50 Mins
Shoulder Rotations & Freeing the Upper Back
This is an exploration on how we can free the shoulders and open the upper back. Working through the different rotations in the arms and direction of the fingers in a way we can’t with other parts of our body. After all our feet cannot rotate all the way around to face behind us and yet are fingers can. This is accessible and an interesting way to practice that creates big change in the freedom we feel in our upper body.
Read More60 Mins
Backbending - What’s behind us?
When we start to open the chest and front body we often do this with movements that place our attention behind us, where we cannot see what is going on. Whether this is with practices that open the shoulders, arch our spines or contract our glutes to effectively and safely master back bends, big and/or small. The primary focus here is actually the legs and the glutes, leading to ustrasana (camel), but the fun is on the journey, not the destination as we bring awareness to the unseen parts of our bodies.
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Palms - Connecting the Palm to the Shoulders
We often take for granted how much what we do with our hands has to do with the movements in our shoulders. Here we practice (with the the bricks as a learning tool) how to open the palms and access a route in to opening the armpits, shoulders and upper back. An open chest helps our posture, elevates our mood and can tip toe us towards fun back bends and arm balance play. As well as helping us strengthen our arms and shoulder joint.
Read More60 Mins
Revolving - Strength & Stability
When we twist our spine dictates how much we can move in either direction. As well as the lats and obliques to name just two big muscles that help. We can deepen our twists with the breath and longer holds, slowly slowly unravelling the patterns and observing them. To aid in the twist mobility we also lengthen the inner line of the legs (adductors) and hamstrings to free the pelvis and waist. There is also fun to be had exploring arm balances, weight distribution and build strength for our ability to do this but also for the longevity of our bones and building density through weight baring.
Read More65 Mins
Binding Times - Rotation, Opening & Folding
In our previous class we focused on twists and the movements that concentrated on what happened above the pelvis. This week we rotate and take it a step further, by including hip openers (external rotation) and the option to take some stronger binds or cross overs that require an even bigger rotation through the torso. By including some hip openers we can observe how this helps us to free up movement in the spine as well as testing out what’s going on in the hips and where we may need to open and or strengthen more. Please take extra lift for your seat when doing some of this work, do not ignore joint pain in your knees!! Always support and adjust or come out completely of anything that does not feel right.
Read More65 Mins
Twisting - Global Rotation
I think when we twist it’s a good idea to view our body from a 360 degree perspective. Turning to the side or revolving our pelvis, waist, ribs, upper thoracic, collar bones, neck and head? Then there’s the response; how does it feel when we are twisting in the front of the body compared to the back, from the right side to the left depending on the direction we are going. In this practice we are not simply twisting or turning around, we are navigating the full circumference of the body.
Read More65 Mins
Vishuddha - Throat Chakra
The 5th Chakra, Vishuddha is located in the throat. It governs self expression, communication and ability to speak one’s truth. To speak and be heard. When imbalanced we are prone to gossiping, interupting and dominating words over others. When deficient our voice is small and weak, there is a shyness and fear of speaking. It is the pathway of communication, it’s associated element is sound and it’s energetic colour is blue. In this class we use the physical practices that open the throat, as well as the breath practices, meditation and bija mantra that helps balance and open this chakra. I mention here but it’s important to note that the meditation and mantra practices will be most profound when practiced for 15 - 20 mins daily. Most likely for 40 days!!
Read More60 Mins
Vertical Spine
I would say this was Part 2 to last week’s class entitled Up Up and Away but of course can be practiced alone. From teaching this in person I learnt that the vertical spine and being able to lift up out of the armpits is fundamental to balancing safely upside down. It’s also key to ease, I never felt as though it was strength alone that kept me balancing in inversions, it’s about strong fundamentals, foundations and a lightness that comes with practice and letting go of fear and knowing where and when to prop. This is preparatory, you absolutely do not have to do the full inversions, but can enjoy the process and the preparation along the way. Shoulder and upper back opening and side body lengthening in all it’s glory.
