With my 20 years of yoga practice and 18 years of teaching, the strengthening aspect of yoga has always been of interest to me.

Coming to yoga as a super stiff runner, I think the ‘flexibility’ was also a driver but I was always more drawn to the aspect of muscle engagement versus simply ‘hanging out’. For this reason, in addition to my ashtanga practice, I was a lover of Iyengar yoga as a complement.

For a long time I felt like I was getting stronger until my shoulders gave out and I was forced to seek help. While physio therapy helped at first, going back to the same repetitive actions in ashtanga just brought the injury back… and more serious. Thankfully I found wisdom around me from people who had similar experiences but with different parts of their body. After two years of studying movement and a style of yoga that incorporated strength and stability in a different, and non-repetitive manner, its now my passion to bring this to others. Strength is the key to maintaining muscle mass, which only gets harder to maintain as we age. I recently heard a ‘health expert’ on the radio actually refer to reduced age related muscle mass as a disease!!

Whatever your age, decide what is important to you as you age and set your course accordingly.

I am always happy to find people to have come to the same conclusion… and thus I introduce Mary Bond.

I came across Mary’s work through one of my courses and admired her approach to health and balance. Then you can imagine my delight when I read her blog about her revelations about the need to incorporate strength.

Enjoy… and thank you to Mary Bond for agreeing to share her story with us.

You can read the full blog post, “Strength: A Wake-up Call” on Mary’s site, here »