Yoga For Everyone
Need to relax and stretch? No matter what your age or fitness level, yoga is for you. Please join Yoga Mike and re-learn how to breathe and relax. Bring a yoga mat if you have one. We will be barefoot.
Saturday, November 7th, 2015
10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Reynolds Corners Branch – Large Meeting Room
Please come join us, it will be fun!
Downward-Facing Dog
(AH-doh MOO-kah shvah-NAHS-anna)
adho = downward
mukha = face
svana = dog
Downward-Facing Dog: Step-by-Step Instructions
Come onto the floor on your hands and knees. Set your knees directly below your hips and your hands slightly forward of your shoulders. Spread your palms, index fingers parallel or slightly turned out, and turn your toes under.
Exhale and lift your knees away from the floor. At first keep the knees slightly bent and the heels lifted away from the floor. Lengthen your tailbone away from the back of your pelvis and press it lightly toward the pubis. Against this resistance, lift the sitting bones toward the ceiling, and from your inner ankles draw the inner legs up into the groins.
Watch + Learn: Downward-Facing Dog Pose
Then with an exhalation, push your top thighs back and stretch your heels onto or down toward the floor. Straighten your knees but be sure not to lock them. Firm the outer thighs and roll the upper thighs inward slightly. Narrow the front of the pelvis.
Firm the outer arms and press the bases of the index fingers actively into the floor. From these two points lift along your inner arms from the wrists to the tops of the shoulders. Firm your shoulder blades against your back, then widen them and draw them toward the tailbone. Keep the head between the upper arms; don’t let it hang.
Adho Mukha Svanasana is one of the poses in the traditional Sun Salutation sequence. It’s also an excellent yoga asana all on its own. Stay in this pose anywhere from 1 to 3 minutes. Then bend your knees to the floor with an exhalation and rest in Child’s Pose.
Lebron James And Other Famous Athletes Turn To Yoga
Whether it’s on the field, on the court, or during training, athletes put their bodies through a grueling amount of strain. One look at the Green Bay Packers’ injury report and it’s clear that this list of abdomen, knee, shoulder, neck, and ankle injuries (among others) are not going to shrink anytime soon unless these guys start doing something different.
As it turns out, that something different might be yoga.
Yoga in the NFL
Tramon Williams, cornerback for the Packers, started earlier last year when Terrell Owens told him that yoga was the “football fountain of youth.†Williams credits yoga as the reason he performed so well in the second half of 2013, and says it allowed him to become even more flexible than he was before.
Instructor Ryanne Cunningham of Green Bay has been working with Packers team members for years, and her clientele is growing. As she tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, some players who had pulled their hamstrings were “dying†doing simple stretching poses—yet eight months later, they could reach all the way to the ground.
Yoga In The NBA
On the basketball side of things, Miami Heat forward LeBron James had to leave the last quarter of Game 1 of the NBA finals this year due to leg cramps. However, James took precautions for the next game: he took a yoga class. Sports Illustrated notes that James has been doing yoga for years, describing it as a mind-body technique that keeps him ahead of the curve.
The San Antonio Spurs, who won this year’s playoffs, have been participating in team yoga sessions for years. Coach Gregg Popovich told reporters that he wanted his team to focus on “flexibility, relaxation, [and] lowering of anxiety.â€
So could the Spurs’ victory have been spurred by yoga? Anything’s possible—and even when teams don’t win, at least players might get injured less often by stretching their way to better health!
Sarah Alender
Sarah is part of DoYouYoga’s editorial team and writes about inspiration and news.
Yoga For Everyone
Need to relax and stretch? No matter what your age or fitness level, yoga is for you. Please join Yoga Mike and re-learn how to breathe and relax. Bring a yoga mat if you have one. We will be barefoot.
Saturday, October 31, 2015
10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Reynolds Corners Branch – Large Meeting Room
Please come join us, it will be fun!
