Lesson 12: Balance and the Hip flexors

What do you think it means to have a balanced life? A balanced mind, balance in the body, balance in yourself?

Balancing poses help us to improve the our powers of concentration in other types of activity. They also induce nervous balance and remove stress, anxiety and worries. If you feel particularly tense at any time, do one or more of these poses for as long as possible.
These poses also develop the cerebellum, the brain center that controls fine movements of the body.


Anatomy connection:
Hip flexors, help us to move more efficiently and gracefully.

Bunny breath:
inhale through the nose, 3 quick sniffs; pause and then exhale through the nose like big silent sigh. This will relax and cleanse.
Poses:
Hand to toe, dancer, tree, triangle, twisted triangle, half-moon,twisted half moon

Journal entry #12:

• Where do you need more balance in your life? Describe in one paragraph.
• What are the three hip flexor muscles and what is their function?
  

Lesson 11: Finesse part 2

Today in class we practiced these yoga tools:

• Humming breath, to time in and tune into ourselves
• warm up poses: spinning top, seated spinal flexing, downward facing dog
• review of Sun salute C series
  
• Partner game:balancing straws
  
• cool down poses: seated bent leg stretch, staff pose, river, plow, shoulder stand, fish

Journal entry # 11: Heart Mail
write out the letters and/or questions that you found in the mailbox and sent back to your heart. if you recieve an answer to your mail back again record that in your journal too.

Lesson 10: Finesse vs. Force

Today I showed you the spine on the skeleton, and pointed out the structural parts of the skeleton we focus on a lot in class:
the sacrum, sit bones, ball joints of the hips and shoulders.
Especially notice that the body naturally reduces forces between the spinal vertebrae with the disks between the bones, what I like to call "jelly donuts". These flexible disks can squish in many ways to give us the ability to move gracefully and with finesse!

Here is a couple good sites to learn more:

• http://www.back.com/anatomy.html
• http://www.spineuniverse.com/displayarticle.php/article1286.html
  

Our practice today involved a focus on moving between poses with gentle ease and finesse, instead of plopping and forcing ourselves to go places that our body didn't want to go. We can use the breath to help our mind relax and let us put our bodies in new positions.

We did sun salute C, with three different sequences,boat, partner boat, flower, and daisy chain.

Journal entry #10: Finesse vs. Force
Write a description:
Think of a time when you weren’t getting something that you wanted, maybe you had a tantrum and tried to force things to go your way, maybe you were sad inside and felt like no one cared. Think of a way, or ways, that you could have done things differently, or looked at things differently so that you could have left the situation happier.

Here's an example:
You made a plans with a friend and while you are together she gets a text from someone else. She makes you stop what you are saying to text this person back. This happens several more times. You are not happy, you feel ignored, like whoever is texting her is more important than you. What would be the best way to handle this so that you feel OK? How could you react with finesse so that you both get what you need from the friendship?

1. grab her phone out of her hands and yell at her
2. stomp your feet and walk away in a huff
3. wait a bit, get her attention and tell her how this makes you feel