Adho Mukha Svanasana - Downward Facing Dog

And......week 5 comes to you from Anne Marie. A round of "snaps" for her for landing a new job! Good luck to you!!! 

My favorite yoga poses are inversions. Adho Mukha Svanasana, Downward Facing Dog may be considered a basic yoga pose, but it is one that I love and am continually improving at. In the Downward Facing Dog Pose, you build up strength in the upper arms and you give space and opening in the back, neck, chest, hips and shoulders. You also build up strength in your calves and ankles. You should hold the pose for 1-3 minutes.

I feel younger and more energetic after doing this pose.  After a yoga practice with many inversions, I look younger as well.  This is definitely an advantage!

Yoga is a grounding and calming experience for me.  It has mentally and physically been my saving grace these past few months.  Yoga draws wonderful people and I cherish my yoga friends and instructors! I plan to practice yoga for the rest of my life

Utthita Parsvakonasana - Extended Side Angle Pose

Week 4 of our 2012 Yoga Challenge is brought to you by Kathy...

oo-TEE-tah parsh-vah-cone-AHS-anna)


utthita = extended 
parsva = side, flank 
kona = angle

The Extended Side Angle Pose is the first pose in which I truly understood how important corrections are to your yoga stance.  I was attending a yoga retreat on Whidbey Island, and Jennifer Isaacson, my fabulous yoga instructor, was leading us in a vinyasa class.  “Think of your body as fitting between two trucks passing close.”  Achieving flat planes is the idea with this pose.  A lightbulb moment for me.  “Ah, rotate the shoulders and hips to create the least space,” I thought to myself.  Arms extended overhead, in line with the legs and torso, to narrowly slide between a small space.  I was starting to understand the alignment with this pose.

Whenever I move into Utthita Parsvakonasana I imagine my body seamlessly sliding between two trucks, and I’m transported back to the gently warmed studio on Whidbey, with the rain silently striking the windows and the trees waving in the wind, with all eighteen or so bodies in the studio performing our orchestrated dance towards enlightenment.

To get into Extended Side Angle from Warrior Two with your right foot forward, pivot at the waist and lean out with your right arm either resting on your knee or with full extension resting on the ground to the outside edge of your right bent knee.  Your left arm raises straight up, allowing your left shoulder to stack directly over your right shoulder.  Bring your gaze up towards the ceiling.  Your right knee remains bent at a 90 degree angle throughout the pose.  Tuck your pelvic in so your left hip opens

An arm variation is to reach your arm forward, creating one single line from left toe to reaching left fingers.

Another variation is to reach your left arm behind your back to join with your right arm in a bind beneath your leg.  Open your chest towards the ceiling

This pose stretches and strengthens the legs, groins, hamstrings and opens the chest and shoulders.

Urdhva Dhanurasana - Wheel Pose

Another week has passed - I trust that it was a good one for you, yoga friends!!! The next pose of our journey comes to you from Monte (yes, that is a shot of him demonstrating Wheel. Wow!!!)

Wheel Pose!

I started practicing yoga over 2 years ago. I was able to do a wheel pose immediately. My wheel pose continues to deepen as does everything in my life. When I am in wheel pose I feel freedom, space, powerful and strong. Not to mention in the moment. It still amazes me how the feelings I feel on the mat show up off the mat. It is magical!

Vrkasana - Tree Pose

"What did the tree learn from the earth 

to be able to talk with the sky?"

- Pablo Neruda

I love this quote. It is the essence of tree pose for me: being rooted firmly to the earth, yet still open to the wonder and possibility of what lies above and beyond our current selves. To me, the juxtaposition of the pose is exactly how I want to live my own life - based in reality and accepting/content with that (santosha!)...but working towards a higher end goal.

And, one cannot deny the beauty of the pose. Even though I am working on gazing at the ceiling and/or closing my eyes in Tree, I still like to sneak a peek at the yogis around me. The surge of energy flowing out of their grounded and free limbs can be electric. If someone was to peek back at me, they would find me grinning. Yep, Tree is definitely my favorite.

I prefer to enter Tree via Tadasana, Mountain Pose. Taking a moment to feel my feet grounded into my mat and focusing my thoughts on the here and now is key. Letting go of the expectation of what Tree will be, and just enjoying the way my hips feel and how my entire posture improves as I settle in. It's like I just grew an inch, maybe two. Hands in Anjali Mudra to begin and then when my mind is ready, I raise my arms and open up to the possibility of being stationary and free, all in the same breath. 

