When is the last time you dove into a really deep, juicy downward dog?
When you take a wall yoga class, you get to do just that—dive into downward dog—with the aid of a wall and straps securely fastened and hanging from said wall. If you don’t believe me, watch this expert (ha ha) demonstration of me diving into a downward dog from the great yoga wall that I happened upon at Blissful Yoga Studio on a recent trip to Scottsdale, Arizona.
On my quest to try all the different flavors of yoga, this recent vacation afforded me the opportunity to try out two newfangled types of yoga, FLYoga and wall yoga, and I don’t think I have to say this, but yes, they both fall into the category of awesomely cool yoga experiences. I’ll save the Circque du Soleil—I mean FLYYoga experience—for my next post and today will focus on hitting the yoga wall.
I arrived at Blissful Yoga early so I could meet my fellow Twitter yogini buddy Stephanie Spence, who introduced me to the owner of the studio, Rosa Rendon, and gave a little sneak preview of what was to come. Rosa gave me a quick demo of a hanging inversion pose and then helped me up into the strap for my first taste of wall yoga. I will admit it was a bit scary coming into my first pose, and mind you, there was a camera on me recording the whole experience, so I couldn’t help but think, “Holy crap, why did I agree to be videotaped doing this!” It wasn’t a bad scary; in fact, I was pretty confident I was going to love the way it would feel, but the first time you do something that involves hanging upside down, it’s pretty normal (I think) to have a bit of anxiety.
I tried to remember all the things I always tell my new students: let go of the fear, come to the practice with a beginner’s mind, breathe slow and steady. I realized I’d better practice what I preach as I let myself lean backwards, completely trusting the strap, brave smile on my face, ready to enjoy the ride.
From the moment I hung from the wall in reclined supta baddha konasana, it was an inverted love at first hang.
The beauty of doing yoga with the help of the wall is that you can come fully into an inversion to extend the spine and align every single vertebra. When I was hanging from the wall in supta baddha konasana, I felt like a rock-star yogini, because, in essence, I was doing a handstand, which is something I haven’t quite tackled off the wall in my yoga practice. A full handstand! And let me just tell you, I felt completely invigorated and exhilarated.
The other thing I felt while hanging from the wall was the gravity doing some amazing work on my neck and face. I couldn’t help but think that this kind of an inversion has to be good for reducing wrinkles, and it turns out that inversions have all along been labeled a fountain of youth. All those blood cells flowing down into the brain assist with energizing the mind, increasing memory retention, and uplifting the spirits. It’s kind of like a natural high for the brain, and who doesn’t like a good natural high!
If that is not incentive enough, wall yoga can be very therapeutic for people with scoliosis or disc disease. In fact, Rosa told me a success story of one of her students who, over a period of two years, had the angle of the curvature in his spine decrease due to weekly wall yoga sessions.
When you first walk into a wall studio, the first thing you notice are the straps hanging from the walls with metal devices. Although you see all the normal yoga studio accoutrements (blocks, straps, bolsters, and blankets), you can’t quite take your eyes off the wall and wonder what the heck is going to happen.
Before my class began, I went up to introduce myself to the instructor, Rasoul Sobhani, and let him know I was new. He was a little nonchalant about this announcement and whisked me away back to my spot on the wall, assuring me that he would take good care of all the first-timers. And that he did. With a calm, soothing voice, Rasoul took his time to show us how to do the asanas with the aid of the wall and strap, always demonstrating proper alignment, and then he went around ensuring we were set up properly in the poses. I think we all rested more assured when he clued us in to the fact that the straps can hold a weight up to 1,500 pounds!
The class flowed similar to a yoga class, starting with some breathing to get us grounded (and also to calm the nerves) and warm-ups, and then we moved to downward dog done four different ways! Downward dog with a strap to support you is really cool. You can lean forward, almost as if you are diving forward into your dog, and then the strap allows you to extend your body deeper into the pose. In fact, each of the standing poses we did – extended side angle, triangle, warrior 2, forward fold – all felt amazing with the aid of the wall and the strap to keep the body in proper alignment as we moved deeper into the stretches. The poses just felt yummier, and although there was no flowing vinyasa movement, I worked up a sweat and felt all the same benefits I do after attending a vinyasa flow class.
