Kayaking, Road Cycling, and Mountain Biking...

That is what I wish I were doing every waking hour! On the kayaking part, I almost have been! September and October is Gauley Season. This season takes place in West Virginia every year when the Army Corps of Engineers releases water out of Summersville Lake and into the Gauley River gorge below it to drop the lake in preparation for winter rains. Here is a video head cam tour of the Gauley River taken by my husband, Leland, via squirt boat, a special kind of glass boat that kicks the river up a notch.

On the 3rd week of September, there is the biggest festival in the whitewater kayaking world there. We had a booth and had some fun! Here are some pictures from the shenanigans at Gauley Festival 2010.

On the mountain biking part, I haven't been on my bike in months! But these ladies have been taking up the slack for me: the Minx Girls. They are some rad women from the UK, who just wrote up this Compendium for a huge cycling event over there. There are some core articles here (including one on yoga, hehehe!).

Tis the season for road cycling events here in Appalachia as we come into one of our best seasons—the colorful mountains, cool dry air, and dry roads make for sweet rides! This is one of my favorite local events, the Tour de Tugaloo. Tucked away in the north Georgia mountains, if you are looking for a ride with something for every level and a fun vibe, put this one on your to do list. You might even win a "Yoga for Cyclists" DVD!

See ya!

Yoga Core Exercises for Healing and Preventing Sports Injuries

It's not news that in order to increase your sports performance, you need to exercise your core. But if you think that this means doing a bunch of sit-ups, you need to freshen up your strategy. Core exercises should not only strengthen your core, but also teach you to use your whole body in a more functional manner. Your body is more efficient when your power emerges from your strong, stable center taking pressure off all the peripheral and much less stable joints of the body. The end result of learning to move from your core is that you will have better posture, less injuries, and more energy. The holistic viewpoint of Yoga makes it the perfect tool to teach us these lessons.

While doing these exercises, think in terms of your body as a whole. The point of these core exercises is to re-teach your body how to move in a more efficient manner. These exercises are from the upcoming "Yoga for Shoulders: Restore and Strengthen" DVD, so the focus is on how the core relates to the shoulders.

In all of the poses, make sure that when you engage your shoulder blades, that they move into the back and not toward each other. In the Boat Poses, think of all energy emanating from the navel and work on releasing unnecessary effort in the rest of the body:

Half Boat Pose, Ardha Navasana:


Begin in Supine Mountain Pose: lying on your back, feet together and flexed, arms at your sides. Lengthen your spine, relax extraneous tensions, and breathe fully. Exhale as you strongly engage the abdominals and lift the legs and torso without arching the low back or jutting the head forward. Concentrate on only using your middle: don't tense the fronts of the shoulders keeping the collarbones broad. Draw the shoulder blades down the back and then firm them onto the back. Breathe fully and relax the jaws and the face. Stay as long as you can stand it. Release back to the floor and relax fully taking deep breaths. Repeat.

Full Boat Pose, Navasana:

Begin sitting with your legs bent in front of you and feet flat on the floor. Lift in and up with the inner thighs, pelvic floor and navel. Lift up through the spine and the crown of the head. Broaden the collarbones and draw the shoulder blades down the back. Engage the bottom tips of your shoulder blades forward--toward your sternum.

Using your hands on the floor next to your hips for balance, exhale and lift your feet off the floor. Keep all of the above actions going. If you need more challenge, lift your hands and straighten your arms in front of you. Draw the arm bones back in the sockets, slide the shoulder blades down the back, and engage the bottom tips of them forward. Lift up with the back body as much as with the front body. Keep the collarbones broad and breathe evenly. Relax the face and jaws.

To go one step further, straighten the legs. Squeeze the inner thighs. Activate and spread the toes. Breathe and maintain all of the above actions.




Release back to sitting and take some deep breaths and relax all effort. Repeat.

The next pose stretches the front body and strengthens the often-ignored back body and the spine. A strong and flexible spine is part of a strong core:

Locust Pose, Salabhasana:

Lie in a prone position with your forehead on the floor, your feet about hip width, and your arms by your sides with your palms face up. Take a deep breath and release all tension. Lengthen your spine from your tailbone through the crown of your head. Broaden your collarbones, draw the shoulder blades down your back and engage the lower and inner shoulder blades into the back. Inhale as you lift your legs, torso, and arms. Keep the head in line with the spine and take your gaze up. Release tension from your face and jaws. Breathe fully. Exhale and slowly come down and release completely into the floor.


End with Relaxation Pose, Savasana:
Lie in a comfortable postition. Release your body into the floor completely. Stay for at least 5 minutes.



If these poses cause any sharp pains in your body, your body is not ready, and you need an instructor to watch and correct your alignment. Listen to your body and seek guidance if you need.

Improve Your Posture and Your Performance With This Simple Yoga Exercise

Aligned posture will bring you better health and livliness because it takes pressure off your joints and allows the blood to flow and the organs to function better giving you more energy for the fun and necessary things in life! Try this one simple and quick exercise: take a belt (or a strap, paddle, or broomstick) and hold it behind your back shoulder width with your arms straight and your palms facing your butt; stand in Mountain Pose with your weight distributed evenly between your two legs and into the base of the big toes, the pinky toes, and the center of the back of the heels; gently draw the belly in and up without disturbing your breathing; lift up through the crown of the head; broaden your collarbones, roll your shoulders open, draw your shoulder blades down your back and the inner shoulder blades forward toward your sternum; do not let the upper arm bones roll forward and down, do not let the rib cage protrude forward, and do not lock the elbows. Do this exercise as often as possible always letting the body unfold into the pose and not forcing. Smile and breathe!

