“Text Neck”: what it is, how to avoid it

Posted on June 30, 2015 by 4yoga

In the Gentle class this morning, Frances mentioned having seen a recent Good Morning America story on “text neck.”  The story illustrates how neck pain and injuries can result from looking down at screens for hours a day and emphasizes the importance of good posture in neck health.  It concludes with three neck and shoulder stretches to do to foster flexibility and strength and mentions yoga specifically as a way to maintain neck health.

If you spend a lot of time looking down at a phone, tablet, or laptop, you may want to give yourself plenty of breaks to practice the stretches in the story or other yoga poses to help keep your cervical spine healthy.

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July 2015 focus and class schedule

Posted on June 29, 2015 by 4yoga

Water. It seems that some places are getting too much and other places aren’t getting enough. Statistics show that the Pacific Ocean temperature is rising, and, as a result, the jet stream is shifting. Places that used to be dry are now wet, and places that were wet are now becoming dry.

It is interesting that we use the properties of water in many of our idioms: “frozen in fear,” “go with the flow,” and “in a fog.” Water is the element of the second chakra, Svadhisthana. As a practice, it may be beneficial to contemplate the properties of water within yourself. What parts of you may be frozen? The melting snows in the mountains can become rushing, raging streams. To “go with the flow” requires surrender. When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

In your yoga practice, use the poses to get into your body to become aware of what in you is frozen. Pull the attention of the mind back from remembering, judging, and planning into the sensations of the body. Learn its language and listen. “The Body is the shore on the ocean of Being” — Sufi saying.

July updates:

  • Usual schedule for holiday weekend: All classes will meet as regularly scheduled over the 4th of July weekend.
  • New Sunday Basics class: For those of you who would enjoy a Basics practice on Sunday mornings, please join Carly for a new 9 a.m. class.
  • Sunday Restorative class: If you seek a calming and restful practice, please join Susan Polk at 5:45 p.m. on Sundays for the Restorative class.
  • Friday Gentle class: The Friday 9:30 a.m. Gentle class continues to complement the Tuesday and Thursday 9:30 a.m. Gentle classes. This month, Angie, Susan Polk, and Susan Webb will rotate as its teachers.
  • Talk/meditation session: Juanita will offer this special session on Friday, July 17, immediately following the Yin class. Whether you have been curious about meditation or already have a meditation practice and would like to discuss meditation with others, please join Juanita for this session.

July teacher introductions:
We are pleased to welcome two new teachers in July, Carly Hennigar and Richard Denton.

  • Carly fell in love with yoga in community college when she enrolled in a yoga class to fulfill her PE credits. At that time, she didn’t expect that she would one day complete a 200-hour yoga teacher training. However, in a management class, she wrote a paper about what she wanted from life and realized that she wanted to help people feel good. While bopping people on the head with a feel-good stick sounds great, it just doesn’t work that way. So, the next best thing that came to mind was yoga!! Carly is excited about teaching because of the new experiences it will bring.
  • Richard began his yoga practice in 2010 after enduring a period of chronic illness and anxiety, when a wise yogini noted how stressful dis-ease was. He began his practice in Yin and Restorative styles, quickly adding Vinyasa flow and meditation. Richard received his 200-hour RYT in May from Shanda Packard at Harmony Therapeutic Yoga and hopes to bring a calming and intuitive approach to his classes uniting mind, body, and spirit.

For a full list of July classes, please see the the online calendar or a hard copy available at The Pots Place.

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Restorative class: Fri., June 26 and Sundays in July

Posted on June 25, 2015 by 4yoga

Many yoga students are already aware of the substantial benefits of Restorative yoga to relax and calm both the body and the mind.  (Yoga Journal weighs in on why everyone needs this style of yoga during winter, but the information about having recovery time in our busy lives is not season-specific.)   Whether you already appreciate these benefits and are looking for a class to take or are searching for ways to relax, we invite you to attend any or all of Susan Polk’s upcoming Restorative classes.

The Restorative class will meet at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, June 26, 2015.  Then, in July, it will meet each Sunday at 5:45 p.m.  We look forward to sharing this style of yoga with our community!

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Tao Porchon-Lynch: still teaching yoga and dancing at 96!

Posted on June 22, 2015 by 4yoga

If you watch America’s Got Talent, you may already be familiar with 96-year-old ballroom dancer, Tao Porchon-Lynch, who took up dance at age 87.  If not, here is a video of one of her recent amazing performances with her 26-year-old dance partner!

But what you might not yet know is that Porchon-Lynch is also considered “the world’s oldest yoga teacher,” and she credits 50+ years of yoga teaching and her determined spirit with keeping her healthy and active as she has aged.  As one of her students says in this short video, “she is the epitome of strength and energy.”

Porchon-Lynch inspires us to continue our practice for decades to come!  Many thanks to Shirley Dammeyer for calling this amazing woman to our attention!

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International Day of Yoga: Sun., June 21

Posted on June 18, 2015 by 4yoga

As some of you may have heard recently on NPR’s Morning Edition, Sunday, June 21, is International Day of Yoga, with yoga activities planned around the world.  4yoga will be celebrating, as it does each Sunday, with a 4 p.m. Basics class, so feel free to join us!

