Chest openers are some of the most rewarding stretches in yoga practice. They are a great way to open up the muscles in the chest to reverse forward leaning posture and they are great for creating freedom and space around your heart.

It is important to maintain an open chest especially if you sit at a desk all day or if you are an athlete. If we’re hunched over a computer all day or not sitting in the correct chair, sharp pain between the shoulder blades or chronic feelings of tightness in the back may occur. This can create poor posture. So when we huch over, we are compressing the lungs, making them harder to expand with deep breaths. If you are an athlete, activities like lifting weights or strength training can shorten, tighten and dehydrate these muscles which can cause poor posture, which can in-turn, inhibit breath function.

Don’t worry though! Some studies show how chest openers can help correct overly rounded shoulders and upper back pain, resulting in better posture, which can lead to better breathing.

You can use our Search Feature to search through all of our Yoga for the Chest classes on your own. To get you started without searching, we’re highlighting six chest classes in a variety of styles, levels and durations that will be sure to help open the chest and upper back to create freedom and space around your heart.

• Open Upper Chest, Shoulders & Spine with Stephanie Snyder: This sequence is designed for the athlete (or anyone) who has tight upper chest, shoulders, and spine. Activities like swimming, weight lifting, and strength training can shorten, tighten, and dehydrate these muscles. This can cause upper back pain and poor posture that can inhibit breath function which will limit you in all ways. We will move through a vinyasa-based class that will open the shoulders, chest, and upper back to create freedom and space around your heart!
• Open Your Upper Body with Jason Crandell: A class for all the desk workers, cooks, baby holders, body workers, car commuters–and, we’ll just about everyone else out there! This class is designed to open the chest while strengthening the upper-back, arms and neck. Consider this your “go to” 30 minute practice for balancing your upper-body from the day-to-day challenges of the modern world.
• Open Up to New Possibilities with Kia Miller: Open your chest and heart with this strong kriya designed to open you up to new possibilities! This is a strong practice. Please go at your pace and modify if you need to.
• Rhomboid Strength with Tiffany Cruikshank: This class focuses on rhomboid strength to open the chest, cultivating awareness around the back of the heart to expand the chest. For those who struggle with backbends, learn how to use your strength to create the opening needed for the big chest opening postures and for those looking to work deeper into their backbends & chest. Useful for learning how to cultivate the strength needed to open yourself up to life.
• Camel Poses Tutorial with Kathryn Budig: This chest opening tutorial focuses on Camel Poses and all of its close friends. We begin in a chest opener and get right into business. 2 versions of Camel followed by a Camel drop-back, Pigeon Droppings and two versions of Half Camel. Get ready to open your heart! Prop needed, block.
• Rhomboid Flow with Jo Tastula: ’Rhomboids’ is the buzz word for this class. The rhomboid’s function is to pull the shoulder blade (and with it, your shoulder/arm) back and inwards toward the midline of your body, and in doing so bringing space and openness to the chest, lungs and heart. We do some very specific exercises to ‘switch on’ and activate these muscles (there are 2 each side) which may be very helpful to those of you with upper back stiffness, tightness and general lethargy. Get into Cow Face pose (gomukhasana) and postures with hands interlaced behind the back and twists to open the shoulders and chest. With this a nice steady flow through sun salutation variations (surya namaskar) to build head and strength.

All of your favorite teachers have done you one significant disservice: they’ve made teaching yoga look easier than it is! Teaching yoga—or any subject for that matter—is a wonderfully fulfilling experience, but it also requires a major learning curve. Here are a few tips for navigating the unfamiliar—and sometimes rocky—waters of being a new teacher.

• You will feel very raw and exposed

Teaching yoga requires you to be transparent. It requires you to speak to a group of students and orchestrate sequencing, verbal cues, manual adjustments and—perhaps—a playlist. It requires you to give direct commands about the position of the body while encouraging your students to notice the sensations, feelings and thoughts that arise. No, your class is not about you; but, in fact, you are the medium for the teachings and if you feel deeply enough about them you will feel raw and exposed. This is not always easy, but it’s an intrinsic part of your job. Allow yourself to notice these feelings if they arise and go with them—learn about yourself from them. And, get used to them, they aren’t going to go away if you continue to teach from your heart.

