Just a niche blog from here on out Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Yep, it's true... I'm slowly deleting the hundreds of postings from the past three years and leaving just the yoga DVD/audio reviews. Lots of reasons for this ... little to say, little desire to create or participate in controversy, and finding I disagree with much of what I've written over the past few years. At first I kept it for posterity but then someone would post a comment on something I wrote several years ago and I couldn't even recall writing it.

However, reviews for experienced home practitioners are severely lacking on the Internet. So, I've decided to keep those and will continue to add to them over time. Lord knows I've done enough of them already and own even more. If there's a DVD or audio routine you're curious about, e-mail me and if I have done it, I'll review it.

Forrest Yoga Five-Day Intensive Monday, March 17, 2008

My friend Lindsey is a Forrest yoga teacher and has me going on Ana Forrest's five-day intensive CD set, something I've eyeballed for years but never could quite get up the gumption (and cash... $150) to try. Each day is a 2-hour session (eep), and anyone who has tried Forrest yoga can probably attest to the fact that it takes pain to whole new levels. This is in a good way, of course, It's very slow and with extremely long holds, which is incredibly intense but requires a major attitude adjustment from someone with vinyasa in her marrow, like me.

Even the one-hour intermediate Forrest DVD I have takes some psyching up for me to do, not because the postures themselves are too difficult but because unlike most forms of yoga, which encourage you to rest often and get out of the posture when you need to, she really encourages you to breathe into the intensity for as long as possible.

So with some insanity glinting in my eyes, I embarked on this five-day intensive, figuring that I could just waste less time during the day (i.e. television) and come up with the two hours for five days to do the series. I'm starting day four, and figured I would muster up some strength in my wrists to type about it just in case any of the rest of you have wondered about this series.

First, I've never read a single negative review about this set, and many have even said they've purposely avoided class to stay home and do this intensive. The purpose of it is to "go deeper," which is probably now the most trite phrase in yoga, but it actually applies here -- each day builds on the day before and culminates in several advanced postures (in stages), and because of the extremely long holds and very slow and thorough preparation, you'll find yourself more ready for these postures than you might have imagined.

The set is very well-done. The CDs are divided into many tracks (each day has two CDs, for a total of 10), and there is a spiral-bound booklet divided into days that shows photos (plus modififcations) for all the postures, plus bulleted posture tips. Ana recorded these live but they don't sound live, other than being able to hear the occasional jumpback or ujjayi (a bunch of people doing lion's breaths sound hilarious).

I decided to try out this series, despite that Forrest yoga is not my regular favorite, to take my mind off my new teaching job and to take a break from power, which can get a little stale at times. I find myself veering off to more alignment-based yoga quite often and then bringing that back to the vinyasa practice, something that has helped me keep my lower back functional. Training my mind to be patient is another factor.

I'd highly recommend this to any intermediate or advanced student (not for beginners) who isn't put off by the idea of two hours a day of yoga for a few days. (Just watch less Law and Order. You can do it!) After the first day, I was extremely sore. Not only that, but for the first day or two I was clock-watching quite a bit, because it was so long and because of the pace. But after the first day, the focus changes so much between days that doing them back-to-back is more reasonable.

Not everyone is going to want to work this intensely. I don't think I would too often. Still, I can see that my practice is going to be different by the end of the series. My hip openers and backbends have opened significantly after just a couple of days. The other thing I do like about Forrest yoga is that because of the pace, an injured area never feels vulnerable. I thought two hours a day of yoga would completely fry my lower back, but after each practice I felt FANTASTIC, far more so than when I practice ashtanga (ouch) or one of its Western cousins.

The other thing that's great about this series is how far it allows you to go. I know there are a few of you out there (OK, three or four!) who maintain a fairly advanced practice but practice at home most of the time and are dismayed at the relative lack of challenging material out there. You'll be pleased with this. Here's a list of the apex postures and focuses for the five-day series (remember, these are the final stages of the postures -- there are plenty of modifications).

DAY 1: Strengthen back and open shoulders, work on form in simpler backbends. Ends with bird of paradise and twisting bird of paradise, wheel (urdhva dhanurasana) and viparita dandasana (wheel on the elbows).

DAY 2: Open hips, thighs, and strengthen upper body. Ends with yogidandasana (foot in armpit), handstands, forearm balances, firely (tittibhasana), and turn signal (firefly with one shin in armpit)

DAY 3: Expands on the backbending of day 1 for more advanced postures. Ends with full dancer (natarajasana), scorpion in handstand and forearm stand, crow (bakasana) and elephant trunk (arm balance with one leg over the shoulder).

DAY 4: Build strength. Ends with straddle in forearm blance, scissor arm balances, side crow (parsva bakasana), twining vine, and yoganidrasana (yogic sleep).

DAY 5: Deeper focus, experiencing spirit in the postures. Ends with crippled sage arm balance (astavakrasana), thunderbolt, bird of paradise, and full bow (purna dhanurasana).

