Welcome to the Blog:
Your go-to resource for learning how to use home yoga + movement routines and rituals for building strength, relieving stress, and living mindfully.
Tips for Home Yoga Practice – Your Space
If you practice yoga at home (or WANT to start a home practice), is your space stopping you from getting on your mat? There are lots of convenient reasons for practicing yoga at home (it's faster, cheaper, easier, no driving or parking time, you get to do what YOU...
The Mmmmmm Phase
The big news of the day from my neck of the woods is that Luma Yoga, the centre that I called home for four wonderful years in downtown Santa Cruz, CA, is closing its doors on February 14, 2021, permanently. You can read Val's message here. She puts the truth of the...
“I’m All Yours”
Here's an interesting experience of shifting away from effort and into ease through three little words: "I'm all yours" I've had a lot to do lately and have been a little bit "blocked." Things have been jumbled in my mind and I've felt scattered. Nothing was seeming...
Your Body is Your #1 Asset
I recently started shifting my focus to specialize in women who are over 40 and have an established business or a "weird job" that allows them to be flexible in how and when they work but also requires them to be active, out in the world. Why? Because I believe that...
No Hands, Ma!
I ask my students to try getting up and down off the floor without using their hands quite often. It’s a fun thing to try. It’s playful! They chatter, they waver, they puzzle, they laugh, they try new things. Even after they figure out how to do it, I find that there...
Simple + Advanced Breath Practice
I've been teaching the breath today in private sessions and classes. Like most days. Today was a day for teaching the simple, yet advanced breath work of really following the breath. Yoga is really just movement layered on top of conscious attention and awareness of...
Wishes for Private Students
I'm just coming inside from the most delightful afternoon out in my garden. We have a fairly small backyard here in California, but we have filled this patio with flowers and climbing vines. A lot of it was here when we got here, so I'm trying to keep it...
Building Relationships in the Practice
"Come to a Tabletop position on your hands and knees. Tuck your toes, lift your hips up and back, and come into Downward Facing Dog." We do lots of these in yoga classes, and I tell you, there is probably no other pose that I get more "should I do X" questions on as...
The Resourcing Framework + Practice
A private student came to her session the other day feeling down and vulnerable and a little heartbroken. She's not the first to come to my on the day of her session not feeling awesome. It happens. I'm sure it also happens in group classes, but I don't know about it...
Wildly Permissive + Wildly Demanding
As a parent, I can oscillate between being wildly permissive and wildly demanding. I have teenagers and they continually make me immensely proud and full of love. And they also frustrate me beyond belief. At the end of the day, I'm trying to raise a human being who is...
Part 2: Trust Your Body’s Intelligence
This is Part 2 in a series on the incorporating new movements in yoga, what I’m doing in my own practice to address a hip-clicking issue, and how I’m working to develop more strength and stability in my body. Read the intro and Part 1 if you missed it! I'm sure you've...
Part 1: Pick Longevity Over Sensation
This Part 1 in a series on the incorporating new movements in yoga, what I'm doing in my own practice to address a hip-clicking issue, and how I'm working to develop more strength and stability in my body. Read the intro here! In 2015, I attended a class at Wanderlust...
Honesty in Yoga: New Movement to Challenge an Established Asana Practice
I have a confession to make. Yoga ALONE doesn't make my body feel great. As a yoga teacher with an "advanced practice" (meaning I can do a lot of fancy poses), I've been practicing with a fair amount of effort for several years, over a decade. And like many yoga...
20 Minutes a Day Keeps the Chaos Away
Back in 2013 or so, I attended my first intensive with Christina Sell at the San Marcos School of Yoga. During that asana intensive, which was a gathering of the Asana Junkies group who studied with Christina in her online courses, we did a LOT of physical asana...
Home is Where the Mat Is
My family and I spent the holiday season back in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, which was our home as a family for 13 years and is my husband's hometown. Every time I'm there, it's strange in that it's a version of home. It's one of the homes of my life. "Home" is...
Revive the Art of Conversation
I wrote this little note several months ago after a full day of yoga practice in Texas: "What a fabulous last day with Gioconda Parker at the San Marcos School of Yoga. The word "conversation" came up in totally unrelated circumstances three times today. Once during a...
Why Private Yoga is Even More Amazing Than Your Favorite Yoga Class
I have a confession to make. Even though I do love teaching group yoga classes, I've fallen quite in love with teaching private yoga sessions. In most yoga teacher trainings, you are not taught how to teach private yoga. The focus is very much on "how to teach a group...
99 Coping Skills for Depression
Yesterday was American Thanksgiving. We started off our day with the 5k Turkey Trot in downtown San Jose to benefit Second Harvest. Three generations of the White-Penney-Krolik family ran/walked in the race, from my 80-year-old dad to my 11-year-old niece....
Self Compassion Practices for Imperfect Beings
Last month, I took a paddling class with an outrigger canoe group here in Santa Cruz. Sounds fun, right? But I had a frustrating experience as a new paddler. It was the first time in a long time that I had not felt "good enough" at something. I was trying my best to...
10 Tips for Arm Balances and What They Have to Teach Us
Have you ever avoided the arm balance section of a yoga class? You know, slipped away to the bathroom just when the teacher announces that it's time to breakdown Bakasana (Crow Pose) or (even worse) Handstand? This has happened in my classes from time to time, less so...
I am Robin Penney, ERYT-500 yoga teacher and movement geek, and I help women who are 40+ get stronger, calmer, and more connected through the practice of yoga + movement that is nourishing, playful, approachable, and challenging at just the right level.
There is no better time in history to get serious about self-care and purposeful living than now, and I hope these tools help you embrace all that you can give to the world.