Tiger poses Yoga Virginia

It’s cold and wet, rather slushy, and incredibly slippery. It is snow pile yoga and it’s happening at a shrinking mound of snow near you.

Earlier this week, Colure Caulfield, an instructor with Down Dog Yoga, demonstrated for me the proper poses for snow pile yoga on a heaping snow pile that is currently melting near the Plaza America shopping center in Reston, Virginia. Snow pile yoga photos are displayed below.

Colure said that snow pile yoga brings her closer to nature. “It’s like doing yoga on the beach but instead of warm, dry sand under your feet you have cold, sloppy ice granules.”

The Forearm Wheel pose. Colure says that when she takes this pose she is trying to be the snow pile.

Every spring, we track and report on snow piles in our area and every spring our readers politely urge us to seek professional help.

This year, however, we’re taking our snow pile obsession to a new level. We’re participating in snow pile yoga. Just imagine, watching the last vestiges of our past winter storms melt away under the yoga mat while you get an awesome, full-body workout.

Sure, we might need to seek professional help, but at least we’ll be in great shape and quite limber when we answer the doctor’s questions about our ridiculously insane interest in snow. We might even take half pigeon or crow on the doc’s sofa when he shows us shapes while responding they resemble a GFS weather map with a snowstorm poised to track up the East Coast.

The Sugarcane pose. Colure said she tries to channel her inner snow pile when holding this pose.

Many of you are probably pulling up Google Maps at this moment to find Plaza America in Reston so you too can go out and do snow pile yoga. Or, perhaps, you are booking a flight to Boston so you can do really big snow pile yoga. It’s all good. The size of the snow pile doesn’t matter. (Yes, I know, we’ve all heard that many times before.)

There is one small challenge with snow pile yoga, however, that should be mentioned. Yoga mats act like toboggans on snow piles. They plunge to the ground quite fast. Scary fast is a better way to describe the descent of yoga mats off of the snow pile.

So, you will need to bolt down your yoga mat to the snow pile. We found the 8” threaded bolts at Home Depot work very well. Just bolt down each corner of the mat deep into the ice and snow and you’re good-to-go. If not, the down dog position will take on an entirely new meaning when you and your mat slam into the ground.

Happy snow pile yoga everyone! Don’t slip and fall! Remember those Home Depot bolts! Namaste!

The Tripod Headstand. Colure said if she gets thirsty while holding this pose she can just slurp the melted snow puddles from off her mat.

Note: A special thanks to Colure Caulfield for climbing up onto the infamous Reston snow pile and helping us with this yoga-snow pile spoof. Well done, Colure! And I will add that she never fell off of the snow pile during our entire photo shoot.

Related:

The Three-Legged Dog. What says peace, love, and yoga better than a Reston parking garage backdrop?
The Side Crow pose. Colure says when she’s in this pose she can see Whole Foods across the parking lot and she starts thinking about organic pizza.
The Flying Monkey pose. Colure says this is by far the coldest of all snow pile yoga poses for some unknown reason.