Muscular and Organic Energy are a pair of yoga alignment principles designed to work in tandem to bring us into balance. I find such paired alignment principles powerful teaching tools, because they inherently stress the importance of balancing opposites. By balancing opposites like Muscular and Organic Energies, we can increase not only our joy in our practice, but its [...]
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 [...]
Most of us have a tendency to work too hard in yoga at least some of the time. We typically do this in an effort to try to force improvement in our practice. However, over-efforting is counterproductive not only because it increases the likelihood of injury. It also distracts us from the enjoyment of the present moment and impedes our [...]
My approach to yoga places the balancing of opposites at the heart of the practice, because I believe that an emphasis on balance is key to increasing the benefits of yoga. This week I want to focus on balancing groundedness and lightness. Balancing groundedness and lightness allows each pose to reach its full expression How is this pair of opposites [...]
Forward bends can be quite problematic for the lower back. When we bend forward, we tend to do too much of the movement in the lower back. The lumbar spine is quite mobile in this direction, but excessive movement here is a frequent cause of back pain. Lower back pain in turn is the most common health complaint in the [...]
I lived in Thailand for many years, and always marveled how well the traffic flows there—and how rarely you hear honking—despite the huge number of vehicles on the road, combined with the frequently creative interpretation of traffic rules. My visiting dad stated with conviction that if there were that many vehicles on the road in Germany (where he lives), the [...]
Make your practice smarter than your habits. What is your prevailing tendency? And here is the real question: What happens when you let go of your prevailing tendency and work with the opposite one for a while?
I do believe in the value of alignment, and thus I have actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about this question. The answer I have settled on is that the question itself is taking you off the path, is derailing the deepening of your practice. It is simply not a particularly helpful question. To ask if there is [...]
There really isn’t much more to say than the title: Do less, feel more. It’s not about the difficulty or impressiveness of the poses you do. Nor is it about how long you can hold them without hating them or collapsing into a heap of muscle spasms. It’s about how deeply you can get your whole being involved in each [...]
“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; or you can live as if everything is a miracle.” –Albert Einstein Making this distinction may seem at first like a contrived intellectual exercise. However, living life from the perspective that everything is a miracle can profoundly change your attitude. It can change your attitude [...]
