About to get on yet another flight? Worried you’ll be stiff and miserable by the time you land and get to your hotel? Not to worry! We’ve been filming yoga for travel classes for a few years now and have built up a library of classes you can take with you wherever you go. Whether you want to sneak a few poses in pre-flight or need to fully open up and unravel the moment you get to your hotel after a long trip, our Travel Yoga videos section is your go-to guide.

A few must-take classes as you travel to and fro this holiday season:

• Find Home Wherever You Are with Marc Holzman – This 30 minute class can be performed before or after you travel to ground your energy and find your sense of home. Various thigh stretches ending in a delicious wall sequence of headstand, viparita karani, and shoulder stand.
• Long Trip Prep with Felicia Tomasko - Get ready for a long trip with this short but sweet whole body practice that includes poses to open up the shoulders, spine and hips for happy traveling.
• Pre-Flight Yoga with Dice lida-Klein - Traveling soon? Take this tutorial with you and practice near your gate, pre-flight! Done from a seated position, we use wide-legged fold (upavistha konasana), bound-angle pose (baddhakonasana), forward fold (paschimottanasana) and seated twist (marichyasana C) to open our inner groin, hamstrings, hips and low back. Find a space that’s clear –  never mind your fellow travelers. They’re just looking because they wish they could feel as good as you do before the flight.
• Mid-Travel Yoga Practice with Jo Tastula - So ~ you’re in a crowded space…nowhere to put down a mat and fully stretch out but your poor body is suffering??? Here’s some ideas for stretches that you can do standing in the airport, at the train station, at the post office – that won’t bring too much attention to you. Warning; great amounts of humor needed when doing yoga in public spaces
• Post-Travel Rebalance with Jason Crandell - When I get off a plane or out of a car, I want to do 3 things: open my hips, fix my back and appreciate that I’m at my destination. This is my go-to practice to re-balance my body. It has just enough movement and strength to make you feel alive, manage your jet-lag, and help reboot your system.

There are many others to take along the way, including this Harshada Wagner “Ready for Anything” meditation that several of you recently mentioned helped you during a stressful flight.

Fly boldly, travel confidently, knowing you have many tools at your fingertips for remaining calm and loose in transit and unwinding properly when you get there. And as our YogaGlo teachers have pointed out, it takes a healthy dose of humor to practice yoga in public spaces. We know you can do it! Enjoy!

In the last year and a half, I moved my base from Los Angeles to Bali, and then from Bali to to the world.  Spending so much time in hotel rooms, I realized that these amazing little spots around the world are check points of potentiality to further us on our journey.  Below are five things that are amazing about staying in hotel rooms for your yoga and your life…

• #1 Breaking patterns. The coolest thing about staying in a new hotel whether for business or pleasure, whether the room is a dump or high- end is that it re-patterns your patterns.  The layout, the design, the shower size, the bed, the windows, the view, the people all are stimulus for the brain to accept a new paradigm and shake up an old.

• #2 The liminal space.  In the space of a hotel, I’ve had amazing transformations. Maybe it’s the pads of paper laid out everywhere, the free stationary, leaving behind friends and family, and having dedicated alone time- whatever it is, there is the permission to use the room as a place to lay down all the “stuff” of your usual place, and come into a neutral comfort zone and see what you really are.

• #3 The mirrors.  Don’t know what your house or apartment set up is, but I never have as many mirrors as I have in hotels.  Usually there are two offering the rare profile view, and sometimes the even rarer back view.  This is not about vanity- just seeing, a new perspective.  To know about my shoulders it helps me to study them in a mirror, or to try out some yoga in front of a mirror is a different experience, in order to SEE what your body is doing.  You then get to see what a teacher sees in class.  The mirror in this case becomes the teacher, just one.  Can you do it without judgement and simply observe in awe and wonder at this body that wishes to know itself.

• #4 Walls. Ok, let’s face it, maybe you have a wall at home, and maybe you don’t that you can kick up into handstand, or try L pose on.  But every hotel I’ve stayed in has plenty of wall space.  And usually the wallpaper is stain proof.  You’re alone, in a hotel, might as well kick up to handstand, try out L pose, put on music or yogaglo, and find a class that utilizes wall space.

• #5 You can create your own personal yoga retreat. This is your room, you decide.  You have YogaGlo, your travelling studio.  One busy person I know just told me that what is great, is that rather than do an hour and a half class, she takes 10 and 15 minute classes throughout the day.  Even if you’re travelling on business you can do a half hour in the morning, night time yoga before bed, meditation the next morning.  You can choose to make this liminal space an advance- where you take advantage of alone time in order to nurture yourself….

