Wednesday, April 24, 2002


i've always liked rodney yee's yoga . . .

long-time readers may recall i took a workshop with him a few months ago at jivamukti. he certainly is a very inspiring teacher. with the release of his new book, it's natural that we'll be seeing a surge of articles about him, like this one in usa today.

i might go back at 5:30pm EST to see how his online chat goes. i've no doubt it'll be instructional.

the workshop i took with him last fall stressed backbending, particularly full wheel pose (urdhva dhanurasana). at that time yee demonstrated how to move the tailbone "in between the legs" to shift more weight onto your feet. this is the action that will allow you to stand up from wheel and also learn to gracefully and safely drop back from mountain pose (tadasana) into a beautiful wheel.

i'm still working on the tailbone action, but with his advice, i have often done a full wheel with my hands at the base of a wall, thought about moving my tailbone, and then successfully walked my hands up the wall to stand in mountain. the trick to coming back down is to lift up at the sternum, not just slouch backwards. then you can put your hands in prayer at your forehead and start to go back to the wall. walking your hands down the wall, while it may seem scary, is actually much easier than walking them up.

if you've never tried this before: don't do it at home without first practicing this several times with a qualified yoga teacher to aid you! falling is dangerous, but more importantly, you could hurt your back if you don't learn the actions correctly.

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