Series 2 - Class #09 with Lisa: Twisting from Our Inner Spirals

The world is available to us.

Can we be available to the world?’

~ Thich Nhat Hahn

This class explores our inner spirals through twisting asana. It’s an opportunity to discover a new sensory gorgeousness within your old best friend called yoga. How we create ourselves is one of the wondrous secrets of the universe. At fifteen days old you are a three-layered disk with a top layer, a bottom layer and a filling in the sandwich of you. Over the next five weeks the disk that is you will fold, unfold, twist, turn, and shapeshift creating tubes, pouches, pockets and bags within bags. There are no straight lines in your body. There never were. It is a world of spirals within spirals. This is the embodied reality of yoga asana and all movement.

You are invited to…

•Investigate the natural elasticity of your tissues without stretching.

•Play with embodying the natural resilience of your fascia.

•Feel qualities of strength, elegance and glide in movement.

•Experience yourself as a multi-dimensional being and investigate what that offers to your movement and your life.

This class will include yoga, somatics, embodied anatomy, breathwork, movement inquiry, developmental movement, bio-tensegrity, and a deep respect for our embryological origins. Suitable for students from all streams of yoga.

Series 2 - Class #10 with Donna: Channeling Your Inner Fish

So much of modern postural yoga practice is oriented in the to-and-fro of the sagittal plane.  The rectangular shape of the standard yoga mat reinforces this linear dimension: inviting us to bend forwards, backwards or to stand sideways.  While working in the sagittal plane can build strength and cohesion in the core and spine, overemphasis of movement in this plane can also create rigidity and lack of fluidity and differentiation in the spinal column.

Lateral movement shifts us out of yes and no answers and moves us into the dimension of choice and possibility.  We begin to see the world (and ourselves) from a different perspective.

 In Anatomy Trains, Thomas Myers describes lateral movement as “the kind involved in the swimming of a fish, consisting of reciprocal reflexes flowing down the musculature in waves.” 

Through playful movements and variations on more traditional yoga asanas we’ll explore how rediscovering our inner fish can release the deep intervertebral muscles of the spine and restore fluid ease to our movement.  Swimming costumes optional.

Series 2 - Class #11 with Neal: Moving From Center

“This pattern deep within our body supports the basic relationship rhythms of coming into self and going out to other, or the world … I have to be connected within myself and able to claim my own movement sphere before I feel comfortable moving in the world.”~ Peggy Hackney

How can we be more centred in our life? In our movement? How do we find and feel the center of our body?

In this class we explore how our movement and our Yoga may be connected to our centre. We’ll harness our natural fluidity to flow in and out of centering practices. We’ll explore pathways from the center out to the periphery of the body and back again, in a cyclical pattern informed by our breath. These pathways point us towards an organic, felt sense of inner relationship and alignment.

As a foundation for core awareness and support, this pattern of moving from and back to center has been an essential part of my practice and teaching for many years. I look forward to sharing it with you, in the spirit of somatic enquiry and Yoga asana.

Series 2 - Class #12 with Donna: Restorative Reset

In this Restorative deep dive, we’ll explore how the baroreceptor reflex (a carotid artery sensor that registers blood pressure) can support a downshift in the nervous system; slowing the heart rate and calming the activity of the mind.  The baroreceptor reflex is a physiological phenomenon specific to postures such as  Supported Bridge, Shoulderstand and Legs Up the Wall.  To maximise the potential benefits of these practices we’ll first prepare the body through gentle cervical, upper thoracic and shoulder opening movements.

We’ll also investigate the oculocardiac reflex whereby gentle pressure in and around the eyes slows the heart rate.  This class will be of particular interest to yoga teachers wanting to more fully understand the physiology of inverted Restorative postures and how to maximise benefits through tailor fitting postures to individual structure.