On the Run: fitness made simple
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A better world starts with a better YOU.
It’s December! Officially Christmas Season :D!
From Yogi Anonymous
Haha omgosh “boat” is my favorite! I just finished a 90 minute yoga session (45 minutes of standing poses, and 45 minutes of balance/stretching/floor-work) and now I’m preparing for my Public Speaking class. My reverse triangle, crow, and splits are getting better!
Have a great start of the week!
I used to be really confused whenever I had an instructor or instructions which told me: “Take your belly button to your back!” or “Belly in!” or “Engage your core!” I asked my yoga and dance teachers to explain to me what “engaging your core” really is and how it differs from sucking in and flexing.
Sucking in: This action is too drastic. Your whole abdominal region collapses inwards causing your back to round. Also, your shoulders tense and creep towards your ears.
Engaging your core: Imagine that you are zipping up a pair of jeans. You are standing up tall, tailbone is tucked in and not sticking out, and you have a little tension in your abdominal muscles. You are staying flexible in this position.
Flexing your abs: This move is too static. Your breathing is hindered. You are stiff and rigid limiting your ability to perform many poses and exercises.
Engaging your core without overdoing it allows you to develop both balance and strength. This is a silly picture, but I wanted to illustrate to you the differences! Hope it helps >.<
~Geraldine
I used to think I was fairly good at yoga, until I started taking my gaze away from a point in front of me and towards the sky. Wow did that change things! All of a sudden Tree pose, Half Moon pose, even Warrior I increased in difficulty. Sometimes I get stuck on the mirror, focusing on my form and how I look overall. It’s also easier to look ahead of us while we’re balancing. However, try to look upwards for a greater challenge and stress relief. Try it for the following poses:
- Warrior I: Turn your gaze up as you drop your shoulders and bring your arms overhead close to your ears.
- Tree pose: Start by facing forward with hands in prayer. Then, grow your arms out like branches as your gaze towards the sky.
- Half Moon Pose: Try and release your reliance on the hand touching the ground for support. It’s really a balance pose developing strength in the standing leg and core. My summer instructor teaches us to only have our finger-tips grazing the ground. Also, keep your head in line with your spine and look upwards.
It’s a humbling experience when you lose your balance in a beginning pose. I am now a very Humble Warrior (great asana btw.) Gosh, something as simple as a Reverse Dive up from a forward fold feels so empowering when you also look up towards the sky as you inhale. Try it next time you have a break!
Would you try gazing upwards in your next yoga session? Do you also find this more difficult than looking down or straight? Yes I know, those are silly stick figures and I ruined a pretty photo of a sunset in Death Valley.
Namaste.
Geraldine
I caved…I got the new Nike yoga mat I saw at TJ Maxx! It’s SO light and makes it easy to carry to school, from class to class, and with a full backpack. I’m taking yoga 2x a week this summer so it will still be in good use.
Cute Nike yoga mats at TJMaxx! They are really light and come with a strap for carrying around too! I want a new one…$20 (instead of $30)
Yoga skills test today! I’m way more focused when I know it counts. I’ll try to use this energy on regular days too.
surfnrunnr asked: Hi Chick, I just watched your recent yoga video. Definitely alot of “whoaaa” moments. How long have you been doing yoga? and do you do impromptu yoga or know sets of poses? Thanks for sharing and love the music too.
Thanks for asking!!! :)
You know what? I’ve been trying to figure out exactly how long i’ve been doing yoga and teaching it. I’d say four years taking yoga, two years of it teaching, minus some black holes of illness and depression and all around life fuckery.
In college I took one yoga class as a PE credit. It was taught by a 65 year old lady who taught in a pink leotard and tights and played songs like “Reminiscing” and anything on a late sixties easy listening compilation. I spent class trying to blow up her tape deck with my thought vibes. Nevertheless, the yoga didnt do much for me.
For the next 8 years I maybe took a yoga class once or twice at my gym. I enjoyed it, had some nice instructors, but since I also took so many other classes, like step and kickboxing, I never had the time or desire to go to an outside yoga studio.
THEN, in March of 2008, after driving around with a brand new mat in the trunk of my car for 6 months, I signed up for a free week at the same studio my friend went to, because my bootcamp class at my gym had been cancelled. She had been recommending it for over a year, but I was too stubborn to change my routine, which I had DOWN PAT.
After a single class, I never looked back. Between 2008-and summer 2010, I did yoga almost EVERY SINGLE DAY, without fail.
I decided to do the Teacher Training program through my studio almost a year after in Feb 2009. I started teaching in June of 2009 and taught at two different studios from the summer of 09 to summer 2010. I had a pretty crazy schedule at this point. In addition to a demanding full time job, I was teaching ten classes a week or more AND trying to get my own practice in every day. So during the weekdays, my mornings started at 4:30 so I could be out the door by five, to open the studio and be ready to teach the 6am class. On some evenings I wouldnt get home from teaching until 11 at night. I taught five classes over the weekend. I was a crazy girl. So within these two years, I crammed in a shit ton of yoga.
Of course, I couldn’t keep up that pace, so eventually, some health issues I was dealing with took their toll, my marriage fell to pieces, and I got severely depressed and sick and had to quit teaching, stopped working and got a divorce. Two words. Not Fun.
