If you have seen any stretching posts of mine, you know I love me some stretching. You know I think stretching is very important and very beneficial. Here is another stretch for you.
Here are quick instructions:
-Kneel on the floor and take one leg out. Knee pointing away from the body to the side. If you were to hold your arm out to the side the thigh would be in alignment with the knee and toes point out in the same direction.
-You can use your arm to push the knee/thigh back a bit.
-I may be stating the obvious, but normally you would do one side after the other. 🙂
That’s it.
This is an inner thigh stretch. It stretches your adductor muscles.
As with many stretches and exercises there are many ways to stretch/exercise a muscle/set of muscles. This is just one.
I teach a stretch class so, of course, I would love you to join, but I also really believe that stretching is so very important so I just want to post some stretches so you can do them on your own and experience the benefit of stretching.
Sometimes the day escapes me. I am not going out, but with all of the stuff happening online I am doing a lot of exploring of additional tools to use to make class registration automated, I am doing tests on Zoom for different ways to bring classes to students, I am having to move and rearrange our furniture on a daily basis . . . so a lot of time-consuming stuff. Not complaining, but explaining . . . explaining why I can’t keep up with my own self-imposed posting schedule. I should have posted this yesterday since I am offering a Pop-Up Class tomorrow (Friday, Nov. 20, 2020). This post has a dual purpose, to explain the difference between a Pop-UP and Pop-IN and to expound a bit on Yin Yoga.
POP-UP VS POP-IN
What is a Pop-Up Class? For me, it is a class that is not on my regular schedule. In many cases with many different things a Pop-Up can happen rather quickly – it pops up – but for me, I am usually talking about it a couple days in advance so it is not a quick spur of the moment thing, but it is not a regularly scheduled thing.
Now, the Pop-UP is different than the Pop-In. The pop-in is quick (under 30 minute). So far we have had three pop-ins where we reviewed katas in a song from a Nia routine and then danced the song. It isn’t something where there is the structure of a regular Nia class (or yoga class or stretch class). It is quick – you can just pop-in. I have ideas to do other type of pop-ins maybe a quick stretch or a yoga pose or two, but we will see. A Pop-UP is a class . . . with the actual class structure so popping in and out is not advised.
YIN YOGA
Yin Yoga has long holds in order to affect the tissue involved. It is not about the muscle but about the connective tissue. Since the connective tissue is not as elastic as muscles it take a bit longer to effect, AT LEAST a minute. When introducing people to Yin Yoga I generally will not hold most poses but for a few seconds over a minute.
In addition to the four Tattvas of Yin Yoga another very important thing to remember is to get out of the poses SLOWLY. In some cases if you feel the pose is too much, it could be just a simple matter of backing off, not getting out of the pose . . . if that doesn’t work and you feel you need to get out of the pose you must do it slowly. When instructing I allow for a transitional period and that could be just as long as the hold. Think of it like when you sit for a long time and how it might not work to jump up, ya gotta ease into standing or repositioning yourself. That is the same with Yin . . . you are in a pose for a long time so it requires a long time to get out of it. If you need to get out of a pose before the instructors instructs the class to do so, do it slowly just as if the instructor is walking you through the transition.
Some of the poses we do in Yin Yoga are similar to the poses in yang yoga. I have probably mentioned how I used to be so frustrated that the Yin Yoga poses had different names then the Hatha yoga poses even though they are “the same” . . . but then I learned they are not the same. Yin Yoga instructors may even use the other name (non Yin) to help you get into the pose, but the intent is different. In yang yoga the focus is stretching and strengthening muscle but in Yin the intent is to affect the connective tissue and move the Qi. But so many people ask about Yin Poses I am going to say here – just to give people an idea – that we do poses similar to pigeon, sphinx, bound angle, and extended child’s pose, to name a few. Most Yin poses are done on the floor, so it is not as if you are going to be holding a Warrior II for five minutes.
Additionally, as a reminder Yin Yoga is not Restorative Yoga. Yin may be restorative like all yoga can be restorative, but it is not Restorative Yoga. Restorative Yoga is about relaxing and involves a lot of lying around. Yin is not about relaxing although it does require the muscles to relax.
