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eagle pose garurasana

4 Tips to Improving Your Eagle Pose Garurasana

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eagle pose garurasana

Eagle Pose Garurasana is the first twist in the bikram yoga series.

By the time you get to this pose, you should be sweating!

In Eagle Pose Garurasana you cut off blood flow to the right side of the body and then the left.  It is the first time in class that you begin to to transfer, move, and use the oxygenated blood that you have been working so hard to create.

For most, the first couple times you try this posture it often feels impossible.

Here are 4 tips to twisting yourself into a knot and making yourself the shortest person in the room:

  1. Step One in this pose is to twist your arms.  Once you bring your right arm under the left, focus on getting your hands together next.  I know it might feel like it might never happen, but the more you visualize it happening the sooner it will!
  2. Then work for the foot wrap.  Focus on pointing your toe back towards the calf you want it to tuck under.  The twist initiates at the toe.  Once you get the tuck, however, work to relax your foot as much as possible.
  3. Breath!  Once again the posture starts with your breath.  Maintain normal breathing as you set the posture up.  Normal breathing means to take long slow inhales and long slow exhales.  Once you get into the posture, work on sitting down more with your exhales  and arching your upper body back more with your inhales.
  4. Make sure you sit down as low as possible to start the posture.  Arch back as much as possible.  Then work to keep the body weight in your heel.  

Muscles Contracting:

  • Hamstrings
  • latissimus dorsi
  • abdominals
  • rhomboids
  • Ankle Stabilizers

Stretches: 

  • Opens up the 12 major joints of the body: heels, ankles, hips, shoulders, elbows, and wrists.
  • Lengthens and stretches the leg muscles, most specifically the glutes and IT band.
  • The posterior muscles of the rotator cuff specifically the supraspinatus, infraspinatus, and teres minor muscles.

Compresses:

  • Ankle Joint, Knee Joint, Hip Joint, Elbow Joint, and Wrist joint breaking down scar tissue.  

Stimulates:

  • Reproductive system and sex organs.
  • Kidneys
  • Lymphatic System
  • Central Nervous system
  • Immune System

Bikram says Eagle Pose Garurasana Benefits us by:

  • Improves flexibilities in the hips, knees, ankles, shoulders, elbows, wrists.
  • Eagle Pose supplies fresh blood to the reproductive system and sex organs, plus the kidneys, which increases sexual vitality and helps clear up reproductive problems.
  • Improves the function of the lymphatic system
  • Improves concentration and balance
  • Energizes the entire body completing the Bikram warm up by flushing blood from one side of the body to the other.
  • Stimulates better immune system function
  • Improves mobility of hip joints and balance
  • Strengthens the legs and calves
  • Good for improving varicose veins
  • Flushes out the kidneys improving the filtration of minerals such as calcium and sodium.
  • Good for Stress Reduction
padahastasana or hands to feet pose

4 Tips to Improving your Padahastasana or Hands to Feet Pose

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padahastasana or hands to feet pose

Padahastasana or Hands to Feet pose is one of my favorite postures!

It is the first time in class your shoulders get a break, if you don’t have proper posture, we suggest to check this review!

By the time I am coming up arms and head together from Hands to Feet pose, I feel like I have finally awakened for my day.  My muscles feel exponentially looser and I feel as if my spine has lengthened a foot!

I was going through the posture correctors 2018 and came to a conclusion that Padahastasana had helped me unlock the secret to yoga:  Use your own strength to stretch your body.  It’s really no secret my instructors said it and now I say it all the time, “Pulling is the object of stretching!”  This posture, however, was the first posture where I actually found this to be true.

I used to and still have very tight hamstrings, but I do have to say that the muscle enhancement pills also helped out.  Every class that I am able to lock my knees makes me so happy.

