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It was good, but as you say, too short--normally, the sessions are 75 minutes.
I think Rebecca was talking about extending it to 90 minutes in the new year. Personally, I would prefer two hours. That gives you a real chance to get stuck in to stuff. And a proper set of aches the next morning after the first few sessions :).The attendance was within expected limits. Lunchtime on a Sunday in December isn't necessarily the best time to draw people out of their houses.
Yeah, I think it was just because we were in a much bigger room that it felt a lot more spacious and quiet. -
I think Rebecca was talking about extending it to 90 minutes in the new year. Personally, I would prefer two hours.
gulps
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Has anyone elses feet grown due to yoga practice.
I used to notice that all my istructors toes were separated in a dactyl fashion. After 5 years of regular practice my toes have done likewise and many of my shoes are now very tight around the toes.
Possibly the most costly side effect of yoga!
i can't say i've noticed this, but i did go down a shoe size when i started climbing, so i think any widening effect of yoga will probably remain suppressed by the regular wearing of climbing shoes....haha.
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Greetings all!
First off, having not been on this thread for a while, I was thoroughly entertained by all entries and glad to see it has been kept alive and kicking - I miss y'all and it! Thank you for keeping all manner of yoga experience vividly discussed!
Secondly, i shall continue with my usual absence apologies! Knowing that I wanted to be back home for Xmas and that home is Brasil I have spent the past two months working 7 days a week - invigorating stuff - cycling across London most days a week in cold weather and keeping practice as strengthening and as hot as possible, but as ever, it meant that sitting in front of a laptop was last priority.
However, I am now in Sao Paulo which is surprisingly wet but warm (hurrah!) and won't be teaching 'til Jan now, so hopefully I can greet y'all from a distance with a little more regularity (well, 'til I go to the beach that is - hehe! sorry...)! Though things are changing - there are now cycle lanes and cyclists where once upon a time there wasn't, it is still arguably a suicidal mission commuting in this city. So I suspect I won't be getting much two-wheeled action, but getting some extended yoga and meditation (especially on the beach in the sun, oops sorry... done it again!) will be featuring for sure.
More soon...
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Blimey, so where to begin - feet I suppose - do they or do they not grow? Well, if you've spent most of your life gripping your toes and wearing tight shoes (which most of us have) or indeed if aspects of your life require you to do just that (miss sox and Hendrik in mind here), then they may well feel like they're lengthening and/ or expanding (although probably not for miss sox or Hendrik!) when you are encouraged to spread your toes apart and become aware of weight distribution through different parts of the feet.
I have gone up a shoe size at two points in my adult life - when I stopped pointe work (that really does keep your feet minute!) and discovered contemporary dance which is all about the glorious barefoot. And then again when I started yoga. Although some do find them understandably alarming, I have become quite fond of my pizza wedge feet. My toes just feel more like fingers which when mostly ignored on pedals, is I believe no bad thing for anyone, especially the cyclist.
Bringing awareness to the parts of our body that we don't pay an awful lot of attention to is good methinks. Toe flexibility is one of the first to go as you age and can end up being one of the most unpleasantly painful, so well worth keeping them wigglin'! One of many things I have learnt from my teachers who are in their 60's...
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Then there's the event at bodywise. Thank you sooooooooo much to those who came along (and to those who couldn't great seeing you last Thursday and Oliver, thanks for getting us out to the pub, great to have a chat to you all in the lovely Palm Tree and meet the charismatic Jim!).
Anyhoo, there were 9 or 10 of us on Sunday, more than in any other class provided that day, so the warren and its bowels are deeply, deeply grateful to y'all and of course it was just another opportunity to see yer faces again! And yes, Reiki was good...
One hour is indeed too short. I did mention this to the event organiser, but there was just too much to squeeze in and adding any more time on would've meant shifting all etc.
Regarding class times - we will be starting at 8pm in January and in theory should be finishing at 9.15pm. I am happy to go on 'til 9.30pm if the majority are happy with this as I think 75 mins isn't quite long enough either. Am happy to keep class price the same. Also, course length will be going back to 7 weeks - having piloted 5 weeks, I just felt it was too short.
