If you have ever wanted to sit for meditation or prayer, you may have found that it is harder than it looks.
The answer is to:
a – sit on a chair or
b – try relaxing your hips and thighs.
I hope this video will help. I’ll take you through a breath focussed practice, releasing tension from the hips and thighs.
I really enjoyed leading this session.
I hope you like it as much as I did making it.
Stay within your capacity and work optimally for your body’s needs.
Love and light,
Lucy
30 minutes of Yoga – Leg and hip work.
Relax the Hips after focusing on leg strength.
Enjoy,
Lucy
Yoga outside in the sunshine above West Beach Cafe, Porthmeor, St Ives. This was the first class of the summer.
Standing poses are a main stay of these sessions because they are pretty accessible to all I hope you enjoy your practice alongside the St Ives crew, as much as we enjoy being there.
Listen to your body’s needs.
Love and light,
Lucy
in 1 hour practice / General ability / Home / Iyengar Yoga / Lifestyle / video / Yoga for surfers / yoga practice
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In light on yoga there is a 300 week programme. I have followed the sequence using Yoga, a wall and props.
Although props are not necessary, they do improve sensory feed-back, ease, and the awareness of internal energy asana, making each yoga pose an entirely new somatic experience.
I though it would be fun to follow last week’s sequence again but showing it in a different light.
This practice has been amazing for me, re-visiting it nearly 30 years after first practicing it.
Reading BKS Iyengar’s words as if for the first time but knowing my body and the poses in a deeper manner.
Tadasana, Vrksasana, Utthita-Trikonasana, Utthita- Parsvakonasana, Virabhadrasana 1&2, Parsvottanasana, Salamba-sarvangasana, Halasana and of course I leave you with Savasana.
Enjoy! Have a beautiful day.
Love and light,
Lucy
In the back of ‘Light on Yoga’ is a 300 week yoga programme. I though it would be interesting to practice week one. Guruji said “My body is my first prop”. Today this is all I had too, so this is a practice without any other props, not even a mat 🙂 and I kept slipping in the sand which made it slightly more challenging.
For more info about the poses check out the Light on Yoga book, it is amazing.
Next week I will put up the second version I made, with props and shoulder stand too.
Love and light,
Lucy
Using a chair (I was using a bench) is a beautifully gentle way to introduce Surya Namaskar (salutations to the sun) into a daily practice and a wonderful way to easy into the day.
Open your heart with this practice and let the sun shine in.
Enjoy 🙂
Lucy
A ‘Yoga chair’ (a metal framed on like in my video) is helpful but not necessary for this practice. Learn how to use the chair to support yoga poses, whether that is because you are dealing with fatigue or you want to explore poses a little longer to improve your technique.
I used to think that props got in the way of a ‘real’ Yogasana practice but, as my practice has deepened, they have become essential tools. Allowing each posture to become (in the words of BKS Iyengar) “Meditation in action”.
I hope by the end of this half hour yoga practice you may feel the same way.
Enjoy!
Love and light,
Lucy
Standing poses feature heavily within the Iyengar yoga practice, bringing strength into the legs and body. You soon feel it when they have not been practiced for a while.
Dan noticed the other day that his inner thighs had become tight. He requested a practice to stretch them out.
Here it is – triangle and sideways stretch with a peppering of the cobbler pose.
Enjoy
Lucy
If I could only explain the joy a few good standing poses brings to my body, the captured image would be it.
With a strong and well balanced action in the legs we have support for our spine and the rest of the yoga practice.
Standing poses are key within the Iyengar yoga system and yet soooo easily forgotten when we become obsessed with more complicated asana.
The late summer sun, the sound of the sea and the standing poses brought a great sense of grounding with upliftment, the play of opposites!
As always listen to your body and work to your own capacity.
Love and light,
Lucy
Learning to move with a relaxed abdomen can allow our bodies to access deeper release.
It is so important to undo the undercurrents of tension that lie below our asana practice.
These elusive patterns hide away un-noticed as we can sometimes try harder and harder to get the posture “correct”.
Let go a little, feel the holding patterns that may no longer serve you, then maybe you can allow your self to rest well within.
I hope this practice helps a little.
Listen deeply, stay peaceful, enjoy.