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.

Having a hard time getting a morning yoga practice in? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one! With all of life’s responsibilities, most of us don’t get enough sleep as is, so the last thing we want to do is get up early when we don’t have to! The good news is that having an evening yoga practice is important as well. Several studies show how an evening yoga practice can help calm the nervous system, reduce physical and mental tension, helps you to unwind after a long day and can even help with sleeping issues.

You can use our Search Feature to search through all of our Evening Yoga classes on your own. To get you started without searching, we’re highlighting six evening yoga classes in a variety of styles, levels and durations that will be sure to help you unwind from a long day.

• Evening Yoga with Marc Holzman: Nighttime Yoga. Full range 30 minute practice to ease you from your busy day into the evening.
• Goodnight Meditation with Harshada Wagner: Goodnight Meditation. Designed for the end of the day, this meditation guides the viewer through a deep relaxation and release.
• Evening Sleep Prep Flow with Tiffany Cruikshank: Unwind with a flow that will get you moving right away and then ease off into stillness. We’ll meet the restlessness of the mind with movement and then slowly ease in so the mind settles and prepares for a deep restful sleep.
• Evening Restorative with Noah Maze: This offers a calming sequence of standing and seated supported forward bends and inversions (supported shoulderstand), perfect at the end of a busy day, to restore and come into a deep state of quiescence. We use 3+ blankets and a folding chair in this sequence.
• Evening Simmer Down with Amy Ippoliti: A delicious practice designed with specific poses to help you release your day and create the kind of tomorrow you dream of, while setting yourself up for a restful slumber. A block and a blanket might be helpful and make sure you have some wall space as we use it for a couple minutes.
• Evening Wind Down with Tara Judelle: A quick evening practice to release your day, and settle into night. Includes, standing forward bend (uttanasana), headstand (sirsasana), seated wide legged forward bend (upavista konasana), supine leg stretches (suptapadangusthasana series), supine bound angle pose (supta baddhakonasana), Corpse pose (savasana).

One of the most important elements of yoga is our breath. Also known as Pranayama. Over the course of our lives, whether we are aware of it or not, our breath becomes quick and shallow. Constricted breathing can lead to lack of oxygen to the blood and to the brain which can result in a number of health problems. Several studies show that proper breathing sends oxygen to every single cell in your body which purifies the blood stream and in turn, will help all the internal organs function properly.

This week we are focusing on developing your breath’s depth and rhythm to unblock restrictions:

You can use our new Search Feature to search through all of our Yoga for Breath/Pranayama classes on your own. To get you started without searching, we’re highlighting six classes in a variety of styles, levels and durations that are designed to help heal the body and clear the mind.

• Advanced Breath Meditation with Harshada Wagner: Pranayama is the art of using the breath to heal the body and quiet the mind. In this 30 minute session, Harshada guides a simple but powerful sequence of deep breathing exercises.
• Daily Pranayama Practice with Kia Miller: Energize yourself with this simple but effective practice of pranayama. This is a wonderful daily practice.
• Breath Flow with Dice lida-Klein: A level 2 flow that is focused on the Breath. Alignment points are given throughout the practice, but we try to connect to our breathing regardless of the difficulty of the asana. This is a full spectrum class with external and internal poses, as well as inversions, backbends, twists and forward folds. Enjoy yogis!
• Cultivate Awareness of Your Breath with Jason Crandell: 100 out of 100 yoga teachers are likely to say that breathing is the most essential element of the hatha and vinyasa yoga practice. Yet, how often do teachers actually teach how to breath smoothly and skillfully? Speaking for myself, not often enough. This practice will create deep relaxation in your body and mind by cultivating awareness of your breath and subtle energy.
• Introduction to Pranayama with Christina Sell: This gentle introduction to pranayama is perfect for the new student who wishes to develop a pranayama practice. Basics of reclined posture and seated posture are reviewed while guidance is given for how to create and maintain a full yogic breath and how to establish ujjayi pranayama.
• Pranayama with Jodi Blumstein: The focus of this class is Pranayama. We begin with a discussion of Pranayama and an introductory practice, then we do the half primary with the focus on the breath and the subtle energy body.

We are thrilled to share some new site features that many of you have asked for over the past several months. When you login to YogaGlo today, the site will look a bit different so please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the changes below so you can get Glo-ing right away.

• Dashboard - We’ve enhanced your YogaGlo Member Dashboard to help you more easily find, manage, schedule and take yoga classes you love. This brief tutorial video will step you through the new layout so you can start to use all the new features we built just for you. View the Dashboard tutorial now.
• Queue -You now have the ability to add YogaGlo classes to a Queue for watching later. You can schedule those classes to take during the Day or Night and get email reminders about your planned classes to more easily keep your intention to practice yoga regularly. This brief video tutorial will give you the highlights of how this new feature works. View the Queue tutorial now.