Other things I've noticed: I'm starving. I sleep like a baby, but I'm not drained of energy. And I can't help but notice after I've done one of these I look like I've been lifting weights at the gym. Makes me thing of Hans and Franz and how they are going to pump you up... a minor side effect, of course, but one that's pretty obvious. Unlike a lot of vigorous yoga programs, Forrest yoga does often bring you to total muscle failure in pretty much every major and minor muscle you have, something I haven't experienced much since I actually did lift weights, many moons ago.

I'll post about days four and five as well, soon. I know I'll be very happy to get back to my regular one-hour practice after this, which I know will fly by. I admit there are times that I'm thinking of all the things I could get done with that extra hour ... although I know that's not how it usually works.

Posted free gentle flow yoga class for relaxation Friday, November 23, 2007

Installment #2. This lunar class is 40 minutes, mp3 format, suitable for all levels. Class details and file are here. Enjoy! Feel free to post comments there as well. Your feedback will help me in planning future classes.

I posted a free audio yoga class Tuesday, November 20, 2007

As promised many moons ago, I've posted a 45-minute dynamic vinyasa class in mp3 format... you can download the class and get the details here. I recorded this one for the Web, however, I also have a live class to post once I do a little more work on some of the sound quality.

I have some great ideas for upcoming classes, including a true advanced class (level 3/4... how come nobody has done this?) and a relaxation sequence. Check back soon, and enjoy the class.

More great (and free) yoga Wednesday, November 14, 2007

NOTE: Regarding putting up my own audio classes, I've recorded a couple of my live vinyasa classes and have been working on the audio quality so I can post these free on my site, and give back a little after all the benefit I've received from other people doing the same. Strangely, I'm self-conscious about my instruction and voice, though, and I'm trying to get over this. Obviously live classes are quirky and not polished studio productions, but the perfectionist in me is still a little weird about it. Well, anyway, coming soon!

Quitting my ashtanga classes because of my back (and being left with no classes to take) has meant seriously getting into my home practice lately, and having to work pretty hard to keep things mixed up. Sometimes when you do the same routines over and over, you get bored. Still, I also think most people can't make it to classes on an almost daily basis, so having a solid home practice is a really good thing either way. I've mentioned in the past that I like to buy live classes from aliveyoga.com, and that the free daily streaming video classes on yogatoday.com are good, but I've also discovered another ...

(Quick note on Yoga Today. I finally discovered how to burn old downloaded episodes to DVD, yet now they aren't offering those anymore -- just daily streaming classes. Well, I don't like to practice yoga in the computer room, so that doesn't work for me, unfortunately. I hadn't downloaded many episodes before, and now wish I had. I'm looking forward to them having their archives downloadable for a small fee. In the meantime, I have a few old ones I like, and I like the one-hour length a lot [though they have very few intermediate or advanced classes, and I wish they offered a larger variety of skill levels.] Still, it's a wonderful service worth checking out and there's pretty much something there for everybody.)

So, Anusara instructor Elsie Escobar posts her live classes free on her site: http://elsiesyogakula.com/ and also through iTunes. I have really been enjoying these, and enjoying her. She has put a ton of work into this, even posting the asana lists for each class with many accompanying photos. You can see exactly what you're getting. She's also incredibly upbeat, insightful, and fun... I LOVE her. She has several Level 2-3 classes available -- I'll post later on which are my favorites, but I did "The Venti Problem" yesterday and really enjoyed some of the creative sequences on it: Handstand splits at the wall with leg-switches (she has a video on her site showing you how to do this), one-armed chattaranga from a bound half-moon, etc. Most of her classes are beginner level, however.

Also, kudos to her for providing something free, just for the love of yoga, that's actually higher-quality than some of the audio classes out there that instructors are charging ridiculous amounts of money for (I've paid $16 for audio classes before that have been complete crap). Thanks, Elsie!

I love live recorded classes -- it feels like being there, but on my own time and in my own space, and I often can do a different one almost every day. It probably wouldn't work for everyone because you need to be able to follow without any visual assistance, but for me, it's great. It's also been interesting for my teaching, because I feel I benefit and learn from so many instructors and styles. The problem is wanting to pause in the middle and running to write down a sequence to teach later before I forget it.

Hip-Deep in Anusara, Day 3 Wednesday, November 07, 2007

On Sunday, the weekend ended with a teacher training workshop that involved, largely, the whole group looking at my SI "default" in great detail. I didn't feel under the microscope this time at all; in fact, I feel like I got more than my money's worth in getting a diagnosis of sorts; I was also lucky in that one of the other attendees is a physical therapist, who also measured and poked and prodded. Basically, over time, my lower back muscles to the left side of my spine have gotten visibly overdeveloped as compared to the right to compensate for the injury. When in a lunging position with the right leg forward, my left hip falls a bit to the left and the right hip flares slightly to the side and up out of self-protection. I also apparently rely mostly on large muscle groups to support my torso, meaning I heavily engage the rectus abdominus and the pelvic floor muscles and transverse abdominus hardly fire.