Well, a really good way to see what Yin Yoga is like is to try it. For details regarding the Pop-Up Yin Yoga Class on Friday, November 20, 2020 please go to my website. Maybe I will see you there! (Update 11.28.20: This class has already occurred, but do check my site because we plan on doing more because they are so FUN!)
Teaching online is different than teaching in person. As you can imagine. If you have taken an exercise class online, especially from your same teacher, you have probably noticed some differences. I thought I would just share some of the things I am doing different.
-I am facing my students. When teaching Nia I like to face away from my students because one of the thirteen principles I was taught when I attended my White Belt training about 12 years ago was “Teach what you sense.” So it is easier for me to teach to my left arm (as an example) when I am actually USING my left arm. Now when I instruct students to use their left arm I am using my right. So I am not using sensation to teach as much. When I had taught yoga in person I often faced my students, but pretty much always faced away when doing twists. It seems twists really twist people’s brains.
-I am moving “smaller”. For Nia, the space I am using is large enough to move around fully, but if I use the whole space it can take me off camera. So I try to stick to what the camera can see. Staying in camera might have me focused on that at times. Sometimes I might go out of view a bit, but hopefully that is on a repeated time of a move and students know by then what the choreography is – and this is in regards to Nia. With yoga I make sure students can see head and feet and I am not moving enough to move out of frame.
-I am quieter. I used to be loud and make all kinds of sounds, while dancing, but since I am in a house where someone is working, I don’t make as much noise. I do hope my students do. I sometimes felt they didn’t make noise because they didn’t want to be the only one, but now that they are home, I am hoping they are taking advantage of the benefits sounding provides. I do make sounds, but not as loud.
-I point more. It is kinda like in Zumba where I point or make a hand signal because I am not sure they can hear me (and again I don’t want to shout all the time). I talk less
-I “check in” differently. In-person I would ask how people are doing and encourage them to answer. That allowed me to know how they were doing and (instructor “trick”) forced people to breathe. Now I try to be very conscious of the pose/stretch because I don’t always want them moving their head or arm to give me a thumbs up. And we mute people because we are all doing this in our homes where there is other stuff going on. I have to restrict my “check-in” to in between poses/stretches. So I am not getting to use the “trick ’em into breathing” instructor thing.
-We start standing then go to the earth. In stretch and yoga we used to start one way and then switch off. We would move up and down (or down and up) to enable us to retain that ability. But with the devices it is easier to start up and then when it is time to get down – stop and adjust the device, then get down. If I start yoga in corpse pose then I don’t instruct on any poses that I may need to see so we just leave the camera “up” and then when we get up it is set fine, then we do our standing poses then adjust and get down.
*****Update 05.26.20*****
I forgot one of the most important ones, I kind of said it when I said I point more, but that is for Nia.
-I don’t always demo the pose or DO the pose/stretch. When I have my face on the floor or in my lap, no one can hear me. When I am talking and my voice is too muffled for people to hear they look up to see what I am doing and they are not doing the pose. So I don’t always do the pose/stretch. I didn’t always put my face down when teaching in-person classes either, but online there are a few more poses/stretches I don’t do just so I can instruct. And, honestly, sometimes I forget. This morning while I was talking to my lap I realized I needed to be up and not folded over – AND, I realized I didn’t include this change in the post.
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I am very grateful to my students who have joined the Zoom classes. They have helped me keep teaching and I love that. I hope to continue teaching online so I imagine these changes will change and adjust over time.
What have you noticed is different on your Zoom/online classes? What changes have you seen in the way your instructor teaches?
This water color is from the Camden Community Center where I teach stretch on Thursdays. It is in a cabinet behind glass so there is the reflection of the lobby in the picture. But . . . I still thought it was sweet and a perfect share to a Friday Photo that happens to be Valentine’s Day!
