Oh, crap, I made a core practice.

It’s actually really fun, in ways that hard physical work can sometimes be really fun. Additionally, because it’s a practice I used for my students, it’s one where I tried to make different options for different bodily needs. In class, this worked out so that most people could select a place that was the right level of work for them; I’m hoping this holds relatively true for larger sample sizes.

A quick note: In places where it lists “options,” I tend to do one of two things. When I’m going through the sequence with a group, I start with what I think of as the physically “easiest” version of a movement, then move on to variations that require more strength or balance or whatever. When there are people who are figuring out which option is right for them, this tends to let them experiment while having a “safety net” — in other words, a version of the pose that they know they can do — to come back to. However, if I’m practicing on my own, I might do all the repetitions with the same asana variation — since I’m already more likely to know what’s going to work for me on a given day. (Not always, but more often than someone experimenting with these poses for the first or second time.)

Centering & Warm Up:

1. Start out in constructive rest. Because it’s a core-focused practice, I like to start with one or both hands on the belly, drawing attention to the abdominal movement during breath. In class, I tend to stay here for several breaths; alone, I might stay as long, or I might cut it shorter.
2. Then a reclined warm up flow that starts out in constructive rest. Inhale into apanasana (knees to chest) and exhale back down into constructive rest; then inhale into bridge and exhale back down into constructive rest. I repeat the whole sequence for a total of 5 complete rounds, but 5 is not necessarily everybody’s magic number.
3. Fart pose! Because fart pose, that’s why. Again, about 5 rounds of this; I do like to keep the number consistent with however many rounds I did in the constructive rest flow.
4. Then a held bridge — maybe with a deeper backbend than the rolling variety, maybe not — for 5 breaths. I might spend a final breath in constructive rest and/or with knees to chest before coming to stand.

Sun Salute A:

1. Three — or so — rounds of Sun Salute A, taking any standard modifications that seem like a good idea.
2. Finally, we did one modified sun salute — stepping back from ardha uttanasana directly to down dog — to come to hands and knees for some plank variations.

Plank Variations:

And other prone core work.

1. First, 5 modified chaturanga pushups. For folks for whom this is the wrong kind of difficult, modifications include bringing the knees forward some (closer to directly under the hips) and/or not lowering all the way into chaturanga. Another option includes doing fewer than 5 repetitions.
2. After that, lower all the way to the floor and rest for a few breaths, turning the head to one side.
3. Either 5 (or, you know, whichever other number you’re going with) rounds of locust or cobra in a vinyasa — inhale up into the backbend, then exhale to lower.
4. Then another few breaths on the floor, turning the head to the opposite side.

This is where that “options” idea starts to come into play. This is the sequence I use in class — letting students decide for themselves which option is the right amount of work — but it totally works to just pick any of the options and repeat multiple times.

1. Something I like to call “traveling bird dog.” Basically, it starts on hands and knees. On one exhale, lift the left leg; lower on the inhale. On the next exhale, lift the right leg; lower on the inhale. Repeat with the arms (which I find actually trickier in terms of balance). It can be helpful to repeat this a second time to get used to the rhythm, but it’s definitely not necessary.
2. Maybe rest in child’s pose, depending on how much physical effort that entailed.
3. The next option is a traveling forearm plank. The way I do it, this involves getting into forearm plank. Then exhale, left foot up; inhale it back down. Exhale, right foot up; inhale it back down. Because I find lifting the arms in the pose awkward as well as difficult, I just repeat the sequence with the feet again — so there are still 4 lifts and lowers of some limb or other.
4. How about that rest in child’s pose?
5. A third option is traveling plank, which is just like traveling bird dog but in plank pose.
6. A rest in child’s pose, whether I think I need it or not.
7. Because then, if I have it in me, I’m going to repeat whichever variation was my maximum “safe and still beneficial” level one more time.
8. Aaaand… child’s pose.

And ack! I had no idea I’d sequenced a practice that would take longer than one reasonably sized blog post to write. I will finish this tomorrow, I promise.

Unless I fall asleep and forget.

Which could happen.

And We All Fall Down

Given the number of times I declare my undying hatred of standing balance poses, it may be surprising, both that I put together a sequence — for my school students — building toward half moon and that I enjoyed doing so. Regular half-moon — as opposed to revolved half-moon, which is a tool of the butt-burning devil, I say affectionately — has never been a pose I love to hate. Perhaps because it’s a hip-twisting-open pose, at least for the standing leg, which is a direction my body likes to go naturally. Perhaps because the most common expression of the pose involves keeping the bottom hand or fingertips on the floor, so it’s not really a standing balance in the way that some others are.

I now have a core group of students who are getting decidedly more adventurous with their pose preferences, so I thought this might be a fun way to challenge them. That said, I can have new people — new to me, totally new to yoga, whatever definition you please — show up at any time as well (something I’m sure is true for any number of people who lead yoga sessions). Because of that, I wanted something that had a lot of flexibility and options built in. This is what I came up with.

Judging from student feedback, I think I may have skewed it a little too far toward the physically vigorous end of the spectrum. Good for me to keep in mind for next time, but not a big deal in the moment on account of some of the built-in options.

Also, before we started, I made sure to let them know:

1. Every single vinyasa was 100% customizable. This includes skipping any given — or all offered — vinyasas entirely.
2. It is totally normal to fall the first time — or the first several times — one tries half moon. In fact, it is good to plan for it and so to position oneself where they won’t accidentally kick another student in the face.

Warm Up:

All variations on uttanasana, including:

• 3 repetitions of ardha uttanasana to uttanasana.
• 3 repetitions of an uttanasana twist (links to PDF; I’m referring to first option pictured), holding for 1 breath on each side.
• 1 more repetition of the same twist, this time holding for 3 breaths on each side.

Sun Salutes, C Series:

The ones we do here are still sort of an extension of our warm up:

• For the first round, I incorporate an open twist in the lunge for each side. That is, we twist the torso toward the back leg, sort of as is pictured here. It’s a gentler twist than the one more often used here, but it more closely mimics the body position in half moon. We hold each twist for 3 breaths.
• For the second round, we do the more common bent knee lunge twist, both as a counterpose to the first twist and because there’s an option for revolved half-moon later. We also hold each of these twists for 3 breaths.

Sun Salutes, A Series:

With add ons.

• The first time through, we add on some warrior 2 — 3 bend-straighten repetitions, then a hold for 3-5 breaths.
• Next comes a sun salute with reverse warrior to extended side angle. Again, 3 flowing repetitions, then a hold of side angle for 3-5 breaths.
• Another one, this time with triangle, held for 5 breaths on each side.

Standing Series:

• Goddess, 3 1-breath repetitions, then 1 hold of 3-5 breaths.
• Wide angle forward bend for 5 or so breaths.
• Down dog, because it’s a nice starting position for half moon.
• Half moon for 10 or so breaths. I know that might sound like a long hold for someone new to the pose, but I found that my students needed that much time to figure out how it actually worked. From down dog, we stepped forward into lunge, then stepped the back foot up, then worked on hand position. Then we just lifted the back foot, talking about engagement and rotation, for a couple of breaths; then a few breaths rotating the top hip up with both hands on the floor; then bringing the top hand to the hip. And then we all fall down.
• Either uttanasana or revolved half moon — the latter bringing both hands back to the ground — for about 5 breaths. Then back to down dog and repeat on the other side.
• At the end of the second side, we all took a few breaths in uttanasana, or — as it was then known — “the heck did we just do?” pose.

Core Work:

Abs and back.

