Poses :: HeavyWeight Yoga®

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Yoga and Heart Health

Posted by Abby Lentz

· February 14, 2020

Whenever you search “yoga for heart health,” over 300 million results pop up. Seems everyone agrees that yoga is good for your heart. Surgeons, medical doctors, and many cardiac hospitals all agree with people like me — simple yoga teachers who are not medically trained — that yoga improves your heart.

In fact, it seems everyone agrees that any yoga will be good for your heart. However, in reviewing the best of the health recommendations, what I’ve found is that yoga poses break down into three major categories: twists and folds, chest openers, and safe inversions. All of these are a part of why yoga is so effective — they help you break out of your stress cycle, which can be a major contributor to heart disease.

If you have time to do a complete yoga session, be sure to warm up and cool down. On my YouTube Channel I help you with that using my Efficient Warm Up Series. Finishing with Savasana (Corpse Pose) while you use a meditative mind. If you don’t have enough time to do a complete session, you can gently sprinkle yoga into your daily life at home or in your office. If you don’t even have time for that, then just pause and take a few deep breaths.

Opportunities to twist are all around you. Twists help to cleanse and stimulate all the organs and soft tissues housed in the torso not just the heart. The trick to make twists effective is to move slowly and hold them deeply keeping your belly relaxed and your breath small. They can be done easily whenever you are sitting by grounding both feet, cross left hand to your right leg, and rotate to the right. Holding your hand to your leg is your Counter Point, the place of stabilization that helps you go deeper into the twist. Twist both sides.

Like twists, forward folds involve squeezing. Folds consist of bending so you are pressing your belly and chest into your legs. If you’re sitting, be sure you lift up out of your hips and low back before you place your torso on your lap. Note that these forward folds are different from doing ones to stretch your hamstrings. For hamstring stretches to evolve that require a Belly Well — a space you create by separating your legs to make room for your belly to fold into. Any of the belly-down poses — Cobra, Boat, or Locust, for example — will also create this press of your belly and chest.

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Categories : Awareness, Breath Work, Heart Health, Poses, Uncategorized

Layovers to yoga over!

Posted by Abby Lentz

· June 29, 2016

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If you’re flying to your vacation destination you can appreciate that some airports now have yoga studios available. According to Rodale’s Organic Life here’s the best of the airport yoga studios.

More than likely however, like me you’re not going to intersect with any of these half dozen airports. No worries however, it’s easy to integrate yoga into your layovers without standing out as much as you might think.

Feel a low backache from the entire sitting? Do wall or sink support downward dog. Grab the sink or place your hands on a wall or door about hip high, step back until your hips are level with your hands (soft bend in the knees) and then press the hips away to lengthen you back and stretch your hamstrings.

Feel like you’ve been curled up all flight? While sitting reach back with both hands and hold onto your seat, ground both feet and press your heart center forward squeezing the shoulder blades together as you stretch out across the front body shoulder to shoulder.

While you may not want or be able to stand on your head like the woman in the picture, you might find enough courage to get your legs up a wall or up on a chair. Here I am outside the Louvre in Paris giving my feet a thorough rest.

If being upsidedown in public isn’t your style simply slip off your shoes and do the Point (toes pointing away to stretch the top of the foot); the Demi-Point (press through the ball of the foot while pulling the toes up and apart); and the Flex (press the heel away to stretch the Achilles and calf). In girly-girl shoe talk, that’s a ballet toe shoe, sexy high heel and an earth shoe negative heel.

Check out my many travel stretches on YouTube on the HeavyWeightYoga channel. You’ll find complete tips not just for flying but driving as well. My favorite prop to pack is my 10-foot strap. Put it somewhere you’ll often see it to remind you when you’re at your vacation spot to sprinkle a little yoga once you get there.

Most important travel with ease!

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Categories : Featured, Off the Mat, Poses, Travel, Uncategorized, Yoga Off the Mat

Livestream now gives us a way to meet!

Abby Unplugged!

Live Stream Event

June 3 at 6p (Central)

After selling DVDs over the past decade I’ve only been able to meet a small number of you in person — but now with technology advancing in leaps and bounds Wednesday night I’ll be able to chat with you live!

