1. Core stability: affecting the entire body
2. What are the most common mental mistakes you can make in yoga?
3. How can a combination of focused breath and gaze change your practice? Where do you experience the surrender into these postures?
4. How can you encourage your students to fully let go in the surrender series? Why is this portion of class so vital to our students practice?
- Core stability is something that is so prevalent in my life. All throughout my gymnastics and dance training growing up I found that I had created a terrible habit of letting my core go and letting my back sway creating what we have described as a permanent "cheerleader butt". During my dance training at CU Boulder I got nagged on constantly about this issue. What I found really worked is when I was shown or when this idea of core stability throughout my entire core and not just core stability from sucking my gut in a squeezing my abs was presented in a way that was descriptive and felt not just understood. This has been applied to my yoga practice in so many ways. I've learned that my core stability can come from breath and how important and now easy it is to find it in so many different postures and that this core stability. Everything moves through and from my core and I also now understand I can't achieve this stability simply through a few sit-ups.
2. What are the most common mental mistakes you can make in yoga?
- The most common mental mistakes I make it yoga are usually not listening to my body and or not breathing and staying present. I think losing my breath throughout the flow of class is the easiest thing for me to forget about. When I first started practicing yoga I had a really hard time getting into it and it wasn't until I started to find my breath that yoga became something that I found passion and pleasure in. It is so easy for me to blank out and or think about all the other things going on in my life. As I move forward with my practice I want to continue to push myself to ALWAYS find my breath and to keep it there throughout each class.
3. How can a combination of focused breath and gaze change your practice? Where do you experience the surrender into these postures?
- First and foremost it changes presence. It brings you back to the space, back into your body and out of your mind. I experience the surrender into these postures when I let my mind go and fill my entire body with air and release everything, letting go of everything unwanted in my body and in my mind.
4. How can you encourage your students to fully let go in the surrender series? Why is this portion of class so vital to our students practice?
- I think I could encourage them to fully let go int he surrender series by simply stating that yes the last 50 minutes of class were super important and we got a great workout, but these last few minutes of class that we share together and just as important as all that hard work. It is vital to our students practice because it calms and cools the body down and stretches important muscles that we just worked and brings you back into your body. This is when you can truly feel your body.