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Spiral Body: A practice exploring how spiral patterns repeat throughout our body on every scale, from the microscopic to the shape of our bones and the directions of movement through our tissues. With a particular focus on arms moving overhead for backbends, this practice starts with supine mobilisations of the upper back and builds into a strong flow with spacious side body work, balancing twists and options for wheel at the end. Props: Two brick type blocks if you have, can be done without.
Waking up the periphery: Wake up awareness in your hands and feet and play with how this opens up communication to our centre and through our whole body. A strong and playful sequence that explores the mobility and sensitivity of hands and arms, crow pose preparation, strong leg work, camel variations and a long seated hip release sequence before a relaxation to close.inversions along the way if fancy.
Power & Grace: A strong and subtle practice exploring backbends in a variety of contexts and cultivating power to move with strength and grace. Begins on the ground with micro movements and opens into a flowing sequence exploring the relationship between the axial and appendicular skeleton in motion. Strong, steady and playful with a variety of options for arm balances and inversions along the way if fancy.
Align and Flow: A practice exploring alignment from a variety of perspectives. What does it mean to find alignment that suits our own unique architecture? How might we be able to sense our way into alignment from within? What’s the difference between local and global alignment? Working with the principle of yielding contact, we move from the ground into a strong practice playing with twists, backbends, inversions, balance, and ‘whole body core’.
Quiet, Steady, Strong: This practice weaves strong and steady movement into a slow flow that offers quiet time and space with less of me talking. Though there are lots of options for balancing (arm balances, standing balances, inversions) we cultivate an anchored groundedness and close with a meditation.
Sneak into Backbends: This practice explores spinal extension in a variety of contexts. On the ground, standing, and balancing. We use the practice to bring our awareness into the back of the brain, and inquire into how that affects how movement emerges. Builds into a stronger flow, with less demonstrating and more verbal cues. Options for inversion play and/or forward folding depending on todays needs.
Sneak to Peak: A guided creative flow that starts on the ground but sneaks into a peak sequence rather swiftly, giving you a whole body dynamic practice in 35 minutes. Explorative core work, balances, delicious wiggles to release through upper back and side body, and an opportunity to invert if you want it before closing with a forward fold, a rest, and sound. Enjoy!
Strong & Springy: A varied, whole body movement practice with a focus on cultivating springy strength. We start with a brief breath awareness practice, tune up through the hands and wrists and then get to a strong flow that incorporates side plank variations, twisted arm balances, hand stand hops and other movement patterns that will get your heart rate up, challenge your balance and build strength. We close with plough variations, bridge, and seated forward folds. A good one for when you need to move in a steady yet dynamic way.
Balance, Inner Ears & Awareness through Listening: How does awareness of our inner ears affect our movement? In this practice we start on the ground and move towards progressively more challenging balancing explorations that will offer our systems new patterns to play with. Woven throughout are opportunities to hone awareness as we tune into the sensory experience of receiving outer and inner sound, and how this can open a space in which we can truly hear ourselves.
Whole Body Core: A creative and challenging practice that cultivates supple strength from the centre outwards towards the periphery and back again. It’s a fun and varied flow of functional core work (i.e applicable and supportive of our every day movements) that will probably get sweaty and will challenge you to move in many directions and to play with balance.
Xyphoid & Tailbone Inversion Flow: A fun exploration of the relationship between the front body and back body via the skeleton and two small bones: the xyphoid and tailbone. This practice cultivates awareness of these two bones as we move and breathe, to find a sense of containment and space through the torso. This can hugely support all of our movement as we find a sense of a ‘middle place’, and is particularly helpful in inversions. Starts slowly and builds into a challenging flow with inversion options to play with (or not!).
Levity through the axis: Finding levity through out axis in rotation via a small bone called the ethmoid that lives in the front portion of our skull. A total game changer! We play with a strong twist sequence that leads us in the direction of side crow whilst deepening our relationship to a spacious axis.
Density & Space: An exploration of the sensation of weight bearing into non weight bearing, and how this can open into a felt experience of the relationship between space and density. Yoga philosophy teaches us that we exist as part of a space/density continuum and this class is a strong and playful exploration of the relationship between the two. We play with asymmetrical shapes, arms balances, movement around the mat, momentum and a variety of movement possibilities before resting into seated side body openers and a long rest, with chanting to close.
Follow your feet: A varied practice that explores and wakes up the antennae for movement that are your trotters! Move into a footworky fun and creative flow and play with inversions at the end if you like to see how your feet play a big part in getting upside down. Treat your feet to attention, nourishment and challenge and feel the ripple affect through your whole body as you practice.
Hand balance flow: A short, strong, varied practice with less instruction and more flow. Explore weight shift in side to side plank variations, play with crow pose, handstands and some stretchy standing flows before closing with some hip strengtheners and releases. Check out the suggested follow on practices to build this into a longer, fuller practice.
Journey to Handstand - Legs: A practice designed to help you develop strength and awareness in your legs to help navigate standing on your hands. You can do this class with or without doing handstands, there are only a few in there at the end, but if you are wanting to build a handstand practice, the legs are a good place to start! We start slow and build into a challenging practice, exploring some familiar postures in new ways, and close with a floor sequence, a yummy rest and some chanting.
Circulation & Heart magic: ‘The human heart is the shape of your entire body, it is not a pump, but the place where blood refreshes its movement’ (Gil Hedley). Explore embodying your vascular system, blood flow, beating heart, pulsation and breath. This is a dynamic, at times strong and explorative practice that gets your circulation going and enlivens our felt relationship to our heart and all that that entails. We close with seated hip releases, a delicious rest, an inspiring peace mantra, and remember how to rest our mind into our hearts.
A process of becoming: A creative practice exploring backbends and the process of folding & unfolding ourselves into being. Integrating philosophical references from the recognition sutras, we start with a floor based flow finding space around the heart, ribs and spine, and then move into some creative core work and leg strengtheners as we find our fluid flow. Opens into backbend sequences and closes with a floor sequence to release. Props: 2 blocks (or 1, or large books)
Innermost & Outermost: A creative flow moving around the mat, exploring the relationship between the outermost layer of our body and the innermost workings of our nervous system. The skin and nervous system arise from the same source within the embryo. Feel into that relationship in this practice as you start with supported supine postures, challenge your balance, find your strength and power, and close with supported backbends and a yummy long rest. Props: A strap/tie and a block or rolled up towel.
Sweaty Mood Booster: This practice is designed to get you feeling strong, get your circulation going, your heart beating, and invigorate and boost your mood with the magic of dynamic motion. For days when you need to shake things up and get a little sweaty and out of breath! Dynamic strength work, handstand hops, some stretchy goodness and rest interwoven for a feel good booster in a short amount of time. Take what you need, leave what you don’t, and have fun.