I started sharing my work with Women’s Retreats in 2007 at what was then The Crossings outside Austin. Abby Unplugged became a tradition as my Women’s Retreats wrapped up on the last day.

Wanting to be sure no one left with an unanswered — or unasked question — I devote the final retreat segment to “Abby Unplugged.”

While my original thoughts were that this would be about yoga poses and philosophy, these unplugged sessions quickly became involved with questions about my personal self — advice on meditation and poses would often be followed by what sex is like at 67. How much I weigh became as important as how long have I been doing yoga (219 lbs / 43 years).

Yoga is so intrinsic to our lives it can touch on all that we do and everyone we meet. Not because we throw Sanskrit phrases around or drop into a headstand, but because yoga helps us to be present and be our best self even when situations are difficult.

Starting Wednesday June 3 at 6P (Central) time I’ll now be able to answer your questions even though we are not sharing the same space.

If you can’t be there live, but have questions you’d like to ask, email me at

abby@heavyweightyoga.com by Tuesday night. I’ll work to fit them into this event. No rules, no restrictions — I’ll be there on the mat to answer them all.

Hope you can join me as we get this opportunity to meet at last!

Abby Unplugged!

Live Stream Event

June 3 at 6p (Central)

http://livestream.com/heavyweightyoga

Yoga for sleep

Today I got my daily email from Yoga Journal. It’s a great resource and reminder about what’s going on with yoga. The topic was yoga for sleep, something that I struggle with. I have tinnitus, constant ringing in the ears, which gets even louder when I’m tired, making going to sleep difficult. I use a masking technique which often has me falling asleep to audio books on a timer. So I was very interested in seeing what was recommended.

What I found was Yoganidrasana, where you start on your back, placing both legs behind your head, hands clasped to the small of the back. For me just trying to get into that pose would be exhausting enough to make sleep easier I’m sure!

Unable to do this pose, I went to the HeavyWeight Yoga technique of Pose-Pairing — taking the benefits of a pose I’m unable to do and matching them to poses that I can do, or at least have a hope of doing anyway.

Wanting to work from the bed top I decided on these poses for better sleep: Read More →

Making Movements Count

Posted by Abby Lentz

· April 22, 2015

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Tonight I’ll be enjoying the NBA Playoff game between my beloved San Antonio Spurs and the LA Clippers. One way that the Spurs succeed is with ball movement. They make every pass to each other count, until they get the best shot, going from good shot to great shot. And it reminded me about my last visit to San Antonio, to appear on KSAT’s SA Live — and talk about making movements count.

I told Fiona Gorostiza on the program that HeavyWeight Yoga was created to give people who are overweight or affected by obesity a safe place to do yoga. People came from out of nowhere, from out of their living rooms, people who would never walk into a gym or a yoga studio. They’d say, “We read about yoga. We want those benefits. But there isn’t a safe place for us to come practice.”

I’ve created a safe place with HeavyWeight Yoga.

These methods make sure that every movement counts. Here’s an example. If I’m trying to stretch my hamstrings and I have both legs out in front, my belly and the tops of my legs come together, and the stretch is not being realized. If I recreate the pose and be sure there’s a space for my belly, by using the Energetic Swipe, I can come deep into the stretch and be safe all at the same time. And not be wasting my time.

With HeavyWeight Yoga, it’s never about the number of repetitions. It’s about your body being able to receive the work.

To do a HeavyWeight Yoga roll-up, I begin with my feet together and my knees apart. You’ll see by starting in that position that there’s space for the belly. My arms are out and my hands are staying parallel. I’m moving slowly in my pose, breathing the arms up and then overhead, then lowering to the mat. And then with the breath, coming up one vertabrae at a time. I’m using muscle, not momentum. In a gym, you’d be doing 10 crunches in an exercise, when I’m only doing three roll-ups. But my body’s getting a great benefit.

Little movements go a long way to loving who you are.

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Categories : Featured, Media, Poses

Tags : Energetic Swipe, movements, roll-up