I haven’t met a single YB yogi or yogini who isn’t a huge fan of the insanely talented, warm, focused, and hilarious Edna Barr. I recently moved to San Francisco, and have been dropping in at different studios just for fun, and NO ONE holds a candle to my beloved Yoga Belly. The instructors here have spoiled me, I’m not just impressed with any old yoga class anymore!

Anyway, as many of you know, we will be hosting an upcoming teacher training this spring. I was curious about it myself, so I asked Edna to sit down and answer a few questions about what the training will cover. Here are her insightful answers, and I thought I’d pass them on to anyone who’s still on the fence…

-What will this class cover/involve?

This course is accredited with Yoga Alliance so we have to cover everything they require in order to register with them. Yoga philosophy, history, all eight limbs in detail.

-Who would benefit from taking this class/training?

Anyone & everyone! I have been on staff teaching this course internationally for the past 3 years & I fall in love with it over & over again. Even though we are covering the same information; it is so profound each & every time. Information ministers to us on different levels during different times in our lives. It is always an awakening as well as a reminder of what is truly important.

-What will a typical class look like?

The course is broken down into 3 hour sessions that cover a variety of topics so there no real “typical” session. The teaching style is repetitive so we will do a daily review of Sanskrit to ensure memory retention. Other than that, each session will be a new experience!

-How did you train to become a yoga teacher?

Haha! I have never heard this question before but the more I think about it, the more I feel that they should be a very common question. Yes, we absolutely must train to become a yoga teacher… There is a misconception that once you complete your YTT course; one is ready to start teaching but nobody trained them to teach…
You train by first being taught how to teach. Then you practice, get feedback, practice some more & get more feedback. A teacher training course is a safe space to learn, practice, get feedback & sharpen your skills before making a public debut. Too many courses out there do not prepare you for this. Rather they leave you to debut as an amateur instead of a professionally trained instructor. Becoming a teacher takes time & experience, but one should have a solid foundation from which to build upon.

-What do you hope to share with your students?

Wow, everything. I hope to share yoga… The full meaning, the full experience, the complete satisfaction & joy of yoga. That samadhi, even a tiny morsel of it, is wondrous.

-How is this program different from other teacher training programs out there?

Well, I mentioned some of it above where this course will prepare you to actually teach. There is a difference between an instructor who calls out cues & instructs and a teacher who can asses the room & actually teach. Once again it takes time & experience to learn to teach but standing in front of a crowded room reciting a generic script is not going to help anyone deepen their practice. I have students who have been practicing much longer than I have; never would I assume that I could teach them something but I do have the ability to assist them to go deeper.

This course is different because it is completely interactive. We don’t just give you a reading assignment & hope that you fully comprehend it. We come back & discuss it, find out if & how it resonated with you. We don’t want you to simply memorize the philosophy; we want you to understand how to live by it & make this life the best it can be.

We spend each day going over hands on assists & adjustments. I was speaking to the owner of an award winning studio last week & she said mentioned that they don’t teach assist in their YTT because of the liability. I responded by saying, “well even more so the importance to teach instructors the proper way to assist.” She nodded her head in agreement…

-How is teaching this program different from teaching your regular asana classes?

Oh gosh, another fantastic question! When we teach an asana class that is what we are there for. Too many teachers insist on cramming every element of yoga into a 60-90 minute class. Many students also expect a full yogic experience in this same amount of time. The truth is none of it can be rushed… If you want to learn philosophy, study it. If you want to learn meditation, study it. If you want to learn more pranayama techniques, study it. You come to an asana class to learn asana. Sure we practice a bit of pranayama but only as it pertains to the asana. Perhaps we throw in some calming, restorative breathing or meditation techniques but to think that 5 minutes of pranayama, 10 min warm up for asana, 30 minutes of asana, 5 minutes of restorative, 5 minutes meditation & 5 minutes of savasana with the instructor constantly talking you through each minute is a complete yogic experience… *sigh* That isn’t it…

More often than not people say that my classes are not spiritual enough which makes me laugh because I have practiced yoga my entire life. I grew up with meditation, the wonder & awe of life, spent a lot of time in the Hare Krishna temple as a teenager. Just because I don’t feel the need to preach one thing in the classroom & turn around & live another doesn’t mean that I do not live in a constant state of truth & bliss… How I can teach others to obtain this same bliss? I cannot… It is their journey to learn to surrender, seek knowledge & accept.

