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Dr. Ariele Foster

Dr. Ariele Foster is a yoga teacher, physical therapist (physiotherapist) and founder of YogaAnatomyAcademy.com.

Is it bad if your yoga teacher wings it? 

This may be controversial, but, despite the fact that I’m about to teach a sequencing workshop: I don’t think it’s a bad thing to “just wing it” when teaching yoga. Decent yoga teacher trainings offer their trainees class formats to follow. Most yoga teachers therefore have a reliable foundation for improvisation. Granted, most of us […]

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Let’s Stop Saying “Square the Hips”

We aren’t ever really “squaring the hips”. Your two hips are on either side of your pelvis, where the pelvis and upper leg bone (the femur) meet. On the mat, what we mean if we are using the words “square the hips”, is to “square the pelvis“. This more accurate phrase typically means bringing the […]

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New Podcast Interview: How Our Obsession with Alignment is Causing Anxiety

Cover image for The Mentor Sessions Podcast featuring Dr. Ariele Foster on How to Respond to Students Who Want "Correct" Alignment

My most recent blog post, How Our Obsession with Yoga Alignment Misses the Point, is the product of a massive paradigm shift that was at least a decade and a half in the making. Despite the indisputable fact that yoga helps many people, asana can cause harm, and is not universally “good”. Yet the idea […]

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Is Navasana a Core Pose? 

Is Navasana (Boat Pose in yoga) a core pose?

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Yoga Anatomy Academy (@yogaanatomyacademy) As an avid student of yoga since the mid-90s, I have heard many yoga teachers say that boat pose, also known as navasana or paripurna (full) navasana, was a core pose.  This always confused me because, in my own body during navasana, […]

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What is (and is not) the “Core”

After recently hearing a yoga teacher insist that foot strengthening exercises were “core exercises”, it got us thinking: what exactly is the core? And how can we help the yoga community apply this term more precisely? “Core” is not a medical term, and does not have a universal, clear definition. It can (and will) be […]

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All the Tea About Tucking the Tailbone

Let’s talk about “tucking the tailbone”.  “Tuck your tailbone” is a cue that has circulated in yoga asana classes since forever. (I can confirm it was used in the 1990s.) The cue is intended to reduce the position of anterior pelvic tilt and / or lumbar lordosis. To put it another way, “tuck the tailbone” means […]

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30 Day Yoga Challenges are Popular, but are They Healthy?

Is there such a thing as too much yoga? Thirty day (or other length) yoga challenges have become a thing in the last 15 years…and therefore a staple of the yoga world every January.  Typically these challenges involve attending a yoga class (virtually or in person) each and every day for 30 days in a […]

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Your Brain on Gratitude Meditation

Gratitude meditation IS yoga, and this is not a platitude. It is proven. The research can visualize and quantify effects parallel to those described in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Today there are 1000+ published studies and papers on gratitude listed on pubmed.gov. Most of these studies were published in the last 5 years. Interestingly, […]

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The Case for a Gratitude Practice (Just not the One that Came to Mind)

It’s the season of gratitude, and this week we are dropping tidbits about the science of gratitude.  It turns out that the neurophysiological effects of gratitude are profound. Inducing a state of gratitude is one of the most powerful, speedy ways to change your heart rate and markers of positive neurotransmitters in your body.  Gratitude […]

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