Walking the Path of Practice with Christina Sell

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.

 

You can also read about Christina's experience teaching the students in Kuala Lumpur here.