This post is definitely me getting my Day 1 Feet Under The Table here! Or since this is a yoga blog: It is me getting my feet on the yoga mat.
Although in the near future I intend to write a yoga wisdom-inspired column here, I imagine the first weeks this space will regularly be used to introduce albums, and today it means recreating the album for you because few will have the 8-track bonus cd to These Days, and I have no idea if it’s available on streaming services.
I also discovered a playlist of this cd on YouTube, created 12 years ago, but it has two different tracks opening the album than the one I have: by Chris R, different opening tracks: Bon Jovi – These Days DISC 2 SPECIAL EDITION So even if you do have the double album, I suspect it might be possible we still have a different one.
Musically, the album is very versatile. Let’s Make It Baby, is the sexiest Bon Jovi song ever written in the history of Bon Jovi. We’ve got a Wembley 1995 recording with Bob Geldof, and Tico Torres, David Bryan and Richie Sambora all bring it.
This is the track list:
1.Fields Of Fire 2.Thank You 3.Mrs. Robinson 4.Let’s Make It Baby 5.I Don’t Like Mondays (Live)Featuring – Bob Geldof 6.Crazy (Live)Lead Vocals – Tico Torres 7.Tumblin’ Dice (Live)Lead Vocals – David Bryan 8.Heaven Help Us (Live)Lead Vocals – Richie Sambora
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yoga journal wednesday February 9
starting time: 10 PM duration: 35 minutes, 8 songs 🎶🎸 Bon Jovi cd: Bon Jovi These Days 2 Disc edition – bonus cd This edition was released in 1996, a year after the original album.
type of yoga: I used our free download Bon Jovi Yoga Set List 2.0 – yoga framework incl sticky men schedules and practiced 6 and 7. And 9 is long relaxation 6. Seated forward bends and twists 7. Lying down supine poses – practiced up until/ to snail pose 9. long relaxation, final song Heaven Help Us
1. Subscribe to receive these posts in your inbox. You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.
2 YouTube: Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs rebooting within days! -> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXpNMsIFP2U34A0yBKk8PUQ As part of our work together, I will also be making Rock Star Yoga or #dailybonjoviyoga videos for this channel, scheduled for starting in June 2022.
You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala and A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and White Tigress Yoga Workbook at the bottom of this page: https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter
beginner friendly playlists from my channel: I m currently restoring my older work. New yoga videos to support our Daily Bon Jovi Yoga / Rock Star Yoga are set for late June.
📷 2020 01 11 At my studio, which I would leave at the end of the year.
📷 2020 02 01 My studio was called M Yoga, it was the name my company had from 2012 and up. Before that I worked under my own name, and didn’t own a studio.
Just when I had made my peace that apparently, I would have to find a way to work whilst losing the first two to four hours of my day to feeling hungover, sleep deprived after yet another restless night (and not in a good way), and the added bonus of a pending cold which had been haunting me A.M. ever since the whole pandemic started; Yet all those complaints disappearing 350 days of every year I’d say, before noon? JUST as I had made my peace that this handicap was just gonna be the way things were gonna be from now on, they disappeared. Not exactly “like magic” because I made some sacrifices, but having my morning back is worth the price.
The price is that I stop work at 7 PM, meaning I have less than 40 minutes to finish this post. I was away for most of the day, out with a friend walking, cycling, getting sun on my face. To exercise outdoors, daily, without fail; That too is a price.
And it’s not just the computer work; I also do not see myself teaching yoga at night. For now, I give myself one night a week out of the house. Even though the Netherlands are coming out of the pandemic, and regular life is resuming more or less as it did, my life will look different. With nights spent at home, and also not writing, which is what I ve been doing at nighttime for the past 15+ years, if I didn’t have classes.
Now after 7 PM I will do my housekeeping; my yoga; and a special event tonight is that I ll be removing a wood splinter from my hand. I work at an antique desk which belonged to my late father. It frequently gives off splinters, but I managed to dodge them or they slide under a nail and are easy to retrieve. Maybe because I have my nights off now, The Universe has set up new challenges for me.
But I am beyond relief…. It feels ages ago that I woke up at 6 AM, without an alarm, and fully rested. I feel absolutely reborn, and I know it’s too soon to label what happened those two years (and that’s not even including the impact the pandemic has on our mental health), but I m going to try and exclude what I can. First off, I do not believe I ve had Covid. I have not coughed these years, but I do believe I was very self-conscious about cold-like complaints, which I probably had in the years before the pandemic as well. Just that I hadn’t noticed them.
The first year I had migraines, which were new to me. I never had them in my life, and although they returned occasionally in 2021, they were mostly a 2020 thing.
In 2021 I woke up sick from April to September, it must have been. That’s when the biggest health loss was, losing half my day time and time again. I was happy when I got tested for allergies: A dust or other home allergy would explain why I woke up feeling sick. But all tests came back negative.
The complaints however stopped. Only to return a few weeks later.
And now February 2022, they’re gone. I feel better than I have in years, I m absolutely full of life. But I also suffer from an otherworldly feel. Like a jetlag when you’ve travelled in the right direction, and at an acceptable time (so you didn’t board the plane sleep-deprived). In those circumstances, when you are at your destination, you are hours ahead of the local time. You wake up at 6 AM, and go for a swim in the hotel pool!
That’s how I feel…. Maybe I also feel a bit like Sleeping Beauty. “Where was I? What has happened?”