Rosa demonstrating an inverted version of Tadasana
I looked around the room several times and noticed the smiles on students’ faces. We were all going places we had never been on our mats. I think that teaching yoga on the wall not only aids immensely in teaching proper alignment, but also helps to boost confidence. If you get the opportunity to attend a wall yoga class at Blissful Yoga Studio, I can highly recommend Rasoul. Any man who can gracefully get 19 women to hang from a wall with smiles on their faces is a rock star in my book.
I’m feeling a little musical inspiration coming on. To quote (well, I guess I should say song parody) Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall”…
Better do it now before you get too old
‘Cause we’re the yoga people, night and day
Livin’ crazy, that’s the only way
So today
Gotta leave those blocks and bolsters on the shelf
And just enjoy yourself
C’mon and hang
Let the madness in the wall straps get to you
Yoga ain’t so bad at all
If you do it on the wall!
And, if you live it off the wall!!
I’m back in Ohio now, desperately searching for a studio with wall yoga so I can keep working on that awesome anti-gravity, wrinkle reducing, yoga high!
Check out my fifteen minutes of fame in this video demonstration of wall yoga at Blissful Yoga, and leave a comment below if you’ve tried wall yoga and want to share your experience.
Thanks Stephanie for helping me navigate the yoga studios of Scottsdale! Please take a trip over to Stephanie’s One With Life website to be inspired and there’s also a bunch of cool videos of her demonstrating yoga poses. Big shout outs and thanks to Rasoul and Rosa as well for an awesome virgin wall yoga experience. I hope to make it back to Blissful Yoga someday soon (maybe for some wall yoga teacher training) and I would love to take another class with Rasoul.
P.S. If you like my rock star yoga capris and tank top, I picked them up from the awesome folks at MPG – Mondetta Performance Gear.
Do you remember coming back to school after Spring Break and dreading that question? Most of my friends had tales to tell about beaches and parties, and they had the tan skin to go along with it. I always came back sporting my pasty white skin, obvious to all that I had not made it outside the great state of Ohio.
Well, this year there were still no beaches or partying. Instead, I took a little trip out to sunny Arizona to catch a few baseball games, do some mountain climbing, and have a few cool yoga experiences along the way! Oh, I forgot to mention that I took my 78-year old mother along for the fun too.
In March, Phoenix is home to the Cactus League for Major League Baseball spring training, and since my mother just so happens to be a huge Cleveland Indians fan, we ventured out to Goodyear, Arizona to check out a few of the Tribe games. Needing to balance out all that baseball with my daily yoga fix, I made sure to check out the yoga scene in the area so I could hit a few classes.
While in town, I could not miss the chance to meet up in person with Sanskrit teacher extraordinaire Cheryl Hall. If you are not familiar with Cheryl, she offers Sanskrit lessons via Skype* and also teaches yoga and Vedic chant. I had the opportunity to take one of her Skype classes a while ago, and it has helped me tremendously with my pronunciations of the Sanskrit names for yoga poses. Cheryl offers a two-hour Vedic chant class on Sunday morning, and I thought this would be the perfect way to do a little yogic bonding with my Mom.
We headed to Dave’s Ashtanga Yoga in Scottsdale to attend the class and were greeted with huge hugs from Cheryl. I pulled up a meditation cushion, joined the group of fellow chanters, and jumped right into the lesson. Cheryl is so knowledgeable on this subject and did an excellent job of explaining the meanings behind what we were learning, how to properly enunciate the Sanskrit words, and what all the transliterations (those lines and dashes above the letters) mean. Cheryl has the voice of an angel to guide the chanting along, and it was always a little bit of a bummer when she would stop singing to check on our progress. She made up for that by telling us we sounded fantastico!
The very first chant we tackled was called Saha Navavatu, and I really loved it because it is meant to be used to bless the interaction between the teacher and the student. I’d like to share it with you.
Saha Navavatu
Om saha navavatu
saha nau bhunaktu
saha viryam karavavahai
tejasvi navadhitamastu
ma vidvisavahai
Om santih santih santih
Which translates to:
Om. May It protect us both (teacher and student) together.
May It nourish us both together.
May we both work with strength together.
May our study have brilliance.
May we not be antagonistic towards one another.
Om. Peace. Peace. Peace.
We sang this verse together, and as both a yoga teacher and student, the sentiment really spoke to me. I need to practice singing this so perhaps someday I can share it with my students.