*Please note we had problems with WiFi when we recorded this so my phone had to do the Zooming and the recording.
Read More60 Mins
Balancing on our Hands
Don’t be perturbed by the idea of taking more weight in to your hands and practicing arm balances. There are many stages along the way and ways to balance with support so the hands and wrists do not take too much weight or any at all. Strong legs, as well as strong arms and shoulders are key but to balance and create postures where we balance on our hands rather than our feet requires good hip and shoulder mobility so there’s lots of this preparatory work here as well as twists and forward folds. It is also key to maintain length in our abdomen, and protect the integrity of spine so we don’t get overly compressed in our endeavours.
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Heart Leading the Brain
We don’t often think of our yoga practice in terms of it’s coherence and integration. Or maybe you do, sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. What is key as we start to switch on to the fact that everything is connected, is that we do not move in isolation and we do not exist in isolation. Most of the movements in this practice focus on us leading with the heart, opening and lifting the chest whilst remaining stable and strong in the legs and lower back/abdomen. One action doesn’t over take everything else, even if it is a focal point, the whole body needs to integrate to make the asanas feel coherent and so we don’t injure ourselves in the process too ;-)
Read More60 Mins
Spiralling Arms
This is like daily flossing for your shoulders. Our shoulders are connected down to our finger tips, to our collar bones and sternum at the front and to our ribs at the back. There are so many ways in which range of movement can be limited, whilst we often over do some movements and under do others we find ease and restriction sometimes in different directions. Take this practice easy and keep coming back to it, or take certain movements from the practice, little pieces and see if you can do a different one every day to keep the shoulders moving healthily in all directions.
Read More65 Mins
Bolster love and Digestive Health
The sight of a bolster instantly made everyone in class think of relaxing. The support it offers and what it is usually used for is synonomous with letting go. In this practice we use the bolster in a more active way in our standing poses as well as in more supportive and restorative ways when it comes to certain seated and supine poses. The bolster massages our kidneys, adrenals and posterior diaphragmatic area, whilst creating length and wideness in the stomach, liver and front diaphragmatic region. It’s preferable to have a bolster but if you don’t have one you can use a rolled up yoga mat, a sofa cushion or a pillow (or two).
Read More65 Mins
Organising Ourselves - Moving Directions
A lot of poses that make up our yoga practice involve us moving in different directions. Not only up and down or left and right, but sending different parts of ourselves in different directions. We are often asking the legs to move in one direction whilst our arms move in another. With backbends this is especially true and especially complex. For me one of the biggest illuminators was the direction I move my pelvis and how I work my legs. There are also lots of surprise ways to move in to a backbend or experience one in many different ways … from many different directions.
Read More70 Mins
Twists with a Twist
Twists with a twist refers to the way in which we take parts of our body from one side and cross them over to the other. If some families of twists feel confined this sequencing is more about elongation and rotation of the ribs. Like a combination of side lengthening, twists and forward extensions. To gain the greatest ease, mobility and length we make repetitive movements that feel like pulsing in and out. Less holds, more movement.
Read More70 Mins
This class is juicy. We lengthen, lift, revolve and extend through our side body. Starting by opening the groins and lengthening the inner thigh we create more room for the diaphragm to move in space. In turn this allows us to lift out of our pelvis, open our chest, twist and side stretch with increased ranged of movement. This sets us up perfectly to move and balance in more challenging standing pavrittas (twists). This can all be developed from simple asanas practiced passively at first to enable us to hold for longer periods and in turn see more significant change in the body that helps us develop the more complex movements and asanas with greater ease.
Read More65 Mins
I love adding a belt in to my practice. It can feel experimental if you are not used to it but then you begin to see how much more accessible some postures are, especially if the belt adds the extra length to the arms to reach the toes, countering the need to round the upper back when getting to the toes is a struggle or restricted by the length of the hamstrings. Belts also help us feel and see the connection of the arms to the shoulders and the chest, that these are moving parts of a whole and not separate entities. I hope you enjoy this practice with the belt as much as I do.