• Boat, either toes on the floor, knees bent, or legs straight. I think we did 2 rounds of 5 breaths each.
• Bridge, first in a flow of 5 repetitions for 1 breath each. Then they chose whether to repeat that or to hold bridge for 5 breaths.

Floor Work:

• Dandasana for a few breaths to prepare for some seated twists. We also came back to dandasana in between each subsequent pose.
• Seated spinal twist for 5 breaths on each side.
• And also janu sirsasana in the same way.
• Then savasana because savasana.

It was fun when we did it, but it was after this class that my students requested a yin series the following week.

Core Yoga: Back Roundup, Part 1

I know it’s been a bit since I got together the first half of the core roundup, but here’s the second. For the delay, I blame work other writing ideas getting in the way general holiday-style rush the dog.

Latissimus Dorsi:

• Back Anatomy, Level 1 — “So if the lats are primarily about moving the arms, why do we talk about them with respect to the core? It’s a fair question, and it has a fair answer.”
• Quick Share: Importance of Lats — “The latissimus dorsi is the only muscle that connects the hips and the arms. This is relevant in various postures where the hips are moving in one direction while the arms move in another, such as chair pose (with the hips moving down while the arms reach up) or down dog (with the hips lifting up while the arms press down).”
• Integral Lat Stretching — “I’ve seen balasana used as an integration pose, as a warm-up pose, as part of vinyasas, as a resting pose between vinyasas, as a cool down pose, and as a posture for final meditation. And now it’s a lat stretching pose too.”
• Back to Lats — “Remembering the anatomy, one movement where the lats contract is when the shoulders extend behind the torso, and one pose that does this nicely is upward facing table.”
• Bovine Multitasking Arms — “But in terms of the latissimus dorsi, gomukhasana (cow face pose) is awesome for both strengthening and stretching. This is because it’s an asymmetrical pose. While the lats on one side are contracting, on the other, they’re lengthening.”
• Triangle: Back on the Lat-Stretching Asana Bandwagon — “… one position that stretches the lats are when the arms are laterally abducted (i.e., held in a T-shape away from the torso). If I pay a lot of attention to creating a long spine in the pose, I find that trikonasana does this pretty aptly.”

Erector Spinae:

• Let’s talk about erectors. — “So I am hunched, spine rounded, over my desk and keyboard, neck jutting forward to glare at the monitor. Given the subject matter, I am acutely aware of how this is impacting my erector spinae.”
• Spine Warm-Up & Self-Massage — “One short-term physical benefit of apanasana is that it offers a supported way to stretch and start to move the low spine without putting a whole lot of stress on the body.”
• Forward Fold = Spine Stretch — “Uttanasana (intense forward fold) has at least one similarity with triangle, at least as I’ve practiced it and seen it practiced: it’s considered kind of a big deal to be able to reach the floor above (or underneath?) all else.”
• Tigers and Sunbirds and Bird Dogs — Oh, My! — “In all yoga classes where I’ve seen this vinyasa mentioned, it’s been called either sunbird pose or tiger pose. However, in many core strengthening videos I’ve seen, it’s been called bird dog (which, as a former owner of hunting dogs, makes a lot of sense to me, based on how the pose looks).”
• Warriors, Out of Order — “I will not lie: Physically, this pose kicks my butt and is a continued reason why I am on close personal terms with the floor.”
• Me & My Camel [note for sexual assault and post-assault fears] — “There was a time, just after I stopped sharing a bedroom with my sister, when I became… not afraid of the dark, exactly, but leery of what I couldn’t anticipate, what I couldn’t see.”
• Getting To It: Dromedary Edition — “Even though I’m focusing on the erector spinae, camel is actually one of my favorite poses to strengthen both the back and the front of my core.”
• Aware in Dandasana — “Dandasana, or staff pose, is really the starting point for any number of seated poses, particularly various types of forward bends. What I sometimes underestimate is: a) how much alignment matters; b) how much muscular engagement is actually happening.”
• Stretching Out: Western Edition — “Generally speaking, forward bends are calming, and they tend to facilitate introspection. Fair warning: Introspection can sometimes be a tough thing to do as it requires just sitting with oneself and remaining present with whatever comes up.”

Wow. The back is so complicated that I’m even going to have to do a Back Roundup, Part 2. With the holidays approaching, look for it either really soon — a sign that I am procrastinating on my grading — or rather far out. I don’t know.

Weight Loss Link Exchange

From time to time, folks — actual, responding people, not spambots — email me asking about a link exchange to their “health” or “fitness” site. Invariably, the sites include weight loss as an essential component. Usually, I respond with some generic “thanks but no thanks” message.

On one hand, this is fine and probably the strategy I will continue to employ most often, as:

1. I’m not obligated to provide an explanation of why I don’t want to link to a particular… anything on my blog (aside from proper attribution of sources). If I don’t, I don’t.
2. The “thanks but no thanks” requires little investment of time or emotional resources.

On the other, I toy with the idea of what would happen if I sent this letter instead.

Dear potentially well-meaning but misguided link exchange requester,

First, thank you for taking the time to lie to me, saying that you’ve read my blog. And perhaps you have, in fact, skimmed the titles and the tags and the pictures. But read it you have not.

If you had, you would have likely noticed that while this is a blog that talks about exercise and yoga and health and fitness, it is not actually a blog about “getting in shape.” More to the point, it is not a blog that dictates what shapes other people are or should want to be in.

I practice yoga because I love yoga. I run because I love running. I love them — at least most days — for how they feel when I’m going them, separate from any other effects they may be having on my body. And you know what? Those are good enough reasons to do what I do.

I reject the idea that we should tie physical activity to aesthetic goals — like weight loss, battling “trouble zones,” or creating 6-pack abs — that are never going to happen for some people. I’ve been practicing yoga for thirteen years. I have the same curves, the same bulges, the same “trouble zones” as I always did. I highly doubt that I’m going to develop a “leaner” body at this point, and that’s okay. Even if it does happen, that doesn’t necessarily need to be the point of exercise. In fact, for a lot of people, encouraging those aesthetic changes to become the point can be damaging. It’s happened to me before, and I will no longer be a part of that.

I’m not saying that my reasons for exercising are the only valid reasons for doing so. It’s not my place to decide what reasons or motivations are valid for someone else.

But it is my blog, and I won’t help to promote ideals that I believe are incompatible with mine.

Hating Gym: Liking Gym Edition

I have admittedly invested a lot of both time and effort in chronicling why I despised my ninth grade gym class:

• Scale Edition and the competitive BMI portion of my PE grade.
• Menarche Edition, complete with gushing and dodge ball.
• Volleyball Edition, where the teacher expected her gym class to be as competitive as her interscholastic team.
• Square Dancing Edition, in which sexual harassment was sanctioned.
• The Last Mile, menstruation revisited.

I’m glad I’ve done so, both because it’s helped me see some of my adolescent experiences through adult eyes — a teacher’s eyes — and to name inexcusable educating and caretaking behavior for what it is.

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t dedicate at least one post to tenth grade gym.

The class was called Muscle Development, and — for name alone, I expect — it had acquired the reputation of being a class dedicated to “bulking up.” Consequently, there were about four sections of Boys Muscle Development and only one of Girls Muscle Development — and that one included a lot of students who, like me, had selected “no preference” for their specific tenth grade PE class. The class itself was an unlikely mix of students — half hardcore, four-season varsity athletes and half people who looked like they’d been plopped in from another dimension. I was in the latter group.