• Practice being clear, simple and straightforward

Clear, simple, straightforward teaching is timeless. New teachers often feel compelled to be tricky, edgy and complicated in order to validate themselves and show “authenticity.” But, remember, teaching is an actual skill that takes a ton of practice. Even more, bypassing the fundamental skill of being clear, cohesive and cogent with your teaching will lead to a confused hodgepodge of offerings. The feedback that I give 95% of new teachers is this: “edit yourself, simplify your sequence, and trust that the practice is strong enough that you don’t need to force it.”

• Repetition is a good thing

You will say and teach the same thing many, many more times than any given student will hear it. So, you are going to feel like you’re repeating yourself all the time, but it’s not going to sound this way to your students. You may have said the same thing 10 times this week, but any given student probably only came to 1 or 2 classes so they’ve only heard what you said once or twice (if they were even paying attention). Even more, most students love repetition—and, aren’t there some things in your life that you need to hear time and time again?

• Teaching skillfully requires you to make many, many mistakes

Teaching requires several specific skills and developing these skills comes from making mistakes. New teachers are often afraid to make mistakes because they are insecure, and they worried that their mistakes may lead to injuries for their students. If you are a sane, reasonable, semi-adjusted person your mistakes are probably not going to lead to injuries. If it’s an issue of your insecurity—or perfectionism—well, you just have to put mistake making in it’s proper context: remember that mistakes are normal, natural things and you will learn more from them than anything else. Relax and be accommodating with yourself.

• You need to practice more, not less (it’s your research and education)

If you get so overwhelmed that you are practicing less and less you’re headed in the wrong direction. Sometimes we get a little lost and this is okay. In fact, many of our best changes come from realizing that we’re off our path and we need to correct our course. The problem is that teaching yoga without practicing yoga is unsustainable. If possible (and, it probably is), stay committed to at least one weekly class with your teacher and find make time to do your home practice several days of the week.

Jason Crandell was recently named one of the next generation of teachers shaping yoga’s future by Yoga Journal for his skillful, unique approach to vinyasa yoga. Jason’s steady pace, creative sequencing, and attention to detail encourage students to move slowly, deeply, and mindfully into their bodies. Jason credits his primary teacher, Rodney Yee, teachers in the Iyengar Yoga tradition such as Ramanand Patel, and ongoing studies in Eastern and Western philosophy for inspiring to him bring greater alignment and mindfulness to Vinyasa Yoga.

Jason is a contributing editor for Yoga Journal and has written over 13 articles for the magazine and website – many of which have been translated internationally (including Japan, China, Italy and Brazil). His integrative and accessible teachings support students of every background and lineage, helping them to find greater depth, awareness, and well-being in their practice – and in their lives. Follow Jason on Facebook and Twitter.

The wrists are among the weakest parts of the body, so it’s very common (especially if you are at a computer all day or you are doing a lot of weight bearing yoga postures) to experience some kind of wrist pain.

Looking for a way to relieve wrist discomfort or just looking to give your wrists a break? Well, yoga to the rescue! This week’s featured classes will help to build strength and flexibility in the wrists, as well as help to eleviate any tension or discomfort due to overused wrists.

You can use our Search Feature to search through all of our Yoga for the Wrists classes on your own. To get you started without searching, we’re highlighting six wrist classes in a variety of styles, levels and durations that will be sure to help you build strength and flexibility in your wrists.

