Are you more right-brained or left-brained while you practice yoga?

Right-brain? Left-brain?

Do you associate more with the right side of your brain while you practice yoga or the left side of your brain?

The two hemispheres of the brain have fascinating connections (Photo credits: Simeon Schatz)

Creative vs. logical

The right-brain/left-brain theory grew out of the work of Roger W. Sperry in the late 1960s, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1981. The cerebral cortex controls rational functions and is made up of two halves, connected by masses of nerve fibers which pass messages between each other. These halves, or hemispheres, are commonly referred to as right-brain and left-brain.

Click to read more ...

Discipline: A spiritual practice

disciplined mind

I just returned from a Bikram yoga class. What sticks with me is not the power of enduring the heat, but the power of discipline to control the mind.

Bikram yoga, unlike the Vinyasa Flow yoga which I have 13 more years of experience with, has many rules that are not necessarily inherent in many people. In my life and in my yoga practice I am used to living organically, letting my life take me in a flow. When I am practicing yoga alone, I have no plans in advance for my practice. I let my yoga practice take me.

Sure, there is discipline required with many styles of yoga, such as Ashtanga. But the movement inherent in this active style, where you generate your own heat, and move your own prana makes for a more organic practice inately.

Back to Bikram. What I feel in these classes is the necessity for discipline, as I'm led along a distinct path and how the discipline itself becomes the spiritual practice.

stay present

It is important to notice where the mind goes in any yoga practice, but in Bikram it is more about needing to stay with the group, listen to the teacher on cue, not close your eyes, drink water only when told, rest in savasana over and over, to name a few

Click to read more ...

how lucky we are… best vinyasa yoga around

San Francisco is blessed to have Stephanie Snyder for yoga

How lucky we are to be able to live in the San Francisco Bay Area and practice the most amazing Vinyasa Flow yoga around!

We have access to classes such as Stephanie Snyder at the Urban Flow Yoga. What a better way to end a Tuesday or Thursday evening, or savor a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

As the warm yoga room fills with 80-100 people, and the music is playing loudly, you walk in to find yourself in an energetic scene before the class even begins. You find all of the same people there every class because they all know that the special secret to their lives is to attend this class regularly.

If you are one of the regulars you know before starting how you will feel when it's over. It is a given, as this class is a sure thing. You can even begin your experience before Stephanie arrives by lying on your mat, amidst the social chatter, with a towel on your face and feel as if a solo boat on the open sea letting the bliss that will follow enter you in that moment, as if time is irrelevant and it is already happening.

Click to read more ...