Tag: Yellowknife Yoga

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fall schedule Yoga

Power Yoga is for Beginners

Ashtanga standing series. Virtual yoga studio. Land and Heart Practice

The physical challenge of Power Yoga makes the yoga aspect of the practice easier than in less-physically challenging sequences.

I teach Power Yoga. I have taught other versions of yoga but Power Yoga is most congruent with my personal practice and is what I want to share with my students. Almost every day, someone says to me that they “can’t” come to my class because it’s “too” hard. Physically, yes, the poses are challenging but the yoga part of the class is markedly easier in a power flow class than in a slower-moving hatha class.

Let me explain. Yoga is about creating a union between breath and movement. It is about silencing the chatter and listening to the breath. As the oft-quoted Patanjali said, “yoga is the practice of quieting the mind.” Indeed, in Ashtanga yoga, Samadhi, the eighth limb, is a quiet state of mind and an awareness exclusively of the present moment. A quiet mind is the intention of any yoga practice.

The physical challenge of power yoga provides an outlet for quieting the mind.

In a slower and less physically challenging practice, quieting the mind can be daunting. Hanging out in utkatasana (chair pose) or anjaneyasana (lunge pose) for ten breaths is physically difficult and thus demands all the mind’s attention.  Sitting in sukhasana (easy seated pose) or standing in tadasana (standing mountain pose), on the other hand, is physically easy but detaching from distracting thoughts is more difficult and requires practice and concentration.

My point is this:  the harder the pose, the easier it is to tune out of the mind’s clutter

and achieve awareness of the present moment and nothing else.  

So, if you are a beginner to yoga, by all means try out whatever class comes recommended by friends and suits your schedule. But don’t shy away from power yoga because you think it will be too hard physically. Yes, the poses are challenging and yes you will sometimes be bewildered by what the teacher is asking you to do (“you expect me to put my foot where?!), but that’s the point. By trying unexpected yoga poses and facing a physical challenge, your attention will be focused completely on the present moment and you will find yourself one step closer to a clutter-free mind.

Power Yoga at Taiga Yoga, Yellowknife

www.taigayoga.com

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Uncategorized Yoga

Cue the Silence

Our world is a noisy place. We exist among conversations, loud engines, music, sirens, air filter machines, humming computers, ringtones, radios, barking dogs and constant chatter inside our heads. Silence is an elusive concept. So when the power went off in my office building last week, besides the darkness, the aftermath was a silence that juxtaposed the constant background noise that I hadn’t realized was there.

In yoga, I encourage my students to “let go of distracting thoughts,” and “quiet the mind.”

But how can the mind become quiet when the world is so noisy?

Therein lays the challenge. I constantly struggle to quiet the omnipresent chatter in my head. I do yoga as a tool to quiet my mind and I teach yoga to help others quiet their minds. Paradoxically I teach with a soundtrack playing in the background. Music is something that I always incorporated into my classes. Deva Premal, Wah!, Krishna Das. These musicians were my most regular attendees. They never missed a class and their voices and rhythms provided the ambiance for my classes. But is more external noise really the key to inner silence?

When the power was off and my office was silent for 25 minutes, I had the time to reflect on the value of silence. I pondered why I play music during yoga classes.

Who was it for? Did my students relate to it? Did it assist them to quiet their minds, as I was constantly reminding them to do? Doubtful.  It occurred to me that I was playing the music for myself. The music was a comfort for me in case I couldn’t think of anything to say. It was a buffer between awkward silence and valuable commentary from me.

So I turned off the music. The relief of not having to design playlists for every class was a wonderful byproduct of my new music-free yoga classes. More importantly, I noticed my students. When I played music, I wasn’t listening to my students. I was often listening to the music, wondering if it was too loud, too fast…did the students like the song? But none of that has anything to do with yoga and my teaching wasn’t effective with the distraction of a playlist.

