New Classes, Class Changes and Vacation!

Hello!

I hope everyone is enjoying the warm weather!  I sure am!

CLASS NEWS:

- NEW CLASS:  Sunday at 2:00 pm, Go Yoga, Beginner's level
- Thursday 8:15 pm open level class at Go Yoga is cancelled for Summer. 

Also, I am away this weekend, all my classes will be subbed.


With Love,

P

Class change at Go Yoga

My classes at Go Yoga are now Intermediate level instead of Beginner level on Both Tuesday and Thursday at 8:15 pm. 

Hope to see you!

Love,

P

Back on full schedule

I am back from a beautiful vacation in Puerto Rico. I relaxed, surfed, hung out with beautiful friends and met new ones. It was a blissful week!

But now I am back in the grind teaching everyday!

This week, we will focus on our hips. When it's so cold outside, we sit all day, watch tv, relax during long periods if time . Our hips become so tight, holding the cold of winter within them. Warming and opening the hip area warms our entire body from the inside out.

Our hips also are located by the sacral chakra, or svadisthana chakra. This powerful energy center is responsible for our emotional identity; Self-esteem and self worth. To open the hips with an intention to unlock your doubts lets your asana practice become a form of increasing your self worth and self respect. It is to give yourself love!

So come and practice.

With love,

P

Playlist

My current playlist is so good!! Stay warm everyone.  Hope to see you soon!

Earth- Garth Stevenson
Come Back- Frances Cone
Evening Kitchen- Band of Horses, Spotify Sessions
Gabriel- Lamb
Ganesha- Nirvana Meditation Orchestra
Khajuraho- Chinmaya Dunster
Coming Home- Chinmaya Dunster
Dawn- Garth Stevenson
Bhaj Man Mere- Nirinjan Kaur
Aum- Lex van Someren
Any Other Name- Thomas Newman

Niyamas, in a nut shell

Every Thursday at Go Yoga we have been studying the Yamas and Niyamas.  Last Thursday was the last installment of the course. Here is what we covered, in a nutshell.

The Niyamas are the personal commitments we make to subdue the mental chatter of our minds.  They are as follows:

(from Kimberly Theresa's Yoga Essentials Course I, The Essential Yoga Sutra, Donna Farhi's book Yoga Mind, Body & Spirit: A Return to Wholeness,  and T.K.V. Desikachar's The Heart of Yoga)


Shaucha:  To be clean.

When we practice yoga, we take care of our studio, our place of practice, we gather our props and neatly place them around us.  When we meditate, we clean our space before sitting down, we decorate our altars.  We prepare.

When we are getting ready to go out, we shower, clean our houses, etc.  We prepare.

All these rituals, or preparations, help ease our practice and create a comfortable space in which we can settle in.

Santosha:  To be contented with whatever we have.



This one is pretty popular.  Every religion has a different take on this.  In our practice on the mat, it is a practice to stay present, to be happy with the current moment.  If a pose feels too strenuous, or a pose feels awkward, it is ok to step back.  If the teacher is not doing a class as we expected, or if there is a pose that your body just won't do, to honor those emotions and let them go, create peace and dissolve anger.

Santosha should not be confused with "giving up."  Santosha is a practice to stay present and content with the present.  It means to practice patience.

It is to look at the glass half full, without the expectation of a result.  

Tapas:  To embrace hardships for higher goals.



The commitment we make every time we go to a yoga class is tapas.  The practice, is tapas.
Outside of the mat, the easiest way to practice tapas is to work hard!  We have all had goals we want to achieve, and know that the harder we work for them, the better the reward.  Tapas is that "burning enthusiasm" that keeps us working hard.

Swadhyaya:  To engage in regular study.



When we listen to our bodies and learn about ourselves, we are practicing Swadhyaya.  We can only achieve this practice by being open to what it is that we are learning.  To be curious about the lessons of every class, and every day.

I have a tattoo that says "I surrender to my teachers."  If everyone and everything that is presented to me is a lesson, therefore I surrender to what it is that I need to learn.  It is my reminder to practice this.

