Category: Yoga Asana
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Is Headstand Risky for You?
One of my students, Julie, recently decided to avoid headstand. She’d just read William Broad’s book The Science of Yoga, which investigates yoga’s purported benefits. Hmm, I read that book when it was published in 2012—and I recall its numerous accounts of serious injuries. The case studies typically involved extreme…
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Yoga Books: A Confession about What I Read (and Don’t Read)
“Could you recommend a yoga book?” a new student, Margot, recently asked. She wanted a basic book to refresh her memory on poses and their names. I immediately recommended my very first yoga book, Yoga: The Iyengar Way, by Silva, Mira, and Shyam Mehta. As a beginner, I liked the…
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Improve Your Posture: The Wall Stand
Last November, I visited my parents in Hilo, my hometown. One day, I got my mom and dad to try a one-minute “wall stand.” I’d given my dad a mini yoga sequence years ago—to help his golf game, I said. But I wanted to add something new and efficient, the…
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Constant Vigilance
For six years now, I’ve gone on daily walks with Stella, a Giant Schnauzer / Labrador Retriever. We’re out for an hour or two and it never fails: At some point, a phrase from Harry Potter springs to mind: Constant vigilance. CONSTANT VIGILANCE! I’m always glancing around, scanning our surroundings…
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Why Learn Yoga Pose Names?
“The Sanskrit words all sound alike,” I once heard a yoga student say. “I’m just not motivated to learn pose names.” She was otherwise a keen student. Although she took up yoga later in life, she’d done other types of movement work and had strong body awareness and self discipline.…
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Trouble Getting Started? Make It Doable
In May, walking past a Little Free Library in Kitsilano, a book title caught my eye: 3 Minutes to a Pain-Free Life. That very day, I was finalizing a blog post on chronic pain. What a coincidence. The book was “like new” and I couldn’t resist taking it. Written by…
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10-Minute Tree Pose: Adventures in Long Holds
The first one-legged balance pose that I learned was Vrksasana (Tree pose). It was doable, although somewhat unpredictable and nerve-wracking. There’s no mistaking if you’re standing—or not. Over the years, I made friends with Tree pose, so aptly named. I now practice and teach it regularly. During the pandemic, Vrksasana…
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Why Are You Doing What You Do?
For several years, “Sam” regularly attended my yoga classes with his wife. One day, she arrived alone and said, somewhat apologetically, “He needs it, for sure, but he just didn’t see enough change.” Sam was lean and fit at middle age. He enjoyed running and had tight hamstrings, a troublesome…
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Lifetime Investment: Yoga Props
Two decades ago, I was a new yoga student. My first yoga prop was, no surprise, a mat. Turquoise blue, it was one of those pebbly textured mats, made in Germany, favored by Iyengar yoga practitioners. Guess what, I still have it. It’s one of my second-string mats, and it’s…
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Being adaptable
When I first met her, my yoga student “Dana” was into endurance sports. Each summer she’d take a break from yoga to train for a triathlon. She loved the outdoors and spent her weekends in Vancouver’s surrounding mountains, hiking, kayaking, snowboarding, whatever the season dictated. A couple of years ago,…
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Fear of falling
In Berkeley in the late 1990s, I learned to balance in Salamba Sirsasana (Supported Headstand) step by step. At first I didn’t even try to balance, but just kicked up to a wall, one leg at a time. Once up, I’d try moving my feet away from the wall. Wobbly…
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Are you in touch with your breath?
In January I somehow pulled a muscle in my back while teaching. Exactly when and how I did it, I don’t know. Perhaps I twisted too deeply demonstrating Parivrtta Parsvakonasana (Revolved Side Angle Pose). I was teaching “cold,” from not warming up beforehand and from the freezing winter temperature outside.…
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My winter of Supta Virasana
This winter I’m teaching Supta Virasana (Reclined Hero Pose) every week in my two-hour classes. Every week. Will simple repetition boost progress in this surprisingly demanding restorative pose? If taught only occasionally, students never familiarize themselves with it. Most require elaborate prop set-ups to accommodate tight quadriceps and iliopsoas, knee and ankle issues, and so forth. If unfamiliar with…
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Should you go upside-down if you have glaucoma?
