Trust

This week’s theme was Trust. It's a theme I love to teach a couple times a year.  Trust is a big concept. I suggested students might approach the word in a sweet and simple way, maybe just trusting in their practice and when they felt capable of challenging themselves and when they needed rest. If they wanted to approach the more profound aspects of trust, they could look at where they wanted to experience more trust in their lives. Maybe trusting someone else or having someone else trust them. Or applying it more broadly to trusting the process or trusting life.

My favorite part of being a yoga teacher, is teaching yoga :) My second favorite part is choreographing a sequence and theme and an apex pose, etc. When I teach this trust class, I do not plan a sequence. So an additional part of trust is for the students and me to trust that something good will come out of the class and we’ll get our needs met.  

Once we connected with our deep, silky smooth breath,  I let the students know that I would take requests. They could ask for a specific pose or a category of poses or an area of the body like hips or shoulders.  I asked them to notice if they wanted to feel more grounded, centered, open, free, clear? And to think about which pose might represent that feeling for them. In some classes I get almost more requests than I can fulfill, but it’s always playful and interactive.  

A highlight in one class was when we headed into some core with chair to boat. When we sunk to the floor from chair to boat, and then I told the group we were headed straight back UP to chair again, one students shouted out, “WHAT?” and everyone laughed! Some classes emphasized hips, other classes wanted more twists. Yogis also wanted triangle, lizard, ardha chandrasana, heart openers, low back, and pigeon.  Thanks everyone for trusting yourself and me and celebrating our community!  Namaste, Lynn

Ardha Bakasana

This week we did a twisting practice, lots of twisting shapes. We worked toward ardha bakasana, side crow. There were many options for students and lots of warm up twists before we attempted our apex pose … the challenging, twisting arm balance: side crow.

I suggested students think about what meaning twists might have for them in this practice. What do you want to twist into or turn toward? What do you want to twist out of or turn away from? When we make space, insights arise. I told students, “Whatever you want or need, something good will come out”. Have patience. Be present.

We started by dancing out the hips in down dog. Paying attention to pressing the knuckles of the hand and fingertips into the earth while also pressing the balls of the feet into the earth. That rootedness starts distributing space throughout the whole body. In cat/cow, we hovered our knees to add a burst of strength. Core moves were sprinkled throughout. We opened the outer hips in a variation of down down into plank with one leg off to the side. We played in crow, balanced in eagle and dancer, greeted a friend in partner squat, and after deeply breathing through pigeon pose, we dove deep into side crow. Laughter ensued. We let ourselves be buoyed up by the desire to learn, be curious, have fun and challenge ourselves. Perfectionism was left behind. We slowed it down with a nice, strong bridge pose then students let themselves feel all of their body supported in a restful savasana. Om, shanti, shanti, shanti, Lynn

Stand.

Baby mandrill, SF Zoo (born May 7, 2018)

The theme this week was: Stand. Keep the ground. Stay grounded as you move through transitions. Oprah said, “Once you’ve done everything you can, STAND”. Krishna says to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, “Stand in Your Yoga”.

Stand in that place of change. Be patient. Stand in the gap, the transition. Change brings space. If we don’t resist change, we may find it has something to offer us. When we turn toward that space and stand in it and wait patiently, something might open up for us.

Change and transitions are upon us. The fall season brings a change in weather and light. The new school year might bring a new grade, new school, new position, new routine. You may be experiencing changes in your job or living situation. Even if big changes aren’t happening in your life, each of us has to negotiate transitions in our day as we move from home to yoga to school to work, etc.

An example from my own life. Space really changed for me last year. My twin girls went away for college. I lost the anchor of my Mom. There were a lot of ups and downs. It was hard to adjust to the change with my girls as they kept coming home then going back to college. This fall, my one daughter is far away again in San Diego. However, she has given me permission to turn part of her bedroom into my office :) It’s been so fun to get a new office chair and pick out a cute lamp and sign up for an online writing class. It took some time, but space opened up and presented me with this space of my own and a chance to write.

When change comes, we don’t have to act or decide what to do right away. Just try to resist collapsing and giving up, or the other end of the spectrum … busying every minute of your schedule. We applied this concept to our yoga practice by paying attention as we moved in and out of each pose, feeling our footing, our long spine, our strong legs and excavating what we could learn or notice or feel in those transitions to help us more fully experience the pose. Those skills can help us off the mat, too. Thank you Kiran for the beautiful scarf and your kind words to our community. Namaste, Lynn

Adventure

The theme this week was adventure.  My wise friend, Allegra, said to me, "it's really the spirit of adventure that you bring to anything you do that is the real adventure".  That helped me feel adventure in smaller, day to day things.   

You don't have to climb a mountaintop or fly across the world to have an adventure.  Those are fun things to do, but the real adventure is the intention and effort and heart you put into it whatever you're doing, whether climbing a mountain or taking a yoga class.  Like with the hiking example, reaching the peak is exciting, but the adventure was every step to get there and all the vistas along the way.  As with your yoga practice, attaining new poses feels great, but the adventure was being curious and showing up and experimenting and being mindful as you took deep breath after deep breath.  

The real adventure is the connection to the present moment, to the strength available to you, to enjoying moving your body and the ease & freedom that come with it.   

My invitation was to let your commitment to the adventure/to the process inspire you, not the result.  Remembering that the truth of who you are does not depend on executing a flawless yoga pose.

So we had some fun as we explored hamstrings today ... an adventure in and of itself :)  Thanks for coming out.  Our sequence included lunges, surya namaskar, warrior poses, parsvottanasana, tree, a partner squat, handstand, variations of side plank and hanumanasana.  We ended with the hamstring strengthener, bridge, to compliment all the hamstring stretching today.  Namaste, Lynn

Humanity Flow

This week's theme was humanity flow.  Yoga is more than alignment and the outer shape of the pose.  The yoga is how we feel once we're in the pose.  Through yoga we connect with our humanity and then we can share our humanity with those around us.  Our hearts connect.  I think that's a big part of the healing and joy of the practice, and what makes it so powerful, intimate and connecting.  You get to come back to your heart again and again.  

So, we focused on heart opening poses this week:  backbends.  But not a practice of building toward a few bigger backbends at the end of practice.  We focused throughout on cobra, locust, sphinx and eventually supta virasana with yogis exploring a closing backbend of their choice.  

Aligned shoulders are a big part of feeling good in backbends.  Shoulders can be tricky & vulnerable.  In a vinyasa flow class, students commonly strengthen the pushing muscles on the front of the shoulders more through poses like plank, chataranga, and up dog.  Often what is needed is to strengthen the complementary pulling muscles inside the scapula (shoulder/wing bones on your back).  When we get injured, often a common component of an injury is doing too much of one thing and not enough of another.  

I had students focus on strengthening the pulling muscles on their upper back; the muscles between the scapula & the spine.  In our flows, we warmed up with locust, sphinx and variations of cobra instead of up dog.   While there is nothing wrong with up dog, for this practice I wanted to offer students tools to warm up and strengthen their pulling muscles.  When students learn better technique there is less risk and they get stronger faster.  

Another pose that helped deepen this learning was warrior 2.  We did warrior 2 with are arms overhead and light fists with our hands.  Then I asked students to feel like they were doing a pull-up, and very slowly pull their elbows down and out until they reached shoulder height.  I encouraged students to try and keep the activation of their inner shoulder muscles as they straightened their arms parallel to the floor.  To round out our practice, we had fun with some core work, balancing and twisting and going upside down in handstand.  Namaste, Lynn