ditch the comparisons and Learn to Thrive in skating and Life

"I help skating folks learn to ditch the comparisons and connect with their true selves and new possibilities. Transform your outlook and learn to thrive in skating and life with joy and success. And together, we are building a safer, more supportive skating community."          
 -----Sarah Neal, The Skating Yogi

My Featured Blog Posts:

Non-Toxic Mental Toughness for Figure Skating and How Yoga is Key
08.21.22

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The Cognitive Triangle
    The ancient sage Patanjali teaches us that the physical practices of breathwork, asana, and meditation are foundational to developing mastery of the mind and, as such, key to our journey on this Earth.  
   One of his teachings is especially pertinent to the conversation around youth sports culture, competitiveness, mental toughness, mental health.
    In fact, this sutra is so important that my yoga teacher calls it the “key to mental peace.”  Yoga Sutra 1.33 says:
“By cultivating attitudes of friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and disregard toward the wicked, the mind-stuff retains its undisturbed calmness.”
   Patanjali and the ancient yogis knew about the cognitive cycle even if they didn’t call it by the same name. This is the foundation of how yoga works—cultivate certain attitudes to live rightly, practice asana to help master the mind, and practice breath to stimulate the vagus nerve to help with all of it.  

Get Better Figure skating Spirals
02.03.2023

      The internet and social media have no shortage of videos and articles showing general stretches to do in order to “get your leg higher” in a spiral–seated forward fold, seated V stretch, standing arabesque, etc. 
     After all, many skaters of all levels must relentlessly work on flexibility in order to get the leg higher than the hip. 
   Some skaters, though, need to work more on strength and holding the leg in position. 
     Also, most of these resources address only the basic spiral position and don’t discuss the differences in alignment and balance that are involved in executing a spiral on an edge. And very few discuss how to work with strength, flexibility, and balance all at once. 
    This is where yoga comes in! A well-designed yoga program can help with all three of these things. Some individual yoga postures in and of themselves work all three, just like spirals do!
    Sure, if you have a “problem” muscle area that is holding you back, then some targeted exercises are just what the coach ordered.  Sometimes, though, to get better at the skating trick, we just need to do the skating trick off-ice. This is where these two yoga postures come into play.

Achieve Figure Skating Success With Yoga
01.23.2023

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Figure skater ready for yoga practice
    While the physical practice of yoga is important for figure skaters, it is much more than "exercise". In fact, the “exercise” component of yoga as off-ice training may be the least important aspect for figure skaters searching for success.
  Most beginning figure skaters join the sport because it is fun, graceful, and free. We stay with it because the ice and wind get in our blood, and we can’t get them out. We also like the people we meet, the community we form, and the progress that we make.
  Practicing on the ice for three or four hours daily doesn’t really matter if you don’t have the right perspective on your figure skating training or don’t know where skating fits in the big picture of your life.
  The same holds true with yoga. Asana – the practice of physical postures—can help figure skaters develop awareness, strength, and flexibility, but without the right approach, skaters will miss out on the most impactful training—the training of the mind and the breath, which help us stay grounded.
  This is why learning and practicing the philosophical principles of yoga—specifically Patanjali’s 8 Limbs—is essential to a well-balanced figure skating journey.

Top Tools For Beating Nerves and Anxiety in Skating Performances
02.17.2023

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Young skater falls during a perforamnce
     Skaters of all ages face different factors that cause them stress in testing and competitive situations. As much as we may try to create a positive training environment and keep the focus on individual journeys rather than comparisons, it’s impossible to take the judgment 100% out of a judged sport. 
     The body automatically senses stressors in the environment, even when the mind isn’t actively thinking of them, and each skater’s body reacts in unconscious ways. While some skaters naturally thrive under this pressure, the majority of skaters react with some manifestation of fight, flight, freeze, and/or fawn. 
     Our body’s response doesn’t have to derail our plans, though! The judges and the event are only perceived threats–not actual threats like a tiger running toward you. Use these 10 tools to beat the nerves that would otherwise stand in the way of reaching your goals and having fun in the process. 

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