Posted 12/29/10

YOGA TIPS from Tracey

A common question I hear in yoga class is, “how can I begin a home practice?”
Here are some tips to get you started.

Start from what you know: If you are fairly new to yoga you may know fewer poses and pre-yoga warm-ups, but I bet you can remember at least 5 activities to begin your practice.
Take a moment to jot down 5 moves you remember from class.
For example, you have learned to lie on your back, knees up and feet flat and tune into your breathing. With mindfulness, notice each breath as it comes in and out of your body. Do this for 2-5 minutes. Remember suptapadagustasana? That’s the pose you do lying on your back and placing the strap over the ball of your foot to get a hamstring stretch. Come up with a few more like this. Take your list and rationalize the order of activities.
Make your practice only 10-20 minutes in length to start. Nothing liked failed ambition to keep a person off his/her mat. Underestimate what you can handle and how much time you can devote each day. Victory will be yours! 
Do the practice in the exact same order every day for a week. You will etch a groove into your memory with repeated practice. The next week, pick a few different activities that you learned in class. Write them down. Do them in the exact same order every day for a week.
If you have to skip a day, don’t fret. Just pick it up the next day. Keep a yoga journal of your activities so you can see your progress over time. Write your weekly practice plan and a few notes or pages, as you like, on how the practice is going, what you need to focus on, what is going right for you.
Enjoy your yoga. If it isn’t fun and you don’t feel better when you’re done, ask your teacher for help.

Posted 7/30/10

Jeff and I just returned from an advanced studies course with Scott Anderson of Alignment Yoga. We came away with three big ideas that have profound impact on how and why we should practice yoga. The ideas are presented here in a nutshell- join us for class as we incorporate these ideas into action.

BIG IDEA ONE: Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, PhD has been able to better pinpoint what happen when we  experience positivity. The vagus nerve which leads into the brain has a “tone” and when it is stimulated, we feel deep contentment or positivity. She also quantifed that for each negative experience, we need three positive ones in order to restore the vagal tone. See her website at http://www.positivityratio.com/  and click on take the test or see her video on Youtube. Her non-academic book is titled Positivity.

BIG IDEA TWO: The vagus nerve is attached into the diaphragm. When we breath deeply and rhythmically, we raise the tone of the nerve, thereby creating more positivity. By practicing asana that causes the diaphragm to move and stretch at the crura of the diaphragm (the tendonous structures attaching the diaphragm to the vertebral column), we can increase vagal tone. Asana indicated are twists and inversions. The implication is Do twists- improve your positivity!

BIG IDEA THREE: The fascia or connective tissue that wraps every nerve, muscle, bone, etc runs in unbroken lines or “trains” in the body. Thomas Myers http://www.anatomytrains.com/  studies these facial trains and has proven conclusively that your shoulder is indeed connected to your foot by the fascia. This is important to our study of the body because when your hip hurts we need to look at that whole fascial line to see if there is a disruption anywhere on that line. It may be a problem in your foot!

The body/mind connection is so important and so real. Yoga helps us access and promote the suble yet observable shifts that bring “santosha” or contentment.