What do we lose as we gain more education and experience in yoga?
Most yoga teachers I know spend a lot of time perfecting their craft – they read a lot, attend workshops, experiment in their own practice and teach many classes. This[…]
Category: Teaching tips
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Embrace your own power by cultivating presence
In my first year of college my academic advisor had roped me into presenting at a minor conference. I complied, even though I didn’t care about the subject that was[…]
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Movement observation in a yoga session
When I started working with students one-on-one many years ago, I used to offer free initial evaluations to anybody who was interested. It was time-consuming and not really cost-effective, but[…]
What to look for in your student’s physical structure
I learned to drive pretty late in life. I started in my early 20s when I came to the US, but never needed a car, so I delayed driving till[…]
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A look back, and a look ahead
With 2016 soon coming to a close, let’s take a moment to look back at the ground that we’ve covered. This year we focused on three major topics: axial extension[…]
How to work with knees in yoga
When a student comes to you complaining of knee pain, the first thing you need to do is assess tracking. Tracking is a relative position between the hip joints, knee[…]
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What causes front knee pain and what can we do about it?
“Get your earplugs ready” – jokes one of my students before attempting Chair pose. Over the years of working together we both got used to the loud crackling sound that[…]
A list of basic chair yoga poses
Once you begin to think of chair yoga poses in terms of directional movement of the spine, it becomes much easier to both structure your yoga practices and make pose[…]
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How creative do we need to be with chair yoga?
If you teach chair yoga to a group or individual student for a while, at some point you will inevitably feel like you ran out of ideas. There are definitely[…]
How to sequence classes for chair yoga
One of my older yoga students gets mildly irritated every time she hears a yoga teacher say: “Listen to your body and don’t do anything that doesn’t feel right”. She[…]
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Who is Chair yoga for?
“Let’s use a chair” – I suggested to one of my students few years ago. “I don’t need a chair, – she replied – I am not elderly”. This response[…]
How do you know what a yoga pose is meant to accomplish?
I remember reading an article couple of years ago by a yoga teacher who observed a tendency to give too much anatomical instruction in yoga classes. As expected, she got[…]
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Want a more effective yoga practice? Use compensation properly
You know how after some yoga classes you feel more balanced and centered and after others you feel more disjointed and discombobulated? There are many factors that affect the outcome[…]
How to make an extension pose a focus of your practice
At a first glance it might seem that axial extension poses are easy – what’s so hard about sitting upright and breathing for a while? But we all know that[…]
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How to lengthen your spine without strain
There are two distinctive ways of lengthening the spine while doing axial extension postures – one that focuses on bringing the spine into maximum vertical alignment, and another one that[…]
Why do we lengthen upward? Four types of axial extension postures
Technically, the term “spinal extension” refers to the spine returning into the neutral position from flexion (1) and bending backwards (2). But the term “extension” also means lengthening. So when[…]
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How can we stimulate the vagus nerve in our yoga practice? Part 1
Have you heard the term “stress loop” before? Here is how it works. When your mind perceives something dangerous or stressful it activates the sympathetic nervous system which dumps adrenalin[…]
Should we engage the abdomen all the time?
Let me ask you a question: if a bowl of ice cream tastes good, would a bucket be even better? Whenever one of my yoga clients encounters a yoga pose[…]
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Corset vs pelvic tilt: to tuck or not to tuck the tailbone under
Couple of years ago Judith Hanson Lasater posted this on Facebook: “Stop tucking your tailbone! We are designed for and function best with a lumbar curve and a diagonal line[…]
Four main functions of your core muscles
One thing that I often hear from new clients is: “I was told by my doctor (PT, massage therapist, personal trainer, etc.) that I need to strengthen my core.” “Awesome![…]
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