Get Your Yoga On: 30 Days to Build a Practice That Fits Your Body and Your Life
176
Get Your Yoga On: 30 Days to Build a Practice That Fits Your Body and Your Life
176Paperback
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Overview
Yoga is a healthful, stress-busting, powerfully life-changing practice that is truly for everyone! You don’t need to be young, flexible, or athletic to do yoga—and you don’t need to spend hours on the mat. You just need to be yourself and commit to practicing at least five minutes a day.
Here, renowned yogi Kino MacGregor presents a basic, self-paced plan to encourage you to try each of the thirty foundational poses included and slowly build a regular yoga practice. Through step-by-step instructions, over two hundred color photographs, and modifications for different body types and abilities, Kino makes yoga possible at whatever level you may be. By challenging yourself for just five minutes a day, you will end up learning a strong, basic yoga sequence that you can grow and adapt for a lifetime of yoga.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781611807219 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Shambhala |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2020 |
| Pages: | 176 |
| Sales rank: | 1,097,220 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.90(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.30(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Foreword by Dianne Bondy
I started practicing yoga when I was very young. My mom found Be Young with Yoga by Richard L. Hittleman at a used book sale in 1967 and decided to try it. When she introduced me to the practice, it felt natural and fun. Throughout my life, yoga has helped me navigate the world as a black woman in a plus-sized body. The world has always been interested in my physical appearance, and I have never measured up to popular culture’s standards. My yoga practice changed how I saw myself in the world and showed me how I could influence consciousness on a much larger scale.
As yoga became increasingly popular in the West, this ancient and powerful eight-limbed practice was reduced to the physical postures. It idealized practitioners who aligned with the Western beauty ideal: white, able-bodied, conventionally attractive, and thin. There seemed to be no place for people of color, elders, the less affluent, disabled bodies, or people in larger bodies. Yoga had become an exclusive club. This was very different from the yoga practice I loved, which focused on creating connection, contentment, harmony, and inclusiveness in the world.
Simultaneously, yoga’s guru principle—a traditional system where a master teacher is the sole authority for a specific yoga lineage—resulted in many abuses of power. Disguised as surrendering to the practice of yoga, practitioners were encouraged to surrender their autonomy and agency to the guru. People were harmed across many lineages and styles of yoga. These situations gave rise to a shift in how we share, teach, and experience yoga: the power of yoga resides within the student and not the teacher.
As modern yoga culture continues to grow, it is adapting to include our evolving ideas around agency, consent, accessibility, inclusion, and adaptability. We are moving away from the idea that there is one way to practice yoga. To paraphrase one of my favorite modern yogis, Colin Hall, yoga teacher and professor of religious studies at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, “It is the very nature of humanity to adapt, so one can argue yoga’s evolution to an accessible, adaptable practice is what is traditional.”
We must be clear about our intentions for practicing. Yoga needs to be more about how we show up in the world and create equity, equality, accessibility, and justice for all bodies and less about beautifully curated pictures on social media. This practice of yoga needs to be about all of us regardless of our size, shape, age, ability, color, or gender identity. Representation matters in yoga as much as it does in other areas of our lives.
Throughout this book you will be guided by Kino’s masterful understanding of Ashtanga yoga along with my interpretation of the practice for larger and nonconforming bodies. You will be encouraged to exercise your own sense of agency and autonomy within the practice. Get Your Yoga On will give you the tools to decide how you want to customize your practice to represent the individual needs of your body. We encourage you to explore your body as a vessel for joy, movement, and enlightenment.
Yoga changed my life. It taught me how to be kind, empathic, compassionate, and content. It also taught me how to be powerful, discerning, and inclusive in my words, actions, and view of the world. Yoga cracked my heart wide open. It can do the same for you. Yoga can be your gateway to a better understanding of your body and your world.
Table of Contents
Introduction vii
The Origins of Yoga 1
Let's Get Started! 3
The Practice
1 Downward-Facing Dog 16
2 Plank Pose 22
3 Upward-Facing Dog 27
4 Chair Pose 32
5 Wide-Legged Forward Fold 37
6 Triangle Pose 41
7 Crane Pose 45
8 Butterfly Pose 50
9 Extended Side Angle Pose 54
10 Locust Pose 57
11 Simple Bridge Pose 60
12 Warrior I 65
13 Standing Hand-to-Big-Toe Pose 69
14 Tree Pose 76
15 Pyramid Pose 82
16 Seated Forward Fold 85
17 Head-to-Knee Pose 89
18 Marichi's Pose A 93
19 Marichi's Pose C 96
20 Boat Pose 100
21 Reverse Plank 104
22 Camel Pose 108
23 Pigeon Pose 111
24 Side Plank Pose 115
25 Plow Pose 119
26 Headstand 123
27 Warrior II 128
28 Pendant Pose 133
29 Reclining Twist 136
30 Meditation Pose 139
Bonus Pose: Constructive Rest Pose 142
Student Bios 145
List of Poses 152
About the Author 154