How To Sequence to Dragonfly Pose

I taught this delightful little power sequence in YYoga’s 3-Day Principles of YYoga Teacher Training as a demonstration of sensibly sequencing to peak poses. Keep in mind that access to Dragonfly is limited by the joint of the hip – not just the muscles. For more info on skeletal variation, check out Paul Grilley’s outstanding resources. Suffice it to say, the shape of the hip joint itself limits and controls how we move.  The deep external rotation and flexion that Dragonfly calls for means that it is simply not a universal pose.

But that’s no problem! It’s great fun and delicious to work towards it. And side crow and eka pada koundinyasana are awesome stages for getting there. Check it out.

 

Dragonfly Component Parts

What needs to be warmed up or educated for the peak

  • Core & Butt staying high
  • Hugging legs to midline/ neutral hips
  • External rotation and deep flexion at the hip
  • Lateral spinal flexion and rotation
  • Bright and engaged scapula – lots of serratus anterior
  • Hand engagement (hasta bandha)
Sequence
Opening
  • Start on back – transition to yoga practice, breathing, etc.
  • Figure 4 stretch both sides
  • Core integration (pelvic floor, slow crunches, slow obliques)
  • Move to child’s pose and walk hands to right (lateral stretch, yum) then left
  • Downward Dog – Uttansana – Tadasana (roll up, yummy, take time)
General Warm Up
  • Surya A with some extra plank core and scapular push ups – 4 x
  • Vinyasa to Downward Dog…
  • Three-legged dog right leg, three slow core crunches (knee to nose). Take one across body to opposite elbows. Cue hip height (get bum up!) and pressing through hands
Targeted Warm Up
  • First series:
    • Vira II – link to Parsvakonasana (can have elbow to knee, elbow in front of knee, or hover core)
    • Hand to floor, turn back heel up, then core sequence: place hands on block. Train hips to stay lifted as you hover front foot. Press into hands. Float foot back to 3-legged plank. Then draw knee in and hover foot again. Slowly two more times. Then step back to 3-legged dog (can keep hands on block if want).
    • Open hip. Keeping hips back and up into down dog, take knee out to side like doggy at fire hydrant. Extend legs – outer hip engagement, YA!
    • Step slowly through foot between hands
    • Vira II to humble warrior
    • Hands to floor, turn back heel up, back knee down – Lizard (bum up again!)
    • Repeat all second side, then vinyasa
  • Second series:
    • From front of mat.
    • Revolved chair – step slowly back into Revolved Side Angle. Raise up to Crescent. Lift front heel up and hold three breaths. Put it back town. Hands slowly to floor.
    • Awkward pigeon (external rotation front leg, bum up and back!)
    • Step front foot halfway down mat, root down through the left hand, turn onto outside of back foot, lift hips high, supported Side plank.
    • Repeat all second side, then vinyasa
  • Third series:
    • From front of mat.
    • Eka pada galavasana prep (ie: standing figure four) – slow transition to Warrior 3
    • Step to crescent and transition to Revolved Side Angle pose
    • Hands to mat. Step front foot halfway down mat, root down through the left hand, turn onto outside of back foot, lift hips high, supported Side plank.
    • Staying lifted through shoulder, lower hips. Pull left heel to bum. Ardha Matsyendrasana. Transition to Agnistambasana (stacked shin) or seated figure 4.
    • Transition out the way you came in to supported Side Plank.
    • Draw right knee into chest, shoot right foot under left arm to left side of mat, turn onto outside of back foot, Side Plank Variation.
    • Staying lifted in shoulder, set hips down (legs look an “L”). Straight legs, twist to front of mat, deep belly twist and IT band stretch (this looks like a prone revolved triangle). Five deep breaths.
    • Come back out the way you came in, slowly. Down dog.
    • Repeat all on left side.
  • Core:
    • Navasana with twist from side to side.
    • Tolasana
    • Repeat
    • Seated Dragonfly
      • Version 1: Twisted navasana
      • Version 2: Seated figure four with twist towards foot
      • Version 3: Seated figure four with twist towards foot, bottom foot lifted off floor (like navasana)
Peak
  • Version 1: Side crow
  • Version 2: Eka Pada Koundinyasana A
  • Version 3: Dragonfly – from eka pada galavasana prep
Cool down and Savasana
  • Anjaneyasana optional thigh stretch
  • Upavista Konasana
  • Happy Baby
  • Savasana
Tips
  • Bum up! It’s not the body part, but the action that is so key
  • A theme about accepting our unique, magnificent bodies is a beautiful way to invite play, exploration and fun to this sweaty, yummy, twisty practice 🙂