Practicing Swadhyaya is easy, as long as our hearts are open to lessons around us, within and outside of the mat.

Ishvarapranidhana:  Seek our master's blessings, or celebration of the spiritual.


Every book you read about the Yamas and Niyamas will give you a different take of what they mean.  Ishvarapranidhana was confusing to me, until I realized that to seek your master's blessings, or to surrender to God means to seek for your own blessings, to follow what works for you, as an individual.  And honor it.

We enter the classroom, we Om, we sit in our mat, and we honor ourselves, our bodies and our mind.  When we go to church, we honor Jesus. Whatever it is that you do to do to honor a higher power, is Ishvarapranidhana.

Honor yourself, make everything around you joyful, beautiful, a part of your journey, and suddenly, everything is beautiful.  

Love,

P

New Schedule

Fall is starting on Saturday, and with that, come all new classes!

Go Yoga has amazing new teachers and two new express classes.

Quick Fitness' beloved yoga teacher Cass Ghiorse (a student of one of my favorite teachers, Elena Brower) is going on maternity leave and I will be taking over her alignment based classes on Thursday at 9:00 am.  Katherine Colla, a dear friend, is now teaching the 7:00 am vinyasa yoga at Quick Fitness, Moriah Ray starts teaching restorative yoga on Sunday nights, and Hannah Gruber takes over the Wednesday and Saturday classes.

Get on it!  Because practicing yoga is better than _________.

Love,

P 

Yamas and Niyamas, continued

Aparigraha (non attachment)

Whether you just started your practice or you're a long term yogi/yogini, Aparigraha, or non-attachment, is another one of the Yamas (the last of the 5, per Master Patanjali) that is commonly used and heard around classes, blogs and yoga-related articles. 

Non-attachment on the mat starts from the beginning of your practice.  The moment you sit down and close your eyes,  in order to embrace your practice, you must separate yourself from the residues of your day.  We carry around the emotions and responses of our day, whether we know it or not (snappy, anyone?).  Sitting down on your mat before your practice and setting an intention to "let go" is the first step to begin a peaceful and refreshing practice. 

Secondly, non-attachment should be practiced in every pose in two different ways, firstly, removing the need to attach yourself to a result of the pose ("I really want to do that pose the student did") and as result, accepting your body and where it is at this present time.  Competition is part of the human condition, and seeing a room full of yogis, it is hard not to compare or watch those around you and see how they practice.  However, we are all different.  What you may be able to do is not what your neighbor may be able to do, and vice-versa.  Let go of what those around you are doing, and concentrate on your practice. As you do this, you will see that every step of the asana becomes important, rather than the end result. 

To practice Aparigraha outside of the mat is a lifetime goal.  There are monks that meditate on the practice of letting go for hours at a time.  After all, we are almost programmed to use our memories as a puzzle and attach everything in our lives to our experience.  Non-attachment is HARD!  I am sure that you can think of many things you are currently overly attached to (shoes?  that restaurant?  Your boyfriend?)  Non-attachment takes constant practice and effort.  Paying attention to the present is an easy antidote to being overly attached.  Also, being generous to others helps remove that selfishness. 

Lastly, to practice Non-attachment you don't have to give away all your material things and let go of everything, it simply means that if those items were to be taken from you, you'd be accepting of your present.  

With love,

P

P.S. I am super excited to be teaching the 9:00 am Thursday class at Quick Fitness!  If you are local to the Williamsburg/Greenpoint neighborhoods, the yoga community in this gym is a gem, and very hard to find in other gyms.  If you're interested in passing by, please let me know.

What your practice can do for you

I love to sit down before my yoga practice and watch those moments in which my heart beat begins to slow down and my breath becomes deep.  It takes me about one minute.  It is that sensation that I yearn during my practice.  As I move,  it feels as if I have begun a journey of going off into another world. I carefully watch my thoughts and I feel them disappear as my breath deepens.  It's a wonderful, wonderful feeling.  

