New Location!
The sun has finally arrived bringing its warmth and invigorating energy alive. May this change in the weather bring a fresh breath into your every day life and inspire you to stay committed on your yoga practice.
This month, I am very excited to announce that Sacred Paths Yoga is moving to our local natural food store, Noah’s Ark on Placerville Drive. Click here for directions. It has a beautiful room upstairs that I’m sure you will be pleased to join me in our yoga class. Classes will be held on the same days and times:
- Mondays ~ 8:30am – 10am
- Wednesdays ~ 8:30am – 10am
- Fridays ~ 8:30am – 10am
Our new location for classes will begin Wednesday, June 2nd.
Sacred Paths Yoga in June
In the weekly vinyasas I have seen great strides taking place during class. I am noticing more flexibility, balance and strength in regular attending students. It gives me great joy to see how hard and focused you are. I am especially pleased with the feeling of awareness and a calm presence that radiates in the room. Thank you for sharing your Self, your wisdom and your strength with me ~ I feel so full after every class!
We will be opening our heart chakras (Anahata) during vinyasa flow this week. Feeling the presence of Mother Earth awaking to the warmth of the sun, we too will emanate that warmth from our hearts to our minds, to our Atman (spirit).
We will build on strength the following week, working on our core, upper body and back strength, so that we are in good form for summer and all the outdoor activities we do.
The following week we will deepen our knowledge of our root chakra, learning a salutation for the Muladhara chakra (like sun salutation though one focusing on opening the root chakra).
In the last week of June, we’ll focus on co-ordination and balance, working with Garudasana (standing Eagle Pose) and the like. We’ll learn to implement the teaching of opening the heart chakra in the beginning of the month, to bring the sense of the air element into practice, creating an awareness of lightness for balance.
We’ve also been working with implementing the virtues of yoga into our classes, introducing a new one each week and contemplating on them during our practice, as I am hoping that you are doing “off the mat” as well. This month we will dive deeper into how these virtues are joined together like a thread, each one building upon the other, so that we can come into an awareness of the mind and how it works, and how we can work with it so that we may find the inner peace and self-love that we all seek.
We’ve been working with ahimsa ~ non-violence or not causing pain, for even by your words, even by your thoughts you can cause pain. We’re working on being kind and loving to ourselves so that may ripple out to others.
We built onto that with metta ~ non judgment, realizing that we are constantly judging ourselves during our practice (and off the mat), thus creating judgment towards others. We’re working on loving and accepting ourselves for just what is; in all stages of life, growth and development.
Last week we contemplated on karuna ~ compassionate opening to whatever physical, emotional, energetic, and mental ills you might be experiencing.
Once we can accept things as they are, we can begin to place our attention on the pleasurable aspects of your experience.
We are going to build on this thread, adding more beads of wisdom and enlightenment to our practice with the spirit of mudita ~ to be pleased, to have a sense of gladness or to be delighted. This is the third of the brahmaviharas (yogic teachings) on love. Mudita is the ability to take active delight in others’ good fortune or good deeds. In Yoga Sutra I.33, Patanjali advises us to take delight in the virtue of others as a way to develop and maintain calmness of mind. We can create the conditions for opening to this kind of joy in our asana practice, in seated meditation, and throughout the day. By actively looking for what is right, whether it’s with a posture or with any of life’s experiences, you can counter-act the mind’s tendency to fixate on what’s “wrong.” That is not to say that there are unsatisfactory and painful experiences in life. That is why this is the third teaching on love, building from metta and karuna. Learning not to judge and sending compassion to what you are experiencing. And just like in life, it is all a practice. Just do your best! (Taken from excerpts on Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras and from the article in Yoga Journal by Frank Jude Boccio)