Yoga audition: tomorrow

Tomorrow is the day I audition for Radiance Yoga, the studio I attend almost every day.  I'm excited but nervous.  I think I can handle the instruction and the demonstration... It's just the speaking.  I can be very soft spoken sometimes, and I hope I can find it somewhere in me to project my voice, but still in a soothing way.  When I get nervous the voice seems to just disappear.

My sequence is going to be a a gentle flow with a yin influence.  I've come into contact with yin yoga just this past year and I love it.  It's not the usual type of flow class where you are linking a lot of movements together at a certain pace.  That is actually a yang practice, where you are building heat in the body.  Yin yoga is a "cooling" yoga.  Each pose is held for a significant amount of time, and the goal is to let the body surrender to the pose.  For example, staying in child's pose for 3 minutes.   Yin is an amazing practice that helps me balance out the rest of the week.  This style works on the fascia muscles or connective tissue.  So it actually helps circulation a lot and promote growth.  Also energetically it can release blockages.  Many times during this style of practice a lot has come up for me... being uncomfortable, but then being with that feeling and trying to lean in to it, to let it go.

I know lots of yoga stuff there.  Yin is also based in Taoism and Chinese medicine.  The focus is that the body is constantly producing new cells that are replacing old cells,  so this kind of yoga basically focuses on the fact that healing and improvement is always possible for the mind and body.

Almost all the postures take place in the lower part of the body.  That is usually where we hold all the tension right?  All from sitting!!!  Yeah, before taking this class I had no idea how bad it was to sit.  Now I try to stand all the time, or sit on the floor where I can stretch.  But sitting actually tightens up everything in the hips and legs.

So tomorrow I'm working a lot on the lower body.  We'll be doing a lot of "cooling" poses like child's pose and some inversions, but I'm also going to do a lower back sequence (for slight compression), hip series (using the number 4 stretch), and closing it out with a supported bridge series.

I hope I can remember all that!

Here's the list of poses, if you want to try at home:

Releasing Lower Back Tension to Find Ease (really most of these poses could be done by themselves to release the back- especially child's, spinal twists, happy baby, and bridge poses)

Sukasana (comfortable seat)
Hand and wrist circles
Arms overhead stretch (fingers interlaced)
Side stretch over head
Spinal Twists
Child's pose
Table pose
Cat/cow
Thread the needle
Anahatasana (melting heart)
Sphinx/Seal pose
Forward Savasana (relaxation)
Child's pose
Knees to chest
1/2 happy baby (both sides)
Number 4 stretch
Intense #4
#4 twist
Legs up to sky (point flex feet, roll the ankles)
Full Happy baby
Pelvic tilts
Supported bridge
Supported bridge each leg extended
Supported shoulder stand on block
Windshield wiper legs
Knees to chest
Supine twists
Savasana
Sukasana

Namaste!!