“Your grade in this class will have three parts,” the teacher explained on the first day. “The first is what you know. For example, can you explain how muscles use oxygen or how to use a particular piece of equipment in the weight room? Being able to lift weights is great, but it’s even better if you know how lifting is affecting your body. And it’s crucial to be able to do it safely.”

As someone who’d grown comfortable in traditional academic settings, I breathed a sigh of relief. Explain the steps in a process? Easy. Conceptualize some human anatomy and physiology? No big deal at all, even if it was only a portion of my grade.

“The second part is participation. Showing up, dressing out, and trying your best every day will get you some points. Because a person who does that regularly is setting themselves up for more longer-term benefits than the person who might only work out once in a while, even if you can’t do very much right now.”

I’ll be honest: Even then, I considered participation grades as ways for teachers to pad their students’ grades. But after my experience with the gym class from hell, I was still worried that I’d need as much padding as I could possibly get. Additionally, I continued to worry about how the whole “needing to skip gym and/or school for horrific period pain” thing would affect my participation grade, as we’d not yet found a doctor who would sign off on a note for it.**

“The last part is goal setting and reflection. You will have to set fitness goals for yourself — reasonable fitness goals — and work toward them. If you’re not meeting them, you’re going to have to figure out why not and what is the best way to change. I don’t mean that you’re going to be able to do anything you want, but there are a lot of different goals you could set, and a lot of reasons you might need to modify. But we’ll talk more about that as we start each unit.”

And she was basically as good as her word on that, too. Things I learned in Muscle Development:

• There is a whole spectrum of combinations between a million reps at a teeny tiny weight and one rep at your complete max for that weight. Different combinations have different purposes, but a good rule of thumb is this: If your weight lifting routine is hurting you or boring you, it’s probably time to switch.
• Form really does matter, both for keeping vulnerable body parts safe (hi, knees and low back!) but also for making the exercise harder.
• You will probably always have particular exercises and/or muscle groups that you struggle with. So will the person next to you. Their struggles may not be your struggles. It doesn’t mean that either person is better or worse; you’re just different.
• Squats were designed by the devil herself.

And even with the squats, it was okay.

** I eventually solved this problem by being totally absent from school and having one of my parents call me in sick (and, slightly further down the road, posing as my mother to call myself in sick — with my mother’s knowledge and consent). While I suspect some people at school may have noticed the cyclical nature of my absences, there were really no solid grounds for them to voice any objections.

Yoga Month, Yoga Wisdom

So, September is National Yoga Month. A lot of places — both brick-and-mortar studios and online spaces — are offering free classes. Not having access to good filming equipment (or, you know, a yoga teacher certification), I thought instead to share, throughout the month, some of the things yoga has taught me over the years.

I think the first has to be that not all pain is good pain.

I know it should be fairly obvious, but it was actually a hard lesson to learn. Before I started with yoga — and even after, in certain classes and with certain teachers — a lot of the physical activity I did was of the “no pain, no gain” mentality. Honestly, I attribute a lot of that to the fact that what I was doing before was pretty well grounded in a mainstream “fitness means achieving one specific aesthetic ideal, and until you do this, your body is not really worthy” mindset.

It’s easy to ignore pain — the bad kind of pain, the kind of pain that means too much strain on joints or forcing a pose too soon — when you’re focused on the image of the body you might one day have at the expense of the body you’re in right now.

Yoga, for the most part, taught me that this was not something for which to strive.

Hip Yoga: Easy Hamstring Stretching

I know that a number of instructors sequence reclining big toe pose toward the end of a sequence, but I actually prefer to do it more toward the beginning. When I do it early on and with a strap, it becomes a relatively gentle hamstring opener for me. I’m not sure, but I think this has to do with the pose’s relationship to gravity. That is, in the reclining version of the stretch, gravity is doing most of the stretching work, helped along by a small bit of tension from my hands on the strap. In other common forward folds like uttanasana and paschimottanasana, the weight of the torso draping onto the legs intensifies the hamstring stretch for me. This is fine when I’m ready for it, but when I’m not — such as early on in my practice — it can be nice to remove that weight from the stretching equation.

If I do this pose at the beginning of a practice, I almost always start with the strap, setting it aside if it turns out I don’t need it. For me, at least, I can get almost as intense a stretch with the strap held very near my foot as I can with my fingers around my big toes. Either way, I prefer to be pleasantly surprised — as in, “Hey, I can stretch more today!” — than unpleasantly stretched too far.

In terms of hamstring stretching, there are two variations of the stretch I like to do, on account there being different muscles in the hamstring group. (For a refresher on hamstring anatomy, go here.) The first one is basically the “straight up” version that stretches all three hamstring muscles more or less evenly (depending on things like individual tightness).

[Cathie Ryder instructing for Expert Village. Video via YouTube.]

Variations and options:

1. Instead of going to one’s full knee extension right away, it can be nice to bend and straighten the knee a few (or several) times first. I find this is especially true on days when my hamstrings feel tighter than normal (exhaustive run, slept funny, whatever). Sometimes, my body needs the stretch to be readily subsiding in order to believe the stretch is safe.
2. For folks whose hip flexors are comfortable with this, the pose can be performed with the bottom leg extended along the floor.

The second version I enjoy involves externally rotating the leg and then bringing it out to the side. The external rotation moves the stretch more toward the semitendinosus and semimembranosus muscles. The abduction also moves the stretch into the hip adductors, but that is another hip yoga post for another time.

[Cathie Ryder instructing for Expert Village. Video via YouTube.]

Again, variations and options include:

1. Not moving the leg so far away from the center line. Especially useful if the adductors are the tighter muscle group here.
2. Softening the knee a bit while abducting the leg.
3. Softening and extending the knee in a bit of a vinyasa.
4. Entering the pose with the bottom leg extended to add some opposite-side hip flexor stretching into the equation. (As a runner and a sitter, I’m big on hip flexor stretching. My hip flexors just love me, let me tell you.)

Basically, the positioning here makes it a lot easier for me to back off and go slowly when needed as well as to play around with a lot of different variations in order to find the right type and amount of hamstring stretch I need at any given time. Additionally, making the stretch more dynamic — bending and straightening — helps to “wake up” those muscles more for hamstring strengthening asanas down the road.

Hint, hint.

Guest Post — Hating Gym: Guest Blogging Edition

Closetpuritan is a self-described nerd and skeptic who writes about fat at http://closetpuritan.wordpress.com/. She likes to involve her dog when running or hiking, and not involve her dog when swimming or doing yoga. She still doesn’t play team sports.

Gym class is frequently touted as a way to lower children’s BMIs. There are many reasons to be skeptical about this*, but I have one reason in particular: my own experience. Gym class for me neither encouraged me to be active during the class itself, nor outside of class. I am fairly active as an adult in spite of, not because of, my gym class experience.

What I mostly remember doing in gym class is standing around. When I was really young, maybe kindergarten or first grade, sometimes they let us scoot around the gym on little scooters or play with hula hoops or things like that. When I was older, sometimes they’d have us run a mile, and there was a weightlifting and aerobics unit, and there was even one brief unit where we did cross country skiing. But mostly we played team sports, and for me that meant standing around.

I wasn’t standing around exclusively. Once in a while I would move to Do Something with a ball. More frequently I would move out of my teammates’ way. I was the stereotypical last kid picked in gym class. (Well, except for the fact that these days that stereotypical kid is probably fat; up until middle school I was thin enough to have a flat stomach.) Perhaps not coincidentally, one of my favorite sports games was badminton; I thought at the time it was because I didn’t suck quite so badly at badminton, but it might be partly because I could actually participate.