Here are 4 tips to lock you knees, Lock Your Knees, LOCK YOUR KNEES!:

  1. Make sure to glue your body to your legs and get your elbows as close as possible to each other behind the calf muscles.  After you can grab your heels, your next goal is to touch your face to your shins–not to lock your knees
  2. Use your Breath:  Like every yoga pose, you want to maintain normal breathing in this posture.  With your inhales, pull harder on your heels.  With your exhales, roll forward weight in your heels and lift your hips up to the ceiling.
  3. Use your Quadriceps muscles:  The quadriceps is the hamstrings’ antagonistic muscle.  Your hamstrings bend your knee and your quadriceps extend the knee.  If you want to “Lock your knee” (or extend it)   You have to use your quadriceps.  The more you work to constantly and consistently contract your quadriceps, the more your hamstrings will be forced to slowly open up and stretch.  ****Using on your strength won’t pull muscles.  Make sure to never bounce into a posture.  Then you are using strength and momentum.  This combo can pull muscles.
  4. Imagine your Head Moving Down your Shins:  Once you can lock your knees, the goal then becomes to lengthen your spine.  Imagine your head sliding down towards your toes.  To do this, you will need to continue pulling with your biceps.  Then try to depress and retract your shoulder blades so you can use your back strength to open up your upper spine.

Muscles Contracting:

  • Biceps
  • Quadriceps
  • latissimus dorsi
  • rhomboids

Stretches: 

  • Spine
  • hamstrings
  • hips
  • glutes
  • Erector Spinae
  • trapezius

Compresses:

  • Large intestine
  • Small intestine
  • Abdomen

Stimulates:

  • Digestive System
  • Heart
  • Nervous System
  • Brain

Bikram says Padahastasana or Hands to Feet Pose Benefits us by:

  • Improves digestion
  • Stretches out the the wrists.  Helping with Carpel tunnel and arthritis, using Kidney Atlas.
  • Opens and Stretches the Hamstrings
  • Stretches the spine.
  • Improves Sciatica
  • Awakens you, sending blood to the brain.
  • Stimulates the nervous system
  • Tones the abdomen
half moon pose

6 Tips to Improving your Half Moon Pose

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Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose)

A major component to yoga is opening up the body.  Half Moon Pose Begins this process.

Half Moon Pose uses opposing muscle groups to open up and stretch the front, back, right side, and left side of the body.

Half Moon Pose is an energizing pose that prepares you for class!  It uses almost every muscle in your body continuing to warm up the body stimulating the sweat you started to form in Breathing to continue!  Here are some keys to improving your Half Moon so you can begin “natural human traction” sooner rather than later!

  1. half moon pose

    This is an old picture. I’ve since learned if I squeeze my feet together my knees stay in one line

    Squeeze Your Feet Together:  Right from the beginning think of squeezing your feet together and keeping your body weight in your heels.  This will help you tone your inner thighs.

  2. Breathe:  As always, the number one focus in every pose in normal breathing.  Think about slowly inflating your lungs like a balloon, lifting your rib cage up towards the ceiling as you keep your body in one line.
  3. Smile:  Set your intention for a relaxed class.  If you can maintain a smile you will be more likely to maintain normal breathing.  When you maintain normal breathing your body will open up more than if you are tense, forcing yourself to push further.
  4. Use your grip:  When you first start, the hardest part will be holding your hands over your head.  Focus on SQUEEZING your hands together like you are juicing a lemon on top of your head.  It will help your strength improve sooner.  It will also help you lengthen and open up.
  5. Use Your Right Hand to Pull the Left:  When you bend to the right side, think about pulling the left arm further to right using the right hand.  Then think about pointing to the back right hand corner of the room as you come down further to push, push, and push.
  6. Focus on Your Hips:  Once you reach alignment, only focus on moving your hips further out past your toes.  If you think about bending more at the waist you will hunch, round, or bend.  By focusing on moving your hips further out past your feet, you continue to lengthen and open up the body.  This will make the opposite side compress more.

Opens:

  • Shoulders
  • Hips
  • Chest

half moon poseStretches:

  • Obliques
  • Outer Thighs Specically the IT Band
  • Latissimus Dorsi
  • Rectus Abdominis
  • Deltoid
  • Trapezius

 

Muscles Contracting:

  • Improves and strengthens every muscle in the central part of the body.
  • Especially the Abdomen.

