Into the Stillpoint: A return to centre. This practice explores gathering towards where feels like centre, and how our sense of centre can shift and morph during our practice. What does it mean to abide with our awareness in the innermost? Through postures that gather to midline such as eagle variations and tree pose, we play and move through a vinyasa flow practice that begins slowly and warms up into a strengthening standing sequence before returning to the ground for a big chill and chanting. A great practice to focus scattered energy or agitation.
Moving meditation - a floor based flow: a nurturing, somatic, floor based class. Woven throughout is an awareness practice that can be particularly helpful for working with strong emotions, supporting us to go underneath the story/thinking and into the sensory, to hold space for ourselves to process, digest, and come back to presence.
Moving into winter: A practice to support transitioning into the colder and darker portion of the year, that focuses on allowing tiredness and slowly builds into a steady practice with some longer holds to deeply ground and soothe the nervous system to support nature’s call to hibernate :). A good one for if you feel tired but still want to move.
Touch into Presence: A short practice to touch into presence and come home to ourselves. We start with a somatic meditation and continue on to explore contra-lateral movement patterns and integration through the diagonal planes of the body. Open into variations of diagonally oriented backbends with options to play with balances, and quietly build strength whilst cultivating whole body awareness and building our capacity to be present. 36 minutes. Props: Maybe two blocks
Soft Axis - The Gut Tube: Our gut tube runs along the front of the spine, gently tethered and offering support for spinal movement since we were just learning to move in the world. This fluid practice brings awareness to this relationship and explores a variety of movement contexts to find freedom and space to spinal/gut tube movement; not only to facilitate ease in the gut tube, and digestion but so that we can truly open into clear listening of our gut instinct and bodily intelligence.
Weight & Levity: A return to weight to find levity. This practice starts on the ground with practices to release holding and tension from the tissues and opens into a circular flow exploring backbends, side planks, lunges, and strong leg work to find a sense of rootedness as we find expansiveness through the spine, lungs, heart, chest and arms.
Freedom in Backbends: A thorough exploration of spinal extension and twists. We look at the spirality of the upper arms as they come over head to find depth in the armpits and appropriate constraint around the joint as we lengthen the front of the body with arms overhead! Play with over head backbends, twisting balances and wheel pose towards the end. Props: Two blocks if you have them.
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.
Inner Reference Systems: What is our inner reference system? Is my practice moving me towards trust in my inner reference system or more into an advanced capacity of overriding inner reference systems? An important question to consider and I share a quote by Erich Schiffmann that I have found very helpful in exploring this…
Rise & Shine: Roll out of bed and onto your mat. This flow starts on the ground and sleepily draws into movement from the ground up as we build into a continuous and delicious flowing practice to anchor in before we move out into our day.
Gentle Grounding Flow: A gentle, well rounded practice to move a little bit of everything and ground yourself as you do. A lovely, soothing flow to bring some movement and awareness into your day whilst cultivating an inner sense of clarity and steadiness.
Purna - whole, complete, satisfied: A satisfying multi modality practice, with a focus on the felt sense of fullness in our body via embodiment of the lungs. Somatic explorations bring awareness into our lungs and then we flow from there outwards through to the rest of the body, exploring natural breath patterns and offering our system the possibility of moving with more time than we need. Flow and relish expansive side body work, integrate strength and spaciousness, and dive into applied yoga philosophy that you can feel in your own body. Begins and closes with chanting. Enjoy!
Self practice enquiry - Hyoid & Backbends: The hyoid bone has a subtle but profound effect on instigating front body support in back bending. This relationship goes right back to our infant development and movement patterns. In this class I share a few ways to explore this relationship. Awareness of the hyoid can profoundly change our experience of spinal extension, in my experience offering much more of a sense of ease, space and support as we backbend.
Actively do Nothing: A 10 minute reset for when you need to just stop and lay on the ground. Whether you are exhausted or agitated, this practice will give you a chance to rest into the steadiness of the ground beneath you and of your breath within you. A short and sweet moment of nourishing rest.
Embryology & Cosmology: Contemplating how our embryological unfolding meets the stories the philosophy tells about the nature of the universe unfolding, and how if the philosophy ever gets confusing or overwhelming we can always come back to the simple fact that we have already self assembled, emerged and performed ourselves into being from a tiny uni cellular being into what we are and what we are always continuing to become…
Bridging the Practice: How do we bridge the experiences we have in our practice into our day to day? And how can we access what we cultivate in longer practices through micro meditations later on? Does my practice exist as an island in my life? In what ways can I bridge awareness at the end of the practice for a sense of cohesive integration and grounded awareness as I move into the rest of my daily activities? Here are some thoughts on bridging the practice…
The map is not the Territory: Contemplating the importance of distinguishing the map from the territory in our study of yoga philosophy, and of holding and trusting our own direct experience. A great one to keep teachings in perspective, build trust in your own inner reference system or for if you ever feel like what you study in texts is slightly different from your experience, or you disagree or feel like you must be getting it wrong… ;)
Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo: I bow to the teacher within me, to my innermost knowing, to the all that is that is my teacher. I bow to all the teachers that have come before me and when I chant these words I stand in the river of their wisdom as it moves through. Melody - Paula Andreewitch
Radhe Govinda Lullaby: A lullaby for Radhe and Govinda, young lovers that embody the essence of joy. Radha, the goddess of the universe and Govinda - the name for a Krishna in his youth. This melody evokes nostalgia and a sense of yearning for the sense of wholeness that we somehow sense is available to us even when it feels out of reach - it is a call for an integration of the masculine and feminine aspects inside our own being (not referring to gender but more to yin/yang, solar/lunar, ida/pingala aspects of ourselves that when integrated created a third thing which is a felt sense of our own wholeness and interrelatedness with all that is. Melody by Paula Andreewitch.
Creative backbend flow: This creative, slow and steady practice explores the specifics of arms moving overhead for backbends, finding the natural spiralling of the upper limbs, with just enough space and constraint for optimal join articulation! We release shoulders and upper back, and intersperse backbends with grounding warrior variations, whilst also weaving in a beautiful awareness practice to cultivate a grounded sense of presence. Props: Strap
