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Bridge Pose

By Sarah Landis, APOGEE Yoga Instructor

Backbending has many benefits, not least of which are the uplifting feelings the movement generates. After a backbend, you may feel physically and mentally energized. The pose opens your chest and your lungs, creating more space for the breath. Backbends stretch your  shoulders, abdominals, hips and thighs and the group of abdominal nerves known as the solar plexus. Backbending stimulates the abdominal organs, improving digestion and relieving menstrual discomfort. Depending on the position of the chin, backbends can stimulate or sooth the thyroid gland, which controls metabolism. Practice backbends regularly, and you will strengthen your back and increase mobility in your spine.

If I were to practice only one backbend, it would be setu bandha sarvangasana, bridge pose. This pose can be active, even performed with one leg raised. Or, you can support your hips with a block for a restful, restorative posture. In bridge pose, the lungs are also inverted, making this a beautiful pose for moving out chest colds.

•    To begin, lie on your back with your knees bent and feet on your mat just in front of your sits bones, arms by your sides. Make sure the feet are parallel. If this is difficult, place a block between your big toes and maintain that contact throughout the pose.

•    Press down through the feet and arms to lift the hips until the thighs are approaching parallel to the floor. Your feet should be under your knees. Draw the tailbone toward the backs of the knees and lift the pubic bone in the direction of the navel. These actions will help elongate and protect the lower back.

•    Snuggle one shoulder, then the other, underneath you onto the back. Be mindful not to move the shoulders toward the feet, which could strain the neck. Pressing the back of the skull into the mat will help maintain the natural curve in the neck.

•    Now that you are in the pose, breathe. Imagine you are filling your lungs with helium and let your full, light lungs ascend, bringing the chest a little closer to the chin. Continue to breathe deeply and explore how it feels to breathe with the lungs inverted for the next 30 seconds to one minute.

Restorative Variation
To practice a restorative version of setu bandha, place a block under your sacrum at the base of the pelvis. Notice that by turning the block you can create three levels. Choose the highest level that still allows you to stay in the pose without tenderness in the lower back. Stay in this variation for five minutes.

For more heart-opening yoga poses, join Sarah Landis on Sunday, February 21, for an Open Your Heart yoga workshop, from noon to 2:00 pm at APOGEE Bedford Hills. Details here.

Consider the benefits of being in a relationship: sharing, trust, support, and communication. Now imagine experiencing those advantages in a yoga class—that’s partner yoga. Partner yoga has a long tradition, and while it’s fun for romantic couples and friends, any two people can participate in partner yoga and reap the rewards.

When you practice partner yoga, you and your buddy use each other’s bodies as aids, assists or props. For example, you and your partner may lean on each other for support during a balance pose. Or, as she relaxes against your back as she performs a backbend, your friend’s weight may push you deeper into your own forward bend. The result is the same feelings of awareness, energy and relaxation you get from a yoga class, but shared with another person.

“Certainly the best part of partner yoga is the connectedness with another human being,” says APOGEE yoga instructor Franklin Shire.  As you move and shift your balance and weight, you will be communicating physically. “Support and surrender happen simultaneously,” says Franklin. “There’s a give-and-take element.”

Couples must talk to each other, but in a way that’s conscious and aware. “You must be truly present to really communicate with your partner,” says Franklin. Because awareness is one reason to practice yoga, the challenges of doing it with a partner can add to your practice. Says Franklin, “Partner yoga can take you places you can’t get to by yourself.”

Go further with your Valentine in a partner yoga class at our “Share the Love” APOGEE Awakening on February 11. Learn more here.

By Lesly Levy, APOGEE Director of Pilates and Pilates Programming

If you’re standing for a few minutes—in a line at a store or airport or in your own kitchen—use the time as an opportunity to strengthen your core and energize your body and spirit.  It’s all too easy to become leaden and lethargic when you’re standing and waiting. Here’s a simple exercise that will create length, lift and openness and boost your vitality.

Align your body. Stand with your heels together and toes slightly apart, then draw your legs together, hugging the midline of your body. Adjust your body so that your heels, sacrum, top of your pelvis, bottom of your ribs and the tips of your shoulder blades are aligned as if you were standing against a wall.

