Tag Archives: yogi

half moon pose

6 Tips to Improving your Half Moon Pose

Leave a reply

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.

If you are a yoga or fitness enthusiast use lean nutraceuticals natural testosterone booster to improve your testosterone levels. Recognize the benefits of alternative medicine by enjoying the latest chiro services in Boca Raton.

 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

Leave a reply

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

 

A QUICK MEAL FOR ELECTROLYTE REPLACEMENT

Leave a reply

Normally I wouldn’t recommend eating a large amount of sodium in your diet.  High sodium levels can lead to high blood pressure, bloating, and water retention.  If you are exercising in heat, however,  you need to consider fluid replacement and electrolyte replacement. Sodium is the the number one electrolyte you sweat out so it is imperative to replace it.  .  This is especially important if you are doing multiple bouts of exercise in a day, such as two a day practices, a morning and evening run, or a double yoga!

 

One of my favorite lunches while I’ve been at yoga training has been Ramon with Egg.  It is easy to make, has a good mixture of Carbs to Protein when combined with some canned salmon, and has enough sodium to keep me from cramping in my evening class

electrolyte replacement

A good refuel while studying dialogue!

 

Ingredients:

  • Ramon
  • Egg
  • Soy
  • Sriacha

This meal is especially nice because you can make it in your hotel room with just an electric kettle!  Add Ramon to a bowl with 1/2 a cup of liquid egg.  Pour boiling water over top both as desired.  Season with soy and sriacha for more flavor instead of the salt packet that comes with the ramon!  Depending on your sodium needs you can also use low sodium soy.

By itself this meal has 430 calories, 22g of Protein, 54g Carbs, 14g of fat.  If you are eating between workouts, this is a decent mix of Carbs to Protein, but I added a can of Salmon to my lunch to pack in an extra 20g of protein to aid in muscle recovery.  Remember, if you are working out hard you have to fuel you body for energy and muscle restoration to keep training at a high level!