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Not all meditations are the same.
Not all meditations are right for everyone.
But meditating is good for everyone according to the neuroscience...
Are you someone who could count your heart beat without checking your pulse? Or someone who has no idea what's going on that even if you had a heart attack, you wouldn't notice?
Read moreOne thing I will say is that sleeping well, isn't always about just sleeping well. It's not just about lavender sprays and dim lights…
Read moreAfter just 2 minutes in this pose, hormonal changes can configure your brain to either assertive, confident and comfortable, or really stress-reactive, and feeling sort of shut down.
Read moreEvery night when we go to sleep the interfaces between our muscles grows 'fuzz'. In the morning when we stretch, this fuzz melts. That stiff feeling in the morning is the solidifying of the tissues. Just like a cat stretches every time it awakes from a snooze, so should we. This 'morning stretch' melts that fuzz that is building up throughout the whole of the body.
Read moreI had never heard of Deborah James who recently died from bowl cancer, but hearing the BBC newsreader, announcing in his best BBC accent that we should ‘check our pooh’ made me snigger like a 7 year old. It felt so incongruous, this great British institution saying the word ‘pooh’, when we all know they should be using the term 'number twos' instead.
Read moreAs I mopped my kitchen floor, I began to think about legacy. Not legacy in the financial sense, but as in contribution to this world.
Read moreThere are some things that are 'just a habit'. I don’t have to think about it, it’s automatic. Teeth brushing, making coffee in the morning, starting a yoga practice with a weird stretch and a yawn. Somethings became a habit without releasing it – a glass of wine at the end of day, a croissant on a Sunday, dancing outside in a thunderstorm. I have no idea at what point these things became a habit.
Read moreI recently heard a ‘top tip’ from a teacher that struck a chord with me. 'If you are ruminating, then ground down on your feet". This got me thinking... (I am aware of the irony of this sentence).
Apart from the fact it is so ridiculoulsy simple I can't believe I wrote it down, we all know this intuitively. It is literally a no brainer. ;-) It makes perfect sense to 'get out of your head' into the opposite direction.
Read moreWe've all had a niggly low back at some point and like me you began to think the worst.
My thoughts generally go something like this “It'll get so bad, I won't be able to teach yoga. I won't be able to earn a living. I won't be able to buy food. I'll have to cook my own liver to stay alive…”
You get the gist. So before our thoughts get out of hand, I thought it useful to look into back pain. (Though I did get a little lost researching 'why humans love to catastrophise?'* and 'can you eat your own liver?'**)
Read moreI had heard about the connection with the heel and the bladder, but didn't understand how it worked, so have gone down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to find out more…
Pee-pee, wee-wee, tinkle whatever name you have for urination, we all do it, we always have done it and sometimes we do it when we don’t want to do it.
When I was a little girl I liked asking “why?”. My mum would answer “Warum, warum? Weil die Bananen sind krumm” which means “Why? Why? Because bananas are crooked”.
Read moreIn a recent workshop the teacher told the class to have ‘an anterior tuck of the pelvis, but counter nutation of the coccyx’.
For some people this sentence is easy to decipher, for others it requires some investigation. I have translated it into Sandra-speak for those who would like some deciphering.
‘Stick your bum out, like a duck waddling sexily and at the same time tuck your tail under like a scared whippet dog hiding his tail’.
Have you ever looked at a yoga pose and thought, "Why!??! Why on earth would I want to contort myself into THAT?"
Then you try it, can't do it and then get annoyed. Then think, "Why can't I swivel my head 180 degrees and lightly place my nose between my butt cheeks?" Finally it's followed by "It's not fair".
Read moreHave you ever been so angry, but not been able to vent your ire? Did you clench your jaw shut and make a bull-like long exhale through the nostrils? Did you want to scream an expletive (or ten), but instead you shut your mouth and made a kind of Darth Vader sound in the back of the throat as you composed yourself?
I am pretty sure you know what I am describing. To me, this feels like the best option when I am fuming. This forceful exhale gets rid of that surge of energy and brings some balance back. When it doesn't work, that's when all hell breaks loose and I say things I wish I hadn't said. (This is of course all hypothetical- I am a yogi after all...)
Read moreHave you ever tried a Moon Salutation aka Chandra Namaskar?
It hasn't been around as long as its famous counter part Surya Namaskar (salute to the sun), but it's a really nice sequence that makes us move in all directions, using the long end of the mat.
The Shiva Samhita (500 year old Tantric text) regards the moon as the source of immortality. Like the 'sun' is located in the solar plexus, the 'moon' is said to be located in the crown of the head and contains 'amrita' the divine nectar of immortality. (There is a yogic practice where you to slice your tongue - just a little -so you can flip the tongue into the back of the throat better and catch this amrita and reverse ageing and decay… Well, this may be a gentler way of keeping the elixir of life.)
Read moreTake a moment now to note where your tongue naturally sits in your mouth. Where is the tongue resting? At the top of the palate? The bottom of the mouth? Where is the tip of the tongue? Pushing against the top teeth? The bottom teeth?
It turns out there is a wrong and right way to rest your tongue and ‘proper tongue posture’. Bad tongue posture can have a negative effect on your eyes, nose, head, neck, shoulders, and teeth. Improper tongue posture can contribute or lead to sleep apnea, TMJ (jaw pain), problems with vision, bad body posture, tooth damage.
Whereby "proper tongue positioning" can lead to improved sleep, better breathing, and decreased neck, jaw, or head pain.
Read moreAt the very end of each yoga class we finish by having a bit of a lie down. To a beginner this is a very odd thing to do- to lie down in the middle of the room with a bunch of strangers for a few minutes. The reasoning is that after having created all those wonderful shapes and moved the body, breath and energy in all directions, we let it all go. We lie down into corpse pose (Savasana), finally stopping and returning to stillness. In this stillness the body has a moment to absorb and assimilate, on all levels, the changes that have happened, before we spring back to life and it gets very busy again.
There are those who come to yoga so they get 40 winks or 5 minutes of 'peace and quiet'. And those who love the practice, but sprint out the room as soon as I say 'find a comfortable lying down position'. They either don't see the point of wasting time on the floor for 3 - 5 minutes or they can't cope with 3-5 minutes of doing nothing. To be fair it's not easy.
Read moreYesterday a friend told me he was contemplating moving because he had a panic attack in his car on his way to work. He thought it might be better to move house so he’d have to drive less. This really upset me and I made me want to learn more. Here are some of my findings and thoughts.
Read moreAt the end of most of my yoga classes, I close by asking us to take a moment to "thank our bodies for the hard work they have just done and have gratitude for the hard work they do for us every day, all the time, without us even knowing it", or words to that effect.
I don't know about you, but I'm miffed when I can't do a yoga pose. It bugs me when my leg won't neatly slide behind my head and I can't then balance on my index finger. When in reality, the fact that I can even lift a leg is an amazing feat of engineering and yet here I am complaining that it's not high enough.
Read moreYoga teachers say some odd things during class. I completely include myself in this. I've named various body parts different marine life forms: I often refer to the pelvic floor as a giant jelly fish. I've moved internal organs around the body, asking you to 'breath with your toes' or twist and 'pop the heart out and float it to the ceiling'. I have certainly said things like 'be in the moment', 'be present', 'be in the here and now'. But what do these phrases really mean?
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