I was no longer practicing regularly and lost a lot of ability which was super frustrating and depressing as well. The rest of 2010 was a wash and I only started feeling like my old self sometime last year. I don’t quite remember exactly how or when it happened, but with the support of my sweetie (who was my guardian angel at this time) I slowly started to come back to life. We spent 6 weeks in the beginning of 2011 in Vermont (where I started this blog over a year ago) and gradually started to feel a little bit better, just a little at a time. After a lwhile, I started going back to the studio to take class, and then several months later, felt strong enough to teach and became a substitute rather than having regularly scheduled classes. If I felt bad, I would have the flexibility to control the amount of classes I taught. I decided not to go back to work and adopted a pretty relaxed schedule. I still got fatigued easily. I still got depressed. But at least this time around I didn’t fall as deep or as hard and I could climb back out with a little help.
By the end of last year, I had a pretty predictable schedule of teaching, taking yoga in SD and then taking some time off to travel with my sweetie. I got my dog Abby and she sucked up much of the free time I used to use for yoga.
We decided to move to Bainbridge Island outside of Seattle in Mid Jan of this year. Since then, I haven’t taken any classes at all, but have been practicing on and off on my own. I have lost some ground. Im not as strong as I used to be and there are some poses that I can no longer do, but at the same time, my body feels good and i’m happy with what it can do. There are also some poses that I could not not do, that I CAN now. So you fluctuate, but never really are better or worse, just different. These days, I may practice 30 mins to an hour or just do 15 minutes here and there. Pretty unstructured and relaxed.
When I used to teach, I used to create my own sequences for an hour class, sometimes an hour 15min class. There’s a basic structure to a yoga class so you get to be creative, but still teach a rounded class. I almost never taught the exact same class twice.
On my own, I wont plan ahead, I’ll just start moving and combine poses that feel good and “flow” well together. I might try a couple different ideas. Once I have a “sequence”, I’ll flow through it a couple of times on both right and left sides and then cool down with some stretches and savasana.
What I recorded is what I would consider a flow sequence. There are some pretty standard series of poses that go well together, so you’ll often see these put together in a class. Different teachers just put a different twist. One of my favorite parts of teaching was building classes and creating playlists to go with them.
BTW, the song in the background is Enigma, Sitting on the Moon. … And I like soft, furry things and cute animals… and there was this one time … at band camp ….
From : http://yogachick.tumblr.com/
If you just got back from school, it’s time to stretch out your shoulders. Release all that tension built up from lugging your heavy backpack around. A nice, easy, child-pose would do you some good right now.
Hope you’re Monday is going well!
(PS: this is Salma Hayek)
So this was my typical backpack during my freshman year in college (errr except I took General Chemistry and not O-Chem): textbooks, laptop, notebooks, food, liter of water, & junk in the front pockets. I would walk around all day like a pack mule. People started recognizing me as the “girl with the huge, colorful backpack.” Someone once said, “it looks like you’re wearing a jet pack,” because it was wider than I was. POINT BEING, students’ shoulders take a toll by carrying heavy backpacks around. Yoga has really helped me align my shoulders more and to release some of the tension that I’ve built up over the years. I feel like I’ve developed huge trapezoids overtaking my neck.
Some things to keep in mind:
- Even in mountain pose, pull your shoulders away from your ears.
- Stand tall and decompress your spine.
- Perform neck stretches as well.
Everyone please, take some time out of day to relax your shoulders and neck!
Yoga Stretches for Singing
Hi Everyone! I recently started taking vocal lessons and we always start with a warm-up to relax our body, engage our back muscles, and to align our body. I find that many yoga poses help. The goal is to open up your chest, lower lungs, and find your back muscles. Start in Mountain Pose with great posture and work your way through these poses. In poses such as camel, try not to drop your head all the way back because that stretches your vocal cords. You can even modify camel and just place your hands on your tailbone and lean backwards.
Yoga class. Total beginners class, but still a good experience and basically free at a local community college. Downside is that students aren’t focused an come into the class gossiping and talking really loud (okay there’s 2 obnoxious ppl). Today we’re working on plank, chaturanga, and side plank…exciting…but I just heard someone say, “if I was by myself I wouldn’t be motivated to do yoga. I would be like ‘oh this is hard, I’ll stop.’ but if I’m in a class it’s different.” yay!
keepcalmandbeyoung Asks:
surfnrunnr Said:
Hi! For me, the benefits of Bikram/Hot yoga are:
- Heat helps me stretch further.
- Gets my heart rate up.
- Motivating environment. Everyone is really focused.
- Instructor talks you through the entire workout.
- Clears my pores.
- Focus on strengthening & stretching back.
- Incorporates great balance exercises.
- Makes you dependent on doing yoga in a studio.
- Showering twice a day…
- Boasts unrealistic benefits (digestive health, endocrine health, activating your thyroid..yaddy-yaddy-ya)
- Long, 90 minutes
Just hit 2000 minutes on Nike Training App and unlocked Leah Kim’s 45 minute yoga workout! So excited to practice this! I love Leah Kim; she’s so young and yet an expert at yoga. Seeing some of her poses shows how strong and focused she is. I really wish I could take classes with her, but she teaches in London =/
A morning yoga sequence to ease back tension…
My back aches and is tight right after getting out of bed, but a few forward bends and cat/cow poses loses everything up. It’s painful at first while my spine decompresses from my tail bone all the way to my neck, but it makes me feel so much better!