I teach a stretch class. In that class we do static stretches that are meant to stretch our muscles. Sometimes to get people into the stretch I use the name of a yoga pose, but because we are stretching our intent is different. If we were actually in yoga doing the pose we would be including breathing and strengthening, but in the stretch class I try to just make it about stretching the muscles. I may have mentioned before, when I started learning Yin Yoga I was frustrated because the names of the poses were different. I kept saying, “Why are the names different? They are the same poses?” Then I realized that the intent of the pose is different. So it really does serve the student better to call it something different. If I were to instruct students to move into Bound Angle, then people that know this pose would pull their feet in as close as they could pressing their knees towards the earth and lengthening the spine, but in Yin calling it butterfly lets them know that they are not doing the same thing as they would be in a yang class. There is no need to pull the feet in as close to the middle as you can get them and press the knees down, the idea is to soften and round, the head and knees hang resting where they are to help the connective tissue stress (FKA stretch). So the names are different to help remind us that the intent is different. We are not working (stretching, strengthening, moving) muscles; we are relaxing muscles and letting our bodies hang into a pose. In Yin Yoga we are not stretching we are stressing.
I often use the same description – stretch – when I am teaching Yin yoga, although that is not the intent. First of all we are focusing on connective tissue and not the muscles, but we still are not trying to STRETCH the tissue. That is what we say, but that it not really what we are doing. Saying we are stretching it does sound better than what we are doing. We are actually stressing it. It seems as if we have been programmed to think that stretching and lengthening are good so that is usually how we describe it. Even when someone goes to the gym they say they are going to “build muscles,” people don’t say they are going to the gym to “break down their muscles” – even though that is actually what they are doing. It is the breaking down of the fibers and the stressing of the fibers that we are actually doing. Then when we rest they build up again or in the case of fascia, return to its normal state stronger and changed for the better.
It is such a habit to say “stretch”. “In Yin Yoga we stretch our connective tissue.” I think I say it because it sounds a little better than stressing. I also keep saying lengthen because it sounds like a goal people want to hear. I think that for many of the people I have encountered stretching and lengthening are goals. Connective tissues doesn’t really stretch out, it gets stressed which helps hydrate it and strengthen it and allow it to move and support us better.
I also feel like some of this is in part due to the fact that many people think of Yin Yoga as Restorative Yoga. Restorative Yoga is more of a relaxing muscle stretching type of yoga. It can help heal the body. There are many props used to allow the participant to lie there in comfort. Yin Yoga is not about comfort. It about stressing that connective tissue which can make the part of the body feel like it aged years over the few minutes you were in the pose. But as long as it is not PAIN or tingling or numbing that is being felt it sounds as if you are doing it right.
In order for the yin pose to be effective it needs to be done for a long time. I was taught that it has to be AT LEAST one minute. But I see some information say it must be longer, but I have also been taught that for many people and for many poses we need to start at one minute because even that is going to feel like an eternity. As the body becomes accustomed to long holds then the time spent in each pose can be longer. I believe the ideal time is from three to five minutes . . . but it also depends on the pose.
Just like with all yoga it is important to listen to the body and not try to compete, the idea is to play the edge yet know when you must stop. Again, we are STRESSING the tissue but we don’t want to stress it past its breaking point. We still must be mindful.
Last Thursday while I was teaching the Thursday evening yoga class I realized that I had been teaching at the Willow Glen Community for six years. Then I looked at my How Long Have You Been Teaching Here? post and realized it was six years to the day! I started teaching gentle yoga at that community center on July 18 in 2013. It was supposed to be a temporary gig.
I am happy to say that they kept asking me back. Hopefully we can keep the class going for many more years to come. It has grown in attendance, which is nice. It started out with maybe five people and now we are cutting off the sign up at 22 (I think). Usually, not all the people that sign up show up at the same time so we end up with 12 to 15 people.
I’ll also have been teaching Nia on Thursdays for six years this year, but in September. The original time we started back in 2013 was 8:45. I understand the necessity for classes starting on the quarter hour, but sometimes that is not as standard as on the hour or half hour so we were able to change it to a 9:00 am start time in 2015.
Then we even changed locations in January of 2019. The program under which Nia was offered with the City of San Jose was cancelled. The feedback I received from the participants was that they wanted a class that they could drop into – which was not going to be allowed under the new program. So I found a new place to have Nia on Thursdays. We were so lucky that it happens to be right down the street from the community center AND it is on the same day AND it is at the same time. I am so happy that I was able to keep it so close to the same as to make it very convenient for the students. So, as I said, come September 2019, I will have been teaching Nia on Thursday for six years!
