During the holidays, it’s more important than ever to have some quiet time. With all of the distractions – parties, relatives, drama, presents, planning, joy, baggage – it’s easy to get swept away on a holiday rollercoaster!
This week’s pose is halasana (plow). By turning ourselves upside down and folding over, we are literally looking into ourselves. The pose helps us to pull our energy in and become more contained and centered. As in inversion, halasana encourages us to challenge our point of view and get out of sticky patterns. Its (literally!) navel-gazing properties can help [read more...]
Many yoga students are quite surprised to learn that joints can become too flexible. But in many joints, ligaments and tendons play a major role in preventing excessive motion; if those tissues become too loose, the joint can move in ways that cause damage or set the stage for injury. A joint with such laxity is said to be hypermobile, and the knee is particularly vulnerable to this problem. In fact, this joint is more or less just one long bone (the femur, or thighbone) stacked on top of another long bone (the tibia, or shinbone). Ligaments and tendons are all [read more...]
Although you don’t need to formally meditate in order to practice hatha yoga—nor is the practice of hatha yoga mandatory in order to meditate—the two practices support each another. Through your practice of yoga, you’ve enhanced both your abilities to concentrate and to relax—the two most important requirements for a meditation practice. Now you can deepen your understanding of what meditation is and begin a practice of your own.
What Is Meditation?
An exquisite methodology exists within the yoga tradition that is designed to reveal the interconnectedness of every living thing. This fundamental unity is referred to as advaita. Meditation is the actual [read more...]
Introduction
There are staggeringly vast numbers of people in this country suffering from breathing related disorders; particularly when factoring in related maladies such as hypertension, back pain and depression. Not surprisingly, similarly large numbers of people are seeking out alternative approaches to healing. A 2002 CDC study1 on Complementary and Alternative therapies found that the most popular method of natural healing (other than prayer and nutritional supplements) is deep breathing exercises, with 12 percent of the population practicing. Another 8 percent of Americans say they practice meditation and 5 percent practice yoga for natural healing. We can only expect that these numbers [read more...]
The chakras can seem a little…well, out there. Whirling wheels of energy? Rainbow light? Huh?
But if we think about the body and its functions, the chakras do seem to match up pretty well to how we work.
The root chakra – muladhara – is at our pelvic floor and deals with earth, downward energy, and groundedness. If we think of our hips and legs as what connects us to the earth and literally roots us, well, it makes sense. If people are “ungrounded,” they tend to be light, frenetic, “in their heads,” and not connected to their lower body.
The second chakra below [read more...]
Bakasana is one of those asani that looks impossible until you actually do it.
“You want me to put my knees where and balance on my what?” we think with dismay.
But with just a few steps, you two can begin to find the effortless flight that characterizes this arm balance. And the key lies in finding your core. The gateway to the core? Your inner thighs. Very simply, by using your adductors (the muscles that allow you to squeeze your legs together), you begin to activate your core – namely your transverse abdominis. Once this engagement starts, [read more...]
