This is the second article is this series looking all the ways in which people are excluded from yoga - reasons like social class, race, money, incarceration or general access. In this article Adhyatma shares how the Yoga Education in Prisons Trust (YEPT) got started, what the challenges have been and what she's learned from the experience. by Adhyatma, Yoga Education in Prisons Trust After I finish teaching my Yoga classes, the men in my class often come up respectfully and shake my hand … [Read more...]
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Launching a Foundational Guide to Yoga for Beginners and Beyond
Pre-orders now open. Shipping September 24. See below. by Kara-Leah Grant Cast your mind back to your very first yoga class. What did it take to get there? Did you have to overcome any fears or hesitancy? Were you nervous? Did a friend take you? Was it a great class - or a bad experience? Did you keep going to yoga, or did you walk away for a few weeks, or months, or years before finally going back? Did it take you a while to find the class and the teacher that was right for you? Most … [Read more...]
The No-More-Excuses Guide to Yoga: Because yoga is for Every body
It's time to bust some yoga myths with Kara-Leah Grant, yoga teacher, writer and trusted ally. The No-More-Excuses Guide to Yoga shows you that yoga IS for everybody. It’s the essential companion guide on your journey to brilliant heath and well-being. Clear, no nonsense and easy to follow, you'll find all the answers to your burning yoga questions: Which class is right for me? How do I stretch myself and keep my body safe? What if I can't understand the instructions in … [Read more...]
Because Yoga is for Every Body – Right? Not just the Young, Slim, Bendy and Gorgeous
by Kara-Leah Grant I'm casting my mind back to Auckland, New Zealand in 1995 and it seems a long, long time ago. I had just dropped out of my second year at Uni - ostensibly because back issues and serious sciatic pain made it impossible for me to sit for lectures, but there were other, deeper reasons too. (i.e. my habitual response when facing serious challenge - run!) Regardless, I was in chronic back pain. A good friend suggested we go and do a ten week beginners Iyengar yoga course that … [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...]
Home Yoga Practice Questions: Can I Practice Yoga with A Herniated Disc?
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...]
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...]
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...]