In February it had been five years that I have been teaching gentle yoga at the Cypress Community Center. At the time I was teaching Nia before the yoga class so I wasn’t able to step into the original class time when they called to ask me to teach it, but the students that had been signed up for that session agreed to move the class to 10:30. So the class has been at 10:30 on Tuesdays since February 2014.
Our stretch class has been going on for three years. This one is the one that have changed the most. First of all before I started teaching the class it was held at noon. But when I took over we moved it to 10:15 (that weird start time) because I was teaching Nia from 9:00 to 10:00 and when I took over teaching stretch we had to relocate from one room to the next so we needed time to do that. Plus it is always nice to have at least 10 minutes in between classes so that students can exit and enter and those wanting to take both classes can take care of any needs they might have (the instructor too!). Stretch was at the community center, but again, when the city changed programs the students wanted to have class passes and drop-ins so we moved stretch to the same place we moved Nia. Not enough people attended the stretch class though, so the studio could not support it.
So, we moved stretch to the park. The park is great. It is a very nice park. It suits our needs just in fine. There is a huge tree under which we can put our mats. Most of the time the students start off with their mats in the sun and after about 15 minutes they move into the shade. But even though we have great weather in California, we will not be able to stay outside through the winter so we are moving back to the community center. If you want to join us for stretch at the community center, please register. Here is a link to my site that will have the links to register. I don’t want to put the links here as they will die eventually and I rather not have dead links on my blog. (I try not to.)
When we moved stretch to the park we adjusted the start time so that we would have time to get from the studio to the park. It starts at 10:30. When it moves to the community center it will start at 10:30 because I will still need the time to get from the studio to the community center. It actually only takes about 5 minutes to get to either place from the studio, but I can’t guarantee that I can leave right after class. Sometimes I have to talk to students and/or attend to other things so it is safest to start class when I can guarantee for the most part that I can be there.
Well, this post just start out because I was excited that I had been teaching gentle yoga at the Willow Glen Community center for six years to the day and wanted to share . . . the other info just seemed a logical follow.
Once a month after stretch class, on the last Thursday of the month, a group of us meets for coffee. Sometimes it is a very small group and sometimes it is much bigger, but it is a way for us to keep in touch and for us to check in with each other. Sometimes after yoga on Tuesdays we go for lunch. At a recent lunch the conversation came around to birds – it was a very windy, crazy, fun-filled path that got us to birds, and I was telling them about our bird bath. A couple of us stated that we love to watch the birds bathe. If you have seen any of my bathing bird posts you know I love to watch them. Because how the conversation started I wanted to show them a picture of our bird bath. Then I remembered I had a video of an oriole bathing. Then I was kind of sad because none of my students had seen it, then I realized I had tweeted it and not posted it on my blog. So . . . I decided to post it here to share.
You know how I love to watch birds bathe. They just seem to enjoy it with all that fluttering and hopping around. Since the orioles are so cautious I was super happy to catch one in the bath. It is a quick bath, but still pretty cool. I do actually have another video of an oriole bathing, but I will post this one first.
Such a gorgeous color. So very yellow. Perhaps they are feeling a little more comfortable since they’ve come back for a few years now . . . if, in fact, these are the same birds.
We keep the bird bath bath clean and full. I don’t do either (clean it or fill it) as much as my hubby. We love to have birds visit so we make it as inviting as possible.
So I was out today visiting the studio I am going to teach at on Thursdays. I was out much longer than I had planned. Then I came home and worked on my site the rest of the day. I have been having to go through all the pages to take out all the old class information. I would repeat a lot of the information on many of the pages to help people be clear on the various classes that I was teaching. So now I am having to change all of that because after five years the program under which I taught for the City of San Jose has changed. I will be teaching Nia on Tuesdays and Nia on Thursday. The classes will be at different locations. The fees will be different. As I said in my last Wednesday post Out With The Old, In With The New.
