Step out with all your potential in Virabhadrasana 2 🥷

(Vira = warrior, Bhadra = friend, Asana = pose) aka Warrior 2

Warrior 2 is one of those poses that is as strengthening and grounding as it is opening and lengthening.

Sitting at a desk all day tightens the hips, rounds the shoulders, and closes up the chest.

This is the perfect pose for stretching and opening all of these areas, as well as lifting and lengthening the spine – great for relieving the pressure that settles into your back.

At the same time, you'll be strengthening your quads, shoulders, and core — not to mention your stamina and inner resolve – one bent knee at a time.

eka pada utkatasana // standing figure four pose.

One leg is lifted and the ankle is placed across the opposite thigh with the knee opening to the side and the shin coming parallel to the ground. The hands are brought into prayer position into the chest, and the torso can be lowered forwards so that the forearms rest on the shin with a deeper knee bend in the standing leg.

A more challenging variation on chair pose, eka pada utkatasana has many benefits for the body, including its ability to:

🙏Improve the ability to balance on one leg

🙏Stretch the outer hips and gluteal muscles

🙏Strengthen the legs

🙏Build core strength

🌻Positive Affirmations🌻 in our yoga practice

Positive affirmations are positive phrases we say to ourselves in order to challenge negative thoughts we may be having about ourselves, e.g.

💪 I am confident
🗣️ I speak my truth with ease
🌟 I deserve the best

Connecting to an affirmation is a practice like any other. To make long-lasting positive changes. repetition is key 🗝️ whether that's as we:

🤸‍♀️ hold certain poses
🙏 meditate
🚶‍♀️ get on with the rest of our day.

Repeating certain sacred sounds and phrases has traditionally been an important part of yoga practice since ancient times. The Sohammantra—translated as “I am That”—is one of the most significant because it connects you to your highest power. 🕉️

If this is all new to you, you might be thinking: What if I am…not?
The ancients would say that those feelings of insecurity are manifestations of avidya - lack of awareness - about the powerful things that are possible for you.

Psychologists today often prescribe a form of affirmation for clients trying to get unstuck or make a change in their lives. They call it the “act as if” approach. It’s not a prescription for faking it, but for practising having the experience you want to have.

But what does confidently asserting something to be true actually do for you?

Owning your awesomeness is an accessible way to remind yourself that you got this 💪 (no matter what 'this' is). When practised with intentionality and regularly, positive affirmations can be an incredible resource for:

💛 cultivating more self-love & resilience
🧘‍♀️ moving you away from your monkey mind, challenging self-sabotaging thoughts & bringing you to the present moment
🧠 reprogramming your mind, creating new neural pathways & space for positive change
💪 connecting with all of your strengths & possibilities, taking charge of your own narrative

If nothing else, they help you feel great. Because you are.
📸@franciscotsantos

🌬️Breathe through the Chaos

While it sounds painful, Broken Toe Pose stimulates the lower body meridians which all originate in the toes. We tend to focus our attention on the larger parts of our lower bodies (achy knees, tight hips, etc.), making it easy to neglect the ten little toes that so greatly help us balance and walk.

This is a pretty simple pose as far as mechanics go. It is used to deeply alleviate foot and ankle pain – particularly helpful for anyone who walks, runs, or stands on their feet for long periods of time.

Be sure to tuck those pinky toes under as they tend to attempt an escape and DON’T RUN AWAY when the intensity starts to build!

By practising consistently over time, you will find greater mobility and more ease in your balance poses.
📸@franciscootsantos

Strengthen, balance & lengthen with Tri Pada Adho Mukha Svanasana

aka Three-Legged Downward-Facing Dog, this pose provides all the great benefits of Down Dog, but also stretches the inner and outer hip, side body, and improves balance.

It adds flow and fun to your practice, while providing a greater challenge to your body and mind.

Here’s why your body loves this pose:
🙏 Cultivates balance in both hemispheres of the brain and in the body
🙏 Lengthens/releases the hip flexors and hamstrings
🙏 Increases awareness of hip position, making it a great variation for runners and cyclists, who usually have notoriously tight hips and legs.
🙏 Strengthens the arms and core
🙏 Reboots the nervous system
🙏 Relaxes the mind
🙏 Eases back pain and fatigue
📸@franciscootsantos

Recharge your Batteries.

As well as taking good care of your
💪S T R E N G T H💪 and 🤸‍♀️F L E X I B I L I T Y🤸‍♀️,
Yoga can be an everyday 🙏 R E S E T🙏 button for you.

Its ability to help clear your mind, any accumulating tension and burnout, makes it truly special and leaves you feeling 🌟 V I B R A N T🌟.

Give yourself permission to relax.
Take time to go inwards to recharge your inner battery and 🔋R E C A L I B R A T E🔋.
📸@franciscootsantos

Virabhadrasana III (Warrior 3)

Also known as Warrior III, this is one of the most beneficial balancing poses you’ll want to master, whether you are new to yoga or you find yourself an experienced yogi or yogini.