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 Bikram says Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose) Benefits us by:

  • Preventing, reducing, and/or eliminating back pain and with the help of a KratomCountry Pain Relief Center.
  • Energizes you for class!
  • Helps rid the body of abdominal fat, toning your abs and obliques.
  • Tones your waistline, hips, abdomen, booty, and thighs (even those inner thighs!)
  • Stretches spinal nerves and abdominal organs improving the working of the bowels
  • Increases the flexibility of the spine
  • Alleviating anxiety and helping reduce stress
  • Works all the major muscles groups including the Quads, Glutes, Hamstrings, Calves, Biceps, Triceps, and lats!
  • Exercising the colon, pancreas, kidneys, muscular, skeletal, respiratory and glandular systems
  • Firming and trimming waistline, hips, abdomen, buttocks and thighs.
  • Increases flexibility of the spine; correcting bad posture, promoting proper kidney function, improving the health liver and spleen, reducing dyspepsia and constipation.
bikram yoga teacher training

Bikram Yoga Teacher Training–What to Expect

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Congratulations!bikram yoga teacher training

You are about to embark on an experience of a lifetime.  Bikram Yoga Teacher Training is a crazy two month journey!

You will challenge yourself.  You will physically do more Bikram Yoga Classes then you ever thought possible.  Your mind will go crazy reciting dialogue day in and day out!

You get to learn from Bikram himself.  Hear his isms and sayings straight from his mouth.  You will also get to learn from some of Bikram’s own hand picked lecturers.  Ones to look forward to are Emmy Cleaves, Jim Kallet, Jon Burres, and Dr. Jim Preddy.

You will take yoga from world renown instructors such as Rajashree Choudury, Cynthia Wehr, Joseph Encina, and Emmy Cleaves.

You will eat a lot of nuts, goldfish, popcorn, and tuna.

Who Knows What Questions You Have

I can’t even begin to imagine the questions you have.  Write them below in the comment section, I will answer them!

Commonly Asked Questions:

Q. What do I need to pack?

Q.  What are most days like?

  • Each day you wake up in time to sign up for class at 8:30.  Sign in starts at 8.  You don’t need to be there right at 8 unless you want to wait in line to get your spot in the yoga room.  (It doesn’t matter, you will be assigned a line to practice on, yet people still lined up every day!)
  • Class run from 8:30-10ish.  After you normally have 2 hours to shower, eat, nap, and study dialogue.
  • At 12 you usually check in for either a lecture or posture clinic.  Don’t plan on having time between lecture/posture and class.  Bring a snack if you will need one!  Lecture or posture clinic normally runs until 4 or 4:15.
  • At 4:30 you have check in for evening class.  This is normally the class Bikram Teaches if he is in town.  Emmy usually taught Thursday mornings, and if Rajashree is in town she teaches one morning class per week.  Class will start at 5pm Indian Time and often ran past 7.
  • After class you have time to shower, eat dinner, study dialogue and relax until about 9.
  • Sign in for evening lecture, posture clinic, and/or movie nights usually was at 9 or 9:30 and evening session would last until 11, 12, 1am….who knows how late.  It’s up to Bikram.   I will say most weeks we were only up past 2 one night a week.  They like to keep the fear of late nights constantly on you, but they rarely do late nights back to back.

Q.  Is it every day?

  • The above schedule is the normal schedule Mon-Fri.  Saturday you only have class at 8:30 unless you are late or don’t sign up.  then you will have to do a makeup class at 11 called Team Saturday.
  • After Saturday Class you are free for the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday!

Q.  Do I need to know my dialogue before I get there?

  • I didn’t know one posture before I went to training and I did fine, however, if you are someone who stresses I would try to memorize as much dialogue as you can before you get to training.
  • You will have to say half moon posture in front of Bikram within the first week.  You might want to have that one memorized!
  • It takes a week and a half for everyone to get through half moon.  The sooner you go, the sooner you can use the time to start working on the rest of the dialogue.
  • That being said, if you don’t know it, wait until you do to get up there in front of Bikram!  He will rip into you if you haven’t put in the work!

Q. What are some tips for memorizing the dialogue?

  1. Line by Line:  This was the best tool for me.  I would pace in the hallways, or at the beach on the weekends saying one line at a time until I had it memorized.  Then I would move onto the next line saying the previous lines first.  Repetition was my best tool!
  2. In lectures or posture clinics I would write the first letter of each word over and over for a posture using the line by the line technique.  It helped ingrain it in my mind.
  3. Record yourself!  I would listen to the postures as I showered.  Make sure when you record yourself you leave a gap of time between each line.  Then you can work to say the next line, with a correction instantly following if you say it incorrectly.
  4. Many people liked round robin.  There are two ways to do round robin.  The first way is to say one line, then the next person says the next and so on and so forth.  Another way to round robin is to have the first person say one line.  The second person will then say the 1st and 2nd line.  The 1st (or 3rd you can play with many people) then says the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd line and so on and so forth until the posture is complete.  ***Round Robins are helpful tools to ingrain the words in your head, but they are kind of useless if you don’t know the posture well yet.