Inverted poses are important in Iyengar yoga. Senior practitioners often cite an inversion as their most essential pose. (Sarvangasana (shoulderstand) seems to be a favorite.) Can anyone do inversions? General contraindications include spinal disorders, hypertension, and glaucoma. Recently, however, I’ve met yoga students with glaucoma who do brief inversions with the approval of their ophthalmologists. Hmm……
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Yoga and mirrors: do they mix?
At my sister’s home in Santa Cruz, I do a brief yoga practice before breakfast with my niece. In my bedroom, there are large mirrored closet doors. I typically face away from the mirrors. During my last trip, however, I ended up doing Sirsasana (headstand) facing the mirror. A sofa blocked my line…
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Case study: hamstring strain (or something)
In early 2014, I strained a left hamstring muscle near the origin. Or an external rotator in the left hip. Or something. It snuck up on me. There was no acute injury. I simply noticed less range of motion (ROM) in straight-legged, forward-bending poses, marked by a pulling sensation on the lateral side of the sitting bone.…
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The yoga block
For my first six months of yoga classes, I used no props–at least what I now know as props. At the Berkeley RSF in the late 1990s, all we had were towels and padded gym mats (which did come in handy for kneeling). Eventually we got mats. But I didn’t try a block until…
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Learning on your own
I bumped into an old friend during my holiday trip to California. “Dylan” has always been an athlete, so I wasn’t surprised that he’s still avidly into hockey, skiing, and other sports. But I didn’t expect him to say, “And here’s one for you. I’m learning to play bluegrass banjo.” What? Is Dylan even musical? Anyway,…
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Pelvic tilt: how much is too much?
A few months ago, one of my original yoga teachers, Donald Moyer, observed my Tadasana. Under his scrutiny, I tried extra hard to perfect my pose. To my surprise, he said, “You’re tucking your pelvis.” What? If left to its own devices, my body is overly mobile in the lumbar spine.…
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Tadasana feet: what is parallel?
Recently a physiotherapist asked me to stand, feet apart, facing a mirror. When I did, she said, “Your feet are slightly turned inward.” In the mirror I saw my feet aligned in Tadasana. I then repositioned them to show my natural alignment, a bit more outwardly turned (yet still more or less parallel). That made me reconsider my Tadasana…
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Home practice in my hometown
Flying into Hilo, my hometown, two weeks ago, I gazed out the airplane window. An endless, supersaturated palette of green, along the Hamakua Coast. While much of the world, including California (my subsequent stomping ground) is suffering from drought, Hilo has had over 12 inches of rain in the month of April alone. The aerial view was striking.…
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Yoga injuries: who’s at fault?
Ever been injured in a yoga class? Chances are, we’ve all felt a twinge in one class or another. So, who’s at fault? The teacher? The student? Or are occasional tweaks simply part of being active and exploring our limits? Since William Broad began writing about yoga injuries in the New York Times and on…
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Take it to the next level
Last summer, I resumed freestyle lap swimming after a hiatus. I’m purely a rec swimmer and will never be super fast, but I still want to cut my 1000-meter time, 25 minutes. “What’s a ‘decent’ 1000-meter swim time?” I asked my yoga student who does triathlons. Here’s her paraphrased answer:…
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Yoga… and the rest of your life
A few years ago, I was walking along the seawall at Kitsilano Beach. There’s a segment where the seawall separates the path from a drop (Six feet? Eight feet?) to the beach below. A friend I’ll call MJ dared me to walk atop the seawall. It’s encouragingly over a foot wide. But…
Yoga Spy 