Without the music, I am able to listen to the pranayama in the room and focus on how students are responding to my verbal cues. I am able to tune into how students are responding to my teaching and subsequently teach poses and sequences that cater to what my students need.

It is my intention to foster an environment where dynamic and valuable yoga practice can take place. An environment where students can silence the chatter, tune out of the world and achieve an internal focus and respect. Turning off the music is my small contribution towards finding silence of mind, awareness of breath and steadiness of body.

Join me on the mat for music-less but pranayama-rich power yoga.

Mondays and Wednesdays at 7pm

Tuesdays at noon.

Taiga Yoga Studio, Yellowknife

 

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Uncategorized Yoga

Silence the chatter with a strong physical yoga practice

Utthita parsvokanasana - bound extended side angle pose

Yoga is the simple equation of breath + movement. But it seems there is an interest in “getting there,” “doing the poses right.”  The physical part of yoga, the movement, is simply a gateway to quieting the mind.  Yoga poses are a venue for your body and mind to concentrate on breath and movement with the goal of quieting the inner chatter.

 Practice yoga to disengage from the constant inner dialogue

The self-doubt, the vanity, the unproductive discussions and negotiations with the self can all be eliminated by concentrating on breathing in physical poses. Easy, right? Except it isn’t.

Some days it feels impossible to quiet the mind, forget the chatter and be peaceful.

Enter power yoga.

The poses of power yoga provide a setting for tuning into the sound of the breath and concentrating on physical stamina, strength and flexibility. By concentrating on breathing in challenging yoga poses, the inner dialogue will fall silent. It’s very hard to think about your next career move when you’re practicing arm balances!

So if your inner chatter is particularly noisy, step onto your yoga mat. The physical challenge will quiet your mind.

You’ll be surprised at the mental clarity that can be achieved after a physically challenging yoga practice.

And if you’re afraid to try yoga  because you “can’t keep up?”  

Yoga isn’t about getting somewhere, or achieving a particular pose. It’s about creating a harmony between breath and movement. Sometimes more challenging poses are required to find the harmony and focus, sometimes not. Some people need more challenging poses to quiet the mind, while others already have the mental fortitude to silence the chatter without the physical challenge. Some days it takes a little extra strength to overcome the inner noise, which is why progressively more challenging poses are offered in power yoga.

But there is no end goal, there is no best pose, there is no best yogi.

Power yoga offers the chance to challenge yourself physically as much as you need to cultivate a quiet mind. Power yoga sequences are designed so that everyone is challenged, regardless of body type, age, or yoga experience.

Mondays and Wednesdays at 7pm

Tuesdays at Noon. 

Taiga Yoga, Yellowknife

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Uncategorized Yoga

Open the heart to heal

When we sustain a physical injury such as a broken leg, black eye or a sunburn, the injury is visible for the world to see and comment on. “What happened!?” invites story-telling and sharing the circumstances of the accident. Sharing contributes to healing. In contrast, surviving emotional trauma does not always prompt the healing power of sharing. We tend to shy away from talking about our aches of the heart.

Recovering from physical trauma takes time, of course, but is visible. Talking about the injury and noticing physical improvements contribute to healing. Matters of the heart, on the other hand, are less visible and more complex. Although heartache often manifests itself as a furrowed brow, swollen eyes and a sad face, sparking a conversation about emotional pain is a little more sensitive than discussing a physical injury.

So, while the presence of a physical injury invites questions and conversation, the seclusion of an emotional injury has the opposite effect. Isolation and loneliness prevail.

Meanwhile, the owner of the broken heart

seeks an outlet for the pain.

Healing from a physical injury has socially-acceptable antidotes: over the counter painkillers, topical creams, physical therapy. Matters of the heart are shrouded in secrecy, punctuated by solitude and emotional discomfort. Thus, the victim of the emotional trauma is prone to making bad decisions, escaping through drugs, alcohol, sex, and regrettable lifestyle decisions.

So, how to deal with emotional trauma in a healthy way?

