Yoga Brought Home

During the outbreak of COVID-19 things have changed. For my Yoga studio that has meant adapting to keep the business going. Adapting to offer something to those of us who go there. I am continually amazed at how we adapt to significant change. There are some people who can’t, depending on their jobs / businesses, but others have the ability to create new ways of working.

I have a job where I have to still have to go in to work. Thankfully I love my job so doing extra just now is a given – no questions asked just get on with it. So how bloody pleased am I that my Yoga Studio in Edinburgh has picked up on the Zoom platform to keep a good schedule of classes going.

Online Fitness

It’s not my first time using Zoom or video meetings / conferences / chats. I am using FaceTime more and more with friends to catch up now that I can’t go out and see them. The group identity is still strong as we FaceTime with a glass of wine, a comfy seat, some music on and chat.

A fellow blogger introduced me to Zoom! Lee did a trial run last week (maybe it was the week before) and so with the app downloaded I was already on-board and online for when my Yoga Studio put out the message that they were starting classes this way.

Thank You and Yeeeeeessss!!! Whilst I will still do Joe Wicks PE (its good fun and you can pick up on it on YouTube even if you missed the live feed) I need Yoga in my life that isn’t the DVD / TV style. No offence to all those lovely people sitting under a tree or in a walled garden doing their yoga to the world….I just like the realism of the instructors I know, the fellow Yogis I see at class and the connection we already all have.

Zoom gives the teachers the ability to watch, correct and interact with us. We get to see faces that we haven’t seen since the studio had to close it’s doors due to the COVID-19 lockdown.

My First Zoom Yoga Class

I am bloody knackered now! I should have pipped for the Yin class but that is not for a few days. So full body flow it was. The funny thing is I thought I wouldn’t work as hard as I usually would when in the studio. But…our teacher was on it, watching and feeding back to us all. It is strange doing it in my living room but I have a mat, blocks and a strap – what more do you need!! I even had a little scent burner going for ambience.

Full body is a mix of things but it definitely includes a lot of strength work. Today thankfully that was legs and back rather than purely focusing on core. So starting off in Dolphin to Down Dog repetitions and moving on to low / high plank repetitions set the tone that by the end of it I expected to be a bit sweaty. When we were popping back from forward fold to plank (and then to chaturanga) I definitely felt like I was working hard!

Moving into back work is my favourite as I really enjoy working on this area of the body. So lots of back bends leading into bow pose. We were then given some pretty ingenious holds for the upper back by holding a V with our forearms out front from warrior two.

Balances. Always a problem for me and I still tried my best even when they could only see me on a little computer screen. Balances with strength holds are even bloody worse but I gave it my best shot! I didn’t even fall over even though I still have a slightly weak ankle from a trip a few weeks back. Go me haha!

Gratitude

A big thing in yoga. Gratitude – yes I am definitely feeling it. For having brilliant colleagues, for all the key workers regardless of what work they are doing, and for staying safe. I was thankful to be on my mat today, just focused on how my body was feeling, what it could do today and my breath. Namaste

A gorgeous spot not far from where I live in Edinburgh.
Photo by Daniil Vnoutchkov on Unsplash

Header Photo by Manja Vitolic on Unsplash

Mermaid pose

Just what I needed the morning after a leg day in the gym. Just what I didn’t need after a leg day in the gym. Mermaid or a King Pigeon is one of my favourite peak poses in a yoga flow. Maybe not after a leg day though.

I didn’t quite get the full pose in the picture above. Slightly adapted with my front hand on a block in front. Still pretty damn good for me given how tight my quads and hip flexors are.

Mermaid

Mermaid pose involves a deep stretch of your quads, open hip flexors, chest opening and a backbend. Plenty of opportunity then to get it wrong. Coming from a pigeon pose you need everything to squeeze into the centre to even give you lift in the first place. Then to grab the foot you need enough alignment, back bend and chest opening. To put the foot into your elbow so you can bind to the front hand…well I can’t get there.

I have been working on my shoulders and posture for ages so this bit I don’t find difficult. I can do the bind easily. But what I find really hard is the quad stretch and open hip flexors so I can’t get the bind with my leg in play. It just won’t yet go far enough to hook it into my elbow. Hence a block. My quads aren’t quite there yet so the adaptation works for me.

The benefits. Pretty much the whole pose if you can do it correctly. If not then even the adaptations offer the same benefits. So a day after leg day in the gym my legs thanked me for pigeon and for the stretch in mermaid.

Getting there

This is the part my legs didn’t thank me for. Worse still I turned up for a mid morning class a little fatigued with the intention of hiding at the back. With the intention also to use child’s pose if I needed to. So it was ironically amusing that others had cancelled and I ended up with only one other person. Pants! No place to hide then. I figured I would do my best. Full body flow classes are pretty much just that – working everything. The instructor whilst lovely is not one for an easy breezy relaxed almost yin like class. Pants!

