Your Personal Yoga Practice Begins Here
Answering these questions is key to a sustainable yoga practice….
Personal Yoga Practice: the Unexpected Missing Ingredient for Great Results
“You don’t have to have years of experience or teacher training behind you to practice on your own. A few principles can give you initial confidence that then grows as you meet yourself on the mat…..”
Winterize Your Yoga Practice
5 Tips for Winterizing Your Yoga Practice
Yoga between 6am and 10am and practice in a warming fashion: Exert early. This doesn’t necessarily mean HIIT - though it could, in conjunction with an engaged practice. Doing it during this time, takes advantage of the times of day the body is in “build” mode. Daniel Pink in his acclaimed book When: the scientific secrets of perfect timing acknowledges that timing can make all the difference. Use it to your advantage.
Wake before or with the sun: This will help you reset your rhythm so it’s natural to be asleep at 10pm. Aligning your habits with circadian rhythms helps the immune system function properly and be ready to clear out the trash (non-functioning cells) at the time of night your organs are ready for the work. Creating rituals helps your habits stick.
If you can’t yoga early, make it half and half: You need to exert during these months more than ever, your body needs this to keep muscles balanced, to keep fascia mobile and bones strong. But if you’re yogaing after 4-5 in the evening, make the first half the warming, even sweaty part. In the second half, scale it down, moving toward yin or restorative, adding in cooling breaths, longer savanna and meditation. Your sleep with thank you.
Demystifying Asana, Virabhadrasana, Vrksasana-Video.
If you have taken our yoga class or any then you must be familiar with the term “Asana”, it simply means "pose" or "position. It is the asana at the end of a practice, when you just lay still and breathe deeply.
Easy Warrior and Tree Pose Yoga Practice Video
Super simple Hatha yoga practice based on the pose names “demystified” in the previous video. Appropriate for beginners as well as experienced yogis. Modifications and supports demonstrated and discussed. …
Understanding Healing Yoga; Spirituality and Sensory Awareness.
The way I help people experience spirituality in different modalities is through breath movement and imagination exercises also known as meditation or relaxation. I also offer these exercises in an effort to provide a sensory experience.
Feeling sluggish? Spring Yoga can Help
As the spring greens emerge, our bodies respond just like the roots and begin to move our energy and manifestation outward…
Feeling Twisted?
Revolved poses like Twisted Angle, Twisted Side Angle, Twisted Triangle, Seated Twists, Revolved Wide Legged Forward Folds, Twisted Plank, Twisted Downdog, Twisted Pigeon all share a common feature: the spine revolves - one vertebrae a little over the other. This causes the second feature: the ribs and pelvis end up facing different directions, up to ninety degrees offset. The neck may also turn, though that’s best left to last. More on that later.
Remember: “the spine” is not one thing. It's a series of large things at the base that get smaller the further you go up. There are other things (bones) attached to these things that restrict motion in places. So the rotation should happen a little at a time and not in one, big swing. (See Tips, below).
How to Make Your Personal Yoga Practice a Habit You Don’t Want to Break
When the desired habit is Personal Yoga Practice (PYP), that means choosing the context that will trigger the habit. This is one element of why zoom yoga classes can be so great: it used to be that only going to the yoga studio would trigger this activity, because that’s how we did it. Now, when you can take a live yoga class in your own home, wherever you choose, you can actually make a bridge from class to PYP simply by yogaing in the same location.
4th of July Recipes
Lemon Cilantro Bananas
The lemon (or lime!) and cilantro balance the kapha provoking effects of bananas perfectly for a peppy breakfast or dessert that will surprise everyone!
Ingredients (Serves 6)
4 cups of bite sized banana chunks
1 cup finely chopped cilantro
Juice of a whole lemon (~2-3 tsp lemon juice)
Yin Yoga: Change Structures by Living in them Differently (ours and society’s)
Yin Yoga works with embodied sensation and it turns out that’s where most of political rhetoric, advertising and cultural conditioning works on us, too….
What make a Badlands Healing Yoga Practice different?
“Your guide comes with a plan and your guide will alter the plan depending on what you choose to share. Classes are very intentionally small, so we can offer at least one technique - posture, breath, flow, image, meditation - chosen for each person. It may be something the guide had already planned for that they surmise would be just the ticket or they might replace part of their plan to illuminate something helpful for you. Modifications will be offered and alternatives suggested along with the reminder that everything is optional and questions are encouraged. “
What is Healing Yoga
“The mechanisms that allow yoga to remove these obstacles to healing, transforming us and our very desires slowly, over time, are what make yoga different than a “work out.” Together they have enormous transformative capacity.”
Practicing with Pain: why avoidance may hurt more
“[D]efinitely listen to your body and its signals. If you have pain in a movement or in a posture, breathe, withdraw from the edge where the pain arose and rest for a moment.
And then, re-approach. Slowly, mindfully. Notice where you get the first hint of a suggestion of the painful feeling and stay there — don’t go further. Breathe and notice. 9 times out of 10, you’ll feel the suggestion of pain fade away. If this happens, go a little more towards where you felt it before in the same manner: slowly, mindfully noticing the first hint of a suggestion of pain, and stay. Breathe and notice. You may feel that fade away. Rinse and repeat, stopping to rest, of course, as needed.
Often a repetition of just three times inside your pain free range of motion will allow you to go back to the once painful movement with no pain.
There are many reasons for this phenomenon…”