You Can Change Your Mind--How yoga taught me to find joy in failure

When I first started this blog, I thought I'd be posting up posture techniques for adventurous types to apply to their asana practice, but I keep writing about the mind techniques. I will get around to some poses and tips eventually, but my yoga practice has evolved over the years from focusing on the physical to focusing on the mental. So much of life is mental, esp. our approach to sports and the outdoors.

Yoga is more than about postures--there are many other tools to help us overcome suffering in our lives. The second branch of yoga is the Niyamas, or "rules of personal behavior." The fourth niyama is Svadhyana, or self-study, and Deepak Chopra describes it as this in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga: "When svadhyana is lively in your awareness, joy arises from within rather than being dependent upon outer accomplishments or acquisitions."

When I began my life as a whitewater junkie back in 1997, I was full of self doubt, negativity, and fear. But I loved being out on the water, so I was determined to overcome those obstacles. I entered a whitewater race the other day that showed me just how far I have come in overcoming these obstacles, and the practice of svadhyana is the reason.

When I first got into whitewater, I was lured into the aspect of how good it made me feel about myself. I had had so many years of low self esteem and now this new sport was giving me tons and tons of self esteem as I became better and better. But the more involved I became in the sport, the more my self esteem became enmeshed in how good I performed. I would become devastated at one little failure and then slip into a deep dark depression that made me want to revert to my former self destructive life. One of the number one no-no's of sports psychology is to have your self esteem dependent upon your performance. I knew this, yet I couldn't help how I was feeling.

I had a number of key things happen over these years--I attended my yoga teacher training and became a yoga teacher, found my one true love, and suffered a debilitating back injury. My yoga study delved me deeper and deeper into the why of my being. My (now) husband who is a brilliant amateur sports psychologist taught me how to replace negative thoughts with positive ones. And my back injury laid me out on my back for almost a full year unable to kayak or to "do" yoga. After the crying fits of "why me?" and "who am I without kayaking and teaching yoga," I decided to delve even more into the non-physical aspects of yoga.

I laid on the floor and visualized for months--it was all I could do. And guess what? I found out that I could be happy just lying there! There was so much to explore in my mind, I became fascinated. Ever since, my yoga practice has centered around mind training. I learned to fully turn my life around by just changing the way that I think. What an amazing and basic concept that had eluded me for so long!

So, what does all of this have to do with the kayak race? Coming up to the race, I was extremely busy, and did not have the option to get out and train as much as I needed. Then a week prior, I got a cold, which sabotaged the week that I had saved to get out and train my lines on the creek. I know what you'd like to hear is that I visualized my lines and then competed and won--that is because our society reveres numbers and winners. But something even more profound than that happened--I completely wrecked and instead of self pity, I found happiness. Finding happiness in winning is easy, but finding happiness in complete and utter failure is amazing.

How? Because I have trained myself to only see the positive in this situation. Yes, I tried the visualizations and it worked in all but one place. Race day came, and I was not that nervous--I felt completely solid inside knowing that I could handle whatever happens. As I sat in the start eddy, I was delirious from sickness and I knew this was not a good idea, but I was compelled to be there racing in my favorite race. Like Arjuna in the battlefield in the Bhagavad Gita, I needed to perform to the best of my ability without being attached to the results. I peeled out and absolutely aced every rapid with amazing speed and style until I got to the one move that I was just going to trust myself to make because I couldn't remember it enough to visualize--in kayaking when you cannot visualize a line on the river, but you run it anyway, it is called oblivion charc (from The Squirt Book by Jim Snyder), and this is not a good thing. I flipped over in the worst part of the rapid. I was completely out of breath because the cold I had was in my lungs and I just didn't have the juice in me to deal with the crash. I barely eeked out a roll above the "Notch," the real real crux, flipped again, and my technique went out the window and caused me to fail to roll up again. Completely exhausted, I swam out of my kayak in front of 1000 people and cameras.

It all worked out--I got all of my gear back from the river and only got a couple of scratches. And I can honestly say that I am happy (although more ill) even though I crashed and burned. In years past, I would not have even tried to race without practicing or being sick--and then I would have beat myself up for not trying. Also, in years past, I would have been devastated by the swim and all of those people watching and I would have been relentless on myself for "failing." But now as I write this, instead I feel more confident than I ever have about myself as a kayaker and as a person, because I am focused on the many successes I had that day rather than on the one failure. I am so grateful for this sport that has given me a zest for life, but I am even more grateful to not be imprisoned by results. In my own mind, I have won. I beat self doubt, negativity, and fear just by changing my thinking. I have come full circle with my sport. First I used it to feel good about myself, and now I am free from that entrapment. The practice of yoga is what freed me and allows me the full benefit of the sport. And now I feel so enthused to get out on the river and kayak more--more enthused than ever! Could it be because there are no expectations? I feel so free! I am now even closer to freedom as Tich Nhat Hanh describes it, "Freedom is, above all else, freedom from our own notions and concepts."

*If you are into an adventure sport, pushing yourself outside of comfort is imperative to progress. But you have to remember to apply equanimity--balance your enthusiasm with restraint. By this I mean that decide to push yourself in smart places. For instance, I would not have gone out and kayaked in a remote river gorge that day while I was sick. The Green is a class V river, yes, but I know it extremely well and that was my 3rd race. Use the "self study" (Svadhyana, the Fourth Niyama) tool of yoga to know when its appropriate to push yourself and when to be conservative.

The purpose of yoga is unite you with You. This can only happen by overcoming the suffering of the body and the mind. Life is so short and there is so much suffering that will happen due to terrible circumstances, don't waste your time creating even more suffering over petty things like how you perform in one event or what people think about you. To free yourself to live in joy is the true gift of enlightenment, of yoga.




Action photo by Chris Bell of BoatingBeta.com
After race photo by Brad Roberts