The Strength Series – Summary

The Strength Series follows Christine on her journey to improve her strength, her yoga, and her overall lifestyle.

Her story covers her discovery that only yoga wasn’t making her strong in the right places and her journey through what she’s learned and continues to learn. Her mantra, you can be too flexible but not too strong is the basis of her exploration. Especially so as one ages so follow along as she opens up and talks about where this new path focused on strength is taking her.

Jumping

I always thought that if I continued to practice I would get stronger and be able to ‘float’ forward and back through my vinyasas. I sure gave it a good try with about 18 solid years of effort and numerous workshops where I thought I would discover the secret.

Learning how to mobilize the shoulders

My road to building strength led to having to learn to mobilize my shoulders. After years of trying ‘to keep my shoulder blades down my back’, I had to retrain my brain to allow my shoulder blades to move.

Chaturanga – a lesson in strength

Why do we need injuries to wake us up? After a week-end of hard core workshops my shoulders said enough with constant pain and more and more tightness. When I finally listened to my body I realized that I simply couldn’t avoid the facts – 18 years of practice and the thousands of chaturangas had played havoc with my shoulders. I needed to look outside the yoga box.

Planking – love it or hate it

Love it or hate it – it’s hard to avoid some version of this – whether it be in yoga, pilates, the gym, or fitness classes.

Downward Dog – Wake it up!

Downward dog is such an instructive and foundational pose. In my 20 years of teaching, I have spent an uncountable number of hours doing and analyzing this pose with a wide range of very senior and talented teachers. It is not an easy pose nor is it for resting!

Ask anyone who has taken my teacher training…

Ask anyone who has taken my teacher training: What is the most important yoga pose and you will hear a chorus: Samastitihi.

One of my very early teachers said that we were trying to find samastitihi in every pose. It took me years and much pondering to understand this.