About running a mile once in a while: The first time I did it I was in 7th or 8th grade. After countless gym classes full of Standing Around, they just announced, “OK, we’re running a mile today.” I wasn’t able to run the whole mile; I was just about last, along with one of my friends. (I have reason to believe that in addition to not having any practice, I’m just not naturally very good at running. It also would have helped if I’d had some idea of how to pace myself.) We might have done the mile run one more time before summer, but that was it for the year. It was the same for the couple times that we ran a mile in high school. No preparation, just one or two times running a mile in isolation. It could have been worse: our grades were participation-based, not time-based.

But it could have been a lot better. What if they had had us run a mile twice a week over the course of a couple months? Then maybe we could have had the pride of seeing our times improve, instead of just a ranking showing how badly we’d done. What if they had given us some feedback besides our times, such as making pacing or form suggestions?

My gym experience left me feeling like I was just not good at physical activity. As an adult, I’ve come to discover that it’s a bit more nuanced than that. I’m not good at vigorous endurance exercise. (Moderate endurance exercise seems to come more naturally to me; for example, I had no problem hiking up Mt. Elmore.) I’m also not good at anything that requires bodily-kinesthetic intelligence: I’m not good at hitting a ball or other object that’s flying through the air, predicting its motion, remembering sequences of movement, or figuring out how to imitate new poses and positions–the few times that yoga is frustrating for me, it’s usually because of an overload of new positions that I’m having trouble figuring out–or just one that’s particularly difficult. But for most of the things I like to do, I don’t need to be good at any of those things. Now that I’m done with gym class (and homework–I “only” have a full-time job now), I’m free to pursue the things that I like to do and have become a lot more active. I’m even finding the joy in running in the knowledge that I’m bad at it, being happy at how much better I can run than in high school while not constantly being reminded of how much worse I am at it than everyone else.

*Scientific studies have had mixed results: see here, here, and here, for example.

________________________________________________________

This post is part of a Back to School Guest Blogging series. If you’d like to guest blog here, please email Tori at anytimeyoga@gmail.com.

Playing with My Playlist 3: Your Mojo Is in Your Hips

You know how when you’re going through your stuff, you sometimes find things that make you go, “What made me think it was a good idea to own this in the first place?”

I do not own it, but that’s what happened when I found this clip on one of my playlists:

[Chaz Rough instructing for Yogamazing. Video via YouTube.]

Its title is “Yoga for the Libido,” but as it turns out, it happens to be a fairly nice series of hip openers. Could be useful for runners, desk-sitters, people who store emotional tension in their hips, etc.

And that’s plenty of comment for something I said was going to involve minimal comment.

Playing with My Playlist 2

I’m not sure how much I love this one for me, so I’m considering deleting it from my personal playlist. That said, nothing about it is terrible for me, so I don’t want to get rid of it entirely.

Ah, indecision.

[Chaz instructing for Yogamazing via YouTube.]

For me, it’s a comfy blend of seated, kneeling, and standing work — sans energy-demanding vinyasas. It’s not quite a low energy or lazy day practice for me — on account of I’m no good with standing on a truly low energy day — but it’s getting there.

Hip Yoga: Build a Stronger Butt?

First off, if you do any kind of YouTube, Google, or other Internet search for “yoga butt” — or even the somewhat more technical “yoga and glutes” — you will find a plethora of pages promising to tighten one’s butt, tone one’s tushie, or remove the “junk” in one’s trunk. (Truth: The only time I consider my trunk to have “junk” in it is in the moments before an impending bowel movement.) My point is, if you’re looking for an asana routine for your butt — a lot of them focusing on outward appearances such that I’m not thrilled linking them here — there are plenty of online spaces to find it. This post is not going to be that space.

I am, however, interested in talking about the type of movements that strengthen the glues-as-hip-extensors (as opposed to the glutes-as-external-rotators, which is coming soon to a yoga blog near you) as a complement to this post. What you choose to do with this movement knowledge is up to you.

So. To recap, in terms of its extension properties, the gluteus maximus stretches when the hip is in flexion, as is the case during forward folds. Conversely, the gluteus maximus is contracting and strengthening when it is working to bring the leg back behind the torso in hip extension. I say “working to bring” because for me, one of the most common times I feel my glute working is when I’m sure my hip is not actually in extension but when I can definitely feel my butt working to get it there.

I am talking, of course, about down dog split (aka three-legged dog):

A capture I took while making the photo post for wild thing. I am not sure if this is as high as my lifted leg goes — with level hips — or if I was just more focused on the different stages of getting to wild thing. Either way, what’s important is that the Caseydog is Not Impressed.

In my asana practices, I do this pose about eleventy billion times per day: stepping forward into lunges and warriors, moving into wild thing, prepping for pigeon. Because of that, it’s useful to me to know what’s happening physically in this pose, particularly as compared to variations — down dog with the top hip externally rotated, for example. Here, because the hips are level, the glutes (and probably the hamstrings — they’re a team like that) on the lifted leg side are working to bring that hip into extension. Because of the positioning — working against gravity — the muscles are contracting and strengthening to perform the action of lifting, even if the leg doesn’t go high enough to be in line with the spine and torso. Basically, gravity is working to pull the leg down; the butt is countering gravity to pull the leg up.

If the goal is to keep the leg lift about hip extension rather than rotation — which, as always, depends on a person’s intent — this is done by keeping the hips level. A good reference point for this is to make sure the toes are pointed straight down and that you’re flexing out through the heel. I think it’s fair to say that most people can’t lift the leg as high when the hips are level as they can when they allow the lifted leg to externally rotate. I’m guessing that has something to do with how the femur head sits in the hip socket, but I haven’t actually looked into it in detail.

For folks looking to extend or adapt the idea to different poses, the same basic principle holds true for the lifted leg in sunbird as well as in standing split.

For folks who are like, “Quit typing. I need to see a video explanation already,” here is one from YouTube:

[Anita Goa instructing for AnitaGoaTV via YouTube.]

DVD Review — Total Yoga: The Flow Series — Fire

This DVD will not be up for giveaway.

Given that I’ve reviewed the first 2 DVDs in this series, I figured it’s only fitting that I review Fire. However, this is one DVD I’m going to keep for myself — on account of sometimes, I need a reminder on what ass kicking feels like. Because while I made the mistake of openly declaring Earth and Water to be physically easy for me, I will not make the same mistake with Fire. Because I have now remembered what karma can do once you piss it off.

___________________________________________

Specs for Total Yoga: The Flow Series — Fire:

Yoga Style: Vinyasa. And it seems to bear a pretty close — though not perfect — resemblance to traditional Ashtanga series.

Suited To: Experienced yogis, particularly those accustomed to fashioning their own modifications — as well as those comfortable with deeper backbends and inversions.

Props: A blanket is suggested for shoulderstand. I used it for headstand as well.

Run Time: 63 minutes from breath instruction through the guided portion of the relaxation.

___________________________________________

Ideally, folks using this DVD would have practiced using the Water edition until they were comfortable with it. If that’s not possible, I’d suggest that folks using this DVD be comfortable with unmodified sun salutes, common standing poses, safe backbending practices, and inversions.

As its name suggests, Fire is a very fiery, energetic practice that assumes a certain amount of physical stamina as well as yoga knowledge from the people using it. The active portion is also about 15-20 minutes longer than are either of its previous counterparts.

Breathing — Same pranayama instruction as in Earth and Water.