Virabhadrasana III is one of the Hindu deities Shiva’s incarnations and is often depicted as having a thousand heads, feet and eyes, wearing the skin of a tiger, and carrying a thousand clubs.

Students may therefore envision a ferocious warrior ready for battle.

Improve your ability to clear your mind of unnecessary thoughts as you focus on the present moment, while maintaining a thoughtful calibration between push and pull—gathering energy in, and extending it out.

Alternate between expansion and contraction, and treat both with equal importance.

Contract but not too tightly… otherwise you'll lose expansion and likely your balance, too.
📸@franciscootsantos

Energise & steady the mind with Parivrtta Hasta Padangusthasana

aka revolved hand-to-big-toe pose.

This pose is great for boosting confidence and perseverance,
while exploring the perfection of imperfection.

It requires a challenging combination of physical and mental balance, strength, and flexibility and pushes you to laser focus on the present moment.
📸@franciscotsantos

Get Grounded // M a l a s a n a

Malasana is a surrendering pose in nature. It is believed to balance and activate the muladhara (root) chakra, which is associated with:
🙏 grounding
🙏 a sense of security
🙏 safety
🙏 and trust.

This activation, with our feet connecting with the earth, helps you experience emotional stability and become more compassionate and patient towards yourself and those around.

While practising this pose, Anjali mudra is specifically useful for bringing extra energy when you feel drained.
📸@kikotsantos

FEET UP FRIDAY.

You don’t have to be a yogi master or even particularly flexible to reap the benefits of viparita karani, often referred to as legs-up-the-wall pose, which is exactly as it sounds: your torso and head lie flat on the ground while your legs are inverted up a wall.

In Sanskrit, viparita means “inverted” and karani translates to “in action.” When you do legs-up-the-wall pose, then, you’re in an active inversion position – a “non-doing” pose that is all about relaxing your body and letting go of the tension you’ve been carrying. With your legs above the rest of your body, gravity gets to work on them in a way it simply can’t for most of the day.

This easy inversion pose activates the relaxation response (parasympathetic nervous system) and deactivates the stress response (sympathetic nervous system). It can bring the body back to its own innate capacity for rest, relaxation, and self-healing. By fully relaxing your body and by focusing on deep breathing in Legs Up the Wall pose, you will evoke a meditative state. As you breathe, surrender and let go, you’ll find yourself slipping into peace and bliss.

Long day at work? Tired after a big hike or long run? Relax into Viparita Karani to refresh tired legs and calm your mind.
📸@kikotsantos

THE POWER OF INTENTION-SETTING // SANKALPA

Setting an intention is a wonderful way to start your practice, your day, or any new beginning. We're actively choosing to empower ourselves to make a change.

Intention-setting acts like an inner compass, guiding your attention to your core values and any virtue you’d like to cultivate for yourself as you move through your asana and your life.

If you’re usually someone who takes things easy and likes to rest, then setting an intention to get stronger might require you to stretch beyond the boundaries you’ve currently set for yourself. In contrast, if you’ve always been quite hard on yourself and pushed yourself to the point of exhaustion and pain, then being kinder and more gentle to yourself is going to stretch you beyond the current boundaries you’ve set for yourself.

Intention acts as a reminder throughout your yoga practice when your mind wanders or becomes distracted. This will help make you more conscious of the choice you have in where your attention goes, as well as help you stay connected to that freedom, both on and off the mat.

Finding your true motivations and looking them right in the face is sometimes the best way to reconnect with our practice and our life. Work to find your true intentions and place them where you can reach them in class...
📸@kikotsantos

There's no such thing as bad weather...

… only the wrong clothes...🌪️🌨️😎

@skyehalfmarathon #scottishsummer
#50mphwind #sleet #hail #ripeyeballs

📸 @loveskyephotography

Strength Training, Resistance & Stretching all in one Session.

The thing that draws people to Pilates is that it’s a really healthy, targeted way of performing resistance training.

There’s a high focus on correct form, therefore you can work out as hard as you like or as gentle as you need, building stability and preventing injury by zeroing in on smaller muscles.

No matter what it is that you are recovering from, if you’re in proper alignment with breath support, you’re going to be safe and effective with your movement.

Get ready to challenge your coordination, stability, and strength with my 60-minute total-core Pilates class that you will keep coming back to — you will feel stronger every time.

Connect to your breath, help prevent injury and get those endorphins going in the comfort of your own home.

All you need is a mat and enough room to stretch out on the ground with your arms and legs extended.

📸@kikotsantos

A Closer look at Twists.

Regular twists can promote a healthy lower back and offer you a greater sense of ease, especially if you sit at a desk, or are on your feet for long periods of time.

Twists are neutralising poses, which are good to include if you’ve been doing lots of strong backbends or forward bends. They incorporate the centre of our body, working the abdominals, obliques, the muscles that support the movement of our spine, our shoulders, pelvis, neck etc.

The action of ‘lengthening’ is to create space between the vertebrae before you twist. When there’s a lack of space, our spine tends to slump or get stuck and our energy levels drop. Meanwhile, twists give us an instant energy lift and decompress the vertebrae in a safe healthy way.
📸@kikotsantos

Balance.