Read More70 Mins
Creating stability in the shoulder blades and the ability to allow them to move up and down so our arms can move over our heads or support us should we go upside down is pivotal to a healthy joint and movement practice. Here we look at a range of shoulder ‘opening’ practices, both isolating movements and exploring ranges of motion in different poses such as binds, spinx, reverse namaskar, gormuktasana (eagle), forearm balance and handstand. Of course there are many stages along the way to build towards the weight baring poses, all practices that stand alone without the need to progress necessarily today, but building blocks along the way.
Read More70 Mins
It is really easy to over look certain aspects of your practice, lots of opening of the back body for instance and neglecting the front body. Lots of active, not enough rest, lots of yin style practices, not enough active for example. I’m guilty of this when it comes to my quads and hip flexors, in comparison to my hamstrings their movement and flexibility is more limited. Which in turn influences how much we can lift and arch in backbends. Here we look at practices which help us lengthen our quads, hip flexors, psoas and also shoulders so we can work towards the “dancer poses”. For which I have an image of the dancer touching her toes to the back of her head when in reality mine only reach my lower ribs even on a good day!!
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I think of this sequence as a story of poses where we asked our arms to reach out. A gesture of moving forward but often there is something holding us back. In this case some tight shoulders or a need for length in our side bodies. Reaching out, reaching forward, reaching up, reaching over, reaching back. Learning how we can make our limbs longer often comes from decongesting the connecting muscles in to our torso. We find we have more freedom and range of motion to move the limbs more freely, with greater extension and connection to our core.
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The shoulders are a fascinating part of the body. They are responsible for lifting and moving our arms and are connected to our sides, back and front torso which then connect to our hips. So we are never uniquely just lifting our arms, we can adapt and focus on lifting and lowering lots of different connecting muscles. We will then see how the stabilisation of the shoulder and the surrounding muscles, careful engagement of the core and connection to the pelvis and legs helps us in to arm balances.
Read More75 Mins
Our breath has different qualities depending on the movements we are making. We can observe these changes and our awareness of how the breath changes by observing it throughout our practice. It is hard to focus and feel the quality of the breath, or take long steady breaths when our body is under strain (when we hold a particularly challenging posture). The quality changes depending on whether we are holding, maintaining or resting. It changes if we are upside down, forward folding, back bending, side stretching, twisting or lying down. Here we practice variety; in speed, in repetition, in orientation, in variation. In practice we trust.
Read More75 Mins
Holding a posture is often the strongest part of the practice physically. Then we practice staying, making the pose homely so that we can then experience feeling; the doing has been done, nothing has to be held. After the doing and the holding the homely state will start to come more quickly with practice. What we can create, maintain and enjoy in our practice begins to feel limitless and we find a state of peacefulness in many poses that may have started off feeling stressful or difficult. Our mission is for a state of being where feeling homely comes naturally no matter the difficulty. Here we explore breathing whilst holding in a variety of postures that lift and expand our upper rib cage and shoulders, challenging our balance as well as looking for different breathing patterns when the body isn’t straining or stressed.
Read More75 Mins
So much of what we do rolls from one thing in to the next, we don’t allow for space between one event or thought and the next. The problem is that things can then become a jumble and we can take on too much. We can use our practice to observe the space in between and how this helps us to not only calm the nervous system but move more freely and more spaciously. The space between the inhale and the exhale, the exhale and the inhale, the space between the pelvis and the ribs, the shoulders and the neck, the ankle and the knees, the eye brows even .. you get the idea. In this practice we look at creating more space in the chest and shoulders through the extension, movement and placement of the arms and legs in different plains. It’s fun and uplifting to move freely :-)
Read More75 Mins
During hot summer days we need to balance our energy before we become depleted. In times when we over heat we need to devise ways to soothe our body and nervous system and try not to over stimulate or exhaust ourselves. In this class we trace the ebb and flow of energy and try to incorporate practices that have a cooling quality. This is especially important if your body has a tendency to over heat or become hyper reactive when it is hot or when we feel over heated (when feeling angry or reactive). In Ayurveda Pita types are particularly prone to becoming over heated when it’s hot outside and need to avoid over heating and becoming over stimulated to avoid total combustion. Chill.