 

Q.  What do I eat?

  • Stock up on food on the weekends.  You will eat a lot of dry packaged, canned, and dried foods.  You will have  a mini fridge to share with your roomie.  The mini friedges surprisingly store a lot!  
  • Sample Grocery List: A Yogi’s Groceries

Q.  Where can I get food?

  • Walking Distance Grocery Stores: Trader Joe’s and Ralphs
  • Bikram Shuttle on Saturday and Sunday:  Target, Whole Foods
  • There is also a Subway, Taco Joint, In-N-Out Burger, Starbucks, ToGos, Thai Food, and Chinese Food within walking distance.
  • On the weekends I recommend taking the trolley to Manhattan Beach and hitting up real food.

Q.  How hot is the room?

  • The hot room depends training to training.  
  • At my training, the boiler was broken for 2-3 weeks.  We had a couple scorchers, but it wasn’t that bad.
  • I hear Fall Training 2011 sucked!

Q.  What’s with the no green rule?

  • Bikram will tell the story to your training.  It is a personal story about a personal friend as well as an Indian Wives Tale.  
  • I have heard in previous trainings he gets very upset if you wear green.
  • He didn’t really yell at anyone in our training…but I still never wanted to risk it.  LEAVE THE GREEN AT HOME!

Q.  Will Bikram really keep me up all night?

  • I was never up all night, but I was up until 4 a couple times.  
  • Don’t stress about the late nights, they don’t do them in a row and often if you were up late they will go easy on you the next day.
  • The worst part of the late nights were the anxiety over how tired you would be the next day.
  • Let it go.  Live in the present.  The Bollywood movies are fun!

Q.  What’s posture clinic?

  • Posture clinic is where you learn the dialogue.
  • You will be divided into groups of 20.  2 groups will be together at a time.  One by one each person gets up and delivers the dialogue for a given posture until everyone has completed the posture.  Some postures spam over 2-3 days.  Other times you will give 2 postures in a day.  Always be ready to give the posture you are on and the next one!
  • Don’t stress about posture clinic.  If you mess up the dialogue the worst that happens is you have to do it again.  Often they just check you off and tell you to work on it.  You put the pressure on yourself to memorize the dialogue because you want to teach!
  • You deliver your dialogue to 3 students doing the posture and 1-3 teachers who have come to visit and/or the staff.
  • Bring clothes that you want to teach in.  I brought many options to practice in, but few for lectures and posture clinics.  I wish I had brought more long and capri yoga pants.

Q.   What should I do in my free time?

When you get free time, WORK ON DIALOGUE.  That being said here are some fun things to do:

  • The beach!  Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Venice Beach, Santa Monica all are easy to get to via bus or trolley!
  • Venice Beach has awesome street shopping.
  • Santa Monica has a fare on the pier!
  • Disneyland
  • Hollywood Walk of Fame
  • Lights exhibit at the LA County Museum (It’s Free!)
  • The Getty Museum (It’s Free!)
  • Take a class at Headquarters
  • Hermosa Beach offers free classes to Teacher Trainees

 

used yoga mat for sale

Used Yoga Mat For Sale: Where Mat User Went Wrong

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used yoga mat for saleLast year the Craiglist ad, “Used Yoga Mat for Sale” went viral.  For anyone who has done Bikram yoga, the ad is hilarious.  The ad, however, is only humorous to those who have learned yoga etiquette.  There are “rules” one learns over time to survive the hot room.  This said Mat user, obviously didn’t take the time to learn the rules.  So you can avoid having an experience like his, here is where he went wrong:

