Five-Minute Yoga

I discovered a wonderful Iyengar yoga blog called "Five-Minute Yoga."  Eve Johnson is a certified Iyengar yoga teacher who teaches in Vancouver, Canada.  She has written this blog to help us yoga students cultivate our yoga practice.  You can link to it here. 

She has a video on the front page which is impressive and well worth watching.  She has blog entries of various poses that only take 5 minutes a day.  And the idea is, if you start with 5 minutes, you may go on to 10 or more.  But even if you just stick with the 5 minute practice, even 3 days that week, you're better off than you would have been without doing anything.  She's encouraging, precise, refreshing, and uplifting.

I'll be incorporating one of her 5-minute practices in class each week to help spark your yoga practice at home.

Being Thankful for Iyengar Yoga and You

It's close to Thanksgiving, a time when many of us get together with family and friends to share a meal and express our gratitude.  I am so thankful that I am living on this island, full of aloha, full of a friendliness that I haven't seen anywhere else.  I'm thankful to be living just 10 minutes away from our daughter and two grandchildren.  And I am thankful for all that Iyengar Yoga has given me.

When I was 13, my mother noticed that I had a curvature in my spine.  She wasn't concerned or wanted to do anything to fix it, and it didn't cause me any pain or embarrassment since I couldn't tell from looking in the mirror that anything was wrong.  But as I aged, it got worse.  It became more noticeable and sometimes my left side hurt.  I needed to stop the progression, so I looked into deep tissue massage, Feldenkrais (which helped with the pain), and physical therapy.  But I could see little or no change from the work I did.  Then I discovered a book on back care (Back Care Basics) and it mentioned that Iyengar Yoga, which focused on alignment and was known to be therapeutic, could help.  So I sought out a teacher in San Diego and began taking classes. 

The classes were demanding and I was unable to do most of the poses without some props, but that's what is so great about Iyengar Yoga -- B.K.S. Iyengar developed a method of using props so that anyone could find alignment in a pose with the proper support.  I used belts, blocks, blankets, and bolsters.  The studio had a rope wall which also helped me to stretch out my spine in poses like Sirsasana (headstand) where I hung upside down and Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Facing Dog) where the ropes held the tops of my legs so that I could stretch out.  Though it was difficult at first and my muscles felt worked the next day, I loved it because I knew that my muscles were being stretched, strengthened, and re-trained and that eventually I would improve -- maybe not completely, but I would improve.  And little by little, I did.

Now I can do many more poses.  I feel much more aware of the alignment and muscles in my body. There is still room for improvement, as I think there always will be, but I have been able to achieve poses that I thought I never would.  I feel stronger, more balanced, and more at peace with myself.

That's why I decided to teach and to be trained specifically in Iyengar Yoga.  My wish is to help others find more strength, more openness, more balance and peace.  I am so grateful for all who come to my classes.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Vrksasana (Tree Pose)

Vrksasana means "tree pose" in Sanskrit. This pose is a standing and balancing pose in which you extend upward like a tree. It is a great pose for building strength in the legs and finding a sense of balance and poise and a steadiness of the mind.

Stand in Tadasana. Shift your weight to the left leg and bend your right knee. Hold your right ankle, and extend the knee out to the right side. Place the sole of the foot on the inside of the left thigh, toes pointing down. Keep the left leg straight, as in Tadasana, pressing evenly through the standing leg foot. Keep your pelvis level. Lift the chest and bring your palms together in front of the chest. Then raise the palms up overhead until the arms are straight. If you can, keep the palms together, but if it is difficult to keep straight arms, then separate the hands shoulder-width apart. Draw the shoulders away from the neck. Now, press down through the standing leg foot and extend the body up through the crown of the head, up through the fingertips. Let go of any tension in the head or neck. Keep the gaze soft. Hold the pose 30-60 seconds. To come out, exhale, lower the right foot to the floor and take the arms down. Repeat on the other side.

In the beginning, balancing on one leg may be difficult. There are several options.