Yoga wise much has changed since the start of the pandemic. I was still teaching to friends, and I was working on finding new ways to teach. But none of them could take flight, the pandemic didn’t allow for yoga classes. I cancelled the studio, and I can see that although I will resume teaching friends at some point; Everything went exactly as it should. I am no longer a yoga teacher. Not in the way the business worked, or what the profession entailed pre-Covid.
But so much new is about to happen. Through this blog I will share my self-practice with you. And within weeks I will reboot my Dutch yoga channel. It will be yoga for Generation X. The English yoga will be kick started in June, with a 30 day yoga challenge. If you want to see my videos sooner, you can start now; There are several playlists with retrieved videos on my channel. Here is a beginner friendly selection of my videos.
It’s good to be back. In fact it’s great. And I m so excited to be writing here…. and to know that you and me have a whole life together. If you choose to stay.
Our yoga journey may have started rocky, with this blog being founded mid-pandemic. But now we’re on a steady course to happily ever after.
1. Subscribe to receive these posts in your inbox. You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.
2 YouTube: Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs rebooting within days! -> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXpNMsIFP2U34A0yBKk8PUQ As part of our work together, I will also be making Rock Star Yoga or #dailybonjoviyoga videos for this channel, at some point (late 2022?).
You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala and A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and White Tigress Yoga Workbook at the bottom of this page: https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter
closing: 1. Shiva Rea on free flowing movement 2. playlist from my channel, of beginner yoga 3. Rock Star Yoga opening prayer
2. playlist from my channel, of beginner yoga one of the playlists from my old work
3. Rock Star Yoga opening prayer Inspired by a speech Madonna gave in 1990, when she was defending her daring artistic choices to the Vatican, this is the opening prayer to Rock Star Yoga:
This felt BIG. After 15+ years of teaching a regular schedule of yoga group classes, the journey of letting go of what was, and reinventing a new type of yoga to teach and to DO, has not been easy. Nor pretty! But I stayed interested in yoga, in business, and ultimately it was also the vision that yoga could be combined, merged, and pounded together with rock music, into pure ecstasy; It was that vision that kept me going.
That although, yes, the relaxation and stress reduction is important. And taking better care of myself in 2022 is definitely a priority. I m not here to build a new yoga business that’s going to keep me glued to my social media, Inbox, or floods my agenda. Nor to create something that takes time away from your calendar, you’d preferred to spend otherwise. But Rock Star Yoga, and it’s daily counterpart Daily Bon Jovi Yoga, are definitely about more than staying healthy. And about more than staying offline and not letting our mood be determined by the madness of the world.
The reason I came back to yoga, even though I could have chosen any form of physical exercise (I actually walk or cycle for over an hour every day), and any career, because I have other degrees and have fallen in love with marketing and sales a long time ago- The reason I came back to yoga, is because the potential of what it can be.
Developing, or just “starting” Rock Star Yoga, and setting one foot in front of the other, is simply the absolute best thing I can possibly imagine doing with my life.
To take yoga, the Indian system of movement and breath, and to within that yoga system pick sides with the free-flowing forms of yoga, most famously taught by Shiva Rea (see bottom of this post for her talk on Burning Man); And to combine that with the energy of rock music, and perhaps even the energy of a rock concert.
To move beyond the silence, and the breath, and be taken over by another power, another energy, where we are no longer aware of our individuality, no longer aware of our thoughts or our worries. And we’re one with the highest vision we have for ourselves and for the world.
Bon Jovi cd: Keep The Faith, 3 November 1992. duration: 1h+, 12 songs type of yoga: I used our free download Bon Jovi Yoga Set List 2.0 – yoga framework incl sticky men schedules and practiced 1-3 fully 1. Opening sequence, half sun salutations and full sun salutations 2. Balance poses 3. Standing poses from 8. Legs up the wall pose with pillow 9. long relaxation, final two songs Blame It On The Love Of Rock & Roll and Little Bit Of Soul
1. Subscribe to receive there posts in your inbox. You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.
2 YouTube: Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs rebooting within days! -> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXpNMsIFP2U34A0yBKk8PUQ As part of our work together, I will also be making Rock Star Yoga or #dailybonjoviyoga videos for this channel, at some point (late 2022?).
You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala and A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and White Tigress Yoga Workbook at the bottom of this page: https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter
closing: 1. Shiva Rea on free flowing movement 2. playlist from my channel, of beginner yoga 3. Rock Star Yoga opening prayer
2. playlist from my channel, of beginner yoga one of the playlists from my old work
3. Rock Star Yoga opening prayer Inspired by a speech Madonna gave in 1990, when she was defending her daring artistic choices to the Vatican, this is the opening prayer to Rock Star Yoga:
The year has already finished its first two weeks, and with the vision for all my work, but in particular my rock star yoga work and #dailybonjoviyoga becoming more clear every day; the time has come to put pen to paper and lay down what I’ve got so far. And what you can expect from this blog in 2022.
Dutch Yoga
For this post, and on this blog, I’ll be limiting myself to the international branche(s) of yoga I will be developing. Because the yoga business I will build for the Netherlands, is proving to be its own thing.
In hindsight, the reason for seeing my work in the Netherlands and internationally as two entirely different things, something I definitely did not understand and have made mistakes in as recent as late last year – that reason is that there are already many free English yoga channels. Online yoga in English is a mature and flourishing market. But until the pandemic, Dutch yoga consisted of real life yoga classes. And, again at least until the pandemic started, none of the professional yoga channels in The Netherlands were able to make it big.