The nuts & bolts:

Vrkasana (vrik-shahs-anna) (From Yoga Learning Center.com and Yoga Journal.com)

Vrksa = tree

In the nature of a tree, the standing leg grounds itself to the earth like roots of a tree as the upper body lengthens upward like the branches. Ancient yogis of India were known to stand in this posture for many days on the banks of the Ganges River while meditating and chanting. The Yogi's say that if you can hold Tree Pose with comfort and ease, it mirrors your emotional and mental states.

Health Benefits:

• Develops awareness, balance, concentration and poise.
• Revitalizes spine as well as the body and the mind.
• Strengthens the entire leg, ankles and feet.
• Increases flexibility in the thighs and hip.
• Steadies and calms the mind.
• Fortifies your Muladhara (The First Chakra or "Root" Chakra. It is located at the base of the spine and the closest Chakra to the ground and controls our sense of stability and security in this life. It is where we get our footing, stand our ground and find our strength.)

That bit about the Muladhara really resonates with me. It's not how adept you are at physically balancing. Oh no! It's about the mental balancing. That's good stuff, yes?

I leave you with this from Yoga Journal:

Though praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow may come and go like the wind (as the Buddha said), happiness comes if you can "rest like a great tree in the midst of them all."

Namaste.

Brand New Year. Bring on Pigeon...

Coming to you from Janet...

My Favorite Pose is:             Pigeon Pose (Sanskrit name is Eka Pada Rajakapotasana*)

I love it because Pigeon was the first yoga pose I “got” & everything about it – from coming into, settling into & moving out of – fills me with deep contentment & gratification.  Coming into pigeon from down dog, I feel lightness & exhilaration.  As I settle into the pigeon stretch, I feel rooted to the earth, connected & strong.  Leaning into the pose, the muscle release for me always feels wonderful & deeply satisfying.  Moving out of pigeon (either back to Down Dog or into Child Pose) releases all kinds of crazy endorphins for me.    I love this pose!  I always have.  Since I fell in love with Pigeon, I’ve been curious to learn that it seems people either love it or hate – I’ve yet to find anyone who feels neutral about Pigeon J  So where do you weigh in?

Something new I learned researching Pigeon is that many consider it “the” classic hip opener.   It stretches, aligns & strengthens the pelvis while energizing the second or sacral (orange) chakra.  According to Yoga Journal, benefits of Pigeon also include stimulating the abdominal organs & opening the shoulders & chest.  Also according to YJ, Pigeon is just the first of “four, increasingly difficult Pigeon poses”. I didn’t know that & plan to have some fun exploring the variations over the next week.

* Also from YJ, here’s the pronunciation & meaning of Pigeon’s Sanskrit terms J

(aa-KAH pah-DAH rah-JAH-cop-poh-TAHS-anna)

eka = one
pada = foot or leg
raja = king
kapota = pigeon or dove

Welcome, Yoga Friends, to Yoga Challenge 2012~

Hello & thanks for considering our 52 week yoga challenge. Our mission, should you choose to join us, is to open our minds & hearts to a new yoga pose every week in 2012. this will add 52 poses to our repetoire & understanding as well as allow us to connect meaningfully with other fellow yogas.
 Amy & I have decided to do this together & thought it would be more fun, inclusive & expansive if we invited a few other like-minded souls to join us. We can create this together but here's what we're thinking, to get us started:
Once a week, one of us Yogis will write a little blurb about a favorite yoga pose. This can include what the pose is, why you love it & any other fun facts or health benefits the pose offers. It can be as short or as long as you like.
 If there are 52 of us, each of us would review one pose. If there are 26 of us, each of us would write about 2 poses, and so forth.
I'll be the boss of the timeline & distirub on it but i'm thinking sunday night might be a good time to post for the week. and then -- would you want feedback on your pose? if so, we could shoot emails back & forth.

This idea was inspired by my yoga mentor Katie Koblenz who loved boat pose. It was never my favorite & I tolerated it at best. When she shared that it was her favorite & why, it gave me a whole new perspective on something I had just suffered through before. Now it is a fundamental part of my practice & teaching --