• Wrist Love with Amy Ippoliti: Have wrist issues or trouble doing things with or on your hands? This sequence may be used regularly to help build strength and flexibility in your wrists. Opens the shoulders and neck, and includes a restorative with a blanket. Have a block and a strap available if you like.
• Give Your Wrists a Break with Jason Crandell: Back by popular demand–and, even longer! This 45-minute practice will take you through a strong, satisfying vinyasa practice without bearing any weight on your wrists. If you’ve been wanting a strong practice and you’re giving your wrists a break, this is tailor-made for you.
• Help for Your Wrists with Tiffany Cruikshank: Ten minutes of help for your wrists. This is a quick series of exercises for your wrists. You can use it every so often preventatively or as needed for tension or discomfort. This practice is helpful if you spend a lot of time at the computer or play sports that use the forearms or wrists a lot. It is also helpful if you are new to inversions or are doing a lot of inversions in your practice.
• Eleviate Wrist, Hand & Elbow Pain with Elena Brower: If you’re having wrist/hand/elbow pain and would like to explore a practice to alleviate the issue, this 20 minute practice may help. We’ll explore ways to strengthen shoulders, elbows and wrists, using only a couple of carefully instructed weight-bearing postures, and some standing poses without hands/wrists at all.
• Suffer From Computer Hands? with Felicia Tomasko: Stretch out the forearms, wrists and shoulders: parts of the body that get overused when we’re on the computer all day (or text messaging profusely).
• Listen to Yourself & Accept Yourself with Christina Sell: This level 1 class is great for those days when you need to rest your arms and take the weight-bearing load out of your wrists and shoulders. With focused work in the legs and plenty of alignment cues, this practice offers encouragement to listen to yourself, to accept yourself, and to practice yoga in a way that is mindful and healing.

So here we are, at the penultimate limb of yoga. Dhyana, or meditation, is described as the “continuous flow of cognition” toward an object – the object being the one we’ve been concentrating on from the last limb, dharana. But as teachers will tell you, there are lots of ways to practice meditation, and as many different objects to focus your attention on – inward or outward mantras, the breath, a physical item, or nothing at all besides the space between your ears. Meditation is a spectrum in itself, and can fit all sorts of different definitions. So you don’t necessarily have to become “one” with the object of your attention (although it would certainly be nice to experience that from time to time). But rather, meditation can be as simple as spending a few minutes observing your mind every day, coming back to the same physical practice, or just spending a moment each day in appreciation of the universe.

Sri Dharma Mittra of the Dharma Yoga Center in New York City, who’s taught students for some 45 years, says that what’s initially important is the coming back to – that return to something, every day or every week, whatever that something may be (within reason, of course). “All these are facets of concentration,” he says. “All of these are better than the other one where you just sit there and you don’t know where you are or what’s happening to you.” He talks about students who come to class every week without fail for over a decade, and of people who simply spend a minute of each day remembering god. “That is concentration,” he says. “That is the very definition of steadiness. So, to meditate is more about steadiness than it is about how you sit or the quality of your concentration or anything else. This steadiness in concentration brings fruits.”

So that is one form of practice. Another way is, of course, to sit in stillness, or to “retire in solitude,” Sri Dharma says, which allows your brain to reboot. For this, he advises people to sit for five minutes and work from there, just being still and watching your mind as an observer. “It is in the absence of mental activities that you get recharged, that you come to operate on higher levels.” If your mind is just too restless and you can’t do it yet, not to worry – you can go back to concentrating on something specific, and work from there: “if you are not ready for this,” Sri Dharma says, “you may concentrate on a picture or a diamond, the sun, a flower, or anything. But, the best thing is to sit comfortably for this with the eyes almost closed. There you remain unconcerned, watching the activities of the mind… This is not this kind of meditation that you lose your consciousness. No, it’s just to sit quietly and keep watching, observing.”

One of the loveliest points he makes is one that’s true when we’re meditating and when we’re not. He urges people to remember that “We are not the body or activities. So it is good always to sit quietly like a witness watching the activities of the body and mind. You realize through this that everything is passing away all the time.” The idea that we’re not our bodies, our reactions, or even our thoughts, is sort of mind-blowing, and it may be one of the most important messages that yoga can impart.

So, however simple or barebones our practices may seem at first, the reality is that we can all meditate in some way. It’s not easy to quiet the monkey mind – and thankfully, everyone, even the most practiced teachers, agrees on that – but it gets incrementally easier the more you try. Sri Dharma ends by saying this: “Meditation is available to anyone regardless of where you are starting from. For those who are not in good physical condition, lie down. Lie down in a very comfortable position, but don’t fall asleep! And there you stay, also trying to be unconcerned just like a witness. All these techniques lead to what: for the mind to become sharp. And then you’ll be able to find answers.”

How do you meditate? Do you notice that it gets easier over time? Please share your thoughts below.

