Yoga at Life Time Fitness Life Time Fitness in Columbia, MD Hot Vinyasa: Sun 11am, Mon 6pm, Sat 8:15am Yin: Wed 9:30am Hatha: Thu 6pm
American Tribal Style® Bellydance
Please contact me for private instruction, or to be notified when group classes are offered again.
Testimonials
"I have had the fortune of watching Flissy turn from a student to a strong, giving and attentive teacher... Recently, speaking throughout the preparation as the students attempted a familiar posture, she taught an awareness of very subtle yet important ways to improve one's position in the pose..." read more
I recently completed an at-home teacher training course with Sadie Nardini and am officially certified to teach her Core Strength Vinyasa Yoga format.
What is Core Strength Vinyasa Yoga? In Sadie's own words: "I prefer to call Core Strength Vinyasa Yoga a “perspective” on all yoga, rather than just its own style. I created it after years of training and study where I was seeing a lack of either understanding or focus on the core of our yoga poses on all levels: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and energetic ... To help students experience their Center, I created my Core Poses, specific movements, postures and sequences that bring the student into more core-generated alignment, improving safety and stability while causing a more efficient total body/mind transformation."
I've been a big fan of Sadie's videos for a long time. She has creative ways of approaching all kinds of postures, backed by a solid understanding of anatomy that has not only helped my own practice but has also helped me communicate the actions required to execute poses and transitions more effectively to my students.
I wanted to do this training because the primary weakness I saw in my students was a lack of integration as they transitioned through postures. I wanted to help them get stronger and move with more intention. In that way, core strength is not limited to the physical core. It's not about having six-pack abs. It's about understanding the center of your being and developing the discipline to move and expand from the truest, most rooted part of yourself.
Having completed the training and incorporating Saidie's philosophy into my own practice and teaching, I am confident that her approach is an excellent way to create a powerful, strengthening, and most of all, SAFE and FUN vinyasa practice. I'm super proud to be certified in her format and excited about offering all this new knowledge to my students.
As I mentioned, Sadie Nardini has a ton of free videos. Check her out!
I'll just warn you, I might sound like I'm gushing, but I really can't understate the importance of what Paul Grilley has to offer to yoga teachers and practitioners. Every minute of that workshop was packed with information!
Skeletal Variation: I encourage you to go take a look at Paul Grilley's Bone Slideshow, which illustrates the variations in all the major bones of the human skeleton. This isn't showing deformities ... this is completely normal differences that you would see from person to person, every day. Paul's message is that the alignment rules cooked up by the various schools of yoga and teacher training programs are simply not going to address skeletal variation. As practitioners and teachers, you must recognize this and understand that you will have to move in a way that works for your own body.
Here's a short video clip from Paul's Anatomy for Yoga DVD that illustrates compression in the shoulder joint, which is an example of skeletal variation:
Yin is good for you: Your ligaments are under constant contracture and it is perfectly safe and healthy to gently stress the fascia by holding poses passively for a long time. Yes, I have been told that it is "unsafe" to stretch your joints, and that hyperextension is dangerous and you should never ever do that! Paul makes a very compelling argument, backed up by scientific evidence that it is, in fact, healthy and good for you to stress your ligaments. Aside from that, my own personal experience: practicing yin yoga has completely rehabilitated my tweaked out sacroiliac joint.
Each day, we did a practice, and then in the afternoon, there was lecture time, which included slide shows (like the one linked to above) as well as analysis of skeletal variation within the workshop participants.
The practices were great. We held the postures for five minutes at a time (usually). While the catalog of yin poses is pretty limited, we still did a different practice every day, which was interesting. One day we did a little yang warmup, and some yang between the poses, then one day we did straight-up yin without any warmup. The third day was definitely the most intense. We did a yang practice and then in the yin practice, we repeated postures, which meant a total of ten minutes in caterpillar (forward fold), ten minutes in snail (plow), and ten minutes in saddle (reclined hero). Then the fourth day, we were able to choose the most effective poses for our own body, and the fifth day, we did the "infant" series, which started on the floor and ended with yang. This gave me some ideas for my own classes and how to introduce variety, however, I must admit that my favorite way to practice is just straight-up yin, no warmup! It's hardcore yin! Kinda.
Paul and Suzee are both fantastic teachers. They went through a tremendous amount of material in 30 hours, and they presented it in a way that was easy to absorb, and with good humor. I left with a better understanding of anatomy in general, and I also feel like I improved my "X-ray vision," which is to say that I feel like I might be able to read my students' bodies better so I know what adjustments to suggest. I feel like every yoga practitioner, and certainly every yoga teacher, should view both the Anatomy for Yoga and the Yin Yoga DVDs and see what Paul Grilley has to say. He doesn't travel too much these days, except, apparently for 100-hr YTT he's now offering, but if you have the chance to take any kind of workshop with him, DO IT! You will not be disappointed.
