Rox Does Yoga

Yoga, Wellness, and Life

Yoga Link Round-Up August 1, 2014

Filed under: Miscellaneous,yoga,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 9:12 am
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been collecting links for a while, so here’s a link round-up!

  • Mother and 4-Year-Old Daughter Take Impressive Pictures Of Their Yoga Poses: I linked this in a recent post about practicing yoga with YB, but I just can’t get over this. It makes me a little teary, actually. I love these photos: I love the joyful looks on their faces, I love the little girl’s obvious commitment to each pose, I love their matching pants. I would love to do a photo shoot like this with my YB someday, but clearly I need to step up my game because there are some arm balances here that I just can’t pull off. 🙂
  • A Selection from the Hammer Museum at UCLA’s Contemporary Collection: Katie Grinnan’s Mirage: To create this fascinating sculpture, Grinnan “cast multiple molds of her body executing a sun salutation”. I find the piece exhilarating, exciting, and also a little creepy.
  • The Strength-Building Yoga Pose That Tons of People Do Wrong: Related to sun salutations, I love this informative video from superstar yogini Kathryn Budig on how to chaturanga properly without hurting yourself.
  • Bending the Rules to Offer Yoga With a Beer Chaser: My father-in-law sent me the link to this NYT article about yoga classes in breweries, offering a beer tasting after class. While I love both yoga and craft beer, I’m really not sure how I feel about this. I find that yoga, like running or dancing or working out, makes me feel fresh and healthy and connected to my body; afterwards I typically want a glass of water, a banana, a salad, a smoothie. I just don’t feel like beer would taste right after a yoga practice – but believe me, I’d try it! And I think it’s fantastic that classes like this are leading people to yoga and helping them build a practice that can extend beyond the brewery.
  • Yoga Every Damn Day: My husband sent me the link to this piece about how, when we’re dealing with other issues in our lives and can’t make it to the yoga mat, we’re still practicing yoga every damn day. I don’t know Angela Arnett but I admire her strength and calm in this piece.
  • Pope Francis Reveals Secrets of Happiness: Can I tell you how much I love Pope Francis? He seems to be so full of kindness and peace, focused on loving and helping and supporting people. Everything he lists here is also discussed by Matthieu Ricard, former scientist and Buddhist monk, in his book Happiness, and seems to be in agreement with everything I’ve ever heard or read from the Dalai Lama, including the concepts discussed in The Art of Happiness. When the Catholic Pope and the Dalai Lama agree about how you should live your life, I feel like there’s something right happening.
  • And finally, for your giggle for the day: Men in Yoga Pants.
 

My Year in Blogging: 2012 and 2013 January 9, 2014

Filed under: Miscellaneous,yoga — R. H. Ward @ 12:58 pm
Tags:

Each year, WordPress sends me a report of my year in blogging. Last year, I meant to post about it but just basically filed it and left it alone, so I thought this year it would be fun to do a bit of a comparison. Here are the links to the full reports: 2012 and 2013.

My blog was viewed about 16,000 times in 2013, as compared to 18,000 times in 2012. That’s despite the fact that I added fewer posts in 2012 – I posted 76 times in 2012 versus 90 times in 2013. (I feel like I posted less and less often in 2013, but I’m guessing the volume difference came from the extended blog break I took after having YB in July 2012.) All of the most popular posts were from 2011 and 2012, too – none of the most popular posts were from 2013.

In both 2012 and 2013, the most popular posts were all “pose of the month” posts or sequences of yoga poses (a gentle prenatal sequence I did in 2012 ranked for both years). I think I was doing a lot less actual yoga posting in 2013; I feel like I posted more about spirituality, goals and resolutions, and about my family life in 2013. Those sorts of posts are less likely to get hits from internet searches, and are less likely to be read more than once or referenced regularly. That probably explains the decrease in blog views, since I was producing less of the hard yoga content?

My posts on Thread-The-Needle, Gorilla Pose, and Malasana (Squat) were among the top five posts for both 2012 and 2013. For each of these poses, I seem to remember the posts being difficult to find sources for, so it could be that these are topics not covered as well by the general internets. I’m glad that people are continuing to find my write-ups of these asanas helpful.

People who found my blog by searching online often used these search terms: yoga humor, prenatal yoga sequence, what to say during savasana, thread the needle yoga pose, and upavesasana. (And if you google upavesasana – a less common name for malasana – my post is the second link!)

In the new year, I’d like to come back to the pose-of-the-month concept (although it may be more like “the pose of the semester” or “the quarterly pose” or even just a “Pose Breakdown” – happy to take suggestions on a more accurate name for this!). I enjoyed doing those, and it seems like they’re useful to people. I hope too that at least a few of the people who found me by looking for a specific pose found something else here that they liked as well.

 

And this is why it’s awesome when ballet dancers do yoga. November 26, 2013

Filed under: Miscellaneous,yoga — R. H. Ward @ 1:22 pm
Tags: ,

This is really beautiful: Phillip Askew & Lydia Walker – Variations On Surya Namaskara:

(Reblogged from here.)

