Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: step forward from downward dog
In the world of yoga, I think of myself as a civilian. When I started taking classes, I was not a dancer, a gymnast, a figure skater, a personal trainer or an aerobics instructor. As a child I tried cartwheels, but I never stood on my hands. I had no speed and not much strength. […]
Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: twist in a chair to free your back
When something feels as good as a deep twist, how is it we forget to do it when we need it most? We sit at desks, shoulders tense and upper backs gripping, then get up and walk away, carrying our tension with us, when we could, with a few minutes of twisting, leave them behind […]
Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: half a headstand with 3 blocks and a wall
The Five-Minute Yoga Challenge started as a response to two of Gretchen Rubin’s Rules for Adulthood: “What you do EVERY DAY matters more than what you do ONCE IN A WHILE,” and “By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished.” That, in a nutshell, is the philosophy of My Five […]
Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: spend a week walking your dog
Place a penny between your index and middle finger moundsMy friend Terri told me recently that she’d had a pain in her foot that was given temporary relief whenever she did downward facing dog pose. So she found herself doing dog pose five or more times a day – whenever the pain-relieving effect wore off. […]
Five-minute yoga challenge: ease your shoulders in gomukhasana
When I’m not practicing or teaching, I’m often sitting at my laptop, writing, answering emails, doing everything that studio administration, blog posts and finishing the instruction manual for building a bear proof composter demands. So I’m well acquainted with the feeling of popping out of a period of concentration – really, that was an hour? […]
Take the five-minute Malasana challenge
I’m a big fan of Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project blog, and her book, The Happiness Project. She writes beautifully and does a lot of interesting research. (My latest find, thanks to Gretchen, was a link to Paul Bloom’s article First Person Plural in the November 2008 Atlantic Monthly, a fascinating look at our multiple selves.) […]