Inversion Lover!

February:

The month of celebrating love is the time to celebrate our love for inversions. There is nothing greater than the bliss of inversions. The challenge: arm strength so for the week of February 13th focus on building our arm strength with a lot of downdog-high plank-chaturanga-high plank-downdog. These not only strengthen the arms but the core and back as well and stretch our legs. Perfect way to build strength and flexibility.



No matter how strong our arms are, if our legs arent flexible we will have a hard time getting our hips over our shoulders in inversions, and this protects our neck and back. The week of Feb 20th is dedicated to Cyclist Stretching: Thighs!

We played with lunges, twisting lunges and finished class with a sumptuous King Pigeon.



Feb 28th was dedicated to the splits. To get beautiful stretch throughout the legs and open our hips we worked on everything to open our biggest joint and muscles in the body. We found patience and connection to our breath in a long yin-style frog, arm strength and leg stretching in wall splits, and ab strength in toe lock side plank - full splits.

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Heart-Opening

 

 



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Posture of the Month!

Each month we will focus on certain postures or areas of the body to deepen our practice and build strength and integrity in all poses.

APRIL: FOUNDATIONS OF YOGA!​

New and Experienced yogi's alike always tend to want more, deeper and more challenging postures. But to really know yourself, our practice and to gage where you're at - its always great to spend time with the foundations of yoga.

Planting our feet firmly on the ground, engaging all the muscles in the legs both inner and outer, tilting the tail bone to support the lower back and engage the core, truly expanding our chests and reaching the heart towards the sky to safely back bend. These simple and complex minor adjustments have compound benefits over the years. The repetition in yoga REQUIRES awareness of the most minor movements to protect out lower back, knees, hips and shoulders.

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By rushing and seeking perfect in the mirror without actually developing an inner awareness for muscle engagement and correct alignment we injure ourselves each day without even noticing it, and instead of achieving holistic health we are achieving immediate gratification with long-term side effects.

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Take the time to always set up the pose, be aware of your foundation, the muscles which are supporting you, and expand from your extremities ensuring every single muscle is engaged from the finger tips through the core to the bottom of the feet - and then breath expansive breaths and soften the tension. Don't mistake tension for muscle engagement or stiffness for strength. Strength is the ability to be engaged, soft and calm in all poses.

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The integrity of your practice and every pose which makes your practice is not defined by how long your hold your pose, or how deep you go in each pose or the level of difficulty….No, the integrity of your practice is how you move in and out of each pose, and how you come to a place where you are challenged yet calm, and can breath and expand your boundaries without losing your integrity and falling out.

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Try to set the intention before class to hold the integrity of the entire class by respecting your boundaries and ensuring smooth transitions in and out of postures and holding postures with awareness and a beautiful flow. You'll find your practice will probably not be as deep, but it will be more intense than ever before with an awareness to intricate movements you were not aware you were capable of doing.

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Heres to really planting your feet on the ground.

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Namaste.