Sometimes you just want to breathe and turn inward. You can’t do that if the teacher is constantly yammering on with a pre-memorized set of alignment instructions, half of which are meaningless.

I would also like to suggest a ban on the following yoga language:

“Rotate your inner thighs” – can someone please tell me what the HELL this is supposed to mean? Once I am in a standing pose, all my leg energy is going into keeping me standing. I do not know how to “rotate” my leg muscles either inward or outward. They do not do that. They are either contracted or not. No rotating is going on with the actual muscle or thigh. If you want me to move my knee or adjust my hip, just say so. Telling me to move my “inner thigh” (as opposed to my “outer thigh”) means absolutely NOTHING. It just irritates me when a teacher says that. What it tells me is that they memorized something their teacher said and probably have no real clue as to what it means either.

“Draw the sacrum down” – By sacrum, are you meaning tailbone? Is it the back of my rear end you want drawn down or my whole pelvic area? What exactly do you mean by this? Do you want me to squat lower or turn my hips in a little bit so I don’t have so much swayback going on? How about something more simpler, like, “don’t stick your ass out so much.”

“Draw the shoulder blades down the back” – Hmm, last time I checked, I didn’t really have an active muscle in my shoulder blades that let me literally pull those bones down my back. So what the heck does this mean? If I pull my shoulders back, my shoulder blades appear to be going inward, not downward. So do you want me to relax my shoulders? Then just say so. “Relax your shoulders” actually means something to me. Trying to move a large plate-like skeletal structure through the sheer power of my thoughts does not.

“Lift the pelvic floor” – Are we now doing kegel exercises in yoga? What does this exactly mean anyway? If I am lifting my pelvic floor does that mean move my entire hips up? I could technically “lift my pelvic floor” by coming into a standing position from seated. See, now my pelvis is higher than it was before, right? Look, if you want me to engage in root lock then explain what that is in detail for the newbies and then just call it root lock. Lifting the pelvic floor otherwise means nothing.

Well, those are my nominations for the most overused and useless yoga phrases. I am sure I’ve missed some. Do you have others you want to share? Please post in the comments. Namaste.

We will start with a brief talk about the history of yoga and the different styles of yoga available. Then, you will be able to participate in a live demonstration of many popular yoga poses. No experience is necessary, and you do not have to be young, fit or flexible to join in. (In fact, you will learn what types of yoga to explore if you have physical limitations.) After the demonstration, there will be lots of time for Q&A. Plenty of personal attention will be given.

Cost: Donations are Accepted and Appreciated

Please:
* Wear comfortable clothes.
* Come equipped your own water.
* Bring a yoga mat if you have one (not required).
* Tell Friends, Family, Colleagues…

Monday, February 8, 7-9 pm

Location
The GATEWAY / a Portal for Growth & Wellness
11674 Gateway Blvd.
Suite C
West Los Angeles, CA 90064
310 – 479 – 0430

* Street Parking Only as with all group venues at The GATEWAY (ample immediate surrounding street parking). Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

RSVP Here: http://www.meetup.com/TheGATEWAYPortal/calendar/12380168/

In hatha yoga, pranayama is often divorced from the movement. You don’t do your alternate nostril breathing while doing down dog. Sure, you might coordinate your inhale and exhale with your hatha flow, but that’s not quite the same thing as doing a breath of fire that coincides with your movement as in kundalini yoga.

Hatha yoga definitely makes my body feel good, but there is a definite endorphin rush you get when doing a lot of breath of fire in kundalini yoga (er, well, I hope it’s endorphins and not lack of oxygen to my brain!). That breath of fire, when done in conjunction with movement, seems to relieve stress and frustration in a way that hatha does not. I simply feel mentally better after doing kundalini yoga in a way I do not when just doing hatha.

I like both disciplines, and feel that both have their strengths and weaknesses. I wouldn’t want to give up one for the other. But if you want to really relieve your mental stress, try a little bit of kundalini yoga every day. It’s fabulous.

