Get Your Yoga On: 30 Days to Build a Practice That Fits Your Body and Your Life

by Kino MacGregor

Overview

Challenge yourself to practice yoga five minutes a day with this inclusive beginner’s guide to 30 foundational yoga poses and sequences—for everyone and every body
 
Yoga is a healthful, stress-busting, powerfully life-changing practice that is truly for everyone! You don’t need to be young, flexible, or athletic to do yoga—and you don’t need to spend hours on the mat. You just need to be yourself and commit to practicing at least five minutes a day. 

Here, renowned yogi Kino MacGregor presents a basic, self-paced plan to encourage you to try each of the thirty foundational poses included and slowly build a regular yoga practice. Through step-by-step instructions, over two hundred color photographs, and modifications for different body types and abilities, Kino makes yoga possible at whatever level you may be. By challenging yourself for just five minutes a day, you will end up learning a strong, basic yoga sequence that you can grow and adapt for a lifetime of yoga.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611807219
Publisher:	Shambhala
Publication date:	09/01/2020
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	626,605
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Kino MacGregor is an international yoga teacher, author of three books, producer of six Ashtanga Yoga DVDs, writer, blogger, world traveler, cofounder of the Miami Life Center (www.miamilifecenter.com), Yoga Challenge (www.yogachallenge.com) and OmStars (omstars.com). Kino’s dharma is to help people experience the limitless potential of the human spirit through the inner tradition of yoga. She is one of the few people in the world of yoga to embrace both the traditional teaching of India’s historic past and the popular contemporary social media channels. With more than 15 years of experience in Ashtanga Yoga, she is one of a select group of people to receive the Certification to teach Ashtanga Yoga by its founder Sri K. Pattabhi Jois in Mysore, India and practice through the Fourth Series of Ashtanga Yoga.

Read an Excerpt

Foreword by Dianne Bondy

I started practicing yoga when I was very young. My mom found Be Young with Yoga by Richard L. Hittleman at a used book sale in 1967 and decided to try it. When she introduced me to the practice, it felt natural and fun. Throughout my life, yoga has helped me navigate the world as a black woman in a plus-sized body. The world has always been interested in my physical appearance, and I have never measured up to popular culture’s standards. My yoga practice changed how I saw myself in the world and showed me how I could influence consciousness on a much larger scale.

As yoga became increasingly popular in the West, this ancient and powerful eight-limbed practice was reduced to the physical postures. It idealized practitioners who aligned with the Western beauty ideal: white, able-bodied, conventionally attractive, and thin. There seemed to be no place for people of color, elders, the less affluent, disabled bodies, or people in larger bodies. Yoga had become an exclusive club. This was very different from the yoga practice I loved, which focused on creating connection, contentment, harmony, and inclusiveness in the world.

Simultaneously, yoga’s guru principle—a traditional system where a master teacher is the sole authority for a specific yoga lineage—resulted in many abuses of power. Disguised as surrendering to the practice of yoga, practitioners were encouraged to surrender their autonomy and agency to the guru. People were harmed across many lineages and styles of yoga. These situations gave rise to a shift in how we share, teach, and experience yoga: the power of yoga resides within the student and not the teacher.

As modern yoga culture continues to grow, it is adapting to include our evolving ideas around agency, consent, accessibility, inclusion, and adaptability. We are moving away from the idea that there is one way to practice yoga. To paraphrase one of my favorite modern yogis, Colin Hall, yoga teacher and professor of religious studies at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, “It is the very nature of humanity to adapt, so one can argue yoga’s evolution to an accessible, adaptable practice is what is traditional.”

We must be clear about our intentions for practicing. Yoga needs to be more about how we show up in the world and create equity, equality, accessibility, and justice for all bodies and less about beautifully curated pictures on social media. This practice of yoga needs to be about all of us regardless of our size, shape, age, ability, color, or gender identity. Representation matters in yoga as much as it does in other areas of our lives.

