Then… The first time I realized the benefits of practicing yoga for cross-training, it was by accident. I had been a swimmer in high school (100 Butterfly and 200 IM) and was a Master’s swimmer in my 20s. In 1995, I taught swimming at the 92nd St Y in New York to support my dance
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Whether you are just starting to practice yoga or you have been practicing for years, yoga props can enhance your practice in many ways. If you have perfectionist or “I don’t need help” tendencies, you may resist using props. However, you are doing yourself a disservice as they are can help you find more ease
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Backbending, or Spinal Extension, is one of multiple healthy spinal movements (Spinal Flexion, Lateral Flexion, and Rotation being the others). Joseph Pilates once said, “You are only as young as your spine is flexible,” and I find this to be true. Backbending can help your spine feel young by improving its strength and mobility. There
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There are many one-legged balance poses in the yoga practice, and numerous variations of those poses. But why? Yoga is a practice that gives us functional strength and mobility, but also improves our balancing ability in different positions. Actively working on balance can increase our strength and stability as we move through our life. What
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When we practice yoga, we move the spine in many different directions. When we are stiff from sitting all day, sometimes our spine doesn’t want to move the way we want it to. Forward bending and twisting are healthy spinal movements. When you have a young, healthy spine, you can “get away” with all sorts
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Yoga is a wonderful way to cross train and strength train as we age. We can build and maintain muscle mass, bone density, and work on stabilizing our balance. Standing yoga poses strengthen our legs, core, glutes, back, and shoulders, while increasing our ability to balance in different orientations to the floor. While in some
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As we age, our bodies become less tolerant of inefficient movement. As humans we are master compensators, and will “perform” movements, even in daily life, in ways that work, but are not always ideal for how our body should move. One example of that is walking. We can walk through our day and never once
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Instagram may show otherwise, but yoga is not just for skinny white women in their 20s, yoga is for everyone, of any age, with any type of body. Yoga is a millenia old practice for stretching and strengthening the body, while calming the mind. There are so many mental, emotional, and physical reasons to practice
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Going to a yoga class for the first time can be intimidating, even when the class is online! We create all sorts of stories in our head about why we can’t go, or what might happen when we get there: “I will be the worst one there!” “I don’t have the right (clothes, mat, props,
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Lower back pain is common in adults as we age. A quick Google search shows that anywhere from 39-84% of adults experience lower back pain at some point in their life. Yoga and core strengthening practices can give us the strength and mobility that we need to support our lower back, both preventing pain, and
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