Get Stronger (and Smarter) During Yoga With 6 Expert Tips

If you're a yoga regular, you know that sometimes even one tiny instruction can totally change your relationship with a yoga pose. All these tips from world-renowned yogis have left me having an "Aha!" moment on my mat. You too may find your yoga practice transformed after reading through this advice.

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The secret to stronger and steadier postures where you're on your hands comes from deep within the serratus anterior. This muscle connects the front ribs to the shoulder blades, and when it's engaged, your shoulders are in a much safer and stronger position. It can be tricky to learn how to do this, so here's where yogi extraordinaire Kathryn Budig's "Jackie Chan" tip comes in to help.

Kathryn says if you mimic Jackie Chan's kung-fu stance "elbows bent, biceps tight to the body, forearms out" you'll feel the serratus anterior engage. When you engage this muscle, it protects your shoulders and keeps your upper body stable, strong, and safe.

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Although you might not recognize it, Upward Facing Dog actually acts as a back bend. Schuyler Grant of Kula Yoga explains that the idea behind Cobra and Up Dog is to "maintain stability in your lower abdomen and lengthen your lower back." When you draw attention to your belly and back, you'll find that bringing the bend to your upper back comes much more naturally.

People tend to hang out in Upward Facing Dog and focus on pushing up through their arms. Under utilizing your legs, chest, and shoulder muscles in Upward Dog is a big mistake, since those are what should be working in the pose. Schuyler gives a helpful tip to visualize the pose once you're moving into it: "Always feel like you're pulling your chest forward and through, not pushing it up away from the floor." Once you make this shift in your practice, you'll find more flexibility (and less tension) between your shoulder blades and in your chest.

Source: Laughing River Yoga

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Get Stronger (and Smarter) During Yoga With 6 Expert Tips

Ashley Bell (foreground, with microphone), an instructor at Mission Yoga and Gaea Yoga Center, helped lead a free yoga class on the aircraft carrier Yorktown last year and will teach a free, 50-minute class at Wild Blue Ropes on Saturday. David Quick/Staff

Free yoga meets a rope challenge course for a local cancer cause this Saturday morning.

The local Lululemon Athletica store, which has put on some remarkable mass, free yoga events since opening two years ago, is reaching out to an array of venues this year for its "Masika" (Sanskrit for monthly) yoga tour.

Saturday's will be under the Wild Blue Ropes course on James Island at 9 a.m. The free, 50-minute class will be taught by Ashley Bell, an instructor at Mission Yoga and Gaea Yoga Center.

Although the class is free, Wild Blue Ropes will be accepting optional donations for Camp Happy Days, a foundation that helps children and teens with cancer.

After the yoga class, Wild Blue Ropes will be offering climbing for $25, half off the fee for advanced courses, with $5 of that fee going to Camp Happy Days. Yogis who want to climb are urged to bring closed-toed shoes.

Other locations for the Masika series this year have been Midtown Upstairs, Collective Coffee and the rooftop of the South Carolina Aquarium.

Bell, who helped lead a free yoga class on the aircraft carrier Yorktown last year, says she's excited to teach and climb at the ropes course on Saturday.

"I play like a big kid, so this is right up my alley," says Bell.

To sign up, go to http://www.eventbrite.com/e/masika-volume-5-tickets-12106335375.

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Yoga, climbing, grom surfing and more this weekend

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On a recent sunny, Saturday morning, a dozen people headed out on the water at Alum Creek State Park to try yoga on a paddleboard.

Many in the group had experience practicing yoga, but moving through the positions on the board brought out the beginner in all of them.

Balancing is the biggest challenge, said Rhonda Keels, a Near East Side resident. You really have to concentrate.

Led by SUP (stand-up paddleboard) yoga instructor Lori Palmer, the class moved through a variety of poses, including sun salutations and downward-facing dog, in a quiet area of the north end of the park.

Its a whole, dynamic experience outside of doing yoga in a studio, where you can control the environment, Palmer said.

Clintonville resident Beth Kaper tried yoga on a paddleboard last year on Lake Erie. She enjoyed it so much that she teamed up with Jim Lawhead, founder of Aloha SUP and Lake Erie Paddler in Lorain, Ohio, to offer paddleboard classes and rentals in central Ohio.

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Stand-up paddleboard yoga making waves in central Ohio

By Danny Peary

I Origins fits my category Movies That Should Play in Sag Harbor. The second science-based SF film written and directed by Mike Cahill (the impressive Another Earth, starring Brit Marling) opens in New York City on Friday. It is described in the press notes as being both a molecular biology thriller and a love story. Smart, provocative, and well cast, it begins as a SF film but no experiment goes wrong and leads to horrific consequences, and it turns into an exploration of reincarnation. Michael Pitt is cast against type as Ian, an atheist scientist who is studying the origins of the eye. Ian is aided in his research by Kenny (Steven Yeun of The Walking Dead) and Karen (Brit Marling), his brilliant freshman assistant. Ian falls for Sofi (Astrid Bergs-Frisbey), a mysterious, spiritual woman he meets at a party. Years after Sofis death, Ian goes to India because its discovered that a young girl, Salomina (Kashish), has eyes that are, impossibly, a perfect match for Sofis. Last week I participated in roundtables with Mike Cahill, Brit Marling and Steven Yeun, and Michael Pitt and Astrid Bergs-Frisbey. I note my questions.

Mike Cahill Roundtable

Q: What is the origin of your movie?

Mike Cahill: I didnt know I was going to make the movie until I met Michael Pitt. I was asked if I wanted to meet him, and since Id admired him for a very long time, I jumped at the opportunity, just to chat. We sat down in Brooklyn in a coffee shop, on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. During the conversation I told him the story of I Origins, and he was like, Thats really cool, Id love to hear more about that one day. And that set off a wildfire in my head to write it. Id had the idea for twelve years floating around in the ether, and Id written many, many things up until that point on it, but I didnt have a script. I wrote it two weeks later, that was in August, and we started shooting at the end of January 2013. It was one year in the making, and we released it at Sundance, literally to the day that we finished production, January 2014.

Q: I think it you should be commended for making affordable science fiction films.

MC: For me, the sense of wonder in movies, over the last fifty or sixty years, has partially been driven by visual effects, but it has also been driven by ideas. Cutting-edge visual effects that are in very expensive movies and give us a sense of wonder are lame after about two years. But an idea can last forever. And an idea is free.

Q: Virtual technology has actually become reality these days. The question is, How do you bring those elements in and separate the spiritual element?

MC: Well, I think writers of science fiction are often influenced by current technologies and the predictions of where they may go in the future. So they extrapolate whats going on now to tell their stories. Mary Shelleys Frankenstein was about electricity animating dead things and it was extrapolated to be this great horror/sci-fi, but thats what science fiction writers do, except for Jules Verne who was completely prophetic. Iris biometrics first began in 1987 at Cambridge University. Minority Report is set years after that, but its an extrapolation to where we may end up. On the other hand, I wanted to make my movie grounded in now, using current technologies.

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Dotting the Eyes in the Thought-Provoking I Origins