Lift and lengthen. Lift your abdominals in and up, starting with the lowest part, as if you were zipping up a tight pair of jeans. Feel your tailbone lengthening toward the floor. As your abdominals lift, allow your ribs to soften, your chest to open and create length in your spine,  through the top of your head.  As your spine aligns, you should feel a lightness through the crown of your head.

Breathe. As you breathe, think about filling the back of your lungs. Allow your lungs to open, and feel the length and width of your spine, from front to back and top to bottom.

Turn. Inhale, and look right, then look left; bring your head to center and exhale. Repeat, looking left first. Do two sets.

Lift, lower and extend. Use your powerhouse (abdominals, thighs and buttocks) to float your heels two inches off the floor as you inhale. Hold for a count of three, then exhale and lower, keeping your head in the space where it was. This should feel as if you are stretching in two directions, up through the crown of your head and down through your heels.

Now relax and enjoy the awareness you’ve brought to your body and mind!

Learn more ways to turn on the calm in your life in our Unwind workshops, starting in January 2011.

For APOGEE instructor Noell Clark, yoga doesn’t end when she steps off the mat. “Part of a complete yoga practice is Seva, the practice of selfless service,” says Clark. Clark fulfills that aspect of her yoga at My Sister’s Place, a Westchester County-based non-profit that helps survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking.  For the last two years, Clark has been teaching yoga to the women enrolled in the center’s Life Skills Program, a 12-week empowerment and job readiness program.

For ten women at a time—a total of about 30 a year—the Life Skills Program provides skills and empowerment workshops. Clark has managed the Life Skills program since 2006. As a whole, My Sister’s Place provides legal services, counseling, education, and emergency shelter to thousands of women recovering from abuse and trafficking.

Yoga and My Sister’s Place are a good fit for Clark. She has a degree in Women’s Studies and Political Science from Purchase College, with a concentration in human services and social work.  And she knows personally how yoga, with its focus on joining the physical and spiritual, can help someone to become empowered. “I don’t come from the most pristine background—I’ve faced many challenges and overcome a lot in my life. Yoga has helped me with these transitions.” Clark says. “Yoga completely changed my life. For me it’s a no-brainer to give others the gift that was given to me and allowed me to get to the other side of my adversity.”

Exactly what yoga poses Clark teaches depends on her students. “If the women need to work through their anger, I do a rigorous practice so they can release their emotions and take it out on the mat,” she says. “If they’re farther along in their resolution, I do healing, restorative poses.” (We recently featured one of Clark’s restorative poses on this blog.)  Clark teaches five classes a week at APOGEE White Plains and encourages APOGEE members to practice Seva, too. “There’s a concept that in order to keep a gift you have to give it away,” Clark says. “If you act compassionately to others, the more you are open to receive compassion from the world around you.”

by Noell Clark, APOGEE Yoga Instructor

On busy days—and especially holidays such as Thanksgiving—it’s important to stay energized, calm and open to the people around you. Take five minutes to perform this calming and heart-opening yoga pose and you’ll be restored, relaxed and better able to receive and give gratitude. All you need is a blanket and floor space on which to lie.

To start: Roll the blanket into a cylinder and lay it on the floor. Sit with your sacrum or tailbone on the end of the blanket, then lie down, so that the blanket roll is under the length of your spine and also supporting your neck and head. Now bring your feet toward your groins, place the soles of your feet together and let your knees fall open. Put your arms on the floor away from the sides of your body, palms up. You should feel your chest opening; allow gravity to gently open your joints.

Now breathe: Then close your eyes and begin to breathe through your nose so that your belly moves up and down. Take full inhalations and exhale completely, pulling your belly button toward your spine at the end of each exhalation. As you focus on your breath, also check that your body is relaxed: Release your eyes, mouth, ears, shoulders, elbows, wrists. Focus on your in and out breath. Try to maintain the pose for five minutes, then roll to your right side and slowly come to a seated position, raising your head last. Take one more belly breath, smile, and be thankful for your day.

Learn more ways to turn on the calm in your life in our Unwind workshops, starting in January 2011.