Dutch online yoga has not reached Yoga with Adriene levels here. And I think it should, and that’s what I m going to do.
If you’re Dutch and want to follow this upcoming Dutch yoga work, you can best subscribe to my now still dormant channel: Yoga met Suzanne Beenackers We’ll be starting soon.
The yoga in English, what this post is about, will be setup as: 1. Daily Bon Jovi Yoga, yoga that you can practice at home; And 2. Rock Star Yoga, yoga that we can practice in a class setting or event setting;
Daily Bon Jovi Yoga 2022
For what has seemed like the longest of times, I have had the resolution to not just start practicing yoga again, but to do it with the albums of Bon Jovi. One of the reasons this has been difficult is because it has been very overwhelming, because I also wanted to practice a lot of other things: online yoga (teacher training) programs, Yoga with Adriene, and my own yoga videos. You can find the latter on my YouTube, look for the lists with videos I made as a yoga teacher: https://www.youtube.com/c/MYogaNijmegen/playlists
And another reason executing this idea has been unsuccessful, is that the catalogue of Bon Jovi, the number of cds I own, is overwhelming. In particular the decade 2000-2010 they have come forth with I estimate 60% of all their work. Some of it is dated earlier; On the box set 100.000.000 Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong (2004), quite the number of songs are from the 80s and 90s. And I will include those in what I have now made into my core decades, my niche;
I have decided to limit my work for the Bon Jovi community, Daily Bon Jovi Yoga and Rock Star Yoga, to the 80s and the 90s.
On a daily basis this means the dozens of cds I can choose from for my Daily Bon Jovi Yoga, are limited to the 80s and the 90s.
Another choice I ve made, which has made it possible for me to prioritize, is to see everything that happened in yoga since 2000, including everything I learned as a professional yoga teacher and including the videos I made from 2015-2017, for which I am very grateful because they allow me to brush up on my teaching skills; To see them as just that. Brushing up on my teaching.
So from now on when I “do” my own videos, I m getting reacquainted with once familiar poses, and I m understanding the moving parts of the profession I used to have. However, I m not “doing” yoga.
“Doing” yoga is the Daily Bon Jovi Yoga, with an 80s or 90s cd from Bon Jovi.
If you want to follow my Daily Bon Jovi Yoga, you can follow me on Twitter, where I will post what I do, what music I used, starting tomorrow Sunday 16th 2022, covering the practice from today, Saturday 15th: https://twitter.com/SLBeenackers
Or! Third option for doing my Daily Bon Jovi Yoga: I do what I intended it to be since summer 2019. 3. Rock Star Yoga.
Rock Star Yoga 2022
Not gonna lie! When I think of the Rock Star Yoga manifestos, of which I have no idea where I kept them “safe”; About the powerful blog posts buried in my Rock Star Writer blog, which was then still called Rock Star Yoga; If I think about the 10 talks on video about the foundations of Rock Star Yoga, which I am still to uncover, update and retrieve from the archives; When I think of the end game Rock Star Yoga has to me, where we meet each other in person in an event-like setting, where we practice Rock Star Yoga to the beat of a 2 hour playlist with rock music.
When I think of all those things, unsurprisingly, I feel overwhelmed. I literally, do not know where to start. How do you start something that has never been done?
How do you start when you are no longer the fluent yoga teacher you were 5 years ago when you made yoga videos for YouTube and taught classes in Nijmegen, the Netherlands; Yet your ambition far extends hers?
So this part, the Rock Star Yoga part, is of course the hardest. It’s more complicated than doing daily Bon Jovi yoga, and also more complicated than starting a Dutch community on YouTube.
But what I remember, is that I had discovered quite a bit, in 2019, when the idea for Rock Star Yoga originated. And I also know I made a screen shot late 2021, where inspired on the opening prayers in the more traditional yoga lineages; I made a Rock Star Yoga opening prayer, for us.
This opening prayer is something I can share with you now. And I hope it sparks the end game, the ultimate thing you and I are going to do when we meet, and when our voices join. And you can say it before your yoga practice, before you press play on your Bon Jovi cd or a more modern medium.
Inspired by a speech Madonna gave in 1990, when she was defending her daring artistic choices to the Vatican, this is the opening prayer to Rock Star Yoga:
Maybe that is ultimately the only thing I can wish for you, here, on this Rock Star Journey with me:
1. Subscribe to receive there posts in your inbox. You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.
2 YouTube: Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs rebooting within days! -> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXpNMsIFP2U34A0yBKk8PUQ As part of our work together, I will also be making Rock Star Yoga or #dailybonjoviyoga videos for this channel, at some point (late 2022?).
You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala and A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and White Tigress Yoga Workbook at the bottom of this page:https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter
one of the playlists from my old work: Beginner Friendly (English) – Yoga Archives
Although I was very happy to have something on paper, to structure our classes on YouTube – referring to a printable called the Bon Jovi Yoga Set List, which I shared with you last weekend; I was also aware that it needed work. A ton of it.
That the descriptive nature of the schedule made it challenging to use, even for a former yoga teacher like me.
Which is why I updated the entire handout to now include sticky-men schedules, and I upgraded the document by using a Bon Jovi font for the headers, to a beginner friendly, user-friendly yoga guide, that you can print and use to do your own yoga (just put on a Bon Jovi album and do your own interpretations of the poses), or; You can print the guide for our upcoming YouTube classes.
Because these poses, this guide, will be our main thing.