Alice G. Walton, PhD is a health and science writer, and began practicing (and falling in love with) yoga last year. She is the Associate Editor at TheDoctorWillSeeYouNow.com and a Contributor at Forbes.com. Alice will be exploring yoga’s different styles, history, and philosophy, and sharing what she learns here on the YogaGlo blog. You can follow Alice on Twitter @AliceWalton and Facebook at Facebook.com/alicegwalton.

Our feet are our body’s foundation, our connection to the earth. They  keep us mobile, aligned and balanced, yet they are often one of the most neglected and abused parts of the body. How often do we actually stop and  think about our feet and what we put them through EVERY DAY? Probably only when they start aching after standing or wearing uncomfortable shoes all day.

Our body reflects everything we do with our feet. When our feet are tired, our whole body is tired. When our feet hurt, even the simplest of tasks might be hard. Whether we realize it or not, because of the way we treat our feet, most of us have feet and ankles that are no longer in balance. Because of the misalignment of our feet, our body now has to make adjustments in order to keep its balance. This means that our overall posture changes. When our posture changes to compensate for foot problems, our joints become misaligned which in turn, can lead to chronic joint inflammation in addition to other health related problem.

The good news is that practicing yoga can help. Several studies show how yoga helps bring flexibility and strength to our feet, toes and ankles, leading to overall better alignment and health of the body.

 You can use our Search Feature to search through all of our Yoga for Feet classes on your own. To get you started without searching, we’re highlighting six feet classes in a variety of styles, levels and durations that will be sure to help us learn to navigate mobility and stability through the foundation of the feet.

• Foot Alignment Tutorial with Tiffany Cruikshank: This class is more of a tutorial on foot alignment and how it applies to our practice of asanas. We’ll look at the foot alignment in standing, seated and supine poses and how it applies to the pelvis and the rest of the body. This is an important practice for beginners and advanced students alike to take with you into your other classes.
• Happy & Strong Feet with Jo Tastula: Worshiping feet is considered a very selfless act of service in many cultures. Today, we worship our own feet as a form of deep self care! Our modern day foot has been squashed, stifled and weakened by shoes and walking on predictable terrain (i.e. horizontal flat surfaces) so this class focuses on gaining full mobility and range of motion in the feet as well as strengthening and toning exercises. Props: Warm Towel
• Relearn Your Feet with Tara Judelle: Relearn the feet – Class focusing on standing balancing poses introducing the concept of “heel foot” and “ankle foot”. Using meticulous instruction around the mechanics of the foot we learn to navigate mobility and stability through the foundation of the feet. Includes Garudasana (Eagle pose), Warrior III, Padagustasana (Hand to foot pose), and Sirsasana (headstand).
• Yoga for Your Calves & Feet with Jason Crandell: It’s easy to forget about your calves and feet—especially with the constant focus on hips, hamstrings, shoulders and spine in yoga class. The feet and calves, however, need some serious TLC since they both become tense quite easily. This practice will open the calves and articulate the feet in essential, satisfying ways. This practice also shows you exactly what it means to “lift your inner-arches” and how to create this vital action in your standing poses. (You will need a belt for this practice).
• On Your Feet All Day with Felicia Tomasko: Do you stand on your feet all day? Nurses, teachers, doctors, firefighters, restaurant workers, vetrenarians, flight attendants, retail salespeople? This is the yin practice for you. Get grounded and rebalance the body with this slow yet powerful yin practice. We begin on the earth, supine, on our backs, with a sequence that works with flexibility and mobility of the feet, legs, and hips. The second part of this practice involves some seated feet stretches, cat stretch variations on our hands and knees and then ends with a pigeon pose to continue to allow ourselves to release the tension stored in the body after standing all day. By the time we get to savasana, we’ll be ready to stand up again.
• Healing Feet Practice with Elena Brower: Such a sweet, healing practice to end a long day on your feet. Standing poses and balances, vinyasa flows with variations for your feet, some nice stretches for the tops and soles of your feet, with reminders to keep your foundation – and your face – spacious and soft.

As in life, the greatest rewards in our practice come from doing the simplest things. With the awe-inspiring grace of complex postures and the promise of a sculpted, balanced body it’s easy to overlook the benefits that come from a simple, sane, satisfying yoga practice.

Teaching has a similar pitfall: teachers often exert more pressure on themselves to come up with new sequences, posture combinations, and themes than to develop a consistent point of view and repeat the most essential teachings of yoga.

