I had never heard of Deborah James who recently died from bowl cancer, but hearing the BBC newsreader, announcing in his best BBC accent that we should ‘check our pooh’ made me snigger like a 7 year old. It felt so incongruous, this great British institution saying the word ‘pooh’, when we all know they should be using the term 'number twos' instead.
Read moreLegacy
As I mopped my kitchen floor, I began to think about legacy. Not legacy in the financial sense, but as in contribution to this world.
Read moreCreating a Habit
There are some things that are 'just a habit'. I don’t have to think about it, it’s automatic. Teeth brushing, making coffee in the morning, starting a yoga practice with a weird stretch and a yawn. Somethings became a habit without releasing it – a glass of wine at the end of day, a croissant on a Sunday, dancing outside in a thunderstorm. I have no idea at what point these things became a habit.
Read moreThinking with your feet
I recently heard a ‘top tip’ from a teacher that struck a chord with me. 'If you are ruminating, then ground down on your feet". This got me thinking... (I am aware of the irony of this sentence).
Apart from the fact it is so ridiculoulsy simple I can't believe I wrote it down, we all know this intuitively. It is literally a no brainer. ;-) It makes perfect sense to 'get out of your head' into the opposite direction.
Read moreTen Back Pain Facts
We've all had a niggly low back at some point and like me you began to think the worst.
My thoughts generally go something like this “It'll get so bad, I won't be able to teach yoga. I won't be able to earn a living. I won't be able to buy food. I'll have to cook my own liver to stay alive…”
You get the gist. So before our thoughts get out of hand, I thought it useful to look into back pain. (Though I did get a little lost researching 'why humans love to catastrophise?'* and 'can you eat your own liver?'**)
Read moreTo P or not to P
I had heard about the connection with the heel and the bladder, but didn't understand how it worked, so have gone down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to find out more…
Pee-pee, wee-wee, tinkle whatever name you have for urination, we all do it, we always have done it and sometimes we do it when we don’t want to do it.
Asking Why?
When I was a little girl I liked asking “why?”. My mum would answer “Warum, warum? Weil die Bananen sind krumm” which means “Why? Why? Because bananas are crooked”.
Read moreCan you wag your tail?
In a recent workshop the teacher told the class to have ‘an anterior tuck of the pelvis, but counter nutation of the coccyx’.
For some people this sentence is easy to decipher, for others it requires some investigation. I have translated it into Sandra-speak for those who would like some deciphering.
‘Stick your bum out, like a duck waddling sexily and at the same time tuck your tail under like a scared whippet dog hiding his tail’.
Push, Pull, Twist and Rejoice
Have you ever looked at a yoga pose and thought, "Why!??! Why on earth would I want to contort myself into THAT?"
Then you try it, can't do it and then get annoyed. Then think, "Why can't I swivel my head 180 degrees and lightly place my nose between my butt cheeks?" Finally it's followed by "It's not fair".
Read moreUjjayi Breath
Have you ever been so angry, but not been able to vent your ire? Did you clench your jaw shut and make a bull-like long exhale through the nostrils? Did you want to scream an expletive (or ten), but instead you shut your mouth and made a kind of Darth Vader sound in the back of the throat as you composed yourself?
I am pretty sure you know what I am describing. To me, this feels like the best option when I am fuming. This forceful exhale gets rid of that surge of energy and brings some balance back. When it doesn't work, that's when all hell breaks loose and I say things I wish I hadn't said. (This is of course all hypothetical- I am a yogi after all...)
Read moreMoon Salutes
Have you ever tried a Moon Salutation aka Chandra Namaskar?
It hasn't been around as long as its famous counter part Surya Namaskar (salute to the sun), but it's a really nice sequence that makes us move in all directions, using the long end of the mat.
The Shiva Samhita (500 year old Tantric text) regards the moon as the source of immortality. Like the 'sun' is located in the solar plexus, the 'moon' is said to be located in the crown of the head and contains 'amrita' the divine nectar of immortality. (There is a yogic practice where you to slice your tongue - just a little -so you can flip the tongue into the back of the throat better and catch this amrita and reverse ageing and decay… Well, this may be a gentler way of keeping the elixir of life.)
Read moreThe Tongue
Take a moment now to note where your tongue naturally sits in your mouth. Where is the tongue resting? At the top of the palate? The bottom of the mouth? Where is the tip of the tongue? Pushing against the top teeth? The bottom teeth?