The flows to get there involved far too many (in my sore leg state of opinion) high crescent lunges with chest openers, twists and strengthening moves. These moves mean you are static in that high crescent lunge for ages at a time. Working some pretty big muscles. Breathing is meant to help. Breathing doesn’t always help.

Every time she said “come back to high crescent lunge as it helps for strength” I died a little inside. There was no where to hide. Sometimes you just have to get on with it. Yes they need strength but the high lunges also stretch the quads.

Lots of flows later we finally land on the mat for a lot of pigeon work. Next thing you know – mermaid pose and the foot is easy to catch. Working it into the elbow…possibly harder. Both me and the bloke who were the only two there didn’t quite get fully into the pose. But we both worked really hard to get to where we were. We both were pretty chuffed at our acheivement.

My knees and my feet were sweaty. His…I didn’t want to stare.

Yes it felt amazing. It felt lovely the day after my leg day. My shoulders are sitting better (down and back) and everything feels a little more open. The getting there…not so much.

Header Photo by Form on Unsplash

The only girl in yoga

Girl is probably stretching things but you get the gist. To be fair I have a young face. But anyway….more men are now doing yoga. The percentages reported are still a lot lower than women, but it is definitely on the increase. I think this is a good thing.

Last week I was in yin and half of the class were males. I also did a Hatha class and, even though we were a small class (a mid morning one), I was the only female there other than my yoga teacher. All the rest were men. Not skinny yoga looking men either…a real mix of types, body types and abilities. We had an absolute blast all trying to get into side crow from movement of side lunges. There was quite a lot of near death face planting and falling over. Also a lot of laughs.

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Men and Yoga

Yoga is still viewed as stretching and flexibility by most men I know who comment. Sure that is part of it but they clearly don’t have a clue how difficult a vinyasa or Hatha class can be. How the edge in Yin makes it the most relaxing and difficult class at times in my yoga schedule.

Yes flexibility is a benefit. I am not flexible but in a year I can see the change. I can also see the change in my strength, balance, focus and movement. That is definitely down to yoga and I think men are starting to see these benefits too. There is nothing worse than building muscle to the point it impedes movement. That is storing up a whole lot of problems.

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Benefits of Yoga

Strength, Balance and Flexibility

Some are obvious. Clearly there is strength and flexibility. There are lots of men on instagram nowadays who have amazing bodies and practice yoga regularly (Andy Raab for example). There are ones who can do a perfect movement into handstand and balances (check out Patrick Beach for this); who doesn’t want to be able to do that!

I know men who can’t touch their toes. To be fair I also know women who can’t do this. Yoga helps. In the long run yoga helps with functional movement and that is a brilliant thing. I jump out of bed now in the morning. Even when I was training with a PT doing lots of free weights and Hiit I wasn’t able to do this. There is something about the core strength and movement you get from yoga that helps. Which leads me on to the next benefit.

Good sex

I am not sure I would know as perfection is hard to improve on (haha!). But apparently yoga helps improve sexual prowess. There are men who really should take note of this benefit.

Weight Loss

Some people will tell you it helps with weight loss. I am not convinced as I still think you can’t out-train a bad diet. My backside will back this up (I really should stop drinking red wine…it doesn’t help).

However the thinking is relevant. If you are more mindful of your body and understand it more then you may be more mindful of what you eat. I get this. I can tell where my posture is good and bad, I know when my hamstrings are tight and which side is more out of kilter.

I might start being more mindful of food (and probably add back in a little more HIIT into my training). No one thing works so why not do a bit of everything.

All the Zen stuff

I am not too overboard with this but yoga does calm the body and mind. Do with that what you will. Different people have different needs when it comes to mental well-being and lifestyle.

For me it isn’t a primary reason to do yoga, for some others it will be. For men, there are definitely some at yoga who have told me their jobs and their lifestyle means that they only fully relax on their mat.

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Men in Yoga Class

Bring it on. The studio I go to is only just over a year old. I have seen a difference in how many men are going even over that short time. A class full of men was a surprise, but a good one. The thing about yoga is the lack of judgement on each other. There is enough to be thinking about with your own progress.

I like the observations of others in yoga without any judgement. I’m quite happy to observe men in yoga (I nearly deleted that in case it sounded bad…). At least some of them fall over as much as I do.

Photo by Form on Unsplash

Dancers and Dancer Pose

The start of a yoga class can tell you a lot about who is settling onto their mat. There are different types of yogi’s. It is what makes yoga great – different people with different abilities all working towards the same peak pose, or at least a similar peak pose depending on which adaptation you choose or manage.

There are those of us who just flop down into a shavasana, maybe with a comfy bolster under the knees to get settled. There are the more ‘serious’ yoga folk who go through a bit of a routine. Then there are the ones who clearly have had some training in dance. They are doing the leg stuck out and stretching over it; usually very elegantly.