I spend the majority of my classes returning to the same, essential themes. After all, most of us can’t be reminded of what is most important often enough. These themes help my students connect to what’s most important inside their mind, body, and heart. These teachings will never become dated.

• Integrity of Movement is more important than range of movement

It goes without saying that a consistent yoga practice will increase your range of motion. It also goes without saying that this is a good thing since so many of us need greater space, comfort, and freedom in our body. Yet, too much focus on range of motion can easily steer us in the wrong direction. Yoga emphasizes even, sustainable, and integrated movements that facilitate our breath and stabilize the nervous system. Of course, we stretch our body in the practice but we’re looking to cultivate something much more subtle and harmonious in our body than simply pulling on various tissues. We’re looking to cultivate an even, balanced tone throughout our entire body. We’re looking to experience a unified field of sensation so that we can feel our totality, not just create more degrees of pelvic rotation.

• Postures can be practiced differently on different days for different reasons

Should triangle pose or warrior 1 include a backbend? Well, it depends. Should you go bring your bottom hand as low as it can go in ardha chandrasana or should you put it on a block so that you can rotate your spine more? Well, it depends. In these scenarios—and many, many more—the nuances of the posture depend on the experience you are looking to cultivate.

There is wide-range of options within each posture and you can emphasize different aspects of postures on different days. Using triangle pose as an example, you could focus on engaging the bottom tips of the scapula, extending the thoracic spine and extending the top arm much more if you were focused on backbends. If you were focused on twists, you could elevate your bottom hand on a block, fire your obliques more intensely, and firm the bottom scapula against the back ribs.

It’s important that we remember these postures are simply templates and that we’re encouraged to explore within their parameters.

• Distribute your actions, distribute your awareness

Practicing yoga awakens the sensations of your body. When beginners awaken the sensations of their body, they are likely to pay all of their attention to the part of the body that is most intense. For example, a new student will tend to focus their attention on their hamstrings in a forward bend because this is where the most intense sensation is present.

As students mature in their practice—and teachers mature in their teaching—this equation should shift to include the entire body. Instead of focusing all of the attention and action in local areas—such as the hamstrings—practitioners should draw their attention into their entire body in every asana. This cultivates a unified field of awareness and sensation throughout your body. While the hamstrings may be the initial draw of a forward bend, we want to observe our feet, hips, torso, neck, facial muscles, breath, mind-state and so on. A pose is never just about one area of the body—it is about one area of the body in relationship to the other parts of the body, the breath, and the mind.

• Exploring your comfort zone and playing your edge

Your edge is the threshold in a pose—or moment in seated meditation—where physical, mental, and emotional resistance comes rushing to the foreground. Reaching your edge is like applying an enzyme that ignites a reaction and magnifies your physical, mental and emotional patterns. This magnification—while challenging—allows you to see yourself (and your conditioning) with greater clarity. In short, you become conscious of previously unconscious patterns.

Most instructions focus on trying to get students to go even further in a posture—even when they’ve already hit their end range of motion. It may be more beneficial to focus on helping students nurture greater ease and relaxation when they’re at their edge instead of trying to get them to go further. Instructions like “lengthen your exhalation, acknowledge the resistance that’s present, and soften your face,” are some of the most powerful, transformative instructions that you can provide your students.

Jason Crandell was recently named one of the next generation of teachers shaping yoga’s future by Yoga Journal for his skillful, unique approach to vinyasa yoga. Jason’s steady pace, creative sequencing, and attention to detail encourage students to move slowly, deeply, and mindfully into their bodies. Jason credits his primary teacher, Rodney Yee, teachers in the Iyengar Yoga tradition such as Ramanand Patel, and ongoing studies in Eastern and Western philosophy for inspiring to him bring greater alignment and mindfulness to Vinyasa Yoga.

Jason is a contributing editor for Yoga Journal and has written over 13 articles for the magazine and website – many of which have been translated internationally (including Japan, China, Italy and Brazil). His integrative and accessible teachings support students of every background and lineage, helping them to find greater depth, awareness, and well-being in their practice – and in their lives. Follow Jason on Facebook and Twitter.

