Journey Into Yoga

Standing. Seems simple? Au contraire; there is so much more to standing than we think. Is the crown of my head extending in an upwards direction? Is my head shifting forward or back? Are my shoulders softening down my back body? What is happening with my tail bone? Are my shoulders stacked over my hips (what does that even mean)???!!! What about my feet and my legs....So...uhhhh...yes...there is much more to standing then we think...

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A twist in the yoga world, although comes in the form of a physical posture, actually works into our internal body as well. When we move into twists, our internal organs are given a refresh - think of the internal body as a sponge - when we twist, we wring out our sponges, thus allowing the sponge to be cleaned , rinsed and ultimately refreshed. In yoga classes, you will typically find at least one twist - that’s how important they are!

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Core strengtheners like boat pose are important poses in yoga, and the reason may surprise you. As we start to build a yoga practice, the building blocks start to come together. Poses not only exist on their own, but they also assist as stepping stones or gateways to other poses. Core strengthening poses like navasana is just one example of such a pose - a wonderful core pose on its own, but also helps to facilitate moving into other branches of yoga, including balance.

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In the yoga world, heart opening poses have the intention of alleviating depression. As we give the heart a boost and an open, the hope is to combat any feelings of sadness and gloom one may be feeling. Now file that information away - it will come up again, but know that our posture today will aim not only at helping combat the blues, but it will also hopefully bring some heat and energy into the body too!

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One of the areas in the body that many many people complain about is tension in the neck and shoulders; I hear this a lot! As we focus some awareness on these potential tension hotbeds, these parts of the body could easily be the subject matter of 50 or more podcasts! Why you ask? Well, the short answer is that stress tends to live here. Not only does the neck have the all important job of literally holding our heads up, if you look at the size differential between the head and neck it is quite apparent that the neck is much much smaller than the head - it is overworked! In additional everything we carry in our shoulders can also find its way up to the neck, contributing even more tension here.

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Have you ever noticed how limber and flexible children are? Think of a young child sitting on the floor with crossed legs - they do this with extreme ease barely thinking about it. It happens all the time in the world of children: assemblies, music class, and in school. Now, change your thinking gears for a moment and consider an adult body sitting cross legged on the floor; as a yoga teacher I see this all the time and I can testify that its not quite the same - in fact its not even close to how children sit this very same way. Why is this? Well, the short answer is that our muscles and joints become less limber as we age, and this is largely due to our lifestyles.

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Come with me for a moment on a different kinds of journey - a journey back in time to when we were in gym class - ah the dreaded gym class. whether your memories are fond or not-so-fond of “gym period” I am pretty sure we can all have a mutual recollection of touching our toes - or what I will refer to as “uttanasana of times past” Now don't get me wrong uttanasana or a standing forward fold actually has NOTHING to do with touching our toes, but it does address the same area of the body - the hamstrings. 

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Downward dog is one of those yoga postures that most of us learn early on - it also typically appears in most yoga classes This is a posture that stretches and lengthens almost every part of your body! But wait…there’s more! Downward dog is an inversion - meaning that in the pose, your head is below your heart. When we move into inversions in yoga, we are changing the flow in our internal bodies. Oxygen as well as blood is given the ability to move in the opposite direction that it normally does allowing a rejuvenation of the body. Yogis also believe that not only is the physical body affected by inversion poses but also the emotional body as well - when we turn upside down we are giving ourselves the ability to have new and fresh perspective! 

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Our practice today is going to open and stretch out our spines! 

Undulate - the dictionary describes this word as meaning “move or go with a smooth up and down motion” It is also said to mean something moving in a wavy pattern. The first time I really grew accustomed to this word was when I started my own yoga journey. Finding myself in the hands and knees or “table top” pose, we were moving into doing some cat/cows, postures which would undulate the spine - I found this word intriguing - amusing - maybe even a bit sexy??

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As we move through life, we encounter many experiences, some are good and some are not so good. We often have emotional responses to these events, which we in turn have to “put” somewhere, or even absorb into our bodies in some way. In the yoga world, we often say that all of these experiential emotions get slotted into the hips; our own personal junk drawer - ergo, this is why the hips are so tight! Today we dive into a yoga pose that helps to create space into the hips and hopefully help release tension in the body! 

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