shaniyoga.com/blog-1

I always loved Instagram as a platform in which I was able to express my creativity and my practice, and also to connect to people from all over the world. I got asked many times on how I got into a pose, what stretching exercises I do and many more questions regarding my practice, that were very hard for me to answer due to time and distance restrictions, until now. Last week I officially opened my YouTube page, where each Thursday I'll be uploading tutorials, how-to's and many exercises from my personal practice!

Whenever I do feel like I practice the same things over and over again for a while, I look for inspiration on Instagram, where I find not only talented yogis who can do the unimaginable, but also many other professional athletes from all over the world. Besides admiring the photos she takes, I also love the positive messages she talks about in her posts, and so when I saw she was visiting Israel to teach I sent her a message right away, not wanting to miss the opportunity to meet and learn from her. We met for lunch and photo shoot a few days later with two other stunning women - who's a pole dancer and studio owner in Eilat, and , also a pole dancer and a professional photographer who lives in Austria. Arina's work as a photographer mesmerized me; when I take my own photos, I work usually from the front and do the pose exactly as I'd do it in my practice.

As for the warm up I did and usually do before photo shoots I've seen through my yoga journey, by meeting other students and yogis and getting to know myself more, that my body is more flexible than most. When I'm done with my strength exercises, I work a lot on opening the hips, upper back, shoulders, front of the body so that the lower back has the least amount of strain on it. Before a photo shoot I usually do a 30 minutes warm up that consists of opening the shoulders and warming up the hip flexors which are the tightest parts in my body with poses like puppy pose, cow-face arms, low lunges and splits. I try not to overdo it as well, again not to cause to much strain of the body without a proper cool down (since there's the travel to the location and the photo shoot itself), and I keep it shorter so that I don't sweat too much too!

We arrived back to Barcelona in the evening when it was already raining, went back to the hotel quickly and fell asleep, excited toward the workshop I was teaching the next day. As the brave students, who woke up for a 9 AM workshop on a cold Sunday morning, started coming in my anxiety lessened, and I was so happy to greet every one of them. Social media is funny that way; you talk to someone with the same interests you have from a whole other country, which you wouldn't have been able to meet in any other way, and if you're lucky enough you get to travel and meet them in person! It felt so gratifying to see everyone giving them all and absorbing everything, and I can only pray that this workshop was not only fun for them but also helpful and fave them the tools they were looking for in order to deepen their backbend practice.