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laurelbeversdorf

Did I think I’d be coaching newbie weight liftin

Did I think I’d be coaching newbie weight lifting yogis and Pilates teachers and students 2 years ago on this date?

Nope!

I was taking care of a 7 month old, still breastfeeding, not sleeping enough, a little lost in terms of my identity.

Okay, a lot lost.

Motherhood is a massive identity shift. I’m still finding myself in this role every day.

What’s that book?

Wherever You Go, There Your Toddler Is

Is that the title? (Ah no, the actual book is Wherever you Go There You Are, by mindfulness scholar Jon Kabat-Zinn, but maybe he’ll let me write the mommy version.)

And then pandemic! And about 8 months into lockdown, I started teaching Zoom strength classes live for members of my (also new) Virtual Studio.

A lot has changed for me in my life since I became pregnant with my daughter in early 2018.

More changed in March of 2020.

I like where I landed.

Here I am.

Stronger in every sense of the word. Definitely more and more myself each day.

I’ve got some fun strength training offerings in the works. If you wanna make sure you hear about them, hop on my email list. Link in bio 👀

Adventures with my girl under the bridge at the Li

Adventures with my girl under the bridge at the Little Red Lighthouse. #littleredlighthouse 🍓#georgewashingtonbridge #nyc

The process of reflection as the vehicle to change

The process of reflection as the vehicle to change need not be an out-with-the-old and in-with-the-new attitude adjustment.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be a “WHAT WAS I THINKING!?” type of experience, either, where maybe we feel a little bit (or a lot) of shame.

We also don’t need to run from what we thought (however erroneously) and pretend we never thought that.

Because chances are, there was probably some truth in what we believed, and it was probably that truth (or partial truth) that guided us toward learning more.

Instead, I think shifting our attitudes and beliefs can feel more like that song with the lyrics

Make new friends
But keep the old
One is silver
And the other gold

In this way we can avoid becoming like human pendulums that swing wildly back and forth between disparate beliefs and opinions (taking sides to *feel* right) and instead, we can lead from a place where we instead try to always be giving ourselves (and others) generous space to learn, change, and grow.

Know what I mean?

Let me know if you read this blog and if it resonates at all with your experience! Have your attitudes and beliefs about alignment changed? 💜

Teamwork makes the dream work. One if the most gr

If you practice sun salutes a lot, it’s nice to

If you practice sun salutes a lot, it’s nice to mix it up!

In all 5 salutes (swipe 👈) chaturanga has been omitted with something different added instead.

If we just omit chaturanga but keep everything else the same (in a sun salute A, for example) we’re tasked with finding a different way to get from half forward fold to up dog.

In terms of body position/orientation, we need to go from standing to prone (on our belly).

This movement problem solving makes my nerd brain sing!

Here are five options I came up with to go from standing to prone (without chaturanga!):

1️⃣From 1/2 forward fold we lower into malasana and then roll back to low boat, then roll to prone! (Notice I’m facing the opposite side of the room, which is sort of a “fancy flow” way to sequence, don’t you think?

*I do these chaturanga-less sequences 2X for symmetry.

2️⃣From 1/2 forward fold I jump back to down dog. You can also step. Then, I step halfway up and find a modified side plank that I then “melt” out of to slide out to side-lying. I roll onto my belly and voila! Ready for up dog.

3️⃣Okay, this one I didn’t do both sides. I had an unexpected visitor! 👶The transition from malasana is similar to salute #1 only, surprise! I do a roll over my shoulder (similar to plow pose) that I learned from volleyball. The progressive yoga community is into rolling so I had to share this version with you!

4️⃣Here I step back into what looks like it’s going to be a lunge, but then I step through. What I love about this is that it utilizes ground-based, cross-pattern transitions (common in primal movement) and is a cool way to go from standing to sitting. From there we can take a similar route to lower into low boat, and then do our rolling pattern to our belly. Again, we face the other side of the mat.

5️⃣This version is “saggitally” very straight forward. ( ; It’s also one of the first “creative asana” sequences I came up with back when I started sharing my movement ideas on Instagram. Forearm plank is an excellent way to get prone via sphinx. From there we’re ready for up dog.

