Keep it Simple Sweetie: Sequencing Tips for Teachers

We've all heard the acronym "K.I.S.S" which I like to define as, "Keep it Simple Sweetie." This is a wonderful way to think about yoga sequencing and class planning. Many teachers have come to me over the years asking how they can know if their classes have helped their students. While just about any yoga class will help, there are very simple things you can do to ensure a class meets the mark every time.

"Keep it Simple Sweetie" is my personal favorite teaching technique. Keeping it simple means coming up with a simple theme, one that you can concisely speak about, and one that you can relate to your peak posture or can apply easily to the entire practice.

Whatever you choose keep looping your theme and your poses together. Create a tapestry that pulls out the same colors and creates a consistent pattern. You can take a simple theme like, "coming out of hibernation" and apply it to an entire class sequenced around cobra pose (this is what I taught last night) and share some interesting facts about snakes, hibernation, and focus on back bends that build in complexity from the simple shape and alignment points of cobra.

When you keep a theme simple and focus on one pose as your anchor students can sync their imagination to the evolution of their poses. Before they know it, they are going deeper and further into postures then they have before and they walk away from your class with their imagination engaged and spirits heightened.

If yoga is is the yoking together of mind, body, and soul then maybe all we need to do as teachers is to design simple classes that engage the imagination, provide intelligent sequencing, and offer soulful meaning. What do you think?

If you are looking for some wonderful sequencing resources, here are a few of my faves:

Yoga Sequencing: Designing Transformative Yoga Classes by Mark Stephens

The Heart of Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice by  T. K. V. Desikachar

Jivamukti Yoga by Sharon Gannon and David Life

Happy teaching sweeties!

xo~
Ashley

Wild Edible Spring Greens: Medicines in Your Own Backyard

Spring has almost sprung and its time to wake up and start moving again! You may find yourself craving more salads and fruits as the body sheds its winter protection. Traditionally, in the spring, country folk would begin to gather spring greens to help the body detox from the rich foods of the winter.  The Greek physician Galen (130 AD – 200 AD) and many other notable physicians after him commonly believed the blood became stagnant after a cold winter, and that the long winter months affected one’s temperament and triggered melancholy.

The easiest way to cleanse our blood and to relieve the winter blues is to eat wild spring greens. Their bitter flavor along with their high mineral content gives the liver a little push, stimulates the secretion of digestive fluids, supports the removal of waste through the organs of elimination, and nourishes the cells and tissues. Eating spring greens is a great way to feel connected to the earth and to sync your body with the rhythms of nature.  There is also science showing that eating small amounts of native soil is beneficial to our immune systems and can balance our gut flora.

Gathering wild edibles is fun and easy but you do need to know your plants. I recommend taking an herb walk with a local herbalist or signing up for a wild edible foraging workshop. I'll be leading two herb walks in Silver Spring this May and there are a number of great Meet-Up groups throughout the country. If you live in the city you can purchase many of these greens at local farmers markets or at your local market. Local urban foraging groups can also help you find clean spaces to harvest your spring greens. If you are lucky enough to have a yard or some land, you will likely find many of these plants ground around the edges of your property or along the sides of trails.

Here are three of my favorites:

1. Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata) - This spicy and bitter plant's name says it all! It is one of the first edible greens that pops up here in Maryland and it really gets your digestive juices flowing. This prolific green leafy plant is high in vitamins A,C, and E and even has pretty good amounts of B vitamins for veggos! It is also super high in vital minerals and has a long time European folk history of use as an antiasthmatic, antiseptic, diaphoretic, and vulnerary. (source)
   
   
2. Dandelion Greens (Taraxacum officinale) - Yes an obvious pick and this plant has so many great health benefits!  The leaves are high in potassium and also contain diuretic agents. The nice thing is that diuretics typically cause potassium loss but dandelion has it covered and provides additional potassium to the system, how great!  100 grams of dandelion leaves contain 2.7g of protein, 3.1 mg of iron, and 397 mg of potassium. The young leaves taste best and they can be eaten raw or blanched with other veggies. (source)
   
   
3. Chickweed (Stellar media)- This lovely little plant packs some pretty stellar health
   
   benefits! It is another of our folk remedies that has a long standing as a spring green as it is a gentle laxative, digestive aid, and circulatory tonic. I have used this plant many times as a poultice for rashes, burns, stings, allergic eyes, and pretty much anywhere where there is inflammation. It is a wonderful cooling topical remedy and is super easy to spot once you recognize the star shaped flower.  As a wild edible and ethnobotanist Jim Duke in his book, The Green Pharmacy, notes its historical use as a natural slimmer and recommends it in his "Weed Feed" slimming salad which contains chickweed, dandelion, evening primrose, stinging nettles (cooked and cooled), plantain, and purslane. (source)
   
   So, if you are looking to improve your health this spring get outside and forage for wild edible plants!  It will get your blood moving, you will soak up Vit D from the sun, and you will be getting nature's most potent spring remedies!
   
