It's a great idea to find time for your own yoga practice in between the classes you take.
It's an even better idea when your yoga classes aren't taught for awhile.
I'm on vacation this week, and I know many of you miss your yoga classes. I'm glad you do! But do consider practicing on your own this week, even if you don't normally do so.
Most of you who've taken classes with me for awhile have seen these practice sequence sheets that you can print out, but here's the link again:
Yoga Sequences for Practicing.
Have a good week, have a good practice (practice more than once!), and I look forward to seeing you all next week.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Standing Pose Class
As a way to bring a few more people into my Wednesday evening yoga classes this summer (since it had been woefully small most of this past spring), I'm trying something new and offering it as a Focus on Standing Poses class.
The response so far has been very good! A few people are strongly urging that I continue this class in the fall.
The minimum suggested requirement for this class is at least a full session (7 - 8 weeks) of a Level 1 Iyengar Yoga class so the basics of these poses are already familiar. There's a little less talk and demonstrating on my part (there is still some though!), and more doing. For each 1-1/2 hour class there's 50 - 60 minutes of standing poses with a few other poses to round out the sequence, including inversions (headstand, shoulderstand) according to one's own capabilities.
We start to learn standing poses as beginning yoga students, and we continue to come back to them, refining them and adding a few more difficult ones as we become more experienced.
When we're new to yoga, learning and practicing the standing poses helps us to learn how our arms and legs work to bring the body into the general shapes of different positions. As we become more accustomed to these shapes, we can fine-tune, or go deeper, into these poses, both physically and mentally.
Practicing the standing poses gives us a good foundation for practicing other categories of yoga poses. They include all spinal movements - forward and backward, sideways, and twisting. The standing poses also make us more active. As Geeta Iyengar says in Basic Guidelines for Teachers of Yoga:
The response so far has been very good! A few people are strongly urging that I continue this class in the fall.
The minimum suggested requirement for this class is at least a full session (7 - 8 weeks) of a Level 1 Iyengar Yoga class so the basics of these poses are already familiar. There's a little less talk and demonstrating on my part (there is still some though!), and more doing. For each 1-1/2 hour class there's 50 - 60 minutes of standing poses with a few other poses to round out the sequence, including inversions (headstand, shoulderstand) according to one's own capabilities.
We start to learn standing poses as beginning yoga students, and we continue to come back to them, refining them and adding a few more difficult ones as we become more experienced.
When we're new to yoga, learning and practicing the standing poses helps us to learn how our arms and legs work to bring the body into the general shapes of different positions. As we become more accustomed to these shapes, we can fine-tune, or go deeper, into these poses, both physically and mentally.
Practicing the standing poses gives us a good foundation for practicing other categories of yoga poses. They include all spinal movements - forward and backward, sideways, and twisting. The standing poses also make us more active. As Geeta Iyengar says in Basic Guidelines for Teachers of Yoga:
"The standing asanas break the tamasic, inert, lazy nature of the body and bring activeness in the practitioner. The practitioner becomes accustomed to various movements otherwise unknown to him/her. The standing asanas correct the structure and the posture of the person and develop the sense of balance and proper weight distribution."Our standing pose class continues to meet on these Wednesdays - July 30, Aug. 1, and Aug. 8 (2012), 6:00 -- 7:30pm. If you enjoy standing poses, come join us then!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
