The King & Queen of Asana: Sirsasana & Salamba Sarvangasana

SATURDAY
Mar 9, 2024 10AM - 12:30PM

Drop-in: $60

Inversions are transformative wonders that restore balance and vitality. Life’s conflicts often lead to dualistic thinking, but sirsasana begins to pacify disturbances, offering clarity and focus. While sirsasana draws us toward singularity, shoulderstand expands our awareness, calming the system, cooling the body, soothing the nerves, and quieting the mind. These poses assure psychological, physical, and emotional equilibrium, providing insurance for our daily lives. This workshop delves deep into these asanas, imparting techniques for lifelong enjoyment of practice.

Evolution of Backbends: From Virabhadrasana 3 to Natarajasana

SATURDAY
May 11, 2024 10AM - 12:30PM

Drop-in: $60

This workshop will teach you how to initiate your backbends from the “nav-chakra” or navel band. Progress from milder and more open or extended backbends such as salabhasana, urdhva mukha svanasana, and purvottonasana, to more intense variations like urdhva dhanurasana and kapotasana, maintaining energetic equilibrium and nurturing positivity throughout. 

Abdominal Work Release: Unlock Effortless Effort & Healthy Will

SATURDAY
Aug 10, 2024 10AM - 12:30PM

Drop-in: $60

Exploring abdominal work reaps rewarding insights in asana practice. The abdomen harbors emotional tension, heat, and congestion. Balancing the abdominal muscles of the front body with the lumbar extensions of the back body while keeping the chest open and the side body lengthened is invaluable. Coordinating relaxation, extension, and toning in the abdominal area unlocks effortless effort and cultivates a healthy willpower approach to asana practice.

Coordinating Movement & Breath: From Surya Namaskar to Pranayam

SATURDAY
Sept 14, 10AM - 12PM

Drop-in: $60

We learn individual asanas separately and then link them together in succession, helping the body become supple and mobile. In Iyengar Yoga, we often use surya namaskar and other linked asanas to introduce quickness and sharpness. Coordinating the breath with movement in surya namaskar underscores the centrality of breath in all that we do and serves as a helpful gateway into pranayam.

Experience the joy of connecting with a light, spacious, and elongated state of being. Forward bends need not be heavy. Today, you’ll activate your forward bends from “grounding” the legs in various postures, projecting the trunk from the pelvis, and discovering the freedom and trajectory of your spine.

Hips & Hamstrings

SATURDAY
Jan 28, 3-5 PM

Natural resistance to stretching of the tendinous fibers in the hamstrings and limitation in the range of motion of the hips (usually due to years of sitting in chairs), limit our physical freedom and comfort.  Working to open and stabilize the hips while lengthening the hamstrings is key to balancing the pelvis, finding proper extension in the spine, and preserving the knees and lower back health. 

Evolution of Backbends

SATURDAY
Nov 19, 1:30-3:30 PM

In this class, we will use both supported and unsupported backbends to get an anti-gravitational lift as well as gravitational release in various backbends. There will be a focus on abdominal length, learning how to extend from the navel band equally back through the legs forward through the trunk. By the end of class, expect to have a more balanced and effortless approach to your backbend practice.

Mind to Balance:
An Inversion Practice

SATURDAY
OCT 29, 1:30-3:30 PM

In this workshop, we will work to build confidence to balance in sirsasana (head balance) away from the wall and develop the stability and understanding to practice the sirsasana cycle and its variations.  In addition to focusing on sirsasana, we will explore salamba sarvangasana, gaining practical experience on the different ways to prepare for and enter shoulderstand to create a lighter, more uplifted pose.

Straighten Up and Fly Right

SATURDAY
July 30th, 3-5 PM

This workshop is not appropriate for beginning students. Are you feeling a little rusty? Does your practice need some brushing up? Every now and then something is bound to come along to interrupt your routine. Perhaps your teacher went away on a summer break?! Whether it has been a couple of weeks or years, this workshop will ease you back into the swing of things. A well-rounded class drawing upon supine, standing, inverted, forward, and restorative postures. 

Right Effort, Healthy Will

SATURDAY
August 20th, 3-5 PM

Aparigraha is the concept of non-grasping or not holding—tight.  Whether it is how we think, do, or feel, can we learn to loosen our grip to find what is “right effort” and healthy willpower? In this class, we will explore how much effort is enough and look at the balance between stabilizing actions and soothing actions and how they are often one and the same when the right balance is struck.

Fall with Style

SATURDAY
September 25th, 10am-12pm

If you have always wanted to "drop back" or already love dropping back, join me this Saturday for my "Fall with Style" workshop-- No, nothing to with autumnal fashion, but rather a Backbending Workshop with a focus on how to gain control of the spine in and out of back bending postures.  We will start with poses that strengthen the arms, open the shoulders and hips, and bring intelligence and coordination to the arms and legs to gain grace and control to fall with style. 

Tune In and Drop Back

SATURDAY
April 21, 10am-12pm

If you have always wanted to "drop back" or already love dropping back, sign up this Saturday for an inversion and backbend workshop.  We will start by strengthening the arms and legs in standing poses, gaining control of the spine in and out of inversions;  building confidence to balance in the center of the room, and developing the grace to drop back with ease and control.