I'm very excited about a crop of new yoga videos now live on About.com. Each of these short videos features demonstration and instruction by Joelle Hann, a wonderful New York-based yoga teacher and writer. You can check out her work on her blog, Yoga Nation, and enjoy her great alignment and clear explanations in this video on anjaneyasana (cresecent lunge).
Bird of paradise is one of those poses that seems completely improbable until the day comes, quite unexpectedly, when you find yourself standing there on one leg, all bound and balancing. What I like about this pose is that it can easily be broken down into stages, beginning with bound side angle. As you become comfortable with each step along the way, you are working your way up to the full pose.
A reader wrote me this week complaining about the high cost of yoga classes. Believe me, if this yoga guide gig came with super powers, I'd wave my hand and make all classes affordable, studios profitable, and hamstrings flexible. Unfortunately, it's beyond my control, but I can offer you some ideas on how to do yoga on a budget. Donation-based studios are the big news lately, as more teachers become committed to keeping the cost of yoga reasonable.
As yoga's popularity grows, more and more avenues of this ancient practice are being explored. Yoga for kids, quite a modern concept, grew out of parents thinking their children could enjoy some of the same benefits of yoga that adult do, such as improved body awareness, coordination, and stress relief. Traditional yoga practice is definitely a grown-up activity, but yoga is flexible enough to accommodate young students as well when the teaching is approached in the right way.
If you're pretty comfortable doing headstand in the middle of the room, you can try these crunches, which figure in the Ashtanga Primary Series. Once you are up in headstand, slowly lower your legs to a 90 degree position. Then slowly bring them back up to straight, moving both legs together the whole time. Do this three times. These crunches will really strengthen your abs, preparing you to lift both your legs from the floor at the same time when first coming into headstand (as well as do anything else you need killer abs for!).
Watch Me Do Yoga is an engaging new children's book by Iyengar yoga teacher and illustrator Bobby Clennell. I submitted the book to a rigorous critique from an actual child. To see what my household's resident five-year-old thought, read my Watch Me Do Yoga review.
Last night, I went to check out the new movie Eat Pray Love starring Julia Roberts. Eat Pray Love is the adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir of the same title. I read the book a few years ago and enjoyed Gilbert's funny, self-deprecating writing style as she describes her breakdown, brought on by her realization that she does not want the conventional life-path she has started down, and subsequent recovery, brought on by a year of travel to Italy (where she eats. A lot.), India (where she prays, in the form of a meditation retreat) and Bali, Indonesia (where she learns to love again). To see how the movie stacks up, read my Eat Pray Love review.
One of the things I love about half lord of the fishes pose (also known as seated spinal twist) is how adaptable the pose is. You can keep your bottom leg extended if you knee bothers you or you can take the bind if you are able to. When it comes to the bind, make sure that you don't throw off the whole pose by leaning too far forward just to get the bind. It's more important to keep a nice, upright spine.
Every August, my family vacations in the same sleepy, slightly run-down, east-coast beach town. I always think someone should start up a yoga studio there, but no one has. Until now! Imagine my delight when I saw the yoga studio just off the main street! Imagine my disappointment when I discovered the teacher was out of town herself and the studio closed down for the week! If you are planning an end of summer trip, make sure to read up on how to take yoga on vacation, either by finding local yoga studios or packing what you need to practice on your own.
Or should it be your period on yoga? Either way, there are a number of opinions on how women should modify their yoga practices during menstruation, ranging from no changes at all to no yoga at all. As with most things, a flexible, middle ground approach makes the most sense to modern women. Weigh in with your take: how do you modify your practice during menstruation?