Supta Virasana: sometimes even super heroes need to lie down
A yoga practice is a friend for life, and like any lifelong friend, it’s bound to change. In some ways, that can look like doing less. I’d like to argue that there are powerful poses, reclining hero for one, that can deepen as we age. Perhaps, in your 90s, or possibly your 60s, you will […]
Let two chairs be your umbrella on a rainy, rainy day
When you come back up, even a dark, gray day looks brighter.Here on the wet West Coast, where winter closes in with endless clouds, rain, and steadily diminishing daylight, we take seasonal depression seriously. I have a “happy light” glowing on my desk as I write this. So there’s nothing I’d like to recommend more […]
September excitement? In spades, but I have it under control
Ah yes, September. Season of self-improvement. Inevitably, my inner child, deeply imprinted with the yearly drama of going back to school, goes ballistic with excitement. It’s a new beginning! Another chance to finally get it right! In bygone days, I wrote detailed September plans, complete with daily and weekly schedules that generally involved getting up […]
Savasana: a new use for an eye bag
(Need more sleeping cat pictures?) Relaxation pose is the name we give Savasana (shah-VAH-sah-nah) in English. In Sanskrit, it means corpse – a pose that mimics death. But if you have a rounded upper back you can easily become one of the undead: not quite able to settle without something to prop up your head. […]
Sweet Sorrow? A yoga fix for Christmas baking back pain
Cute mice, and very Christmasy, but making them can be a pain in the back. I love to make Christmas cookies, the more intricate the better. This means long periods of standing on a tile floor, leaning forward to perform the delicate, focused work of creating mushrooms out of meringue, painting chocolate eyes on sugar-cookie […]
Cool it: rest your head on a chair, then put your feet up
A few weeks ago I promised to fill in the blanks of the cooling yoga sequence I’d suggested – the poses that hadn’t already made it onto this blog in the form of a Five-Minute Yoga Challenge. I meant to do it, really I did. Then we lost our summer, temporarily. At about the same […]