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For me I have spent so many years dedicated to lengthening my hamstrings I have relatively neglected to balance out the length in my front body. Here we look at a practice which requires us to lengthen and open the front side of our body. This is a significant component when back bending and using the curve through the entire spine and not just segmenting the spine or just using the most flexible parts (lower back and neck) to move in to a back bend. Most of these poses require us to lengthen the front of the thigh, strengthen the glutes and mobilise the upper back (dorsal). It also gives us some insight in to where we hold on and where we need to let go. A life long balance to seek and find.
Read More75 Mins
When we twist in our bodies we are often spiralling a part of the body from small to big or criss crossing from one side to another. Physical twists can be used to untwist our minds but this is something you need to explore after your practice and see how inner turmoil can be lifted, softened or maybe even resolved. Twists can feel intense, you learn a lot about the ways your body can and can’t move in certain directions. They also unlock a lot of freedom and movement in our bodies and help create more balance and evenness.
Read More75 Mins
When we focus our attention on opening one place we can experience many asanas from a whole new perspective. We continue with our opening and lifting of the upper torso and see how this is not only applied to back bends but can also apply to forward folds, arm balances and inversions. All poses that require us to extend and lengthen our front body.
Read More75 Mins
What does something we do with one part of our body do to affect another part? This is the constant see saw we explore in our Yoga practice. Everything is connected and we can see this when we feel that no movement we take is singular in it’s experience. What we do with one part of our body has an effect on another. Here we explore the act of back arching, principally by opening the upper back but in such a way we feel the movement all the way through the legs so the body as a whole comes in to the arch. Then we start to notice less the extent to which our back is bending but more the capacity we have for our front body to fully open and lengthen.
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When we cross over from right to left or from left to right it involves a twist/revolving movement through the spine. It also allows you to focus on feeling and stretching one side of the body at a time, principally the back side. We can also see how a twist or a turn can impact our ability to breath in to each lung. We also experience that there is asymmetry between our two sides. There is lots of exploration in this class, not just twists but cross body movements and accessible arm balances and transitions. Good training for the vestibular system too, learning about our sense of balance and spatial orientation. Have fun :-)
Read More75 Mins
I started a little investigatory research in to the lymphatic system and it’s function and purpose for our bodies. Teaching people I always notice certain areas where people are ‘stuck’, where the body doesn’t respond to movement instructions to ‘open’, that can look confined, shortened or congested. In brief the lymphatic system maintains fluid levels in our body, it acts as a drainage system that moves fluid from body tissue in to blood circulation, it helps us fight infection and gets rid of any waste cells make. We need to maintain it’s flow for a healthy immune system and one way we can do this is through diaphragmatic breathing and through Yoga. Specifically where we incorporate postures that open and stretch across the chest, arm pits, groin and where are legs are inverted. This all helps lymphatic flow and drainage, and helps dust off feelings of lethargy and sluggishness. Hopefully this practice will energise you and get things moving. Enjoy :-)
Read More75 Mins
In this class we will explore the idea of counter balancing our movements and creating a sense of equilibrium. We move through a sequence of poses where we notice how we are asking parts of our body to move in opposite directions from one another, simultaneously moving apart. If we over use one part and under use the other it creates instability, so we work to try and balance ourselves evenly, as one part goes up, another goes down, as one extends forwards the other goes backwards. This thought process can be applied to almost every movement, an exploration of physics. We focus mainly on forward facing asanas where we split our legs and build towards lifting in to forearm balance and headstand without necessarily lifting both our feet off the ground.
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In this class we explore where an action begins. When we ask are feet to turn out or take our hands out to the sides. The movements come from the hips or the shoulders, the movement is a whole limb not just the distill ends. We play with different rotations of the feet and hands and explore how what we are being asked to do and our ‘success’ depends on how the legs and the arms are able to move in the joint. Put simply I could say this is a hip focused class without the traditional poses you would associate with ‘hip opening’. I love exploring the asanas (poses) in this way, it’s intriguing and adds a new layer of enquiry to our practice and help us ‘crack the code’, as one of my teachers puts it. Understanding more about the shapes we make with our body and how they work can be illuminating and enable us to move deeper.
