Use a long strap to put your shoulders in their place
Typing, driving, cooking, gardening: almost everything we do encourages us to slide our shoulder blades up our backs and roll them forward. Over time, that can lead to stiff shoulders, sore upper backs and neck pain. You can reverse this action, and move your shoulders back and down, with the help of one eight-foot yoga […]
Mula bandha on ice: what skating taught me about yoga and vice versa
Eight weeks ago, I laced up my skates for the first time in almost 40 years. (No, not the same skates. They lay in the front hall cupboard until the inner lining turned to dust and were finally sent off to the Salvation Army.) On my first few shaky turns around the rink, my front […]
It’s not all bliss: how to work with poses you don’t like, part two
So you’ve already looked around, noticed that other people enjoy poses you hate, and accepted the possibility that you might come to like those poses too. You’ve gazed deep into the eyes of your least favorite poses, and recognized them as your own tailored assignments from life, superbly structured to teach you whatever it is […]
Taking Rotated Triangle to the Wall
Feeling twisted out of shape isn’t fun, nor is it pleasant to find yourself all tied up in knots. But here’s a yoga paradox: the more strongly we twist, the more we unwind. Rotated triangle pose is an intense twist, but at the beginning less of our attention goes to twisting than to maintaining balance. […]
Why Hitting the Wall is a Good Idea
Among beginning yoga students, one of the most difficult props to acquire is a yoga wall, wide enough to spread your arms out wide without hitting anything, and blank. Most walls are already in use. Couches rest against them, pictures hang from them. And if your living space is small, the need to sit down […]
Drop a Block To Tune Your Triangle Pose
It’s a happy coincidence that just as the triangle is the first figure of plane geometry, Utthita Trikonasana (extended triangle pose) is often the first place where many of us feel the inner geometry of yoga – the understanding that as we align ourselves physically, we also somehow bring our minds and emotions into alignment […]