I will be creating 30 minute classes, and it feels so good to have this structure, to have this guide. This Bon Jovi Yoga guide, or Set List 2.0, is the stable base from where we can start building Bon Jovi Yoga.
This guide is also what will make my channels different to other channels- if you want you can really “learn” yoga here, I will be a teacher in the truest sense of the word. I will teach you yoga, like I could teach you French. Although no- I cannot teach you French! But you get what I mean right?
I’ve always wanted students to be able to learn yoga, like you could learn French; That you know how to use it, how to work it. A framework that gives you a sense of direction, just like you have a sense of direction when it comes to Bon Jovi.
Then in your mind you label this: -remastered full concerts -hAnD90 channel – CRUSH tour – 2000/start of their most productive decade- and if you are Dutch like me probably also: -Dutch concerts -Arnhem
Now I’m sure this will sound unbelievable to you, but yoga wise, there is no such framework. Yoga practitioners do not speak the same language, they don’t use the same labels, nor is there a sense of kinship, the way there is among Bon Jovi fans.
Yoga practitioners are a group as diverse as pop/rock/blues/the whole shebang that must have started somewhere in the 50s, and that we still have today. That’s 70 years resulting in a wide array of musical genres, and similarly there’s 70 years of yoga in the west.
Yoga practitioners may seem like a homogeneous group, like modern music must seem like a homogeneous group but only if you religiously stuck to church- and classical music and avoided all modern music like the plague.
So there is no one face of yoga, and the kinship is often found within, and not so much outside, of one “lineage”. Found in and not outside of one class or one yoga school.
And systems? Well, yoga systems everyone agrees on are even more rare because because many lineages do not have a clear system. Bikram, Ashtanga, and Sivananda are the ones that pop to mind, as yoga lineages that practice a series of poses, and therefor have a system that can be explained to others. But they are a minority, and most yoga classes are not that explicitly tied to a certain lineage to begin with.
I want to teach you yoga in a systematic way, so that you can understand yoga at a meta level, and become “fluid” in yoga, in the exact same way that you are already fluid in Bon Jovi.
And just like Bon Jovi concerts: It can also be a stand-alone experience. You do not have to study, or have to understand. But if you want to, you can. Which is why I created this system and wrote this guide.
So what I did is I used the descriptive yoga system I posted this weekend, and expanded it with drawings, with sticky men schedules. This is the 17 page guide, you can print:
You can do Bon Jovi Yoga by putting on a Bon Jovi album, and do your own practice; Or join me this week when the English and Dutch channels will resume.
1 Daily Bon Jovi Yoga (daily blog): subscribe to -> https://dailybonjoviyoga.com/ This is the page you’re currently on. You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.
Daily Bon Jovi Yoga on YouTube will grow into an online community and database, where you will choose the videos you like, just like you’d be able to pick a class at your local yoga studio. Photos; The Next Best Thing (2000)
Today’s blogpost is going to be a little different, and with good reason. Because I want you to be able to find it, print it, do yoga from it by yourself (if you want to), and it will help you to understand the structure I will be using in our Bon Jovi Yoga videos on YouTube.
Last week, I filmed the pilot episodes for both the English and Dutch channel, using only poses that are closely related to daily life. Struggling to keep filming, what I found is that because we’re coming at yoga from such an unusual angle, of doing yoga with a Bon Jovi inspired theme – Bon Jovi songs for the English channel and Bon Jovi albums for the Dutch channel – I needed the yoga poses to be rooted in something solid.
Although I think a free-style form of yoga is preferable, I can’t teach freestyle AND give themed classes. I want the poses to have a link with the theme, and will therefor use yoga schedules, drawing the poses and exercises that we do.
Which is why I have decided on two systems: 1. A 7-step yoga guide which I will have ready for you in two weeks. These are classical yoga poses, seated, lying down, breathing exercises. and 2. A framework with different categories of poses. This is the framework, in this post, below.
You can do Bon Jovi Yoga by putting on a Bon Jovi album, and do your own practice; Or join me this week when the English and Dutch channels will resume, and after the pilot, Season 1 will begin!
on hands and knees: child’s pose with the knees wide and arms extended forward forehead to the floor resting pose, stay as long as you like
on hands and knees: child’s pose with twist cross one arm under your body to the other side turn head on one cheek resting pose, stay as long as you like
on hands and knees: cat or also called “cat cow” inhale: arch your spine and look up exhale round your spine, tuck your chin in to your chest easy moving pose, repeat as often as you like
from hands and knees move to: downward facing dog hold for longer or shorter, depending on if you re familiar with this pose It’s a pose I suggest you throw some YouTube tutorials at!
from downward dog move to: standing forward fold walk your feet forward, until you can come in a gentle forward fold (bend your knees) roll up the spine and reach your hands all the way up, inhale deeply bring the palms together overhead. Exhale, bring the hands in front of your chest in “Namaste”
you have now completed the opening sequence
from here you can move into: Half (standing) Sun Salutations & Sun Salutations of your choosing
2. balance poses
Examples of balance poses are
tree pose
dancer’s pose
hand to big toe pose (advanced) holding big toe and extending the leg forward variation: open/ rotate leg to the side variation: place hand on hips, hold leg hovering, keep extending it forward
eagle pose
half-moon pose variation: with a twist
“the mountain” place feet at hip width interlace your fingers with the index fingers up extend your arms high above you, index finger now points to the sky come on toes
3. Standing Poses
examples of standing poses:
crescent pose/ high lunge pose with the back heel up arms extend overhead, at shoulder width
crescent pose/ high lunge pose with the back heel up variation: with a twist
reversed warrior pose
warrior pose II upperbody turns open to the side
reversed warrior pose
warrior pose I looks simple but it is a tricky one keep your lower body turning to the side as in warrior II and twist/ turn only the uppertorso, from the waist up, facing forward
extended side-angle pose
triangle pose variation: with a twist variation: bow forward over the leg
Goddess pose standing wide legged squat reach your arms up overhead, at shoulder width
fierce pose bend knees (“squat”) with the feet and knees together reach your arms up, at shoulder width
wide-legged forward bend variation: walk your hands to one foot and stretch over the leg variation: from folding forward, bring your body halfway up/ horizontal, and extend your arms to the sides. Lift your head up. Making a bird shape with your entire upper body.
