Category Archives: Poses

Yoga For Emotional and Mental Stability

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In Class This Week, we’ll focus on three things:
  1. Lunges – We’ll practice variations of the lunge pose, including Warrior 1 modifications, low lunge and high lunge. These poses stretch the groin and legs, strengthen your legs and arms and increase your balance.
  2. Emotional and Mental Stability – We’ll do an 8-minute, 4-pose soothing Kundalini Yoga set (kriya) that does wonders for your nervous system in a very short amount of time and will leave you feeling mentally and emotionally calm, relaxed and stable. It’s my favorite – works every time! Oh yeah!!
  3. Pranic Meditation – In this 5-minute meditation, you’ll focus on your breath and the prana (life force) that is carried by your breath. According to Yogi Bhajan, this meditation “fertilizes the brain” to help eliminate depression and fatigue, provides a constant flow of energy, and boosts your health and intuition.
I hope you will join me this week for this very beneficial practice for your physical, mental and emotional health!

Yoga Is A Balancing Act

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In last week’s classes, we focused on balance. Yoga is a great tool to increase your balance and restore your balance it if it’s gotten away from you.

When I first started taking yoga classes, my balance was way off. I had always had really good balance. Anytime I’d go through a parking lot, I’d turn the sidewalk edges and cement parking stop thingies into my personal “balance beams” and boogie on across them with a big grin and no problem. However, it got to where I could not balance! Ugh! How frustrating! After taking yoga classes for a while, I noticed that my balance was back and I could have fun on my parking lot “balance beams” again! Whoohoo!

One of the cool things about yoga is that what you do in class translates to your life. So, as I was learning balancing poses in class, it was building balance back into my body, mind and life!! Yeeeehaaaaw y’all!!

I now use balancing poses as a barometer for my life. If I’m all wobbly, it tells me my life is a bit (or a lot) out of balance, so I need to practice my yoga more to bring all of me back into balance. And you know what? It works every time!

Yoga builds balance in so many ways – here are just a few:

  • The standing poses create balance between the grounding you get through your feet, legs and hips… and the lengthening upward of the spine, head  and arms.
  • The one-legged balancing poses create stability and strength to keep you stable and aware as you walk, stand, run, etc.
  • Doing poses on both sides of your body brings balance to the right and left sides of your body, since one side tends to be more dominant and sometimes one side is tighter than the other.
  • Yoga also helps balance the two hemispheres of your brain – yeah, this is your brain on yoga!
  • Your nervous system is balanced between the sympathetic nervous system (fight-or-flight mode) and parasympathetic nervous system (relax response) which is great since in our stressed out lives, we can easily get stuck in the fight-or-flight mode.

I could go on and on about the balancing benefits of yoga, but for now, just begin or continue your practice of poses, breathing and meditation and increase or restore balance in your body, mind and spirit – your whole life!!

Copyright 2012, Cheri Harvey, Yoga For Real, LLC., www.yogaforreal.com.

Safe Forward Bends To Stretch Your Hamstrings And Save Your Lower Back

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Ever notice that if your hamstrings (thigh muscles at the back of your legs) are tight that your lower back also gives you fits? In today’s class, we focused on stretching the backs of the legs and strengthening the lower back – a great partnership!

One cause of tight hamstring muscles is that we spend SO much time sitting. When we sit, the hamstring muscles are not stretched. Over time, muscles that don’t get stretched much can get tight. If your hamstrings are tight, your lower back may attempt to compensate and you get back strain. Not good.

So, how do you stretch your hamstrings without causing more strain or pain in your lower back? Slowly. Gradually. Gently. Your hamstrings did not get tight over night, so they won’t get all stretched out and comfy overnight. But with time, patience and practice, good results come.

Poses that tend to give people with tight hamstrings the most trouble are forward bends. Forward bends are wonderful to stretch your hamstrings, but if your hamstrings are really tight, they may not be comfortable and you could end up straining your back if you try to go to far. We do not want that!

So, here are five tips for doing forward bends to keep you safe and aligned as you move forward (ha! – pun not intended, but I like it!).

  1. Engage your bandhas (lift up the pelvic floor muscles and draw the navel back toward the spine) to engage a band of muscles that goes all around your waist (above and below) that support your core and lower back.
  2. Bend from your “hip hinges” (right where your legs join onto the rest of your body) – not from your waist – and keep your spine lengthened. This protects your lower back, allows a deeper stretch and keeps your chest open so you can breathe freely.
  3. Don’t go down so far. Focus on proper alignment instead of trying to touch your toes or get your nose to your knee. Focus just on getting the lowest part of your pelvis/belly connected with the top-most part of your thigh. That’s enough to start with.
  4. Never force the stretch. Allow your muscles to stretch, but do not force. Only go as far as feels right today – there is tomorrow and the next days to continue on.
  5. Breathe! To me, breathing is just as important as the pose. If you get the pose “right” but end up holding your breath, your muscles are not getting what they need and will not stretch their best. Take long, slow, deep breaths and allow your body to relax further and deeper (when it’s ready) on the exhales.

I hope these tips help you! Here’s to healthy hamstrings and a healthy back!

Copyright 2012, Cheri Harvey, Yoga For Real, LLC., www.yogaforreal.com.