Last week we worked on spreading awareness to all the parts of our bodies. This week we will focus on generating the sensitivity to guide your awareness to where you need it most. There are many poses in which almost everyone benefits from the same alignment instructions (i.e., energize and lift the back thigh in high lunge). However, all our bodies are [...]
Yoga and meditation teachers often use the words 'attention' and 'awareness' interchangeably. To me they are fundamentally different, as they create two fundamentally different experiences of reality. Attention means being focused on one thing. Awareness means taking in multiple things at once. Focusing on one thing gives us a distorted view of reality, especially when we (as we often do) [...]
As your awareness of your body grows more subtle, you may notice that your head is not really where you thought it was, namely balancing on top of your spine. This postural misalignment is called hyperkyphosis/head forward position. To address this problem, you need to focus on opening the front of the chest and strengthening the upper back. Equally [...]
Keeping your shoulders safe can be more challenging than protecting your hips. The shoulder joint does for the arm what the hip joint does for the leg. It connects the limb to the trunk. Both are ball and socket joints, which allow for the greatest range of motion of any joints. However, there are two key differences that explain [...]
Getting your upper back involved in backbends (last week's theme) is a challenging adjustment for many. However, like any directional adjustment, it IS possible to take even this important adjustment too far. When we do that, we collapse the back ribs and reduce spaciousness in the back body even as we create more space in the front. This week we [...]
One major problem with backbends that most of us have experienced at some point is a sore lower back. Backbend-induced lumbar pain is the result of following the path of least resistance. Concentrating your backbends in the lumbar spine is simply the easiest thing to do. However, it's neither the healthiest, nor the most effective path. If you want [...]
When you look at photos of people in super-deep backbends, it often looks like they have a sharp 90 degree kink in their lower back. It looks that way because they do. They have a hyper-mobile lower back. That certainly seems advantageous for deep backbends, but it is not something you want to emulate if your back doesn't do that [...]
In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few. —Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Do you ever feel like your practice has become routine? Are you convinced you have figured out exactly how you like to practice (fast/slow, alignment instructions/no instructions, music/no music)? Are you now taking poses for granted that you couldn't do a [...]
Increasing core strength can transform your yoga practice, improving your balance and agility and bringing more ease to difficult poses. However, tuning up your core means more than just building strength. A well-tuned core also involves increasing core flexibility and improving the brain's ability to direct the core with ease. A radiant core can improve posture, reduce back pain, [...]
Inner and Outer Spirals are a pair of alignment principles usually applied to the hip girdle. They are specifically designed to take us towards a place of balance, as they are based on the realization that wellbeing is a state of balance, not an extreme. This perspective runs counter to the widespread belief that more is always better. It also [...]