Try it and comment!

Want more? Check out my continuing education courses in Yoga Sequencing and Teaching here.

Enjoy! 🙂

 

Saying no to right/ wrong

I’m right! You’re wrong!

Ooooo, it feels so good to be right!! Doesn’t it? Being right is brain happy food. “He is soooooo wrong!” I say, outraged (but somehow gleeful). When I’m right, I feel safe, secure, and wonderful. “I’ve got this.” Control maintained. Oh happy day!

And then my dad says, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to have a relationship?”

My dad: the yogi that has never practiced yoga.

See, according to yoga philosophy, there is no such thing as right/ wrong, at least not if we can step back and take in the big picture. We humans just get confused because our brains love to make comparisons. If I’m good, you’re bad. If I’m dark, you’re light. Tall/ short, thin/ fat…nothing in the world exists except through comparison. We love this duality; it’s how we make meaning. But to often we forget that duality is just a mind tool; it’s not what’s really happening.

According to Tantra, the Universe is Consciousness unfolding itself, simply for the joy and play (lila) of the experience. You are consciousness regarding itself (yourself), and regarding others as well. Your perspective or viewpoint (darsana) is uniquely yours, a special experience of consciousness knowing itself in a particular way. Verily, we are the universe in self-reflection.

Because we are all part of this self-reflection, everyone is an essential and holy component of this grand unfolding. From this higher perspective, we can see that every viewpoint has value, because it is. It is, therefore it is good. “Right” becomes a limited and egoic tantrum of self-assertion, a needing to prove that our own viewpoint is okay. But when we trust that our own perspective is intrinsically of value, the need to be right becomes obsolete.

Instead of right/wronging each other, we can become curious about someone else’s perspective. What have they experienced that it outside the marvelous sum total of your experiences that would cause them to think so differently? How marvelous! How eye-opening! How curious!

So no to right/ wrong. Let’s soften up our hard edges. Out of curiosity – rather than judgment – true compassion and learning are born.

Photo credit. 

Saying no…to self-limiting beliefs

Your mind is a beautiful cage.

Glorious, glittering, shiny, and infinitely complex…but a cage nonetheless.

From the time we’re children, we create an understanding of the world and live by the subsequent rules that we create. And for the most part, these beliefs go unchallenged.

  • “I can’t sing.”
  • “I’m not good at math.”
  • “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”
  • “I can’t do handstand.”

We cruise along in our lives, blithely acting in accordance with these governing beliefs.  And because our mind is so darn persuasive, we often agree to its rules without a second thought.

But your yoga practice is different.

In yoga, we are asked to dive beneath the mind’s advice and admonishments and connect to the intelligence of our bodies and our breath. We deliberately create space from the mind’s relentless and well-meaning chirping (“You’re going to fall!” “You can’t kick into handstand!” “You’re not strong enough!”) in order to pry open some cracks in our armour.

We create space for self-surprise.

There is a part of my practice where my mind jumps in. It’s when I’m practicing handstand. My mind starts its whispering, “You can’t.” While I can’t silence my mind, I can choose to lovingly question its certitude. I focus on my breath. I set my mind’s chatter aside. And then I practice. Some days I fall, and some days I defy my own expectations. By focusing on our breath and letting our body find its own intelligence, we can begin to open the doorway to new possibilities. After all, our mind can only advise based on what it’s already experienced or imagined; new vistas are unimaginable and beyond its scope. The only way to blow our own mind is to create opportunity to transcend our known experience.