Do you have other ideas for how to recognize International Day of Yoga?  Know of any special activities planned in south-central Kentucky?  Please share in the comments!

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Angie completes Yin immersion

Posted on June 15, 2015 by 4yoga

We are pleased to announce that Angie recently completed a 20-hour training specifically focused on Yin yoga. This immersion, held at Sanctuary for Yoga in Nashville, was led by Liz Stewart, who teaches Sanctuary’s Yin classes and who has studied with Bernie Clark, author of popular books on Yin and founder of YinYoga.com, an excellent online resource on this style of yoga.

From the training, Angie learned that we are fortunate to have so many teachers interested in learning about and teaching Yin yoga; most of the other participants are the only people in their area who are teaching Yin, which keeps them from being able to take other Yin classes. She also was introduced to new ideas about sequencing a Yin class and appreciated hearing teachers’ perspectives on how much talking (and about what topics) and how much silence best helps their students explore the practice.

Although this training was Sanctuary’s first one focused on Yin, the studio plans to make it an annual event. While Angie took it as an elective for her 300-hour training program, it is open both to teachers and to students. Therefore, those of you who would like an opportunity to study and practice Yin for 20 hours over a weekend can keep an eye on the Workshops/Events section of Sanctuary’s website to see when the next one will be held.

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Meditation reduces stress, changes brain (Harvard study)

Posted on June 11, 2015 by 4yoga

The Washington Post recently reported on a study by Sara Lazar, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, that identified changes in people’s brains when they practice meditation.  After subjects spent eight weeks in a mindfulness-based stress reduction program, researchers found thickening in four regions of the brain associated with mind-wandering, learning, and empathy.  They also discovered reductions in the size of the amygdala, commonly thought of as the “fight-or-flight” region, which correlated to reductions in stress levels for the meditators.

Locally, Vanderbilt’s Osher Center for Integrative Medicine offers training in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), with new eight-week sessions beginning on June 16 and on Sept. 1.  Alice Simpson completed this course in 2014 and would be happy to answer anyone’s questions about it.  She notes, “I would highly recommend the program. I regularly use the skills I learned and the materials they gave us. Just more tools for our toolkit on this path of learning to become more peaceful and more enlightened.”

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Frances learns more about low back health in workshop

Posted on June 8, 2015 by 4yoga

In May, Frances attended a two-hour workshop led by Kevin Wheet from Memphis, Tn., dealing with ways to overcome back pain with yoga.  The workshop emphasized details of the psoas, the pesky muscle that causes many of us lower back pain and hip discomfort. Kevin demonstrated ways in which to manage and prevent issues at the root of the problem by using specific yoga poses specifically designed to target the psoas and by breaking down the poses to make them more beneficial, thus allowing people of all ages and abilities to get more benefit from their yoga practice.

We hope that Kevin will return to Bowling Green for another workshop soon!

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Danielle’s visit on her “50 States of Yoga” tour

Posted on June 5, 2015 by 4yoga

Several of you were able to meet Danielle, a visiting student who attended class on Sunday, May 17, while stopping in Kentucky on her 50 States of Yoga tour.  Danielle’s goal for the year is to take a yoga class in every state, and her class at 4yoga marked her 15th state.

Here are Danielle and Susan enjoying a variation of tree pose after class!Danielle_Susan_50_States_May2015If you would like to read more about Danielle’s time in Kentucky, which included stops at Mammoth Cave and the Corvette Museum in addition to 4yoga, check out her blog.

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June 2015 focus and class schedule

Posted on June 1, 2015 by 4yoga

Will summer ever arrive this year? We have recently been witness to extreme weather conditions all over the world. Weather experts attribute this to the warming of the Pacific Ocean which, in turn, moves the jet stream and creates shifts in weather patterns. How adaptable are you to the ever-changing conditions that surround you? Assuming that we all strive to be happy, it is probably not a good idea to seek that happiness by expecting predictable patterns in the external world.

Our internal worlds are constantly changing as well. Did you know that a prune-sized part of the brain, the insula, is constantly scanning the body to detect signals that drive our emotions and behavior, in order to bring us into balance? By tuning into the language of our bodies’ subtle sensations, we can show up as more present and “embodied” in our lives as well as more resilient to the changes in the world around us.

In his brilliant new book, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., highlights a chapter on yoga with a research study of traumatized people who participated in a regular yoga practice for twenty weeks. Before and after scans of their brains showed increased activation in both the insula and medial prefrontal cortex. We all know that yoga is good for us, and now neuroscience is validating it from the science perspective. Healthy, happy insulas to you!

June updates:

  • Friday Gentle class: The Friday 9:30 a.m. Gentle class continues to complement the Tuesday and Thursday 9:30 a.m. Gentle classes. Angie, Susan, and Kathie continue to rotate as its teachers.
  • Talk/meditation session: Juanita will offer this special session on Friday, June 12, immediately following the Yin class. Whether you have been curious about meditation or already have a meditation practice and would like to discuss meditation with others, please join Juanita for this session.
  • Restorative class: Susan will offer a Restorative class on Friday, June 26, at 5:30 p.m.

For a full list of June classes, please see the calendar page of this site or pick up a hard copy at The Pots Place, located at 428 East Main Street (on Fountain Square) in Bowling Green, Kentucky.  We look forward to practicing with you in June!

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