Asana and Reading for February 2011
Hello yoginis!
The first month of the year has flown past, and we’re getting ready to stretch into the shortest of them all: February.
As the previous two months had us work up our strength with many balancing poses (which take a lot of concentration), I think that we’ll move into more of a flow again in February.
The sequence that we’ll practice from February is adapted from one of my favorite yoga teachers on earth: Sadie Nardini. She makes yoga available for everyone with her excellent youtube videos, which already number over 200, and her easy-going personality. Her main focus is the core of the body, because when your core is strong, it will support the rest of your body and being, and allow you to reach new personal levels. If you want to check out more of her work, have a look at her website ( Sadie Nardini | Ultimate Wellness Expert ) or search her videos on youtube.
Rather than just list the poses that we’ll be working through in February, I’d rather tell you what we want to achieve with these poses:
| 1) Open the chest, relax the shoulders/neck With a variety of shoulder and neck stretches (including some tabletop poses) we’ll soften those neck muscles and shoulder joints that are always under a lot of stress. |
| 2) Heat up the body from inside using breath Using breath-based poses such as “Fists of Fire”, we will focus our attention on breathing and increasing the volume our lungs take in, bringing more oxygen to the brain and organs, and removing more carbon dioxide from the tissues. |
| 3) Strengthen the core Using a series of postures designed by Sadie Nardini, we will focus on the psoas muscle which runs all the way from your upper thigh to under your diaphragm. Using poses such as Navasana (boat pose), downward dog, lunges and leglifts, we will work on different parts of this major muscle that affects everything from balance to breathing. |
Sounds like quite an exciting series this month!
Our class will end, as always, with a reading. For this month, I’ve chosen a piece called “Our Deepest Fear”, written by Marianne Williamson.
| Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. |
| We ask ourselves, ‘who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of the Universe. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. |
| There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. It’s not just in some of us: it’s in everyone. |
| We were born to make manifest the glory of the Divine that is within us. We are all meant to shine as children do. |
| And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. |
月毎に行うポーズ名をご紹介します。レッスンの状況により多少変更することがあります。