The posture of grief is characterized by hunched shouldersslumped spine,and head in hands. Heart opening yoga poses are the antidote to a grieving posture and will create space to let the emotion out, to free the heart from sadness and begin to heal.

Yoga is the union of mind, body and spirit.

Practicing heart opening poses is a gateway to releasing unwanted emotional energy.

Make no mistake, heart openers will trigger a painful release of emotions, often tears, but will ultimately foster tremendous release and freedom from negative energy. Fortunately, the yoga studio and the yoga mat is a safe place to let go of great emotional trauma. The yoga mat is a place of solace and comfort and is free from judgment.  You are always safe on your yoga mat and just like you aren’t passing judgment on the yogi on the mat next to you, you can be certain that (s)he isn’t judging you either. All that being said, if getting yourself to a studio is simply too much for your broken heart, unroll your yoga mat or towel in the privacy of your own home and practice these heart openers there.

Warrior I

Updog/ cobra

Bow pose

Wild thing

Camel

Fish

Wheel/bridge

Dancer’s pose

After a deep heart-opening practice, rest in a long savasana followed by several minutes of sitting still, crosslegged. Take your time and step off your mat and back into the world when you’re ready.

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Uncategorized Yoga

Just because it hurts doesn’t mean you should quit

The yoga posture begins when you want to leave it.

Practicing for the past week at an ashtanga-style studio where we contort ourselves into the primary series’ postures and then hold each one for five breaths (that’s four seconds in, four seconds out, times five) has really emphasized Iyengar’s point that la posture commence quand on a envie de s’arreter.

The good stuff starts when you feel like quitting. This is true of adventures.  When you lose the high trail at 4:45pm in November and realize you don’t have a headlamp. THAT’s when the adventure begins.

Because adventure takes on many forms, and the best ones start out uncomfortable.

It’s being at the trailhead with a too-heavy pack. It’s climbing a mountain that no amount of training could have prepared you for. It’s deciding to go to another country for six months. It’s realizing you can’t get back to the other side of the mountain because the tunnel closed twenty minutes ago. It’s dragging your blistered feet to the summit. It’s enduring the storm in an inadequate sleeping bag. It’s sneaking into the museum and then getting locked in. It’s moving away from everything you know and attending university in a foreign language. It’s sharing a cab with the locals. It’s trusting the locals. It’s arguing with your travelling partner, even though he’s the only person with whom you can speak English. It’s sprinting through the station, but missing the train anyway.  It’s realizing the next train isn’t for three days.

Adventure is a chance to push beyond the discomfort and see what awaits on the other side. It’s sticking with the plan, even when you feel like quitting. It’s enduring the pain and knowing it’s not in vain.

See you on the mat. See you on the mountain. See you on the adventure.

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Yoga

Constructive Feedback: KEEP STOP START

Keep Stop Start

In my yoga classes, I want to emphasize student expectations by accepting feedback in the keep, stop, start format.

Your presence, your emotions and your contribution to the world are a projection of your acquired experiences and memories. This is fact. Your interactions with the people around you are affected by reciprocal expectations. Sometimes, however, expectations are misunderstood, miscommunicated or not communicated at all. The expectations between two parties must be clearly expressed and understood by both. This is true for professional relationships, romantic relationships and is also applicable in the relationship between yoga teacher and student.

When I step on to the mat at the helm of a yoga class, I am presenting a series of ideas that are based on my previous experience of learning and practicing yoga and on my memories of classes that I have attended. My expectations are that the students who come to my classes will be open to listening to my ideas and trying the poses which I suggest. Conversely, and this is the part that I often forget, my students arrive on the mat with experience and memories of their own. Their contribution and presence in the class is as essential as my own and I want to clearly understand their expectations.

A technique I learned to effectively convey expectations, praise and constructive criticism is as follows:

KEEP___________________STOP________________START_________________.

For example: keep starting the class with pranayama, stop doing backbends without warming up the quad muscles and start doing balancing poses earlier in the sequence. (An extrapolation of some recent feedback I received).