Sun Salutes — In addition to those practiced in the Water DVD, Fire includes 3 rounds of the B-series sun salute — that is, the one that incorporates both chair pose and warrior one as part of the sun salute. In addition, all sun salutes are presented without modifications. If one is familiar with, say, bending knees during ardha uttanasana or dropping to one’s knees during chaturanga, those variations are quite easy to take. However, the explicit instructions in the DVD are for the “full” expressions of each pose only.

Standing Poses — This sequence is even longer than the Water series. Additionally, with Fire, all of the standing poses are taken as part of more sun salutes. I often take vinyasa classes that operate on this same practice; generally, they advise students that they should feel free to skip or modify vinyasas as they need. In the DVD, there was no explicit instruction to that effect, though again, actually doing it would be easy to incorporate. The standing poses include triangle, warrior two, extended side angle, half moon, warrior one, warrior three, and revolved triangle.

Core Work — Includes both lying boat (locust) and seated boat (navasana). Also includes some half sit ups as well as some lying leg raises.

Backbends — Camel, repeated twice. Then one series where bridge only is offered for the first option. For the second option, the instructions offer the choice of repeating bridge or moving to full wheel.

Floor Work — The forward bending segment is longer as well, including some standing forward folds, janu sirsasana, paschimottanasana, and a seated wide legged fold. (And bound angle? I remember bound angle in there somewhere.) There’s also a seated spinal twist as well as a seated hip opener with the option of moving into seated archer and/or putting one’s leg behind one’s head. (I already know that there is no fucking way my leg goes behind my head — at least not without placing strain on my ankle and my neck — so I did not attempt this.)

Inversions — The series starts with dolphin and offers the option of moving into headstand. For me, the hold length feels long for headstand (meaning sometimes I’ll come out early to play it safe with my neck) but is quite manageable for dolphin. Next, the series moves to shoulderstand, entered and exited through plow, practiced with a blanket. Finally, there’s fish: this DVD offers options for flying fish and/or fish with the legs in lotus.

Savasana — Like the other DVDs in this series, it’s long, partially guided, and fades off into music after the voice instruction.

Overall, I’d most want to recommend this for fairly experienced yogis. For one, some of the poses offered — wheel, the archer progression, headstand, some of the fish options — can be fairly involved. And while the instructions the DVD offers are by no means bad, they are also not pose tutorials — and I don’t think they’re meant to be. Similarly, all of those more involved poses come in the later portion of the practice, after some vigorous sun salute and standing work. So it requires some good gauging on whether it’s safe or serving to take every asana offered or whether some modification (either in the sun salutes or in the second part of the practice) is a better personal option.

Hip Yoga: Is Ass Stretching a Thing?

So I’m looking at the gluetus maximus as hip extensors (accurate, though it has other functions as well), and I am starting to realize — I am not sure I have ever consciously stretched my glues before. I’ve had instructors mention a glute stretch in pigeon, but I definitely feel stretch predominantly along the outside of my front hip. Similarly, I may actually feel it a bit in fire log, but there’s still something on the outside that feels it way more.

Maybe I just have a loose ass? Or maybe stretching my butt — as opposed to building strength there — is just not something I’ve paid much attention to over the years.

I figured the latter was probably more true than the former. That is, that I probably have felt some gluteal stretch over the years, but I maybe haven’t paid the most attention to it. Going with that hypothesis, I’ve done a fair bit of experimenting in my private yoga studio — er, the bit of floor between the couch and the TV — over the past few days. I have determined that I do, in fact, feel some straight-on gluteus maximus stretch in various forward folds. Which fold, exactly, depends on when and how I do it. Because of this, I am going to detail the fold that works best for me (as well as the modifications and attentions I use to maximize the ass stretch). You should feel free to experiment with the forward fold that works best for you.

I find that prasarita padottanasana (standing wide legged forward fold — the English really isn’t any more convenient here) is what gives me the most room to be able to work into my glutes. The standing position means that my butt is not on the ground, which gives it some maneuverability to find the best stretch. The wide stance means it’s easier for me to find some internal rotation in my hips. (Another gluteus maximus function is to externally rotate the thigh, so that opposite movement — internal rotation — helps create some stretch.) Finally, gravity working on my upper body lets me get the hip flexion I need to feel a glute stretch.

But, here. Let me show you the pose. Or rather, let me embed a YouTube video of someone else demonstrating the pose:

[Brenna instructing, Heather instructing -- at Bend Yoga Studio for GeoBeats.]

Things that help me shift the stretch toward my glues and to maximize the stretch I feel there:

1. Opt for a wider stance. I hear different recommendations for stance length, with the feet anywhere from three to five-and-a-half feet. While neither of those extremes works for me, I find that there is a sort of range that does. Being on the narrower end of my workable range tends to emphasize the stretch in my hamstrings whereas being on the wider end of my comfortable range tends to emphasize the stretch in my glutes.
2. Watch my feet. Again, I hear different recommendations for how the feet should be — insides parallel, outsides parallel, midlines parallel, toes turned in — so I do the one that works for my anatomy. This involves keeping the outside edges of my feet parallel to the short edges of my mat (or where those edges would be if I’m not using a mat), which for me, does mean that the inside edges of my feet are angled slightly toward each other (heels slightly out, toes slightly in). It also helps me to double-check to make sure I’m not feeling any strain in my knees or ankles, which means that internal rotation happens from my hips.
3. Play with bending my knees. Whether I do this depends on how loose my hamstrings are feeling. If I’m doing both of the above steps and am still feeling the stretch mostly in my hamstrings — and also if I want to be feeling it more in my glutes — sometimes bending my knees slightly helps facilitate that.
4. Really focus on keeping a straight spine — and therefore reaching back through my tailbone and sit bones — even if I have to prop the shit out of this pose. Generally, I’m flexible enough to reach the ground easily (at least on my fingertips), but I still have my days. I know using blocks is a common prop to “raise the floor.” And I’ve seen folks — particularly practicing at home — use the seat of a couch or a chair or, for additional height, using a wall.

I’m not totally sure how well these principles translate to other bodies or to other types of forward folds. But I’m also not too sure what other types of stretches best get at the glutes. Suggestions, anyone?

If not — and even if so — I’m off to do more geeky yoga research!

Hip Yoga: Butts!

So, intermittently, I’ve been talking about hips, most recently, about the hip flexors. Now it’s time to talk about butts.

Specifically, the gluteus maximus, a big ass (pun intended) muscle and one of the main hip extensors. (The other muscle group involved in hip extension is the hamstrings, but their location and action is distinct enough to warrant them getting their own segment.) Hip extension is basically the movement of drawing the thigh backward behind vertical and/or a neutral pelvis alignment.

While the glutes function as hip extensors more during running and jumping more than they do during walking, they are well and truly all over the hips — which is a claim the hamstrings cannot make and why I am going about things ass first. (Also, for the butt jokes. Can you blame me?) Of the three gluteal muscles, the gluteus maximus is the closest to the skin’s surface. It has its origins on the sacrum, the top of the iliac crest (that curvy bone at the top of the pelvis), and the fascia (connective tissue) near the lumbar spine and the gluteus medius. On the lower side, parts of it attach to the femur and to the IT band.

Hip extension is the complementary action to hip flexion. Since there’s a tendency for contemporary people to have hip flexors on the tighter side, it can help to have strong hip extensors in order to counterbalance the pull on the pelvis. Weak glutes can result in some instability in the lumbar spine, which can then sometimes lead to back pain. Similarly, an inflexible gluteus maximus can increase the risk of lower back injury during some activities.

