Tag: White Gold Yoga

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Uncategorized Yoga

Acro Yoga

I just got home from my very first acroyoga workshop and I am hooked! I have always admired photos and youtube videos of acroyoga and today I got to fly and support flyers with an amazing group of people at White Gold Yoga!

At its simplest, acroyoga is a partnership between two people: the base and the flyer. The base works to create a strong and stable platform to support the flyer who moves through a variety of dynamic poses.

Both roles are equally important but remarkably different. The base must be grounded and have excellent alignment (“bone-stacked”), while the flyer needs to have confidence, balance and core strength.

The beauty of the practice is the intense mental concentration that is required of both base and flyer: both must be giving 100% concentration to the pose. There is no opportunity for hair-fixing, mind-wandering or grip-adjusting. As soon as the base creates the support and the flyer accepts that stability, there is no room for any distractions. In the pose, in that moment of support, trust and fearlessness, there is nothing else happening for either party. Being fully present, fully concentrated on the acroyoga pose is an opportunity to cultivate clarity and precision.

 

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Uncategorized Yoga YTT Blog

Five Reasons to take a Yoga Teacher Training program

1) you will discover patience within yourself. Or you might discover some other attribute within yourself that you didn’t know you had. The point is that yoga teacher training will take you beyond the physical realms of yoga and will calm your mind and create space for new and exciting emotional qualities.

2) You will meet a group of amazing people who come from unique backgrounds and have chosen to expand their knowledge about yoga. You will get to know strangers and learn, laugh and balance together.

3) You will learn enough about yoga to make an educated decision about what type of yoga you want to do (and teach). The choices of yoga classes can be overwhelming, but with a solid foundation on the fundamentals of yoga, you will be able to choose what you like about yoga, and which aspects you are less interested in. Maybe you will only want to teach chair yoga to seniors, maybe you want to teach meditation to recovering addicts, maybe you want to teach introductory poses to a rugby team. Yoga teacher training gives you the knowledge to know what you love about yoga, and the skills to share that knowledge.

4) Yoga is not some trendy fitness fad. Despite branding from clothing manufacturers who convince you that yoga and yogis have to look a certain way, yoga can be pretty much anything you want it to be. Yoga is an ancient tradition, folks! Learn more about it. Discover meaning in your practice. Relate to people around the world and through the ages who are practicing the same poses. It’s amazing to think that, with some knowledge of the practice, you can walk into any yoga studio around the world and hear the same words being used to describe the same physical shapes. Teacher Training will make you understand and appreciate the complexity of these poses.

5) Yoga Teacher Training will make you strong and resilient. Emotionally strong, physically resilient. Physically resilient, emotionally strong. Try it and see for yourself.

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Uncategorized Yoga

White Gold Yoga: Handstands for everyone!

I’ve been practicing at White Gold Yoga in Whistler, BC. Owner Erin Anderson is warm, welcoming and confident that everyone can do a handstand! Maybe not today or even this year, but she knows that we’ll all get there someday. The space is cozy and usually the students are practicing mat-to-mat. The teacher does not actually have a mat, but Erin and her staff are so adept at verbal cues that they can effectively read what the class needs and cue logical sequences without actually moving through the practice themselves. As a yoga teacher myself, I am extremely impressed with their verbal cues. I’m going again this afternoon, and I am going to channel Erin’s belief in me and hopefully believe enough in myself to do a handstand today (or maybe tomorrow).