I do yoga so that I can stay flexible enough to kick my own arse if necessary. ~Betsy Cañas Garmon
Ha! I love it! I found this website with some fun little inspirational yoga tidbits.
I participated in yet another awesome yoga workshop at Smiling Dog Yoga with Kira Ryder who has a studio in Ojai, California called Lulu Bhanda’s. I had just returned from traveling and was super sleepy and lethargic and it was THE MOST PERFECT solution to my travel woes. My favorite tidbits…
- She said that people who are cronic teeth clenchers should do lots of lunges. A great one is known as “thigh torture.” My students definitely know and love it, it’s great for runners and cyclists, but she did a new variation I really liked. I will try to come back and document with photos, but it’s when you take your shin up a wall, with your knee on the floor or a blanket and your shin going up so your foot is near your hip. She had us sink into a deep lunge while in this position which hurt oh so good. Usually I do this trying to get my hips to the wall, then my shoulders.
- Kira has a lovely soul. You can tell she has spent a lot of time just being on her yoga mat and learning about herself. She is one of those teachers who teaches from her heart and experience. The more yoga I do the more I realize that these are the best teachers.
- She spotted me into a drop back backbend (where you go from standing back into the backbend with no wall or laying on the floor)! She made it so I felt it in my body for the first time which was so exciting. I have been playing with walking down the wall for a while and it was fun to try something a little scary. There is just a point where you have to let go of your legs and just fall onto your hands.
- I also loved doing big toe hold after intense backbending.
- She challenged me, yet didn’t kick my ass. It was nice to be reminded that yoga (and probably all things in life) can be challenging in a slower, loving way. I wonder where the concept of challenge became intermingled with painful, ass kicking, dramatic in my brain. I think it is my practice in life to learn learn that less is more and that I am still taking good care of myself even if I don’t hurt myself in yoga class and can walk the next day. I don’t have to do 50 poses to have a solid yoga class, nor do I have to make my classes so ass kicking power yoga like, flinging our bodies through so many sun salutations but never really feeling the energy the way I did in her class. I don’t have to cry or hurt to have breakthroughs. I have been reminded that there is a reason the tortoise beat the hare.