In addition to possibly going to physical therapy to "retrain" myself, here is what she recommended:

1. Knee drops. Supine, with one leg extended long and completely relaxed, very slowly drop the other knee out to the side, windsheld-wiper-style, while maintaining the pelvic alignment and not allowing any tipping to one side. This forces the pelvic floor and transverse abdominus to turn on.
2. On hands and knees, extend one leg directly out behind me and lift it, again very slowly, until the point that my low back starts to collapse/hyperextend, and then hold it right there as long as I can. Right now, on the injured side, it's literally with my toes about three inches above the floor.
3. Work on the alignment on the one side in lunge and pigeon, and until it's automatic and not requiring conscious adjustments on my part, avoid asymmetrical backbends like eka pada rajakapotasana (full king pigeon) and even hanumanasana. She said to use caution and have my form evaluated in rotated half-moon and warrior 3 as well, though I sense these aren't as big of an issue. I was really glad to hear that those were the only postures off-limits for now.

Everyone thanked me for allowing them to learn from my spine, which felt weird, since I felt like I was getting way more attention than everybody else (like dgny said... wish I could be adjusted that much). And what finally made it click for me was when the instructor had me stand behind her with my hands on her sacrum and she demonstrated what I looked like. I'm a visual person, which I guess is why all of this was news to me.

I enjoyed this intensive a lot, although by the end of the weekend, I was seriously craving a juicy vinyasa practice. Spending hours upon hours on about five postures was great, though, and building on those will be a lot more effective now, for me and for my students, I hope. But my students will have a rude shock tomorrow evening in class, when we dissect their sun salutations.

Hip-Deep in Anusara, Days 1 and 2 Saturday, November 03, 2007

I'm on my lunch break from the weekend intensive. I went into it a little apprehensive that I would find myself impatient with the pace, and with backing up to the foundations and dissecting them in such great detail, then talking about them for another 20 minutes before moving on. Well, that part has been great. I'm enjoying something new and happy to find that I love yoga, all yoga. Still, I sobbed all the way through shavasana this afternoon and left feeling pretty sunken and lousy.

I'm surprised and pleased that I enjoyed three hours this morning and two last night with only about 10 postures (and I'm looking forward to the afternoon of restorative, something I don't get to experience very much of), but was surprised to find myself corrected, over and over again, in just about every rudimentary posture and preparation. My ego was fine with this; in fact, it was happy about it. I was more than a little surprised to find that my right hip is uneven when performing a lunge (and related postures) on one side and that this problem has bled over into a ton of other postures -- because it both explains my back pain and my back pain also explains it. Finally, someone has been able to pinpoint the problem, show me where it is, and tell me how the pain has caused the surrounding musculature to "bow out" and let the bigger muscle groups support me, such as relying on the rectus abdominus in core work and not properly engaging the transverse abdominus and pelvic floor. I lie, maybe I was a tad frustrated by the time we got to shavasana and she took issue with my head placement -- not frustrated with her, necessarily, but with myself that it seemed nothing I did was right. I had to laugh because I couldn't even seem to relax in an appropriate position.

I lay there and cried because, first, my back started hurting at the end and I was just sick of my damn back and hearing about it and thinking about it. Second, as a teacher, it made me feel like crap. The student in me loved the corrections and was very grateful for them. The teacher in me was embarrassed at being corrected constantly in front of some of my students who are also attending this workshop. If I can't even properly align myself in some of the most basic postures, why should they trust anything I have to say about them? Granted, I can spot a problem in a student's form by looking at them, and I'm aware of why it took someone else palpating and moving me to such a degree to help me see where I'm overcompensating (and it's not just the uneven hip -- it's hyperextension of the knees and overcompensating lats and... I could go on), but I still feel like it makes me look bad to students who look to me to help them, and my ego took a blow there.

I also couldn't help but wonder -- how come my own teacher hasn't corrected me even once on some of these important but very basic things? I know we ashtangis are not into intricate and slow alignment, and some things aren't easy to see when someone is in and out of a posture, but it does bother me that I've been building pose after pose on an unstable foundation, especially when I think about postures like eka pada rajakapotasana and what that has probably meant for my lower back.

And then, feeling bad about feeling bad made me cry more, because I felt like I shouldn't be feeling bad about it. And that made me feel worse ... You know the never-ending cycle.

So, I guess I'll see what the rest of the weekend brings. I hope she didn't sense she bruised me (because I'm sure she'll misunderstand why I felt bruised) and treat me differently, as I'm so happy to get the feedback. I'm thinking about seeing a physical therapist soon (she recommended this) to "retrain" this pelvic floor area so other muscles won't have to compensate at their own expense. We've talked a lot about this so far this weekend -- how muscles will jump in for each other, one growing too strong at the expense of the other. What complicated little webs we are.

About Sara



What: 31-year-old vertebrate
Where: Alaska, U.S.
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Just a niche blog from here on out
Forrest Yoga Five-Day Intensive
Posted free gentle flow yoga class for relaxation
I posted a free audio yoga class
More great (and free) yoga
Hip-Deep in Anusara, Day 3
Hip-Deep in Anusara, Days 1 and 2
Good Non-Class-Day Option (and handstands!)
No monthlyyogadvd.com
Gravity and Grace, Peter Sterios


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