Yoga - CD/SD

This is a very good piece on him: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/22/my-teacher-bks-iyengar-yoga

A pupil of Silvia teaches me now.

Oh and R4 (15 mins in): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04fcstv

yoga people:

i've been watching myself on video a lot recently for class and holy shit my posture is awful. i have the thing where my shoulders point inwards and are tense (pulled up) plus my head is tilted forward -- terrible. it causes tension too so i am trying to eliminate this habit.

what are the best yoga programs/postures for correcting bad posture? also, is core strength really the key here or is it other stuff? i can't afford a chiropractor so i am crowdsourcing folk wisdom on this

What do you mean watching yourself on video? Do you have a teacher who corrects your posture? If not, find a new teacher.

I think he's a schoolteacher and he saw himself on video.

I'm the king of bad posture despite taking yoga -- for me, it's only taught me what good posture is, and doesn't necessarily enforce it in everyday life.

However, something that's helped me lately is to think of the base of your skull as having a knob, and then pulling that knob straight back (without raising your chin) -- that'll help you avoid the hunched-over computer slouch.

Another suggestion is to imagine that you have a string attached to the top of your head: imagine yourself suspended in the air from this string to get tall/elongate your spine and to avoid arching your back.

lee's got it. the class is a grad school class, not a yoga class, so in the videos i am lecturing and stuff. sorry it was unclear.

yes, i assume that deliberate corrections during the day are going to be a big part of this. i think it has to be part of larger, body language awareness. i am kind of "pulled in" and that signals nervousness, i think, even though i don't feel that way.

i am too busy to go to any of the yoga classes at my university gym so i am going to look to the internet now. i am doing other fitness stuff, but i think yoga is probably essential for developing body awareness and also flexibility to prevent injury

Oh ok. I didn't understand what you meant. I really like yoga for body awareness. Best of luck to you.

good posture is a constant battle since practically everything else in our lives works against it.

it's true. technology deforms us all, mentally and physically

even beginning to contemplate the kind of holistic transformation that would have to take place for my posture to improve always makes me think of the incessant jesus prayer, like in franny and zooey, that i would have to so absorb a conscious awareness of the ideal as to be practicing improvement at all times, simultaneous with all other thought. instead i know when i walk down the street i just periodically make ridiculous-looking momentary corrective adjustments, strides that lunge into a kind of pinned-back breathed-in verticalism & which then slouch back into seahorse pose within ten paces

anyway i was maybe going to start yoga too. lil worried i'm coming to it with too fervent a Businessman Chugging Wheatgrass expectation that it will immediately fix me. there is this six-inch-square grid of chiropractic real estate that i feel like hasn't moved or rotated in like fifteen years

honestly, if people followed through with their plans to only eat whole, organic foods (mostly organic vegetables) and to follow a consistent, well-planned exercise regimen, i think they would "fix" a lot.

i only eat vegetables & i keep a consistent exercise routine of not doing a lot of exercise but guess walking everywhere & this city is pretty damn big & i still think of the bit in that film where the guy kills himself with an electric drill quite often

yeah but if you ate doughnuts and drove everywhere imagine how much worse off you'd be

but i am not allowed doughnuts & after work i'm tired & i always thought i'd do pretty well inside a car (tapes, don't mind waiting around in traffic &c)

honestly, if people followed through with their plans to only eat whole, organic foods (mostly organic vegetables) and to follow a consistent, well-planned exercise regimen, i think they would "fix" a lot

I sort of want to believe this, but I basically don't.

I am very pro-yoga, though, all the same.

well, the good news is yoga won't fix anything overnight. if you stick with it though, it will def help with posture, especially for the deskbound.

best "program" imo would be a vinyasa class that you enjoy. this is the slow, steady kind of change that lasts so just sticking with it is the big thing. a lot of what you're learning is body awareness/muscle memory type stuff so there's no substitute for getting reps in.

thanks for the tips!

you guys don't think that diet and exercise and reducing stress can radically improve most people's lives? (emphasis on most -- obviously some problems are intractable.) i feel that so much in our life works against health, actively addressing these things is very important. don't always practice this.

i think no one can agree on what a healthy diet and well-planned exercise regime actually are.

people disagree on the specifics but a few things are uncontroversial. for instance, refined sugar and trans fats are bad. never eating plants in their whole state is bad. barely moving all day is also bad.

ok but you know how incredibly simplistic and impractical that is when trying to translate to things people do

why impractical?

i'm not saying it is easy to adjust one's habits to be healthier, i am just saying that the benefits are potentially enormous. and not just in the long term. i can tell that i feel better on days when i avoid high-glycemic garbage in favor of real food. also, i made enormous strides in health when i started sleeping 7-8 hours a night instead of 5. i think this stuff matters.

http://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/11/590x/Elderly-couple-using-a-laptop-504720.jpg

how did you find that photo of me and call all destroyer?