Everything we do relies heavily on our ability to balance, yet maintaing physical balance skills is one of the most underrated aspects of well-being. As we age, we gradually start to lose our muscle strength, vision and sensory perception – all things that contribute to our ability to balance. As a result, our mobility can be compromised and lack of mobility can lead to falling, which can lead to a whole new set of health issues.

The good news is that physical balance is a learned skill that can be maintained and improved by practice. Several studies show how yoga can strengthen our self-perception which can help the body to better position our muscles and allow us to sense where our body needs to be without looking. In addition, yoga builds muscle and increases range of motion in the joints, which helps in distributing weight evenly, creating overall stability.

You can use our Search Feature to search through all of our Standing Balances classes on your own. To get you started without searching, we’re highlighting six standing balance classes in a variety of styles, levels and durations that will be sure to help refine all of your standing balances and help you stay centered.

• Balance & Control Transitions with Jo Tastula: This is a lively class that focuses on standing balance postures as well as slow controlled transitions. Balance postures are physically strengthening and also develop both coordination and tempo. Sun salutations to warm up (surya namaskar a & dancing warrior) and balance poses swan (hamsasana), standing splits with hands interlaced (uttana padasana) eagle (garudasana) crow (bakasana) and inversion tripod headstand (sirsasana). The trickiest transition is probably triangle to extended hand-to-big-toe (trikonasana to supta utthita hasta padangustasana). Finishing poses are single pigeon (eka pada rajakapotasana) and forward bend (paschimottanasana).
• Standing Pose Practice with Noah Maze: Stand!–This class of fundamental standing poses will educate, engage, and challenge you. Cultivate your studentship of these poses from several different approaches, culminating in vinyasa style sequencing.
• Fluid Standing Pose Practice with Steven Espinosa: Receive The Rewards – our yoga practice can often be challenging but the rewards are worth our efforts. Gentle but steady warm up leading into a fluid Standing Pose series including Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose). Also combines standing hip openers with standing balance pose in Vrksasana (Tree Pose). Concludes with thigh and hamstrings leading into backbends with Setu Bandasana (Bridge) and/or Urdhva Danursasan (Upward Facing Bow).
• Balance Boost Yoga with Elena Brower: A sequence of symmetrically arranged standing poses, hip openers and backbends to heighten our awareness of how and where our attention pools in our bodies, giving us information about how we can redistribute our attention and usher balance into our lives both on and off our yoga mats.
• Refine Your Standing Balances with Jason Crandell: Afraid you’re going to fall over and take out a row of fellow students while in tree pose? Fear not. This thorough practice will refine all of your standing balances and help you stay centered. You will focus on developing strength, flexibility and poise while practicing tree pose (Vrksasana), half moon pose (Ardha Chandrasana), eagle pose (Garudasana), Warrior 3 (Virabhadrasana III) and many more.
• Divine Alignment with Kia Miller: Explore how the way you stand informs each pose you do. Find your true ‘Tadasana- Mountain Pose’ and slowly build to a balancing posture – Warrior 3. Enjoy challenging yourself in this sequence and finding your own Divine Alignment. Props – 2 Blocks.

The sixth limb of yoga, dharana, is affectionately referred to as “concentration.” It’s a limb that can get overlooked as either unimportant or too difficult to bother with, especially since its fuller, less tangible translation is “the binding of the mind to one place, object or idea.” This conjures up images of master yogis staring at objects until they’re “one” with them. And while there can be some truth to this scenario, it’s not entirely accurate. Dharana, in reality, is one of the most important parts of yoga there is, and learning how to practice it (because it is definitely a practice) may be one of the most worthwhile things we can do for our brains.

This is party because dharana and the next limb of yoga – dhyana, or meditation – are two sides of the same coin. Conceptually they can be separated, but in practice, that makes less sense. Dharana, at its very heart, can be thought of as the work it takes – the practice – to get your mind to the point where it’s ready for meditation. So dharana isn’t so much the state of concentration, but it’s more the act of brining your “monkey mind” back to whatever it is you’re focusing on. Again, and again, and again.