standing forward bend feet at hip width variation: with a twist keep fingers one hand (left) on the ground, bend one leg (left), twist body open to other side (right) and reach other (right) arm up variation: gorilla pose feet still at hip width in the forward bend. Bend your knees deeply and place your hands, with the palms up, under your feet.
4. transition poses between standing and kneeling & poses on your knees
transition between standing poses and on the knees wide legged squat pose +with a twist crow pose (arm balance)
high on your knees gateway pose camel pose
plank pose variation: side plank variation: starfish or a moderate (half) starfish with your toes on the floor behind you, in side plank
downward dog
on hands and knees: cat or also called “cat cow” inhale: arch your spine and look up exhale round your spine, tuck your chin in to your chest easy moving pose, repeat as often as you like
on hands and knees: cat free flow circle the hips in a big circle, let rest of the body move with it
tiger pose or half tiger pose
on hands and knees: arm and leg extension on hands and knees: extend left arm forward, right leg up, look up, inhale “crunch” bring left elbow and right knee together, exhale repeat as often as you like | always practice both sides (repeat other side)
tiger pose or half tiger pose
for the called ones: full body prostration lie on your belly, face down, with your arms extended overhead, palms together
5. backbends & close with child’s pose
on hands and knees: puppy pose
forearm plank & sphinx pose hold low forearm plank and then move into sphinx pose (hold) repeat
cobra
seal
locust pose
bow
———-
child’s pose with the knees wide and arms extended forward forehead to the floor resting pose
6. seated, forward bends and twists
seated forward bend also called forward bend or forward fold
janu sirsasana with a twist
head to knee pose, janu sirsasana & janu sirsasana with a twist
“easy pose” sit with the legs crossed or in lotus pose: -side stretch, reach (right) arm overhead and lean sideways (to the left) -repeat other side -relax forward -place fingertips behind you, lift/open chest and stretch head slightly back change legs (other foot up or in front of the other) and repeat the four exercises
wide-angle seated forward bend variation: grab toes and lift your legs up (upward facing wide-angle seated pose) variation: now roll back and forth
butterfly pose/ bound angle pose place soles of the feet together, so that the knees drop open grab the ankles and draw the feet closer towards you – sit up straight, breathe to your belly – or gently sway left to right, maybe even rolling from side to side – or sit up, roll/rotate the knees in the direction of the floor with every exhale – relaxed version: place the feet further away from you, and relax forward with your head in the direction of your feet
seated spinal twist
double pigeon
7. lying down, supine poses
all these poses are done lying on your back
lying twist stretch lie down on your back, pull one knee (right) towards you now twist it over to the other side (left) with the left hand on your knee extend your right arm to the right at shoulder level turn your head to the right (optional)
repeat on the other side
supine leg stretch start with both feet flat on the floor extend one leg (right) up and pull it towards you maybe relax the other (left) leg on the floor repeat other side
supine pigeon stretch or eye of the needle
happy baby or dead bug pose
(I) inversions* * do not practice inversions when you are in your period
bridge
plow pose/ snail pose = a relaxed plow pose with the arms overhead
shoulderstand (compensate with fish pose)
8. Lying Butterfly, or restorative yoga With props
lying butterfly, reclined bound angle pose lie on your back, place soles of the feet together and let the knees drop open let the arms rest next to you or place them wide, at shoulder level
legs up the wall pose, here with a yoga block to elevate the hips
(I) restorative inversions* with a meditation cushion to elevate the hips or multiple cushions or a rolled up blanket * do not practice these poses when in you are in your period
bridge pose with a meditation cushion under your hips
legs-up-the-wall-pose place a mediation cushion under your hips and relax with your legs up
(II) restorative poses with a bolster to rest your upperbody on or a rolled-up duvet/ blanket
reclined bound angle pose with a bolster
-child’s pose with a bolster -wide-legged forward fold with a bolster -seated forward fold with a bolster -backbend, legs and hips lying on the floor, and back and head resting on the bolster. variation: legs in butterfly = reclined bound angle pose with a bolster
9 long relaxation
Long relaxation Lie on your back, cover up with a blanket and maybe you’d like pillow under your head. Lie down with the feet at hip width, hands open next to you, close your eyes and relax your face and entire body.
#dailybonjoviyoga 7 Nov 21
I’ve committed to two systems: White Tigress, which are 7 yoga schedules for your home practice. This guide will be available within two weeks. And the other system is an order of sequencing poses, which allows you to create your own practice as well.
1 Daily Bon Jovi Yoga (daily blog): subscribe to -> https://dailybonjoviyoga.com/ This is the page you’re currently on. You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.
