I shared this to my newsletter subscribers recently, and didn't want you to miss it! Take an elastic band or a yoga strap and bring it around the back of your ribs, and follow along with me to bring focus and breath movement into new parts of your torso. If you've been taught belly breathing is where it's at, you may be missing essential real estate in your lungs, diaphragm and breathing capacity. After you practice with me, make this part of your daily routine. You can even place your hands on your side or back ribs for feedback if you don't have a strap or band. I prefer the band because it's a variable resistance tool - it moves with me as I breathe - versus a yoga strap which feels more static, but can get the job done. Enjoy, and tell me what you think or how your breathing … [Read more...]
3 Qualities of a Stellar Teacher
With so many 200 hour registered yoga teachers (RYT) in the US (and dare I say, globally) it may seem like everyone and their sister, brother, mother, cousin and neighbor is also a qualified 'teacher'. But what makes a teacher 'good'? What makes a stellar teacher? To me, an excellent teacher completes plenty of training as well as demonstrating evidence of personal experience - meaning, they have a well established personal practice, and they've been around the block in regard to hands on, contact hours of true teaching experience. Yet training and personal practice can, at times, be rote memorization and become mechanical or uninspired - or even dangerously unchecked when driven by one's ego or insta-famous ambitions, or lacking depth of understanding and context gained from time … [Read more...]
The Freedom Mantra
Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu Written above, you see a Sanskrit mantra which means: “May all beings everywhere be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words, and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and to that freedom for all.” So, I call this one the Freedom Mantra. Happy Independence Day! And as I reflect on the role of relationships, and how they give us such opportunity and clear confirmation of our own state, our own growth, (or our own momentary, ahem, regressions and transgressions) I would like us to consider Independence Day as Interdependence Day. I won't get too political here, but let's face it. We are on this planet together, and the more we can support each other's freedoms the more we, too, can feel freedom, embodied. Feel … [Read more...]
Love: Sleeping better than she has in 20 years!
Life flows in seasons and I'm honored to have supported so many of YOU through your journey this past year in learning embodied practices and truly, embodied living. To me, yoga, fitness, meditation etc are all pointing us back to our relationship to ourselves and require us to be present, show up, grow and thrive in new ways. My current season as we enter spring is actually feeling like a fall season of shedding, saying no, setting down projects, letting go and even death...moving into a winter season of being inward, nourishing myself and preparing to enter into this next phase of life as a woman, wife and new mother. As I'm preparing to birth this child (come out and play, please!) I'm enjoying completing tasks that got set aside while teaching full time and yes - enjoying … [Read more...]
Restorative Yoga: The Head Wonton
Today I'm giving you one of my favorite restorative yoga propping techniques. I originally learned this from my mentor, Donna Farhi, and have enjoyed seeing students settle in with a sigh of relief when tucked in properly. If you experience neck and shoulder tension, or feel overstimulated by the outside world, this can bring a soothing, cradling quality to a standard savasana. To the left, one of my dear students agreed to model for this blog - really, she was so comfortable that she didn't mind the extra time to soak in this pose! We took her wonton corners and tucked in her shoulders with a fairly large amount of the blanket, leaving the center of the blanket roll's height right at the base of her skull. She had another blanket underneath her torso for softness and support, … [Read more...]
Vagal Tone
"It’s very clear that the human is one entity: mind and body are one. It sounds logical but it’s not how we looked at it before. We didn’t have the science to agree with what may seem intuitive. Now we have new data and new insights." How can we use this information? Meditation, vigorous exercise, and emotional resilience all relate to vagal tone, heart rate variability and deep internal health. Vagal tone might be a hot ticket item right now for teachers and neuro-geeks, but it doesn't help our students if we don't know how it applies to how we practice and live life, right? Basically, we can't do what we've always done the way we've always done it and expect to be healthy, people. Change it up. Take a risk. Get outside more. And move your body, mind, and life in NEW … [Read more...]
Insights for Teachers: Cues To Reconsider
Although at face value the article (that inspired me to write this post) is easy to read and the tips are concise, I actually disagree with the author on several points. Please let me clarify that I'm not merely going to share my opinion, but instead use biomechanics to back this up. Anatomy requires our attention, and if we are teaching yoga, we're teaching movement. Which means a shift from the right-wrong duality of how to cue and thinking into deeper discernment. Many teacher training programs teach you how to teach what and how to do it - I like to educate my students to understand why they're paying attention in a certain way, how their body moves and functions, and help them experience their power to influence outcomes. For example, you might ask yourself, "How, as a … [Read more...]
My Approach to Teaching Yoga
I had a conversation recently with a colleague. They asked me what I thought about 'stretching' and hatha yoga...and they wanted to know how my approach might be different. Here's an attempt to put a sensory, visceral, lived experience into words: "When I teach Yoga it's about movement, and my students end up moving through multiple repetitions of gradually fuller-range movements, with encouragement to keep it active, dynamic, supported - it's more about moving through space than 'seeking stretch sensation' or 'going as deep as possible'. I'm interested in integrity. Sustainability. And if we're using movement as a tool to train the mind and embodiment, let's see how subtle and supple we can get. They {my students} end up possibly doing a whole lot more transferring of weight, … [Read more...]