Get your insides ready for the "H word."

HOLIDAYS.  They'e coming. 

No - don't look at the displays in stores (that are already there on October 4th).  It cannot be healthy. You know what is? Getting your digestion ready. As in, help all that yummy food make its way through you, like its supposed to.  Read on. (there's a story.... as there always is with me.)

I have a tendency to be the kind of practitioner - in ALL my practices: music, yoga, cooking, teaching - who likes to get bare bones instruction and then physically figure it out on my own, trial and error. Yet, last weekend during master yogi Christina Sell's visit from Austin, we referenced B.K.S. Iyengar's Light On Yoga several times for alignment. (For those of you saying BK-WHA?? Iyengar is considered one of the modern-day grandfathers of yoga who helped bring its teachings to the western world).

So every once and a while I get on this kick of "oh yeah, lets read that book, written by that master." for a few weeks. Today marks day 2-in-a-row of me practicing with my trustee "yoga bible" Lino Miele's Astanga Yoga. 

So I'm sitting there on the floor in perhaps my favorite pose of them all: Paschimattanasana. (a.k.a. seated stretch.) And when I say favorite, I mean sometimes I will hang out here for fifteen minutes or more and simply RELISH in all that internal shifting. So I thought - what is it about this thing? Why does it feel SO good to me?  Well, according to Mr. Miele (and Astanga master Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, and a doctor, and a few other contributors), this pose is pretty key to all the abdominal organs, which all aid in digestion and blood purification. Which I found interesting (and telling) that I love this pose so much, and I happen to be someone with all kinds of interesting digestive issues (gluten, dairy, probably all kinds of other things I've never seemed to pinpoint). So it shouldn't be too surprising to see that this pose is like YOGA GOLD for digestion.

<-- This was literally me, sitting in one of the other poses (which happens to be super fun to say - all together now!: Triang Mukhaepada Paschimattanasana) reading about regular old Paschimattanasana and all the inner goodness it provides us.

Hoo ray for digestion!  There's more, come to class :)

Yoga with Calley (normal schedule!):

Sundays @ 10:00am - Abbreviated Ashtanga (for beginners!)
Tuesdays @ 6:30 pm - Full Circle Yoga