Handstand before Headstand…is that ok? YogaAnatomyAcademy has been spotted in the March 2018 edition of Women’s Health Magazine! This was a fun, first experience: picking up a magazine in the airport and finding your own face inside. In the Ask Anything section, we (I) answer this: “I have neck issues, so headstands make me nervous. […]
Yoga Teacher Burnout is real, and although today’s post may seem a little off-topic, it isn’t. After all, I run a mentorship program for Yoga Teachers. Questions often come up about the realities of the profession of yoga teaching. Davis Burroughs, author of “Why I Quit – Confessions of an Authentically Fake Yoga Teacher”, struck […]
Fascia Release for Yoga and Yogis I’ve been loving self-myofascial release (SMFR) for many years now. My “Way of the Happy Fascia” workshops regularly sell out, I assign SMFR to nearly all my patients, and am sometimes “guilty” of spending more time on my mat rolling on balls than doing conventional yoga asana. Well, […]
Three golden nuggets of anatomy wisdom on M.B.Om – Mastering the Business of Yoga Podcast Yoga Anatomy Academy had the great privilege of being featured on yet another podcast (the third in 3 months!), in which we share three of our most audio-friendly nuggets of anatomy wisdom. (If you missed the first two, please check […]
Talking Yoga Anatomy on Podcasts is Kind of Our Jam. Today is Thanksgiving Day in the United States, a busy travel holiday, with loads of folks driving long distances to connect with family. If you are appreciating a relaxing long weekend or spending time in a moving vehicle, I hope that you’ll enjoy this chat: […]
A few weeks ago I taught the first iteration of my new workshop, Posterior Chain Awakening. “Posterior Chain” is a favorite term in the personal training world and in physical therapy clinics, but it’s less known in the yoga sphere. What is a Posterior Chain? “Posterior chain” indicates the muscles (or myofascial network) on the […]
Julie Tran of Science Yoga Sundays graciously invited me to speak on her program. I chose a topic that has been on my mind a LOT lately — Are we serving the yoga or is the yoga serving us? “We are here to enhance our lives, we are not here to bow down to some […]
I had the pleasure of talking with Shannon Crow of The Connected Yoga Teacher, and we had a great conversation about Anatomy-Informed Yoga. Anatomy-informed yoga (a term I made up) takes the best of yoga, the best of what we know from Western medicine about how the body works, and merges them to offer foundational […]
In case you haven’t noticed, yoga is undergoing a revolution. This revolution is a natural ricochet from dominant paradigms of physical asana practice that have included: 1) overly prescriptive alignment and/or 2) lack of alignment plus excess repetition, but that 3) in nearly all cases discouraged critical thinking, deviation from your teacher, and incorporating modern […]
One of the first principles of teaching anatomically sound asana is this: Any yoga pose can harm; Any yoga pose can heal. For example, Tadasana (Mountain Pose) can reinforce poor postural habits, or it can build strength. Headstand is likely to cause excess pressure on cervical vertebrae, but may also be a skillful way to […]