Ever wonder how yoga helps your feet? Your knees? Your head? Your heart? Ever taken an “all around” class that touches on each part of the body in sixty minutes but found yourself wanting more when it was over?

If you are interested in exploring the ways in which yoga can expand and enlighten every part of your body, Tara Judelle‘s seven-part Toes to Top series is for you. In this series Tara explores the architecture of the human body through yoga:

• Toes to Top: Feet – Exploring the architecture of the human body through continuous movement, centering awareness in the stability and the mobility of the feet.
• Toes to Top: Knees – Continuous movement focusing on this largest joint in the body and initiating movement from the base of the tibia: Includes Garudasana, Ardha Chandrasana to Ardha Matsyendrasana, Agnistambhasana, and Gomukhasana.
• Toes to Top: Pelvis – This class will explore, in detail, the bowl of the pelvis, its movement, its stability and mobility and its seat as the center of our weight bearing self.
• Toes to Top: Core – The core is not only the organization center for our power and locomotion but in this journey of the vertical construct, our energy springloads with fire as we ignite the solar plexus, kidneys, and center for digestion and intuition.
• Toes to Top: Heart – Building our body architecture upwards, we use the tools from the previous centers: Feet, knees, pelvis, core in order to localize our energy and movements into the heart space.
• Toes to Top: 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.
• Toes to Top: Head – This includes headstand, shoulderstand, pranayama and meditation.

There you have it: seven sixty-minute classes exploring the body. Set a goal for yourself to take this series and let us know what you learn about your body, about yoga, about yourself. Enjoy!

Have you ever gotten halfway through a yoga class only to realize the teacher is about to do a pose you’ve never seen, certainly never mastered, and don’t know how to do? Ever wanted to perfect a pose you’ve fallen in love with but can’t quite get into? Wondering about the best way to transition from one pose to another? We’ve been there.

We’ve started a tutorials series to help break down some key poses – the big challenge/peak poses and some of the basic poses that never get taught – in short instructional videos that you can play again and again to practice. In several cases, variations on getting into the pose from other poses are offered so the poses can become more and more accessible to you as you practice.

We’ll be adding more tutorials on a regular basis, so check the Tutorials section regularly.

Until then, here are some tutorials you might want to explore to get started:

• Chatturanga and Up Dog Tutorial
• Downward Facing Dog Tutorial
• Jumping Forward from Down Dog Tutorial
• Lotus Pose Tutorial Series
• Yoga Transitions Tutorial
• Bakasana Tutorial
• Getting into Handstand Tutorial

If there are other tutorials you’d like us to create, please let us know and we’ll do just that! Enjoy!

Ah, Lotus Pose. Padmasana. The pose you think of when you think of yoga. The pose that is elusive to many though it looks like it should. just. be. so. easy.

Thanks to Jason Crandell, it eventually will be. His four part tutorial on Lotus will get you ready, help you develop approaches, and ease you step-by-step into the pose. Here are each of the four classes, ready when you are:

• Lotus Pose Tutorial: Part One – The first episode of our 4-part practice and tutorial dedicated to developing lotus pose (padmasana). You will emphasize opening your inner-groins and learn how to fold your legs into lotus with greater safety, comfort and skill (read, your knees will probably be much, much happier with this approach). Of course, you will also open your outer-hips and glide through a couple of sun-salutations and relevant standing poses.
• Lotus Pose Tutorial: Part Two – The second episode of our 4-part practice and tutorial dedicated to developing lotus pose (padmasana). In this segment you will prepare for lotus by focusing on opening your outer-hips and deep hip-rotators. You will also learn a second way to approach folding your legs into lotus. And, again, you will work on a few relevant standing poses, open your inner-groins, and drop into a few sun salutations (I even sneak a couple of mellow backbends into this one!)
• Lotus Pose Tutorial: Part Three – The third episode of our 4-part practice and tutorial dedicated to developing lotus pose (padmasana). In this practice you will prepare for lotus with a combination of outer-hip and inner-groin opening. And, here’s how this practice is significantly different from episodes 1 and 2: you will do quite a bit of deep opening while laying on your back. You will develop an even more refined understanding of the neuro-muscular pattern of lotus by working on folding your legs without using your hands. A third method of coming into lotus is presented.
• Lotus Post Tutorial: Part Four – The last episode of our 4-part practice and tutorial dedicated to developing lotus pose (padmasana). Now that you’ve developed steadiness and ease in lotus, what’s next (other than sitting quietly, of course)? This sequence is your answer. After practicing several deep hip and groin openers you will transition into a series of half and full-lotus variations, including lotus in handstand.

Get out there and get your lotus on!