I want to be the best yoga teacher I can be. We all want to be the best partner we can be in professional and romantic relationships. Please use this format to offer feedback on my teaching and I urge you to try this format when changes are required in your professional and personal life.

We all bring our experiences and memories with us every day and sometimes we forget about the value of the experience of those we interact with. I want to make a change in my teaching and begin placing more value on the experience and expectations of my students.

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fall schedule Taiga Yoga

Stay healthy this autumn!

As we approach the Autumn equinox (Tuesday, September 23), staying healthy through the Fall season must be made a priority. Everyone has a busy schedule and the setback from getting sick can be frustrating and inconvenient.

We all have busy schedules and important commitments and we know that if we get sick, the responsible choice is to stay home until we are no longer coughing and sneezing. But it feels impossible to rearrange our daily schedules to accommodate illness. So how about taking a proactive approach this fall to avoid getting sick at all!

  • Curtail alcohol. Summer BBQs are finished for the year and indulging in beers at the lake is no longer a constant temptation. Overconsumption of alcohol interrupts sleep patterns and is dehydrating, two elements that will reduce immunity. Limit alcohol consumption to one drink a day.
  • Get enough sleep. Figure out how much sleep you need by allowing 8-9 hours for sleep for a week. Go to bed without setting an alarm, and take note of how many hours you sleep before waking. Do this for seven days, and then aim to get those many hours every night: weeknight or weekend.
  • Get some fresh air. Go for a brisk walk at lunchtime of after dinner. Breathing in fresh air and seeing colours change from green to orange is invigorating and nurturing. If it’s cold out, layer up! If it’s really cold out, add even more layers. Wear wool socks. Put on a hat. Wear whatever you need to be feel cozy outdoors and get out there every day.
  • Meditate. Just do it. It is one of the easiest ways to reduce stress. Stress compromises immunity. You don’t need a fancy pillow or special area to go. Just sit somewhere, close your eyes and breathe. Set a timer. Start with five minutes a day. Do this instead of logging on to Facebook.
  • Exercise. Go to the swimming pool: it’s warm and bright there. Play squash: it’s hilarious to run around in a little box with weird glasses on and smash a ball as hard as you can. Practice yoga! Try Zumba: learn some dance moves so you can impress your friends this winter.
  • Eat vegetables with every meal. Sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, parsnips, turnips, rutabagas are all coming into season now and can all be roasted, or pureed into soups. Make a big pot of soup on the weekend and eat the leftovers for weekday lunches.

Finally, do not overextend yourself. Create manageable goals and refrain from overloading your schedule with infinite activities. Make time every week for quiet time with your family, when nobody has anywhere they need to be and everyone can sit, relax and enjoy each other’s company.

For more information, read this article from Harvard University Health Centre. There is a lot of practical information here: http://www.health.harvard.edu/flu-resource-center/how-to-boost-your-immune-system.htm

Happy Autumn, everyone!

Categories
Yoga

end of summer, back to schedule

picnic potluck

What a glorious summer it was! Full of friends, outdoor cooking, paddling, warm evenings, camping and care-free weekends. Although summer doesn’t officially end until September 21, Labour Day weekend may be considered the last long weekend of summer and with the end of summer comes the return to structure.

As children, September is the time we return to school. With a return to school comes a regular bed time and wake-up time, a weekly schedule and requirements to be at certain places at certain times. Septembers of youth are spent in elementary school, high school and perhaps university and are always characterized by flighty and frenetic summer energy  replaced by structured schedules and upcoming deadlines. Even though many of us are not in school anymore, and probably work all summer, there is still a palpable change after Labour Day, instigated by the habit of returning to a more scheduled autumn lifestyle and also by the schedule changes of those around us who have children in school.

