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.
Hare Krishna: This mantra is well known from the Hare Krishna movement, but is actually an ancient mantra found in the Upanishads. The mantra precedes the movement and is a beautiful call to presence. In the Bhagavad Gita the teacher (Krishna) is the embodiment of existence itself, and for me, repeating the name Krishna is a call to wake up awareness to life itself. This melody came through as I was playing my harmonium one day and for me holds the feeling of yearning - the feeling of life yearning to be noticed, existence longing to be felt and known. Melody: Paula Andreewitch.
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’.
30 minute circular flow: A short and sweet movement practice moving you around the mat in a creative circular exploration, moving through hip releases, spinal articulations and flowing side plank transitions. A delicious movement snack with plenty of floor work and a brief meditation to close.
Form & Formlessness: A journey into exploring the relationship between form and formlessness through our movement. A flowing practice that weaves hip release work and balances into a creative twisting sequence. Find the feeling of your own unique vibration that brings you home to yourself in a gentle and profound way.
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.
Cultivate Heartfulness: A practice dedicated to cultivating heartfulness. What does it mean to perceive from our heart? How does initiating movement from our heart shift our experience of being? What does it take to re sensitise to a fully feeling heart, and how do we cultivate the strength to do that? In this practice we awaken into the heart and explore our movement from there. A slow meditative start unfolds into a strong, grounded somatic vinyasa that builds our power, resilience and sensitivity.
Inner Ear & Balance: A practice exploring the vestibular mechanism, and how our inner ear relates to our sense of self, organising our relationship to space and ground via balance. We start with sound, and move slowly into a flowing practice that stimulates a heightened awareness of our balance system, weaving backbends into our flow and playing with dynamic standing balances and half moon variations.
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.
Spacious & Connected: A steady and calming practice inspired by my dear teacher Jean Hall. A sequence that invites a sense of returning to centre as we move slowly and steadily from the ground into some standing work with a focus on spaciousness in the hips. Builds into a strong flow of side planks, prone backbends, balancing postures and twists.
Moved from Within: The potential for movement arises in response to containment. As we push up into boundary, tone builds in our body. This inner motion precedes outer movement. In this practice we explore what it feels like to be moved from within, venturing into a varied asana practice that flows from the ground into lunges, half moon, tree variations, and offers the opportunity for inversions if you like. Closes with a deep rest and chanting.
Embodied Voice: A variety of movement explorations to support free expression of our voice. A great practice to ground and settle agitated energy, and often helpful in processing stagnation/frustration. We move and sound and then rest into quiet, before closing with some chanting together.
Movement Snack - Foot Flow: A 25 minute flow practice with a focus on waking up and moving from our feet. Short and sweet, we start with some foot activations and then get straight into a balancing flow before bringing it down to the ground for a nice long stretch out of the font of the legs and a little inversion to close.
Slowly open into movement: This practice starts with a grounding awareness practice and stillness, slowly opens into micro movements and then sneaks into a flow that will get you warm, strengthen your legs, and challenge your balance, with a yummy dose of backbends, twists and stretchy lunges in between.
Rest & Digest: A practice gently supporting digestion. We move in a way that supports down regulation of the nervous system and brings about gentle movement to the gut tube. Could be helpful in the digestion of food, experience, emotions… we move and flow slowly, rest in our breath, and have a little meditation to close.
Holding the Paradox: A brief meditation exploring the underlying ground of our awareness as it holds all of the fluctuations of our experience. We use a specific hand gesture as a tangible doorway into this concept and nourish ourselves in presence for a few moments before moving into the rest of our day.
Tend to the Soil: This practice tends to the soil of our being. We slow down, ground, and tend to our feet, and the ground of our awareness. A wonderful practice to gather energy and turn inward after the outwardness of summer, but could be used any time of year that you would like to slow down, tune in, and take stock. We explore though meditation, movement, chanting and journalling. (Note: This was a live Monthly Gathering, and I have my baby with me for parts of the practice so you can hear some of her snuffles at times.)
