Sage Rountree's Blog, page 38
December 4, 2017
Skill in Action: Yoga and Social Justice
Join me in supporting Michelle Johnson as she prepares to release Skill in Action: Yoga and Social Justice. Michelle, a longtime teacher at Carrboro Yoga Company and town alderperson, now lives in Portland, OR, where she works to dismantle racism. Her classes are clear and inclusive and her work is for the benefit of everyone! This book will show you how to use yoga philosophy toward social justice, and how to create inclusive spaces in your class and studio.
While we miss Michelle dearly in Carrboro, we are glad to see her work hit a bigger stage. (She’ll be back for her annual New Year’s Eve workshop at Carrboro Yoga—sign up here.) You can contribute toward her Kickstarter here, and you’ll have an option to get a copy of the book along with other incentives.
Thanks for considering it!
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December 2, 2017
New! Core Strength for Real People: Tap Front and Back
Ready to keep your sense of humor as you play with a challenge to your balance? The latest episode of Core Strength for Real People is here to help! From standing and from tabletop, we’ll work abs, back muscles, and balance with contralateral movements to tap in front of and behind the body.
Enjoy the preview above, and buy or rent the entire video at the Core Strength for Real People page. Better yet, subscribe, and for less than the price of one Pilates or yoga class, you’ll get access to the entire library, and a new video to challenge you posted regularly. There are lots more fun challenges coming your way! Get started now.
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November 28, 2017
Watch: Yoga for Athletic Balance, 11/20/17
My latest Yoga for Athletic Balance class is online at Yoga Vibes, where you’ll find 100 other videos from me. (This is a great time to give the gift of yoga with a YogaVibes gift card—help your friends stay balanced in 2018.) This 75-minute class helps athletes and everyone by focusing on a quick routine to help you balance before and after your workout.
In this class you’ll enjoy a slow, mellow warm-up, move through standing balance poses—dancer, pigeon, and pyramid—and repeat the poses as core strengtheners on the floor. Finish with a twist personalized for your hips and spine. The perfect reset for your body and mind!
Watch the full class at Yoga Vibes!
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November 27, 2017
Gift Ideas for Athletes, Yogis, and Everyone
If you’re looking for a gift for a friend who needs balance (who doesn’t?), my work can help!
Books[image error]
My books include something for everyone—athletes will learn from Racing Wisely and The Athlete’s Guide to Recovery; aspiring yogis from Lifelong Yoga, Everyday Yoga, and the others! Several of the books are available in e-book format; all of them are available direct from me, and I’d be happy to personalize any copy!
Yoga Vibes
Give the gift of yoga with a YogaVibes gift card—you’ll find over 100 classes with me on the site, with more coming each week!
Gift Cards
If your loved one is in central North Carolina or has plans to visit, both Carolina Yoga Company and Hillsborough Spa and Day Retreat offer gift cards in any amount.
Experiences
If you’re a fan of giving experiences rather than things, join your loved one on a trip to the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in January! I’ll be leading Yoga for Athletes January 26–28. It’s suitable for all ages, all sports (including none), and all levels of yoga experience (again, including none). We’ve had lots of friend groups and family configurations in the workshop over the years. It’s a great way to spend quality time together while relaxing and enjoying the retreat life (less screen time, more delicious meals you don’t have to cook for or clean up after). Sign up here!
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November 21, 2017
Read: Three Yoga Poses That Are Perfect Right After a Run
[image error]The third piece in my series of yoga to do before, during, and after your run—all excerpts from the second edition of The Runner’s Guide to Yoga—is up at Yoga Journal.
When your run has been easy, or even moderate, you can move right into a quick practice, and, you’ll enjoy the benefit of warm and relatively loose muscles. (After a hard run, focus on recovery with gentle moves like Cat/Cow and Legs Up the Wall.) If you need to slot your routine a little later in the day, include some warm-up poses, like the Arrow Lunge Sequence, before moving into these balance poses, which challenge your strength and flexibility.
Practicing standing balance poses taxes your hips and legs to stabilize you. You’ll build strength in your standing-leg hip and lower leg while receiving a stretch for the raised or back-placed leg. Doing these three poses in sequence on one side before repeating on the other side increases the challenge. Together, these poses will stretch the main muscle groups of your hips, thighs, and lower legs, making them efficient and easy to include before you hit the shower.
Read the whole thing at Yoga Journal.
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November 18, 2017
Watch: Yoga for Athletic Balance, with Wall Work
As the beta of my Yoga for Athletic Balance class live stream continues, we’ve nailed down the sound with a nice new mic. Classes are archived at YogaVibes. Last week’s class is an especially good one for the late season and the holidays. You’ll need a little wall space or a chair or clear coffee table for the hip and hamstring stretches toward the end.
Watch the whole class at YogaVibes.