Tara Judelle is a certified Anusara yoga instructor who has taught both nationally and internationally for over 10 years. Inspired by the work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s Body Mind Centering approach, as well as her in-depth studies with Sally Kempton, Carlos Pomeda and Paul Muller-Ortega, Tara utilizes the tools of experiential anatomy, along with a lucid and creative presentation of the yogic tradition, to discover our movement vocabulary, leading students on a progressive and co-creative journey within the multi-faceted play of perceptual awareness. You can practice with her on YogaGlo.

• Sixth Chakra Meditation – Third Eye Chakra. This meditation focuses on the ajna energy center located in the space between the eyebrows.
• Sixth Chakra Practice – Your Vision, Your Light. What you see really is what you get. Shift your perception and perspective into a state of complete acceptance and watch your body unfold through this sequence of standing poses, forward bends, splits, hip openers, a moment of restoration and meditation to open your eyes to the light within and around you.

These classes, taken together, will help you shift your view of yourself, others and the world around you. Enjoy!

• Fifth Chakra Meditation – Throat Chakra. This meditation focuses on vishuddha energy center located in the throat.
• Fifth Chakra Practice – Your Truth, Your Voice. Attentive listening, radical honesty and why that matters in your practice – or in any realm of your life. Use this sequence of standing balances and standing backbends, hip openers, supported plow and shoulderstand, as well as some Reiki for your throat, a restorative backbend and meditation, to open your throat and locate both the grace and the wisdom in your voice.

Explore you unique voice and all that brings to your life.

• Fourth Chakra Meditation – Heart Chakra. This meditation focuses on the anahata energy center located in the center of the chest.
• Fourth Chakra Practice - Love and Be Loved. Love is the subtle force that connects us all; we are all here on the planet to learn how to love and love fully. Use this sequence of standing poses, arm balance variations, baby and big backbends, hip openers and meditation to give and receive love by asking for entry into your own heart.

Go forth and get your fourth chakra on!

• Third Chakra Meditation –  Belly Chakra. This meditation focuses on the manipura energy center located in the core of the abdomen. In today’s world, this chakra is a major one for us. When the contraction here goes, a big freedom ensues! Keep with it. This is also a great one to touch in on during the day. “Gut check” yourself from moment to moment and allow space and freedom there.
• Third Chakra Practice – Manifest Transformation. Ignite the fire of your will and take action, in practice and in your life. Feel into your solar plexus, the spirit of the light in your body, through a series of standing poses and arm balancings, leading into seated twists and meditation.

Have you had a chance to take these classes and work with your third chakra yet? It is powerful stuff! Let us know how your chakra practice is coming along and if you have any questions. We’re all learning so it’s a safe space to ask away!

Second Chakra Meditation with Harshada Wagner – Sexual Chakra meditation. This meditation focuses on the svadhishtana energy center located in the core of the pelvis.

Second Chakra Practice with Elena Brower – Chakra 2 – Svadisthana (Navel) Chakra. Creative, Compassionate Freedom. Clarify your foundational alignment and open the flow of your light through this sequence of cleansing twists, both standing and seated, with breathwork and meditation to close.

Enjoy this exploration of the second chakra and let us know if you have any questions along the way.

Upward-Facing Dog and I didn’t become fast friends upon our first introduction. For years I found the pose alternately painful and confounding. These days I relish it—I love the feeling of opening the whole sheath of the front of my body, from the top of my feet to the tight, fibrous abdominal tissue between my hip points, on up to my front chest. But it took years and a lot of conscious effort to feel this way.

And it will never be a particularly beautiful pose in my body. For years in my work at Yoga Journal, I helped scout, select, and hire our models. I worked with them on set and was constantly astounded by the beautiful shapes they could make with their bodies. It was hard not to get attached to wishing my body could do those things and look that way, too. But here’s a little secret that I learned on those shoots: Everyone and I mean everyone has one or two poses that look or feel like total stinkers. So, lately I’ve been channeling Tina Fey’s motto when I consider whether or not my poses are beautiful: “…always remember the most important Rule of Beauty. ‘Who cares?’”

