Namaste, y’all!
There is a lot of yoga stuff going on in the ATL over the next couple of weeks.
I’m subbing Easy Yoga at ELY, Wed., 2/11 from 5:30 – 6:30
This Saturday (Valentine’s Day – Awww), from 3-5 p.m. – there is a Partner’s Yoga class at Jai Shanti Yoga. It looks like fun and David and I are gonna be there. You can go alone or bring a partner. Here’s the link for more info, and a time-lapse video of what you can expect the class to be like:
http://www.jaishantiyoga.com/partneryoga
Next Tuesday night, Feb 17, Angie S. will be subbing for the Flow Yoga class at ELY while David and I go to see Krishna Das at the Variety Playhouse. This event is sponsored by Jai Shanti Yoga, and starts at 8 p.m. Let me know if you’d like to meet up before the show so we can sit and chant together!
I went to see Krishna Das last year during his first visit to Atlanta and it was a great show. He performs some songs, but most of the evening is a chant-along in the kirtan, call-and-response style. No experience necessary. He’s also a funny story teller.
On Wednesday, Feb 18, 6 p.m. Krishna Das will be holding a kirtan workshop for a smaller group at the First Existentialist Church. To learn more about either the kirtan or the workshop, check out the Jai Shanti webpage at:
http://www.jaishantiyoga.com/krishnadas
New Teacher at ELY!
Angie S. has been teaching at the Decatur-Dekalb Y (DDY) for awhile now, and she’s recently joined our teaching staff at ELY. She is teaching the Monday night Power Yoga class. Check it out –
Monday Night Power Yoga, 7-8 p.m, Meeting Room #3 (Community Room)
She will also be sharing the Friday night Relaxation Yoga class with me starting Feb 27.
My February Schedule at East Lake YMCA
Monday Morning Flow Yoga, 9:15 – 10:30 a.m., Heritage Room
Tuesday Night Flow Yoga, 6:30 – 8 p.m., Meeting Room #3 (Community Room)
Friday Night Relaxation Yoga, 7 – 8:25 p.m., Meeting Room #3 (Community Room) – I’ll be working on making this class more restorative and contemplative. Check it out! Jean will sub Feb 20, and Angie will teach Feb 27. We will alternate Fridays after that.
New Year, New Yogis – Time to Be Reminded of our Yoga Basics
Here are a few basics about yoga. These are things I might say at the beginning of class, but some of you are often late (not to worry – I understand scheduling issues), or you might leave early (ditto), so…here is a brief list of things to keep in mind to make your practice the best it can be.
These first two items are the most important – the others are given in no particular order.
1. Keep in mind the essence of yoga: letting go of expectations, letting go of judgments, letting go of competition (even competition with yourself). Also, staying grounded and present in the moment by focusing on the breath. If the breath becomes ragged or uneven, it’s a sign that you’re working too hard and need to back off from the posture.
2. Everything we do in class should feel good. You should feel better after class than you did before class. If this is not the case, please remember to pay attention to what YOUR BODY is telling you. We’re never forcing anything or straining. I am a guide who is here to help you practice safely, but I can’t feel what your knee or hip or back or neck is telling you, so please modify poses to make them work for you. You never need to ask permission to rest. If you want to come to class and spend the entire time in child’s pose because that’s what your body needs that day, that is yoga.
3. Practice on a(n almost) empty stomach. It’s good to wait at least 2 hours after a full meal (3-4 hours might be better), and at least 1 hour after a light snack before practicing. If you leave work and come straight to class and simply must eat something to avoid the low blood sugar shakes, try a small piece of fruit or a small energy bar — something light and easy to digest.
4. Drink water — plenty of water. Expert opinions vary on just how much that should be. One simple rule of thumb is that you should take your weight, divide that in half, and drink that number of OUNCES of liquid per day. So, for example, if you weight 150 lbs, that would be 75 ounces, or between 9 and 10 (8 oz) cups of liquid per day. New research shows that caffeinated drinks aren’t nearly as diuretic as previously thought, so unless you’re drinking more than four cups of coffee or 8 cups of tea per day, it counts toward your fluid intake. Fruit and vegetable juices do, too, but keep in mind that fruit juices are full of sugar and lack the fiber and many of the phytonutrients that make fruit such a great snack.
5. Don’t try to drink all of your water just before class. I think the reason for this is self-explanatory. All that fluid sloshing around and wending its way south can make for a very uncomfortable practice.
6. Do, however, bring a water bottle with you to yoga, especially for flow/vinyasa classes. We get sweaty and need to replace those fluids (or at least wash the salt off our lips!).
5. If you arrive late to class: Please enter quietly. If we are still in the warm-up portion of class, join in right where we are. If we’ve moved on past sun salutations, you will want to do some warm-ups to get your muscles ready to stretch. Moonflowers, sunflowers, chair flow – any of those will warm the body quickly as long as you’re matching breath with movement.
6. We breathe in and out through the nose in yoga to build and maintain heat in the body. If you need to feel how much heat you lose by breathing out of your mouth, place your hand in front of your mouth and breathe out, as if fogging a window. Feel all that heat and moisture? Much better to keep that inside, warming you and building prana, or energy.
7. If your nose is chronically stuffy, you might want to try a neti pot to wash the dust and pollen out once or twice a day. It’s an old yogic method of body purification that has many modern proponents. Many people I know find this to be a life-changing habit. Neti pots can be purchased at most natural foods stores and online.
8. If you need to leave a yoga class early, keep that in mind. About ten minutes before you need to leave, stop and put yourself into corpse pose (savansana, pronounced “shah vaah sah nah”). This is the most important pose we do in class. This resting period allows the body to take the prana, or energy, that we’ve built up in class and use it to repair tissues in the body, as well as to calm the mind.
9. A special note to the Type A student (you know who you are!): If you are leaving class before the relaxation period so you can get 10 extra minutes on the treadmill or exercise bike, you are missing one of the biggest benefits (and pretty much the whole point) of yoga. The 2nd Yoga Sutra says “Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.” The hatha (or physical) practice is designed to still the mind so it can work more efficiently and comfortably. That’s the REAL yoga, which happens off the mat.
When I open my eyes and look at the wide world, I become great; when I close my eyes and look within, I become greater still.
— Hazrat Inayat Khan
Besides, if you leave my class early, you miss out on the end of class goodies – the lavender temple massages and chimes and chanting.
10. If I correct your posture, or suggest a modification, it is not because I am the Yoga Police or that you are doing the posture “wrong”. It is not because it should look “prettier”.
It is because you are either doing something potentially unsafe (in the long run) or because you are not getting the most benefit possible from a posture. For example, knees out over toes in squatting poses or lunges is unsafe for the knee. Pushing up into High Cobra (knees on the floor) instead of Upward Facing Dog (with knees and thighs off the floor) is too hard on the average person’s back. Twisting the top hip forward in triangle so that you can reach the floor won’t hurt you, but you won’t achieve the benefits of the posture – strengthening the upper body and stretching the side.
I’ll be adding to and revising this list and sending it out every so often, so if you have any questions, clarifications, or suggestions for other “yoga basics”, let me know.
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Thanks for reading all the way to the end, y’all.
Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti! Lisa
Lisa T. Bennett, LNMT, RYT
ltb1014@gmail.com
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