Tune Up Fitness® Self Care Blog

Last month I spent a week in Stockholm, Sweden, teaching my Yoga Tune Up® Integrated Embodied Anatomy module to a group of future yoga teachers at Yogayama studio. I arrived in icy-cold Stockholm late at night after a 22-hour journey. When I awoke jet-lagged…

[See Part 1 of this blog and the discussion of antioxidants here!] You may also ask: Doesn’t my antioxidant system continue to get rid of the ONOOs even when I’m being a couch potato? The answer is yes, but not enough.…

I have a guilty secret. I am the consumer for whom the Matrix will be made. If I were a brain plugged directly into a net with access to all the books, games, movies and TV shows ever made, I’d probably…

Many schools of yoga have their own formula or recipe of “cues” to get students into Tadasana/ Mountain Pose. The purpose of Tadasana from a strictly anatomical perspective is to teach proper postural alignment, i.e. a biomechanical neutral position of the…

The cue “navel to spine” is used ubiquitously in Pilates and yoga classes. I don’t like it. I don’t use it. It is impossible to sustain, and does not sleeve your spine with the muscular support needed to prevent injury. Your…

Let’s face it – all of us have a million things competing for our attention, from grocery shopping to paying bills to getting the tires rotated. The list goes on and on, and we as yogis should know better than to…

Some people have such built-up tension in the superficial muscles of the neck and chest that it is well-nigh impossible to access hidden muscles like the pectoralis minor without some much-needed prep work. My student Ellen has a very forward head…

One thing I always focus on in my classes is opening the chest to create space for more breath, and while we yogis always think about backbends and contracting the back muscles for chest opening, sometimes we need to bring our…

During many yoga classes I have attended, the teacher would continually tell us to “open your heart” and “bring your shoulders back and down.” In Pilates reformer classes, the cue was to “place your shoulders in your back pockets,” or just…