For more information, please see:

http://yogareiki.com/schedule/gateway

PS I will be starting some classes in downtown LA in September…stay tuned!

FREE Class 5 – Shoulders [Full Length Premium Version] from Les Leventhal on Vimeo.

This is a good class for physically fit people who want to work on strengthening the upper body while opening up the chest and shoulder area. The beginning portion is a bit strenuous, particularly for the upper body and core. If you are a beginner, I’d recommend coming to your knees in dolphin plank.

P.S. I love half-hour online yoga classes like these. You can get a decent workout at home without having to invest two or more hours of your time (as when you go to a live yoga class).

They are actually almost there. Just an inch, maybe even less. But they have been kind of stuck in this netherworld for a few weeks now. Teasing me. Saying: Yes, you do have the possibility of touching the floor, but we’re not going to give it to you…just yet. Almost! But not quite! I can even kind of hit the floor if I do one foot at a time!

I’m hoping they’ll just pop soon and go PLUNK down on the ground! Wow! A miracle! A yoga miracle!

Patience, Grasshopper, I know!

NEW DELHI—Krishna Pattabhi Jois, a yoga teacher and practitioner famous for popularizing Ashtanga yoga in the West, has died. He was 93.

Jois died in the southern Indian city of Mysore on Monday, a press statement from the K. Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute said.

More: http://www.chicoer.com/news/national/ci_12410237

Searching for solid scientific data on what works and what doesn’t, Hartz and his associate Suzanne Bentler launched a study four years ago. They asked about 150 patients with chronic fatigue to list all of the interventions they were using for their fatigue—from the alternative to the conventional, including physical activity and pharmaceuticals. About two years later, the researchers contacted the study subjects again and asked how they were doing and whether their CFS had improved. When the researchers compiled their data recently, they found some unexpected results: Yoga appeared to help the CFS patients more than anything else. Hartz was shocked.

Hartz warns that these results are preliminary and further study is needed to verify the findings; in fact, his team hasn’t even finished fully analyzing the study data. And if yoga is indeed as helpful as the study suggests, Hartz won’t know without further research whether CFS patients benefit from yoga’s gentle physical activity, meditative component, or some other factor. Even with all of those caveats, however, Hartz’s research offers CFS sufferers an exciting possibility for effectively treating their ailment.

The article, however, did not do enough, in my opinion, to cover cases of people with CFS who have extremely stubborn, chronic forms of the illness. There are differing varieties of CFS – one is where people recover almost fully in about a year, another is where people suffer chronically for years with periods of relapse and remittance, and another where people degenerate over periods of years. The people cited in the article seemed to be of the first variety – two people who got CFS and recovered mostly after a year of rest and recovery.

This is not to say yoga is not helpful for those with severe cases of CFS. It has certainly been instrumental in helping me manage my CFS. But it is not a guaranteed cure – for me, it mostly helps keep the CFS at bay.

For those who have very severe CFS to the point where just getting up and walking can be strenuous, please check out Liz Franklin’s Yoga in Chairs DVDs. (I recently got certified in her Yoga in Chairs, which I’ll share more about in a future article!)

For me, hatha yoga is not enough. Doing hatha yoga does provide stress relief and stirs up those good hormones that help with mood, but that in and of itself is not transformative. The kundalini yoga – particularly the mantras and chanting – seems to be the extra kick in the pants for me. To say that some of these mantras are magical sounds a bit over the top, but they really do seem to create massive shifts.

I can’t say I have reached enlightment yet – I still have my negative moments for sure. I still also react, but not as badly as I used to. (It used to be really really bad!)

So has yoga changed your life? If so, how? Do share!

So my alternative is to place my back against one wall in my narrow hallway and walk up the other wall. I can’t seem to get both legs straight up at once, but I think that might have something to do with where my hands are placed. With the door jamb method, you are supposed to place the hands around either side of the jamb. In the hallway, the hands have nowhere to go except next to the wall.

Well, at least I’m getting somewhat vertical.