Regardless of how glorious the summer months were, with the hot days, outdoor pursuits and easy-going-I-only-need-to-bring-flipflops attitude, I relish the change of season and the soothing effect that having a schedule has on me. By creating an autumn schedule I have a chance to set new goals, build some structure in my life and re-evaluate my priorities. For example, this September I have set aside time to learn a new sport (Squash!). I have also decided that I will arrive at work half an hour earlier than before, so that I can go home earlier and have extra time to prepare meals for myself and my partner. My September goals include adding regular updates to this website as well as developing a new yoga sequence each week. My priority will be to follow through on these goals by working in thirty minute distraction-free blocks of time, with a five-minute break between.

Take advantage of autumn’s deeply-ingrained return to structure to create new goals, priorities and a schedule of your own. Include projects and ideas that didn’t fit into the frenetic summer months. Keep in mind that municipal classes  often resume in the fall. This also might be an excellent time to sign up for a new activity such as dance classes,pottery, bouldering or yoga!

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Handstands Power Yoga Taiga Yoga Uncategorized Yoga YTT Blog

What is Power Yoga?

What is Power Yoga? The term power yoga can be found on many yoga schedules and there is some confusion on the meaning of the term. Power yoga is designed to make you strong. You will likely sweat during the practice and there will probably be some core-strengthening poses. Some teachers will follow a set series of poses in each class, while other teachers will create different sequences every day.

Power Yoga is aimed at individuals who don’t want a lot of chanting and meditation in their yoga practice. The time on the mat will be focused on strengthening, balancing and sweating. The sequencing will be challenging, but will be adaptable to every student. Baron Baptiste describes his sequencing as a blueprint for an invigorating vinyasa yoga practice and says that his brand of power yoga is adaptable for all body types, ages and fitness levels.

Most power yoga sequences are based on Ashtanga yoga, but will likely flow faster than a traditional Ashtanga practice. Where Ashtanga encourages practioners to hold each pose for five breaths, power yoga sequences will likely hold each pose for far fewer breaths, sometimes moving fluidly throughout the entire practice, cultivating one breath per movement and not pausing in any pose.

What to expect from my Power Classes:

• Flowing sequences. We will start slowly, taking the time integrate breath with movement, but expect to flow between poses. All of my sequences offer a logical progression from the floor to standing and back again.
• Sweaty yogis. Sweating is encouraged. If you tend to perspire a lot, you may find it beneficial to bring a small towel to class. The towel can be used under your hands so you have a firm base in downdog or to dry your arms and legs so you don’t slip out of side crow. Be sure to hydrate before arriving on your mat.

• Some core-strengthening. There will be 100 core-strengthening poses strategically placed throughout the practice. They might be extremely challenging or relatively simple to you, but we’re a team and we’re going to do all 100 of them together.

• Handstands. Try one or try 50. Handstands are a fun inversion and are challenging and will make you laugh. My current goal is to hold a handstand for ten breaths! I’m not there yet, and I’m having a great time building up the strength and confidence to get there. In each class, I will offer tricks to help you practice your handstand.

• Accessible language. I will offer clear instruction on where to place your hands and feet in each pose. That being said, if you’re ever unclear on the alignment in a pose, ask! Shout it out! Someone else in the room probably has the exact same question.

• A friendly vibe. I encourage everyone to join me on the mat for Power Yoga. I don’t care if you’ve never tried yoga before or if you’ve been teaching at an Ashram for the past 20 years: you’re all welcome. In the 60-90 minutes that we practice together, we are a team and we will be learning, progressing and having fun together. A note to the newbies: every single person in the room was new to yoga at some point, and we all know what it feels like to not have a clue what is happening. If you’re new, you will probably fall over a few times and there will definitely be poses that are unavailable to you, but I can assure you that nobody is criticizing or judging you!

Join me on your mat at lunchtime on Mondays and Wednesdays at 7pm and Tuesdays at Noon at Taiga Yoga in Yellowknife. Whatever your reason for wanting to practice yoga, I can’t wait to share my practice with you!

www.taigayoga.com