Somebody asked about whether there would be more events. Probably not for a while, but what there will be are yfc workshops which will be taking place, at least every two months (and eventually every month hopefully) on Saturday afternoons between 2.30 - 5.30. I tried one of these last Winter and enjoyed it immensely. With a three hour session, we will be able to work with very specific requests/ themes, go into alot more detail etc. The first one will be on the 22nd Jan. Will send out a reminder closer to the time...
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prancer, like the idea of yer nifty fifty sun salutes in the park. Most definitely up for that.
As part of the bodywise fundraiser, Angelika - great teacher - led a 108 sun salute session. I spoke to her about it and felt very inspired (as did she!). It took two hours to complete and no-one dropped out, so let's see how we feel when we start to thaw out and perhaps go for the full monty!
*m.f - that must be the best turkey dodging xmas greeting I've seen this year! And as ever with you, in what looks like a glorious spot! I'm behind Hendrick on the headstand on the saddle challenge, I certainly don't put it past you! ;-)
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think Ill leave the headstand riding to the artistic cycling crew....
Good to hear your news, take it easy there in Brazil, bet youre devastated to miss the English snow...
I didnt do the yoga pres in the end, maybe at end of next term
however Keith did an amazing piece with a much smaller female partner,
they started in childs pose and slowly moved into diving, flying crashing aikido inspired yoga dance piece, it was made more intense by silence,
the tension of two people comin together, then propelling each other.
Ive certainly not seen anything like it before.well, guess you better get out for morning salutations on beach, must be time,
peace out.
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while I think of it,
can you post some partner poses,???
like the childs pose where you lie on the others spine,
down dog where you place the feet in front of hips and lift the others arms off floor?
need some more of these contact ones,
theres lots of mirroring but I like the contact. -
A point on the poses which we find easy and those that we find agonising...
Needless to say, the best thing about all of this is you gradually get to know how your own body functions. From what you were born with to what has evolved over a lifetime of all your various activities and tendencies. Once you have identified those, then you can understand why some are agonising and others aren't. Obviously, the agonising ones are usually addressing parts of our body that are stiff and/ or weak and then there are those that we just find plain scary.
The coolest bit of all is how all this info gradually gets processed gradually over time by body and mind and the poses that we love to hate gradually become the poses we love to love.
One of my teachers was excruciatingly good at spotting what we found difficult within seconds of entering a pose. Mostly due to lots of fidgeting, sighing, muttering, over-preparing etc. Anyhoo, she never let us get away with it, occasionally reducing people to tears. As you have probably gathered by now, my teaching stylee isn't quite as old school, but a good reminder I guess that as with most things in life, it's the poses that you find difficult that you will probably get the most from, so take note of what they are...
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*m.f, ta for info on world yoga day - great idea - I probably won't be able to participate as I'll be running parkroadpilot (www.parkroadpilot.org) a fundraising arts event/party that very weekend, but praps we can raise money for the same charities.
Also, thought I'd send this on. Sadly, I am sending it too late as it's happening today, but another great idea methinks - one that I would've liked to participate in had I been in the country! Keep an eye out on youtube...
On 7 December 2010 14:47, Ash Jenkins <ash@roundtablefilms.co.uk> wrote:I am from a company called Roundtable Films in London and we are arranging an Flash Mob event for Saturday
18th December to take place in London, LA and Kenya all on the same day. The Flash Mob is a launch to an
awareness campaign that supports Kenyan Yoga teachers at The Africa Yoga Project who are teaching yoga to
have an affect on Tribalism in Kenya. Many of the teachers were idle youths from the slum areas in Nairobi who
have recieved a personal transformation through learning yoga and they are taking this experience to thousands
of individuals across the county, in an attempt to heal tribal boundaries.
The Flash Mob style event in London will take place in Covent Garden at 1pm, the idea is that yogis guised as
shoppers at precisely 1PM roll out their yoga mats and drop to the floor to do the Sun Salutation Series for
5 - 10 minutes. Before end the Flash yoga session with the yoga "Om" and disperse. This event will be filmed
and the video will be edited together with the footage from LA and Kenya into a video for Youtube to promote
the AYP teachers and the documentary film that is being made about them.
Best,
Facebook link http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=173609632659191
Website http://www.yogaforunity.co.uk/ -
greetings all,
Watched the news last night, blimey I do feel for y'all, hope you're all keeping warm and snug and that any xmas travel plans won't be too disrupted...