Thank you, Cheryl, for such a lovely morning full of learning, brilliance, and peace.
Stay tuned – I’ll be writing more this week and next about my cool yoga experiences in Arizona, which included climbing and hanging from the great yoga wall and aerial yoga, otherwise known as FLYoga!
*If you want more information about Cheryl’s Sanskrit lessons, please read my review of her online training sessions (done via Skype), and then contact her direct (azvedicchant at gmail.com or by phone 480-216-2602) to set up a class. Mention the Daily Downward Dog, and Cheryl will give you $5 off the 45-minute class (which is normally $35).
If you’ve been to one of my yoga classes, you know that I’m a big fan of setting an intention at the beginning of class. I always say that when you direct your mind and heart in a new direction, it can be a very powerful thing. Setting an intention before you start a yoga practice can help ground you and guide you throughout your practice.
I’m also a big believer in sending your dreams out into the universe, as I’ve been the recipient of many dreams coming true. I even have gone so far as putting together a vision board. My fellow yoga teacher and friend Juli Hicks turned me on to the vision boarding concept, and I have to say that the one I created is pretty damn cool. It captures all of my dreams and wishes and where I want to take my career and spiritual life over the coming years. I won’t tell you everything I pasted on my board – but some central themes are continuing yoga education, travel, writing, and meditation.
One of the dreams I set out for myself in 2012 was to continue my yoga journey by attending one of the “yoga festivals” like Wanderlust, and/or attend one of the Yoga Journal conferences. To me, traveling to a destination to study with well-known yoga luminaries, hear awesome yoga music, and hang out and do downward dogs with hundreds of other yogis all in one place is my idea of going to Disneyland. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to make this happen, but I figured if I saved my money and believed in the dream, I’d make it come to fruition.
I entered a couple of contests to try and win free tickets to these festivals, one of which was on the lovely Roseanne’s It’s All Yoga, Baby blog. She held a contest to giveaway passes to the Tadasana Festival, an international festival of yoga and music held Earth Day weekend (April 20-22) in Santa Monica, California. I entered the contest, and then rather than be quiet about the contest in hopes of increasing my chances to win, I did the exact opposite and started tweeting and telling all my yogi buds about it so they could enter too. If you’ve never visited Roseanne’s blog, please go over and check out the yoga information, interviews, and conversations (and if you need some help with your blog or writing, check out her freelance services).
I found out on Friday, March 9 that I WON the tickets! Woo Hoo!!!* I feel like the poster child of setting intentions.
If Intent.com needs a spokesmodel, I’m available. You put something out there in the universe – it may just come true! Just saying.
So, check out some of the people I have the opportunity to practice with at Tadasana Festival: Seane Corn, Shiva Rea, Amy Ippolito, Kia Miller, Elana Brower, Guru Singh, Bryan Kest, Baron Baptiste, and Jennifer Pastiloff, to name a few. And, I’ll get to hear MC Yogi play and attend some classes where Wah! is going to provide the music live. I’m like a kid in a candy store trying to pick out which classes to go to. The festival is three days and there are 50 master teachers offering 70+ workshops with live, in-class musical performances by artists from around the world, lectures, cool yoga stuff to purchase, organic food, and to top it all 0ff, the location is right at the edge of the beach facing the Pacific Ocean. Somebody pinch me!
If you are going to Tadasana Festival, please leave a comment to let me know. I’d love to meet up with some of my fellow yogis and yoginis and would also appreciate any recommendations on which classes to attend.
I also purchased my tickets today to attend the Yoga Journal conference in New York. It is going to be a busy and yogalicious month of April, and I can’t wait to share all of it with you! Stay tuned.
* I originally used six exclamation points, but my editor noted that six might be excessive, so I cut it down to three. 😉
Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve wrote about yoga for back pain and even longer since I’ve mentioned how much yoga has helped with my scoliosis. I’m a veteran of many rounds of physical therapy to help me heal and strengthen my back. The funny thing about physical therapy is that it was never as much fun as I found the stretching and strengthening I get on my yoga mat. I’m happy to report that I’ve been able to replace those obligatory print-outs the docs gave me of my daily exercise prescription with a yoga practice that I look forward to doing! I’ve just got to say that yoga is a helluva lot more fun way to deal with the curve in my spine and the resulting back pain that it can bring.
