Private yoga session available now at Rain City Massage Therapy

Rain City Massage Therapy welcomes 

Sarah Jamieson, Certified yoga teacher

 

Sarah Jamieson graduated from Langara College as a Certified Yoga Teacher in 2009. Her formal continuing education includes: Advanced Training at the Anand Prakash Yoga Ashram in Rishikesh, India with Yogi Vishvketu, Restorative Yoga training with renowned yoga teacher and physical therapist Judith Lasater, additional training in Yoga Anatomy with Leslie Kaminoff of The Breathing Project in New York and Prenatal Yoga Training with Janice Clarfield.

Sarah's approach to teaching yoga focuses on awareness, alignment and breath. Through awareness, she emphasizes the development of your own ability to sense what is right for your body - and what is not. In many ways, alignment is simply a tool to safely guide awareness, and staying present with your breath helps to foster the presence necessary to explore, observe and listen.

Sarah is passionate about making yoga accessible, and she strongly believes that anyone can do yoga. She hopes to challenge any ideas you have about "not being able to do" yoga and invites you indulge your curiosity about practicing yoga with her.  

Students have told Sarah that one of the things they appreciate about her is that she makes them feel like they really have a choice about whether or not to try things when she is working with them - and that the freedom often helps them feel more courageous and willing to explore.

If you are interested in working with Sarah to support injury recovery, to develop physical mobility, to build strength, address anxiety or mood disorders, or to support general well-being, please email yoga@sarahjamieson.ca or call778.549.8374 her to arrange an appointment through Rain City Massage Therapy.   

Posture 3D style: Part 2

Posture 3D style: Part 2

So before I get deep into the subject of posture and how to sit up straight I feel the need to acknowledge that this blog post is probably a good 3 months overdue.   Somehow I have found every form of procrastination possible, from putting up a Christmas tree, to sweeping floors, before divulging my thoughts on proper posture. 

In some sort of weird “cosmic” way I’m actually happy that I didn’t post what I initially had written for part 2.  Here’s why, I had a huge list of anatomical, position specific directions that were over the top and I think confusing to the average Joe or Jamey.  For a fellow colleague or an individual like myself, my in depth analysis of how many degrees your pelvis should be tilting and how your adductors should be engaging, would have been an appropriate “how to” guide for posture. For the Joe’s and Jamey’s my “how to” guide would have flown right over their heads.  Which defeats the purpose of this post.

The massage therapist in me wants the Joe’s and Jamey’s to connect with their bodies and  to have the felt experience of what good posture feels like.  This is because life can get overwhelming and stressful, and lets face it, we all need some simple tools that we can pull out of our back pockets when were slumping over our desks and computers.

So here it is posture 3D style:

The most important part of the posture process is to connect with your body.  I would suggest getting comfortable and maybe start by closing your eyes and taking some big belly breaths in and out.

The only directional tips I’m going to give you is, if you are standing press into the four corners of your feet or if your seated take your sit bones, the bones in your bum, to the back corner of the seat/chair.  This will give you a supported foundation.

Now that your foundation is stable what your going to do is visualize your body expanding in three planes, 3D style.  Start with front to back, then add side to side and then finish with bottom to top. With each direction take a belly breath in and out and imagine your breath expanding your body.  You can repeat this for as many cycles as you like.

It’s that simple!

Again, I could intellectualize posture until the cows come home but this is at the risk of all the Joe’s and the Jamey’s being stuck in their heads and not in their bodies.  Which would lead to a bunch of useless information floating around in brain matter that has no connection to what you are feeling on a daily basis and really, who has extra room for useless information in their brain matter?

So I encourage you to connect with your deeper posture self and start enjoying all the deep benefits of perky posture.