The new place I will be teaching on Thursdays is right down the street from the other place, so that should be very convenient for the Nia and stretch students. I was able to keep the schedule the same . . . with the old program under the city we had Nia at 9:00 am and stretch class at 10:15. We are doing that at the new place. We will start January 10, 2019.
I am excited. As I said, I spent time visiting the studio and one of the owners, today, then spent the rest of the day updating my site. I need to give it a rest and come back and look at it with fresh eyes to edit it. And retry all the links. You are more than welcome to help me edit it . . . if you see something that is incorrect, please let me know!
Anyway . . . I have been re-doing my site instead of writing a blog post. So I thought I would share what is going on. And use another avenue of social media to let people know about the changes and the new location of the Thursday Nia class and stretch Class.
I have posted information about the programs that I teach under for the City of San Jose. At different times they had two versions of a “gym-like” program (Group Ex and then SJCITY Fit) where people could purchase an annual membership and attend all of the classes offered under the program at the participating community centers. There is also the program many seemed to be familiar with, where the city sends out a brochure listing all the classes available. The classes are taught in “sessions”. You might want to take guitar lessons being offered for 10 weeks one night a week. You register for the class paying for the entire session, all 10 weeks. There is no make-up if you miss a class. This is the way that I have taken classes with the cities of San Jose, Santa Clara, and Campbell as long as I could take classes. I remember taking a babysitting class when I was young. The “gym-like” program was relatively new. It was a great program, but I am betting that most you reading this that are local didn’t even know about it. It seems like a fair job of promoting it was not done. It was impossible to use the internet to find any information about it and like, happens with all things when they don’t get properly promoted, they fail. The city has determined that the current version of the “gym-like” program – SJCITY Fit – is not sustainable so they are cancelling it.
There are members that take at least one class Monday through Friday. It was a great deal. The majority of the students that came to my class loved the program because when the math was done with them going to at least one class a day Monday through Friday, it was about 50 cents per class. So, yeah, it makes sense that the city wasn’t able to maintain that. But it is sad that the program could not attract more than 140 people. I keep thinking in a city with a population of over 1 million the program could have at least attracted 500 people.
But with so many different choices for the exerciser out there it really takes a strong desire and a concentrated effort to get the word out about exercises programs. So the city it moving some of the classes that were be held under SJCITY Fit into a hybrid of the leisure program (where students sign up for a session of classes). There are a multitude of things that are different under this program, so I will only be teaching Nia once a week on Tuesdays.
Now, in order to take Nia with me through the City of San Jose you have to sign up for the sesssion or “season”. So far there are two sessions/seasons on the books (Winter and Spring). They are both 10 classes each. I say classes because there are some weeks where there is not a class so it might end up being more than 10 WEEKS, but there are only 10 CLASSES. You can see more information on my site.
I am still teaching the yoga classes, one on Tuesdays at 10:30 am and one on Thursdays at 6:00 pm.
It is very sad that this program or a version of it was not salvageable by the city. So many of the consistent exercisers are moving off to other places, some I am afraid might stop exercise altogether. I will miss seeing them every week. I’ve been teaching Nia on Tuesdays for six years, on Thursdays for five years, and on Fridays for three years. Many students have been coming that long or even longer (on different days at the various places I have taught). I did write a post on the how long I have been teaching what.
I do hope to see some of my students taking part in the new program that is being offered. It might not have the convenience of SJCITY Fit, but it is still a great deal. The program will still offer 8 of the 12 classes that were offered under SJCITY Fit.
So, here is to a new chapter of San Jose Nia. I am looking at teaching at a studio right down the street on Union from where I teach now. I am hoping to teach my Thursday Nia class and my Thursday stretch class. So stay tuned.
We have such a great little Nia community in San Jose I hope we can keep dancing together! Here’s to the New Year and to a new chapter of San Jose Nia.
Do you take classes through your city’s exercise program?
This is almost turning into Friday Flowers or Flowers on Friday. I know, I know. But I love flowers. And these are sitting on the front desk counter at the Camden Community Center where I teach Nia and stretch. I was talking to the people at the front desk and these were right in my face and I couldn’t help but notice them. They are so beautiful. They smell good, too!
I hope you don’t mind all these flowers for the Friday Photo.
Here are quick instructions:
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