Recently in Yoga Category

I sometimes roll into Child's Pose, letting my shins and knees sink into my mattress before I get out of bed. I did this when I was a kid. I keep the center of my forehead on the mattress for several minutes and then might turn it slowly right and left.

In yoga class, the Child's Pose is a wonderful way to restore your energy, to say, I've had enough. It's a check-in point, a bow to yourself, a little lull that allows your breath to flow into your back, your shoulders, your neck. Do nothing. There is no shame to this.

Good yoga teachers will generally give you Child's Pose as a rest or encourage you to get into it when you're breathing heavily and getting hot. (Unless you're in teacher training, I guess, and you have to be tough!)

If you've never tried yoga, try this pose for a few minutes today. On a rug or mat is best. You can send your arms out in front, or fold them next to your body with palms up or down.

The Child's Pose says, "Thank you. I am grateful. I am attending to myself this moment."

Enjoy it!

Yoga continues to get good press. Here's the latest. An excerpt:

Yoga reduced anxiety and improved motivation and concentration in as little as eight weeks, according to a new study.

The study involved 84 college students who were put in a 10-week Hatha yoga class. The students were given standard tests to measure concentration, motivation and anxiety.

The average age of the students was 24, and 93 percent were women, 45 percent Hispanic, 35 percent white, and 7 percent African-American.

By eight weeks there was significant improvement in all three areas.

Thanks Sierra for alerting us all to Linda's yoga blog. Click here to read.

Thanks to the reader who brought this Houston judge's unusual sentence to our attention. The case was publicized some in January, but I missed it. Today, I tried and failed to find James Lee Cross through Houston directory assistance. I'd like to know if he has thus far experienced any of yoga's benefits.

Anyway, here's the original story: Judge Larry Standley of Houston ordered a man convicted of slapping his wife to take a yoga class as part of his one-year probation.

Read more about it here.

Yoga is peaceful, and class is usually quiet. But some 800 people registered to take one of six yoga classes in the large traffic island within Times Square on Thursday, an all-day event organized by the Times Square Alliance in honor of the summer solstice.

From the New York Times' write-up:

Guardrails surrounded the group of people as they listened to Douglass Stewart, a lead yoga instructor, belt out directions. Taxis honked their horns and fire trucks whizzed by, their sirens blaring. Yet the yoga practitioners remained unfazed.

Writes Beliefnet.com spirituality editor Valerie Reiss, who was there: "It was really about finding the peaceful place in the middle and making peace with the chaos, if only for a moment. It made the metaphorical concept of stillness in the storm so ridiculously literal, I found myself giggling in the middle of savasana."