This is what I truly hope to share in this course. I hope that it will change everyone who attends the way that it has changed me. I have always been able to see the divine light in others but it took a lot of work to finally see the divine light in myself.

A few weeks ago, Will and Aaron took us on a team training excursion: aerial yoga in Campbell. I envisioned Cirque du Soleil type trapeze stuff, I was all about it. The second we arrived in the studio, Stasha and I just started playing… getting a running start, we’d swing in the hammocks, flip ourselves upside down, and take boat pose just inches off the ground. It was SUPER fun.

Once class started, we all felt pretty awesome. Like, even though we’ve never done this before, we can totally do aerial. We’re yogis. We can pretty much do anything. When the instructor complimented our bulldog-style breathing (“I love a class that can breathe!”) we felt pretty confident. We used the hammock like a strap to open our shoulders, which felt amazing. We did chaturangas with our feet in the hammocks, which made them infinitely harder. I, being the accidental-yoga-slacker that I am (I always forget to engage SOMETHING that should be engaged, even when I focus), felt my core fire up way more than normal. Perhaps this is what it should always feel like? Hmmm. What a thought.

After warming up, it became clear that aerial yoga is not just fun, it’s HARD. We started doing the upside down stuff. This is where it got a little difficult for me. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE going upside down, but I hardly ever do it for more than a minute at a time. In aerial, we spent a lot of time upside down, and it was significantly more than I was used to. I’d have to come up and let the blood drain back into my body, I’d have to shimmy around and get the hammock to sit more comfortably on my hips, I’d have to raise my hands above my head to get them to stop feeling so puffy. I turned red as a tomato, and sometimes forgot to breathe, and wondered if I was the only one in the room who felt like my head was possibly going to explode.

Then I saw Stasha totally rocking her upside-down-dancer’s pose. It was beautiful, she was hanging upside down, her face calm, both feet gripping her foot behind her, letting the motions of the hammock twirl her gently in the sunlight. It was just stunning.

“Wow,” I said, “That looks awesome. How can you even do that?”

“You can do it too,” she said, “Your foot is right there, just grab it.”

I flailed my fingers around a little, felt something warm and chubby, and felt a tingling sensation somewhere just above my head.

“Holy shit,” I said, “There’s my foot!”

And right then, I felt like I “got” it.

Maybe I had to give up my dream of Cirque du Soleil (s’ok, Loran’s going to go represent us all) but I did learn something from my afternoon upside down. Literally, it came in the form of my foot: I can never quite reach my foot in eka pada rajakapotasana, but for some reason, I could when I was inverted. More importantly, it was fun to play around, and to step outside my comfort zone, push the boundaries of the familiar. It gave me a sense of heightened awareness, a freedom to fool around, and permission to say Umm, that feels weird.

So. Would I trade my vinyasa flow for aerial? Probably not. Would I do it again? Definitely. Was it awesome to bond with the very people who make Yoga Belly the amazing, quirky studio that it is? Umm, yeah, because anytime your ass is spinning around upside down offering all your neighbors a panoramic view, it, well, builds some trust. Did I learn that defamiliarizing something you love can open up possibilities that you didn’t know existed? Absolutely.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why it’s important to, on occasion, step outside of your comfort zone. Even if it’s just with a baby toe. Like, a baby toe, in your hand, right above your head, which is upside down.

Let’s just all pretend that made sense.

Oh, and savasana in a giant hammock-cocoon thing? Best. Thing. Ever.

Remember those picture puzzles you saw as a kid? Where you look at two copies of the same picture, but you have to find the six differences? Okay, let’s do that again, with these bad boys:

Don’t cheat! Take a minute to really look, and see if you can find anything. Don’t cheat…

Okay, what did you see? Because before my private lesson with Edna, I just saw my feet: flat on the ground in the first picture, and then up on my tippy toes for the second one. I would work on backbends and home, or look sideways in the mirror at the studio, and it all looked the same to me.