So. That’s the hip flexor most directly attached to the hips themselves. That’s also the top layer of the butt. I’ll be getting to the other hip flexors later as well as some of the deeper butt muscles. But up next with hip yoga: gentle ass stretches.

Hating Gym: The Last Mile

This post is part of a series on the dubious joys of my ninth grade PE class.

My New Balance MT10s, minimalist trail shoes.

I had survived. Almost — and barely.

It was June, with less than a week before final exams. The weather was also unseasonably hellacious for Michigan, with sunshine, high temperatures in the 90s, and humidity bordering on 80%. I had PE fifth period, so I got to experience the full brunt of this as we ran our last mile.

As might be evident from some of my other posts on this blog, I am not naturally averse to running. I can be taught to run safely and with good form, to cover reasonably long distances, and even to enjoy myself as I do so. Speed, I’m not so much designed for, though even on that front, I make slow but measurable progress.

Unfortunately, in the PE Trial and Tribulation known as The Mile, speed is the only thing that matters. Well, that and not walking. Walking during The Mile, even if it is speed walking of a sort to blow past the average mall walker and even to make Olympic speed walking hopefuls take notice — even if it is faster than one’s actual running pace** — is the ultimate badge of shame.

I know because I walked during the third quarter mile — that is, the mile run that came just after the square dancing unit, during the third academic quarter of the school year. I walked. Not all of it, mind. I broke from my job deliberately for the third of four laps, my own small act of defiance. Two acts, really: I hadn’t been running as fast as I could in the first place, and then I broke gait from there.

“Rears in gears, ladies!” Mrs. D called as I passed. I can’t say for sure if I was the only one walking then, but my guess is probably not. “No one ever got nice legs from walking.”

I idly wondered how many people developed nice legs from roundhouse kicking. But I didn’t speed up because, truth be told, I just didn’t care anymore. Maybe I even wanted to piss her off a little or a lot. I wasn’t going to get her approval — or the grade I wanted — no matter what I did. Deliberately undermining her passive-aggressive coaching with some passive aggression of my own gave me at least a modicum of control.

My recalcitrance, however, had not been kind to my grade, and Mrs. D knew this too. Before the final mile run, she pulled me aside. “If you want an A in this class,” she smiled, “you’re going to have to break seven minutes.”

To the best of my knowledge and from the best of my research, seven minutes is certainly a reasonable (possibly generous) cutoff time for a track coach seeking out competitive runners. (Interestingly, most of the high school track coaches I’ve worked with have been more like, “You will run a mile? Regularly? In competition? Hells, yes. You’re in. I don’t care what time.”) It is not the most reasonable standard by which to determine the physical fitness of the general high school population.

Or maybe I’m just bitter because it was ninety-plus degrees, eighty percent humidity, and the first day of my period — which is less “eek, I have cramps” and more “clots the size of golf balls are trying to force their way through each and every pore of my body.”

I tried to rain check. There were still enough days left in the semester that a make up day should have been possible. Any other day but this.

Mrs. D shook her head. “You want the A, you earn it now or not at all.”

In that moment, I realized I did still want the A. If she’d allowed me an alternate run day, a 7-minute mile would not have been out of the equation for me. The A is the grade I believed I’d have earned from an instructor who’d been, well, instructive and accommodating. I wanted to show her that I could earn it now, even from a teacher who’d been an active barrier to my physical education.

I had to run. Chunks coming out of my vagina, blood coming out of my nose, my entire pelvis feeling like it was on fire, but I had to run. So I ran, keeping pace with the second cluster of runners in our class, figuring them to be my best bet for a 7-minute mile sans dying afterward. Or at least only dying afterward, once my A-making time was recorded.

Except, of course, that I’d figured wrong. Even if my body could have handled a faster pace, it couldn’t handle a faster pace on this day. My pelvis throbbed like it was going to explode. Each lift of a leg shot pain through my hip and low back, each step sent the same pain slamming down through my thigh.

My vision tunneled. I could only see the gold gym shirt of the person in front of me. Not the track, not the other runners, not even the whole of that one person. Just a shirt. Then the edges of even that tunnel vision blurred. Sparkles formed. Without quite knowing how I got there, I found myself on my knees inside the track, puking onto the football field.

“Move your feet!” an oncoming runner yelled.

I did. They passed me.

Eventually, one classmate — who’d deliberately decided to walk every bit of each assigned mile — stopped for me. “You all right?”

I stood up slowly, pausing to let my head dangle between my knees. We walked back around the track to the starting line.

“One more lap to go, ladies! RUN!” From beyond Mrs. D, the girls who’d already finished their mile stretched, sprawled, and grinned. “What, are you scared you’re going to mess up your hair?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. (Maybe it was the beginnings of hysterics. I don’t know.) My hair, having been flipped over my head while barfing, was already undoubtedly already messed up. I had long hair at the time, and can’t recall having had the presence of mind to move it out of the way of the vomit stream.

“I’m not finishing.” I shook my head experimentally then stopped. Too dizzy.

“What?” she asked.

I grabbed for the chain link fence.

“You mean you can’t even walk your mile without stopping?”

This was not the no of defiance or righteous indignation. I slid to the ground, defeated, realizing she’d already made up her mind about me. “I’m not finishing.”

** Due to differences in stride length, mine actually can be, at least when it comes to my comfortable running pace. I attribute this to the fact that my dad was six-foot-four, and I had the necessary job of keeping up with him since I could toddle.

Hating Gym: Square Dancing Edition

This post contains talk of unwanted sexualized touching as well as jokes and victim blaming regarding said touching.

By John and Ruby Lomax, American Archive of Folk-Song [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons — You will notice how there is no ass grabbing going on.

If I’d retained any chance of not hating gym up until this point in my ninth grade year, this unit squashed that hope like a crunchy, sticky bug.

First, it required our previously gender-segregated PE classes to become co-ed — and co-ed in ways that required touching. Additionally, it was sprung on us without warning, sort of like this:

[Clip from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, uploaded by adithyasampath100 via YouTube.]

With the notable exception that Mrs. D was nowhere near as awesome as Professor McGonagall.

Furthermore, instead of letting us pick our own partners, Mrs. D — along with the boys PE teacher, whose name I do not remember, possibly on account of I never had him for any class ever — assigned the boy-girl pairs for the unit.

“Tori, you’ll be with C.”

To this day, I view that pairing as punishment for something I’d done in a past life. Because I believe the technical term for C’s school persona was “entitled as fuck,” with an unhealthy side of “it was only a joke” deflection. Some choice vignettes from my memory:

Square Dance Caller (one of the teachers or a recording): Bow to your partner.

(I turn to C, either curtsying as I’m supposed to or — forgetting that “bow” doesn’t mean “bow” for me, on account of I am a girl — bowing.

C raises his chin, leans over toward me, and peers at the gap in the neckline of my gym shirt, either actually trying to see cleavage or pretending he is trying to see cleavage. I do not know which, nor do I care.)

Me (pulling shirt collar back): Watch it!

C: It’s okay. There’s nothing to see there anyway.

Because clearly, whether looking down my shirt is inappropriate or not is dependent on whether there are actually any boobs to see.

Square Dance Caller: Promenade left.

(I hold out my hands for C to take them. C reaches instead for my ass.)

Me: What are you doing?

C: Sorry. I thought this was the one where I hold your waist.

Me: There is no one where you hold my waist. There is definitely no one where you grab my butt.

