Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: roll your feet on a tennis ball to loosen tight hamstrings
Is there such a thing as yoga magic? If you struggle with tight hamstrings, this Five-Minute Yoga Challenge might lead you to say yes. The effects can be startling the first time you try it. Continue to roll your feet daily for a week and some of that “shock of the new” will drop away. […]
Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: reverse the curve
A normal curve and a hyper-kyphotic curve of the spineWe all have a kyphosis, or at least we ought to – it’s the natural outward curve of the upper back, which balances the inward curves of the neck and the low back. Hyper-kyphosis is different. The outward curve becomes exaggerated, and we lose our ability […]
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 […]
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 […]