Yoga With Aislinn

I'm officially back from maternity leave! If you haven't checked out my latest newsletter, find it here:

Hello Again! It’s been many (many) months, and so much has changed in the meantime! I’ve had a baby, my yoga practice has completely changed, I’ve gone on and recently returned from maternity leave, and those of you with children in your lives know: every day feels like an unfolding of the person I was bef...

Day 1️⃣7️⃣ of with ➡️
Taken during Carmen’s wheel workshop about a week ago; I’m grinning because Carmen decided to crack an absolutely hilarious joke while we were all doing something incredibly challenging that I definitely cannot repeat here because if you were there, you know. 🤣 Laughing in a deep backbend is fun but I don’t necessarily recommend it. 😜

Anyways, I’d never done this variation in before — I think I love it! I was surprised to find my feet on my head, but I guess that’s just another advantage of having big feet: foot-hat-surprise! 👣🧢 Also, the perspective of this picture makes my right hand look like it’s bigger than both my head and my right foot. I swear it isn’t. It is a very normal hand. 😳

Day 1️⃣6️⃣ of with ➡️ or variant
I couldn’t go running this morning because it’s 100°F in Berkeley 🥵, which had the double effect of worsening my overall mood today ( ) while also making backbends feel much easier without the extra tightness around my quads and hip flexors. So, glass half full, I guess. Mmm... a glass of water does sound pretty good right now. *runs to chug more water in the hopes of cooling down* 💦

If you know me, you know I run hot, and in fact am usually the first person to rip their shirt off in a sweaty yoga class (my homie and I pretty much turn our Liforme mats into slip’n’slides by the end of the standing poses) — so days like today are, shall we say, not exactly my favorite. They do make deep backbends easier to warm up for, though!

Day 1️⃣5️⃣ of with ➡️ or variant
You don’t wanna know how many tries it took to get a picture of this where my front leg was visible. 😂 Suffice it to say, this pose looks a little more alarming (and a lot more confusing) when you can’t see the front leg at all.🦵🏼I happen to love this variation of Anjaneyasana — I’ve been working on entering it from for the last year or so, as I’m building up towards putting my feet on the ground in . (It’s coming, but slowly. At least that’s what I tell myself. 🙃) Took this after my Anuvittasana picture yesterday, so I wasn’t having the best backbend day — I would have loved to straighten my arms and ground the back thigh more, but the hard practice days have the most to teach us, amirite?

Day 1️⃣3️⃣ of with ➡️ or
My back was feeling stuff yesterday, so I put this off until today. When I woke up feeling the same way, I decided to let go of perfection and just take the damn photo. Even though I know I can go deeper than this, I’m still happy with how this turned out. There was a time when I would have forced deeper extension with a really full-on warmup and aggressive holds, but today I made the truly advanced choice and listened to my body’s signals instead of exploiting my flexibility. As a result, this ended up feeling pretty fantastic! My hip flexors are stoked! 😜

Day 1️⃣3️⃣ of with ➡️ variation at the wall
I snapped these during last Sunday’s Stop Drop And Wheel workshop with Carmen... and figured I’d include the second variation we worked on, which could be either aka or a wall-assisted version of , both poses I love to practice.

Getting into this was definitely the hardest part — I look like a baby walrus learning how to travel on land coming into it. 😂 Also, can we agree that breathing in this is hard AF? 😅

Day 1️⃣2️⃣ of with ➡️ or
Sadly, you can’t see my awesome shirt from this angle, but I’m wearing an RBG shirt that says DISSENT with a little cute Ruth icon. (You’ll have to take my word for it.) Anyways, this felt amazing and I am so grateful for the break from deep backbends! I love love love this pose.

Day 1️⃣1️⃣ of with ➡️ or in
Took this picture after teaching a couple of days ago, which is a backbend I *love* — pretty sure I’m the only one who gets excited about that pose. 😂 Anyways, I’m happy that I can still comfortably do this and other variations of kuntasana (after some warmup) even after falling back in love with running last year and logging some serious mileage in the meantime. Shoutout to my larger-than-average feet for making this pose accessible even as my quads get tighter. 🙏🏼🦶🏼

Day 🔟 of with ➡️ or variant at the wall
Holy wow this was *intense.* I am lucky to have been blessed with a lot of mobility in my shoulders, but I still feel like I have to fight for every little millimeters of extension in my thoracic spine, so this felt incredible as a tool for evening out my backbends. ✔️ Adding this to my wheelhouse!

Day 9️⃣ of with ➡️ variant
Snapped this pic after teaching a sweaty backbend-focused practice this morning; this felt incredible on my shoulders and upper back. I’m currently focusing on pressing into my inner feet more vigorously in and aka , and loving both how much more stable my dropbacks feel when I do that, and the extra engagement I feel in my pelvic floor. Also, always love to energetically try and drag my heels back to my hands/shoulders to tone my hamstrings in this shape. (If you’ve taken a backbend workshop with me, you know I love to fire up hamstrings for big backbends!)

Day 8️⃣ of with ➡️ aka
The double bind is such a doozy for me; this took me a bit of time to get properly warmed up for, and I’m still pretty sure my forearms are going to have tiny bruises from how much pressure they put on each other in service of the double wrap. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I need to practice this more! Doing both sides really shone a light on my asymmetries both in my shoulders and my hips. Anyways, this felt almost like a break before we dive back into deep backbends tomorrow!

Day 7️⃣ of with ➡️ or in
I just worked on this pose in my morning sadhana, so snapping a (properly warmed up) pic of today’s challenge post was a breeze. I’m currently working on leaning my head back more and closing my eyes to challenge my balance; it’s a constant work in progress for me to maintain external rotation in the standing hip, while resisting the temptation to overly abduct my lifted/bound leg/hip. I like to imagine a little magnet in my upper inner knee pulling it down to the mat. (Sidenote — anyone else practice with lots of little mini-visualizations like this for alignment? Or just me?)