by Hilary Lindsay | Jul 31, 2015 | anatomy, Asana, Healthy Living, medical yoga, nashville yoga, society, therapeutic yoga, Yoga, yoga class, yoga community, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
Inquiry and Experience #6 and #7 There’s a surge of disclosure on yoga injuries due to the quickly growing number of students and their use of social media. Don’t panic. Although you will likely be injured at one time or another doing yoga (including muscle strain as injury), it’s unlikely to have a lasting effect for the majority of you. On the other hand you might get yourself in trouble if you have a condition that will be ill served by the yoga practice you’ve engaged in. Not every body should do every thing. You may have a health or skeletal, soft tissue or muscular issue that warrants caution. Even those of sound body can be at risk engaging in the wrong practice or becoming overzealous. Innocent people have suffered at the hands of unskilled or thoughtless teachers as well. Here’s my sincere advice for new and old students: Stay in Your Own Lane ~ move at your own pace and do the best you can without overreaching. You might research range of motion often referred to as R.O.M. Everyone’s is different but there are normal ranges. Are you practicing for a circus career? Can you be content not putting your foot behind your head like the guy next to you? Take a good look. Do you really want to look like that? No. It’s damn unattractive and you don’t. Pay Attention ~ this is the fruit of staying interested and the two are co-dependent. Don’t space out or move by rote. Notice everything about sensation. Take your time. Notice everything...
by Hilary Lindsay | Jul 21, 2015 | nashville yoga, Tradition, Yoga, yoga class, yoga community, Yoga History, Yoga Philosophy, Yoga psychology, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
Before you take those hands to your heart…… Namaste is the yoga student’s salutation that allows our similarity below the surface. We feel beneath our skin and say we recognize you beneath yours. Here we share DNA that makes us kin. It is a gesture of respect. There is benevolence to that greeting that tames the mind from critical thought and soothes the ego from needing to show. It makes the instant significant. It is momentarily unifying. Collective moments become a manner of thinking unless the greeter becomes careless and speaks without thinking, without authenticity. Then habit overcomes intention. Ironically, habit like this is the veil of illusory behavior that yoga aims and claims to conquer if the doer is sincere. Namaste offered in sincerity is yoga’s domain. It cannot abide the popularity of the offhand “love ya” which has merit as it is a spoken offer of love however lightly or fleeting. As yoga’s greeter, Namaste might better be delivered as Sincerely,...
by Hilary Lindsay | Jun 27, 2015 | Cooking, Healthy Living, nashville yoga, Recipes, yoga teacher |
Here is my recipe for an uncooked fresh fruit pie for the Fourth of July that will delight. I am not giving you a crust recipe because I use Whole Foods Organic crusts these days. They also have spelt or whole wheat…. Neither appeal to me but you may like them. When I make my own crust I always use whole wheat pastry flour for a quarter of the crust because it has a nutty, flakiness that seems lovely to me. Pastry flour is lower in gluten so it doesn’t hold together as well and may not be as pretty but you know pretty only goes so far. You can substitute a vegan crust or for you folks who are both non-gluten and vegan you could make a crust using nuts and seeds but I don’t know how to do it well enough to share yet. I change this recipe to suit my moods or guests as I do all things eaten, worn or done! Slice and mix approximately: One pint of blueberries or blackberries or both One pint of strawberries One large banana (Room temperature) Heat about a cup of fresh squeezed orange juice. Today I’ll use organic orange strawberry banana as that’s what I have. (Do not eat conventional strawberries, they are pesticide sponges!) Dissolve about a TBLSP Agar Agar (you can substitute kanten) into cold juice and bring to boil Heat crust at 375 degrees for 10 minutes (My chef friend Bett likes a browner crust. If she’s coming over, cook yours longer) Pour fruit into hot crust Pour hot juice mixture over it...
by Hilary Lindsay | Jun 16, 2015 | Cooking, Healthy Living, Recipes, Yoga |
I am not an exact chef. It drives my chef friends crazy. Why can’t you just use a recipe as you find it before you change it? Baking is an exact science! You can’t mess with it!!!! Nonsense: I mess with everything and it works out fine. But suffice it to say that I encourage you to mess with this recipe. I made it up and I change it when I want to. It’s expensive and hard to make unless you have a great blender but it’s worth it. I use organic ingredients. Here you go: Soak one cup of raw cashews and one cup of raw almonds in hot water (walnuts or pecans are good too) Soak 10 small dates in hot water or hot liquor of your choice Remove most of the water after a half hour or more and place in blender in thirds holding back a quarter cup of nuts and puree Add 3 T. Raw agave One T. Organic unrefined coconut oil ½ t. vanilla One T. Raw Coconut Sugar (sometimes I add a tablespoon of cacao nibs) Blend again Once blended add 2/3 cup raw cacao powder 1 T. chipotle powder ½ t. pink sea salt Blend blend blend – the smoother, the more pleasing Add the last nuts toward the end so they are chopped into small pieces Roll into 1 inch balls on freezer paper on a cookie sheet and freeze (optional – you can chill them in the fridge) Options: Roll them in coconut or toasted sesame seeds and coconut sugar or even powdered sugar You...
by Hilary Lindsay | Apr 19, 2015 | anatomy, Asana, nashville yoga, Yoga, yoga class, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
In the last inquiry post I wrote that the body and mind collaborate through an unspoken language. It is a system of organization by automatic pilot that moves you in the right direction if all the signals are clear. But what happens if the signals are not clear and your organization goes offline so to speak? Will you be able to willfully remember and retrieve data so that you can manage yourself manually? Most of us have had the experience of changing computers or programs and losing automatic access to a site that had “remembered” our password for us. If we’ve forgotten or lost our password we’re now locked out. It’s important to keep the muscle memory of our secret keys. I was a dancer. My muscle memory allowed me to move with grace. It was automatic. Now I have a damaged hip and a fused lumbar spine. I cannot automatically move according to the data that worked for a healthy system. I must input unique passwords to retrieve healthy movement. Otherwise what follows the first flawed motion will take me down a bad path. It’s called compensation and it’s a useful way for the body to organize in emergencies but it’s just for emergencies. When it is used as a permanent fix, things can go badly. They went badly for me. I was intense and too impatient to heed injuries so by the time I noticed them I was already in the weeds. I’ve had to retrain muscles that would not fire. I am trying to encourage opportunity for damaged nerves to...
