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….
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….
Can you grow a relationship with yoga? Many people don’t think of yoga as something you can actually learn. That is probably because a lot of what we see in advertising makes us think that yoga is an exercise for people who are already flexible and some how intuitively already know what they are doing….
In the yoga sutras of Patanjali, yoga is defined as the cessation of the movements in the consciousness. There are five classifications of the movements in the consciousness, they are: correct knowledge, delusion, illusion, sleep and memory. At any time your consciousness can be fluctuating in one of these classes. We hope though to get…
1.13 tatra sthitau yatnah abhyasah Practice is the steadfast effort to still these fluctuations. In this yoga sutra “these fluctuations” are the movements of consciousness. We experience the movements in our consciousness when our thoughts are bouncing around. We have a thought which sparks another thought which turns into another thought, and so on and…
Lots and lots of brand new students have told me on the first day “now, I have never done yoga before, is that okay?” I respond by saying “of course, this is the class for beginners, you don’t have to know how to do anything before coming class.” There seems to be some kind of…
In the winter I started Iyengar Yoga with Aaron Fleming at College Hill Yoga. Much to my surprise months later I am still attending 2x a week. The group classes are easy, informative and encouraging. Class participants cross all ages and have been great to meet. I have been given a lot of information, direction…
My teacher is Laurie Blakeney. This week I announced that I am going to borrow her idea to introduce a weekly topic for discussion. The discussions will be brief, just a few minutes, but hopefully informative. At the end of the week I plan to post a summary of the discussion here on the blog….
One of the many reasons I love teaching is because the students challenge me to clarify my thoughts. Sometimes the answers to their questions come easily – like “should the legs be straight in Trikonasana”? The answer is yes. Didn’t take much brain power to come up with that answer. But every once in awhile…
This is guest blogger, Suzanne, here to tell you about my journey with handstand. I have been practicing Iyengar yoga for two years. When I first began, I knew that this philosophy of yoga appealed to me. The frequent instructions while getting into a pose and while in the pose were soothing. I found that…
