Emily’s Sequence

**Designed for slight asthma, wrist pain, weak ankles, stiff knees**

NOTE

Hold each pose for as long as is comfortable. Do NOT continue if you have pain. You can work up to extended length of the poses.

 Virasana (Hero’s Pose). If you need a modification to make it more comfortable, sit on a block or blanket to elevate the hips from the knees and ankles. Take a few deep, yogic breaths. Exhale with a long “Om.”

Tadasana (Mountain Pose)

Urdhva Hastasana (Upward Salute)

 Uttanasana (standing forward bend)

Plank

Chaturanga (elbows at 90 degrees)

Urdhva Mukha Svasana (Up Dog)

Adho Mukha Svasasana (Down Dog)

Virvidrasana Two (Warrior Two)

Utthita Parsvokanasana (Extended Side Angle)

Utthita Trikonanasana (Triangle)

Malasana (Garland)

Balasana (Child’s Pose)

Dandasana (Staff Pose)

Shivasana (Corpse)

 BONUS POSES:

 ½ MOON POSE

 VIPARITA KARANI MUDRA

 Emily’s Comments:
“I started the sequence about a month ago. My hope was that it would help me eliminate stress from my life. The first time I did the sequence it took me about an hour, afterward I felt great! I had stretched out all the achy muscles and relaxed. The next day, I had achy muscles again, but this time from doing the sequence. I stuck with it though, and by the next day the achy muscles had disappeared.
Now I do the sequence in about a half hour, and it has been a tremendous addition to my daily routine. I usually do it at night, around 10pm, due to my late schedule. This falls about 4 hours before I fall asleep. It is a great way for me to switch from school mode to relax mode.
Though I saw no changes in the conditions I had originally claimed, I also didn’t see any pain from them, which is rare. Usually when I start a new exercise regime or yoga routine, I do see pain once or twice. So I am taking the lack of pain as a good sign. I did however, prior to starting the sequence, have plantar fasciitis, which for some strange reason, I had forgotten to claim as an ailment. After starting the sequence the pain from the plantar fasciitis improved greatly.”

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Rachel’s Sequence

**Designed for anxiety, headaches, and asthma, with an emphasis on relaxation**

 NOTE

Hold each pose for as long as is comfortable. Do NOT continue if you have pain. You can work up to extended length of the poses.

Virasana (sitting on your knees) or Sukhasana (cross legged)

Cat/Cow Pose.

Tadasana (Mountain)

Uttasana (standing forward fold)

Plank

Chaturanga

Bhujangasana (cobra pose)

Adho Mukha Svasana (Down-Dog)

Repeat

Trikonasana (triangle)

Prasarita Padottanasana (extended spread leg forward bend)

Parivrtta Trikonasana (revolved triangle)

Tadasana

Baalasana (child’s pose). 

Uttana Shishosana (extended puppy).

Seated Twists

 Janu Sirsasana (head to knee forward bend)

Supta Virasans (reclined hero)

Svasana (corpse pose).

BONUS POSES:

½ MOON POSE

VIPARITA KARANI MUDRA

 Rachel’s Comments: (This was taken from her Facebook status after her first one on one with me)

 “Oddly enough I learned a lot about myself from one session of yoga. I learned I love yoga, I learned that I can do yoga, I learned I never give myself enough credit, and I learned that doing yoga for the first time ever is gonna make me hella sore but in spite of that I can not wait to do it again. Thank you so much Chels for teaching me so much and not even meaning to. You will make an excellent yoga teacher!”

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Student Experiments with Teaching Yoga to Kids

As part of Denver’s Axis Yoga teacher training program, students engage in final student experiments that incorporate what they have learned in the 3-month training into their daily lives. As someone who works with at-risk youth, this student chose to bring her knowledge of yoga to the kids she works with. She had to change her expectations and modify the poses to gear the class towards rambunctious elementary school kids. Her account of the experience follows.