In our yoga practice, we experience new possibilities in the form of physical poses (inversion, forward fold, arm balance). We may say, “I never know I could do that!” Ultimately, however, the pose itself doesn’t matter. The pose simply reveals the truth: we don’t need to believe everything that we think.

How might this insight change our world off the mat? When our mind’s cautionary tales are exposed as fiction, suddenly new vistas emerge. Beyond our imagination.

So, say No to self-limiting beliefs.

And say yes to wild possibility.

Fora great article on NLP and limiting beliefs, click here.

Saying No…to Rushing

“No rushing,” my yoga teacher admonishes sternly.  She’s helping me with backbends.  I’m moving too fast. I take a breath and pause. I slow down. “Good,” she nods, “no rushing.”

Ah, yes, as in yoga, as in life.

Rushing used to make me feel important. “I’m so busy!” I sighed dramatically, secretly thrilled by the sense that I was moving, shaking, and making something happen.

But rushing means autopilot.

Sure, it may look like I’m getting a lot done, but when I rush, I’m not present. So there’s no time to change the way I’m doing something, because the focus is simply get this sucker done. We’re one step ahead the whole way. So we have to run on our brain’s happy habitual grooves, doing everything exactly as we’ve done it before.

Ironically, this isn’t efficient.

When we rush, we forget our keys (our dry cleaning, our kids). We forget to feel (to breathe, to pause, to think, to experience). There’s no time to innovate (change, adjust, improve). We can only survive the rush.

Here’s the funny thing: despite what our brain may be telling us, rushing isn’t about time. Rushing is how we feel on the inside; it’s an internal state. And despite the feeling, it doesn’t get us anywhere more quickly. In fact, rushing often takes up more time, because we miss seeing the possible short cuts along the way.  I don’t have to rush to be efficient when I practice. And how I feel while on the journey is radically different.

This month, Say No to Rushing!

Instead, slow down. Be in the moment. And feel how time and possibility expands.

November. No to Yes.

It’s the month of November and time again for this most remarkable time: saying no.

At first, saying no sounds bad, like a five year old staring at their brussel sprouts. “No! I won’t!” He sticks his tongue out. To me, saying “No” still smells like failure, like I’m a bad sport (bad friend, bad worker, etc.)

That’s why we gotta practice.

Because saying no is a way of saying yes. Saying no asks us, “what is our good stuff worth? And what can we shave away to get it?”

In yoga this month, we’ve said no so far to:

  • being small (be big!)
  • being isolated (recognize connection!)
  • rushing (savour the moment!)

You can start small.

  • Say no to the coffee date you don’t really want to go on
  • Say no to the extra work project
  • Say no to the free tea set that your mom wants to give you (“Nooooo, thank you.”
  • Say no to riding the worry train
  • Say no to habit

Go on, practice loving on your inner five year old.

Say no.

And say a big old YES to you.

 

Photo credit.

Props to go to my gal Shandy Rae, who came up with this amazing theme several years ago. Check out her most delicious juice bar cafe in Whistler, BC if you’re there.

Yoga confessions

I fall over in handstand.

I try, I miss, I get afraid, I fall. I am not one of those effortless inversion mamas, deftly floating from pose to pose. I admire those practitioners, marvel at their grace. I’ve been afraid of handstand since I fell out of it over four years ago.

I have other sins.

I am not consistent in my practice. I do not arrive every day on my mat at 6 AM. I arrive late, get flustered, leave early to get to meeting. My mornings are derailed by the previous evening’s glass of wine, a netflix binge, or the simple deep heart angst of an existential day. I get consumed in work, become anxious, forget to meditate, and catch myself texting when I should be listening.

I beat myself up, wonder what the point is, then am suddenly struck by the beauty of the autumn leaves. And I am reminded for a moment – a glimpse that is breathtakingly beautiful – that I am alive.

I breathe, remember myself, and return to practice.

And fall over in handstand.

But today in practice, I realized that the point isn’t actually to do handstand.

