Ten Tips for Starting HOT Yoga!

Hello friends,

If you are interested in starting a hot yoga practice, and have questions about what to expect, check out this blog post on my new site: truebodymindsoul.com !

http://truebodymindsoul.com/ten-tips-for-starting-hot-yoga/

Best,

Amber

 

A New Home for TrueBodyMindSoul!!

 

Hello friends and followers!!

I am excited to announce a new home for True Body Mind Soul!

I have purchased the domain, and started a new blog (well, a continuation of this blog!) at truebodymindsoul.com

I hope you will come check out my new site for posts about yoga, meditation, mindfulness, health and happiness.

Here is one post, for example, that you should definitely read : )

http://truebodymindsoul.com/ten-tips-for-starting-hot-yoga/

Hope to see you soon!

Best,

True Soul
(Amber)

365 Challenge Day 315 – GRADUATION!!!

I did it!!  It’s official, I’m a certified yoga teacher!!!!

Wow oh wow oh wow.  Even though I’ve worked so hard over the past six months, I still can’t believe it.

In a way this is fulfilling a lifelong goal.  My mother was a yoga teacher, and my father was a yoga teacher!!  They lived in a yoga ashram when I was born, and the Guru named me!!  So yeah, it kind of feels like destiny.  And my sister has a 2 year old at home, but I am quite sure in a few years she will be a yoga teacher too : )

Here I am celebrating in my backyard on graduation day : )

365 Challenge Day 313 – Core Power

Okay, I’ve decided that Core Power is the “Starbucks” of yoga.  It is fairly good quality, follows a formula, a little overpriced, and lacks the character of the local individually owned studios (as most chains do.)

Teachers choose their own music which is really asking for trouble IMO, it’s just hit or miss!!  Today’s teacher played this bizarre really loud, rhythmic sound that seriously sounded like a fog horn – DURING SAVASANA!!!  Argh.  It was very aggravating.

But I’ve still got four weeks to go on my membership, and I plan on getting my money’s worth!!  Although I do miss my studio, a lot.

365 Challenge Day 305 – Yoga + Music?

At Core Power yoga studios they play music in their classes.  I have to say I’m not a huge fan.  But I think most people like it.  I guess I consider yoga more of a moving meditation than an exercise, and I don’t listen to music when I meditate either…  although I’m sure some people do.

I think the music they played in the class was pretty tasteful.  Some mellow kirtan chanting, which I wasn’t crazy about but it was fairly benign.  Some songs that were probably Deep Forest, and that I actually enjoyed : )

So it was okay, kind of different.  It will be interesting to see how I feel about it after 5 weeks of unlimited classes here.  Will I get so used to it that the silence will be challenging?

But one thing I feel strongly about, they really should have turned it off during Savasana.  IMO.

365 Challenge Day 304 – Core Power

Today I tried out the chain yoga studio called Core Power.  There is one right in my neighborhood that I drive by every week.  I wasn’t really looking to try out a new studio, because I love my studio (and every time I try someplace new I’m disappointed) but they were having a really good deal on a special, 5 weeks of unlimited classes for $75.

I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised!  I didn’t have high expectations.  The teacher was definitely young, and there was something about the way she spoke that sounded very rehearsed, not natural, but everything she said was good stuff.  And I liked the flow.  The heat was a good temperature for me.  It was good!  All their classes are only 60 minutes, and I’m used to 90, so it definitely felt short.  Maybe next time I’ll take two!

365 Challenge Day 285 – Sacred

I took a yoga class today in which the teacher was very bold and unfiltered.  It was definitely not a style I’m used to.  She would curse and say things like, Stir that shit up!  She had us do a body scan and said to find spots in our bodies that needed attention, “Maybe it’s your right hip, maybe it’s your left hip, maybe it’s your vajayjay, maybe it’s your anus!” Yes, she said vajayjay in yoga class.

She seemed so confident and casual with it all that it didn’t feel awkward, at least not to me.  But it did make me wonder.  When we go to a meditation or a yoga class, if it’s more than just exercise, we are often trying to create a sacred space.  On the one hand, everything is sacred, so maybe it’s good if you can say “anus” in class and still bring us towards the sacred.  But on the other hand, by using “vulgar” language a teacher may be making it a lot more difficult for people to feel that they’ve left the everyday world behind for a moment and entered a sacred space.

It’s interesting to contemplate.

365 Challenge Day 283 – Yoga: Teaching

Today in our teacher training we turned a corner.  They broke us up into groups of four, and we had to as a group chose any theme from anything we’ve learned and bring it into our practice teaching.  We were allowed to do anything we wanted and some groups got very creative.  Going up in a group made it much more fun and less stressful (I still get nervous teaching the whole class by myself.)  Some groups talked about the bandhas, some about the elements, some did pranayama.  But it really opened us up into a whole new world of teaching, away from just doing the bare bones instruction.

My group did the four elements and I did Fire.  I spoke to Ujiyii breath, Drishti, Bandhas, and strength.  And it was SO FUN.

365 Challenge Day 278 – Yoga: Imagery

One thing I love noticing is how different teachers use different images while teaching yoga.  Some are successful, some less so, some are downright disturbing!!

When doing cat and cow poses my teacher asked us to rotate our hips around in a circle, like we were a knife scraping every last bit of peanut butter out of the peanut butter jar.  Sounds good, I liked that one.  But today I went to a class with a new teacher and she said to imagine we were like a toilet brush scraping around the toilet to clean it…  Ewwwww.  No thanks.

A good one for me was imagining I was standing on ice (when in a wide leg stance) and that I needed to pull my legs together to keep from slipping out.  This really helped me to actively engage the muscles in my inner thighs and legs.  And an image fail, one of my teachers said to imagine that our nipples were crazy glued to our thighs.  Yuck.  What the heck?

I’m not really at the point when I’ll be using that much imagery yet.  But I’m excited to think about it!!

365 Challenge Day 274 – Soft Tissue

Over the years of knowing several yoga teachers, I’ve heard the term “fascia” used quite a bit, but never really understood what was meant.  This is still a new area for me, but my teacher said something that really made sense.  We were doing half pigeon pose, and she said that the pose was not meant to get at the “soft tissue”, but that relaxed animal pose could (yes, there is a pose called relaxed animal : )

Here is how she explained it.  If you are in a posture where there is any tension or resistance, then your muscles are working and they kind of tighten up because they are trying to protect the joints.  But if you can set up a posture in which all the muscles are supported and relaxed, then you have a chance to get to the soft tissue.  Okay, I need to do more research about why this is a good thing!