If you live in northeast Ohio, I want to make you aware of an upcoming yoga therapy workshop being led by Amy Jeske at Yoga Bliss Akron. The workshop will bring a special approach to practicing yoga with scoliosis.
When you have scoliosis present in your spine, there are special considerations you need to be aware of when you practice yoga. Without this awareness, a regular or vigorous practice may actually make the problem worse. According to Amy, yoga has been used for years to help correct the misaligned curvature of the spine and to help rebalance the musculature of students with scoliosis.
If you have scoliosis or know someone who does, this workshop will consist of postural evaluations to determine your specific needs, followed by a basic class that will teach you how to practice with the awareness you need to move through your practice safely, with balance, and to help correct and prevent further degeneration.
The workshop will be held Saturday, March 24 from12:30 to 2:30 PM, and the cost is $20. You can register for the workshop on the Yoga Bliss website, or call the studio at (330) 576-6687. I’ve been lucky to co-teach beginners’ workshops with Amy, and I can tell you that she is very knowledgeable about yoga therapy and brings a fun, supportive environment to her classes.
If you don’t live in my ‘hood and would like to learn more about how to adapt your yoga practice to the curvature in your spine, I highly recommend the Yoga for ScoliosisDVD workout with Elise Browning Miller (read my review of this DVD here).
Spectacular design, outstanding light-weight engineering, and phenomenal handling precision are combined with unparalleled comfort. No, I’m not talking about the newest Porsche 911, but the brand new compact Vernice Vita Studio Yoga Mat. Racheal Ennis, the founder of Vernice Vita Yoga Mats has done it again, introducing a sleeker, modern interpretation of Vernice Vita’s popular, successful, and original three-layer memory foam yoga mat.
If you’ve been to a yoga class with me recently, you may have noticed my extra-large, cushy yoga mat. I get a lot of stares at the yoga studio when I roll out the original 28 x 72 inch Cadillac version of the Vernice Vita yoga mat, but once my curious fellow yogis check out how cushy it is, they know why I love the riding style and comfort of my Vernice Vita. You can’t beat the luxury or the performance of this engineering marvel.
I got my first test ride of the Cadillac version back in September of 2011 and have been singing its praises ever since. The beauty of the mat is that the bottom layer is skid-proof to stabilize it, the middle layer is ½” memory foam to provide yogalicious comfort for your body, and the top layer is textured and water resistant to stabilize your yoga practice. I have not had any pain in my wrists since I began using my Vernice Vita, and my savasana and meditation times are pure bliss.
My only real issues with the original Cadillac version are that it is a bit unwieldy to carry around to the studio and my NamaSTAY yoga towel wouldn’t fit it. Poof…issues gone! The new studio version is ¼” thick and 4 inches smaller in both width and height. At 24 x 68 inches, my NamaSTAY yoga towel will fit snugly on top when I decide to sweat it all out with my Bikram or hot yoga friends. The studio version is made with the same high quality and patented three-layer construction, so it more than exceeds the exacting standards of my yoga practice.
The Cadillac version caters to taller yogis, injured yogis, athletes who need extra cushion because of joint pain, and pre-natal yoginis, and it’s awesome for Pilates classes. The new studio mat provides the same comfort and is the perfect mat for more advanced yogis. Really, anyone who’s seeking extra support and cushion in their yoga mat will benefit from either of these premium yoga mats. If you don’t believe me, check out some of the testimonials about the Vernice Vita products. Here is what a fellow DDD reader had to say about her purchase.
“This is the best mat EVER.
No more sore wrists — AND I feel more stable. I could totally nap on this thing.”
– Dominique
Give your body the comfort and support it deserves and purchase your very own Vernice Vita mat from The Daily Downward Dog. Order now for special savings.
Add a Vernice Vita strap to any order for only $10 more, a $5 savings!
Just click the Buy Now button below to order and pay securely through PayPal or your credit card. Or you can order direct from the Vernice Vita website and use offer code MARIA10 to get the savings!
The Kind Mat
The pricing for shipping and handling that is applied in the PayPal transaction is only for standard shipping within the United States. If you live outside the United States or need expedited shipping and would like to order a Vernice Vita Mat, please contact me, and I’ll provide a quote to handle your order.
