yoga

Where is Your Head?

accidental goddess7 Comments

Unless you spend a lot of time birdwatching, picking fruit, flying a kite, or stargazing, you are probably bringing your head out of alignment most of the day.  Where should it be?  Centered and balanced over your spine. Where is it?  Most likely too far forward.

Kyphosis, curvature of the spineIt’s not just the ever-increasing time we spend on our mobile phones, other activities also contribute: reading, house cleaning, cooking, gardening, crafts, tending to children and pets.  Any time you are working with your hands, you are looking down and forward.  Unless you have an ergonomic configuration for your desktop computer (more likely in an office than at home), your head is probably forward. Continue reading →

Teaching Yoga on Zoom: My Path to Acceptance

accidental goddess8 Comments

At the start of 2020, I was teaching two yoga classes at a local dance studio and was about to start a new weekly series for Duke University employees. My calendar was as full as I liked it, with room for other yoga gigs that periodically came my way. This all came to a  Covid-19 dead stop in March. Pandemic-mania meant time for me to take a break. I was not interested in moving my classes online, either with YouTube videos or scheduled Zoom sessions. I felt the Internet was already flooded with good content, much of it affordable or free. I thought “I’ll just wait it out, resume in-person classes when the situation improves.”  Are you laughing along with me?

Teaching yoga at home

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Bringing Serenity to Your Mat

accidental goddess7 Comments

Did you know… that yoga is not just a physical exercise program that you might choose in place of other gym offerings like kick boxing, weight lifting, or Zumba?

Yoga Prayer FlagsIf you delve in the history and philosophy of yoga, you will find that it is much more than the body-centered approach (Hatha yoga and its spin-offs) that has become immensely popular in our society. Yoga can be traced back 5000 or more years with ancient texts such as the Rig Veda, Upanishads, Bhagavad-Gîtâ, and Patanjali’s Yoga-Sûtras.

Like the Bible and other sacred texts written so long ago and in a different language, our modern English interpretations vary.  I am most familiar with Patanjali’s definition of yoga as an eight-limbed path that can lead to enlightenment. It includes asana (the poses) as only one of the limbs.  It can get complicated.
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