• Try doing the pose at first without taking the arms overhead. Just keep the palms together in front of the chest.
• Or extend the arms out to the sides, parallel to the floor, palms down. Sometimes this is enough to find steadiness in the pose.
• You can do the pose with your back to a wall, the back slightly touching the wall.
• Or stand with the left thigh parallel to a wall, about a foot away from the wall. Place the fingertips of the left hand on the wall, with the elbow bent. Place the right foot on the left thigh, then slowly take the right arm straight up overhead. Now you can slowly move the left hand up the wall until it's parallel to the right arm, and then move it away from the wall as you feel balanced. When you're ready to come out, take the left arm back to the wall, and release the right leg to the floor.

Practice this pose regularly to build strength in your legs and to achieve balance and poise.

Tadasana or Mountain Pose

Tadasana or Mountain Pose is the foundation of all standing poses.  In Light on Yoga, Mr. Iyengar writes, "People do not pay attention to the correct method of standing. Some stand with the body weight thrown only on one leg, or with one leg turned completely sideways. Others bear all the weight on the heels, or on the inner or outer edges of the feet. This can be noticed by watching where the soles and heels of the shoes wear out. Owing to our faulty method of standing and not distributing the body weight evenly on the feet, we acquire specific deformities which hamper spinal elasticity. Even if the feet are kept apart, it is better to keep the heel and toe in a line parallel to the median plane and not at an angle. By this method, the hips are contracted, the abdomen is pulled in and the chest is brought forward. One feels light in body and the mind acquires agility. If we stand with the body weight thrown only on the heels, we feel the gravity changing; the hips become loose, the abdomen protrudes, the body hangs back and the spine feels the strain and consequently we soon feel fatigued and the mind becomes dull. It is therefore essential to master the art of standing correctly." (p. 40)

How to do Tadasana?  Begin standing with your feet together, big toes and inner heels touching. The feet are the base of the mountain, so we want to spread them out as much as possible.  Also see that both feet are pressing down evenly, the ball of the foot to the heel, inner edge to the outer edge.  Lift the kneecaps up and press the thighs back. Bring the navel in toward the spine and lengthen the back waist down. Lift the sternum and roll the shoulders back and down so that the shoulder blades press in toward the sternum. Keep the chin level, the throat soft. eyes soft.  Breathe easily.  You can also do this pose with John Schumacher, Senior Iyengar Yoga Teacher:  John Schumacher teaches Tadasana.

Practice this pose whenever you can -- at the grocery story, in a ticket line, etc.  All of the instructions you learn for this pose can be applied to each of the other standing poses.  In each pose, ask yourself, "Is there Tadasana in my feet? in my legs? in my torso?" 

Beginning a Home Practice

There are lots of ideas on the internet about how to start doing a yoga practice at home, but I like John Schumacher's suggestion best:  Just do one pose a day and you've begun a home practice.  It can be any pose.  Maybe you did a pose in class that felt good and was fairly easy for you to do.  Start with that one.  Or maybe there's a pose that you didn't do as well as you'd like and you want to make it better.  Practicing at home will help.  The nice thing about doing one pose is that maybe you'll do another, and another, and another.  That's what happens to me.

I went to yoga classes for years before I started practicing at home.  And I really believe I missed out.  But a wonderful thing happened when I did start.  I learned how much I knew and how much I didn't know about the pose.  The next time we did that pose in class, I listened harder and tried to fill in the gaps in my knowledge.  I also found that I made more progress in my poses when I practiced at home.

Give it a try! 

Welcome to the Yoga for Alignment blog!

My name is Cheryl Ritter and I've been practicing Iyengar Yoga for the last 10 years. I love this form of yoga because of its emphasis on correct alignment. When the body is aligned – and it can be, with the use of props -- the student can achieve the pose safely and with a sense of grace. When the mind is given a break from its day-to-day distractions and instead is focused on that alignment, a sense of peace is attained.

I will be using this blog to inform you of upcoming classes, to share tips on beginning a  home practice, and to share quotes from people who have inspired and uplifted me in my yoga practice and my life.

I teach yoga classes on Tuesdays from 9:00-10:15 a.m. at the Koloa Neighborhood Center located on the south side of the island of Kauai.  Each week we will work on a variety of poses, but with a particular focus: standing poses, forward bends, backbends, inversions and/or restorative poses. Attending class will help you feel the benefits of yoga -- increased strength, stamina, flexibility, and discipline, as well as a sense of well being. Come and enjoy!