Alternative title would be: “Did I do ALL that?” But because my ideal “doing” is still yoga, and not study yoga, restoring yoga videos, nor even publishing yoga books or fixing anyone’s love life (really); I thought the accomplished ring that “Did I do all that?” had, did not entirely fit the occasion.
Because, bummer! Bummer that I didn’t do yoga. Bummer that I saw 6 hours go down the drain to having an unexpected and violent headache. Bummer that although I loved being amongst the peoples, and feeling human and loved and get a sense of belonging; Boy, I need this work. I need my yoga.
I didn’t tell anyone (well, I m telling you now, so that cat is out of the hat) but at the beginning of this week, when I started “doing” Daily Bon Jovi Yoga, and made a commitment to either do yoga, either make a video, or, if that isn’t working, to combine yoga with my creative expressions of curating, restoring, fiddling, playing with notebooks, studying and so on and so forth; That I was basically acknowledging to myself that my relationship to my art, is my primary relationship.
That there will never be a significant other, not in the way society thinks of significant others, because there has always been a significant other since 2006 when I started writing. Since 1998 when I started yoga, by starting to see myself “as that person”, as a strong yoga practitioner. Or since 2000 when I started to see myself as a yoga teacher, and moved into that identity.
Stationary means paper, pens, notebooks and other office supplies. They’re usually seen as functional, but I always refer to it as “play”. I play with my notebooks.
The creative relationship I have with playing with my identity, with performance, with stationary (that is the English word for notebooks, I can remember how for decades I couldn’t get past the association with a car engine running in “stationary” mode, but no -> see picture) and the creative relationship I have with writing and teaching yoga; At the beginning of this week I chose that relationship to art to be the most dominant one. Or, like I said, made peace with the fact that it had been for a very long time.
That even the love life, to which I so coyly referred to in this title and in one of the videos I recovered, that even that love life is a play. It is a performance, of two people, who keep the game going by constantly changing the rules.
In 2016 I was still not fully aware of the fact that I was playing, and never in a linear relationship to creating something that was supposed to last. That I was a creative, not a builder. Yet, in this video about my love life, you can see me quite literally up my game, after days of feeling lonely.
I added this video on how to tackle and up your game in your love life, at the bottom of this post.
But the other videos as well; Candid, funny, and since I really do have the feeling life, and that includes yoga, has been slipping through my fingers the past couple of years, it is so nice to see that in 2016? I still had it.
You can find the 2016 yoga videos I retrieved including their descriptions which will give you an idea of their content, below this post in the Daily Bon Jovi Yoga 5 and 6 November paragraph.
Other things I did, relating to yoga – other than restoring all these videos – was that I feel like committing to doing White Tigress yoga. For myself but also to start sharing it with you. But then I realized that I couldn’t teach it because the guide I had written in my days as a yoga teacher, was not available. So I published that book, and it turned out absolutely wonderful.
I ll have this White Tigress yoga guide available for you in about two weeks, when I’ve received the test/trial copy. Subscribe to this blog to stay posted!
The final thing I did, was that I started a teacher training I purchased in 2018, but that I had never finished. My specific program has discontinued but it has evolved into this program, which is available: The Full Yoga Shred® Teacher Training Certification by Sadie Nardini
So that was it for today! And now that I think of it, I may not be churning out daily videos, like I was in 2016.
And today I want to share them with you individually, including their description:
#7 Baby M at home | AbFab Yoga for your Lower Back II | 5 minutes yoga https://youtu.be/B_viUOMxO54 description box 2016: “You will be on your back for this whole series. (pause) And I won’t be making sex jokes.” *cat Max enters screen* “Not even when my pussy comes say hi.”
#8 Baby M at home | AbFab Yoga for your lower back III | 13 minutes yoga https://youtu.be/fi3aPSA2-OA description box 2016: “Me, flashing my non-alcoholism (day 9), a red thong, and an obviously perfectly functioning lower back…. Come to think of it: Drinking and a red thong have something in common: you should never apologize for it.”
#9 Baby M at home | Gym Yoga Done Making Excuses | 14 minutes vinyasa power yoga https://youtu.be/qdGDjz5NI24 description box 2016: “Remember that perfect day when you had lots of time to do your work-out, incredible mental focus, and unwavering stamina? Exactly. Not gonna happen. So you may as well do it today.”
#10 Baby M at home | Empowerment in your love life | 6 minutes vinyasa power yoga https://youtu.be/GzDb6yjqXsI 2021: I can’t believe I FOUND this video! This is the most fun, most uplifting and empowering yoga video I think I ever created. How about this gem: “Whatever you do, don’t wear sweatpants. Sweatpants have the power to bring any woman on her knees. And not in an empowering way.”
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When at the beginning of this week, I committed to Bon Jovi Yoga in general, and this blog Daily Bon Jovi Yoga in particular, I didn’t know exactly how it was going to turn out. Nor what I was committing to, to be honest. But I did know one thing.
That it was about fucking time.
I’ve cleared use of the word fuck in myunofficial Bon Jovi Yoga manifestowhich I wrote Monday, so that was taken care off before anything else.
The reason it was the fuck time, was that two years after coming up with the first version of what would turn into Bon Jovi Yoga, but was then still called Rock Star Yoga (a name I m keeping in my back pocket should I need to claim a name free for commercial use), I knew enough to make it work. I knew MORE than enough, and was actually in the phase of tossing out everything I had tried to attach to Bon Jovi Yoga.