Kids, this is why you need a private lesson. Don’t get me wrong, instructors have adjusted my backbends before, and they’d say things like, “make a C with your spine,” “don’t put too much pressure on your low back,” etc, and I made a very concerted effort to listen and tune in to my body. And when they’d come over and pull up on my ribs, I’d definitely feel the difference, but not long enough for my muscles to remember the sensation. I’d flounder around afterwards, trying to recapture that elusive feeling, more or less to no avail. Then in Jeff’s class I realized I was doing things COMPLETELY wrong and I realized I needed some extra guidance. The spine is a very precious, delicate thing, I didn’t want to mess around with it.

So, I had another private lesson with the fabulous Edna Barr. In my opinion, the three best things about private lessons with her are:

1) Concentrated effort on your particular practice: your challenges, your whims, your body.

2) Professional explanation and unparalleled attention. If she explains something and I don’t get it, she’ll explain it again a different way, until it “clicks.”

3) The full body massage.

We spent an hour working together, of course starting with headstand and handstand, warming up with some vinyasas (which still give me grief, oy vey), and when I was warm enough to sweat we moved into backbends.

For the record, PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, you really need someone who knows what they’re doing to spot you, backbends feel amazing and wonderful but it’s also not hard to overdo it and injure yourself. Not worth it! Approach your favorite instructor, one who really “gets” you, and don’t go hurting yourself.

We started with bridge, then moved into full wheel, and I learned to rock back and forth to get more into my upper back. After every pose, Edna would work over my back with a delicious massage, it felt amazing. Finally, I got up into headstand (yes, headstand), and she helped guide me back into what might just have been the deepest backbend of my life. Y’all, my ELBOWS were on the ground, I could hardly breathe, and then when she told me to lift up my head, I was like, “What?” I don’t know about you, but when I’m in a pose like that, I hardly know my own name, I’m concentrating so hard just on breathing through the pose and not passing out that any verbal instruction is just totally wasted on me.

Edna knows this, and took pictures to help me. At first, she took a picture of my bad habits: the way I dumped into my lumbar spine, and kept my shoulders over my hands. After some coaching, she got me into a backbend that felt very different: there was significantly more action in my upper back, my shoulders crept towards my elbows, and the bend was so deep there was no way I could keep my feet flat on the floor (give me a few years!). The photos really helped me visualize the difference in my backbends, and it was so helpful to be able to scroll back and forth, rather than crane my neck to the side and try to see in a mirror, huffing and puffing and too “in the zone” to understand anything.

So! That’s the latest update in the Adventures of Tristen. I can’t believe we went from HEADSTAND to a backbend, I just can’t wrap my brain around that. But yes, it happened, and I think it happened a lot sooner than it would have because of the private, personalized guidance of a capable, thoughtful, and loving instructor.

Thank you so much to Edna, and all the amazing instructors at Yoga Belly! You ALL are fabulous!

Good morning lovelies,

For those of you who haven’t yet had the chance to bear-hug our yoga-mama, Edna’s back! Yaaaaay! And, because apparently she can’t function without getting on an airplane every few weeks, she’s hosting an aMAzing looking retreat next month. Rumor has it there are still a few spots open, so get it while the gettin’s good… a week of yoga, meditation, a private chef, snorkeling and beach adventures… yes, please!

If you’re interested, holler at your girl or send her an email at edna.barr@gmail.com

A few weeks ago, I had my first private yoga lesson.

I wanted to make sure I had all my basics covered, so that I could move into more challenging poses with ta solid foundation. I didn’t want to learn any bad habits, and I felt like I was ready for the “next step” in yoga.

So, I show up to the studio, and to warm up, I have to get into headstand and touch my feet to the floor and back up again, five times. I’m a little nervous about the piking part, but my headstand has felt strong for months, so I figure I’ll give it a try.

Cue humble pie.

First off, I hadn’t been doing headstand properly. I didn’t realize there was a “proper” way, I thought as long as your feet went over your head and you didn’t topple over onto anyone, you were golden. I was wrong. My elbows were too far apart, my head was too close to my hands, it was a disaster.