Many yogis say that for beginners, choosing a thing to focus on, rather than an idea, is the way to go. The object can be a physical object, the breath, or an oral mantra. The idea is just to have something outside yourself that serves as a point to draw the attention toward. “I usually recommend practicing in the morning, before you get into the machinations and manipulations of your daily life,” says Thomas Amelio, managing director of the Open Center in New York City. “I recommend setting a timer – just to 10 or 15 minutes if you’re beginning – so you don’t have to think about it. Pick something to concentrate on, and try it for a few weeks or months.”

Most people, including Amelio, know that this is easier said than done. The problem is that the mind goes where it wants. So while the idea of intently focusing on, say, a flower is all well and good, the mind is naturally going to wander away from it, especially at first. Swami Satchidananda writes about a funny scenario that we’ve all experienced in some iteration, where a person is trying to practice dharana with a rose. “As you look at the rose,” he writes, “the mind will try to go somewhere. The minute you begin, the mind will say, ‘Ah, yes, I remember she sent me a rose like that for my last birthday.’… And then, ‘After that we had dinner. Ah, it was the best dinner. Then we went to the movies. What was that movie? King Kong?’ It will all happen within two minutes. Even less than two minutes. So, on what are you meditating now? Not on a rose, but on King Kong.”

Because just about everyone experiences the unwelcome King Kong meditation, Amelio says he usually recommends practicing dharana with a mantra, since “it gives you something – a vibration – to focus on. And an internalized mantra can actually be more powerful than an oral one because you’re occupying your mind. If you’re repeating a mantra aloud, you can still be thinking about what you’re going to wear to work the next day. But an internalized one takes up that space.”

If you’re not using a mantra, though, and you’re practicing concentration with an image or an object, the most important thing to remember is that the goal is in the practice. Bringing the mind back to the rose – as many times as it takes – is what dharana is all about. Satchidananda points out that the practice of dharana is not concentrating on the rose – it’s the act of redirecting the mind, again and again. He writes, “This very practice itself is called concentration: the mind running, your bringing it back; its running, your bringing it back. You are taming a monkey. Once it’s tamed, it will just listen to you. You will be able to say, ‘Okay, sit there quietly.’ And it will. At that point you are meditating. Until then you are training yourself to meditate. Training your mind to meditate is what is called dharana.”

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that dharana can help us with our focus in any walk of life, not just when we sit down to meditate. Amelio stresses the fact that there’s just something innately gratifying about focusing intensely on something – like getting lost in a book or abandoning yourself to the beauty of the ocean. “People often feel that they’re scattered in day to day life,” he says. “They get taste of dharana and they’re surprised. Concentration gets easier as you practice it. It’s joyous to concentrate on something, there’s pleasure in it. When you get familiar with dharana, the mind becomes a much less restless place to be.”

Have you practiced dharana? What do you find is the most effective way?

Alice G. Walton, PhD is a health and science writer, and began practicing (and falling in love with) yoga last year. She is the Associate Editor at TheDoctorWillSeeYouNow.com and a Contributor at Forbes.com. Alice will be exploring yoga’s different styles, history, and philosophy, and sharing what she learns here on the YogaGlo blog. You can follow Alice on Twitter @AliceWalton and Facebook at Facebook.com/alicegwalton.

Ever feel like you’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders? Well that just might be the case. Usually, our emotional energy will manifest itself in the form of pain or injury in a specific part of the physical body. For most of us, our shoulders and neck carry the brunt of our stress and if we are not careful, this stress can lead to shoulder pain, tense muscles and if ignored, can lead to injury.

Luckily, several studies show how practicing yoga might help to stretch and open the shoulders, relieving pain and tension.

You can use our Search Feature to search through all of our Yoga for Shoulders classes on your own. To get you started without searching, we’re highlighting six shoulder classes in a variety of styles, levels and durations that will be sure to help release pent-up tension and tightness from the neck and shoulders.