I think I saw same recent studies that cast doubt on the 'trans fat is always bad' theory, though I may be well off base.

trans fat is always artificially synthesized (i think) so i think it's safe to say your body doesn't need it, even if it might not be as bad as some projections would have it.

as always though, it's also possible i don't really know what i am talking about and my comments come from a desire to, in a faithless society, place my faith in the human body and its capacity for healing

you guys don't think that diet and exercise and reducing stress can radically improve most people's lives?

I dunno, I just went from a near-zero exercise regime to twice a week intense workouts and while I really like it I wouldn't say it's radically changing my life at all. It's radically changing my ability to lift heavy things, but it doesn't change my life outside the gym very much. A few years ago I spent six weeks cutting essentially all sugar and grain out of my diet and that also didn't create any radical change: I felt the same, looked the same, weighed the same, etc.

Note: I feel like changes of diet and exercise can make you live longer and be healthier when you're old, so that kind of IS a radical change of your life-as-a-whole, but I had the sense you were talking about your life-in-the-now.

i also should say that i find it almost impossible to believe that your body is affected by organic food any differently than it is by non-organic food.

i do not relate to that at all. when i am not eating well or exercising i emotionally feel like shit.

what are the best yoga programs/postures for correcting bad posture? also, is core strength really the key here or is it other stuff? i can't afford a chiropractor so i am crowdsourcing folk wisdom on this

― Treeship, Wednesday, 10 December 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

An advice would be doing the standing poses against the wall, That should get you into -- as you stretch in the class triangle pose, for example -- keep in absolute line.

Sorry its a bit garbled but hopefully you know what I mean.

I think technology is a big culprit, but it even goes farther than that imo. maybe this is kooky, but it just doesn't seem like our spines are well designed for being upright all the time. so "good posture" is less finding a holistic "natural" spine position so much as it is fighting against its poor design to distribute weight different, keep it moving, etc. so it's always a conscious, directed thing. so yeah yoga is a great way to become "mindful" about how your body is positioned throughout the day.

Hey yogis, to properly open up my hamstrings, I need to feel the pull in my sit bones, not just behind my thighs, right? Any suggested poses, or is it the usual array but with knees bent to accommodate the stretch?

Depends on the asana - in Trikonasana you shouldn't let the bum stick out at all - by doing so you should feel an 'opening' in the hamstring.

You don't need to bend a knee, in the basic Tasasana you are opening the hamstring, maintaning tension by a lift of the kneecaps.

i've been really into inverted poses in the last few months
it really helps to change perspective, if you're in the need of that sort of thing

Attending a 'Level 2' class since NY. Inverted triangle is fine on one side, on the other (left) I nearly fell over.

Teacher said I wasn't ready to go upside down yet so I did a part dog pose with my head touching the floor to prepare. Hard times at the moment but still learning a lot.

Inverted triangle is fine on one side, on the other (left) I nearly fell over.

It happens!

Teacher said I wasn't ready to go upside down yet so I did a part dog pose with my head touching the floor to prepare. Hard times at the moment but still learning a lot.

Sounds like what I know as the dolphin pose. There is a secret trick that makes head stands really easy to get into but I hesitate to offer it.

do them against a wall first? why hesitate to say that? it's safety-minded.
it made them easier for me. i use a support beam in my basement but same concept.

Not wall-related (I personally don't like doing headstands against them). My hesitation is if people aren't necessarily ready for it, because THIS ONE TRICK will get them upside down easily.

ok well i don't know this trick then!
i don't care about doing headstands against the beam because the benefit is the same and i feel safer. i usually do yoga alone and will do p much anything to avoid injury.

(btw I almost always fall over in half-moon pose, so yeah its cool.)

Thanks Leee, its the Dolphin - although my head was closer to my hands.

Yes I tried doing it against the wall first. I did do it at first but actually didn't trust that I was doing it right so came down, asked for help (class of ~ 10 so teacher was helping someone else), called her over and she told me to not get into it right now..

is it bad to do yoga on carpet (w/or w/o a mat) when i goog search all i get are ads for expensive platforms

It's harder to balance certain poses like tree, but I just went to a studio that was carpeted, but I don't think it's actively bad. The cushion will make certain other poses more comfortable, in fact.

Maybe contact a yoga studio if they are getting rid of some and you could get a cheap 2nd hand mat?

I would use a mat as I am getting precise about using that space to measure my stride for triangle and right angle poses. Also my feet are placed at the back edge of the mat for those, it all helps alignment.

Also prefer to place blankets on a mat.

Otherwise I wouldn't think it as actively bad.

the mat isn't the problem, i just dk if it, like, compromises your yoga if you have a carpet underneath. my carpet isn't too thick anyway so i'll just deal with it. thx

I don't think carpet should be the factor that keeps you from doing yoga!

Amazon search shows a zillion options for between 15 & 20. Don't do it on carpet my for slipped and I got hurt one time

what are you searching for that i'm not? all i see is "lifeboard" which is way too much

just like a yoga mat right? like the foam ones that roll up? i just searched for yoga mat on amazon, unless you mean something different?