by Kara-Leah Grant, author of Forty Days of Yoga This week's Home Yoga Practice questions comes from Catherine in India. She writes: I have practiced yoga for many years and for the last 6 months have been doing a regular home practice. However last month I had an MRI scan due to persistent backache and discovered that I have a slipped disc. My doctor has asked me to stop yoga - forward bends are a definite no - and his opinion is that I should walk and swim as exercise (which I have been … [Read more...]
Search Results for: bikram
Yoga Injuries and Pain During Yoga Class – What’s the Story?
by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat Matthew Remski is currently researching asana-related injuries in an attempt to understand what we are actually doing with yoga, and how we can know the value or safety of the postures we practice. After taking the time to read his first article on the subject - What Are We Actually Doing in Asana - I found myself asking questions about my practice and the pain I sometimes experience in yoga. In particular, Matthew says: I would like to explore … [Read more...]
How to Use Ayurveda to Guide Your Yoga Practice
by guest author Jacinta Aalsma Besides yoga, I’ve always been interested in Ayurveda. Not so strange; Ayurveda and yoga have been sister sciences since the beginning in ancient India. Ayurveda deals with the healing side for the physical body as well as the mind. You could consider yoga as the more spiritually-oriented sister. In practice, they will both overlap. Since a couple of months my yoga practice has been transformed from mostly public classes in my local yoga studio to a home … [Read more...]
Why We Need to Take Our Yoga Practice Back to The Basics
by Melissa Billington, Ear2Earth Yoga is a self-regulating practice. It’s a yoke, a disciplined and regular practice that harnesses our innate animal power/prowess and enables us to see our own self-sabotaging habits and tendencies. And, armed with that awareness and new tools for transformation, we are empowered to change those tendencies and habits of self-sabotage into tendencies and habits of transmutation and transformation. We can become the opposite of our deepest darkest fear, … [Read more...]
The Kundalini Awakening Process: An Inside Story
WIN a copy of Kara-Leah's new book 'Field Notes from Kundalini Awakening', publishing in 2018. Guaranteed to take you on an intimate journey into the depths of the Kundalini experience. Click here to sign up for the book launch list and go into the draw to win one of THREE print copies. by Kara-Leah Grant It's 7:15pm and I'm upside down on the carpet in front of the fire, balancing on my hands and knees, head hanging low, not quite touching the carpet. I'm meant to be on the computer, … [Read more...]
Why Letting Go is a Crucial Aspect of Loving Well
by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat It's the summer of 2000 and I've just come back to Whistler, BC after nine weeks living on the side of a volcano in Maui. I'd been on a mad adventure with a man I'd meet waitressing that winter in Whistler - but that's another story. My life is packed full of stories from that time, many of them involving men. I was young, carefree and a permanent traveller. It was four years since I'd graduated my Journalism Course and bailed on New Zealand, … [Read more...]
What does it mean to “breathe into it” in yoga?
by Kara-Leah Grant There's loads of phrases which yoga teachers toss around willy nilly that after time cease to have any real meaning. Phrases like: Surrender into the pose Let your heart open Find your centre Honour yourself Let yourself come into a place of... Honour yourself for committing to your practice today... I know, I say these things. Thing is, many of these phrases have value and depth, and - in the right circumstances - apply to the practice. In particular, … [Read more...]
Sun Salutations Video Series: How to do Mountain Pose (Tadasana)
by Kara-Leah Grant Welcome to the first in a series of articles & videos exploring the foundations of an asana practice through sun salutations. But first... In my ideal universe - besides living next door to Johny Depp and and down the road from Einstein (imagine that dinner party!) - every yoga student would be encouraged to start a home yoga practice the very first time they ever went to a yoga class. Yes, the first time. In fact, every yoga teacher would teach with the … [Read more...]
Where Are All the Fat Chicks in Yoga Media?
by Kara-Leah Grant Polarizing headline, no? Am I allowed to use the word fat? How about the word chick? Or would you prefer I lead with something along the lines of: Why are most yoga images of young, slender white women? Also appropriate. But I like the first headline. I like the way it sounds and the way I say it. How you read it and what judgement you place on it is up to you. I pass no judgement on fat. Or on chicks. This is a valid query - as one of my readers pointed out … [Read more...]
You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em
By Kara-Leah Grant, author Forty Days of Yoga The more I practice yoga the more I realise it's got nothing to do with "flexibility". At least - not in the way that we often think about it, as the stretching of muscles. Rather, yoga often has to do with letting go and releasing our nervous system and the patterns of holding that result from years of activating the fight or flight system. These patterns of behaviour create the shapes of our bodies, as much as our muscles and bones … [Read more...]