New class & new Yoga Grump

Yesterday I taught my Yin Yoga Primer to a wonderful group of people at the Cameron Wellness Center. We focused on the side body and allowing ourselves to breathe more easily. The center is a great place to teach!

My new Yoga Grump post is up, please check it out. Also, I'm excited to teach a new occasional class called 'Get Crackin!', which premiers this Sunday at Schoolhouse Yoga on the South Side. It's at 9:30am, right before my Yoga 1 class.

Here's the info:

In 2009, medical doctor Donald Unger ended a 50-year personal experiment—after cracking just his left knuckles at least twice a day for five decades, he concluded “there was no arthritis in either hand, and no apparent differences between the two hands.” (from Scientific American). This and many other studies prove cracking your joints on occasion doesn’t harm them at all. In fact, it enhances the range of motion in a joint by allowing all potential movement to occur. Plus it feels really good!

Introducing Richard Gartner’s ‘Get Crackin!’ class, where we spend 75 minutes popping as many joints as we can in the hands, feet, wrists, hips and neck. You might even get lucky and experience the elusive ‘firecracker pop’ all the way down the spine. In addition to joint cracking, we’ll be doing some abdominal work, deep breathing, and a few long holds.

Techni-cool information: This class is based on Swami Satyananda Saraswati’s Pawanmuktasana Series 1 and 2. The first is considered anti-rheumatic and the second is for the digestive tract. As for the cracking itself—there are different types of popping in the body. Richard will explain the different types, which ones are good, and how to tell. We’ll be focusing on what’s called defixation—the release of any vaccuum in the joint caused by two sides of the joint fixed together.

Take care and namaste,

-Richard