Reflections on Decades in the Yoga World: A Duo-Interview Project

I sat down with my dear friend, Jenni Rawlings to discuss all things yoga, you can find the full article here

"One of my favorite aspects of the yoga world is the people who exist in it. At times I’ve reached out to various yogis to ask their opinions on certain hot-button topics, which I’ve then assembled together into articles for my blog. Today I’ve done something different. I decided to interview two yoga teachers I admire immensely who share a unique quality in common: they’ve both been practicing or teaching yoga since the early 1980s – much longer than most of the rest of us. I had a feeling they would each have unique perspectives to offer about the ways in which their yoga practice, yoga teaching, and the yoga world in general have evolved over the past several decades."

10 Tips to revive a yoga routine

1. Listen to your body; be intuitive to your body. I don’t believe in restricting anything but if it makes you feel bad the next day, don’t do it again.

2. Stretch in bed before you get up, I can show you some simple stretches to do in bed.

3. Start moving your body while you brush your teeth, make your coffee. You can roll your neck, your ankles, starting moving gently.

4. Get into a routine of pausing work every hour and give yourself 5 minutes of stretching, you should set an alarm to start a routine.

5. Don’t over complicate it, use household items like a chair to stretch your back and hamstrings for example.

6. Don’t dive into the deep end, ease into 10-15 minute movement classes. It’s safer and you’ll feel so much better and crave longer classes.

7. Stay hydrated!

8. Pick a class and stick to it. Whether it’s morning or night, find your rhythm and ensure you always do that class at that time every week.

9. Allocate time and be present. If you know you have morning meetings, try practising in the evening to unwind with less distractions.

10. Be patient, everything takes time. It won’t all come back to you immediately, be kind to your body and be kind to yourself.

Yoga For Runners

I have a lot of students who are passionate runners, most of them have injuries but of course they love running so much they aren’t stopping till the injuries get really bad and their knees or their hips go.

What I would suggest is stretching, because so many runners come to me and they can’t touch their toes, they can’t cross their legs, their hamstrings are super tight, their IT bands are tight, the list is endless!

So there's a lot of exercises to do for runners, some involve the feet, the legs, the hips and so on.

Let’s start on all fours, flex your feet and sit back onto your heels, do this for about 30 seconds before doing  the same again on all fours but this time pointing your feet and sitting back so you stretch the top part of your foot. That part for most runners is where they are tight because of the impact running does to the other side of your foot.

I would work on other postures like sitting down, sliding your fingers between your toes, massaging the feet while you’re there!

Then I would work on the hamstrings, standing up, folding over and pedal the knees. If you can’t touch the floor you can put your hands on a chair. Check out my video tutorial here.

There are actually quite a few things you can do on the chair, you can put your leg up and bend your knee, leaning forward into the hip and back, you can take your arms above your head if that feels comfortable, but most importantly, listen to your body.

To stretch out the outer thighs, you know some runners can’t even sit on the floor but if you can, sit on the floor, cross your legs and fold over. Remember to lift up and out of your hips not round over, repeat on other side, switch your legs and fold over gently you should be able to  feel that in your hips too.

If you can’t cross your legs, sit on the floor, bring one knee up, one leg out and twist around the side that your knee is up, this will ease tension in your outer thighs and lower back. Breathe in to lift, exhale to twist.

You can also take your arms under the bent knee and work on straightening and bending the leg, moving it in circles to ease some tension.

If you’re a regular runner I would recommend doing this definitely after each run but also on your rest days to build flexibility and ease the tension that comes from the impact. 

You can watch the video tutorial on my Instagram here!