I had gone through my phase of wanting this yoga to be everything, my life’s work. I had gone through that array of artistic, expansive, free flowing versions, which turned out to be as numbing as they were all-encompassing- I’d gone through teaching it online, offline, one-on-one; Doing it in private, blogging and tweeting about it, not blogging and tweeting about it.
However the thing I had practiced the most in all those 2+ years? Had been falling off the wagon. And then apparently getting back up again, because how else was I going to gloriously fall off again, so I must have developed some climbing onto wagons skills and yet; What a disappointment.
In moments of brutal honesty I called and still call myself yoga free. Which I think has a nice ring to it. If you’re new at yoga, or you have fallen off the wagon, may I suggest you start calling yourself “yoga free” too. But you’re open to being seduced, if yoga lures you in. If yoga makes it so appealing, and gives such bold suggestions!, that you eagerly follow it to the mat, curious about what’s gonna happen! Dropping everything you had planned for that moment or that day, in favor of this shiny new yoga thing that is gonna have its way with you.
Well, you know what the problem is? Yoga RARELY, if ever, tries that hard. Yoga is usually not exactly selling itself. And if you’re used to being sold to? And with social media, and internet, we’re all being used, not just to being sold to; But to connecting over it. Being loved over it. Flashing it. Having a laugh over it, and having a great time together over it.
Then in that context, doing yoga alone on the mat, being introspective, confronted with your body that may or not be as healthy or as in shape as you remember it to be and being confronted with that, on top of already going out of your way to make it to the stupid boring yoga mat doing a stupid boring video? I m not talking about taking real life yoga classes, because they have a much much higher chance of doing the trick of engaging you; But online yoga with a pre-recorded course or video, or doing private yoga without internet?
That is a toughie, Love. Or tough love. However you choose to call it.
So if you look at it from that angle, from the angle of us being forever altered and spoiled by the instant gratification of internet connection, spending, purchasing, sharing; Then you can already see a loophole to making yoga fun! Although this is not even the one from the title, not even the one particular for artists, but one way to make yoga more interesting is to tie it to your online activity, by posting your yoga practice or joining an online yoga community, or taking live online yoga classes or a live online yoga course.
The approach I want to write about today is a different one. It is for those of us who CAN be entirely submerged in alone activities that are seducing us effectively, to engage with them over and over again. Any form of art and creativity but it can also be watching movies or Netflixing.
Then the key to making yoga interesting is to find a way to connect that activity, to “yoga”. Not so much to the doing of yoga, as I was talking about when I said I fell off the wagon all the time, but to tie it to yoga as a field of interest. If you like photography, you can look up coffee table books with yoga poses or Indian Saddhus. If you like Netflix you type in yoga and see what comes up. If you like YouTube you can start there and create playlists of yoga videos that you think are interesting. If you like studying, purchase a foundational course or (teacher) training, for example on Udemy. You can watch movies about yoga, documentaries about yoga, or dig into popular culture with yoga or yoga teachers in them. Such as the turn of the century series Dharma and Greg, to name a vintage one. If you like cooking you can take a look at suggested yoga diets or start studying the Ayurvedic kitchen. If you’re an entrepreneur, you can study marketing for yoga studios, or business models in yoga.
As an example I also added a very pure artistic interpretation of yoga, from Meghan Currie, at the bottom of this post.
If you’re interested, I even have vocabulary for that; “To be in the space with”. So instead of committing (and then failing…) to doing the actual yoga, you can commit to be in the space with; Yoga!
Say you dream of ultimately practicing yoga for half an hour every day, then you can commit yourself to be in the space with 1. your artistic medium + 2. yoga
What did I do, the past 24 hours of “daily Bon Jovi yoga”? Well, I had a failing Wifi, causing me to postpone some things to night time that cause me a lot of stress, and when at 11 PM I was home, I was not doing that great but still thought I would do yoga. Only to then bump into something that triggered my anxiety, hard.
My agenda went from “do yoga” to “make it to the next day”. And I did, because here I am.
This morning, instead of writing you that I had not done any yoga, I started restoring my old yoga database. My archive. I also improved on 25 uploads I had recovered earlier. Seeing those creations come to life was highly satisfactory. It was as good as writing, like writing this blogpost, which I then ALSO did.
And I recognized, for the first time in all those years, and I want you to take this in!, I recognized what I am. And, in all likeliness, what you are too. An artist, a creator, a creative.
Creators create, it’s what we do.
So find a way to create something with yoga, find a way to connect yoga to something you’re creating or doing already. Tie yoga to your already existing creative activity.
This blog, Daily Bon Jovi Yoga, will stay daily (unless I tweet, if I cut corners, but then I ll bundle them up later), and the main idea, will still be: -about creating and sharing Bon Jovi yoga videos or -about doing and sharing Bon Jovi yoga, what I did.
But now I see this blog, and me doing yoga is so much broader than that. And that my commitment is not to do yoga (either on video or off), but to be in the space with yoga. And that will result to the following things that you can also expect from me here: – restored yoga videos from my YouTube channel – yoga postures or exercise schedules = sticky men schedules (drawings) – Bon Jovi music playlists to do yoga to – playlists of yoga videos to do yoga with
And then no one, not me not you, ever has to fall off the wagon ever again.
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Ever bended like this after working in the garden? That’s yoga! First English video up: https://youtu.be/PwMb2jRC84o
🤩🥳🍾 BON JOVI YOGA HAS BEGUN! And everyday I will be sharing my practice with you.
I’ll use this blog if I have but an inch of time, but if I’m on location or otherwise have to cut corners, I’ll use social media and then later bundle the entries up.