Having said that, I do care about how the pose feels in my body and I care that I’m practicing it in such a way that it’s beneficial to me. So, I thought I’d share a little bit of my experience in case you, too, are struggling with this ubiquitous pose and want to nudge it to a more enjoyable—or at least a more peaceful—place.

The Awkward Meeting
Cut to the first few years of Updog: Not only did it pinch my lower back and neck, it seemed to me like it was pinching everyone else’s lower backs and necks, too! I spent many a class sneaking looks at my fellow classmates trying to figure out how to do the pose only to find them looking like more like neckless worms than stretching doggies. Shoulders squinched up by the ears, heads thrown back, red-faces—this is what 99% of my ashtanga class looked like. And that super-flexible girl in the corner who had a perfect, effortless arch in her back? I wanted to look just like her. I wanted to have a perfect arch, an open spine. But, she was obviously given a genetic gift from the backbend gods. That was never going to be me.

The Denial Years
And so, I entered The Denial Years. During The Denial Years, I stopped doing the pose completely. It didn’t make any sense to me to do something that felt uncomfortable, even downright aggressive on my body. And I wasn’t progressing anywhere in the pose. It felt stagnant.

Fortunately, around this time I started going to anusara classes and I learned all about Cobra Pose. Cobra Pose was a balm for my aching, confused vertebrae. I could go on and on and ON about this pose, but suffice it to say that, in my humble opinion, Cobra Pose is the foundational pose that we should all be taught before Updog. Here’s why: It strengthens your whole back body, which makes Updog easier. You can also rise up as high or as low as you need to in the pose, which makes it far safer on your lower back and sacrum. And finally, it brings kinesthetic awareness to the upper back. Before I did Cobra and I would crank myself into Updog, all I could feel was my lower back. My upper back wasn’t even in the picture. Forget trying to open it or press my shoulderblades into it—I couldn’t even feel it.

Cobra changed that. By keeping my elbows bent and my legs on the ground, I could suddenly draw the heads of my armbones back, spread my collarbones wide, and feel that indescribably awesome feeling of opening my chest. Instead of racing through each vinyasa, Cobra encouraged me to slow down, to observe, and to adjust my body accordingly. And eventually, Cobra coaxed my upper back and front body into opening just a little bit more.

The Reconciliation
I didn’t consciously decide to begin doing the pose again. It happened naturally, organically. It just felt right to press up into it. (And there are still days when I will substitute Cobra in my Sun Salutations until I feel ready to lift into Updog.) There’s no way for me to detect exactly what happened in my musculoskeletal system that enabled me to move the focus of the pose from my lower back and neck up into my upper back and chest. It was a series of small transformations that made the pose accessible. But there’s no doubt in my mind that learning the foundational actions and principles of alignment in Cobra led me to The Reconciliation phase: Cobra helped open my upper back just enough that I could actually lift my chest and pull it through my arms a little more. This helped relieve my lower back. Cobra taught me to use my legs. Perhaps most importantly, Cobra helped me to stop focusing on creating a beautiful back arch—because that only spurred me to jam my vertebrae together aggressively—and I started to focus on stretching the front of my body. Instead of fixating on the outer form of the pose, I started to work the pose from the inside out.

For many years in my home practice, I also tried the pose on blocks. I still love this variation because the added height under the hands creates a feeling of spaciousness all long the spine. Try it for yourself and see how it feels.

Practice:
I recommend trying this variation after you’ve done some Sun Salutations. You can either do 5 Sun Salutations with Lunges or 5 “A” series Sun Salutations. Whichever one you do, warm up your spine with Cobra instead of Updog to begin.

Once you feel warm and ready, come down onto your hands and knees and grab two blocks. Place your blocks in front of you on your mat about shoulder-distance apart. Next place your palms on the blocks and extend your legs back into Upward-Facing Dog. Take several breaths here, noticing how different it feels to be up on the blocks, versus having your palms flat on the floor.

You can really play around here and experiment with different actions in the pose. Here are a few possibilities:

Bend your elbows slight and move both shoulders in a circle: Take them up your ears and then draw the back and slightly down (not too harshly down or you’ll stress your neck). Feel as though your shoulder blades are pressing against your back and up—like they are supporting and lifting your heart. As your heart lifts, your breastbone, your collarbones, and eventually your chin will lift, too.

Keeping your elbows bent, move your tailbone down toward the floor – you’ll feel your lower back get longer and you might have more space to open your upper back.

