Category: Yoga Practice Tips

A few words on Patience

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Wait, Breathe and Trust That All is Coming; why Yogafurie’s approach is to allow the mind and body to find space and time.

Patience is a virtue and that means patience is not easy.

Often we ask you to practice patience right at the start of a yoga class; whether that’s sitting mindfully, doing a breathing exercise or lying down in savasana. How often have you been thinking to yourself in that moment, ‘Gosh, can’t we just get started?’

Of course patient practice has already begun, not just for you, but for everyone else on the mat as well.

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The whats, whys and hows of meditation

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To meditate on something is to let it fill your mind. All your attention is on that one thing. If there is a thought, it’ll be about that one thing. As proficiency grows, there’ll be fewer and fewer individual thoughts during meditation. It becomes an unbroken flow of attention towards the chosen object of meditation.

meditation

There’s a few implications from this definition. First, attention and thought are treated as different experiences. You can pay attention to something without necessarily thinking about it. Example: driving. During the journey, you pay attention to the road but rarely think about the movements and decisions. Most thought is on the rest of the day, or other things important in life at the time. Here’s another example: say you’re on a course, or in a meeting, and it’s a bit boring. You know you need to pay attention, but your mind keeps wandering onto thoughts of what to do later, or other more interesting stuff. Clearly, attention and thinking really are different.

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5 Elements Hot Yin Yoga class

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We’ve spent the last few weeks exploring the acupuncture meridians through Hot Yin Yoga here at Yogafurie. We’ve looked at a different pair of meridians each time, and then at the extraordinary vessels. This blog gives detail about the meridians, and a simple yin yoga sequence you can practice to target them all.

Come along to one of our Hot Yin Tonic classes to learn about the safe application of each posture – or of course speak to a qualified Yin Yoga teacher. That way you can get the best out of this practice without risk of injury.

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Yoga Inversions – A simple guide for basic strength and mobility

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The following exercises have proved helpful to me personally in building up an inversions practice. I’ve documented them here for you people who are attending the Yogafurie Inversions Course. Attendees will be coached in the safe execution of all of these: please don’t actually try these unless you’ve had the safety coaching face-to-face with a qualified Yogafurie instructor.

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Fall head over heels in love with inversions…

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Turn your practice upside down!

Or: what’s all this about standing on your head then?

Yogis do some odd things. From chanting OM to getting up at getting up at silly-o-clock to practice, we can be an odd bunch. No more so than when we start standing on our heads in yoga inversions – and it turns out that there are a surprising number of different ways to do that!

But there’s method in our madness. There are serious benefits to Yoga inversions where the head is held below the heart. And there’s also quite a bit of misinformation out there about what they are! Check out our list of benefits and myth-busters.

Yoga Inversions

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What is Partner Yoga?

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Yoga is often quite an individual practice. We are all in our own zone – rightly so, we need to introspect and stay with the breath. But every now and then, a Yoga teacher will say: “Let’s all find a partner for the next asana”. Scary stuff – especially if you’re new to the studio.

It’s perfectly understandable to use this as an opportunity for a loo break! The alternative is to do Yoga…with someone else’s body. That can feel a little strange – but it does open up a whole new world of practice and development. Read on to find out more.

Partner Yoga

Some benefits of partner Yoga

First – and probably foremost – it’s always lots of fun. After a few moments, the whole room will be chatting and laughing. The ice is broken almost immediately and your partner, who was a stranger a few moments ago, is now working with you like an old friend.

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Mastering Arm Balances – Information for Beginners

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What are arm balances?

If we’ve been to enough yoga classes, or follow enough yoga profiles online, we’ll all be aware of Bakasana (picture below).

Arm Balances

In fact there’s so many of them, it’s amazing what you’ll find out there. And in some classes, workshops and courses you’ll receive teaching on how to practice these postures.

Arm balances

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Ed’s Guide for Starting and Developing an Inversions Practice

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What are inversions?

Any pose where the head is below the waist can be counted as an inversions posture. However, most often it’s the poses where the feet are above the head that are called “inversions”.

Inversions

Why do inversions?

Hatha Yoga is an amazing physical practice. If you read into it a little, you soon see that there is no part of the human body that is not targeted for practice. So, of course we would try to stand upside down. Hatha Yoga creates people who are as strong and stable upside down as they are standing upright.

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