Fitness Friday #52: Yoga Workshop with Kathryn Budig

Recently, I had an opportunity to take my second yoga workshop with Kathryn Budig!

My friend Angela joined me for an adventure to D.C. for a ‘Kick Up Your Feet’ workshop!

The first time around, I took an adventure to New York City for an arm balances workshop at Pure Yoga. This was 2013.

Yogis ready for some mat time!

Fangirl moments aside, I cherish and appreciate the work of Kathryn as a yogi. She makes yoga accessible, which it IS and SHOULD BE to all. She’s real, down to earth, and has a passion for movement and challenging the body.

When I first started practicing yoga, I found Kathryn through Yoga Journal. I immediately followed her on facebook, twitter, and instagram, and started pouring over all the articles I could find.

I love her teaching style. Kathryn breaks down ‘challenging’ postures into accessible pieces. She teaches postures in building phases. Take a look at the way she’s teaching progressing to full side plank pose with extended leg…4 elements become the building blocks to the full posture!

I knew I’d love taking another kick up your feet workshop with her.

She took audience requests and we created an agenda for the workshop based on those requests. On the list: crow, single-leg crow, crow with lotus, and peacock. We didn’t make it to peacock pose, but it was definitely one of the more challenging requests!

True to her form, Kathryn led us on a journey to reach various accessible points for these postures. She had us on the ground, offering assistance to our neighbors, learning all of the elements necessary to build for each posture.

The workshop was both fun and challenging. I love taking workshops as a group — you get the chance to see others in these forms, how they approach them, and learn tips and tricks to take home to try.

My key takeaways

I’ve definitely added more arm balances to my practices since this workshop, and I’m excited to have a few new postures to try.

For example, bound leg in balances:

I’m trying this bound leg lately in tripod headstand, which has been my focus the past couple of months (video, click to play):

I’ve also started working on this single leg headstand variation, as a prep for single/extended leg in crow (video, click to play):

If anything, I’ve learned that there’s always a way to improve or strengthen postures, even when you’ve ‘accomplished’ them — I look at photos and videos from last year to this year and notice changes in posture, hand placement, and even transition variations.

I’m so glad I took advantage of this workshop, and look forward to deeper practice at home!