Meanwhile here, after a week of tropical rainstorms every day, the sun and heat have finally made a daily appearance and meant that I've been able to do yoga outside. Been a while since I've done yoga in the heat - feeling quite otherworldly. Particularly as I tried your latest posted sequence *m.f! Quite challenging, will keep trying it 'til it feels fluid... nice and logical though!
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so, contact yoga! yes, this is lovely, fun and very effective stuff. One day I'd love to do a full course on this. I teach and practice contact improvisation so have certainly brought elements of this into yfc classes.
Blimey, there are so many and they are not so easy to articulate in written word. But here go a few suggestions.
For breath...
Person B holds sides of person A's ribcage - get them to expand ribcage laterally on inhale and close right back in on exhale. B must give them a bit of pressure so that they have something to push against on the inhale and to yield to on the exhale.
For beginners to get a sense of energy direction in Uddiyana (rather than lock), lovely having person A have their ribcage lifted by person B on inhale and feet pressed down into the floor by person C. Person C keeps feet pressed down on exhale whilst person B strokes shoulder blades down firmly.
To encourage serratus engagement of shoulder blade to ribcage rather than the all too common trapezius shoulder blade lift - Person B stands beind person A with arms outstretched pressed against deltoids. Person A lifts arms outstretched to sides whilst B places firm downward push...
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so many for D-Dog, but one of my faves is still have A in D-dog and B places feet next to their hands and lies on A's back with full body weight.
A person in Prasarita Padottanasana c - B person steps into the circle of their arms. Encourage A to allow their full weight to fall into B.
A person in **Virabhadrasana II **with back close to a wall, person B sitting in front of them leaning back on elbows, B places their feet on A's thighs near to knees, push gently - direction of the feet is back to the wall and rotating upwards to encourage correct knee alignment...
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A in **urdhva dhanurasana - **B places their feet next to A's feet, bends their knees, holds A around the back of their hips/ sacrum. A places their hands on C's hands, C embraces around the back A's shoulder blades. On the inhale B and C pull gently in opposing directions.
Inversions...
A goes into adho mukha vrksasana preparation against a wall. B sits facing A's back and places hands on shoulders - placing pressure towards the wall and up.
Falling out of sirsasana - A goes into sirsasana, bends knees and creates a back bend. B and C are kneeling either side. B places hand between shoulder blades, C places hand on sacrum as A brings feet down...
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thanks for these R.
I will learn from them when writing down,
we did a partner session today for lesson, so it was interesting to read the 3 person moves you posted.
Ours was based more on 2's, Keith has still got notes from training with David Swenson and we found that the adjustments were much more active and useful for both people than some of the mirror postures. There is something perhaps in the style of Yoga we do anyway that prompts that, but lots of the other partner stuff out there is primarily aesthetic, you know mirroring, both doing the same postures in different directions.
lots to write up thanks.
Glad you liked my sequence, Ive got another couple to post soon.
enjoy the Brazilian sun- as Ive dissolved the ego completely Im not jealous at all...... -
wanted to be back home for Xmas and that home is Brasil
That I would never have guessed! I'm not a great one for accents at the best of times but I hadn't noticed any Brazillian/Portuguese hints.However, I am now in Sao Paulo which is surprisingly wet but warm (hurrah!)
Hmm, that tropical rain is amazing stuff after coming from cold and soggy England. Take the heaviest rain storm you've ever seen, stretch it out from a brief shower to all day long continuous, make it a bit heavier still and raise the temperature lots. It can be like standing under a warm waterfall!Still, I'll bet you aren't happy sat on your hot sunny beach. Doing sun salutations as the sun rises up over the water. You must be so miserable thinking about how unfortunate you are not to have all this wonderful snow. Er. Or maybe not.
It does look gorgeous over hear at the moment though, especially out in the countryside. It's starting to melt again now, but there was much fun to be had at the weekend - building igloos, sliding mountain bikes around forest trails, scraping icicles from beards, ... :)
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Hendrik
Oliver Schick
mrs_socks-
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Yoga for cyclists
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Nice!
Are you starting a whole new yoga discipline? Yoga on a bike? I want to see you doing a head stand on the saddle...