Here’s where a private lesson starts looking different from a group class: EVERY little detail gets serious attention. In a group of 15 students, no instructor has the time to kneel down by you, skooch your elbows into exactly the right position, and stand behind you as you lift your feet up. In a private lesson, everything gets adjusted precisely, and when I picked up my shaking legs, the instructor was right behind me, guiding my hips, pointing out things I didn’t even notice (like, apparently I was leaning more on one elbow than the other). Nothing was overlooked. I got massaged every time I took a break. I started to realize just how much I was in for, and I was loving it.

Coming Up: Sun Salutations (And you thought they were easy!)

… to Fiona for being the first instructor I’ve heard play RENT during class! Yes!

Oh, and for kicking our butts too, oui.

Oh, and for those of you who haven’t noticed, we have another blogger on board! Aaron will now be joining the conversation and adding his voice to the YB blog. Weeeeeelcome, Aaron!!

Hello lovelies!

Today, in what is now officially the last half of September, we conclude our summer “What’s In Your Blender” series. We’ve gotten some tasty, healthy recipes from our instructors, and we’re going out with a bang. Mr. Matt Sharpe, NASA-brainiac-turned-yogi, shares his smoothie recipe with us:

Happy Hump Day, my dears! Hope you all are well and enjoying the short week. Tomorrow, I head down to Big Bear for a long weekend of lounging, swimming, and, wait for it… a WATER TRAMPOLINE. I know, right? My life will soon be complete. I’m convinced that I haven’t really lived until I’ve jumped as high as I possibly can and tumbled into a lake, which is my first order of business once we get there.

Anyway, today, we’re in the kitchen with Wendy Howell, the lovely lady behind the Topher Simon photo shoot that we posted  a while back. She’s sharing her latest summer smoothie recipe with us, so take it away, Wendy!

“Try this one on for size!

2 cups strawberries

1 cup watermelon

¼ cup strawberry honey Greek yogurt

2 capfuls strawberry balsamic vinegar (hard to find …. Farmer’s Market item)

Blend and enjoy!”

Sounds deeeeeeeeeeeeelish…Imma have to track me down some of that strawberry balsamic vinegar. Thanks, Wendy!

Image courtesy of tasteofhome.com

I hate to say it, but summer is on it’s last leg… my students are back in school, the pool is quieter, and mornings have me already looking for my slippers. Pretty soon, smoothies will take a back seat to oatmeal and hot tea, as far as my breakfasts are concerned.

To help us transition from the summer of smoothies to autumn, we have the culinary queen Fiona So. Fiona is a wonder in the kitchen, and she has been kind enough to share her Sweet Walnut Soup recipe with us.

Take it away, Fiona!

“Ingredients:
1) Dried Shelled Walnut 200g
2) Dried South Almond 5g
3) Dried North Almond 5g
4) White Rice 25g
5) Water 3L
6) Coconut Milk 400ml
7) White Sugar 300g
Whipping Cream (optional)

Directions:
a) Put items 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5 in blender. If the blender is not big enough, divide the ingredients into several groups. Blend the aforementioned items into a liquid form.
b) Pour the mixture into a big cooking bowl with the use of filter, add item 6 all at once.
c) Boil the soup and keep stirring until it’s done.
d) Add item 7 and 8 into the soup. Keep stirring. Take the big cooking bowl away from the stove when it’s done.

As per the ayurveda and yoga blog, “Walnuts are good Brain stimulants, Heart healthy, immunity booster, Cancer fighter, and muscle builder” (http://www.ayurvedictalk.com/the-health-friendly-must-eat-everyday-foods/792/)”

Image courtesy of cookwork.com

Good morning lovelies,

You all met Sophie, the adorable yogini standing on her head, yesterday. Well, today, her mother, our feisty and fiercely-good-looking Thoa van Seventer, shares a smoothie that tastes delicious and actually helps you look good in a bikini. She sent the recipe from the sunny shores of Puerto Rico, and she claims she drinks this twice a day because it’s so good!

In a blender, combine:

1 cup of soy milk

1 and 1/2 tbsp of peanut butter

1 banana

2 tsp of cocoa powder

3 tbsp of silken tofu

Blend until smooth, and enjoy!