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Kareen's Yoga by Kareen
Zebroff
When I was a child of four, I lived in a medieval castle. We had to
flee the Russians entering the famous old spa-town of Marienbad, now
in Czechia, leaving behind all we owned. The 1000 year-old citadel
was a marvelous place to grow up in, since we had no toys in post-war
days. Instead, we honed our imaginations into creating adventurous
soap-operas of play no doubt, stimulated by the heath, portcullis,
moat, hunger-tower, torture-chamber, Iron Maiden, crypt, dungeon,
secret passages and other fascinating aspects of castle-living. Fifteen
years later, there was no escape from meeting a Russian face-to-face
(albeit a third-generation pacifist / vegetarian Doukhobour teacher),
in Russian-language class at university and even end up marrying him.
The child psychology courses I had taken while in education came in
handy, both as a mother and as an elementary-school teacher, in instructing
children in the joys of hatha yoga. The kids always had a grand time
imagining they were on a photo-safari through jungles, pampas and
marshes while meeting, in thrilling scenarios, all sorts of interesting
"beasts of the field". Familiarizing ourselves with the
habits of the animals first, we would then enthusiastically copy their
movements or assume statue-like stances of their silhouettes. Afterwards,
we would always allow ourselves a release of pent-up energy by galloping
around in various animal gaits and making lots of appropriate noises.
Lions stuck out their tongues and roared, camels showed their humps
and spat, cobras bent and swayed and struck, cows put up a horn and
mooed, dogs stuck up their behinds in a great stretch and barked,
cats stretched their leg straight out and miaowed, fishes silently
floated with their heads back and then wiggled on the line (but were
kindly thrown back into the water afterwards), locusts arched and
then hopped high while flapping their wings rapidly, mountains stretched
themselves into jagged peaks, hands unfolded like tulips in the morning
sun, and warriors sat between their legs and looked as dignified as
knights in shining armour on a horse.
Never was more fun had with yoga. That gave me an idea for enticing
the adults into an "easy" daily yoga discipline. I began
playfully to differentiate, in my televised evening yoga classes for
adults, between what I called "impulse yoga" and "trigger
yoga". The impulse yoga was meant to make students so self-aware
that they would be able to pick up on the messages their bodies were
constantly sending them in an attempt at a better expression of health.
The trigger yoga was to trigger the thought of "Ah, my yoga"
through the repetitive stimuli we all experience in our daily lives.
We could thus "sneakily" in-corp-orate (put in body) yoga’s
undoubted health-effects, rather than feeling guilty about not getting
around to doing a whole hour of yoga while harried in the morning
or exhausted at night.
For general good health, it is imperative for modern beings to re-learn
how to follow body-impulses as soon as they occur rather than suppressing
them for when they may well have passed later. Be discreet about it,
of course, but do not let some of society’s sillier rules stop
you from responding to these important urges. Stretch whenever the
body wants to; grunt and groan then, for immediate release of tension;
yawn, because that is the body’s demand for "oxygen now";
burp to relieve gas-pain caused by food sensitivities / allergies,
acid reflux, H-pylori, or ulcers; sneeze, for a cleansing effect of
both nose and lungs; void the bowels as soon as the urge occurs, to
avoid re-absorption of toxins into the body (light a match if worried
about odour); immediately massage or scratch whatever body-part needs
it most; arch backwards in a chair or bend forwards in rag-doll fashion
when muscles feel tight; contract, the better to relax afterwards,
your toes, fingers, wrists, ankles, shoulders, or buttocks.
Trigger-yoga can readily be done all day: in bed in the morning, with
a side-stretch; while brushing teeth, with an alternate leg stretch/forward
bend variation that has one leg up on the toilet-lid or counter; while
brushing hair, in a forward bend standing; against the steering-wheel
at a red light, by doing a hands-to-wall or lion variation; on the
phone, while doing balancing poses like the tree; in the kitchen,
while doing the squat for peeling potatoes; when picking things off
the floor, by pulling the tummy in for an abdominal lift; at a desk
or computer, the instantly relaxing chest expander sitting; in front
of the TV, a yoga sit-up, twist, leg-over, sitting pose, spread-leg
stretch, rock ‘n’ rolls; or, at the dinner-table, aswinin
mudra. Use your imagination, kids!
Kareen Zebroff’s new website is up and running at kareenzebroff.com.
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