Jason Alan Griffin :: The Blog

Last month I posted a video of me doing my basic Energy Flow workout .  It was the exact same technique that I've taught many times in Energy Flow classes and to private training clients. This month, I'm posting the next phase. Once I've worked with the basic Energy Flow movements long enough to feel comfortable and strong with them, I graduate to the more sophisticated Phase Two movements. The four exercises you'll see are designed as offshoots from the four basic Energy Flow positions: The Squat, the Plank, the Bridge and the Side Plank.  By moving into, through and out of these positions, or moving back and forth between two of the movements, the energy really starts to flow. People who have taken my Energy Flow class, and were interested in moving to the "Next Level", well this is it. I am finally making this level available. As always, the video is me working out in my studio. I've recorded a voice-over to help make the workout accessible to b...

About a month ago I got the idea into my head that I wanted to make a lifestyle out of taking River on RV road trips. It all started when my uncle died and I was entitled to an inheritance. My first thought was that I wanted to buy a small home on the beach that I could escape to when the Seattle winter wetness got to be too much to handle.  That idea was quickly scrapped for many reasons. One being that I wasn’t going to inherit enough money to be able to afford anything decent on the beach. Another was that I didn’t want to feel tied to the same beach year after year. And finally, there was the issue of getting River to the beach house, since he can’t fly.  So the next logical step was to rent beach houses.  This solved the dilemma of repetition but not the transportation issue.  So my next leap of logic was to buy a car and stay in hotels. But finding dog-friendly hotels across the country seemed like a great big exercise in optimism. Not to men...

In October of 2010, I went to Thailand and spent a weekend at Absolute Sanctuary, a gorgeous yoga retreat center on Koh Samoi. It was there, over that weekend, that I did a lot of thinking and planning and putting together a new, updated business plan for JAGfit. And also while I was there, I ate baby coconuts and a delicious, local vegetarian cuisine and we practiced "Hot Yoga" daily. I'm not a big fan of yoga in heated rooms. I easily generate enough body heat to have sweat dripping off my nose and elbows just from a moderately strenuous bout of exercise. But I did really appreciate the sequence of poses we practiced. So I took a photograph of the pose chart on the wall (thank you iPhone) and when I got home, I copied it down into my book of workouts.  I've been practicing that sequence, or a variant of it, ever since. Today I made a video of myself practicing a variant of that sequence. I set a timer to bong every minute and I work on or hold each pose for...

Solar Dog is a Nia routine created by Debbie Rosas and no longer available through Nia. In my version, I've changed it considerably, as I do with most routines that I've worked with for years. I obviously think what I've done is an improvement over the original.  That statement is not intended to belittle the work of Nia or Debbie Rosas at all. In fact, I have respected Debbie and practiced Nia for over 15 years.  I suspect that if you took this routine in Debbie's class today, you'd find that she has also changed it quite a bit from what she originally released on video. The focus of Solar Dog is on the joints: Ankles, Knees, Hips, Spine, Wrists, Elbows and Shoulders. It uses the music from a discontinued sampler of music from the Planet Dog record label run by Michael Dog.   The first song is focused entirely on the ankles.  The second one on the knees. The third song is focused on the hips and pelvis. The fourth song puts attention on the spine.  The fif...