themselves mindfully rather than following hard-and-fast rules of destination and time. This kind of learning fosters patience, acceptance, and self-reflection. These are the cornerstones of a mindful practice and one that has room to grow for a lifetime.
Yoga Enthusiasts
Let’s say you’re a yoga practitioner who practices a minimum of once or twice a week. Whether you are currently using yoga props or not, this book will help to refine your practice and develop your “inner” teacher. This book will help you to explore your physical and mental edges in a thoughtful way and can even inspire you to begin a home practice. Start by working with your favorite yoga pose, one that feels comfortable to you. Next, determine how long you can stay in the pose maintaining that level of comfort. Once discomfort surfaces, take note of the part of you that begins to tire. Feel your way into what’s happening, and identify your greatest sensations.
Now try coming into the pose with prop support that allows you to maintain the pose a little longer, perhaps extending its comfort and shelf life for twice the time you had originally practiced the pose without support. Play around with the support until you are certain that it provides a level of experience that allows you to breathe smoothly and maintain safe alignment skills and a calm mind. Part of developing your “inner teacher” is to have a curiosity about what’s happening “now” and to listen and follow your intuition. Your body/mind is brilliant. Your practice will speak to you in both quiet and loud voices. You only need to observe, listen, adjust, and wait. You’ll be exercising the mind of your inner yoga teacher, an invaluable tool whether practicing by yourself or in a group class.
Yoga Teachers
Being of service through yoga is a rewarding experience. As an ambassador for yoga, you have signed up to practice, continue your studies, and spread the heart of yoga with others. This book will teach you how to see and teach your students, not just lead poses. Learning how to intelligently, skillfully, and creatively advise and adjust your students with prop support will enhance the overall quality of your teaching and their practice. Many students fail to discover the benefits of passive restorative yoga because their teacher may not be trained in that style. Learning how to use yoga props will open your students to experience a whole and balanced practice. A teacher who values the restorative side of yoga understands what lies beneath what’s so obvious in a practice — that timing is valued over timeliness and process is valued over progress. These are just some of the rich lessons I have learned from my teachers.
You, too, can be this kind of teacher. The more you educate yourself on how to work individually with your students, the more yoga they will experience and the less ego they will fuel. Observing your students without yoga prop support paints a picture of where they can build and let go. Using yoga props to guide your students is a path to work within their limitations and safely maximize the benefits of a pose. This style of teaching clears the way for reconciling differences — yoga’s ultimate path to freedom.
UNIQUE NEEDS
Weekend Warriors and Professional Athletes
More and more sport enthusiasts and professional athletes are integrating yoga into their fitness routine. Weekend warriors and professional athletes require considerable active recovery to balance the effects of intense workouts. Unfortunately, they don’t always welcome a quieter practice. What is required after an intense workout is a slowing down from sweating and endorphin chasing, as well as a kind of mind that seeks stillness from doing nothing except feeling and breathing. Achieving this stillness is difficult for most of us but promising for all.
The BEING poses are particularly helpful to stretch, lengthen, and open areas that are typically overworked. A yoga practice that includes BEING poses promotes flexibility, an important element of injury prevention. Flexibility helps you to tap into your strength. Strength and flexibility go hand in hand. One without the other is like a table missing a leg — simply out of balance. In addition, a pranayama practice is an extremely helpful tool that fosters a stable, calm, and present state of mind and can translate into improving your athletic performance and sharpening your ability to focus.
Yoga Practitioners with Injuries
An intelligent yoga practice can address a host of physical, emotional, and spiritual concerns. Ancient yoga philosophy states that each of us is made of five koshas (sheaths): physicality, energy (breath or life force), mind (intellect), perception (intuition, wisdom), and spirit (innate joy, peace, and harmony). My yoga practice has proved to me that these layers are connected much as the anklebone is connected to the hip bone. Although the two bones may not be directly connected, if one is affected the other may likely be as well. Since yoga therapists are not doctors, treating any chronic condition with certainty can be risky; however, yogic principles and therapies that have proved successful can be applied wisely using a basic tried-and-true balanced approach, including most or all of the following:
• Relaxation
• Traction (if there is compression)
• Mobilization
• Stabilization and strengthening
For decades I have used this simple approach with yoga students to help them manage and recover from injuries. It doesn’t mean that students with severe issues can avoid necessary surgery. However, I have prescribed many combinations of these yoga therapies using this approach, which can include both DOING and BEING poses or one or the other, all practiced with yoga prop support, to prepare students for presurgery and to speed up the recovery time postsurgery. Again, I can’t stress enough how important it is to link all “layers” for holistic healing and productive injury management.
Massage Therapists
If you are a massage therapist, you may already be stretching your clients. In my opinion, integrating massage with a few targeted BEING poses that address your clients’ habitual holding patterns is a perfect recipe for deep letting-go. Being supported in a passive yoga pose by both gravity and strategically placed yoga props is a unique experience. It always encourages a deep level of relaxation that may otherwise be difficult to access through assisted stretching. Here, there is nothing to do and nowhere to go. Your clients can be suspended in the experience of a yoga prop–supported stretch while breathing, feeling, sensing, and letting go. Sounds good, right?
That which I seek finds me, embraces me, and knows me. It lives inside me.
Each of the yoga props listed in this chapter (except for the eye pillow) can be used in practice in all classifications of yoga poses — standing, seated, back bending, twisting, inverting, and forward bending — whether they are DOING or BEING poses. I have my personal prop preferences in style, size, material, and manufacturer. If you are a budget-minded yogi, however, the expense of yoga props shouldn’t deter you from creating an ample prop inventory. When I first started teaching, I used books for blocks, towels for blankets, couch cushions for bolsters, dining room chairs for support, fabric remnants sewed together for belts (trust me, I am not a seamstress!), and a kitchen sink and door jams for leverage (yes, even a kitchen sink!). All is possible. All the time. Always. Think outside the box.
Yoga Mat
Yoga mat manufacturers produce mats in various thicknesses. For ample support, whether the mat requires folding or rolling, it should measure no more
