June 9, 2017
Posture Guiding
If a student is struggling to guide themselves into a posture in a safe manner and the instructor is concerned that they may become injured as a result of their poor technique, hands on adjustments can be used to guide a student into the correct posture.
November 16, 2016
Place your fingertips above the upper lip, stiffen the muscles of your lips and slide your index fingers over the area underneath your nose to the sides of your mouth and then around the bottom of your mouth (below the lower lip).
September 20, 2016
When practiced correctly, it introduces the practitioner to all the processes that will be encountered on the pranayama path: heightened sun energy activated by the breath retention and the sweet flow of relaxation that comes with slowly releasing the breath.
August 15, 2016
You know that feeling when you leave a good yoga class. You’re euphoric. Every cell of your body thanks you for giving it exactly what it needs. You tell yourself, “I’m going to practice yoga forever. I always want to feel like this.” And for awhile — three months, six months, maybe even a year — you’re committed to a regular practice and feeling wonderful. Then something gets in the way — a short illness, an important meeting — and you skip a class or a home session. You justify it because you’re busy and you’ve been doing so well. Then it happens again. Soon, you’re out of your yoga groove and struggling to get motivated again. Why resistance happens It’s part of human nature that we tend to self-sabotage and procrastinate. Psychologists find that this behavior is often learned in early childhood and continues into adulthood, unless you take […]
July 15, 2016
To the casual student of yoga, it may seem that teaching yoga merely means demonstrating how to correctly perform asanas. The advanced student, or yoga teacher in training, knows better. In addition to the spiritual aspects of yoga practice, there are so many other technical pieces involved. One of the most important is sequencing. You can think of sequences at three different levels. There is, of course, the order in which asanas are performed. But good sequencing involves giving thought to the mini-sequences needed to attain a given pose, as well as the big picture of how to sequence moving between different pose categories (standing poses to floor poses, for example). While understanding the principles of sequencing is crucial to creating a great yoga class, it can seem daunting to new teachers. In our 200 hour teacher training, we teach the 66 basic yoga postures and some 100 variations. It’s […]
July 5, 2016
We’ve all experienced the sensation of being moved by powerful music. Maybe a certain sad song always makes your eyes fill with tears, a piece of classical music makes your spine tingle, or a bright, happy song forces you to dance. These experiences give you just a taste of the powerful effect mantra and mantra chanting can have on your life. Whereas a song can transform your mood, mantra chanting can transform your very existence. What is mantra? Mantra, simply defined, is a sacred Sanskrit syllable or phrase which is repeated to powerful effect. While mantras are used in many spiritual traditions, they originated in the Tantric lore and ancient scriptures known as Vedas. They are used up to this day in India. The source of all mantras (known as the pranava mantra) is Aum (or Om). This root syllable represents the fundamental unity of existence and symbolizes four states […]
June 21, 2016
First you decide to take the life-changing plunge to become a yoga teacher. Next, you must find the yoga teacher training program that’s right for you. This is no small task. One big consideration is where the training will take place. The location you choose has the power to shape your experience. Check in with yourself and ask some key questions: During my training, do I want to wake up in my own bed every morning? Or am I hankering for a physical journey as well as a spiritual one? Is your favorite studio with your favorite teacher offering a training that’s only a mile or two from home? Or do you long to experience life in an ashram with a view of the majestic Himalayas? Or beautiful South India? For some, circumstances dictate that you must stick close to home and perhaps stretch out your training over a period […]
April 15, 2016
When people come to a yoga class, on some level they know it is not the same as taking a Crossfit or circuit training class. Even a new or casual student has an intuition that yoga is something deeper. Yoga is not an exercise regimen. The eight limbs of yoga provide a spiritual way of life designed to unite us with the whole of existence. There is a tendency in the West to focus on only one limb of yoga, the asanas, or postures. While there are undoubtedly benefits to engaging with yoga on even one level, as a teacher, you want to authentically embrace the entire spiritual system if you wish to serve as an example for your students. When you set out to teach, you are committing to living a yogic lifestyle. You will live yoga and pass it onto others. We offer these nine foundational steps to […]
March 15, 2016
Science is Catching up With Thousands of Years of Meditation Wisdom It’s believed that meditation has been around for 5,000 years, originating in India. According to the latest research and oral history, the yogic tradition of meditation can be traced back to Shiva, a great spiritual master who systematized both yoga and tantra about 7000 years ago. Around 400-100 B.C.E. Patanjali documented some of those teachings in the Yoga Sutras. Millions of people have felt the many benefits of a regular meditation practice in one of its many forms (mindfulness awareness, transcendental, vipassana, yogic, and others). While scholars in the West first learned of ancient meditation teachings in the 18th century, it wasn’t until the 1960s and 70s that the practice of meditation became more popular with westerners. Today, for many people meditation has become decoupled from its roots in the religious traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism, allowing it to […]