The Ajna chakra, or your Third Eye, is responsible for this shift into inner awareness.  As you watch yourself enter that deep dimension within you past your heartbeat, into your energy body, your third eye opens.  Your awareness shifts and turns within, rather than focusing on outside factors.  

Let your practice guide you and allow you to go deep into these moments.  Be curious and watch how you react to your practice.  Do certain poses make you want to leave the room?  Or do they feel delicious?  Is there mental chatter during your inversion at the end of the practice?  These type of moments and connections, are a crucial part of your practice.   Ease into them with an open heart. 

love,

p

The Third Eye Chakra symbol

Beautiful Video!

The amazing Pete Longworth created this video of my favorite studio (to teach and practice).  I make a cameo towards the end :)

Click here to check it out!

Revised schedule

Hi All!

I feel very lucky for this weekend I get to go and support my teacher Kelly Morris at the Hangout Festival in Alabama!  I also celebrate my birthday on Saturday, so it should be great!

I am also going away next week to support my sister who graduates from law school, so I am away the latter part of the week.  Please check the schedule below for an updated schedule.  Also, check Go Yoga's calendar for their schedule is amended next weekend for the holiday.

Have a safe and fun weekend!

Patricia 

Benefit class at Go Yoga

The New York Yoga world is being attacked by the state. They want to add taxes to the classes, among other things.

Timothy Lynch will be hosting a benefit class for the organization helping sort this mess, Yoga for NY. The class is this Wednesday at noon at Go Yoga. Class cards welcome. I will be there! For more info please visit www.goyoga.ws

Change happens

We can't control the changes that happen around us, nor to us. Part of understanding this, is understanding the karma that ripens all the time, from seeds planted yesterday, or many years ago. Understanding this, and letting light shine through the holes that some of these changes bring are part of the acceptance and ultimately, bring us growth and happiness.

What we can do, and what we can control, is the seeds we plant now. Plant seeds that will cultivate good karma. Make others happy, live honestly, be good to yourself and those around you. Flowers will bloom soon after.

Classes this week

I'm going away for the weekend, heading to Cape Cod with some of my favorite people of all time. Nevertheless, I am subbing out Friday and Sunday at Quick Fitness and Monday at Go Yoga. Tricia Napor is subbing for me at QF, and Jessica Crow is at Go.

Have a great week!

More classes at Go Yoga!

Tomorrow I start teaching the GoBasics at 8:15 at Go Yoga in Williamsburg.  I am joining some of the best teachers at the best studio of the neighborhood, so every Thursday will be a celebration.  Join me! 

Go Yoga!

I am so excited to be part of the best yoga studio in Williamsburg! Starting this Monday, I am teaching the Monday at noon class!   Also, subbing tomorrow at 10:00 am, and more classes to come.

Hugs to all!

Patricia 

Twitter, Facebook, Blogging

I am not much of a fan of Twitter, and as you can tell by all my posts, I am also not much of a blogger.  There is just too much information being thrown out there is all times and I get overwhelmed.  I am an avid Facebooker though, so if you really want to keep up with my Yoga adventures, feel free to add me as a friend. 

This week I am keeping things cool by working on our hips and psoas openers.  For those beginners out there, I am subbing for the amazing Maria Cutrona at Go Yoga tomorrow, and teaching at Sangha Yoga Shala at 12:00 pm.  Come chill out! 

It's been a pain in the as* trying to make it out to Long Beach with all the weddings and things going on during the weekends.  This weekend I am not sure if I can make it either.  I need some beach time desperately!  I hope to make it out there next week along with my lil' surfboard.   Check out our page on Facebook for updates and for schedules.  

Hugs to all!

Go Yoga, Beach Yoga, More Yoga

Hello All,

I am adding a couple of classes to my Summer schedule.  I will be teaching the Basics class at one of my favorite yoga studios of all times, Go Yoga, Tuesdays at 8:15.  I am super excited and honored to be teaching in the studio!

I have also picked up a new class, Monday at 7:15 at Sangha Yoga Shala, also in Williamsburg.

Please tell your friends!

Love,

Patricia