Read More75 Mins
The abdominals muscles are made up of the rectus abdominis, transversus abdominis and the internal and external obliques. In brief they provide support for the spine, support and protect our internal organs and help to regulate breathing. Muscles get stronger in the lengthening process (eccentric muscle contraction). Put simply it is when a muscle lengthens when it contracts rather than when it shortens and contracts. In this class we explore a huge variety of ways in which we lengthen and strengthen our abdominal muscles without a single sit up in sight. There’s lots of variety, movements in all directions and an exploration of all the abdominals muscles.
Read MoreIf you are spending long periods of time sitting, whether this is at a desk, driving or feeding a new baby the pull in the body to slump becomes harder to resist. Our focus in this class is how we can counter the effects on the upper back (the hunch) through shoulder/chest openers and twists. There are so many options to relieve discomfort and a lot of the postures can be taken individually and practiced regularly on their own for relief. Never be intimidated by the length of a class, we are not doing this particular class in order to achieve a deeper backbend or a fancy arm balance. This is like first aid and does not need to sequential if you do not have the time to follow the full class.
Read MoreSometimes you realise there are elements of your practice you are neglecting or ignoring. This can be consciously or unconsciously. It’s always nice to practice the things that come to us effortlessly and that we enjoy whilst resisting the things that make us uncomfortable or are practices that we don’t enjoy. Blockages can be physical, if we are injured or feeling poorly certain practices should be avoided, but it is deciphering if we are always avoiding the same things because of what we tell ourselves we feel about this certain movement or practice. Sometimes it’s about finding a different path, a different perspective and a new way of approaching or looking at something. Backbends are the perfect practice to explore this. When they come easy the practices are energising and fun and make you feel strong and alive. But when you you feel stuck, heavy or resistant they can leave the body and mind (ego) feeling depleted and deflated. This practice gives an accessible route in to back bending/front lengthening that can be kept very simple or advanced as your mood, body or practice decides. One thing to emphasise is that back bending shouldn’t cause you lower back pain. Once we learn to use our legs and open the upper back and chest properly the lower spine and pelvis are completely stable. Please discontinue practising any movements that cause pain or lasting discomfort.
Read MoreOne element that is hard to avoid in any style or level of Yoga class is shoulder mobility. Rarely is flexibility over strength or strength over flexility the solution, it is a happy interchange between the two. This class we focus on mobility and gaining greater range of motion in the shoulder area, which includes the connections to the chest (muscles and bones), the ribs and upper back. With repetition of certain actions and movements we see how this has a dynamic effect on the movement range of our upper torso and how our body has the potential to use this information to practice asanas that require more weight baring. Primarily because our body feels lighter, we are no longer over using and creating stress in the same and often the wrong muscles.
Read MoreMoving from our centre helps us to balance, stops us from falling and enables us to move with increased awareness in all directions. In this class we investigate how a balanced “core” that is both strong and flexible can help us twist, open and lift our chest, backbend, forward fold, roll, invert, and of course do ab-centric asanas too. You can do just about anything and find healthy, pain free movement patterns that will strengthen your practice and help you prevent and/or observe imbalances in your body.
Read MoreBy changing the direction we place our palms we can change the experience of the arms, shoulder girdle and chest and completely transform some of our backbends. We also start to consider kumbaka as a moment, a pause at the top of our inhale that can reveal a profound stillness. Our practice culminates with an introduction to Maha Mudra.
Read MoreMobility in the shoulders comes hand in hand with mobility in the connections to the torso. Here we explore how a wide ‘wing’ span can create width in the chest, improved balance and more freedom in the shoulders.
Read MoreFreeing the breath by lifting the chest and lengthenin the legs. Lengthening the front body
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