Yoga Journal Singapore — December 15, 2017

(Grace) #1
of standup paddleboarding was born in the
1940s when Waikiki surfers stood on boards
and navigated their way through the waves
with a long paddle. Standup paddleboard yoga
(or SUP yoga, as it’s known to its devotees) is
asana practiced on 10- to 12-foot-long boards
in the most serene of settings: an ocean bay,
a glassy lake, even a slow-moving river. In
recent years, water-loving yogis—some with
board sport experience, like Gibree, some
without—have embraced SUP yoga as a
practice that brings a sense of joyful freedom to
an otherwise earth-bound yoga practice.

“On the water, I have to let go of any
control or wanting to do everything perfectly
because at any moment, the current can
change everything, and I’ll be in the water,”
says Jessica Taylor, a vinyasa teacher who
started her SUP yoga practice in Savanna,
Georgia, where many mornings she’d warm up
by paddling against the current on Richardson
Creek near her home. Over the spring, she
moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where she now
practices at Neptune Beach. “In a studio, I find
myself trying so hard to do everything perfectly
that I forget how fun yoga is. SUP yoga is a
reminder that it’s not so serious.”

Taylor begins her playful practice with a
few grounding asanas like Cat-Cow Pose and
Balasana (Child’s Pose) to get her balance.
Then she moves on to more challenging
standing poses such as Vrksasana (Tree Pose)
and Virabhadrasana I (Warrior Pose I), which
can end in the water if her weight isn’t evenly
distributed front to back or side to side. She

compensates by using a wider stance and
rocking with the waves—and by letting go.
“The worst that can happen is that I fall in
and get back up,” says Taylor, who notes that
not taking yourself too seriously is crucial to
making it fun. In that spirit, she and her SUP
yoga students give each other snaps when
someone goes over.

Rock and Roll


In New England, where Karen Fraser teaches
SUP yoga, the rougher Atlantic waters can turn
practice into a thrill ride. “The craziest day out
was when the waves were chest high,” says
Fraser. “I took a group of fellow instructors
out, and just doing Downward-Facing Dog was
challenging. It was like riding a bucking bull. We
had a lot of laughs.”

It’s a fun practice but with some serious
benefits. Doing yoga on a surface that is
constantly in motion fires up your core
muscles, says Gibree, and strengthens muscles
that aren’t called on in everyday practice. “Even
Plank Pose is more challenging because your
board is moving a little back and forth, and that
added tipsiness activates your core and arms,”
says Gibree. “You definitely feel these tiny
muscles that don’t activate on the ground.”

The challenge is part of the attraction, and
it isn’t just physical, Gibree says. SUP yoga
requires a different quality of focus—and not
just when you’re doing the poses but also
when you’re transitioning between them. For
example, bringing your right foot between your

hands from Downward-Facing Dog to come
into Anjaneyasana (Low Lunge) can sometimes
shift a board a few inches forward—even on
the calmest water. The key, says Gibree, is to
make micromovements, adjusting alignment
and weight distribution as needed and fixing
your gaze on a point along the horizon, on the
shore, or even on an outlying rock or tree.

Your alignment may be different than on
dry land (for greater balance, Taylor turns her
standing foot out in Tree Pose, for example),
but that’s OK. It’s also fine (and even fun!) if
you lose balance altogether and fall overboard,
says Katie Fitzgerald, a yoga teacher who leads
vinyasa classes on a lake marina in the resort
town of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. “Falling is just
part of the experience,” she says, and there’s
freedom in fully embracing that. “You let go of
your expectations and judgment, which is what
yoga is all about in the first place: getting out
of the mind and into the heart center. When
I’m teaching, I love seeing the joy on students’
faces when they fall in and get right back up
into a pose. That’s what we are all doing in life.
We fall, whether it’s physically, mentally, or
emotionally, and we get back up and try again.”

At the end of Gibree’s SUP yoga practice,
she takes Savasana (Corpse Pose) on the board,
where she says the perpetual motion translates
to a sense of ease. “I lie there, the ocean gently
rocking me, my hands resting in the water
while the sunshine warms my skin. You really
can’t beat that feeling.”

The beginner-friendly sport


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