Delighted to have the wonderful Yoga teacher, Melissa Wasserfall, with us this week while Jennifer is touring with her string quartet. Melissa is working with Karate students as well as the Yoga students to help all of us improve our practice. See you in class!
Yes, We are open during the Thanksgiving weekend! We close for Christmas and New Years and we have a slightly reduced schedule in July and August but otherwise we are always open! There's no better time to come to a class than in the midst of a busy time. It's counter-intuitive, sometimes we feel like after a long day of work or school or even family holiday time the last thing we want is to come to a class and work hard, but because we focus so strongly in our Yoga or Karate classes, we forget all our other concerns and classes are a refreshing break.There are times we feel like not coming to class, but we never regret coming when we do. See you in class! Introductory Karate Classes for Children at http://shoplocal.ly/01zsQQ Introductory Yoga Classes at http://shoplocal.ly/01zsRt Introductory Adult Karate Classes at http://shoplocal.ly/01zsRs
Why does anyone take up Yoga practice? To get healthier, maybe stronger and more flexible, maybe to lose weight, maybe even to find some sort of inner peace or happiness. But how can we be certain that Yoga might do any of those things for us?The answer is that we can't. Even if Yoga has been scientifically proven" to good things for people, even if it has worked for everyone we know who has tried itstill there's no guarantee that it will work for us.Of course, there's only one way to find out and that is to give it a try. So we buy a mat and enrol in a class and follow the directions as best we can - not out of obedience or blind faith, but out of a kind of provisional trust. We say, I want to give this a fair shot so I'll do it for some amount of time and I'll do it as correctly as I can to see if it works for me".I think this is exactly the right way to approach this work and I think it is intended to be done this way. Also, I think this is the way to look at the ten instructions for self-care and ethics in the Yamas and Niyamas - they are not the ten commandments of Yoga, they are ten ideas to try in order to find out if they work for us. So if you would like to be happier and healthier, the first suggestion Yoga has to offer is not to buy a yoga mat and start stretching, it is to do less harm to those around you. That's Ahimsa - non-harming - the first of the five precepts in the Yamas, the first of the eight aspects of Yoga.It's a big idea, and certainly not unique to the Yoga tradition. (What is the first precept in the Hippocratic Oath? First do no harm.) So how can we do less harm? That's what the other four precepts explain - coming up next! Introductory Yoga Classes at http://shoplocal.ly/01zsRt Introductory Adult Karate Classes at http://shoplocal.ly/01zsRs Introductory Karate Classes for Children at http://shoplocal.ly/01zsQQ
Happy Moon Day! There's a full moon today so don't practice - enjoy an extra hour today to sleep in or have an extra coffee. It's only an hour but I often feel like my whole day is a holiday on a moon day.What is this moon day thing anyway? Why do we take a day off from our daily practice every two weeks when the moon is full or new? Is this some sort of astrological hocus-pocus?Like much in traditional practice we aren't given reasons for what we do, we are just given a set of directions. The reasons are for us to figure out...or not, depending on how curious we are. Some of us are content to follow the directions and just be grateful for the good results we get from these sophisticated poses and sequences. Some of us want answers and enjoy a lifetime of reverse-engineering these practices.I fall more in the second category. My reversed-engineered take on the moon day thing is that moon phases are cycles with real consequences - just ask a kindergarten teacher or an emergency ward nurse if things get crazier on the full moon. Ashtangis always know what phase the moon is in and we have friends who tell us once a month how poorly they slept last night, you guessed it, on the full moon.The full moon is like the peak of an inhalation. We may feel more energized than usual, but maybe a bit too energized to get a good night's sleep, and we might be more inclined to push our practice too hard and injure ourselves.The new moon is like the bottom of an exhalation. We might feel especially grounded but maybe a bit too grounded, our practice can feel like moving through wet cement. These kinds of cycles happen every day, every month, every year, and over each lifetime. Over the course of a year, a bigger cycle plays out peaking at the summer solstice and reaching its nadir at the winter solstice - the darkest day of the year. No wonder so many people find the winter solstice the saddest time of the year, and its no wonder we save something from the harvest for this time, light some candles, and give each other gifts to express our gratitude for each other and this life.Or, if you prefer, just enjoy a random day off every two weeks!See you in class! Introductory Yoga Classes at http://shoplocal.ly/01zsRt
It's an old insight but still true and worth reconsidering that the materialistic West embraced Yoga primarily as a physical practice. Westerners mostly skipped to the third of the eight aspects of Yoga, Asana, the physical work we do on our yoga mats. Don't get me wrong, the physical aspect of Yoga is truly wonderful and it fills a gaping hole in Western spiritual practice - the body! But what about the other aspects? Let's look at them over the next few days. We aren't going to definitively sum them up, any more than we are going to master Asana practice in a few sessions, but let's at least get started.The first of the eight aspects of Yoga (Ashtanga = Eight Limbs) is Yamas. There are five of these and the first one is Ahimsa, non-harming. Let's start unpacking this together! Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga at http://shoplocal.ly/01zsRz