The point is simply to try. To show up.

Regardless of the wine, the netflix binge, the boyfriend fight, or the existential crisis. Show up anyway. Or in fact, because of the wine, the netflix binge, the boyfriend fight….to return. To come back. To breathe. To feel. To try to do handstand, again. To fall. To try. And to return the next day.

The point of our yoga isn’t achievement, but our there-ness. Our showing-up-ness. To remember, just for a moment, that we have a space inside us that is beyond distraction. Beyond success or failure.

A space of goodness that simply is.

And we are enough.

Photo credit.

The invitation

One of the most powerful gifts that yoga provides to us is a safe space to feel richly and authentically.

How many of us get caught in days of politeness, with work or with friends, “Why yes, Amanda, while I agree your projections are viable, I respectfully disagree and hope that we can find a mutually beneficial solution.” We wear masks in order to seem civilized, squelch emotions so we don’t appear irrational, and protect others from our fears, anxieties, or reactions. “No, Brad, that’s fine, I’ll just wait until tomorrow to finish the report.”

All this is part of civilization. Until we’re all able to find joy and happiness in every moment, we generally have a cultural agreement to smooth the roughness or at least not scream in public. Observe a playground full of toddlers: witness the true internal human landscape. Many of us have become so good at hiding our feelings that we can no longer feel them completely – even when we’re alone.

Yoga is a place that can inspire peace, quiet and calm, certainly. But let us make these the results of the practice, rather than a pre-requisite for membership. Too often I feel as if we are shushed the moment we enter the space, strapping on a feigned bodhisattva placidity in order to participate in the group experience.

Lest the door has not been fully opened until now, allow me to usher you into this sanctuary and greet you: your whole self is welcome here. Your tears, your frustrations, your anxiety, your shadow, your pain.  Your joy, your irrationality, your deep feeling, your sensuality, and your vibrant, shimmering soul. Your startling stained glass majesty as well as the burnt edges of your hidden shame.

Your whole self is welcome here.  On your mat. To breathe, to feel, and to be.

To be human.

Pegan Adventures: Total Failure

It was day one and I was already befuddled.

First of all, allow me to confess that I drank a glass of wine. I know, I know! SO not paleo! But I just moved into a new apartment, and a glass of wine was the perfect toast to end my Ikea-bed-assembly-beg-my-neighbor-for-help-adventure. And – I’ll have you know: “Wine is often considered to be the closet thing we’ve got to paleo-friendly alcohol. There are various organic options – red wine in particular” (Ultimate Paleo Guide). So there you go.

Other than the wine, Day 1 had started so brightly.

Food on Day 1:

  • cashews
  • coffee with cream (my exception to the vegan guideline is the necessity of cream in my coffee)
  • tofu, greens, broccoli lunch
  • yam, spinach, cauliflower dinner

However, I then remembered that tofu wasn’t paleo. Whoops.

Um, and neither were any beans. Or legumes of any kind.  So no hummus. No soy. No rice. Oh dear. No nuts either.

Friends, maybe it was the Ikea bed, or maybe it was just the threat of no hummus, but I lost heart.

Confession, dear reader: I full failed the pegan.

Now, I may try it another time. But for now, I am content so simply recuperate from Thanksgiving and get back to my relatively sugar-free ways. Because post pumpkin pie, there’s some work there to be done.

Happy Thanksgiving lovelies.

Photo credit.

 

Boring means you’re awesome.

I relish new beginnings: new diets (oh my sugar free, pegan fads…you know me!), New Year’s Resolutions, yoga practice plans, website launchings.  I get this rush, a burst of bright satisfaction. The start is intoxicating: I’m making a plan, I’m doing it, yippee!

But then, some way down the line, upholding my intention becomes, well, boring. 

I’m going to the gym, and now it’s part of the routine. I am eating better, and it’s status quo. The initial shine of doing something different and better! has given way to a humdrum-this-is-just-part-of-my-life-feeling.

