“I have tight hamstrings” Recently a yoga teacher who attends my classes asked me how to respond to students who complain of tight hamstrings, who are seeking ways to open and lengthen them. It is no exaggeration to say that I have heard the statement, “I have tight hamstrings” uttered thousands of times by hundreds
The most effective yoga teachers wholeheartedly work toward basing all of their instructions on a clear understanding of the philosophy that underlies asana practice. In a nutshell, we use the body as a tool to concentrate the mind so we can see and identify with the stillness that underlies the chatter. According to Patanjali, this
I am reminded by the bells at the cathedral at the end of my street, and by the growing size of the crowds flowing in and out of it each Sunday, that Easter is coming in a few days. Although I left the Catholic Church that I was raised in many years ago, my experience
The great yoga teacher Vinnie Marino once said, while teaching an advanced yoga pose, “I know a lot of people who can do this pose and they’re not any happier than anybody else I know.” In other words, when you seek happiness in a pose you can’t do, or in any thing that you don’t
Excerpted from the Yoga Journal book, Yoga at Home: Inspiration for Creating Yoga Home Practice,. Authored by Linda Sparrowe, who has also written The Woman’s Book of Yoga and Health: A Lifelong Guide to Wellness and the Yoga Journal book: Yoga, it’s described as “The definitive guide to creating your own home yoga practice from the leading experts of
When I started doing yoga, I loved most of what happened in the classes. One thing I did not love, though, was the chanting of “om.” None of my early teachers could explain what it meant or why we were doing it. It felt cult-y and confusing. Eventually, that frustration led me to try a
Greatness in any skill comes after a lot of practice, and that practice has to start somewhere. A few weeks ago, I had a text exchange with a yoga teacher who was at that starting point. She was about to teach her first fully-booked class and, although she was a stellar student in her teacher
People practice yoga for many reasons. But, almost all who come to yoga have at least one thing in common: a desire to change something about their physical or mental experience. Tapas is a Sanskrit term that literally means, “to purify with heat.” It’s used in The Yoga Sutras to describe one of the requisite
In each teacher training that I lead, we start by discussing whether or not certain postures qualify to be called yoga asana, the Sanskrit word for pose. It’s a great place to start because it puts in place the cornerstone upon which all of the work that follows is based. That building block states that defining
