Overview

Yoga for Cranky Hips

This alignment-based class is a slow, methodical and safe way of working the legs to create space in and around the hip sockets. Leslie addresses how to use yoga poses and yoga props to increase space, flexibility and strength in the hips. You will find familiar yoga poses using props and done with a focus on the relationship between the legs and pelvis. This way of practicing can help alleviate aches and pains in and around the the head of the femur.

Pain in the hips can have many causes. But whatever the root cause, most people are sitting in chairs or cars more than ever before. Sitting with the legs at a 90 degree angle from your torso decreases the amount of space in the front of the hip sockets, brings the femurs forward in the hip socket and restricts blood flow to the pelvis.

We come to yoga to undo some of our postural bad habits. However, we can actually exacerbate hip pain if we are doing our poses without mindfulness.

The approach in this class is to encourage the femurs to be deeper towards the back of their sockets, and to practice the poses with a new spotlight on the hip joint.

• • 1 or 2 yoga straps
• • 2 yoga blocks
• • Chair (folding chair or similar)
• • Blanket

Buyer's Guide

• Audience: All levels of practitioners
• Focus: Creating space and stability in the hip socket
• Intensity: Mild to moderate
• Props: 2 blocks, 1 or 2 straps, chair, blanket
• Style: Alignment-oriented standing and seated postures

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About Leslie Howard

Leslie has been practicing yoga for over fifteen years in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area. She currently leads teacher trainings, annual yoga retreats, and therapeutic yoga workshops including her specialty, pelvic floor workshops for women. Her teaching is informed by over 2,500 hours of yoga study with senior Iyengar teachers. Currently she studies with Ramanand Patel, Manouso Manos, and Patricia Walden. Teaching women about their pelvis nationally is a result of her own struggles with hip and pelvic pain and working with physical therapists, Susanne Kemmerer and Lizanne Pastore.

She is a presenter at the Yoga Journal Conferences in San Francisco and New York City and is featured in an upcoming documentary “Yoga and Women” by Second Nature Films (2011).

When she is not on the road teaching, she splits her time between the Bay Area and the Central Valley where she lives with her husband Bill, a philosophy professor. Together they are raising their two cats. Leslie and Bill are activists in the community and are passionate about bringing awareness to social, agricultural and environmental issues.

For more information about Leslie and her work, please visit her website at www.lesliehowardyoga.com.