I miss seeing the students walking through the door to College Hill Yoga. Like many other yoga teachers I am conducting classes online for now, until it’s safe to meet in-person again. The coronavirus pandemic has changed life for everyone. Most of the changes are completely unwanted, and we should work hard to undo them….
Why do we want to build stamina in our poses? The poses are the playground for exploring how the body, mind and breath relationship. We first learn simple actions within simple poses. (such as the triangle pose, seen here above). Actions such as how to lift the knee caps or how to straighten the arms….
Even if you have never done yoga it is likely you have heard the jingle “Body Mind Breath” before. And it’s also probably likely that you think that improving your Body-Mind-Breath relationship is important. But how do we do that? Start with the Body In Iyengar Yoga we start with the body. Compared to the…
Is the purpose of yoga to help improve your health? Yes it is. WAIT! I mean… no it’s not. Well, it kind of does. Let’s sort this out: “Classical yoga” (which is yoga as outlined in ancient philosophical texts) is defined as the “cessation of the movements in the consciousness.” This means that yoga is…
At the intensive in India, this past December, Prashant Iyengar many times said that he wants us to become our own teacher. That we need to stop relying so heavily on our teachers to tell us what to do in our practice. Which doesn’t mean we don’t need a teacher. You need a teacher so…
Last December I traveled to India to attend classes at the Iyengar Yoga institute in Pune. The yoga institute started by B.K.S. Iyengar and now run by his son and granddaughter. It’s been less than a month since returning from India. The experience is still very fresh in my mind. When I go to my…
At the beginning of class I occasionally engage the students in a short yoga philosophy discussion. The discussions are usually inspired by my on-going reading and contemplation of yogic texts, such as the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. (A sutra is a short phrase. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali is a book of phrases, which are…
In such-n-such pose, “is my knee supposed to be straight, like this?”, said every new student. Students always have lots of questions about the logistics of poses. Class is a great venue for answering your questions. The Iyengar Yoga method is known for a few things, one is the instructions we give students on how…
A friend of mine years ago used to always say “if it’s urgent, it’s not spiritual.” She meant that if you are pressuring yourself to make a decision too soon you might not make the right decision. Some decisions do require urgency: Should I call the police or my spouse after a fender-bender? Don’t delay…
Do you think it’s important to have a yoga teacher? I do. This past weekend I traveled up to the Ann Arbor School of Yoga to attend the weekend intensive with my teacher, Laurie Blakeney. (In the photo below, that’s me standing on Laurie’s shoulders!) I have been attending these weekend intensives regularly for years….