   For for information about our upcoming herb walks visit our workshops page and to link up with a local Meet-Up group search "Wild Plant Foraging".
   
   Bon Appetit!
   

The Mindful Movements of Nature

Is all mindful movement yoga? This morning I watched a robin outside my window stretch, flutter its wings, stretch its golden orange throat before moving into song. It reminded me of the movement ritual that I practice before beginning my day. Does the robin shudder, shake, and stretch so it can give the world its best song?

I have thought about this with my two dogs. They wake up each morning with a big stretch, go from down dog to up dog, let out a little yawn or squeak and then greet the day with a wide smile. Is this movement ritual a simple way of moving their life force so that they can optimally enter into their day?

This leads me to only more questions and has me imagining how all kinds of animals and plants like frogs, armadillos, agrimony, daisies, and dandelion move to enhance their own experience of life.

My Piscean south node likes the idea of a hundred billion yogas. Each one specific for the needs of that individual. A musician and metal worker who cooks only in crock pots wakes up twirling her wrists playing invisible notes across the room and squats from her heels to tippy toes to warm up her body for lifting her crock pot from the cupboard below the stove to the tall counter. The single mother with an hour commute arises and pantomimes the games she plays with her children and makes sweeping motions with her long neck swaying her head side to side as she looks over her shoulder.

If your body contains its own yoga, its own movements created entirely for the betterment of your life, how would it go?

What would be your poetic way to prepare your limbs, rivers, voice and bones for each wonderful day?

Written by Ashley Litecky Elenbaas

Nature's New Year & Beginnings

This Sunday we celebrated the winter solstice or the darkest night of the year which heralds the return of the light. We are also inching upon the New Year, a time when many of us create resolutions, intentions, new goals, and action plans for the year ahead. This practice has always puzzled me and in looking at the history of the Yule, I can see why.

The pre-Christian Germanic peoples celebrated the winter through a three month celebration called the "Yule-Tide", a tidal wave of customs that include the Yule log, Yule goat, Yule boar, Yule singing, and the celebration of the "Wild Hunt", a ghostly procession of stars in the sky. This period of time where darkness reigned was revered and feared as a time of increased supernatural activity and sacrifices were made to keep the gods happy. It was a time of community activity, feasts, ale drinking, song and merriment. It was a time of keeping the light alive within the darkness and also honoring the darkness with offerings.

In a culture that is overly obsessed with quick fixes and baptismal fresh starts I wonder if we as yoga teachers are perpetuating this simplistic view of the solstice and the new year. To "resolve to evolve" or to "set an intention" seems to bypass the process that our ancestors understood. We forget that this time of year is a gradual descent into the darkness and a slow walk back toward the light. On December 21st or January 1st nothing in nature is asking us to make a resolution. There is no bird song calling us to rebirth. Nature is still, cold, and quiet and in this space it appears that she is asking us to listen.

I recently researched the word "beginning" to get a better sense of what it is we are trying emulate during these symbolic moments of change. What I found was fascinating. The word "begin" is comprised of "be" which is a prefix that derives from the old English word "bi" which can be translated as "about, by, on all sides, thoroughly" and the West Germanic word "ginnan" which means "to open, to open up, to cut open." So we could say that what we are trying to do when we begin in the New Year is really a movement toward "opening up and viewing thoroughly the contents that are inside." If this is the case then we should view this opening as a process and not a moment that is willed into action by force.

So, this New Years, let's gather together and eat, drink, and celebrate the yule-tide, the waters of the winter. Let us find the patience to slowly unwrap the contents that are inside and thoroughly examine them from all angles under the dark starry skies. May we refrain from quick fixes and remind each other that the process of re-discovery takes time, and we have plenty of time.