Finally, engage those legs! Hug them in toward each other as you press the baby toe side of your feet down. Easier said than done. Even if you can’t get those little toes down, you can visualize it and it will create a pattern of alignment in your body. Straighten your knees and move the backs of your thighs toward the ceiling. If you begin to overarch your lower back when you do this, remember to draw the tailbone down.

Enjoy building the strength and the foundational alignment for this fundamental pose!

An editor at Yoga Journal for nearly a decade, Andrea Ferretti has had the honor of writing about and learning from some of the best yoga teachers in the West. She has been greatly influenced by Sarah Powers, Sally Kempton, Cyndi Lee, and her husband, Jason Crandell. For more of her personal writing, visit her blog, Mindful Living.

We’ve updated our Yoga Poses Video Library to show you what different poses look like and we’ve added a lot more poses for you to peruse at your leisure. Use this pose library as a reference before or after taking a class that features a certain pose, use it as a fun fact resource (who knew a cross-legged sit was called Fire Log Pose?) or simply as a way to playfully engage with some of the standard yoga poses. This format will allow you to play the pose again and again outside the context of a full yoga class so you can master the finer points of alignment. Or you can get your Sanskrit on. Your choice!

As you playfully peruse, let us know if there are other poses you’d like us to add. We’ll be featuring a pose a week very soon. Enjoy!

Have you ever wondered what having “too much pitta” means or why you might want to “balance your vata dosha” as part of your practice? We have too, which is why we’re all lucky to have Felicia Tomasko, who serves on the board of directors of the California Association of Ayurvedic Medicine and the National Ayurvedic Medical Association, teaching us what’s what and how to weave Ayurvedic principles into our yoga practice.

If you haven’t yet explored the Ayurveda classes on our site, here’s a taste of the foundational classes and lectures we’ve created and some of the yoga classes you’ll love, love, love once you get started:

• 30 Minute Talk on Calming Vata Dosha through Restorative Practice – The vata dosha is comprised of the energetic qualities of the elements of air and ether, or empty space. It controls the movement in our bodies and the excessive movement we are exposed to on a daily basis increases and can even aggravate this dosha, leaving us more vulnerable to feeling worn-out and depleted.
• 90 minute Restorative Class to Calm Vata Dosha – Slow, languid, luxurious restorative practices using fluid circular movements, supportive held poses, forward folds and time on the earth help to calm the nervous system, the heart and the mind and help us recover from the ravaging effects of unremitting excessive stress. When our nerves are raw and frayed, a compassionate restorative practice helps us to press the reset button to feel rejuvenated.
• 30 Minute Talk on Balancing the Pitta Dosha – The primary element of the pitta dosha is fire. It controls all of the forces of transformation in our internal body, Maintaining a healthy relationship with our inner fire is key to promoting our health and well-being. How do we keep the flame of our inner digestive fire burning without it spreading throughout our entire body like a forest fire? This is the subject of our discussion.
• 90 Minute Class to Juggle the Flames of Pitta Dosha – We begin with cooling pranayama practices to reduce excess heat in the body and then compassionately explore a slow vinyasa practice that aims to create balance in the central core of the body, the seat of pitta with postures in a variety of positions that strengthen and open without overheating. For the fiery pitta who needs challenge, we flow through twisting balancing postures connecting feet to the earth. While this practice may at times be warming, its slow pace and use of cooling breath practices walks the Middle Path.
• 30 Minute Talk on Cultivating a Healthy Kapha Dosha – The Earth is ultimately the source of all of our nurturing, support and unconditional love and the kapha dosha, the energy of water and earth embodies this fully. In our need to feel grounded and supported, sometimes we look for love in all the wrong places, or other times the weight of the world around us is heavy and stagnant throughout our bodies. How do we create more stimulation and circulation and move energy with compassion and love? That’s the question explored here.
• 90 Minute Class to Compassionately Balance Kapha Dosha – Heart opening poses, backbends and twits all increase circulation through the upper chest, the seat of the kapha dosha in the body. These types of poses lift our mood, stimulate mind and body and allow our inner luminosity to shine forth, clearing off the dust and debris. While this is a warming practice, it is suitable for all levels, including beginners and the emphasis is on stimulating while maintaining a strong stable connection to the earth and cultivating safety with each expansive pose.

Once you’ve had a chance to familiarize (or re-familiarize!) yourself with the foundational Ayurvedic principles and how they can become part of your regular yoga practice, you can take other Ayurveda classes on our site and be on the lookout for new classes added regularly.