What we'll be working on in 2021

At the beginning of each new year I spend a bit of time thinking about where I want to take my students over the 12 months ahead. And, using a process I picked up from one of my own teachers (Jason Crandell), I’ll think about what mental, physical and emotional qualities I want to help people cultivate in class. Then whatever we’re working on throughout the year - postures, techniques or anything else - everything will be underpinned by those elements. So (only a few days late) here’s what I’m aiming to develop with you lovely people this year....

3 mental qualities

• Agency – I got this idea from another brilliant teacher I’ve recently started studying with, Alexandria Crow (and who I’ll be training with for the rest of 2021 to help develop this point further). Through this theme I aim for students to genuinely feel like they can take any of the options I offer in class without being judged or pressured into doing something different, to choose to rest whenever you want to, or perhaps even leave class if you need to. The longer I do this job the more I realise how different people’s experiences of coming to class on any particular day are, and so how differently they each might need to approach (or choose to avoid) different postures or techniques. Also, if people feel empowered to genuinely do what feels best for them in a group class, might this make yoga feel more welcoming, inclusive and perhaps encourage more diversity among students (and so eventually teachers)...?

• Attention – this one keeps building on a strand from last year because this is still something I’m continually working on (and that my phone/ laptop/ social media definitely doesn’t help with!). I also appreciate that for lots of students it’s even harder to focus on class right now, when we’re working online and they are at home with family/ pets/ housemates etc. But, to me, paying attention to what I’m doing and not thinking about the rest of my life for 60 mins feels like one of the key reasons why I feel better after practice. I think that effect is probably the same whether it’s been a 60 minute vinyasa class or an hour long savasana (which kind of backs up the fact that you should be empowered to rest/ take any option that suits you in class). And, since my cues are sometimes different to other teachers and I ask students to make shapes that aren’t always classical yoga poses, paying attention to class also means students hopefully following my instructions more easily! (You’re always welcome to filter out the jokes though 🥴)

• Equilibrium – my hope is always that by the end of class you’re feeling calmer than you were when you walked in. But this is also something I’d like to cultivate during the more physically challenging parts of class… can you accidentally fall out of a balance without mentally beating yourself up? Can you watch a demonstration of something you don’t think you’ll be able to do without starting an internal monologue it?

3 physical qualities

• Precision and sensitivity – These two are inextricably linked. When you begin practising yoga postures it makes sense that you notice the most obvious sensations first. But, over time, you might start to be able to feel what’s going on in other parts of your body. Developing this sensitivity and a higher level of body awareness will allow you to be more precise in your movements (eg is that leg doing what you think it’s doing..?) and notice the effects of what you’re doing more easily. Trying to work with precision and sensitivity also helps keep my mind from wandering, so I hope it will support your work on our second quality (listed above) of paying attention.

• Evenness - I don’t mean by this that I want all of our bodies to be completely symmetrical by the end of 2021 (that would be weird, impossible, and probably pointless!). Instead, I’ll be thinking instead about even and steady breathing, and working your body relatively evenly. For example, in vinyasa yoga we tend to stretch the backs and outsides of your hips and thighs relatively more than we strengthen them – can we start to address this and perhaps pay more attention to the fronts and insides too? Or, in relation to your shoulders, we spend a lot of time with your arms overhead or in front of you (think plank, downward dog, high and low lunge, handstand etc). Can we add in anything to strengthen the muscles that pull your arms back?

3 emotional qualities (these all overlap with each other and probably give a reasonable insight to my state of mind atm!)

• Patience – with yourself on any given day, with your body when it gets injured, with the process of turning up to class regularly or of constantly noticing your mind has wandered and bringing your attention back on to what you’re doing. And especially at the moment: with people/ pets/ neighbours at home that distract you from an online class! Although that last one might be selfish on my part because I love seeing the pets and kids joining for savasana in your zoom squares….

• Compassion – for yourself when you’re trying to stay focused but your mind keeps wandering, for your body when it gets injured, for your loved ones if they’re being annoying, and for yourself if you need to rest more often than normal during class or if generally you’re having a hard time (we are still in a global pandemic after all)

• Gratitude – for what your body can do and for still being here and able to practice after whatever you have personally been through over the past year or so.

So if you come to class/ a workshop/ a teacher training with me this year, this will underpin what we’ll be working on (and no, this isn’t a recent picture…. it’s from this time last year, in Oman). So if any of this sounds interesting I hope to see you in a Zoom square soon. And perhaps in person in not too long! 🤞

Transitions: kicking up into handstand

There’s more than one way to get into a handstand. This post covers the way most people try first: kicking up, and shows some of the errors I see students make most often. We made this our class focus recently: rather than getting into a handstand and trying to hold it for as long as possible, focusing instead on how to improve the transition into the pose.