There’s lot of reasons to leave out chaturanga, but my favorite is to MIX IT UP! Lemme know what you think. 😃

Would you believe me if I told you I haven’t pra

Would you believe me if I told you I haven’t practiced this pose away from the wall in over a year? (Actual video speed.)

I haven’t been interested in working on inversions as much these days. Or I’ve been busy. One of those.

What I have been doing is pushing heavy kettlebells over my head.

And today, (in the way I most love to notice what I’ve been up to) I noticed my progress. I thought to myself, “oh I’m still up here. Huh! Wasn’t expecting that!”

Strength is specific! For sure it is. Meaning, it’d make sense for me to tell you I’ve been working a lot on this pose and that’s why I can balance in it.

But that’s not the case.

And so, it’s also true that strength has a ton of carryover.

So even though strict presses and push presses and Turkish get ups aren’t forearm stands, they all involve honing strength in the overhead position (when the load and dosage is high enough for strength adaptations to occur.)

And remember when we thought that if we just kept practicing a pose “it would come”?

Well that’s not true for all poses, especially poses like inversions where we ask quite a bit of strength from our upper body.

Because sometimes we need to build that strength through other means that make *progressing it* more possible. Weights make progressing strength more possible than body weight because they can be easily added (in less challenging body positions than being in an inversion).

Also, when we lift weights we do reps (which we don’t often do in our asana practice. We certainly don’t do them in a row to fatigue or failure that often.)

Anyhoo, had to share! Because these little things are what make us do the big things.

The big thing, in this case, is getting stronger (because it’s literally been shown to help us live longer) but noticing you can do a pose like forearm stand in a different way is the little thing that makes the process immediately felt and fun!

Something I’ve discovered over the years of spen

Something I’ve discovered over the years of spending hours lying still and rolling around on a flat, hard, immovable, cool floor is that it’s these qualities of the floor—its flatness, hardness, immovability, and coolness—that provide the relative, contrasting backdrop (if I pay attention to it) to my body’s curves, softness, movement, and warmth.

I feel the floor because I am not like the floor. The floor, in a way, shows me who I am by showing me what I’m not.

It can also be the floor’s qualities of lowness, horizontality, expansiveness, and support that can provide an example for me, as well. I can try to become *more* like the floor.

Low to the ground, horizontal, expansive, and supportive.

This observation of how we are not like a floor, or, like a floor, is something that I love about working with props.

It’s never about the prop. It’s about finding more of ourselves in relationship to the prop. It’s how we are similar and different to the prop that we can observe.

This happens in human relationships as well.

I think it’s often the case, that in relationships, we feel ourselves relative to the other person.

In other words, we don’t find ourselves alone. We find ourselves together. And we don’t find ourselves with people who are only like us. We find ourselves with people who are very different, too.

I think we’re all trying to figure out who we are. The whole of Yoga supports that Self-discovery.

But I think it’s less obvious to consider that this pursuit of Self-discovery happens in relationship, not alone.

What do your props help you know about who you are and aren’t? What do your people (and the people who are not your people) help you know about who you are and aren’t?

#rhetoricalquestion or #dropacomment

In case you missed it, @corageroux and I had a con

In case you missed it, @corageroux and I had a conversation that resonated with quite a few folks. I got lots of emails and DMs about this one.

Link in bio 🎧 or download the Teaching Yoga Podcast (I recommend it!) and search for my interview with Cora.

Note: my interview starts around the 20 min mark.

This transition from scorpion to skandasana and ba

This transition from scorpion to skandasana and back again was the peak transition in a “primal” themed bands class in my Virtual Studio. Sometimes we use the bands to prep a transition we do without bands.
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And this challenging peak transition from scorpion to skandasana needs lots of prep for most (over the long term since we don’t get the requisite strength and mobility for new movement in 45 min necessarily. It’s more long game stuff.)
.
Members of my Virtual Studio—many of them—are working on that long game in Sweet & Simple Strength and the other yoga, mobility, bands, and balls classes.
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So this type of unusual primal themed banded transition—going from prone to standing in one move, an unusual way to get off the floor—is something to work toward and many might be surprised to realize they are more capable because of the strength and mobility work they’re doing in other classes in the Virtual Studio where lateral squats (and squats of many kinds) as well as scorpions make regular appearances.

