Padmasri’s Blog
Movement Snack: 360-degree Breathing
This movement snack explores 360-degree breathing with a strap (you can also use a resistance band, a belt, or something similar). For many of us, sensing the back of the body and even the sides doesn’t come so easily. The brain connection to that area is fuzzy… The strap is a great tool to begin creating the link.
Movement Snack: Mobile Hips
This movement snack explores a sitting pigeon pose where you take one hip into external rotation and the other into internal rotation. In addition, it challenges us to hold our hips in external rotation without the support of the other leg, making us use our own neural-muscular control.
Movement Snack: Freedom for Your Pelvis
This sequence explores our ability to tilt the pelvis forward, backward, and laterally. It also challenges us to hold our pelvis neutral as we move towards child’s pose and back to tabletop position.
Movement Snack: Strong & Supple Feet
his dynamic balasana-vajrasana sequence asks us to add some variable loading for the toes, ankles, and knees. With that, our joints get more resilient. We feel strong and firmly grounded on our own two feet.
Movement Snack: Keep Cool with Spinal Lateral Flexion
Here is a side-bend snack to keep you cool and calm during the summer season or if you are experiencing signs of excess heat in the body (acidic digestion, heartburn, loose stools) and in the mind (irritability, anger, jealousy). Side bending can also improve breathing capacity and spinal mobility and increase the range of motion in the shoulders and hips.
Movement Snack: Relieving Strain in the Eyes and Neck
Play with these combined movements of the neck and eyes to release strain in those areas and experience your head balancing lightly atop your neck with easeful breath.
Movement Snack: Building Resiliency in The Knees
The idea here is to bring movement to the knees to bring more awareness to the back of the knees and possibly more strength to the hamstrings. It also improves circulation in this area increasing lymph flow and reducing swelling.
Movement Snack: Improving Motion of the Shoulder Blades
The idea here is to bring movement to the shoulder blades, creating optimal ranges of motion, greater neural control of motion, and improving circulation in this area to lift up the heaviness of Kapha, preventing its accumulation.
Movement Snack: Energizing Snack
It is time to lighten up so we can stay inspired and revitalized during the springtime!
Movement Snack: Upper-Mid Back Articulation
For this month, your movement snack is upper-mid back spinal articulation that you can do on the floor or on a chair. Keeping this area moving will help release stagnation and invigorate the body and mind to feel light and bright.
Movement Snack: Reset Practice
For this month, your movement snack is a reset practice that you can do on the floor or on a chair. We are so used to holding in our abdomen the entire day that we don't spend very much time moving our core dynamically.
Addressing Fear and Anxiety through the Lens of Yoga & Ayurveda
Now more than ever, we need to find our inner resilience and cultivate calm, so these uneasy feelings can be reduced and released, and we can be useful to our families and community. Yoga & Ayurveda offer insights and practices that are powerful support for the body, mind, and spirit. These practices help us to stay grounded and healthy.
Why to Take Ayurveda to the Yoga Practice?
Yoga and Ayurveda are related healing disciplines of India. Both have their own exclusive benefits; however, they were designed to be practiced together, providing us with a complete system of wellbeing for the body, mind, and spirit.
Starting a Yoga Practice at Home
For anyone who begins a home practice, I believe sincerity is there already! Consistency and frequency can be more challenging, but they are the keys to experience the benefits of yoga.
Gratitude on the Mat
We can use our hatha yoga practice to help us remember and appreciate the many blessings in our life. Healing happens when we express and feel gratitude and our yoga mat can be a perfect place to reflect on and express those feelings.
The King of the Core
The transversus, I call the “king of the core” because to me it has a more yang or masculine role. While the psoas senses and sends us messages about the integrity of our center, the transverse is a key stabilizer! It provides protection and stability to the spine so when we move through our asanas and daily activities, we do so more safely and more effectively.
Advanced IY Hatha, A Deeper Sense of Stillness
A beautiful seed of grace was planted within me right from the point of my first practice, and it continues to be nourished and encouraged to grow by the Level 3 Hatha practice. I started at the beginners’ level and gradually, mindfully, and joyfully advanced in the practice.
Yoga Paths
The differences among the classical branches relate more to the way in which self-realization is accomplished and how the transcendental reality is defined.
Four Practices for Spring Balance
If you’re missing the gifts this season has to offer, these four lifestyle choices can help to overcome spring’s challenges while promoting optimal health, so that we can truly celebrate the earth’s awakening!
Experiencing Our True Nature Through Hatha Yoga
The practice is approached like meditation in action. By doing so, we can discover and adopt the most effective flow of energy that allows us to strike a balance between exerting the right amount of effort and surrendering to the process.