Kind of obsessed with the idea of partner yoga. If I can convince my favorite yoga buddy Jordan to give it a try, I’ll be a very happy girl. Don’t know if we can get on the level of these two anytime soon though.
(Source: sailorskankk)
Didn’t know other people loved underwear handstands as much as I do, but I am so happy to see it’s a thing. A super sexy thing.
(via yoginiyoda)
Today’s Practice: 1 June 2011
Recapping a day late again, I guess I can always make time for yoga but maybe not for Tumblr. Oh well, I still had an awesome practice yesterday and am really excited to share what I found:
First up: Engaging Muladhara, the Root Chakra from Yoga Today
This short (28 min) kundalini class, led by Sarah Kline, got me SO HIGH. I thought the Maya Fiennes practice had been pretty stimulating already and then this practice blew my mind. Not only were my lips and fingers tingling, but so was my entire face. This may sound hard to believe if you haven’t tried much kundalini yoga, but when I engage my root chakra in the right way, I can literally feel the energy rising up my spine and it’s amazing. Sarah is a great instructor and really knows how to explain the poses well. There was one specific pose she included that combined an abdominal hold with breath of fire, and she repeated the pose 3 times, each time holding it for a minute. It made me pretty exhausted at the time, but today my abs look and feel a lot tighter. I will definitely be incorporating this video into my regular rotation, try it, you’ll like it.
And then: Opening to Hanumanasana from Yoga Today
I am quickly developing a hardcore yoga crush on Adi Amar. In this video, she begins with a hip opening flow leading into hanumanasa, otherwise known as the yoga splits. As a former high school cheerleader, I’ve spent plenty of time stretching my muscles in all sorts of unhealthy ways, applying loads of IcyHot to my inner thighs, and sitting in the splits until gravity works its magic. Still, it’s been quite a few years since I’ve been able to get all the way down. However, Adi does such a fantastic job of gradually opening up the hip flexors and hamstrings that once I finally attempted full hanumanasana near the end of the practice, I was only about an inch off the floor! She also offers plenty of variations to accommodate different levels of flexibility and encourages viewers to practice safely. I loved the ending stretches in this video as well, (happy baby, bug, etc.). After enjoying all of Adi’s videos this much, I’m certainly inclined to purchase some of her full length classes from the Yoga Today website.
Sexy.
Yes!!! Been looking for something like this for a while.
If you’ve ever wondered what it really means to target a certain chakra, now you know!
(Source: somethingherpingthiswaycomes)
Crow pose inspiration :)
(Source: exerciseforfittness)
Today’s Practice: 30 May 2011
Recapping this a day late since I was exhausted yesterday…
Since it’s finally nice outside, I’ve been itching to go for a run but have postponed it every day in favor of yoga. Obviously it’s possible (and healthy!) to do both, but time constraints usually force me to choose one or the other, and you know how I love my yoga time. But yesterday I updated my iPod with some dope new beats and hit the streets, and DAMN I should run more often. I felt great afterwards, though my face was melting, and I am definitely feeling a healthy burn in my legs today.
My yoga practice was pretty fantastic as well. As I mentioned, I wanted to try yogayak’s Grounding Afternoon Practice, available for free on YouTube. This practice is led by Dagmar of Montezuma Yoga in Montezuma, Costa Rica, which made me wish I was anywhere but a smelly dorm room in Massachusetts. Her style of instruction is very simple and calming. Unlike other instructors, she does not feel the need to fill silence with comments and allows you to hold poses quietly which I really enjoyed. The practice itself was a fairly standard intermediate vinyasa flow, beginning with sun salutations, transitioning into warriors 1, 2 and 3, and ending with other basic poses like pigeon, half moon and wheel. At the end of the practice, I was feeling so calm from the yoga and so tired from my run that I stayed in shivasana for about 20 minutes.
Yogayak’s videos are not the highest quality, and if your computer speakers are as horrible as mine, then you may want to try connecting your computer to a TV or at least a better set of speakers before watching these videos. Still, full length practices are rarely available for free, especially at the intermediate level, so I would still recommend this video for a satisfying, standard yoga practice. Be careful though, if you’re at all like me then you’ll catch a travel bug from this video and start checking out Montezuma Yoga’s retreat schedule and flight prices to Costa Rica immediately afterwards!
