Week 5: Asana Practice

This week, we accepted helping hands as much as possible to help us into poses: our fellow yoginis, our belts, our own hands… Sometimes the helping hands helped us just get into a challenging pose, sometimes they simply gave us a really good stretch we couldn’t do on our own, sometimes they deepened the pose

Week 5: Accept a Helping Hand!

Ever feel like you’re drowning in responsibilities  out of your own doing? All of us have turned down help before… in a work setting, at home, with your bags of groceries at the grocery store… (some of us more than others… not naming names…) When asking myself why I do this at times (and most often,

Week 4: Asana Practice

Setting our structure was key in this class… not to harden, but to allow our bodies to soften safely. We set up every pose like a ritual… but then let the beauty shine from within at that moment of pure stability. The main experience of this class was Vrksasana (Tree pose), as those who attended

Week 4: Forgiving Structure… Structured Forgiveness

By now, any student of mine has heard me say “effortless effort” a few times, at least. This paradox is a concept set forward by Patanjali, the wise teacher(s) of all things yoga and writer(s) of the Yoga Sutras, the “bible” of all things yoga. Paradox (especially this one) is foundational not only to the

Week 3: Compassion

Although I was absent the week of February 17, we still had a theme, and I do believe it fits in well with my resolutions…  The theme of this winter’s Olympics is “With Glowing Hearts”. We can feel our hearts glowing as we watch our country’s athletes win medals just as we feel our hearts

Week 2: Asana Practice

To activate our 2nd chakra and all that wonderful stuff related to it (creativity, flow, love, flexibility), we worked on loosening up our hips and stimulating our cores… in order to be able to salsa our way home! By starting the class with some core work, we were able to bring our focus to and

Week 2: Keep the Sparks Alive! (or, in some cases, Re-ignite those Sparks!)

In the spirit of the upcoming Valentine’s Day, I would like to propose a second name for the day: Svadhisthana chakra day. Valentine’s Day, in my opinion, does not quite encompass all that this day really could signify… not only in the way of relationships, caring and love for others, and compassion, but also in

Week 1: Asana Practice

This week, in yoga class (my first one back after a terrible bout with every circulating pathogen this winter!), we kept it simple and full. As it was not only my first class back after a while, we filled the class with familiar poses, held for a good number of breaths. In this, we were

Week 1: Resolve to Resolve Differently

New Years resolutions. Some are kept, some are forgotten (sometimes in the first week!). Some are useful… others are not at all. Every year, I take a different stance on the whole phenomenon of “New Years resolutions”. Often I consider that resolutions set us up to failure, disappointment, self-deprecation, self-doubt… self-defeat. This is not a