It turns out there is a wrong and right way to rest your tongue and ‘proper tongue posture’. Bad tongue posture can have a negative effect on your eyes, nose, head, neck, shoulders, and teeth. Improper tongue posture can contribute or lead to sleep apnea, TMJ (jaw pain), problems with vision, bad body posture, tooth damage.
Whereby "proper tongue positioning" can lead to improved sleep, better breathing, and decreased neck, jaw, or head pain.
Read moreWhy do we lie down in Yoga? Savasana
At the very end of each yoga class we finish by having a bit of a lie down. To a beginner this is a very odd thing to do- to lie down in the middle of the room with a bunch of strangers for a few minutes. The reasoning is that after having created all those wonderful shapes and moved the body, breath and energy in all directions, we let it all go. We lie down into corpse pose (Savasana), finally stopping and returning to stillness. In this stillness the body has a moment to absorb and assimilate, on all levels, the changes that have happened, before we spring back to life and it gets very busy again.
There are those who come to yoga so they get 40 winks or 5 minutes of 'peace and quiet'. And those who love the practice, but sprint out the room as soon as I say 'find a comfortable lying down position'. They either don't see the point of wasting time on the floor for 3 - 5 minutes or they can't cope with 3-5 minutes of doing nothing. To be fair it's not easy.
Read morePANIC ATTACKS
Yesterday a friend told me he was contemplating moving because he had a panic attack in his car on his way to work. He thought it might be better to move house so he’d have to drive less. This really upset me and I made me want to learn more. Here are some of my findings and thoughts.
Read moreDear Body, a word in your ear...
At the end of most of my yoga classes, I close by asking us to take a moment to "thank our bodies for the hard work they have just done and have gratitude for the hard work they do for us every day, all the time, without us even knowing it", or words to that effect.
I don't know about you, but I'm miffed when I can't do a yoga pose. It bugs me when my leg won't neatly slide behind my head and I can't then balance on my index finger. When in reality, the fact that I can even lift a leg is an amazing feat of engineering and yet here I am complaining that it's not high enough.
Read moreWhat are you thinking?
Yoga teachers say some odd things during class. I completely include myself in this. I've named various body parts different marine life forms: I often refer to the pelvic floor as a giant jelly fish. I've moved internal organs around the body, asking you to 'breath with your toes' or twist and 'pop the heart out and float it to the ceiling'. I have certainly said things like 'be in the moment', 'be present', 'be in the here and now'. But what do these phrases really mean?
Read moreYoga is yoga, isn't it?
'I am off to my yoga class' = I am going to a place where I will roll out a mat and do some weird shapes.
But technically speaking if we are talking about the postures we perform in a yoga class, we should be calling it Asana class rather than Yoga class. But that's like pointing out that a hoover should be called a vacuum cleaner and ping pong is the name of the brand of a table for table tennis...pointing that out would be pedantic, wouldn't it?
The Art of Turning a Blind Eye
I have been painting the Grand Hall of my house, which incidentally is 1m2. My other half says it looks much better than before. I think the paint now highlights all the imperfections in the walls and the old radiator, the cracked door frame and scuffed skirting board. These imperfections invisible prior to my contribution, now really annoy me.
Meanwhile, my other half is tiling in the West Wing, aka the bathroom. I think it looks fabulous, so much better than before. Yet all he can see is the gap between the centre tile is 2mm narrower than the tile above it. Had he not pointed this out, I would never have noticed. This imperfection really annoys him.
In both cases it's not perfect, but better than it was before and in actual fact - it is fine, it does the job more than adequately.
And yet it niggles...
We want perfection
Yoga isn't sport or exercise
As controversial as this notion of 'yoga not being exercise' is, especially when we do it in gyms, it is worth considering… The whole point of yoga is to reach enlightenment. This is a bit of a tricky place to find. We first have to stop all our 'mind chatter'. Then, discover our true self and perhaps, after that we might be good to go.
Read moreBe Better. Be Faster. Be More… WHY?
Yoga is so much easier in the bath. All those poses where I have to lift my entire body weight just using my hands - piece of cake. The poses where I have to put a leg behind my head- easy. (Well... perhaps 'close' to my head.) Forward folds - easy peasy- you can't go too far or you'll drown.
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