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Thoughts on Teaching Yoga to Kids

As I prepare to conclude my yoga teacher training and move out into the world as an instructor I would like to bring yoga to those people who may otherwise not have access or afford to practice yoga. One population in particular, with whom I already work, is inner city youth. In my role as a youth program manager in affordable housing sites around Denver, I’ve been imagining the power and impact that yoga could have with this population.

Inspired by my desire to continue to work with youth and motivated by the final personal experiment, I chose to explore the pedagogy of teaching yoga to youngsters. With my three month Yoga Teacher Training coming to an end, I feel more or less confident with the idea of teaching to a room of compliant adults who generally are quiet and relatively good listeners. In contrast, my day job, working with youth in a chaotic and haphazard manner made me curious about what a class full of rambunctious elementary aged children practicing yoga would look like. I began by researching several books on teaching strategies for working with children, I explored accounts of teachers who interface with kids, and worked to modify my general teaching knowledge to my understanding of youth development methodology.

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Teaching Yoga to Kids: The Class

Armed with these tools I planned and prepared for an hour-long class that I would teach, which looked something like this:

Discussion:

  • Ask the kids: What is yoga? Give additional insight to their answers. 
  • Set Ground Rules including:
  1. Stay on your mat 2.Try everything 3. Everyone is different so it’s impossible to be good or bad and you shouldn’t compare yourself.
  • Belly Breathing

Asana:

Name              Sanskrit                                  Additional items

Cat                   Marjaryasana                         Meow

Cow                 Bitilasana                                 Moo

Butterfly          Baddha Konasana               Ask what noises butterflies make?

Down dog        Adho Mukha Svanasana      Bark

Mountain        Tadasana                                 Be a tall, strong mountain

Tree                 Vrksasana                                Trees are rooted into the earth but their branches sway, can you

                                                                               sway without falling?

Frog                 Bhekasana                               Do leap frog

Warrior II        Virabhadrasana II           Partner Warrior, explain that we can be peaceful warriors, not

                                                                               sway without falling?

Boat                 Navasana                                Can you also try to row your boat?

Corpse Pose    Savasana                              Change the name to sleeping pose

Meditate on your favorite place, go there and remember how that happiness made you feel.

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Reflections on Teaching Yoga to Kids

After teaching the class I reflected quite a bit on my experience and what I struggled with, what I would change, and what worked well. While I certainly did some things well, I was confronted with more challenges than anything else. First, I struggled with my ability to discipline. I am fully aware that a yoga class with kids will not be quite or calm and probably shouldn’t be. However, should I reprimand or discipline children for any of their behavior, particularly when nothing about discipline feels yogic? Second, the kids that I work with rarely are acknowledged for their effort or good work and I work hard at reinforcing positive behavior. Yet, should I tell someone their down dog looks good or they are doing such a good job trying to balance in tree pose, when it merely is feeding their ego? Third, Many of the youngsters had taken yoga before in school, and were knowledgeable enough to request poses or wanted to teach me various asana. This behavior required me to be humble and learn from my students, totally shattering my vision of what a student, teacher relationship should look like. Fourth, adapting some of the poses to kids, like turning a relatively static Bhekasana into leap frog, or an Adho Mukha Svanasana into a barking dog, seems trivial and far from the calm and serene idea that I have of yoga.

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Teaching Yoga to Kids: Conclusion

After reflecting on these challenges for quite a bit, I realized that I was trying to squeeze carefree and dynamic young children into a rigged and sterile framework that is intended for adults. Adaptation, creativity, and flexibility are requirements when working with kids; therefore they should also be requirement when teaching yoga to kids as well! My experience teaching a yoga class to 15 inner city kids, who face abuse, neglect, and poverty on a daily basis, was humbling to say the least. Yet, one incredibly redeeming aspect to this experience, and one that I should not overlook, is that every single child in the class absolutely loved their time on the yoga mat and conveyed that to me in their excitement, their words and the smiles on their faces. And lastly, as we rolled up the mats and said our goodbyes, a peaceful and serene feeling radiated in the room, so much so that my colleague said to me: “I’ve never seen these kids so calm and quiet in my two years here”. That’s enough to inspire my return!