So Bon Jovi Yoga? What is it, right? Well, it has been a work in progress since 2019, originally starting out as Rock Star Yoga which is still the name it will have commercially if I ever, absolutely, or else I miss millions, have to brand something. But right now Bon Jovi Yoga is what you would call “fan art”, so it is art (my art is yoga) and it is inspired by Bon Jovi.
I even, and you’re allowed to hold this against me anytime!, thought of calling us Bon Jogis! From Bon Jovi and yogi, the word for a yoga practitioner. And “Hi Bon Jogis!” does make a great opening, better than “Hi everybody!”. Plus after having been a yogi or a yoga teacher, for two decades, I would definitely take the identity Bon Jogi and run with it!
But no. In the end, meaning Now-but-I-might-change-my-mind, it just didn’t feel right to call us Bon Jogis and I think I know why. Because we’re all so emotionally invested in the name Bon Jovi, that any alteration is just acid to our ears. Any alteration is heresy.
So Daily Bon Jovi Yoga has started, and it did so on a Dutch yoga channel and an English one.
🇳🇱Bon Jovi Yoga Nederland | channel trailer Speciaal voor de Nederlandse Bon Jovi fans, en zij die er open voor staan om dat te worden, Bon Jovi Yoga in het Nederlands! In een nieuw decor met Coca-cola spullen en vintage Bon Jovi posters, net alsof we op mijn jaren 80 zoldertje zijn van vroeger. Dus rol je yogamat uit, en let’s rock n roll.
See you tomorrow, for a new episode of #dailybonjoviyoga!.
subscribe to -> Daily Bon Jovi Yoga (daily blog): https://dailybonjoviyoga.com/ This is the page you’re currently on. You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.
Her talk tells the history of dancing, and how it is something babies do instinctively, yet it was almost equally instinctively repressed by the church, because it represented creative power.
And when you read creative power, you could also read sexual power. Because those are the same thing.
And it wasn’t until the 50s brought us rock n roll, that it ended. Shiva points out, how you cannot be afraid and dance at the same time. Fear needs you to hold still. In the 50s Elvis came, people started to dance freely and the spell of fear and repression was lifted.
This analysis from Shiva Rea touches on something I have been trying to make up my mind about, as I am wondering how to start, or root, my second career in yoga. Will I continue to write yoga schedules for my yoga classes and my yoga videos? Or not.
The reasons to do so, are absolutely overwhelming. Methodical teaching will give you a system that will allow you to understand yoga as a whole. You will be able to take classes, wherever you are, and feel like you know the poses and have some kind of reference. And I ve also quite enjoyed making schedules, usually based on vintage yoga books, on videos from YouTube, courses I took, or on dvds. I always had one schedule for every class week, which I often made available for the people in class. It gave me a sense of groundedness, as a teacher.
And yet: In the final years of teaching group classes, I already had the desire to be a teacher without a script. Just like my blog posts are never planned, but the story comes out as a whole, and without me knowing the end of it; That is how I want my classes to be!
So from a personal perspective, this really is the perfect time to step up my game and no longer teach something I have planned or written out before.
Which does not mean I will not make schedules based on dvds and books; Just that I won’t be teaching or doing them. I have always liked watching dvds, reading books, and from there to write out yoga schedules. That is a creative process. But to then actually go do that? Then it is no longer creative.
So to satisfy my own creative needs, there really is no better time for me to start coming to the mat without preparing what I am going to do. Just like when I practice yoga myself: I also do not have a schedule, and sometimes my poses are not “really” yoga poses. I ve been wondering how I could teach this free-style. Or, more specifically, I have been realizing I cannot teach it. That it’s too difficult. That I have no idea what I am doing, and that I could analyze and name it, but then I end up with a system, and it would be a scheduled practice all over again. And I don’t want that.
The talk from Shiva Rea made me realize that despite being absolutely clueless on how to teach yoga that has no system or no form; That that is precisely why I want to teach it.
That my personal system of writing down exercises, and doing yoga by what I have on paper, may not be two-thousand years old, but it is over two decades old. And that’s a long time.
Who knows how many Victorian yoga values I have internalized. I know I still feel exposed when my yoga top shows cleavage, or when the shirt curls up and you see my belly. I get this 50’s Catholic feeling of being too sexual; So yeah, it is still in me!
Shaming someone, including shaming yourself, for their sexuality is in my opinion evil in its purest form.
I ve internalized values which are directly opposing everything I stand for. And there is a very high chance the feeling I was a better yoga teacher if I prepared my classes, if I stuck to the known poses and their names, if I rooted my teachings in existing lineages; Is tied to those same internalized Victorian values which may have worked in 19th century colonial India, or early 50s in The Netherlands; But they’re not my values.
My yoga, which I already do on my mat to one Bon Jovi album every day; Is free.
And our Bon Jovi inspired yoga, which I will teach for both my English and Dutch channels; Is free.
It will not be rooted in those yoga lineages, regardless if they were good or bad or if their leaders (yes, there’s more plenty more than just one Netflix documentary) have fallen off their pedestals because they have abused their power, and justice caught up with them.
Our yoga will be rooted in freedom.
In rock n roll.
In Bon Jovi.
And let’s give them something to worry about, for the next two-thousand years.
Short version?
When at the beginning of this week, I committed to Bon Jovi Yoga in general, and this blog Daily Bon Jovi Yoga in particular, I didn’t know exactly how it was going to turn out. Nor what I was committing to, to be honest.
Daily Bon Jovi Yoga 