Today I'm heading down to Chapel Hill to complete a 30-hour Teacher Training with Paul Grilley. I'm super excited because I love his DVDs, Anatomy for Yoga, and Yin Yoga, and he has a reputation for being a really funny guy. He's someone who doesn't travel too much, so I feel very fortunate that he landed where my sister-in-law lives so I have the bonus of spending some time with her this week! I'll be sure to report back after my training!
I just got back from an awe-inspiring weekend at TribalCon, a super-awesome bellydance conference. I went with my troupemate, Amy, which was all the more fun because we got do spend all our downtime doing our favorite things: eating and talking dance.
When we arrived Thursday night, we dived right in by attending a thought-provoking lecture with Donna Mejia. Donna comes to Tribal bellydance with an interesting perspective coming from academia and modern dance. As bellydance is experiencing a sudden explosion of interest and creative growth, it was wonderful to also have some weight given to why it is that we should honor the roots of the dance, how to do so, but also where there is room to be experimental. I also attended two of Donna's movement workshops, which unlocked exercises that will help me move more like a dancer.
My all-time favorite teachers, Olivia and Maria from Zafira Dance Company, presented two workshops, both of which were lessons in expression. I love them so much. Not only are they amazing dancers, but they are both outstanding teachers who, even in a large workshop, take the time to give personalized adjustments and thoughtful, encouraging feedback.
I was so happy to get to dance with my old teacher, Asharah, doing some shimmies. As usual, she (literally) kicked my butt with her glute-driven drills. I miss her lots and I credit her for cleaning up my technique early in my dance career.
John Compton of Hahbi 'Ru rocked my world. He was completely hilarious dishing about Bal Anat and Jamila Salimpour. And he is also a fantastic dancer. There is such ease in his dance. I had a blast learning a choreography featuring zills to Omar Faruk Tekbilek's version of Shashkin, and also working on some old-school tribal steps. I wish I could have been in California in the 70s when Tribal was first taking off, and apparently, the bellydancers were way crazier than they are now.
I also took a workshop with Zoe Jakes all about moving muscularly, and a Flamenco for ATS workshop with Myra Krien.
So, in short, the weekend was awesome. I learned so much and I have taken home a lot of "homework" to do in my dance practice!
Wow, I'm flying high after a weekend with Erich Schiffmann at Yogaville. This was a big deal for me because I have wanted to study with Erich ever since I was introduced to his book during my teacher training in 2008, and also because in nearly ten years of practicing yoga, I've never taken a retreat or stayed at an ashram.
The workshop was “Essentials of Freedom Style Yoga.” However, Freedom Style is a non-style in that there is no technique except for the using meditation as a channel to express your practice. In Erich's Freeform classes, there is meditation, some preparation through some asanas that he leads, and then he cuts you loose to do your own thing, then more meditation.
In a way, this is how I have practiced yoga from the beginning. Actually, I can't see why you wouldn't practice yoga this way. I did yoga from DVDs and books and making stuff up on my own, and only dabbled in classes until I got really serious about working toward teacher training. It was only then that I got all these new rules about how to do yoga and how to teach it. I was struck by one of my friends who had brought her book for Erich to sign, had NO written in big letters on the page for fish pose because our teachers had said we should never teach that one. Really? Never? Another attendee said that a superstar yogi had said “there is no reason to ever do pigeon.” Really? Never? Those kind of decrees really frustrated me in teacher training, and continue to frustrate me now. I also get cranky when people ask me what kind of yoga I teach because I don't identify with any particular school of yoga. I pick and choose things that resonate with me. It was so encouraging to hear from Erich that this is a perfectly valid approach to practicing and teaching. I feel like I also got some insight into how I can continue to cultivate my practice by following my own inclinations. I'm on the right track.
At the same time, it was a very challenging workshop because at the core of Erich's teachings is meditation, and frankly, I suck at seated meditation. There, I said it. This warrants a post of it's own, so for now I will say that I think it's totally normal to suck at meditation, and if you think that you suck at it, you're probably doing it right. So yeah. I need to work on that with more discipline since I intend to continue doing yoga the way I am doing it.
In addition to the amazing lectures by Erich, his asana sequences are just … magical. I hope that after thirty more years of yoga I can offer sequences like that. He also a world-class hugger made extra fun because he is so very large. This weekend was so very good for me. I'll follow up with at least one more post about meditation and about my experience of staying at the ashram. Good times. While I can't wait to study with Erich again, I'm also feeling refreshed and ready to grow my practice in other ways, too.