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Student Experiments with Eliminating Migraines through Ayurveda

As part of Axis Yoga’s teacher training program, students are taught basic ayurvedic principles as they apply to their lifestyle, diet and yoga practice.  As a component of this exercise students also take on a personal experiment to begin to implement these teachings.  One of Axis Yoga’s guiding principals is that students need to embody the teachings into their lives for optimum learning to transpire.  This is not to say they should accept everything we say as gospel, rather they should check it out with their own experience.  The ayurvedic experiment provides the support and guidance needed to start that process.
 
This student removes wheat from her diet while integrating ayurvedic principles in the hopes of relieving migraines she has been suffering from for ten years. Below is an account of her experiment.

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Eliminating Wheat to Eliminate Migraines: Introduction

My experiment began in early-November when I began learning about Ayurveda. While I was perplexed by some of the seemingly disparate instructions, I did notice that many of the ideas presented appealed to me and that there were pieces of this philosophy I was hungering for. For my Ayurvedic experiment I added the practice of abhyanga to my morning. This practice of lovingly rubbing herbally-medicated oils all over my body was wonderful. It brought to my morning some peace and to my life, some self-love. Self-love has been a long and hard road for me; abhyanga was an easy place to start. I also practiced eating in silence and doing nothing else. Although at times challenging, if only because my mind was used to doing several things at once, I found this a wholly satisfying experience. I noted that I consumed significantly less food than I if I was multi-tasking. I also noted that I felt a much deeper sense of contentment and satisfaction, not only with my food, but with my life. These were amazing practices to bring to my existence.

Then, while discussing our Ayurvedic experiments, I overheard another student in my yoga training explaining that she had previously had terrible eczema but she had cut wheat out of her diet while completing an Ayurvedic cleanse and that her eczema had gone away completely.  Later, I was reading over the material of foods not recommended for Kapha people (I am 50% Pitta and 50% Kapha). Wheat, and many things like it, was in the “avoid” column. I woke up several days later with a revelation. I believed the migraines I had been having for 10 years were caused by wheat. My hypothesis was if I removed wheat from my diet, as recommended by Ayurvedic principals, my migraine headaches would disappear.

I have had migraines almost every day for the last year or so. They varied in severity, but almost always included sensitivity to light, sound and movement. They were very drug resistant and the only way I could even reduce the pain slightly was to take 4 ibuprofen tablets, wait 30 minutes and then take 2 extra-strength acetaminophen tablets. Considering I was doing this on an almost daily basis (I tried to “tough it out” if I could), I am sure this was wrecking havoc on my stomach.

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Eliminating Wheat to Eliminate Migraines: Experiment

Day 1 – I ate nothing but gluten-free foods. Did not have a headache.

Day 2 – Only gluten-free foods until arriving home at 5pm. Had a minor headache. Ate leftover-pasta. Headache became very intense within five minutes of beginning to eat pasta. Headache was so painful I could not look at the computer or television. I took my usual doses of acetaminophen and ibuprofen, to no avail. Headache persisted through the night into the next day.

Days 3-7 no gluten consumed, no migraines.

Day 8 – Staff “appreciation” at my middle school. I resisted all gluten-containing items for about 4 hours. I finally decided to have one brownie, about a 1.5” square. I did not get a headache.

Days 9 – 11 – Thanksgiving holiday – did not eat wheat, did not have a headache.

Day 12 –Had pie from Thanksgiving, did not have a headache right away, but later in the day I did.

Day 13 — Woke up with headache, which dissipated as the day went on.

Day 14 — Had half a small bowl of macaroni and cheese from school cafeteria. Within an hour I had a migraine that lasted until mid-day the next day.

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