About Good Yoga
Good Yoga is a physically, mentally and emotionally rewarding practice. Anyone can practice yoga. Yoga is beneficial to all, no matter what your shape, size, or age. Flexibility is not a prerequisite for yoga — it is an outcome.Good Yoga classes are a powerful stimulus for maintaining or beginning a good health program for mind and heart as well as body. Some of the benefits of yoga include increased flexibility, strength, vitality, calmness, circulation, alertness and mental clarity, and physical, mental, and emotional balance.
Have you ever heard the phrase "what you resist persists"? Stress is a byproduct of resistance. Good Yoga is a powerful tool for relieving stress. The practice of yoga teaches you how to stay centered and calm even in the most stressful times, and how to conserve and increase precious energy. It helps develop self-awareness, increases respect for all aspects of our being — emotional, mental, spiritual, as well as physical.
Regular practice of hatha yoga is health insurance for the new millennium! I offer carefully sculpted yoga classes and private sessions to address specific needs.
What distinguishes Good Yoga (my practice), a Kripalu-inspired yoga from Kundalini, Iyengar or Ashtanga methodology? The essence of Good Yoga resides in the student listening to the wisdom of the body and responding to what brings healing and fulfillment in the present moment. As a result of my training in yoga therapy, I include very specific guidance about the physical benefits of yoga to not only the musculo-skeletal system, but also to the organs and their corresponding dynamic energies. My classes are a safe place for students to feel, breathe, observe, and accept the messages and needs of the body. I encourage the understanding of and sensitivity to one's unique experience in relationship to the holographic physical, emotional, mental and bliss bodies. The result is response-ability in the student; a greater chance that the student will maintain a long-term home practice.
More about Kripalu Yoga:
Known as "meditation-in-motion", "Kripalu’s broad, nonsectarian approach to yoga is based on the honest and unfettered inquiry into all philosophies, techniques, and approaches that produce thriving in the individual, community, and world"
--Kripalu center for Yoga and Health
While strength and flexibility of body, breath, energy and mind are all encouraged, the focus of Kripalu yoga practice resides in a deeper arena - awareness of the Self. Compassion and self-respect are the watchwords. Rather than a strict adherence to classical forms, beliefs, and concepts, the understanding of and sensitivity to one's experience in the body and in relationship to other lives is the touchstone of Kripalu's approach to yoga. Pleasing the teacher, doing it right, and looking good are de-emphasized. With the exception of balancing postures, students are encouraged to keep their eyes closed. Students maintain an awareness of the posture being expressed from the inside out. Establishing personal boundaries, listening to the wisdom of your body, and responding to what brings healing and fulfillment to your heart is the emphasis.
This practice of yoga "on the mat" gives the student the ability to strengthen, open, integrate, and heal the fractured relationships between the body/mind, heart and energy. It also helps each student develop awareness - posture by posture and breath by breath - of the condition and potential of the body, not just at an anatomical level but at a feeling/intuitive one. In addition, the yoga of relationship comes alive. Students recognize in themselves and each other a new level of caring and compassion, which stimulates a sense of community.
The ability to be with this deeper and wider realization of "yoga as union," in all situations and conditions, is characterized as Kripalu Yoga in daily life - yoga "off the mat". This is where the more profound benefits of yoga begin to emerge. While the blessings of softer hamstrings and a stronger more flexible back are very satisfying, and a deep forward bend can be a thing of great beauty, these pale in comparison to embracing your life at a more intimate level. Through practice, you develop more space and stamina to be with your authentic self in both light and shadow.
Kripalu Yoga is primarily concerned with freeing up the spirit. The forcing of our life into established forms and sequences is discarded. While I include very specific guidance about the physical aspects of yoga, and also provide a variety of sequences for students to use in developing their strength, flexibility, understanding, and stamina, my emphasis is not on accomplishing higher and higher levels of mastery of the form. My aim is to awaken deeper levels of Self-awareness. It is this middle path, balancing personal with traditional, internal with external, that gives Kripalu Yoga its freshness, vitality and unique signature.
Folks who become my regular students tend to be older, having matured beyond the drive to perform, compete or abandon conscious attunement of their bodies. This maturity often comes from the experience of an injury or illness that has awakened a deeper desire to take a responsible and holistic view of personal health. My yoga classes are a sacred and safe place for students to feel, breathe, observe, and accept the present-moment messages of the body. This is an experiential path that develops deep awareness of atman, the individual soul, and prana, the inner intelligence and energy of the body.