C: I guess I still have a lot to master in the fine sport of square dancing.

Like how not to be a giant jackass? I mean, I realize that’s not spelled out in any kind of “how to square dance” instructions, but I think that if a student if a student deliberately did steps incorrectly in order to harass another student, it would not be unfair to deduct points from his grade. On a purely technical level, he has not demonstrated mastery of the skills.

Also, and I see this fully only now as a teacher myself, he was creating a situation where gym class was not safe for me. Like, even though I didn’t think he was likely to become more aggressive than he was being, he was still treating my body as though it existed for his pleasure. Defending myself against even just the humiliation was stressful, was tiring, was more than I should have had to do as a student.

About a week into the unit, I found Mrs. D in her office after class.

“I don’t want to be partners with C anymore,” I told her.

She raised an eyebrow. “We don’t always get what we want.”

I flushed. “No. I mean — He puts his hands in places –”

She cut me off. “It’s your responsibility to show him where his hands should go. Do you understand me?”

I understood perfectly: I would get no help from her.

Hating Gym: Volleyball Edition

So. I wrote a couple of times over at Fit and Feminist about my experiences with my lovely, charming — ahem! — ninth grade gym teacher. Basically, as evidenced by her handling of public weigh-ins and menarche, Mrs. D was approximately third last person on the planet who should have been teaching adolescents how to support their physical health.

Today, I move on to the PE volleyball unit, which was its own special blend of hell.

Because, you see, Mrs. D was also the junior varsity volleyball coach for the school. She took her volleyball seriously — so seriously, in fact, that she expected her gym students to be as skilled and competitive as the players on her team.

“No underhand serves here! Overhand, OVERHAND!”

“I can’t believe you missed that! There’s no excuse.”

Enter me.

It’s not that I’m not a good student. It’s not that I don’t try hard. It’s not even that I’m particularly uncoordinated or unathletic. It’s that volleyball is not my thing.

It’s true, at this time, books are my number one thing. Horses are second. In terms of PE-approved mainstream sports, though, basketball is the closest I have to a thing. That is, when I see a ball hurtling through space at my head, my instinctive action is to put my hands up and catch the fucker — not to hit it with extended arms or spike it down with fists. I maintain that this is not a terrible instinct to have though it does make me ill-suited for most of the main actions in volleyball.

As it turns out, though, I am not such a bad setter, perhaps because the spider-fingered action of setting is not so very different from creating sticky fingers to catch a basketball pass or rebound.

If I were teaching me — in a ninth grade PE class, mind you, not a competitive team — I like to think I would have noticed that. I like to think I would have said something supportive. I sure as hell would not have told me that my body was wrong for behaving as it did.

“You’re too big. You’re wasted as a setter. You have guy muscles, so you should use them to work on your overhand serves and spikes.”

I am already self-conscious about my body being too big, so being told as much and that I have “guy muscles” is not something I can take as a compliment. It is especially frustrating to be told these guy muscles mean I cannot try to do the thing I am good at and instead should spend more time doing the things I am not good at.

But this is gym class, and she is the teacher. In drills, I dutifully focus on the skills she’s set out for me. I am terrible at these things, so I try really, really hard to get better. I remain terrible. I spike the ball into the net. I toss the ball up for a serve and fail to make contact with it again, even a little bit. I spike the ball dangerously close to my classmate’s head; she is on the same side of the net as I am. During a serve where I actually make contact with the ball, I send it spinning twenty feet to the left, where it knocks Mrs. D’s clipboard out of her hand. I’d feel self-satisfied, except that it was completely and utterly an accident.

I never get any better, nor do I get any specific instruction in how to get better. I do, however, get a lot of disparaging remarks about how I’m “too scared of the ball” and “just not trying.” The former may well be true — see point about no specific instruction — but the latter is not.

The end of the unit: We break up into teams for two weeks of tournament play. Our test grade, yes, is based on how well our team ranks in the tournament.

On my team is W, a girl with whom I used to play middle school basketball. Given our respective strengths and positions, we had a fairly comfortable routine of me catching a rebound and sending it to her for shooting or dribbling downcourt. W also now plays JV volleyball for Mrs. D.

“I don’t care what she told you,” W says, glaring over at the teacher, whose nose is buried in her clipboard. “Serve underhand, bump when you need to to keep the ball in play, and when you can, set it up for someone who can spike.”

So I do, deciding that using less flashy skills competently is better than attempting showier feats with spectacular fail. Not only is our team more likely to score points and win games, but I am less likely to cause concussions. And until sending Mrs. D’s clipboard into her nose is an “accidentally on purpose” kind of thing, concussions are something I want to avoid.

Mrs. D is livid, though, just the same. She scowls every time I send over a predictable, easily returnable underhand serve. And I can actually see her roll her eyes and turn away every time I neatly float the ball for W or another teammate to spike. Lest you think Mrs. D is picking on me, I should point out that she has similar visible reactions anytime a student makes a move that might be considered mistimed, uncertain, timid, or careful.

At the beginning of the unit, we as students came to her with a wide range of volleyball skills and aptitude. By the end, very few had improved. Very few had fun.

Summer DVD 4: AM Yoga for Your Week by Rodney Yee

This DVD will be part of the giveaway portion of this series.

When I first purchased AM Yoga for Your Week, I did so because I was — and, quite frankly, continue to be — sold on the idea that multiple shorter practices equaled a better value for my money than did purchasing a DVD with a single longer practice. And ultimately, if I try every practice on the DVD only to discover that most of them aren’t quite my style, I’ve still gotten my money’s worth.

______________________________________________

Apologies for the glare. It’s as good as I was able to get without tilting it so far as to be unrecognizable.

Specs for A.M. Yoga for Your Week:

Yoga Style: Hatha, with a noticeable Iyengar influence. With the exception of a short seated flow in one of the segments, most poses are held for a few to several breaths.

Suited To: Generally speaking, people looking for a variety of shorter practices to incorporate into their daily routines. Because of the different focuses (foci?) of each segment, it’s relatively versatile in terms of working for different physical needs and abilities.

Props: A strap is recommended for the twisting segment and is offered as an explicit option for the backbending and forward bending segments. A bolster (done onscreen with a rolled up blanket) is recommended for the backbending segment; I also ended up using it for the forward bending segment. A block is recommended for the hip opening sequence; if you generally substitute a book, it should be one that’s sturdy enough to use it both “flat” and “sideways.”

Run Time: 110 minutes total, broken up into 5 stand-alone practices, each ranging from 20-25 minutes.

______________________________________________

Because Yee is Iyengar-trained, it’s pretty natural that there’s a lot of very specific talk about alignment in the postures. Which way to rotate legs, how far to rotate feet, how to support the low back in backbends. The quality of instruction in this DVD is excellent, and I could see where it could be particularly useful for folks who are newer (maybe even brand new) to yoga. It might be overwhelming to try to follow every instruction at once or to get fixated on exact measurements, but all of the instruction is there and can be incorporated a bit at a time, as the poses become more familiar.

Each segment is a stand-alone practice that focuses on a specific category of poses. Because it’s advertised as AM yoga, though there’s no reason one couldn’t try it at other times of day, I made sure to try each segment in the morning, when I am at my creakiest.

Standing Poses — A fairly straightforward sequence of common standing asanas: warriors 1 and 2, side angle, triangle, pyramid, wide-legged forward fold, ending with a seated cooldown. While it’s not a complicated practice it is fairly strong. There were a couple of places where I was mentally like, “It is too early for this,” though there was nothing about the sequence that was unsafe for me to do physically.

