Yoga is like the proverbial onion: it is simple on the outside, but within the many translucent layers lies a deep elusive core. For your yogic pleasure, here are 5 micro-layers for you to explore and peel away in your asana practice. You can apply these 5 interconnected skins to any and every yoga pose you practice.
Author Archives: Mara
Be a Creative Yoga Teacher
As a yoga teacher, there are only so many times that you can either guide your students, or yourself, into pigeon pose before you become totally bored. Now is the time to get creative and exercise your imagination — for your own benefit and, most importantly, for the benefit of your students.
Yoga and the Mind: Exploring the 5 Hindrances
Yoga classifies 5 of the foggiest, thickest clouds, as hindrances of the mind because they cloud and obscure clear thought and feeling. The 5 hindrances of the mind are desire, aversion, sloth, restlessness and doubt.
Explore the Three Stages of a Yoga Pose
Yoga poses have three distinct stages, just as every story has a beginning, middle and end, and every day has a morning, afternoon and night. The three stages of a yoga pose are: moving into, sustaining and releasing.
Find Determination and Courage in Warrior 2
Much like a warrior, Virabhadrasana 2 (Warrior 2) invites you to feel strength and stability as you ground down through your thighs all the way down to the wide stance of your feet. In this yoga pose, you should feel balanced, rooted and unshakable: indeed, fearless!
How to Use a Yoga Block
Here’s how to use your yoga block to “unblock” your body. A yoga block is fantastic as a balancing aid when you need the floor to come closer to you. It’s also a useful support when resting deeply, as the forgiving edges and corners of a cork or foam block can be used as acupressure and massage tools.
Be a Balanced Yogi, Inside and Out
Balancing in yoga poses always brings up anger and frustration. It’s natural to want to perfect something while avoiding the feeling of failure when you fall out of a pose. But, remember, if you are not falling (on or off your yoga mat), you are not trying.
Know Your Yoga: Hatha, Karma, Bhakti and Jnana
There seems to be a little confusion in the yoga world between ‘types’ of yoga and ‘brands’ of yoga. Here is a guide to help you sort out the differences. This will provide you with a basic understanding of the 4 different types of yoga (Hatha, Karma, Bhakti, Jnana) and how you can practice them.
The Hardest Yoga Pose (You Already Practice!)
You may not know it, but you may have already practiced the hardest yoga pose there is: Shavasana, or corpse pose. This is the final pose of any yoga practice, also called relaxation pose. It is called the hardest yoga pose, because in Shavasana you are meant to completely surrender all physical and mental effort. That’s hard to do.
Yoga at Your Desk
Practicing yoga at your desk may sound far-fetched. But think about it: How many hours a day do you spend sitting down? Between commuting time on the bus or in a car, at your home or office desk, and on your couch, the number of hours spent sitting might surprise you.