This 2 hour workshop is designed to bring yoga and it's mental/physical benefits to anyone and everyone.  Chair yoga is a great way to practice with a little extra support if needed.  You will leave with the tools to create a practice for yourself while sitting at your desk at work, on the sofa at home or even in an airplane seat!   

Just as there are always two sides to every story, two faces to every coin - there are two parts to every person.  There is the face we put on for the world to see; the shiny, well polished and expertly crafted variation of you.  On the flip side of that coin, there is the face, whether we know it or not, that comes through while practicing yoga; the more authentic variation of you.

This year I've been lucky enough to spend time in two countries known for their yoga expertise, their Hindu faith and their deep, ancient culture steeped in tradition and spiritual ritual - Indonesia (Bali) and India.  

Settling, I have the urge to nest.  To be still and snuggle into one place, one house, one area, to delve deep to get to know it well and all its perfections and imperfections.  To not run into hiding when the imperfections become larger than life in my own mind.  I have the desire to dig in my heels and stay put.  

Thanks to a brilliant recommendation by a yoga student, I've started reading Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach.  It's changing the way I think about a lloooottt of things that were probably long due for an overhaul.  Here's the gist in case it helps you like it's helped me.  

Flowers are a thing of magic.  They appear out of tiny buds that shows the infinite potential for life.  From the smallest seeds, a tree grows and grows, that tiny seed holding all the information and potential energy needed to produce the frangipani flower I hold in my hand.  That little seed only needed a bit of nourishment from the sun, the rain, the earth and her soil.  Then, little by little, with some patience, its full potential becomes reality.

I was looking through my phone recently and came across a picture from my parents of the backyard of the house I grew up in covered in snow.  “winter wonderland”.  Waves of nostalgia washed over me.. I remember the days we would have off from school because the snow was too high for the school bus to make it to our houses.  On those days we would strap on our snow pants and boots, bundled up in jackets and hats and rush outside to the awaiting untouched fresh snow of the back yard.

This morning, Les Leventhal, one of my favorite yoga teachers, was in Sydney putting on a workshop.  His classes always seem to provoke some kind of insight or deep, intense feelings in me.  Last time I practiced with him in Bali, I had this sense of shedding the external layers of who I am to get to my inner being, throughout the progressively more challenging sequence he taught [link to post].   Today his workshop reveled an intense sadness, loneliness and the desire to be held and taken care of.  Not such a nice insight as last time but a very important one nonetheless.  I woke up this morning feeling this way (without actually knowing it until later). 

I recently made a ridiculously difficult, challenging and major life changing decision...One I ruminated on for a very long time and kept putting off and putting off.  I delayed making the decision because it just seemed too hard, too daunting.  I can't begin to tell you the mental energy I spent on thinking about what to do - I weighed the pros and cons, I contemplated all the possible outcomes of my decision, I went back and forth, back and forth. It was so mentally exhausting, I frequently got sick and had to spend a few days resting in bed.  It was so scary, I shoved the decision into the recesses of my mind, burying it under the dirt and thought about anything but.  

Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga - the 8 Limbed Path as developed by Pattabhi Jois

I'm a recent covert.  I am even a morning person (something I never thought I'd hear myself say after years of going to bed at 1am and dragging myself out of a deep sleep by 9/10am).

I currently wake up at 6am/6:30am and practice yoga! I wake up, drink my hot water with a squeeze of lemon, brush my teeth, throw on my gear and I'm on my bike by 6:20am heading down the hill to the yoga shala.  Where, inevitably, there are already 20 yogis mid-way through their standing poses.  I now practice Mysore style Ashtanga at Yoga Moves, a self-lead class where you make your way through a series of set postures.  There is a teacher (Eileen Hall) and a few assistances there for guidance and adjustments.