What’s locked in your ribcage?
On the day my yoga life officially began, sometime in June, 1987, I took a private class from Wende Davis. She taught me spinal stretch, with my hands resting on her upright piano. Then she tapped her fingers along my spine and asked me to notice the different qualities of the flesh. My lumbar spine […]
Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: stretch your arms in a doorway
The most yogic use for a doorway, real or metaphorical, would surely be to come and go mindfully, knowing when you’re on one side, when you’re in the middle, and when you’ve passed through. But doorways also have yogic uses that are far more physical. You can, for instance, use a doorway to get a […]
Rest your cow to ease tight hips: five-minute yoga challenge
Wouldn’t it be great if all of life’s problems could be solved by lying down and taking it easy? The good news is that some of them can. Take tight outer hips, for example. This might be one of your problems if you cycle, run, do weight training, spend a lot of time sitting, or […]
Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: stretch your shoulders with an imaginary sticky mat
One of the conundrums we face as beginning yoga students is that we can’t know what the pose is supposed to feel like until we’re doing it. But if you start with the standard issue collapsed chest and tight shoulders of a 21st century desk worker, how can you even begin to know how large […]
Five minute yoga challenge: strap your thigh bones and explore a forward bend
In a forward bend with the legs parallel, the front thighs roll toward each other, the skin and muscles of the back thighs spread away from each other, and the sitting bones widen. But while all this widening occurs, the tops of the thighbones, deep in the hip sockets, pull toward each other. This should […]
Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: hang your head to free your neck.
Almost every time Wende, my first teacher, looked at my downward dog, she would say: “Eve, let go of your head.” Time after time, it came as a surprise. I was so used to gripping my neck that I no longer knew I was doing it. Head-forward posture, the kind we adopt when we stare […]