• Open Your Shoulders with Noah Maze: This short and focused class will open your shoulders and upper back. This is a great class if you store excess tension in these areas. Stand up from your desk and do this routine in the middle of the day, or use it to prep you for backward bending or any other category of poses. Props needed: 2 blocks and a strap.
• Upper Back & Shoulder Flow with Dice lida-Klein: This flow is all about the upper back and shoulders. Drawing the shoulder blades down the back and pressing the bottom tips of shoulder blades in towards the heart is the general theme of the practice. Using arm variations like garudasana (eagle), gomukhasana (cow face) and hands behind the back, we open the front, side and back of the shoulders. Enjoy yogis!
• Happy Shoulders with Kathryn Budig: This everyday shoulder sequence is a great way to help flexibility and release build up tension from the day. Put this into your daily routine to keep happy, open shoulders.
• Toes to Top: Shoulder Girdle with Tara Judelle: The 6th class in the Toes to Top Series – Shoulder Girdle. Working upwards from the heart, this class focuses on the construct of the shoulders in order to help facilitate the upward moving energy from the heart to the brain.
• Shoulder Saver with Felicia Tomasko: Save your shoulders with this combination of Yin and Restorative that uses two blocks to help release tension in the neck, shoulders, spine, and hips. When we use the practice and the shapes of the poses to soften, we can find a sense of ease in and a positive relationship with our bodies.
• Strong Practice for Those with Shoulder Injuries with Jodi Blumstein: So you have an injury and you miss your strong practice?? This is an ashtanga practice designed specifically to deal with shoulder injuries.We do NO chaturanga and all of the primary series, with some modifications. The vinyasa we do in this class is designed to strengthen and stabilize the shoulder while eliminating any irritation. This is an important class for anyone working with injuries. You need a strap and a block.

The Spinal Column is one of the most vital parts of our body. It’s like the trunk of a tree, supporting the entire body structure and lodging the all-important nervous system. If your spine is unhealthy, it will impair your nervous system function. If your nervous system function is impaired, then your body’s ability to function is impaired. The good news is that several studies show how yoga can help strengthen back muscles and lengthen the ligaments in the back, promoting flexibility and taking stress off of the facet joints, vertebrae and intervertebral discs, reducing the risk of incurring degenerative spinal disorders like sciatica, osteoporosis, herniated disks and scoliosis.

You can use our Search Feature to search through all of our Yoga for the Spine classes on your own. To get you started without searching, we’re highlighting six spine classes in a variety of styles, levels and durations that will be sure to help leave your spine feeling tension-free!

• Cultivate Extension in the Spine with Tiffany Cruikshank: In our forward oriented world the tendency to slouch puts a lot of pressure on the spine & the internal organs. This class focuses on cultivating extension in the spine in some simple ways and some more precarious positions. Take what you need and find some expansion through the front of the body to take some pressure off the spine and the internal organs in the process. Some arms balancing variations & transitions included.
• Yin Yoga for the Spine with Felicia Tomasko: Find sanctuary in the spine with this slow and languid Yin practice that focuses on forward folds and twists with a connection to the refuge of the Earth. We begin with a long seated forward fold to fully let go of tension in the neck, shoulders and back and then move into a supine series of twists to continue to wring out the spine and hips. Drop in and soften in into the sanctuary of the layers of the inner self.
• Strong Legs Healthy Spine Yoga with Elena Brower: Sequence of standing poses, including backbends and twists, to learn how to use our legs optimally to create both stability and receptivity. When we create lower back stability, we are able to receive our gifts, act from our highest potential, and offer ourselves to serve in the world, whatever the context.
• Open Upper Chest, Shoulders & Spine with Stephanie Snyder: This sequence is designed for the athlete (or anyone) who has tight upper chest, shoulders, and spine. Activities like swimming, weight lifting, and strength training can shorten, tighten, and dehydrate these muscles. This can cause upper back pain and poor posture that can inhibit breath function which will limit you in all ways. We will move through a vinyasa-based class that will open the shoulders, chest, and upper back to create freedom and space around your heart!
• Anti-Aging Tonic with Kia Miller: Apana Kriya. This simple but powerful series of exercises is a perfect anti-aging tonic. It moves the spine, boosts the digestive system and brings a youthful energetic glow! Practice regularly to gain maximum detoxification benefits. Best practiced on an empty stomach. Awaken your excellence!
• Release Spine Tension with Jason Crandell: Target those tight, achy spots in your back with a full complement of twists, sidebends and backbends. Learn how subtle-shifts of awareness and action in your practice can leave your spine feeling tension-free. In addition to sun-salutations and standing poses, you will practice several uncommon twists that are sure to become staples in your routine. You will finish this revitalizing practice with several upward-facing bow poses.