Swipe through to see some of the preparatory strategies with bands.

1️⃣ here’s the peak (video speed 🐇)

2️⃣ we started the entire sequence standing on this rolled mat set up with the roll for ankle dorsiflexion and the band for shoulder prep.

3️⃣ squat prep with a focus on hips and knees (heels are elevated to take the ankle challenge out of it)

4️⃣ now we add in some ankle challenge with a staggered placement of the feet on the roll.
.
5️⃣ next we get a little flowing rolling banded core sequence going.

6️⃣ & 7️⃣ we take some time to prep our ankles and hips for a chair skandasana and then we take some of that standing hip prep to the floor. The bands here are primarily for feedback to connect our two legs to our brain better. 🧠

8️⃣ we played with this transition—using the floor, using momentum, using joint mobility, using our hands to give us a boost, plopping, not plopping, definitely not taking any of this too seriously.

If you’d like to try membership to my Virtual Studio, link in bio 👀 or go here —
https://laurelbeversdorf.com/membership/

When you only know a couple of rotator cuff exerci

When you only know a couple of rotator cuff exercises and you’ve run out of ideas…

then our Movement Logic Shoulders Tutorial is for you! 💪💪💪

But after today, it’s gone – and we don’t know when it will be available again.

The Shoulders Tutorial is packed with 3 hours of corrective exercise techniques, pain science, anatomy, biomechanics, myth-busting, and more!

Interested, but don’t have time to watch it right now? No worries. After you purchase, it’s yours forever!

It’s carpe diem time. 👆👆Click the link in bio to get all the details and enroll.

Doors close TONIGHT at midnight and we don’t know when we’re offering it again!

@laurelbeversdorf
@sarahcourtdpt
@anulamaiberg
@movementlogictutorials

More from Shari: “Hey! I just wanted to say tha

More from Shari:

“Hey! I just wanted to say thank you so much for the Shoulders Tutorial (all the tutorials really).

There is a woman who has been coming to classes and she has barely moved her left arm for years out of fear (of pain).

She had shoulder replacement surgery, went through rehab, was discharged all good and then just stopped moving. I asked if I could meet with her.

We went through her exercises together – I helped her slow down, breathe, stop the negative self-talk and helped refine her movement.

One week later she came back and was excited to tell me she washed her hair with both hands for the first time in years.

She also has hope that she will regain pain-free movement of her arm for the first time in years.

I had a lot of the knowledge I needed beforehand to help, I just lacked the confidence.

👉 This tutorial, so specific to the shoulder, all the info in one place helped so much. Thank you!”

Wanna learn the tools Shari learned?

You’re in luck! Right now we’re making our Movement Logic Shoulders Tutorial available for a LIMITED TIME.

Cart closes after tomorrow and the course goes away.

👆Click the link in bio to purchase. We don’t know when we’ll be offering this tutorial again!

@sarahcourtdpt
@laurelbeversdorf
@anulamaiberg
@movementlogictutorials

This exercise from the Movement Logic Shoulders Tu

This exercise from the Movement Logic Shoulders Tutorial with co-creator and Pilates expert @anulamaiberg is called CLIMB THE POLE.

We all know that pulling and grip strength is important for shoulder health, but it can be difficult to work in effective ways to improve this connection regularly if you don’t have equipment like a reformer, a rope wall, or a pull up bar.

Good news! For this highly effective exercise that strengthens your latissimus dorsi muscles at end range and improves your grip, all you need is a dowel, broomstick or equivalent.

The bonus is it’s a fabulously novel way to practice prone (belly down) backbends too!

This exercise is part of a series of push up and pull up progressions in our Movement Logic Shoulders Tutorial.

Want to learn more exercises to address your shoulders?

We’re making our Movement Logic
Shoulders Tutorial available again until 5/31!

CLICK THE LINK IN MY BIO TO PURCHASE 👀

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