Twists — Some reclined, seated, and kneeling twists with some forward folds as neutralizing counter poses. How gentle or vigorous this is for an individual depends a lot on how deeply they take the twists, so it’s a pretty customizable segment.

Backbends — This starts out with a gentle reclined backbend done over a bolster. It was supported, relaxing, and very opening for my chest and shoulders. It continues with various backbends — crescent moon, cobra, camel, bow — interspersed with down dog as a neutralizing counter pose. At the end, there’s maybe 4 or 5 minutes of twists and forward bends to release the spinal muscles.

Forward Bends — This is a gentle, relaxing sequence of various forward bends. A few of them are standing, most are seated, and there’s a bit of reclined poses at the end. At the end of this, I was relaxed enough for a nap, which makes me wonder if it might be more suited as an evening sequence for some.

Hip Openers — This starts out with a seated flow: staff pose to cobbler’s pose to wide angle pose to cobblers pose to half boat to staff pose. It’s repeated a few times, I expect to warm up and lubricate the hip joints, which it does reasonably well. At least, my hips felt reasonably cooperative with the rest of the opening they were asked to do, which included a longer-held cobbler’s pose, pigeon (entered through down dog), fire log pose, and half fish. Overall, a calm and grounding sequence.

One thing I should point out is that A.M. Yoga for Your Week is not set up like Daily Energy. That is, the practices on A.M. Yoga are not as easily mix-and-matchable. Each segment has its own substantial-length savasana (well, as substantial as one could reasonably expect in a 20 minute practice). Additionally, there’s no way to combine segments on the menu page. I mean, you could certainly go back to the menu between segments to select the second one; there’s just no way to program it ahead of time.

As far as it being “current body friendly,” it’s in the same neutral-to-somewhat-positive ground that many of my current DVDs are. It talks about the benefits of yoga in terms of strengthening, improving flexibility, centering, and feeling better. I can get behind all of those. As far as imagery, Rodney Yee is the only person pictured. He’s trim, visibly muscled, and quite flexible. Certainly, that’s not to take anything away from him, but it’s not always the best visual guide for folks who don’t fit that body type. I know I keep saying it review after review, but I keep saying it because it continues to be a systemic issue.

This is getting re-homed because it’s just not my style, not because I have any objective complaints about the DVD. In fact, when Rodney Yee comes out with “Midafternoon Vinyasas for Your Week,” I’ll be pre-ordering that one.

If you’re interested in being entered in the giveaway for this DVD, please comment here, on my Facebook page, or on both for two entries. Please do so by June 12th as I”ll be announcing a winner on June 13th.

Hip Yoga: Nautical Variety

In case you’ve been practicing boat pose and were like, “Damn, I like feeling like I just set my abs, hip flexors, and quads on fire. If only there were more ways to do it!” Or, perhaps a bit more practically, “This boat thing looks interesting, but that first version just isn’t doing it for me.” So, happy fun variations for a variety of needs. (Bonus points for anyone who can guess how late at night I’m writing this.)

First, some floor variations that might be appropriate for people who were having some trouble, either physical or mental, with the sort of “classic” version of the pose:

[Video from ExpertVillage via YouTube.]

Also, boat pose works in chairs:

[This video also from ExpertVillage via YouTube.]

For folks who want to practice straightening the legs but need additional support, it is possible to use the arms:

[Video by and featuring WheelzOfFortune. Uploaded via YouTube.]

Or a strap:

[Video by and featuring Jennifer Coan. Uploaded via YouTube.]

For people looking to add some flow, one can slide boat into a vinyasa:

[Esther Ekhart instructing via Yoga with Ekhart and YouTube.]

I am particularly fond of this one because it combines some psoas strengthening (boat) with some psoas lengthening (table). Plus, it’s a nice shoulder opener, and my shoulders always need opening.

Another option is to take boat on a diagonal:

[Video from YogaTuneUp via YouTube.]

Abdominally, this incorporates the obliques. In terms of hip flexors, I find that it’s a good way to isolate the work done by each side. This can be good for me when I’m having hip issues and either can’t work one side as much — or, conversely, when I’d like to work one side more.

Finally, if you’re like, “Boat pose is just not fun without some upper body work too,” you can stick your boat up in the air.

[Video by Jennifer Coan via YouTube.]

Everyday Yoga: How Does This Thing Work?

Since there was such a great response to the Everyday Yoga idea, I thought it would be good to hash out some of the details.

How I do tree pose at the grocery store. (Though I am not at the grocery store in this pic.) Note the raised foot’s close proximity to the ground. This way, if I fall, it is not such a noticeable happening.

This is the draft version of what I’m thinking will happen. Because this is the draft version, you should feel free to offer any suggestions, improvements, or alternatives you have — especially if they will meaningfully affect your ability or desire to contribute.

1. On pre-determined days of the month — let’s say, the 15th and the 30th, shall we? — I’ll post a call for pics of a specific yoga posture. I’ll also link to some tutorials, hopefully one text and one video, for folks who aren’t super familiar with it. (Of course, if a particular pose just sends up red flags when you think about trying it yourself, you should feel free to modify or opt out as you see fit.)
2. Sometime over the course of the next 2 weeks, you submit a pic to me (anytimeyoga@gmail.com) of you in the pose. At the time you send it, please let me know: 1) whether I need to alter the image for your privacy (e.g., pixeling or cropping out the face); 2) how you would like to be credited (full name, first name, pseudonym, etc.).
3. I will compile the pics and post the results on the following 16th or 31st (or 1st), respectively. That is, the one 15 days from the initial request — giving folks 14 days to submit and me 1 full day to finalize the post.
4. When I post, I will include both copyright and commenting policy notes. That is, all pictures remain the property of the people who submitted them and may not be reposted without explicit permission from the owner of the pic. As for commenting, I’m going to suggest that this is not the forum to critique anyone else’s pose unless they specifically request help. That is, someone should feel free to comment with something like, “I’m the third picture in, and my left big toe always feels weird when I do this. Any suggestions?” to get feedback. But unless there is such a comment, this is probably not the place to go, “Um, shouldn’t that person’s knee be bent more/less/differently/etc.?” That also said, I think it would be fine to say, “I look like X photo in this pose, and I’m having Y unpleasant sensation. Suggestions?”
5. If folks want to submit after the cutoff date — for example, if people find the project at a later date — I will still happily take them and edit them in, but it will be on a “do this as I have time” basis and not an “I will make this a high blogging priority” basis.
6. Starting as soon as I finish this post (so, now) there is an “everyday yoga” tag on the side. This is where all such posts will be collected.

Main questions I have:

• Is 2 weeks a good amount of time between posts? I wanted something long enough to let people submit without feeling rushed but short enough that the project felt continuous.
• Are there ways people would prefer to submit other than email? I’m open to that; I just couldn’t think of any.
• How does the commenting policy sound? I’m trying to create some kind of balance for people to be able to use some of the photos for springboards for asking their own questions. However, I also want to make sure that people can submit photos of their bodies without stressing about judgment, however well-intentioned, from it. I know there’s a balance here, and I know it’s probably never going to be perfect — but I’d like to make sure it’s as workable as one can reasonably expect it to be.

Additionally, if you have any specific poses that you’d like to see included, please comment and mention them here so that I have a written record to come back to.

Consider this “open commenting” on the project details. Unless Big Changes happen, I will probably post the first call for submissions on June 15. (Yes, I do want to do it sooner. But a regular pattern will help me keep with it over the long term. So. Patience.)