This is the moment where we “fall off the wagon”  – because we forget there’s a moving wagon in the first place! It’s only a couple weeks later after I’ve eaten three boxes of Timmy Hoho’s do I think, huh, wait a minute. Where was that wagon again? Oh crap, now it’s three miles ahead. Then I’m running again to catch up. And again setting shiny new intentions.

Upholding our best self doesn’t always have to be an uphill battle. Sometimes being our best is about the plateau, the easy cruise, the staying with of our current momentum. Rather than climbing a mountain, now we just have to show up and do it. Even it’s boring. Especially when it’s boring. Because this is the time when we are integrating this change into the fabric of who we are.

Yes, enjoy the rocket launch of your start, but let’s not be seduced by that fleeting emotional high of momentary change. Once that rocket gets into outer space, there will come a point where it will cruise on its own momentum. Like in our relationships, that first sense of heady in love intoxication will fade. Our job is to recognize and get comfortable with the fact that change – at some point – loses its lustre.

Boring is the moment we’ve been waiting for. Boring signifies that we are becoming.  “Boring” means that it’s working.

So get on your rocket. And enjoy that mother-loving boring ride.

Bittersweet human. The beauty of our no-win situation.

Two armies are poised for battle. Our hero falls to his knees at the impossibility of the choice: should he uphold his righteous claim to the throne and slay his enemy – who also happen to be his kin? Or shall he be killed and forsake his duty? Frozen by terrible consequences on all sides, he collapses and begs for guidance.

Arjuna’s battle in the Bhagavad Gita is a metaphor for the choices we face everyday. If we choose one path, we lose something. If we choose the other path, we also lose. There is no way to win.

As we get older, the simplicity of our childhood choices falters as we start to realize the world’s true complexity. There is no right way. There is no answer. Whichever way we choose, something gets taken away. Good mother, good career? Adventure, or stability? In each moment, we necessarily must cut ourselves off from a thousand other possibilities. Small choices in the past nudged us in one direction, and ten years later we find that small choice has thrown us onto another continent, another world, another life.

What if I’d bought that apartment? Stayed with that guy? Left that guy? Said fuck it that one time? What if I’d been more responsible and played it safer? What if?

Every path is bittersweet. I feel this truth so strongly right now because my fertile years will soon be exiting stage left. For the first time, time is imposing the brakes of real life consequences. The cumulation of choice is inescapable.

But here’s the thing.

This isn’t a problem.

No, my friends. As much as I may want to rail against and mourn the many paths I have not travelled, this bittersweet ache I feel is part of the tender beauty of being human. In each moment, we stand in the middle of our own compass, choosing our direction. And we do it again in the next moment, and the next. We have no right choice, we only have the artistry of this choice. And the next. A kaleidoscope of decisions that creates the tapestry of our lives. Fucked up, colourful, confused, full of inconsistency.

Making great art is rarely tidy or clean.

Our practice: Love this choice. Love this tapestry. With all your heart. With abandon and courage. Love your one, precious, and most remarkable life.

“I’ll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”

― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

 

Ah, thank you Nico Luce, for reminding me today of the story of the Bhagavad Gita. 

 

How much should we sleep?

I slept an unprecedented 10 hours last night. That’s right. Ten.

For a gal who usually weighs in under 7, 10 felt like a luxury only reserved for vacation or illness.  Oh, and then I had a nap. For an hour.

What the what?

Perhaps it’s because I’ve been chronically underslept since my early twenties, or perhaps it’s simply that this weekend is the first time I’ve been able to unwind a bit. Who can say for sure? But science does keep beating us over the head: Sleep is good for you.

The Paleo movement (which I’ve been dabbling in for the last few months) is not just about food. They’re also big on sleep. In fact, sleep ranks #1 on Paleo Gugu Mark Sisson’s Daily Apple this week   – for tips on building lean muscle mass! Go figure!

Check out these recent articles from reputable sources:

And now go on. Nap.

 

*My mom says, “I really noticed an improvement in my sleep when I started wearing a sleep mask!” She petitioned me to put this link in. Enjoy!