Throughout this book you will be guided by Kino’s masterful understanding of Ashtanga yoga along with my interpretation of the practice for larger and nonconforming bodies. You will be encouraged to exercise your own sense of agency and autonomy within the practice. Get Your Yoga On will give you the tools to decide how you want to customize your practice to represent the individual needs of your body. We encourage you to explore your body as a vessel for joy, movement, and enlightenment.

Yoga changed my life. It taught me how to be kind, empathic, compassionate, and content. It also taught me how to be powerful, discerning, and inclusive in my words, actions, and view of the world. Yoga cracked my heart wide open. It can do the same for you. Yoga can be your gateway to a better understanding of your body and your world.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

The Origins of Yoga 1

Let's Get Started! 3

The Practice

1 Downward-Facing Dog 16

2 Plank Pose 22

3 Upward-Facing Dog 27

4 Chair Pose 32

5 Wide-Legged Forward Fold 37

6 Triangle Pose 41

7 Crane Pose 45

8 Butterfly Pose 50

9 Extended Side Angle Pose 54

10 Locust Pose 57

11 Simple Bridge Pose 60

12 Warrior I 65

13 Standing Hand-to-Big-Toe Pose 69

14 Tree Pose 76

15 Pyramid Pose 82

16 Seated Forward Fold 85

17 Head-to-Knee Pose 89

18 Marichi's Pose A 93

19 Marichi's Pose C 96

20 Boat Pose 100

21 Reverse Plank 104

22 Camel Pose 108

23 Pigeon Pose 111

24 Side Plank Pose 115

25 Plow Pose 119

26 Headstand 123

27 Warrior II 128

28 Pendant Pose 133

29 Reclining Twist 136

30 Meditation Pose 139

Bonus Pose: Constructive Rest Pose 142

Student Bios 145

List of Poses 152

About the Author 154

Editorial Reviews

The representation and modifications in this book make my heart sing! A must-have for all yoga practitioners!”
—Jessamyn Stanley, author of Every Body Yoga
 
"If you're looking to design a practice unique to your needs, lifestyle, and body, then this is a great resource to begin! Filled with insightful information and practical instructions, this is a book that meets people where they're at, and allows them to flourish. As someone who has advocated for yoga for every body and everyone for over a decade, I'm thrilled to see this message growing in power and scope. The more people who can get on the mat, the better!”
—Melanie Klein, editor of Yoga Rising
 
“Get Your Yoga On is an accessible, diverse, and well-versed book that illustrates the power of asana practice on our bodies, minds, and spirits. Kino’s deep knowledge of yoga, paired with her unique ability to make it approachable, are beautifully displayed in this book, and remind us that yoga is for every body.”
—Sahara Rose, bestselling author of Eat Feel Fresh

“As someone who grew up with yoga as a way of life, but who didn’t fit the norm in yoga studios, I deeply appreciate how Kino MacGregor intentionally curates belonging in her new book. She takes the time and care to share the depth of Ashtanga practice and to make it more accessible and available to us. Her book goes far beyond tokenism, to true inclusion. Folks of all different sizes, colors, experiences, and styles practice in ways that invite us all into deepening our asana. It makes me jump and wiggle with joy to see a book like this that is helping to truly change the face of yoga. I highly recommend this book for all practitioners of yoga! I love it!”
—Susanna Barkataki, yoga teacher writer, and yoga culture advocate

“Thanks to Kino McGregor for this gift of making yoga available to all of us—whether circumstances allow five minutes or five hours; whether we are healthy, sick, injured, or even getting older. We learn to start where we are, to work patiently and slowly in order to grow the real loving kindness of yoga, becoming honestly embodied, to reveal the profound relief, joy, and fun that is yoga.”
—Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor, authors of The Art of Vinyassa

“Imagine a yoga practice that, instead of long, sweaty hours on the mat, takes only a dedicated five minutes a day. Then imagine that everybody, no matter how athletic, flexible, or thin they’re not, can build a transformative, satisfying, life-long yoga practice that nurtures them just the way they are, and that fills them with excitement about who they’re becoming.”
—Foreword Reviews

From the Publisher