Strengthen your abdominals in seated forward bends: Five-Minute Yoga Challenge
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say, “Wow, I’m really going to feel my abs tomorrow,” after taking a yoga class that concentrated on seated forward bends. And that’s a shame, because they can be great abdominal poses. When I first started to take classes, I loved seated forward bends and practiced them at […]
Lean Into a Brick in Baddha Konasana: Five-Minute Yoga Challenge
Lately I’ve come to have a whole new appreciation for my shoulder blades, and in particular, for the thick part at the very top rim. In the past, I always imagined my shoulder blades to be light and fragile, part of a gossamer shoulder girdle meant to float on top of my ribcage. Now I […]
Strengthen your abdominals: Five-Minute Yoga Challenge
For some time now I have suspected that there might in fact be two kinds of people in the world: those who have a natural connection to their core, and those like me, the tap-dancing star on the left, who don’t. I dug that picture out just to confirm that yes, even when I was […]
Five-minute yoga challenge: add a roll in Virasana to loosen your hamstrings and heal your feet
Thirty years ago, when I first started taking yoga classes, Virasana (hero pose) was a 50/50 proposition. Some days it was fine. Sitting up on three chip foam blocks, I could feel a pleasant stretch in the fronts of my feet. My knees didn’t bother me, my front thighs weren’t tight and life was good. […]
Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: Stretch Your Feet on a Wood Brick
This just in: sitting in chairs is lethal. Yogis already know that sitting leads to tight hips and shortened psoas muscles. Now, a comprehensive new study shows that prolonged sitting doubles your chances of diabetes, heart disease and death. To come up with this finding, Dr Emma Wilmot, a research fellow in the Diabetes Research […]
Break out of your computer body while there’s still time
Do you ever find yourself hunched over your keyboard, shoulders up around your ears and a dull ache taking hold in your upper back? Yeah, me too. That’s why this simple chest opening is one of my favorite five-minute yoga breaks, and also one of my favorite ways to ease into a practice. The older […]