I’ve been to many studios, done my down dogs, hundreds and plies, but never once did anyone make sure I was safe.  How could they?  There were so many people in the class, and the teacher was only armed with an arsenal of exercises under their wings, but no understanding of human kinesiology.  Sure they could string a bunch of exercises together in a dynamic fashion, but my body kept aching, and I still felt weak.  As a Pisces, I have often felt vulnerable and emotional, feeling weak was not something I wanted anymore.

As a teacher I was sick of

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I have never been anti-yoga, but I’ve never been in a committed relationship with it either. I’ve dabbled in it off and on for the last ten years, but life would take me out of practice, and it seemed like everyone around me was either going off to “find themselves” at far-away ashrams, turning into offensive yoga pushers, or constantly wearing out the Y-word like it was some sort of badge of honor. It was easy to get turned off.

However, things changed last fall when I attempted to lift a heavy box and put it on a high shelf. I knew this was something I should have had my boyfriend do, but I was being stubborn and thought I could handle it. I ended up bending backwards and triggering a major spasm that was unlike anything I had ever felt before. It was so painful that it rendered me unable to walk for a full week. I was popping muscle relaxers like candy, had visions of having to use a walker at 32 (not cute), and knew I had to do something.

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By Sarah Seely, RYT and Thai Yoga Practitioner 

The woman who taught me Thai Yoga Massage is about 9 inches shorter and 40 pounds lighter than I am and yet, I once watched her lift and balance a heavy, muscle-bound guy who was three times her size on her knees, as if it was the easiest thing in the world.

This display of super human strength is what drew me to Thai Massage in the first place.

That and the massages.

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I had a conversation once with  Georgetown University Professor of Linguistics, Shaligram Shukla.  He was from India so i really wanted to talk to him about Yoga.  He quickly cut me off and said “Look, yoga is culturally contextualized and loses its meaning outside of India”.  I didn’t really understand what he meant until 10 years later, after completing a two year yoga training program.  I realized that I was a westerner and that I have a western perspective … and that is a good thing. 

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Do you have a New Year’s resolution list? I do, and I find that in the past, it was an overwhelming prospect to try and maintain it for a month, let alone a year! So I’ve resolved to just make my resolutions a part of me, meaning I do them naturally without force, but with cheer and excitement.  If I saw my resolutions as a task, part of my to do list, or something I was forcing myself to do, it would feel painstaking, laborious and just not fun at all.

 Here are a few suggestions to help your resolutions stick:

1. Start slow, start with what you can handle.
2. Take each day as it comes; not every day will be your best, and that’s ok.
3. Nurture yourself like you would something you love dearly that requires patience.
4. Integrate them into your lifestyle.
5. Find the joy in an aspect of the hard ones that seem to be a struggle.
6. See the positive in everything (glass half full kind of thing).

There is comfort in knowing that the one thing you can control in life is yourself and the decisions you make.

At the top of the list for some is to get fit and stay fit.  This one has been on my list consistantly for as long as I can remember, and will most likely remain on my list forever.  My biggest pet peeve with the fitness industry is all the hype with greed as it’s driving force, and the result is people are sold a bill of goods that most likely ends up doing harm to the body.

Take it from me, I’ve been easily duped into believing there is only one way to get the body to a high performance state and no other, but that’s not true!  In fact, I’ve suffered from repetitive stress injuries as result of consistenly doing one type of exercise over and over to the best of my ability.  So my number one tip, is to always change it up; do something different every day or every other day.

Here are some more safety tips:

1. Don’t over do it.  Rest & recovery are vital to building strength & endurance without injury.
2. Muscle soreness is good; joint pain, tension and tightness are not.
3. Stretching is vital.  Remind your body of where you’d like it to stay.

If you are trying to lose weight:

1. Weight loss is 40% exercise and 60% eating habits and food choices.
2. Consistency in both is vital.  
3. Be kind to yourself, and know that the journey may be longer for you than anticipated.
4. Family history and geneology play a role in weight loss.  It’s good to know what your body history is.
5. Be safe.  Consult a doctor if you are showing signs of deteriorated health.

Good Luck Everyone!! I know you’ll do well, and feel free to shoot me an email if you have any specific questions. info@saperestudio.com 

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I was recently asked, out of all of the muscles in the body, which one I thought was the most important.  And my answer was simply (drum roll please) … the psoas, or as most of us know it, the hip flexor.

So you may be asking yourself, “well, why isn’t it the back muscles or the abdominal muscles,” and the reason being is that your psoas (well, technically, your iliopsoas) relates to both of those very important groups of muscles.  In fact, if your psoas is off, tight, wandering (as my Structural Integrationist, Aimee Kolsby puts it) or just plain weak, then it’s effecting your back and abs, and typically not in a good way.

In order to understand what I mean, let’s first look at where this thing is located in the body and what it attaches to: (1) It’s origin spans from your last thoracic vertebrae (T12) and continues down your lumbar vertebrae L5-L1; (2) You actually have two of them, one on each side of your lumbar spine; (3) the muscles come from their origin at the rear of the body through the abdomen and pelvis to the front of the body inserting itself into the inner thigh bones.  Now it’s job, as noted in the term ‘hip flexor,’ is to do just that, either lift the leg from the hip or fold the torso at the hip.  So here’s why it’s the most important.  

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The age-old quandary of finding a routine for one’s physical well-being.  Even teachers have a hard time maintaining their practice, but in the end we are always grateful we devoted some time to ourselves and moved our bodies.  

For me, the hardest routine to establish was my morning routine.  I am naturally a night owl, so shifting my clock came with mood swings, tons of ice cream (any excuse to eat it really, not just getting up early), and sleeping aids- from Tylenol pm to sleepy-time tea.  I mean, I had tried the evening workout routine, but quickly found myself enjoying a glass of fine wine or meeting up with friends, or worse - getting stuck at work!  

So with my new attempt at working out before starting my day, I would get freaked out that I wasn’t going to sleep on time and that my whole next day was to be ruined cause I’d feel like crap and be exhausted.  Boy was I good at projecting on to my future self, there was no way I could win; I wasn’t allowing anything but that to be my reality.  All I could do was dwell on how negative my life had become as I shifted into trying to find a routine that worked.  I began to feel a slave to working out, but I loved to eat and drink, so there had to be some kind of balance.

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(these ladies think they are getting the best workout for their body, but they’re not.)

Take it from me, a survivor of a severe pelvic tuck which caused sciatica symptoms for nearly two years; the worst thing you can do is tuck (even if you don’t have sciatica … yet).

I’ve never been a naturally flexible person, so feeling muscular tension and subsequently compression was pretty much the norm.  And once I traded my active college lifestyle of lifeguarding, swimming, biking and running for Architectural drafting with 8-10 hour days at a computer, it only got worse.  I was always in pain unless I was lying down or weightlessly submerged in water.  

So I sought out Pilates, and immediately felt better.  I began my training as a Pilates teacher and was soon on my way to relief, until something shifted.  As I got more adept at Pilates and began progressing to the harder exercises things got electric.  I began to feel shocks down my legs as I walked, and so I would work out more trying my best to achieve the “Pilates neutral pelvis” ideal.  

I would receive cues to tuck, so that I wouldn’t hyper-extend my back or to somehow engage my abdominals, and in some cases I was asked to flatten my 

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Sapere Studio is happy to announce its new location at 65 Maspeth Avenue, Suite 2B in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York.  We’ve received a warm and happy welcome from the neighborhood, and we are so happy to be filling a much needed void for Pilates, Barre and Yoga. www.saperestudio.com