty in waiting is the way that different styles have presented themselves to me over the years. I have loved nearly all of them, and I would like to do more searching and learning before I choose which one I pursue.

I am six feet tall and I currently live in a small space. This presents many challenges, but there’s an innate beauty in challenge and I’m writing this blog to share what I learn about small space yoga.

I am not perfect, and I am by no means claiming to be an expert practitioner. I just have a love for yoga that I need to let out! I’m very excited about this new project and hope that you will enjoy this journey with me. And keep in mind that most of the pictures are done with a timer. I have to set up the camera and then run to get into position, so the poses depicted are just to give you a general idea. The one above was tough to get into in 20 seconds!

Please let me know if there is a specific spatial problem you need to overcome (i.e. short ceilings, no arm room, no leg room) and I’ll write a post just for you!

Namaste

Corinne

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