 

WTH, Toys R Us? October 28, 2013

Filed under: Miscellaneous,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 8:31 pm
Tags: , , ,

So there I was on Sunday evening, relaxing and watching a little TV with my husband, when this commercial comes on:

At the beginning of the commercial, there’s no indication of what exactly this is an ad for. Based on the setup, I thought this guy was taking a busful of children to a forest someplace, where, although they didn’t know it yet, they would learn about how wonderful nature is and it would be the best field trip ever. I believed him. I got a little excited for the heartwarming goodness that was sure to follow.

And then they went to Toys R Us. Cue scenes of running up and down the aisles in a frenzy of joyous commercialism. I was furious and horrified, and I obviously still can’t stop thinking about it.

Raz Godelnik, who wrote about this commercial for TriplePundit.com, agrees with me:

I find this ad irritating because it tries to communicate a message that is inherently unsustainable to both children and their parents. To children it says that true happiness lies in buying new toys and the subtext is that their wishes should be focused on asking their parents for new toys. To parents, it says that if they want to make their children happy they should buy them toys because this is what they wish for. This ad perpetuates everything that is wrong with the current unsustainable economy – from the notion that more stuff means more happiness to the idea that the holidays are about shopping to the idea that learning about and interacting with the environment is tedious and unimportant. I was even more irritated that this ad portrays a field trip to the forest as a boring experience for children that has nothing to do with fun or joy.

Here’s the thing, Toys R Us. Forests are way, way more fun than whatever you’ve got. Forests are fun for everyone, and if kids start liking forests when they’re kids, they can keep on liking forests for their whole lives, unlike Barbies and Elmos and whatever else you’re showing in this commercial that I refuse to rewatch and break my heart over again. Forests are not just about “what kind of leaf is this, oh it’s not an oak it’s a maple”. Forests are about growing and listening and being quiet, and forests let you learn about something much larger than yourself. My one-year-old knows that outside is way better than inside, and I’m going to do everything I can to help her keep that worldview.

 

Happy Fourth July 4, 2013

Filed under: Miscellaneous — R. H. Ward @ 5:45 pm
Tags:

Happy Independence Day! On this day last year, YB was still in my belly (my due date was July 3). What a difference a year makes! In honor of the holiday, YB is asserting her independence.

07-04-13-1052289_10151703791119936_800692881_o

 

Guest Post at 5 Cities 6 Women May 13, 2013

Filed under: Miscellaneous,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 9:16 am
Tags: , , , ,

I’m happy to announce that I have a guest post up this week at one of my favorite blogs, 5 Cities 6 Women!

My post is about breastfeeding, pumping, and mom-life balance. It was fun to write a blog post and not feel like I somehow had to bring it around and relate it back to yoga and wellness. I hope you’ll go check it out, and while you’re there, take a look at what Katie and the other ladies are up to. There’s always something interesting happening at 5 Cities 6 Women.

 

Meditating Machinery April 25, 2013

Filed under: Miscellaneous — R. H. Ward @ 1:03 pm
Tags: ,

Well, this is the most fascinating thing I’ve seen all week: Meditating Machinery: Mechanical Buddhas and Other Religious Icons by Wang Zi Won

This artist creates sculptures that fuse figures of Buddha and Bodhisattva with gears and moving metal parts. (Make sure to watch the videos.) The result is both beautiful and kind of creepy, both meditative and totally sci fi in a way I haven’t ever really seen before. I can imagine that watching the sculptures move would be a kind of meditation in and of itself. Enjoy!

 

Etsy: home to all kinds of handmade yoga stuff October 3, 2012

Filed under: Miscellaneous — R. H. Ward @ 1:30 pm
Tags: ,

If you’re a yoga fan, you probably need a bag to tote your mat to class. You can get pretty decent yoga mat bags at stores like Target, but you can also find some really fun, handmade bags on Etsy.com. My current yoga mat bag was made by Jackie, whose shop XcessRize has bags made from a variety of fabrics and cool prints. I love my bag – it not only holds my mat, but also has enough room for a change of clothes, and it has several pockets to store small items like jewelry (great for ID, keys, or when my necklace keeps smacking me in the face during downward dog). There are tons and tons of Etsy sellers who offer similar bags in different styles and patterns – just search for “yoga mat bag” and see all the fun stuff that comes up!

Another shop I love on Etsy is Yogaworks. Sarah makes lots of different things, including yoga mat bags, but I love her scented savasana eye pillows. Really relaxing!

My husband has found lots of fun yoga-related jewelry pieces on Etsy that have made great gifts. I have a small collection of pendants made from Scrabble tiles: the side facing out is painted with art, and you can flip it over to see that it was originally an E. I have one that looks like this and another like this (not sure if those are the sellers who made my pendants, but these pieces are just as pretty). I’ve seen some really cool jewelry designed around yoga poses, the Om symbol, you name it. Etsy is a great place to find pretty things that display your yoga love (and a great resource for spouses on holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries!).

 

Gratuitous YogaBaby Photo September 20, 2012

Filed under: Miscellaneous — R. H. Ward @ 4:06 pm
Tags:

In lieu of actual substantive content, please enjoy this photo of my Buddha baby chillin’ peacefully.

YogaBaby at 8 weeks

 

Lead Me August 10, 2012

Filed under: Miscellaneous,yoga — R. H. Ward @ 1:51 pm
Tags:

Just a quick post today: my teacher N’s story “Lead Me” is up on The Yoga Diaries. N is an amazing person and she’s had a heck of a year. I’m always impressed by her serenity and her fortitude. I hope you’ll check out her story!