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November 14, 2017
Read: 4 Yoga Tricks to Steal for Running
[image error]You’ll find another excerpt from The Runner’s Guide to Yoga at Yoga Journal. This one is about yoga to do during your run.
Doing yoga during a run doesn’t have to mean stopping to strike a pose mid-stride. While the strength, flexibility, and balance you gain from the physical postures are all deployed as you move, you can also use the focus and presence you develop on the mat out on the trail.
Try using the techniques of form, breath, and focus outlined below during an easy run. Once mastered, they will aid you during harder runs and whenever your mind starts to wander. Being able to come back to good form and presence of mind will improve your running immeasurably. These mental skills will allow you to bear down when you need to. You may realize you’ve been using these techniques already without calling them “yoga.”
Read all about them at Yoga Journal and in The Runner’s Guide to Yoga. And use this video to help you check your Mountain Pose alignment during any activity!
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November 6, 2017
Read and Watch: A Dynamic Yoga Warm-Up to Prime Your Muscles for a Run
[image error]The second edition of The Runner’s Guide to Yoga is now available! It features updated photographs in addition to the originals, all of which depict real (and some really fast) runners in realistic expressions of poses real athletes can conceivably do and benefit from doing. You can order your paper copy today at Amazon and get an Amazon Kindle copy, too. (I’ll have personalized signed copies available in the next few weeks, in time for holiday gifts.) And I’d love a five-star review there—it makes a huge difference in helping other potential readers find the book so they can find balance and connection through yoga.
Yoga Journal is running excerpts from the book. The first one shows my Parking Lot Yoga routine, the perfect prerun warmup.
Static stretches, like you do holding a yoga pose, are useful for building strength and flexibility, but a dynamic warm-up is best before a run. In a dynamic warm-up routine, you’ll move in and out of poses without lingering in them. The goal is to move through your range of motion, priming the muscles for the work you will soon do. The dynamic warm-up helps get the appropriate muscles firing, with a special focus on the lower legs and hips. While waking up your sense of balance and focus, you’ll activate your glutes and the muscles that support your ankles. That will ensure you begin your run with appropriate muscular engagement, keeping the workload in the right muscles, which can help prevent injury down the line. Plus, all the whole routine is standing, which is perfect if you want to do it right on the gravelly road or mucky trail you’re about to run on and don’t want to put your hands on the ground.
Read the full excerpt here, and enjoy the beautiful modeling by running coach, yoga teacher, and Carolina Yoga Company studio manager Jenni Tarma.
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November 2, 2017
Newly Certified: Kelsey Hood
[image error]Meet Kelsey Hood, one of the newest certified Sage Yoga for Athletes teachers. Kelsey grew up in Iowa and played soccer at the University of Minnesota, then professionally for five years. She lives in Grimstad, Norway, now, where she is the premier specialist in yoga for athletes.
Kelsey’s experience at every level of sport makes her a particularly sympathetic and empathetic teacher to athletes at every age and level. She’s intimately familiar with the demands of high-level performance and the life of a traveling professional athlete, so she designs and teaches sequences that suite exactly where an athlete is in his or her training cycle. At the same time, she remembers her progression from youth player, which means she’s great with young athletes as well. Her unique experience means she knows exactly what runs through the body and mind of an athlete in yoga class: how it feels to be fatigued in class, and how it feels to find your mind won’t turn off in long-held poses. She holds space in class for athletes to meet their bodies exactly where they are. And she cues clearly and sweetly, with plenty of time for athletes to investigate their own experience. Kelsey is a boon to the field, and I’m glad to have worked with her.
Fun fact: Kelsey, as a transplant to Norway, is the first certified teacher to list curling as a special interest! (Those who’ve taken my five-day intensive know we use curling as a test case.)
Want to follow in Kelsey’s footsteps and spend five days with fun colleagues exploring how to teach yoga to athletes of all sports and levels, and learn a little bit about curling? Join me at one of these three intensives in 2018:
Yoga for Athletes Five-Day Teachers’ Intensive at Kripalu in western Massachusetts, January 28–February 2, 2018
Yoga for Athletes Five-Day Teachers’ Intensive at 1440 Multiversity in California, April 22–27, 2018 (enrollment online soon)
Yoga for Athletes Five-Day Teachers’ Intensive at Carolina Yoga Company in Carrboro, NC, July 9–13, 2018
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October 23, 2017
Hillsborough Spa and Day Retreat First Anniversary Party
Join me, my business partner Lies, spa director Dara, and the wonderful staff of the Hillsborough Spa and Day Retreat at our first anniversary party! We’ll be open Sunday, October 29, 2:00–5:00 p.m., with cake and some really wonderful giveaways. If you’re a spa regular, this gives us a chance to say thank you. If you aren’t, it gives us a chance to show you around and make you into a regular! We look forward to seeing you there.
Hillsborough Spa and Day Retreat
1814 Beckett’s Ridge Drive
Hillsborough, NC 27278
hillsboroughspa.com
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