Working on BALANCE requires a healthy dose of patience and a good sense of humour – some days we can feel super steady, other days like we might wobble all over the place.

Yoga teaches us to tap into the deep muscles that coordinate the separate parts of the body into an integrated whole.

If you can maintain presence in shapes that make you wobble, you can observe where you overextend and where you hold back.

You can learn to identify where you are weak and in need of strength or where you are rigid and in need of release.

Then, by drawing your energy more evenly toward the midline of your body, you’ll establish a steady centre and keener focus in spite of the asymmetry – skills you can call on during difficult or unsteady times in your life.

Eventually, you may learn to be at ease and even find joy in moments when you don’t have two feet planted firmly on the ground.

Ya dancer.

How are you coping with our new normal...? I think we can probably all agree that some days are easier than others but one thing I've learned that definitely helps is to KEEP MOVING.

If you think a yoga class might be of benefit to you, even if you are a complete beginner, tune in via Zoom from the comfort of your living room to take a little time to reset and flow! Message me if you have any questions, and don't forget to take care of yourself!

In a rut/lost your mojo?!

Yoga encourages us to keep pushing on and dig deep into our warrior spirit, particularly in poses such as Virabhadrasana III (Warrior III). You will emerge stronger, more serene, and ready for anything life has to throw at you.

According to legend, this aerodynamic pose represents an arrow soaring through the air with utmost precision, devoid of all hesitation or fear. In yoga, our opponent is internal conflict, which we aim to cut through in order to achieve absolute focus, clearing away mental and emotional debris. No matter how wobbly we feel, Warrior III pushes you to ignite your fire and live from intention, and you will find every excuse arise to break your will and your focus.

Warrior III improves endurance and core strength, while stabilising the hips and giving the overworked piriformis a much-needed break. You are creating a strong foundation that will not buckle under the stress that life places on you (or your knees), and with time and dedication, your inner warrior will rise to the occasion to transform the biggest struggles into strengths.

Move with your core!

We are focusing on waking up uddiyana bandha (contracting the abdomen up and into the rib cage to channel pranic energy upwards), and keeping it active throughout class. With a strong sense of front-body core, you can move with more intention and depth, and come into backbends more safely knowing you can consciously engage the muscles needed to protect the lumbar spine.

Outside of the physiological benefits, activating your uddiyana bandha can be very energising and refreshing, a kind of ‘reset button’ for your breathing and digestion.

Rajakapotasana 🐦 Pigeon

People who have experienced emotional discomfort generally have tightness in the back and tension in the hips. 🐦 Rajakapotasana 🐦(Pigeon pose) is an advanced backbend pose, done in a seated position resembling the stance of a pigeon, which specifically targets both of these areas: it opens both the hip flexors (located on the front of your body) and the hip rotators (located on the back of your body), plus releases tension in the lower back. The heart receives a stretch, thereby increasing its efficiency in pumping blood, the diaphragm receives slight pressure and oxygen-rich blood rushes to this area, thereby catalysing healing.

Take time to slow down in this pose to notice any sensations you feel in your body and focus breathing into those areas, allowing yourself to feel grounded and safe. Let the deep stretch relieve the body of stress and anxiety and serve as a reminder that everything will be alright.

The full expression of Rajakapotasana requires patience, practice and serious warm up to build a combination of strength and flexibility throughout the body. Start where you are. Move from there and enjoy. 💫

🔥 Tapas 🔥

In yogic tradition, a key to following through with your intentions is Tapas, which translates to "purification through discipline," "commitment," or "internal fire." It is the friction or resistance that arises when we go against the overwhelming momentum of our ingrained habits.

Sometimes, tapas can literally be felt as heat in the body when holding a difficult asana on your mat. Your natural inclination will be to come out of the pose and run away, but that’s even more of a reason to stay. Practising overcoming any physical or mental resistance by sticking with the pose can prepare you for staying with discomfort in your daily life. At each step, listen to how your body responds and to any thoughts that appear. Plus, discipline doesn’t strictly mean pushing ourselves harder in a physical sense. Sometimes just making time to be still and observe the mind is difficult enough.

Next time you’re faced with a challenge in a yoga class, practise facing up to it and igniting your inner fire! The fruits of nourishing our tapas are higher levels of energy, self-trust, inner strength and control over the fluctuations of the mind. 💫.

Urdhva Dhanurasana.

Urdhva Dhanurasana encapsulates the whole essence of back-bending and moves you towards joy and fearlessness. Backbends of all sorts are so good for us because in our everyday life we tend to do the opposite: slump forward.

Even though this pose requires strength and power, that is what it will yield as well: you will feel more alive and strong. Urdhva Dhanurasana opens the chest so the lungs can function better, it stretches the muscles of the chest, belly and hips and legs, while engaging the muscles on the back body. This asana stretches the organs in the belly, stimulating circulation and increasing the functioning of the organs. It also massages the kidneys and stimulates the adrenal glands, which make us feel more energised and alive.

It's a pose with a plethora of benefits so well worth the effort!