Yoga Practice Blog

      This week I did another yin yoga practice. Recently, I've been trying to implement a yin yoga practice at least once a week in my routine. I just find it to be the perfect practice when I'm feeling tired or run down and don't feel like doing any other forms of exercise. It's something that's beneficial for my body but without putting too much strain on it or exercising it too hard. I did this practice on Youtube from a teacher named Kassandra. The class was about 40 minutes long.      Specifically in this practice I did find a form of meditation. For example, during one of the more intense poses called toe squat, there was a really intense stretch through my feet. Since I don't stretch out my feet as often as I do my other muscles, the stretch was really intense. Instead of trying to fight the discomfort or completely come out of the pose, I tried my best to just breathe through the sensations and stay in the pose as long as I could. I've done toe squa

    Recently I tried Sound Healing after a yoga practice. I took this class through my yoga teacher certification program. The teacher's name was Christine and I took the class on Youtube for a little over an hour. This was my first experience with sound healing and it is the first time that I've felt this transcendental feeling from yoga in a long time.      We started the practice by doing a shorter, restorative inspired flow. Most of the poses were on the ground and they were very slow and gentle to the body. Once we did about 30 minutes of flow, we moved into 5 minutes of mindful breathing. We counted the lengths of our inhales and exhales in a comfortable seated position and then we moved into savasana. Traditionally I just take savasana on my mat but this time, since I knew I was going to be laying down for a while, I decided to take this pose on my bed with a blanket over me. I made sure I felt completely  comfortable and made adjustments like taking off my glasses and a

 This week I tried the Viniyoga practice that was included on Week 10 of the syllabus. The practice was focused on the low back and sacrum. This video was about 25 minutes long. One of the things I noticed that is different than other practices we've done is that this one felt more like a physical therapy session. It was very focused on anatomy and alignment, more than our previous practices. I also noticed that the cues were more focused on the body instead of more "yogic" instructions that are more metaphoric in nature. It seemed more like a stretching routine than a yoga practice. Some things that I liked about this practice was the pace. It wasn't too fast or too slow. It really helped me to focus on my alignment. I also liked that each movement had a breath linked to it. I felt like I got more out of the postures when the breath was included in every movement. Each pose built on each other which I also enjoyed. For example, in one pose we started off with a basic

      This week we did Sivananda Yoga with Jenn over zoom for about an hour and a half. This was my first time doing  Sivananda Yoga and it's probably my favorite zoom class that we've taken so far. I really liked that the practice is structured in the sense that there's a certain set of postures that are repeated every practice but there is still flexibility in the ability to modify or do different variations. For example, instead of doing headstand we practiced by doing dolphin pose. I liked having a goal posture to work towards instead of pushing my body into these really challenging poses without prior practice.      Another aspect of the practice that I really enjoyed was how it was broken up. I never started a practice with savasana but I felt like it started the practice off the right way. I was more relaxed throughout the practice since we started off with savasana and I felt like I got the most out of the class. I also really enjoyed the breathing exercises we did