Five minute yoga challenge: strap your thigh bones and explore a forward bend
In a forward bend with the legs parallel, the front thighs roll toward each other, the skin and muscles of the back thighs spread away from each other, and the sitting bones widen. But while all this widening occurs, the tops of the thighbones, deep in the hip sockets, pull toward each other. This should […]
Learn to do a full back bend, one step at a time
“The body is the bow, asana is the arrow, the soul is the target” – B.K.S. IyengarIn my first dance class, I clung to my mother’s knee, three years old and already deeply suspicious of group activities. Then Miss Goddard announced “London Bridges” – the full back bend that Iyengar yogis call “upward bow.” I […]
Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: hang your head to free your neck.
Almost every time Wende, my first teacher, looked at my downward dog, she would say: “Eve, let go of your head.” Time after time, it came as a surprise. I was so used to gripping my neck that I no longer knew I was doing it. Head-forward posture, the kind we adopt when we stare […]
90 days of shoulder stand: a long and winding road
Back on September 6th, I committed to doing shoulder stand every day for 90 days. Yesterday was day 30. Here’s the report: I started with the assumption that the hard part would be showing up every day. In fact, it’s not so hard. Maybe it’s the power of commitment: I feel like a switch has […]
Can you do flow yoga while sitting still?
On the face of it, this is a dumb question. Flow yoga, as generally defined, covers a wide range of forms all of which link poses in close to continuous movement. Some, like Ashtanga, follow a set sequence of poses, with a sun salutation between each pose. Others have no set sequence, and may or […]
Are you ready to commit to a daily practice?
I once heard a story about a senior Iyengar teacher whose non-negotiable daily commitment to her practice was to do her headstand and shoulder stand at 5 p.m. local time. I no longer remember who it was – if you can fill me in, please do. But since she was an international teacher, who travelled […]