Explore Big Postures
These classes are intermediate or advanced in that they involve weight bearing on the wrists and shoulders, inversions, and strength drills. As such they are less accessible. Use them as starting points, you do you, and listen to your own body. Build strength, feel your power, explore big poses.
Summer Strength: bakasana
Weave together plank, side plank, open shoulders and ready legs to play with - not necessarily do, just explore the elements of - crow pose bakasana. I recommend a bolster/couch cushion and a block on standby.
Long Inhale
This is a tutorial designed to go with an individualized practice; I explain and give options for details of the sequence and expect the student to practice later on their own to some fluency with the sequence. The video - my teaching with detail - takes 90 minutes. A personal practice would take less.
Explore lenghening the inhale with complex postures, several of which require a mobility in ankles, knees, and hips (virasana, full squat with feet together, and bound half lotus). śirṣansana and a 12 breath pranayama are included. You can see the stick figures here.
This sequence aims at a particular breath and learning to create boundaries/work without overworking. It satisfies our need for ‘deep’ without overtaxing the body or going too fast.
Centered shoulders
Explore the necessary shoulder joint actions for weight bearing on the arms, from adho mukha svanasana to pincha mayurasana.
Imperfect Inversions
an hour that includes grounding, breath, and just enough prep for headstand and shoulder stand. I do not instruct these poses; I trust you to make your own best decisions. If you have an upside down practice, this might be just what you need after months of pandemic and social upheaval. It’s big but little. Perfect in being ordinary.
Support for arm balances and inversions
90 minutes. often these more ‘advanced’ poses are dissected into shoulder alignment, core strength, range of motion questions. And while all of that is true and useful to some extent, there is also a question about tapping into the body’s own - intrinsic - co-ordination and all together now functioning. Your brain doesn’t think in anatomical terms. Neither do your muscles. They work as a whole. Play with this sequence and then plug the really interesting to your body pieces into your own practices. Bring all the props for this one: two blocks, strap, blanket, and a bolster or something for a restorative close.
Hip Strength
This is a low to the ground practice with a couple of lunges and ustrasana camel pose but no body weight on the arms. Explore stability and range all around the hip. 60 minutes, I suggest a blanket to kneel on.
Strength and Freedom: Shoulder
75 minute sequence. use Jalandhara banda to develop presence and range in the upper back while promoting shoulder stability and movement. Explore how engagement and strength are actually parts of ‘release’ or ‘freedom’. This is not a terribly advanced class, but starts with 10 minutes of breath work and weaves in vasisthasthana and ardha chandrasana.
Spring Handstands
messy handstands, but still. 90 minute sequence. Come spring, a little playfulness and energy is good for our practice. It’s good for our lungs lymph muscles and blood. It’s good for our mood. Have a strap, a couple of blocks, and a blanket for this sequence that works to integrate upper body/shoulder strength with low back/leg skills. It’s all about the exploring, and nothing about ‘nailing’ a pose.
Uddiyana Bandha
Desikachar often said yoga is 90% waste removal. The whole concept of ‘purification’ is a loaded one, both within our western culture and it’s obsession with diet and weight, and in some versions of yoga where the body needs to be ‘overcome’. And yet, and yet. There is a truth to the idea of ‘digesting’ our experience and yoga’s role in it. Explore uddiyana bandha - and the idea that asana can help us digest what’s happened in our lives. Through backbends, which is a little atypical. But I wanted to get some clear understanding of ribcage biomechanics and poses involvement.
Integrating front and back body
Grab a block and a strap and give me 75 minutes to look at some biomechanics around weight bearing on the arms in support of inversions and big back bends. Includes headstand, shoulder stand, and urdhva dhanurasana. Consider how ‘peace’ is an outcome of doing the work, rather than a spiritual bypass.