The Neck Bone's Connected to the...Shoulder Blades?

On days that I get to lounge around the house, I like to flop upside-down over the arm of my couch and watch my legs float in the air. If I let them hover long enough, they come to rest in a bone-balancing-on-bone position and my muscles don’t have to work at all to hold my legs in the air.

Lately I’ve been looking for that same sensation in the way I hold my head on top of my spine. Especially when I’m concentrating on a task, I tend to jut my head forward, which makes the muscles in my neck work overtime to support my 10-pound noggin. Over time, that hurts.

In my search for balance, I found a particularly insightful article by Richard Rosen. He says that the root of the neck is between the lower tips of the shoulder blades. When I imagine holding my head from that point, I catch glimpses of the sensation I find so easily in my lower body when I’m upside-down on my couch. My head floats and an icy-hot feeling spreads up the back of my neck and the top part of my breastbone. That’s the sensation I get when a new area of my body wakes up.

Ohi’mbu…what?

As a new yoga teacher, I’m having way too much fun creating my class playlists. Yesterday I was perusing my iTunes library and clicked on “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” After the first ohi’mbube, I laughed out loud at how absurd and how perfect the song would be to start my class. Who knew? I went with it, and people seemed to jump right into the playful mood.

Here are few more songs I’m loving unexpectedly:

• Skip to the Bip by Club Des Belugas
• You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere by Bob Dylan
• Free Fallin’ by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
• Yummy Yummy Yummy by Julie London
• Down to the River to Pray by Alison Krauss

My Yoga Rant

Seems like everybody has a yoga rant these days, and tonight, I’m releasing mine into the blogosphere.

Yoga Rant #1: What’s up with all the criticism of everybody else and every other style of yoga except for yourself and your way of practicing? It really sickens me to watch yogis get so impassioned about why they are right and someone else is wrong. Why get high on criticism when there’s so much joy in pure practice?

Yoga Rant #2: What’s up with the obsession with stillness and tradition? What about movement and innovation? Men created yoga. Be a woman (or embrace your feminine side) and come up with your own way of practicing.

That’s all. Thank you for listening.