Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: move your spine in two directions at once
It’s March. In Vancouver, we expect cherry blossoms, rain and spring winds. For Iyengar students, that includes the friendly blast of fresh air called Gabriella Giubilaro. Gabriella is a senior Iyengar teacher based in Florence. Last weekend she taught her annual Vancouver workshop, ending with a four-hour teacher training on Monday. There were themes, of […]
Five Minute Yoga Challenge: press your outer arches down to lift your inner ankles
Words are important, and what we say when we teach matters. So kudos to yoga teacher and blogger Michelle Myhre, who wrote a thoughtful essay this week in Elephant Journal on cleaning up the language of yoga teaching by getting rid of verbal filler. I’m so much in agreement that I’m considering putting an elastic […]
Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: build your inner strength in half arm balance
Photographer Alan Turkis calls this “Joy in the Cascades” Full arm balance holds a special place in the great yogic enterprise of becoming and remaining conscious in our bodies. In part, that’s because standing on your hands opens your armpits like almost nothing else, and as B.K.S. Iyengar has famously said: “If you keep your […]
Five-minute yoga challenge: extend, don’t grip in headstand
“You are old, Father William,” the young man said, “And your hair has become very white; “And yet you incessantly stand on your head – “Do you think, at your age, it is right?” Who can blame the inquisitive young man for asking? Anywhere outside yoga culture, headstand is an odd thing to do. Certainly […]
Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: roll on the floor to free your hips
In this week’s Tuesday 7:30 class, Jean told me that she’s making progress on her tight hips. “This week I actually thought about doing some hip openers,” she said. “Before, I wasn’t even thinking about it.” Ah, tight hips. If you have them, then every hip opening pose, no matter how moderate, hurts from the […]
Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: Make Right Angles to Strengthen Your Shoulders
Is there magic in right angles? Pythagoras isn’t the only one who thought so. When you bring your arms into right angle position and draw your elbows back, you wake up serratus anterior, a muscle that connects your shoulder blades into your ribcage. Once your serratus anterior is strong and intelligent, you’ll be able to […]