Kim’s Class for Athleta and Zeel

As you know we taught classes for a Zeel and Athleta store-opening event.  Hopefully, you made it to Kim’s class on Saturday, despite the snow.  Here’s the glowing-review Zeel gave the class as well as helping us announce SMARTer Yoga to the world:

On the last day of Zeel Week at Athleta, the weather turned unaccountably stormy. (Really, snow in October?) Yet dedicated yogis made their way to Athleta’s UWS store to enjoy a yoga session with Zeel Expert yoga instructor Kim-Lien Kendall.

And did we ever. Behind Kim’s innocent demeanor lies the mind of a hardcore yoga taskmaster. Kim took us through a series of poses that tested our ability to stretch and balance. Whenever we managed to successfully complete one asana, Kim would sweetly say, “Now we’re going to try something a bit more difficult.”  Kim, however, was not without mercy, offering modifications as needed to those of us with tight hips and knees and groins (yep, groins).

I learned a lot through Kim’s mastery of body mechanics—how the body is supposed to move. (Kim and her yoga partner-in-crime, Melissa Gutierrez, are creating a biomechanically-based form of the age-old practice called SMARTer yoga.) After congratulating myself on doing a floppy pigeon pose, I learned that my lack of resistance in my hips means that my psoas, a muscle connecting the base of the spine to the inner thigh, was way too tight. Looks like I’ll be doing psoas homework!

Even though we had to venture out in to the freezing rain after class, we did so with a smile (and perhaps a looser psoas).