by Kara-Leah Grant Welcome to the last article and video in this series of Yoga Explorations. Yes, you've made it all the way to the end and now it's time to bring everything together in one smooth flow. Circular sun salutations work on a few different levels. Usually on our mats we work in a purely linear manner - we move left and right, back and forward. Plus we usually only face forwards, or sideways to one direction. However when we do circular sun salutations we use all four sides … [Read more...]
How to Open Your Wide-Legged Forward Bends using Variations {video}
by Kara-Leah Grant Welcome to the fifth article and video in this series of Yoga Explorations. You've now learned how to spontaneously allow the body to move within the structure of a posture, as well as two breath pairs - the Ascending and Descending breath, and cultivating the core and radiating from the core breath. Last week you learned how to use core cultivation to open the body in Lunges and Lunge variations. This week, we take a look at the Wide-Legged Forward Bend and ways to … [Read more...]
Forty Days of Meditation and Manifestation – Did It Work?
by Kara-Leah Grant I've just finished a Forty Day Meditation and Manifestation practice. It's something I completely made up. I'd been wondering for many months about combining daily meditation with a conscious manifestation process because I'd observed in my own life that the first key step for creating anything new is always getting clear. Usually, before I write, I meditate or walk first. This helps to shift me into the ground of being, and out of my head. Out of this space, creativity and … [Read more...]
How to Open the Front of the Body using Core Cultivation {video}
by Kara-Leah Grant Welcome to the fourth article and video in this series of Yoga Explorations. You've now learned how to spontaneously allow the body to move within the structure of a posture, as well as two breath pairs - the Ascending and Descending breath, and cultivating the core and radiating from the core breath. This week, we start to put it all together even more, using these tools to work with a posture to find alignment. In particular, we'll be exploring Lunge and variations … [Read more...]
How to Use Breath Movements to Free the Body’s Spontaneous Movement {video}
by Kara-Leah Grant Welcome to the third in this series of Yoga Explorations. You've now learned two breath pairs - the Ascending and Descending breath, and cultivating the core and radiating from the core breath. We're going to take that understanding, and use Downward Dog and Three Legged Dog to look at how tuning into the breath can allow our body to move spontaneously within the structure of a posture. As I mentioned in the first article on the Ascending and Descending breath, … [Read more...]
How to Cultivate your Core and Radiate through Your Limbs {video}
by Kara-Leah Grant Welcome to the second in this series of Yoga Explorations. This week we're going to continue building on our sequence while exploring a second pair of breath movements. Tuning into these two breaths - inhaling and cultivating the core, exhaling and radiating through the limbs - helps us to find strength and integrity in postures. But for many of us, tuning into the breath movements within the pose can be difficult. We struggle to keep our awareness on the breath … [Read more...]
How to Work with the Ascending & Descending Breath {video}
by Kara-Leah Grant This is the first in a six-part series of Yoga Explorations which takes you through a creative Mandala Surya Namaskar - or a circular sun salutation. The focus on this series is in teaching you how to use the breath to explore and play within your home practice. It's about giving you the confidence to step outside the usual linear flow of your practice and see what it is that your body needs moment to moment. There is a huge difference between a home yoga practice and … [Read more...]
The Eight Essentials of Restorative Yoga
by guest author Neal Ghoshal, Sacred Moves A few years ago I enrolled on my second Yoga Teacher Training course for a year at the Yoga Academy Auckland - I was on a mission to learn more about this practice and to equip myself with as much knowledge as I could. If I was going to teach Yoga, then I wanted to be good at it. About half way through the year, course tutor Jude Hynes gave us a new practice, brought out some Yoga bolsters from the cupboard and introduced us to the wonderful world of … [Read more...]
Pranayama – It’s Your Medium to the ‘Super Soul’
by guest author L. Farrah Furtado India… the place that heightens the sense of penetration into another worldly reality, or the world beyond this one; a world within a world. I am currently in Mysore, India taking a pranayama, mudra and philosophy course at the Krishnamachar Sri Patanjala Yoga Shala with the famous Guruji, B. N. S. Iyengar. (Not to be confused with B. K. S. Iyengar). This entails taking an hour class with him every day and practicing pranayama six days a week for four … [Read more...]
How Understanding the Kleshas and Gunas Helps Your Asana Practice
by Kara-Leah Grant Asana is a powerful tool to access our psyches, release tension in the body, and help us understand the hidden aspects of Self. Practicing asana gives us the opportunity to observe our relationship with the postures, with our bodies, with our minds and with our breath. This relationship is what reveals ourselves to ourselves. In other words, paying attention to questions like this is how we use asana to awaken. Are you liking the pose? Disliking the pose? Or are you … [Read more...]