A mountain is a permanent fixture in a landscape and can be used by the traveler as a reference point to help them find their way. In this practice sequence, Tadasana (Mountain Pose) will become your guide. After a short restorative sequence to get you up out of the valley of daily life, with every […]
Fundamentals Practice: Growing Your Mountain
Mountains grow over the span of generations, the result of massive geological forces as the tectonic plates that cover the earth smash into each other in imperceptibly slow motion. Your Mountain Pose, on the other hand, can grow after just a few easeful poses. About Fundamentals Practices: Fundamentals practices are appropriate for all levels. They […]
Tadasana (Mountain Pose)
There’s a wonderful visual harmony and energy to a room full of people doing Tadasana (Mountain Pose), the classic foundational standing pose of yoga, but then, the same can be said of a parade ground of soldiers standing at attention. Both project an image of power and vitality, of conformity amongst a group, but yoga […]
How to Stand with Poise and Ease, Part 2
It’s Monday morning! Hopefully, you’ve had a relaxing and restorative weekend, and you’ve arrived back at work refreshed and ready to meet the week. Those first few moments of the day can be great, can’t they? So much spring in your step before the weight of the day presses down on you. But that weight […]
How to Stand with Poise and Ease, Part 1
In my last post, I floated the idea that a person’s physical aspect, their body, was a complex and dynamic organism capable of accommodating multiple directives or intentions, even if they seemingly contradict each other. In this exploration, we’re going to take a look at some of those contradictory intentions as a precursor to finding […]
Do Less, Not More
There is a long tradition in both Western and Indian cultures that gives a person’s physical aspect, the body, a bad rap, branding it as somehow lazy, unclean, not to be trusted, and in need of whipping into shape. In his book, “Tree of Yoga,” yoga master B. K. S. Iyengar evocatively spells out the […]
“Yank-and-Crank” Yoga No More!
Have you ever finally felt like you’re beginning to understand, after ages of struggling, some arcane instruction your yoga teacher has given you, only for them to tell you something completely contradictory? My yoga teacher, Donald Moyer, recently retired and I was looking back over a decade’s worth of notes from his classes. I was […]
The Alexander Technique Can Help Big Business
In a study conducted in 2011, Alexander Technique teacher Mireia Mora Griso undertook a study of large companies who gave their employees training in the Alexander Technique. If you have studied the Alexander Technique, the results are perhaps not surprising, but for the business world at large, they should be a wake-up call to Big Business […]
Why What “Feels Right” Can Be The Wrong Thing To Do
Every one of us has a “sixth sense.” Unfortunately, it’s nothing fancy. It’s not telepathy, or the ability to see ghosts, or anything supernatural like that. It is pretty cool, in its own way, even though most of us take it completely for granted most of the time. Our sixth sense is a “feeling” sense […]
“Text-Neck”: a Modern Epidemic and its Elegant Solution, The Alexander Technique
The internet has been a-buzz with the publication of a new study by surgeon Kenneth Hansraj, M. D. Using computer modeling, he was able to determine how much stress we are actually doing to ourselves when we drop our heads and collapse to look at our cell phones. An adult human head weighs anywhere between 10 […]
The Alexander Technique and Back Care
In 2008, the British Medical Journal published the results of their randomized controlled trial of Alexander Technique lessons, exercise, and massage for chronic and recurrent back pain. This is not exactly news for those in the Alexander Technique community, as word of favorable scientific studies travel fast. The results were so positive in favor of […]
Why Are Habits So Hard To Break?
A recent cover story in Scientific American revealed how the brain creates habits and why they are so hard to break. In their article, researchers Ann Gaybriel (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Kyle S. Smith (Dartmouth College) outline three stages to laying down a habit: Explore a new behavior Form a habit Imprint it into […]