Last weekend, I attended a 3-day intensive yoga workshop with Christina Sell which she named as "Walking the Path of Practice” and she combined her teaching on the techniques to go into the poses with asana practice.
For all three days, the morning session started with standing poses to
build strength in our legs before we do handstands with variations followed
with some arm balances and backbends while forward bends and twists were taught
in the afternoon. New advanced poses were added each day but Christina taught some of the same poses throughout the three days as she believes that repetition will help us to learn the poses better.
Christina also taught some of the obscure advanced
poses from the book “Light on Yoga” and one of the
pose is Yogadandasana which BKS Iyenger says “It takes time and practice to be
comfortable in the asana, but when you are in it.. is restful… In this pose,
the spine is rested and the body relaxed.”
At the beginning, I was feeling quite intimated as I watched the other practioners who were mostly yoga teachers going through the poses earnestly while I was struggling with them. But Christina gave us the option to do what
we can and to always remember to ask ourselves “What is my next step?” when we were not able to do the more difficult variations given to us. Like in
handstand, while some of practitioners were
working on the more difficult variations to
the pose, some of us who cannot jumped our legs to the wall were given the
option to work on poses which will help us to progress into handstand such as
the upside down “L” position at the wall and the scissor kicks. You can
watch Christina’s tips and techniques on handstand here.
All in, it was wonderful learning from a great teacher and I was also
inspired by the dedication shown by the yoga teachers who attended the workshop as they became students
during the three days so that they can become better teachers to their students.
Below are scenes from the workshop which has been beautifully made into
a video by Christina’s hubby, Kelly Sell who also practiced with us at the
workshop while being the photographer and he even assisted Christina to demonstrate the King Pigeon
pose.
