Those who come to class will know where I put the breath retentions and bandhas. If you are not in Altea, and can’t come to class, just follow the sequence as it is presented.
A simple Viniyoga practice to do at home
Fascia and slow yoga
On the Alteayoga facebook page, I re-posted a piece from Dr. Mercola’s web site in which fascia is thoughtfully discussed. I suggest that you pop over and read it, then come back here.
Summing up:
Fascia makes up about 20% of body weight and is like a battery pack for muscles. It also transports water in the body. It seems to be tightly related to pain, especially chronic pain. Movement is the best method for relieving fascial pain.
I teach hatha yoga in a very specific way. Firstly, following the Viniyoga method, there is almost always a dynamic and a static phase for each posture. This means that you get both the flow of vinyasa-style yoga and the holds of classical yoga.
You can see that the whole posterior muscle chain is activated in this sequence. There is a clear indication of breathing. Also, there is abdominal compression. All this contributes to making this very simple sequence highly effective in moving muscles and, ergo, fascia.
I design my classes with anatomy in mind. There are four kinds of yoga: Bhakti (devotion), Raja (intellect), Karma (selfless service) and Hatha (movement). I am very clearly a hatha yoga teacher, and use my deep understanding of kinesiology to design sequences within sequences all with a clear objective in mind. Loosening up the deepest layers, the bits that no one can get to, the parts that hurt but you can’t put your finger on. Yoga, specifically Viniyoga well-taught, gets to these parts.
Practise, all is coming. The Guru is within.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
In the natural health world, we eschew medication as much as we can for many reasons. In fact, here are many people who take upwards of five pharmaceuticals per day.
Between 1988 and 2010 the median number of prescription medications used among adults aged 65 and older doubled from 2 to 4, and the proportion taking ≥5 medications tripled from 12.8% (95% confidence interval: 11.1, 14.8) to 39.0% (35.8, 42.3).
Here is yet another reason why this can only end in tears:
Diet, rest, gentle exercise, loving kinships, contact with nature and creative realisation go a long way to palliating the worst ravages of simply being human and existing in this crazy world. I don’t advocate for a complete avoidance of pharmaceuticals – I am a huge fan of good medical science. What I do advocate for, however, is a reduction in our dependence on such things. This will only come about when each individual adult realises that they hold the keys to their own health and must practice preventative medicine.
Some years ago, I made an independent study of the typical age of onset of various chronic diseases (atherosclerosis, Type-II diabetes, high blood pressure etc). It is much earlier than you think…you’re probably thinking 55? 60? Think again. In men, about 38-45 and in women about 45-55.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Yoga is a complete system that offers advice on diet, exercise, rest, healthy human relationship, our place in the big scheme of things – the natural world – and how to realise your inner visions (creativity). I can teach you some or most of that, depending on how long you stick with me, how often you turn up to class and whether you decide to have private as well as group classes.
It is a long journey, and I am not an easy yoga teacher. I will needle you, I will make you think. But, I will teach you all that I know, and I never stop learning myself, so my teaching will always evolve. Of that, you can be certain. But, without makng any claim such as yoga can prevent cancer – because one cannot make such claims, ok? – I can guarantee that if you do get diagnosed with cancer, having a steady and established yoga practice will help you through it. And this, a mean yoga teacher is nicer than a mean course of chemotherapy! And one more thing, yoga has been proven to help prevent both cardiovascular disease and diabetes. So there.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Over and out, dear souls. Today is a bright and lovely day. You’re alive. Be joyful, be joy.
AUM.
Yoga practice – "Towards Inversion"
I am feeling generous tonight, and shall give away a lovely yoga practice that I designed last year and have taught a number of times to my dear students.
Notice that “B” or “R” means breath or respiración.
When it says “6x”, it means do the vinyasa six times.
When it says “6B”, it means hold the pose for six breaths.
Respect any contraindications and check with your primary care provider should you have any doubts about the suitably of this practice for you, at this given time.
Yoga makes me feel…old. What's up with that?
The lady who asked the question I blogged about last week, “Yoga is meant to calm me, so why do I feel so nervous?” asked another great question yesterday. Gosh, I love students who give honest reflections and ask questions! Thanks, honey bunch.
After class I noticed that her face wasn’t 100% bliss. Quite the opposite. So, unlike a YouTube video would, I sat next to her and asked her what’s up. She said:
“I couldn’t do some of the simplest poses. It made me feel old.”
Ouch. And yes, yoga does that. You see, if you give someone a workout routine like Crossfit or marathon training, it is very normal that they will find, at first, themselves not able to do it. But because it is hard, challenging, perhaps unattainable, they are quite happy to just thrust away at it for a long time until they reach the goal. To not do something hard on the first go is quite normal and acceptable for the ego.
But when we are asked to do something simple like lie on our backs and stretch one side of the body and breathe deeply, and find that there is pain, discomfort, we say “hold on a second…what is happening here?”
What is happening here is that our bodies have aged, have adopted fixed patterns, have held onto thoughts and emotions and stored them in our abdominal muscles, our hips, our necks, and we have become unable to make those muscles do our bidding. We try to move the ribs with the breath, and we can’t. Upon finding that we can’t do something so seemingly simple, we reflect on how, once upon a time, we could. As children, we were all free and loose and easy. But time, and life, and blows, and ailments, and all that, steals our childhood from us and we become adults, then middle-aged and then, if we are lucky, old. The body ages but so does the mind. We swap physical agility for mental wisdom. Or that is the idea, anyway. There is concept that I love in yoga that goes like this:
Why do we do âsana? We do âsana to keep the body strong and supple and youthful so that we can live a long time. And why do we want to live a long time? So that we can gain wisdom.
Doing yoga is like holding a mirror up to our true selves and being forced to look. Mostly, we won’t like all that we see. The mirror as a symbol is powerful and appears all over in the popular culture. In Jean Cocteau’s 1950 Movie Orphée, the mirror is the portal between two worlds, the living and the dead. And in fact, a very eerie reflection uttered is :
“Les miroirs sont les portes par lesquelles la Mort va et vient. Du reste, regardez-vous toute votre vie dans une glace et vous verrez la Mort travailler commes les abeilles dans une ruche de verre.” (Mirrors are the doors by which Death comes and goes. You have only to look at yourself in the mirror every day and you will see Death at work there, like bees in a glass hive.)
Yes indeed. When we look at the mirror every day, we look at the face of Death. Our own death. This is getting heavy, but the Yoga Sutras are very clear about all this, in the first 5-10 aphorisms of the very first Yoga Sutras book, Patanjali identifies the Kleshas, the mental patterns that cause the vrittis, the mental fluctuations that assail us all. And right up there in spot number five is fear, abhinidvesa. Principle fear? Death.
We are all aware of our mortality but none of us wants to admit it, to face it. When we do, we cringe and shudder. This is normal. I love to ruminate on the human being’s awareness of the passage of time. We are, I believe, the only animal that marks time with such precision. We are time-obsessed species. Why? Because we are all unconsciously counting down the seconds of our lives. And this is wildly uncomfortable. Because what this forces us to do is to admit that our time is limited, that we must live fully in the present and create from our meagre and humble little lives the best and brightest creation that we can. And any abstention from this duty, whether through fear, intransigence, obstinance or fakery, is a negation of our duty to grow and gain wisdom and be the best person we can be.
Uff. All that at 8 in the morning. I think a lot. That is why I do yoga. So, I will leave you with a Joy Division song with footage from Orphée. Enjoy it, and live this day fully. And get on your mats, and breathe deeply and feel the love. It is there, all the time, and there is enough for everyone.