Series 2 - Class #01 with Lisa: Sideways with Somatic Yoga

Side bends inhabit a liminal space of possibility. We are neither moving forwards or backwards but in the fertile soil of ‘in-between asana’. This class will focus on developing a conscious conversation between our right and left sides, and investigates how our sides talk to our midline. We will investigate how to grow yoga asana from simple somatic exercises. You are invited to....

• Learn how to use somatic exercises as an exquisitely intelligent preparation for yoga asana.
• Investigate how to align bones and free myofascial knots and tensions.
• Discover how to lay down inner movement pathways for seamless flow.
• Experience the ease, freedom and strength that comes from being aligned from the inside out.

This class includes yoga, somatics, embodied anatomy, breathwork, movement inquiry, developmental movement and bio-tensegrity. It is suitable for students from all streams of yoga.  Bring a curious mind, a willingness to explore, and a love of movement.

Series 2 - Class #02 with Donna: Movement as Meditation

“The moment opens.  In it are contained

Like tiny seeds a million more divisions.”

~ Jewel of the Moon, William Kotzwinkle

When we invite present moment awareness into our yoga practice there is an opportunity to saviour the granularity of sensation. What we might have once experienced as a blunt transition or a final end-point or threshold, can be transformed into a delicate and differentiated experience that opens doors into new possibilities and potentials. When we open into the moment, there are indeed many more divisions; made up of distinct, subtle and sometimes ineffable experience.

In this class we’ll explore a broad range of movements and yoga practices with the view to heightening our awareness of how we enter into a practice, how we sustain and explore it, and how we can expand our threshold for deepening.

Series 2 - Class #03 with Neal: Kindness in Motion

“When you carry out acts of kindness you get a wonderful feeling inside. It is as though something inside your body responds and says, yes, this is how I ought to feel.”~ Harold Kushner

It has long been a passion of mine to bring kindness into my personal Yoga practice, my teaching, and into my life. I’m truly excited to be offering this class on embodying kindness.

Yoga traditionally means to unite, to yoke together, to bring together. Kindness is like the glue–it always connects us. Known to not only be good for our health and well-being, kindness offers us a felt sense of belonging, and a practice in which our essential and true nature is in action.

In this movement class, a space is offered and practices explored which allow kindness to be present throughout. Where we are encouraged to meet ourselves–our body, breath, emotions, mind and spirit, with curiosity and easefulness.

We will take time to savour and feel how a kind practice may be experienced in the body, and we will complete the session with a potent and restful Yoga Nidra meditation on metta (loving-kindness).

Series 2 - Class #04 with Donna: Sequential Flow: Origins of Alignment

Through learning to initiate impulse from the ground and allowing this force to move unimpeded, we rediscover the organic origins of asana and its intimate relationship to the oceanic flow of the breath.  As we learn how to use the ground as a springboard for movement, we begin the process of sending force clearly through the structure of the body, while keeping the joint spaces open and fluid. 

The ability to intelligently sequence force through the body is the foundation of what we call “alignment”; alignment of the structure of the body; alignment of the energetic pathways that support the movement of prana and breath and an ultimate alignment of the human being in relationship to ground, gravity and space.  This cyclic flow through the body is constricted when asana practice is practiced in a static and effortful  manner.  We’ll explore how containing and directing impulse through the body can be balanced by remaining suggestive to the subtle ebb and flow of the breath current.