  1.  “She will not be pleased to learn that I need to lose 30 pounds before I propose to her.” Don’t go to yoga with your number one goal to lose weight.  Yes you will most likely lose weight, but if you are focused on losing weight you are missing the yoga!  Part of yoga is pushing yourself so hard that you create a euphoric effect.  When you reach this state, you don’t want to fuel your body with sugar and fatty foods.  Yoga is a double whammy because not only are you exercising, but you also cleanse yourself from the inside out in a way no other exercise does.  For whatever reason, the majority of people don’t want to eat the way they used to after doing yoga.  This is what makes yoga so good for weight loss.  If you think you can go and just walk through the motions in the hot room, you will not be successful in losing weight.
  2. “Begin small talk with my bride to be.”  You shouldn’t talk in the hot room.  If you are talking in the hot room: 1) You are not centering and calming yourself and 2) You are most likely upsetting others around you creating negative energy for your class.  
  3. “She introduces me to the class and everyone turns around to greet me just as I decide to aggressively adjust my penis and testes packed in my Under Armor.”  Try not to “adjust” yourself.  Any excess movements between postures creates extra heat.  You want to work to be as still as possible.  It is hard to do, but when you can manage to be absolutely still, you will almost feel cool between postures.
  4. “We are breathing each other’s body odor, expelled carbon dioxide and other unmentionables. (Don’t worry, I’ll mention them later.)…This room stinks of asparagus, cloves, tuna and tacos.”  The mat user is allowing everything to steal his peace.  Yoga teaches you to block out the unpleasant.  Do what you need to do to be at peace in your mind.  Pretend to be at the beach on a sunny day; Floating on a magic carpet ride in the desert; but don’t think about the smell, the heat, or the humidity.
  5. “My wife looks slightly weathered dripping sweat and her eyeliner is streaming down her face…The overweight Hispanic man two spots over has sweat running down his legs.”  He continues to look around.  There are a lot of distractions, and everything will steal your peace if you keep looking around.  Try to focus on your eyes in the mirror.
  6. “Is breathing voluntary or involuntary? If it’s voluntary, I am screwed.”  He loses control of his breathing.  Through class you should always maintain normal breathing.  That is your number one goal.  In fact, if your breathing isn’t normal, as an instructor I would rather you stand still until you can at least work to have long slow inhales through the nose and long slow exhales through the nose.  Once you are able to breathe in the room, your practice will improve.

No one ever said practicing yoga etiquette was easy, but give it a try!  It changes the experience.  I definitely didn’t have it right when I first started.  It was pure pride that kept me going.  There was no way I was going to let yoga defeat me.  Once I let that go, I stopped struggling in class…most of the time. 🙂

runner to take advantage of winter

4 Ways for a Runner to Take Advantage of Winter

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runner to take advantage of winter

Runners for the most part are the toughest athletes there are.  As many a cross country runner has boasted, “Our Sport is your Sport’s Punishment!”

That being said, even the most hard core runners can lack motivation in the winter.  There aren’t as many races, and the races we do sign up for we don’t expect to pr at.  It’s rainy and cold.  There are less hours of daylight and running in the dark isn’t ideal.

Here are 4 ways runners can take advantage of winter to improve their running when spring comes.

1.  Get inside on the Treadmill and do speed work.  Most runners hate treadmills.  They are boring, monotonousness and for whatever reason 1 mile on a treadmill seems to take twice as long as running outside.  Treadmills, however, are awesome for working on speed work.  They don’t let you slow down!  Warm up for 5 min and then try a 10x .25miles, 6x .5 miles, or mile repeat workout.  Doing high intensity workouts will leave you burning more calories post workout and you’ll start to see your average MPH start to increase on your normal runs.

2.  Do Strength Exercises to Work on Running Stability.  If you aren’t feeling motivated to brave the elements, stay in your living room and do some stability exercises.  You might feel like you aren’t getting as good of a workout at the time, but remember building lean muscles helps you burn more calories throughout the day and the muscles you build will help keep you injury free once your mileage begins to creep up again!

Try these moves to keep yourself running all season long:

Do 3 sets of 10 each (except for runners hops do 3 sets of 30) and you have a great go to winter stability workout!

3.  Try a Hot Yoga Class.  Runners often avoid hot yoga classes, because they say they aren’t flexible enough.  Think about that, that’s like saying you can’t come to dinner because you are too hungry!!  The cold day you don’t feel like bundling up for your run, check out a class at your local hot yoga studio.  I bet you’ll be shocked to find how challenging it is.  Who knows, it may become part of your training routine!

4. Buy some new warm clothes!  Nike has some great new products out there such as the Vapor Windrunner that will help keep you warm and dry!  Lululemon also has some great shirts for runners.  I love them because they have thumb holes to keep your hands warmer!  Buy some new clothes and you’ll want to get outside in the elements to use them!