In the first clip you can see that both of my legs are bent. The plus points for this method is that it gets your feet off the floor, and you can see I start the motion with my top leg low (which allows me to get a bit of momentum going). But it feels a bit out of control, so doesn’t give a steady foundation to build upon to try and get a little closer to the pose.

For me, kicking up works best when I keep my top leg straight (so it swings up like a pendulum) and only bend my bottom leg (so the bottom leg acts like a spring). Compare how this first video looks - in particular what my top leg looks like, and how fast/ slow I’m moving - to the last video in this post.

In the next clip I've corrected my mistake of bending my top knee, but am now showing two more errors. One is that I get my top leg as high as I can, then try and kick up from there. If your top leg is already as high as possible you don’t give yourself any room to swing it.

Towards the end of this clip I’m also starting with my bottom foot flat on the floor. If you consider that your bottom leg is meant to act like a spring here to help you kick up, having the sole of your standing foot flat on the floor means that you’re taking out the springing potential that you could be creating from your ankle (and only really springing from your knee).

Compare how this looks - in particular how much my top leg moves, and how I use my bottom foot - to the last video in this post.

In this last video I’m still not trying to get all the way into a handstand, I’m just practising my kick up transition. I’ve corrected the errors from the last two videos. The things I’m focusing on here are:

• Keeping my arms completely straight and actively pushing the floor away from me

• Gripping with my fingertips

• Coming on to the tiptoes of my standing foot, and bending my bottom knee and ankle a lot at the start of their springing action

• Not swinging my bottom leg away from my hands as I spring, and instead thinking of springing straight up towards the ceiling

• Keeping my top leg straight and bringing it low at the bottom of the spring so I can swing it higher at the top of the spring

• Keeping my front side core muscles a little switched on (like I’m trying to cinch in my lower ribs and belly a bit

• Moving slowly and not flailing my legs around!

Have you been trying to kick up as shown in either of the first two videos here? If so, how does it feel to try it like I am in the third video? Comment below or send us a message with any questions!

Transitions: malasana (garland pose/ squat) to bakasana (crow/ crane pose)

The transitions we’ve looked in this series so far have been moving from standing on two feet to standing on one foot. In this way, we’ve been moving from a more to a less balanced pose. The transition this blog post is about takes you from being on your feet to your hands but in a way it’s still the same: moving from a more to a less stable posture. For each of the previous two transitions (if you missed them see my posts here and here) I cued my students to move slowly and minimise using momentum. We also made as much of the shape of the less stable pose as we could with both feet on the floor and made the transition simply about shifting your weight (ie not about launching yourself forwards or up). In that way, students (hopefully!) were able to tune in more closely to what was working to hold them steady, what was working to move them slowly, and maintain slow steady breathing. All that same work applied this week to shifting from a squatting position (malasana) to crow/ crane pose (bakasana). 

We’d looked at trying to get into crow pose and hold it a few weeks before in class so I knew my students were familiar with this posture (see that week’s blog here). So this week, since we were approaching the same pose but as part of a transition, instead of holding it we were moving in and out of the pose in time with our breathing.

Start in malasana, or a relaxed squat. I’ve got my big toes together here and my knees apart, and I’m dropping my chest as low down between my legs as it’ll go. This means my knees are as high up towards my armpits as they can go (which will be useful as we progress towards the next pose).

Before you move on from here, squeeze your legs in against your upper arms. Keep squeezing them through all the steps that follow!

To get to this shape I’ve changed 3 main things from the picture above:

• I’ve planted my palms on the floor in front of my feet and slid my hands back so my arms are pressing on my shins

• Lifted my heels

• Lifted my bum

In the introduction to this blog I talked about making as much of the unstable pose as you can with both feet on the floor. This shape looks like bakasana but we’re not quite there yet!

This is as much of bakasana as I can make with my feet on the floor. I’ve kept everything the same from the last picture (legs squeezing in, hips lifting high, fingertips gripping the floor) and now I’ve also shifted my weight forwards so it’s more over my hands. Arm balances aren’t about lifting up - they’re about getting in position and then shifting your weight forwards so that your feet can lift up.

You can see that everything in this photo is exactly the same as the last picture, except that I’ve bent my knees, pointed my toes and brought my feet to my bum.

Since we’re looking more at the transition rather than simply trying to hold this pose, this is how I was cueing my students:

‘Inhale come up on to your tiptoes (ie photo 3); exhale shift your weight forwards and lift your feet (ie photo 4); inhale hold there; exhale bring your toes back down again’. We went through that transition (photo 3-4) and back again three times. Please ask if anything is unclear!