Asana for August 2011

Namaste yoginis,

We are well into the second half of the year and feeling the hottest part of summer. I always feel that summer in Japan is a very liquid season. Droplets of sweat, rain, steam and bottles of water to rehydrate… there’s a definite flow and liquidity to summer life.

In that spirit, we are returning to our original vinyasa flow yoga this month. Vinyasa, which means “breath synchronized movement”, can fall under many kinds of types of yoga. Most often, we take it from Hatha yoga though, and we just connect the asana (poses) to each other with smooth, liquid movements. The well-known Sun Salutation is the perfect example of a hatha flow sequence. Vinyasa always has breath synchronised to movement, and we will put extra focus on that this month. Always let your breath lead and your movements follow – not the other way around.

As we said last month, Hatha comes from the two Sanskrit words Ha and Tha. Ha means SUN, tha means MOON. This month, we will look for the first time at the lesser-known Moon Salutation (Chandra Namaskar), the complement and sister sequence to the Sun Salutations. Some of the asana included in the Moon Salutation are:

As for the Pranayama (breathing), we will be doing two sets of breathing exercises this month. At the start of our flow sequence, we’ll get our prana flowing with the standing deep breath, and end the lesson with the Skull Brightener Breath (Kapalanhati pranayama).

Keep cool… and see you on the mat!

Namaste,
Marilu

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。