Hamstrings

How do people manage to stretch their hamstrings before they are even just a little sweaty? My hamstrings don’t want to move at all until at least the third downward dog. But hamstrings, chest openers and a bit of a backbend are all needed to get anywhere near dancer pose.

Hips

This is another thing to focus on if you want to notice the variety in the class. It is hard not to stack your hips when balancing but the instructors normally do adjustments to keep your hips squared as much as possible. Especially in triangle, warrior 3 and dancer pose. This hip squaring adjustment thing is hard! My body just wants to fall. Maybe my body is just telling me that my bum weighs too much to be suspended squarely in the air.

Balance

So tree, floating tree thingy, warrior three and dancer pose. All balancing. All probably my least likely poses to do for any length of time. I have this weird thing where I balance better on one leg than the other but the opposite is true when I try and bind my toes and stretch out my leg. If that even makes sense. Basically I can stretch my legs (hamstrings) better on the opposite leg that I can balance on without falling. Frustrating!

It is a journey (I suppose!)

If this happens to you (yeah probably just me!) then it does get better with practice. In class this week I placed myself at the back. I like to think this was so that I wasn’t going to distract the people behind me with my wobbling. It is hard to keep your balance when someone in front is moving a lot. Ok Ok – it was so I didn’t wobble in front of everyone.

I was however rather pleased with myself that I managed all these poses with my hips squared (mostly). The repetition of triangle helped with the hammies and I didn’t fall out of tree even when I moved my arms up from my hips. So I was feeling pretty optimistic about dancer pose when we were getting to the end of class.

Peak pose – Dancer

I always have a bit of a wobble when I catch my foot. I never understand why I am holding it on the inside of the foot rather than the outside as it feels a bit odd. But foot in hand (on my good leg) I did a kind of dancer. Probably not like the image above. Definitely not like the two girls who were clearly dancers in the class and also like the serious yoga who basically did her own class before the class. For me it was an achievement though and there was a little grin from my instructor before she put me off with the grinning and I toppled over. I won’t mention my bad leg attempt. It was less than elegant. All in all this was definitely progress and I felt like dancing down the road home. I didn’t do that – someone would lock me up!

Camel

Photo by Nesha Thich on Unsplash

You might be wondering where I am going with this post. My mind is thinking all sorts of amusing things about being in a hump, hump days, humping and…well…other things. It wasn’t inspired by any of those thoughts though…It is the yoga pose ‘Camel’ (Ustrasana). I have never managed it before but I did it this week and I am definitely not in a hump about this achievement.

Why is it called Camel pose?

Who knows for sure! But apparently it is so called because of the resemblance to the camel’s hump (yes I still giggle a little every time I say hump). Or possibly because of the way they fold their legs to sit (it is a sort of seated pose). No matter the name, I have always found this a hard pose to get into mainly due to my tight quads, hip flexors and shoulders / chest. Never mind the feeling that I won’t breath properly with my head tilted back.

The prep poses

Lots of things that involve you grabbing your feet behind and stretching out the quads. Some nice gentle back bends to prepare in very some very ungentle high lunges and chest openers thrown into the mix.

So poses like cobra in the vinyasa, sphinx and even bow were involved in my class. I managed to catch my feet in a low lunge to quad stretch. I usually have to lasso my feet with a yoga strap to catch them and get the quad stretch. However I caught them both much to the surprise of me and, I am convinced, my yoga teacher. To be honest when I managed bow I could have stopped right there and went home happy (its the grabbing feet difficulty). But Camel was the one we were heading to and it would have been slightly awkward if I left early. My progress in feet grabbing? I am convinced this is because I am spending time trying to sort my posture with chest openers and keeping my shoulders back. It might just also mean that my quads are starting to stretch a bit more. My Thai massage lady who led me through a torture session yesterday may disagree with me being more stretchy…but she didn’t know me a year ago.

Anyway…more poses like pigeon and triangle helped before we headed into a few camel variations.

Getting there

Camel can be tough for people but it is a really good stretch for pretty much the whole of the front of your body and also for the upper back. So blocks at the ready we did a little bit of dancing camel (my feet were not flat down but up resting on balls of feet so I could transition from the blocks to my heels). Dancing camel is pretty much just doing half camel pose (Ardha Ustrasana) and moving from side to side. This may even look quite graceful.

In camel both hands (externally rotated to help to lift the chest and not press your shoulders into your neck) rest on either the heels or on the back of the feet if you aren’t up on the balls of your feet. The easiest variation is hands to lower back, moving to blocks and then to the heels.

I can’t get further than my heels but for me this is pretty bloody good. As said, I am definitely not in a hump about achieving this. My facial expression, however, may have resembled the lovely photo above.